0237 | Building Direct, Action-Oriented Account-Based Marketing Programs For Leading Advertising Agencies with CEO Peter Levitan

I am Peter Levitan. I run Peter Levitan and company. And you are listening to EA interviews.

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Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview. Do you want to get your company out there? Do you want to create more brand awareness? Do you want more people to know about your services? Well, I'm super excited to have Peter Levitan on the show today. He's an author, speaker and CEO coach to help you grow your business. I'm going to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor.

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Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Peter Leviton. Peter, how are you feeling today?

I'm groovy.

I like that word also. I have not heard it in a while, but it's, it's a good one.

We need to go backwards sometimes to go forwards.

I agree. Well, I'm glad you're here today because I know you're a wealth of knowledge and why would you say PR and advertising is so important for companies?

Well, you got to get the word out. And I'm going to say, I'll maybe say this more than once during this conversation. It is ever more difficult to get the word out about your business, your product.

Blogs, podcasts, you know, it's very difficult. So advertising works because you can target people and get them to know who you are and what you're selling.

What do you think most companies are doing wrong when it comes to the PR and the advertising side of things?

I don't think they wake up in the morning and say, I want to be unignorable. And it's a word I stole from a great agency in Canada. So let's think about what unignorable means. It means that people are going to pay attention to you. And I always say, what is the alternative? And that's ignorable. And it's, you know, I think it's an objective very few companies actually utilize. Let me use a huge company, Apple, as an example. You cannot ignore Apple. And there are reasons.

What do you think those reasons are?

Well, obviously there's a brand, there was a personality. This is something a lot of companies lack. They don't have a really a personality or a leader that can get out front. It's not that it's easy, but let's just go with personality. Just the idea. Let's think of Geico, which woke up one day and said we're like a lizard. And it's hard to ignore anything GEICO does. So they decided that they're going to be unignorable. And if you think about the insurance business, all of the other major insurance companies kind of follow. They're all doing kind of wacky, crazy advertising. And you can't do it just to be whacking crazy. But they're getting their messages across. They want to be unignorable.

Now, when you're talking about Steve Jobs and Apple.

How important do you think the personality piece is versus the brand?

Well, you have to sell the brand. And you know, there are guys. I'll use an example, Gary Vaynerchuk, some of your audience may know of him. Vaynerchuk and Gary is a personality. He is not really selling his brand as much as he's selling his personality. And he's quite successful. So he's the best example I have of right now of a guy that is selling personality versus a brand. Now we can turn that around. But essentially when you have a spokesperson, a CEO, somebody who's great and compelling, it just helps to drive the business forward. Most, most people are not either good at it or are not super comfortable at it. I've been lucky in my career that I've worked with some great people who can do that.

Do you think it's somewhere that people should be starting? If, if they're the first five, 10 years in business, do you think they should be starting trying to develop that personality, the brand, or do you think it should be something else?

Well, today I think that it's very important to have a personal brand. And again, I want to be very cautious here. Not everybody can do that. I mean, I've got in manufacturing that are not as savvy as my advertising agency owner type clients. But I think that you can work through it and if you think it'll help your brand. And I think you know more than think, I know that brand differentiation is critical. We're all too similar, a lot of people doing the same thing and personality is one of the major, major drivers. Can you make that happen? You know, you're a little bit born with it. I was lucky to grow up in New York City, which forced me to be outgoing in many ways. I think there's enough information on YouTube channels, even watching a show like yours where people get an idea what it is like to have a personality and how important it is. Okay, I mean, look, you got a great tie. So, you know, let's go with the tie today.

Well, I do appreciate that and yeah, it's always interesting because branding, I mean.

I believe it's important and I know it adds that element that not every business has and I think everyone should have a brand. But I also feel like, and I might be wrong, but would you agree that some people, early on, they're trying to do too much too quick? I think that might be a good way of saying it.

Well, there's definitely an issue of too much. I was working with a client this morning and this client has a 40 page PowerPoint deck talking about their business development program as super smart people. Fantastic, very deep. And I said, look guys, can you get it down to five pages?

If you can get your plan on one page, you're in good shape. Keep it simple. Stupid is one of my great mottos. I didn't invent it, but it works. I think simplicity is important. Hopefully I'm answering your question, but it's the goal of being unignorable and keeping your message simple and people will hear you. The other side is to be different and a lot of people don't really have that as a goal. I mean, if you remember, I hate to keep using Apple as an example, 80s they had a campaign different because they were up against Microsoft and let's face it, they were certainly different than Microsoft.

Yeah. And I think you are doing a great job answering it because I didn't want to specifically say it or lead the question, if you will, but to the point of doing too much too soon. Like you're saying, everyone feels more comfortable doing the 4050 page document than distilling it down. Because anyone can go on forever. But it takes, I think you need to have some sort of time under your belt. Whether it's a few weeks or at least enough thought put into it, maybe times a bad analogy. But I see a lot of companies that just, they're like, we need to build this brand. Like to your point, Gary Vee, we need to build this whole empire. I go, why not get your first 10 clients, your first hundred, your first thousand, whatever the case may be, depending on the industry, but it's like they're just trying to break off this thing and be this take 20, what takes us 10, 20 years to develop in the first year or two. And you know.

It takes time to develop.

I just feel.

Well, it's good to have goals. It's good to be aggressive, assertive, whichever word you prefer. On the other hand, you need to be a little bit patient. You know, there are so many gurus on the Internet right now. It's not so much get rich quick, but it's a side hustle. You know, this is a new term for the past five or so years. Start a side hustle while you're working for your company and get rich and make $5,000 a month, and then you can switch over and quit your job and start all over again. It's not that easy. And the smart guys out there give you the tools, but they'll also tell you this isn't easy stuff. I've never seen anybody not work to get to where they are. And I think Gary Vaynerchuk is an example. I mean, just think of those two guys, Steve Jobs and Gary Vaynerchuk. Both very successful personalities. Both work very hard. Doesn't come easy. That's a song, I think.

Yeah. And to your point with the personality, because again, instead of just focusing on the clients or customers going, how can we serve them better? Which is part of your brand? You know, do you have a brand of excellence or do you have a brand of mediocre? I mean, that's a huge thing that goes into it. Instead of actually selling, not selling, instead of just serving the clients and being known for a good service or something, it's like, let's do all these bells and whistles. I know one of the things with logo design and identity, you know, if you can't do a logo in black and white, it doesn't matter what colors you throw on it. Same with this. I mean, I get compliments all the time on the colors in the show and this and that. And I'm appreciative. Don't get me wrong, I put a lot of time, energy and money into it, but. But at the essence, I could strip this whole thing down and you can see it in the first 10 episodes. The content is still strong, and the essence of it is still strong. What would you say to someone who wants to bulk up their content and bulk up just their services? Where can we start? Like, you know, if it was a hundred years ago and we didn't have Internet and all this other stuff, how did those companies succeed? What would you say to one of those companies that wants to just get right at the core?

Well, I'll say a few things. One is content development is difficult just even trying to develop content. So that's number one. Number two, today it's very difficult to break through the clutter. The clutter is unbelievable. I mean, there are just so many people trying to get your attention. You know, it's very, very difficult. The question is you know how to do it. And I think you, you pay very smart marketers to help you do that. That's one of the reasons I'm not going to say I'm a super smart marketer, but it's the reason I get hired.

Content is interesting because it can be.

Accelerated, it can be reused. Again, I was talking to a client morning. They're going to do a podcast which can be turned into a transcript, which can be turned into a blog post, which can be put on LinkedIn. It can be cut up into videos. They can create videos from it. We have to amplify what we do, otherwise you'll lose your mind. I'm a one person operation. The agency I was talking to is 200 people and even they have trouble. So I said, look, everybody, let's all calm down. Not try to do everything, but when you do something, how can we amplify it? How can we cut it up and put it into different programs? I didn't invent this. This has been ongoing for a while. But it's again, I think that people have to realize that they have to think strategically and also start worrying about their time because you also have to do business. So it's not just content. I mean, you have to make a living. It's complicated.

I want to ask you, I don't expect you to name them as well, you shouldn't. But the 200/Company, what are some typical issues you see with large companies such as that?

Well, again, I always say to people I'm like a cancer doctor. I mean, nobody comes to me if they're super healthy and they're not sick. So the kinds of companies I work with are companies that want to accelerate and craft their business development strategy over time. Well, I started out working for clients like General Mills or British Airways and so forth. Now I work with agencies, but all of a sudden I'm sort of other companies are kind of sneaking in and asking me to help. The greatest issue I think is the people at the top have to want to be sales oriented. You can make things, but if people are not buying it, you've got a problem. The issue with a lot of companies, I think is they don't make business development one of their core strengths. They just don't get it. Again, I want to be cautious. These are the kinds of people that Come to me, they're not coming to me because they're healthy. They've got a problem. Right.

So it goes back to those core strengths like you're talking about. You can have all the bells and whistles in the world but if you have a problem internally, it's just going to, I think what is it? Implode?

Yeah, you need, I mean look, it's very simple. In general for most companies the vibrations and the goals and objectives and the style come from the top. And I realize there are companies with you know, thousands of people but still, I mean we know who are the great CEOs and, and they drive the company and it works. And if the, if the guys leading the company are not oriented towards, and this is my world towards sales, it's going to be a problem. And you know we see a thing with a lot of companies, sales is one side of marketing is on the other. It's insanity. It's really should be one group of people all trying to do what they wake up in the morning doing. And this includes people who want to start a one person Internet business selling socks. I mean this isn't rocket science.

It works and cuts across all types of businesses. One person to a thousand people sell stuff.

What would you say is the difference between advertising, marketing and sales?

Well that's a very good question because to me they meld. Often you'll see in a company the marketing people, the ones that do advertising, public relations, get the word out, get the messaging out, think about the website and so forth. And they're over here even doing pay per click advertising on Google and they're driving people to the sales group. And then you have this other group of people that are, that are receiving incoming inquiries or leads and sometimes both of these groups are not talking, they're not talking about the same objectives. A sales guy will get a lead and go where did this come from? Why is this person contacting me? So the marketing group has to make sure that they're aligned with sales in terms of the type of customer that they're looking for. It's not just getting leads, for example, it's getting the kind of lead that makes sense for the company. So when they don't talk, and I've seen this often, there's a disconnect and it's very expensive disconnect.

And how much would you say if you were to add a dollar amount to that it could cost a company just not having the communication or having that convers conversation?

Well there's the labor cost, there's a time cost, there's an opportunity cost. These are the kinds of costs that you're seeing. Labor is obvious. You have people getting paid a salary and let's just say they're not functioning at, I don't know what the optimum is, let's call it 80% in terms of sales. They're not selling the right stuff. And I think the opportunity, the loss of an opportunity is underestimated by companies. If there's a market out there that you should be talking to and selling to and you're not and it's in relatively, it's an easier than more difficult sale, then you've lost an opportunity and that's the efficiency that a cfo, COO and CEO marketing director should be aiming towards. Easier said than done.

Very good expert authority insight though, because if you're not doing it, it could be, you know, limitless. On the like you're saying the opportunity cost is huge, but again, it's not going to. And I don't ever like to lead people on and be like, yeah, do these three things that's going to happen overnight to, to our point earlier, you know, keep it simple. But you know, there's no magic bullet. You know, like you're saying right now, again, you know, easier said than done. I'm glad you're sharing the framework, but I'm also glad you're.

Part of this is figuring out which your audience, your market wants to hear. Again, this, you know, it's rudimentary, but I'll give you an example. I'm talking to this company this morning and I said, how can you own, quote, own quote, unquote the category? How can you be a category leader in this one specific category that they're working in? And my suggestion, suggestion to them was to do low cost research. We can't do, you know, we don't do a lot of man on the street research at the moment. Mask on the street. That would not quite be as interesting as it used to be. But there's a tool I push people towards. It's called Google Surveys. And you can use the Google universe, which is like almost everyone on the planet, to run surveys and research. And if it's compelling research, your target market will want to hear it and pay attention to it and they'll be interested in what you have to say and you can do that every month. So there are a lot of things going on there. I'm a huge fan of research. It makes a lot of sense and people pay attention to it. And you can do it at a very low cost.

That's a great point. Because when you have those, when you have that research, when you have the numbers, when you have the actual facts, you can act on it. And it's not just, oh, I think someone would like this, or I think, you know, I think someone would appreciate that. You know, there's a big difference from arbitrary to empirical.

Yes. And we're all starved for. Well, I was starved for time. Yeah, I guess we're starved for time. We're, you know, with so much going on, if somebody gives you something useful, you will pay attention to them. There's a value proposition here. Give people something that helps them, and they will pay attention. I always used to say that if somebody wasn't interested in my brilliance, then I would move on to the.

Next customer kind of deal. But in most cases, that's just me. In most cases, people are interested in information that will drive their business forward, and they will continue to pay attention to you over the long haul if you provide that information. So let me use you as an example. I think you're close to 200 podcasts. Is that right?

Just over now.

Just over. Okay. I mean, that's miraculous. I mean, that's an incredible amount of information. And I'm sure you're not doing this for your health, although talking to me must be a wonderful experience for you. You're doing it because it's a huge amount of content that people find interesting and of value, and that's how it works. So whether a podcast or a blog post or research something that adds value to the. To the target market, to the recipient, will return.

Will deliver a high return on investment. And that's really what it's about. That's marketing. If you can have a high roi, you win.

I love that you're sharing that great expert authority effect insight. And I want to ask you about your beginning, because how did you get in this? Why did you choose this over anything else you could have?

Well, I journey, you know, I'm not 27 anymore. So my first job was as a professional photographer in San Francisco. And I had clients like Mondavi and MasterCard at San Francisco magazine when I was in my early 20s. And I realized at that point a couple of things. One, I didn't want to be a photographer anymore or sanitized, because I would not have gotten those jobs had I not learned how to do, at least in those days, very early rudimentary sales. So my. My world has been at least three or four companies that I started myself. I also spent 16 years at the world's largest agency. So I know big corporate, and I know how to start businesses. I can tell you that it's if you have the right product, the right time, or the right service, it works. Today, I do. On consulting, I do because I sold an advertising agency seven, eight years ago, and people said, hey, can you help me? And I said, sure, let's do it. And I am, to a certain extent, a nomad, a digital nomad. I can work from anywhere. And I live in Mexico. But in the good old days, like, it's in January.

I know we want to be timeless on podcasts, but it's been a few minutes, months. People got an airplane, but I used to be able to do that. I could work from any hotel room anywhere in the world.

Yeah, and that's the great thing about technology nowadays. You know, the last couple of decades, none of this is new. Some people approach me and they're like, oh, my gosh, you're. You're live streaming the show. I'm like, this is nothing new. We've watched the Olympics for how many years? It's the same thing. But what's cool about it is anyone can be doing it now. It's not costing $1,000 a second to broadcast it over 28.8 or 56k dial up, or, you know, the early days of cable modems where you could barely get a 1 meg file transferred. It's limitless what's at our fingertips now, which I think is great. And to your point of working from anywhere, there's no reason not to. I mean, as long as you can.

Get the result.

And you're competent, you know, you can stay on a schedule and work with the team. I got. I got team members for EA interviews all around the world. I like looking for the best of the best, people who are going to support and capture that vision. Not just, you know, I don't want someone who's just going to punch the clock from nine to five and it doesn't even resonate. It actually irritates my personality, to be honest.

There are people and companies around the world that are working 247 to help us give you a couple of examples. I get my transcripts done by a company while I'm sleeping. They're making transcripts and podcasts. I have a company in the Soviet Union that helps me do virtual voiceovers. I type it into their application and it creates a computer voice.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, there.

That's an interesting comment. I'M trying to think of their name. I can't right now. If people listen to a couple of my podcasts, they'll. They'll hear a AI voice talking. And it's a day where I just. I want to do the intro to the podcast and I have these strange. And you can pick the language. Do you want an English sounding person, an Australian sounding person? You could even do it in Russian. They'll translate into Russian, which is not necessarily a huge market for me, but it's funky and interesting. And again, I'll go back. I try to be unignorable, and it's slightly unignorable. Tell me if you'd like me to mention one other thing which is kind of funny.

Oh, please, please do. We got time.

Okay. All right. I work with a company, and anyone can work with this company. I'll name them Cameo. As in Cameo.

Oh, yes.

And you pay. Yeah, you pay celebrities or comedians. I use a person that has delivered.

A couple of people actually have delivered videos to me. One is Donald Trump saying I'm fantastic. I've got a couple of those. I have Mahatma Gandhi from India saying that Peter Levitan is fantastic. And I just had someone do a Borat piece. So I've got Borat saying you should work with Peter Levitan. And these are 60, 70, $80. Now you can also, I think, get Tyson to say something. That's a different story. That's, you know, that's borrowed interest. But I love that I can get impersonators to be Donald Trump who says I am the smartest person in the world. Except also for Peter Levitan. Maybe Donald, in a, you know, short period of time might be doing those as well. Maybe get him on Cameo.

Yeah, when I heard about that, there's, you know, I saw the entire cast of the Office, I think was the very first people. I got an ad from Facebook or who knows where or whatever. But, yeah, it's funny when you can get anyone. Again, not just being able to live stream, not just being able to work from anywhere, but you can literally get anyone in the world. It's funny that it's so easy to access them now because you can. There's all these social. A lot of them really are run by those people. Facebook pages are something different. But I found with Instagram and Twitter, it's usually the person running, doing it. And especially if they do live streams, they're probably not hiring a stunt double to do their livestream. You know what I mean? They might have someone automating something. On Facebook or LinkedIn. But I found with Twitter and Instagram, it's pretty. Just cut through the clutter, like you're saying. And with Cameo, there's all the people that, you know, 20, 50, 100, 200 bucks or whatever, and you get access to them. That's miraculous. You never had that ever. That I can think of. I remember writing actual letters in the mail back in the day from people in the 90s that I saw on TV and, you know, just was writing them letters and stuff. And it's surreal now that some of them are on the list to be on the show, and I'm half wondering if they ever got it, because I was reaching out to people 20, 30 years ago, and it's just cool now. You don't need to go through all those hoops, but you can still get access to them.

I'll say that.

One of the most underutilized tools in 20, 20, 21, moving forward, is mail. And, you know, we can. We can kind of get worried in saying, are people getting mail if you send it to their corporate headquarters? But it is getting forward. You know, getting a letter Now, a number 10 envelope with a stamp on it. To me, that kind of looks personalized. It's like a Christmas present. You know, we're so digitally oriented that if you can break the mold and send something to somebody. I use a company in the UK that creates sort of mini newspapers for me. I use it actually for my. I still do photography, and when I go to a place like India and photograph people, I put. I make a newspaper out of it and send it to them. You could use this for your sales program. It's. The goal is just, how can you be different? Because the problem with things like blogs and I started very early is that when I started People, I was found. It's very difficult now to get found because it's just that this, you know, the amount is overwhelming.

Yeah.

Like you're saying all the clutter out there on paper.

Yeah. So do paper. No one's doing paper. You know, send them a present. Christmas is coming. You know, I think one of the.

Things I tell my author clients and audiences, whether they have a book or not, all the more reason to do a business book. You can send it in the mail and they can physically hold it in their hand. You can write a note in it. I mean, if. If you're going to pay for direct mail, pay for copies of your book, I mean, that's a huge one.

Absolutely.

Handwritten letters are also huge.

Anyone? Yeah, go for it. Send them a T shirt.

You know, be creative.

You know, we know that there are companies that make.

You know, the New York word is tchotchke. You know, little things that come in the mail with your logo on it. Those breakthrough. And they used to break through. I think they break through even more now because people are not getting things. I mean it's just, you know, the only thing people are getting this is almost like a joeling up is take out food.

Yeah, I'm glad you're talking about this because so many people forget it.

Donuts.

Forget that you can actually get deliver again. I want to say it's like getting Christmas presents. Who gets mail? I mean it's such a weird, you know, you get your ballot in the mail. Okay, now let's get past that. Everybody we know that works. Well, most of us think it works and now let's send something else. I mean it, you know. Yeah, it's just try break the mold. Even if you're a small company and manufacturer making lead pipe or I don't know if they make lead pipes anymore. They make pipes you can, you can break out. It does work.

Absolutely. I'm really glad you're mentioning this because everyone was doing everything physically and then it was like email came out 20 some years ago. Whatever. 25. Don't fact check me on that. Whoever's listening, but catch the concept. You get the email and then everyone's like, oh my gosh, it's so much cheaper. So they stopped doing the direct mail and everyone's like, oh, you know, email's not working anymore. So send something. And the cool thing is no one's doing very small percentage other than us are doing direct mail. It's a wide open playing field. Like you said, who gets stuff in the mail anymore? And if they do, it's some stupid advertisement, a bill or.

That'S basically about it. You send them something good in the mail. I mean, why do you think Amazon's doing so well? Oh good, my order's here. Some fun stuff, you know. Yeah, let's make the mail fun again.

I was talking to a client this week and I told them that I had done some research.

On positioning for my company. You know, what should we, what's the next thing we should talk about? And I used, I wanted to do the research and ask the market what they thought. And let's say I had 50, 50 potential clients on my list. Right. And that's important to have a good tight list. We sent them a paper and a digital questionnaire and told them if they answered, they would get a Amazon gift card. Very simple.

Oh, nice.

And you know what? Everyone, because it was as much research as it was business development, everyone got an Amazon gift card. Everybody was a winner because I wanted those 50 people to love us. And as it turned out, we got Harris Casino as a client because we said to the client, thank you to the marketing director, thank you so much for answering our questionnaire gift card. And she called me up and said, who are you? Who are you people? So that was just one very specific example of breaking through clutter and getting my agency a Las Vegas casino as a client. I love that story because all it took was a $10Amazon gift card. And I got to talk to the marketing director of Harris, who said, who are you? Works.

Wow, that's a great story. Well, I have one more question before you, before we thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. And it's dealing with the wheel of whatever. So we're going to see where this thing ends up today. All right, so my question for you is, what is a company you would love to work with that you haven't yet?

Well, I've never sold cars, so I think the idea of selling cars is interesting.

Because here's why. One, they spend money. Two, they have to try to create some form of. I said earlier, differentiate. I used to have Ford Bronco in the 70s.

You know, it's now this is probably worth $150,000. Everybody wants, I should say everybody wants a Ford just relaunched the Bronco. And I think it would be just fabulous to sell it. I think to actually to a certain extent that they've sold out because the market wants it. So marketing products that sell out is its own unique problem. Right? Because you want to make sure two years from now. So I'd love to sell Ford Broncos, plus I'd get one for free.

That would be great. And I did notice that they just did bring them back. And I remember those from years ago. So it's interesting to see what disappears then comes back. And to your point of the personality and the brand, you know, I don't think the Bronco or Ford, well, Henry Ford is the personality that strikes out to me. But that was hundred some plus years ago. But the brand of the Bronco, even when you take it away, I've noticed when companies take it away, for whatever reason, the customers just, they're like, absolutely not. We're not having this. You got 12 months to bring it back, basically kind of thing.

Right? Well, The Bronco, they messed it up. You know, they took this great looking box and then they, they turned into, they wanted to make it a little bit sweeter and nicer. And if you think about the Bronco brand, unfortunately one of the essences of the Bronco brand is OJ Driving from the police or you chase on the highway for hours. For those of you and if you don't know what I'm talking about, O.J. and the Bronco, just go search on YouTube O.J. simpson in his Bronco for an hour and a half driving down the LA freeway. I'm not sure that was a good commercial for the Bronco branding. Sometimes happens to you as they say, it just happens. You know, I won't say the word but it happens. So life can be like that, right?

Absolutely. Well, we're going to thank our sponsor. We're going to come back for the imperfect action round.

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Back with the imperfect action around Peter. Are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am so imperfect.

All right, these are 60 second or less answers. I got a couple questions for you. The first one is, what is the fastest path to the profits?

Well.

I hate to say this, but controlling your costs, I mean, it sounds insane, but I would say one of them is controlling costs and the other is saying something that is more unique and interesting than the next guy because you're rarely alone, even if you sell socks. You know, there are sock companies that make a lot more money than others. Have cool socks. I'll use that as a metaphor.

Nice. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Well, it's getting the attention of your market, whoever you are. And that, that is a problem that many, many people just cannot solve. So I suggest, you know, some of the solutions are, as I mentioned earlier, solutions, ideas. Actually, that one, you know, spend a half a day looking at what everybody else does to the success, the successful people, and steal from them. There's a great book I love called Steal like an Artist. I've been doing that for years.

All right, number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Well, you used the word earlier and I know it. There are critical problems with email, but if you have an email list and you can mark it out to them, you know, obviously you can do things on LinkedIn and there are other tools. But I am still a fan of email marketing. I may only get 20, 30% opens when I send out an email, but I still, that's still 20, 30% of the few thousand people that are on my mailing list. And it works.

Excellent. You had mentioned one, but feel free to mention it again with any others. What are some books you'd recommend to Expert Authority World that have made a difference in your life?

Well.

I would say that.

Here I'll make it simple for people because it's not. My list would be incredibly long. Go on Amazon, search on business books. I would say to people spend two or three hours trying to resolve a question. So while I can tell, I could probably name a bunch of books if my brain worked. And if, you know, I wasn't thinking more about cocktail hour than books, the moment I'd say go online and for example, just search on best B, E, S, T. Search on best business books. You know, the word best is a great one. You know, best car, best book, best everything, best movie, best Netflix series. It's a great word. And there are so Many people that want to tell you what is best. But I would say, you know, search on Amazon because Amazon will, you know, essentially deliver a quantitative look at whatever subject you're trying to figure out. All right. By the way, side note, I know he's sort of strange these days, but I'm reading the biography of Woody Allen. Just seeing how Woody went from nobody in Brooklyn to making movies is very interesting. I think creative books, books about creative people that make it, are in some cases, some of the best business books.

Excellent. Well, I appreciate you for sharing that insight. Where would you like people to learn more?

Well, I try to keep life simple. I. My website is called peterlevitan L E V I T A n dot com and I'll tell people that I'm putting something up in a couple of weeks, which is a guide. And, you know, you're the last person that needs to hear this. A guide to how do you do virtual meetings and sales calls and because I get asked this question a lot. So I'm interviewing four experts, including a neuroscientist, about how the brain works on Zoom.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, there's so many people that, you know, zoom's been around for ages. It's going to be around for ages. And it sounds like a great resource because so many people use it nowadays, but it's not going anywhere. And I. Unless you're in video.

I don't think you're going to be looking at it as the way you could be. Because if you're just using it as a conferencing thing, people are just like, if as long as they get a signal and they get a picture, they're like, oh, I've mastered it. And any type of live stream software, any type of web conferencing, any type of anything video related is so much more than that. They're just conduits. So I'm glad you're making that available.

Well, the other thing, I didn't say this earlier. People should write books and, you know, as you're. You're the man, so you can help people do that. And you're not going to write a business book to make money selling the book, but you use the, you'll make money using the book for sales. You can quote me on that.

Well, I appreciate it and I just might. And doesn't hurt that it's getting recorded in live streams. So thank you for that.

Cool. My pleasure.

All right, well, I've enjoyed this. Thank you so much, Peter. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And thank you for sharing with Expert Authority World.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me on.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24? 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode.

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