Write a book. Get on the NYT Bestseller List. Get rich. Die famous.

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello my friend and welcome in the 715th episode of the sales
podcast. I'm W shave of sales was for
your host today we have Michael Drew.
He is the co-author of pendulum.I've spoken about this many
times before. He and Roy Williams, Roy H
William wrote this book back in 2012 and I actually did a report

(00:23):
on it. Let me see, I was going to pull
this up before I. Started, but I've been watching
the Pope. As our, as I do this actually, I
just had Michael on here Thursday, May 8th and then they
announced who the new Pope is. So we've been talking about
that, but episode 5 O 7. So way back in June of 2021, I

(00:44):
did a review on on the book, Great book.
But Michael has helped produce 131 New York Times bestsellers.
So the guy knows what he's talking about and he we go down
a couple of rabbit holes. We talked about, you know, the

(01:05):
difference in direct response marketing versus branding, you
know, longer term marketing, youknow, transactional versus
relational branding and marketing and sales.
And he shares a lot of specificson the book publishing industry,
things I didn't know. And he's offered to come back

(01:27):
and I'll probably have him as a regular guest.
He's a smart dude, been in the game a long time.
He shares the story, how he got started.
And so it's funny, some things Ididn't know, but he just, he got
after it and he is put in the time and so he knows what's up.
So you're in for a treat. If you need some help growing
your sales, go to myhomepagewestshafer.com.

(01:51):
While it's still up. I'm offering or taking free I
picked my brain sessions. I got a little video there
introducing it right at the top of the homepage and you can
schedule your time. OK, 45 minutes and we can talk
about whatever and still got thethe weekly whisper, but it's
daily. But you know, I like the name
the weekly whisper. We're working on some new
artwork, created the couple new tools using sub stacks some now.

(02:16):
So experimenting with that, doing more with YouTube, it's
all about getting the word out. You know, people don't do
business with you for one of tworeasons.
Either they haven't heard of youor they have.
So I hope it's the the former, it's the latter.
I don't know if I can help you, but otherwise I can't help you.
So sign up for some free help and then come back and listen

(02:38):
this episode, this interview with Michael Drew.
Michael Drew Crazy hair day all the way from Lehi, UT.
Welcome to the sales podcast, man.
How the heck are you? I'm great, Wes.
How are you? I'm good, man.
I'm not lying. I told you this.
I tell for a decade at least, I've been telling.

(03:00):
I've been talking about this book.
When did this come out? Let me see.
Let's find out. Exactly. 2012.
So yeah, over a decade. And I got it, I think, right
when it came out. So for 13 years I've been
talking you up, man. I mean, you might be talking
about more because Roy and I've been doing that presentation
since 2003. Yeah, well, and I was, I was
there. I was hitting Roy's classes when

(03:23):
he was still in the strip mall in Buda.
So before he bought the property, maybe he had the
property. He hadn't developed any.
He didn't have Tuscan Hall. But you know, I was.
I was going to Tuscan. Hall a bit upstairs in the attic
in that in that space and then they they moved outside to the
slightly bigger space and then. Tuscan Hall has an upstairs.
No, no, no. I'm saying at the Buda location.

(03:44):
Oh, oh, OK. He had his his at office
downstairs and then upstairs. In the there was an upstairs
there. I thought it was just like a
little, just a little strip center.
I don't, I mean, I went there a couple times for his free.
He would do his free like Fridaything or monthly thing.
I didn't know there was an upstairs they have.
Do you have a couple of offices?So they had two buildings right
next to each other and they got the second building the year

(04:08):
before that they they decided tostart building the Academy.
So you have to remember I've known Roy since 1999 and 1999
actually, so. How did y'all meet?
Well, you know, I, I worked witha publisher called Bard Press
and Ray Bard was the the publisher and, and published the

(04:29):
Wizard of Ads trilogy at Yep, Yep.
I was, I was 19 and Ray said to be first day on the job.
Michael, we published business authors.
What our authors want more than anything else in the world is to
be a New York Times best sellingauthor.
What I want you to do is go figure out how the New York
Times and other bestseller list works.
And as a young, naive 19 year old, I'm like, yeah, sure, I can

(04:51):
do that. And so funny enough, what I
literally did is I called the person at the New York Times and
said, Hey, I'm Mike Drew with Bard Press.
Can you tell me how your list works?
And of course, the gentleman, this name was John Wright,
laughed at me and said, Nah, butkeep calling back, kid.
You're kind of fun. I'll, we'll, we'll, we'll keep
talking. I called Bob Hughes at the Wall

(05:12):
Street Journal, same conversation, Jackie Blaze at
USA TODAY and and so forth. And so I started talking to them
and having some really basic conversations.
And then within about a month ofthat, Ray came to me and said,
Hey, our next book is Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads by
Roy H Williams. I need you to make it a New York
Times bestseller. And I'm like, OK.
And so I went and met with Roy at his, at his old, at his old

(05:35):
office there in Buda. He had a, a different type of
office with a big giant barn andsome other things.
And we came up with a plan, which was to mail an advance
copy of the book to the general manager of every radio station
in the country with a offer thatsaid if they get 99, if you buy
20 copies of the book from a specific bookstore that I

(05:58):
informed them to buy it from, and if they run 200.
Radio like a local bookstore or from one specific.
It would have been from a local bookstore, but like it like a
local Barnes and Noble or local books-a-million or look at the
time Borders were still in business, right.
So it would have been a specificstore in their area, in their
market, so that we got the salesreported.
And so we we had that plus they had to run 200 radio ads.

(06:20):
So I'm sorry, tell me again. So the offer was if they buy 20
books. And run 200 radio ads promoting
the book. Wow.
And they can, they can run it overnights or whatever like and,
and unsold inventory, which is fine, which is what a lot of
them did. But we had huge we, we had
almost 800 stations out of the 6000 US stations participate

(06:42):
and. You mailed to 6000 stations.
Yep. And we you.
Mailed a a physical book. Not only did we do, did we mail,
I then oversaw a team that did all of the follow up and I, I
personally talked to about 2000 stations over a three month
period of time. So it, it's, it's where Roy and

(07:03):
I actually developed the relationship because I, I, I
wasn't then working out of the Bard press office.
I was going down to Buda to Roy's office and working from
7:00 AM till 5:00 PM every day. And then Roy would be like, hey,
come in my office and then I would just, he needed to have
somebody was talking to and I would just sit there, be fly on
the wall or he and I would have conversations for half an hour
to an hour. I did that every day for three

(07:25):
months, right? So that's where he and I
developed that the the personal relationship that that we have.
And of course, I launched that book.
Secret Formulas of The Wizard ofAds to #3 on the New York Times
and #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list is my
first of now 131 consecutive NewYork Times best selling books.

(07:46):
So, OK, so let's finish this. So they they buy 20 copies, they
run 200 ads, and then what do they get for that?
Thank you. They Roy created a training
library on VHS at the time because we heard back.
So back then, CDs were there, but VHS was as common or more

(08:06):
common than the DVD. And the, the basically what we
said is that look, the book as athird party testament States and
proves that radio is the best form of advertising for a
smaller medium sized brick and mortar store or business.
What we're going to do is we're going to give you those books as
ammunition. We're then going to give you 12

(08:27):
tapes of training from Roy and Roy's going to train your sales
reps on how to use the book to be able to go generate more
advertising revenue. And so we had all of those
stations personally. Now certainly one of the reasons
we got our foot in the door is Roy back to that I think was the
number five buyer of radio in the country.
He wrote for Radio Inc and he hewas already a big name before I.

(08:52):
Started so so these stations would know him yeah they.
Know who he was. OK, OK, so but.
He wrote for Radio Inc and he used to speak at every radio
Bureau convention for every state.
Every year. He would do fifty of those a
year, right? So anybody who either read
Radio, Inc, which is the the toptrade publication or went to

(09:15):
their state trade convention would see Roy and so and and
then and then he was a huge buyer of media as well.
Like they 5th back then, I thinkthe third down in radio in terms
of total volume of, of radio buys.
So yeah, everybody knew knew whohe was.
So how does that math work out though?

(09:36):
I mean, you got 6000, you maileda book, and let's say it's $5.
I mean, yeah, you may know the actual math, but I mean, there,
there's 30 grand right there. He's gonna mail out.
So, so, so it's a great questionAnd, and this is a, the, the,
the, the question is one that wehave, I have with every author

(09:56):
to start off with, which is the revenue from the book against
the marketing cost. And what I'll, before I go into
his numbers, what I'll say is I have 131 New York Times
bestsellers. 7 of those authors made more money from the sale of
their book than they did on marketing costs.
However, 110 of those clients permanently increased their

(10:21):
gross revenue by $1,000,000. Ten of those clients permanently
increased their gross revenue by$50 million or more and seven
increased their gross revenue by$100 million or more.
So the the the math, if your measurement of success is
revenue from book sales against marketing cost will almost never

(10:42):
make sense. And to be honest, the book, the
seven books that eventually mademoney, took a few years and sold
into the millions of copies before it broke even because
there's so little revenue for from a book.
But the book as a relationship building device, as a
conversation starter is a reallygreat tool to be able to build

(11:06):
and grow your business. Right.
You, you took pendulum. I, I get, I hear at least two or
three times a week from somebodywho's read Pendulum, who wants
to talk more or interview me about pendulum or, or whatever
else. It has nothing directly to do
with my business Pendulum. I mean, there is, there is a,
certainly a reason why we did itand, and there is a tie in, but

(11:29):
it, it's, it's not as direct as,as, as you might think, but it's
still a huge audience builder and, and, and relationship
builder for me and so on. Roy's cost, he spent about
$400,000 to sell about $400,000 in books.
He could have, he could have given away 20,000 books and pay

(11:49):
the retailers for that and spendthe same amount.
The difference though, beyond that that radio spots is that
the, the there's a a big difference between somebody who
is given the book like you read pendulum, you are in the
pendulum, you you want to know and talk about it.
If you gift that to somebody. I have underlined and written

(12:09):
notes in Pendulum I. I've done a podcast review of
Pendulum. Nice.
So, so, so that you, you're, you, you, you've read it.
If you give that book to somebody who has no, who had no
intention of reading it, they probably aren't going to read
it. I'll tell you, Roy is my one of
my best friends and mentors gives me books all the time.

(12:31):
I might read 10% of them, maybe,maybe not because he has good
intentions. There are books I probably
should read there, there. He has reasons for doing it.
It's just I have to psychologically, physiologically
be ready to read that book. And so gifting well.
The problem is he also gives youbourbon and wine.

(12:51):
So I mean I can't read and drink.
I'm just saying about a. 3rd of the attendees are, are, are Jews
and about a third of them are Mormons and they don't drink and
they go to all of those events too.
So you know, you don't, you don't have to drink the the the
whiskey. I understand, but I'm, I'm for
me, I'm just saying, I remember walking in that first Friday

(13:13):
event, you know, 9:00 AM and there's that cooler of, of, of
non bowling alley beer. I still call it bowling alley
beer. You know, Bud Light.
Yeah, there's no bowling alley beer here.
And he had wine and he's up there sipping a little red wine
and I'm like, where am I? It's like I think I'm home at.

(13:34):
The Academy, we, we do things differently because, and we want
to create pattern interrupts in,in school, we have an education,
we have an idea of what education looks like sitting at
a table and being taught a certain way and, and what not.
And Roy's like, no, we're going to disrupt that.
We're going to do it differentlybecause that's what creates
something that's memorable. If it, if it reflects everything
that you've already always done,then you'll forget it pretty

(13:56):
quickly. So he's done an amazing job both
originally at, at at his office in Bute and now the Academy of,
of curating events and experiences that you can only
experience there that is not relatable to anything else that
you might do. So.
You know, it's interesting, two things.
It was 2012. I was at a conference, a

(14:20):
software conference software that I've sold for many years,
since 2008. I wrote a book on their software
and I was sitting there with thewoman that had gotten to know
big Entrepreneur and she was a New York Times best selling
author. And I'm having lunch with her
and she said, oh, if she said the same thing, if you have
$400,000, you can be a New York Times best selling author.

(14:40):
And I was like, what? So I mean, it's it, it kind of
hurt my soul. I was still, I'm still kind of
naive in business. I'm like, I think I, I, I know
people are can be cruel and eviland blah, blah, blah.
But I still hope and, and give people the benefit of the doubt
that it is what you see. But I mean, but to hear it's

(15:02):
gained so much. So let's so let's, let's talk
about that because there's, there's gaming and there's
understanding the game, which are two different things, right?
If you're playing baseball, you want to understand all of the
rules of the game so that you can play at the highest possible
level. Gaming it would be corking the
bat or or putting cuts on the baseball as a pitcher to be able

(15:23):
to get better grip or whatever else.
That's, that's gaming the system.
Knowing how to pitch better or how to catch better or how to
hit better is not gaming the system, it's playing the game
better. And so there is a distinction
between the two. But the reason why the why even
that fine line came in is that between 1880 to 1980, the

(15:44):
average number of books published each year was about
40,000 copies. The average retail bookstore
even today, but back then as well, carried on average about
100,000 unique titles. Of those unique titles, between
70 to 80% are what we call backless titles, which are your
perennials, your classics and last year's best sellers.

(16:07):
So the remaining 20 to 30% are frontless titles, new titles
that are coming out that year. And so historically in the
United States, you know, most books that would be published by
a major publisher would actuallymake, make the make it onto
retail shelves. And so, and then something
happened in 1980 that changed everything, the proliferation of

(16:33):
the personal computer and we're processing.
And then every Tom, Dick and Harry and Amy and Sue and Sally
thought that they could write a book.
And they started to, when I started in the industry in 98,
there were 76,000 books published, almost double what
there was in 19. In 1980.
Last year there were 1,076,000 books published by publishers,

(16:56):
not self published, not POD published, not published through
KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. That's from small, medium and
large publishers. They're all still vying for the
same shelf space of 20 to 30 spots.
And So what you have then is a, a change in the, the model where

(17:17):
historically the publishers would make the author, they
would send the author on an author tour, they would get
speaking gigs, they would get TVshows, radio shows or whatever
else. And they would actually own it.
And they would give basically a,a percentage of royalty to those
authors. But when we got to a point where
we where anybody could publish, like there was no such thing as
self-publishing pre 1980, to be able to figure out printing and

(17:40):
all of the other things was too expensive.
And then distribution, of course.
So as we move from 80 until today, the model had to change.
Publishers had to look at thingsdifferently and the modeling
therefore had to look different.But one of the things that I,
that is, is important to observefrom a book standpoint is that

(18:03):
the majority of books, 80% of books still sell through
retailers online or off. Yes, authors do have direct
sales that are special sales, but most books still sell
through retailers. And while most people think
today that Amazon sells most books, they sell the most books,
but they don't sell the volume that people think as the number
one bookseller. They sold 16.6% of books last

(18:25):
year, 16.6 Barnes and Noble. In contrast, the number 2
retailer in the space, primarilybrick and mortar, sold 11.1.
So Amazon sold almost 50% more than Barnes and Noble, but now
you're only at 27.7% of all sales.
If you take all online sales, Amazon, barnesandnoble.com and

(18:48):
books-a-million to all of the online sales, it represents
about 24.3% of sales, right? So it's a, it's a huge number,
but the brick and mortar sales represent 75.6% of 7% of sales,
right? So the brick and mortar.

(19:09):
And is it? These are US numbers.
These are US numbers. The thing is the US is the
biggest, the, the, the biggest book market.
You go to Europe, you have French and German and Portuguese
and you know, Italian and Greek and all of the other languages.
And so they, they, they have very small unique markets.
Whereas US publishing can expanda little bit to England and

(19:31):
South Africa and Australia and New Zealand.
But it as a as an individual book market, it is the single
largest book market in the world.
Even in India they've got, or China, they've got multiple
different languages. It's not it's not the same.
So yeah, you're. Just saying.
So 75% are still in the store. Yeah, that's amazing because
like, I'm such a hermit. It's like I go to church and I

(19:55):
go to jiu jitsu in the gym. That's about it.
Books. Some bridges have bookstores in
the. I know, but I used to, I mean I
drive right by a Barnes and Noble every day on the way to
Jiu Jitsu and I used to stop in there all the time.
You know, we got 7 kids. We used to go, especially in the

(20:15):
summer before we got solar and it's so damn hot here in the
summer and electricity was so expensive.
We'd go to the had the little kids section and we'd go sit
there in the middle of the day because it was cooler.
But, but I mean, I went all the time.
I love thumbing through books and magazine.
I got so many books, but I don't, I don't go to a physical

(20:37):
store anymore. I, I, I haven't been to Barnes
and Noble in years. It.
It it's certainly down from where it used to be.
But The thing is you you also have to consider that grocery
stores sell books. All grocery stores sell books, a
smaller number, but they still sell.
Walmart sells books. Sam's Club that sells books.

(20:57):
Costco used to sell it all the time.
Now they're in and out. But but they sell books, right?
Any big box chain sells books. Target sells books, even.
My library. So dude I got a stack.
They had this $5 per bag sale. Yep, it was epic.
I got all these classics. It was awesome.

(21:20):
Library cell books too. So you've got, you've got,
you've got all of those different things that just add
up. So, so success from a book
standpoint still is predicated upon distribution.
And So what happens with a book is you you have the I was
describing backless titles versus frontless titles.
Well, the objective is to go from being a front list title to

(21:40):
sell enough volume within a 60 day, 60 to 90 day time frame to
become a backless title. So literally whether a book
lives or dies is based on what happens at the retail level in
60 to 90 days. And So what you want to consider
with that is that a book is bought at the decision on how
many copies to make of a title is made at the corporate level

(22:03):
and then the books are shipped to the individual stores.
But the individual store's internal inventory management
system is what determines whether or not they carry the
book on an ongoing basis. And so to have a book that works
long term, you have 60 to 90 days to create the sell through
of the book. And the important thing to note
with that, that most people don't realize is that in

(22:25):
publishing books are 100% returnable by the retailer to
the publisher if they don't sell, right.
And so with that brings an interesting dichotomy.
Now, the fact that the returnable allows for them to
have that movement of, of, of new titles to put in the store
on an ongoing basis because they're getting rid of the ones
that didn't sell and putting in new ones.

(22:47):
But it, it does a couple of things.
Number one, it it, it's created a merchandising condition in
publishing, which all books now have to pay for it and in
publishing it's called Co-op. So, so if we apply to grocery
stores, you walk into a grocery store, you want to buy a, a cat
of soup. What's your What's your favorite
brand of soup? I have no idea.
Campbell's Campbell. 'S OK Do you have a specific

(23:09):
kind of soup that you like? The big meaty one all.
Right. Cool.
So you got big meaty 1. So if you had Big Big beefy
brand X, that was a fourth of the price of the of the Campbell
soup big beefy brand that you like, which do you go with?
I go with the cheap one. With the cheaper one, that's

(23:31):
transactional marketing, that's people that right that you're
right transaction. But what happens is one of the
the tactics that Campbell's deploys is they pay the grocery
store chain to have their soup at hip level and they do the
same thing in publishing with books.
So every front list title that you see on retail shelves is

(23:52):
paid for by the publisher. And that's irregardless of
whether they sell zero books or all of the books.
They pay it as a per unit expense.
And So what they look at is the placement in the store, the
number of books in the store andthe duration of the Co-op.
Most Co-op is about a two week time frame.

(24:13):
And So what you, what you look at is if it's spying out in
category, it's a dollar per unit.
If it's face out in category, it's $2.00 per unit.
If it's end cap on the, the, theend of the aisle where there's
fewer books and more exposure, it's $3 per unit.
If it's on the table at the front of the store, it's $4.00
per unit. If it's point of purchase or

(24:34):
special display, it's $5 per unit.
Then at the airports, Hudson's and WH Smith and others, it's
twice that. And so they pay that for every
book. So let's say the average is $3 a
unit and they put 50,000 copies out on the shelf.
That publisher is paying $150,000 to buy the shelf space,
whether they sell zero books or all 50,000 or anywhere in

(24:57):
between. And they're paying the printing
costs, say $2.00 a book, they're$5 a unit 50,000.
Their out of pocket cost to do that is $250,000 before they
ever sell a single book, right. And So what ends up happening is
the, the everybody has to pay the Co-op, the retailers,
there's so many books, so many publishers.

(25:17):
The Co-op is a is a guaranteed the obviously printing is, is a,
a guaranteed thing. And So what you have to do is
not only have that in place, theCo-op and the and the the
printing, you also then have to come to the table with a
marketing plan and strategy thatincentivizes the the stores to
bring in inventory of your book so that it's there.

(25:38):
And and then that execution of that strategy in theory is what
creates the sell through of the book at the retail level that
creates the model that lets the book stay on the shelf beyond
the 1st 90 days. So 1999 Roy does this right?
Four, so $400,000 that'd be 600 seven, $100,000 today, right so.

(26:02):
The. Wizard Academy.
His platform was smaller. Right.
So what how does somebody know that that's the best play for
them? You know, I mean you, you gave
some great numbers of how many extra 1,000,010 million, 100
million, but I mean that's, that's 131.

(26:23):
There's there's probably others that spent $400,000 and didn't
get there. Funny about today, about a third
of our clients are folks that I talked to and then somebody else
sold them smoking mirrors that they can do it for less.
And they went out and spent a bunch of money and failed
because the, the, the reality is, is that, that there are
rules in the industry that have to be followed.

(26:44):
I don't set them. I just understand how to play
the game of baseball publishing better, to be able to hit better
and throw better and catch better and, and all of those
things, right. And that's, that's the actual
objective of, of working well. Other folks do try to game the
system. They try to find, yeah.
No, I I get that. But I'm just saying like if I'm

(27:06):
sitting here right now, I got $700,000 burning a hole in my
pocket. It's like, well, first I got to
write a book that is good. I mean I know you can gain the
system and and even a bad book can get some some publicity but
it it won't have legs for the long haul.
I mean Roy's books are timeless.I still recommend them so but if
I got 700 grand bring a hole in my pocket.

(27:28):
Like how do I know why is this the right Ave.
It's it's a right question. So I'm I'm going to answer it in
in a in a semi long response. So I'll get to it fully.
Because look, I I want to buy a NASCAR.
I just want the sales whisper ona NASCAR so you know.
So, so, so obviously you look atthe ROI on everything and the,

(27:53):
the saying is to hammer everything as a nail.
And really at the end of the day, what my business does is
build thought leadership businesses.
A book is just the, the biggest tool.
It's not the only tool, but it'sthe biggest tool that we use in
building that business. And so we look at it in context
of does the book deepen relationships with existing

(28:19):
customers or start new conversations.
Roy talks about gravity well and, and what he and I, through
the our research for pendulum, we refine gravity well down into
is what we call the 12 steps of intimacy.
Direct response marketers, whichI refer to as douchebag
marketers because they're like pick up artists trying to get
into their customer pants, like pick up artists trying to get a

(28:40):
woman's pants only they want to get the wallet right.
They, they focus on that, that transactional marketing of
selling a can of soup that the manipulative tactics that get
you to buy my cheap brand of beefy Buffy beef over over
cattle soup, whatever those tactics are.

(29:00):
But when you, when you work in the world of thought leadership
and influence, your objective isn't to sell it a, a, a
commodity. It's to change someone's mind,
their heart, their body, their soul, their, their way of
thinking, right? You're, you're trying to
transform the individual in somecapacity.
And that is distinctly differentthat to gain the trust for

(29:20):
somebody to say, I'm going to let you change my body, right?
That's, that's a huge level of trust that you've got to have in
that person for you to say, yes,change my body or my mind or
whatever in that, in that way. And so the, the, the model that
we look at is building relationships through intimacy.
And so the, the work that we found was by that that we

(29:43):
clarify Roy's gravity well, the concept with and what we replace
funnels, which is what direct response marketers use the
funnels, which is a push push process, which is, by the way,
if you're a pendulum, a very me modality versus a we modality to
push versus pull. But they're pushing to be able
to get the immediacy of the, the, the lead and the sale.

(30:06):
Building a relationship is antithetical to that.
Building a relationship takes time, it takes investment by
both parties and it in terms of the relationship, it pays out in
a much bigger way. It's got what we call LTV
lifetime value, greater lifetimevalue to build a relationship,
but it takes longer to get there.
So the value is greater, but it takes longer to get there.

(30:26):
And the reason why direct response marketers get so much
attention is could be because they're talking about the
immediacy of what's going on. If you run this ad, you're going
to get this result, which equalsthis revenue.
And so they, Roy likes to, to call people who do that short
Dick weasels who are stepping all over their Dicks because
they're, they're focused on the,the short term versus what

(30:49):
creates that long that long. Term.
But don't. Don't you need a balance
sometimes? I mean, it's the old adage of,
you know, eat, eat the rabbits while you hunt the elephants.
So, so yes, but. But here's what you here's what
you need to know. And a rabbit will never be an
elephant. And So what happens, what
happens is, is that the transactional marketers say that

(31:09):
everything comes in from the, the, from the rabbit hunting.
And what you want are elephants where you really got to build.
The thing is, is that, and, and,and with that, what happens is
that the, the process of, of, ofdoing both, they conflict with
each other. So if this is, let me explain
the 12 steps because I think it'll make it.
No, I, I, I get it, you know, but it's like it, I'm, I'm

(31:32):
working with small local businesses and I don't know, I
got a soft spot for these guys, but a lot of them struggle.
You know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing a direct response, a big, a big
postcard, 9 inches by 12 inches for local businesses to
affordably get the word out right.

(31:53):
And, and these people, they struggle, restaurants are
struggling, you know, general contractors, electricians,
plumbers, they, they don't see the big picture.
They kind of get it. But like you know, they they
can't stroke a check for 40. Grand, you know, to hit. 40,000
homes over six months with an adyou know.

(32:15):
Which, which I understand, but, but what I'm, what I'm saying is
that, and Boyd talks about this very plainly in, in the Wizard
of Oz trilogy, The, the problem is, is that once you're on the,
the, the sales model of burn andchurn, you're on the sales model
of burn and churn. And you're now addicted to it
like any other addiction, because now you have to do that.

(32:35):
The, the, the, the, the actual amount of work to do burn and
churn and to build a relationship are the same.
The difference is is the payout.Yes, but if somebody's
struggling, you know, if they'reif they're barely profitable.
So but but. How do they get there?
So, so, so I would step back. I, I would tell a business

(32:55):
owner, let's step back. I would say you need money for
your business, but you're serving a customer.
They're a human being. And what they're interested in
is what, what problem you can solve for them.
They're not interested in that. You have a business problem
they're interested in, they havea problem that you're going to
solve. And if you then humanize that

(33:17):
understanding, again, the analogy that I would use as
being a pickup artist, the objective of a pickup artist
teachers, is to teach men how touse psychologically manipulative
tactics to be able to go into a bar, club or event and to be
able to use those tactics to manipulate 3 women into having

(33:38):
sex with them, right? And it works.
It works. Predictably, when you tackle 100
women applying these models, you're going to get three of
them that will sleep with you. But the probability of any of
those relationships being a longterm relationship is less than
3%. And so the, the question is, do
you want, because literally whatthey're doing, because they,

(34:00):
because the short term money is so important to them.
What they're doing is they're acting like that pickup artist
to be able to generate that thatshort term revenue, which means
that they are objectifying theirclients and in the
objectification of their clients, they're actually doing
two things. They're they're not building a
long term relationship, but they're also communicating to

(34:23):
audiences that they just want toobjectify them.
And so they get branded and viewed as a company that just is
trying to sell them and to objectify them.
That's why car dealerships, as an example, often get a bad rap.
But but I, I work with vendors all the time on my house or
business or whatever else. It's the same thing when a
company if I feel like I'm beingsold, I'm actually, I don't feel

(34:46):
good about it if I hire them andmore than likely I'm not going
to buy from them because I because of that experience.
So how how do you know so much about pickup artists?
Have you been reading this guy? Neil Strauss, There's a another

(35:08):
gentleman who who goes to the the Academy who's a a former and
reformed pickup artist, Tucker Max and.
Oh yeah, I know, Tucker. Tucker Mersey Academy and he's
he's performed he's no longer there.
What, what, what, what occurred is he and I became friends and
and at the Academy, I started talking about the 12 steps of
intimacy and he would be in the room and he'd be like Michael's

(35:31):
right. We do the exact we we used to
teach this stuff on the oppositefor for the pickup artistry
work. So I know from discussions and
on ongoing stuff from one of considered top experts in the
space or at least formerly that that it it that that the pickup
artist work. It is what direct response
marketing is, and it's contrast to the relationship marketing.

(35:52):
So here, here's a funny story, right?
This is probably, we were in this and we've been in this
house since 2010. So it was somewhere around 2011,
2012, I think. Let's go with 2012.
That's kind of the theme. I think it's the pivotal year
for me. That's the pendulum year for me,
right? You know, But I digress.
I was, I was working on a blog post and so I wanted to do a

(36:12):
post on like top sales books. So I do a search and get all
these different results, you know, top ten sales, best sales
books ever, blah, blah, blah. And I'm seeing all these books
and I'm like, OK, I got that one.
I got that one. Like I got all of them, right?
I had 95% of them. But I saw rules of the game and
I'm like, what is that? And it's a pickup artist.

(36:37):
And I'm like, I can't buy that. I literally I went and found a
bootleg PDF so I could skim it. And then I'm like, then I had to
tell my wife, I'm like, I'm buying these pickup books.
So it's, it is for research and but it's so good.
I mean, it's, it's sales one O 1, you know, but from a

(37:00):
transactional standpoint, I meanit because I tell people all the
time, selling is courtship, selling is dating.
There's a game, there's a rhythm, there's a choreography
to this, you know, and. But the distinction is with your
local businesses is I would ask,is what they're selling a
commodity and therefore transactional or is it something

(37:21):
that is, is actually relational?Because if they're selling
commodities, if they're selling something that is not
relational, then by all means use those tactics.
They are really good for that because they, because the, the
customer's relationship is to the, the, the, the transaction,
not to the, not to the individual product.

(37:42):
And so. If so, I agree 100% on that.
It's there are also even to deepin a relationship.
If you're going for the true relationship, there are still
parts of this that come out justfrom human connection and
communication. You know that you can pick up
from this because I I've never been a hard closer teaching.

(38:05):
I I I hate that stuff, but it's like, I think we need to know
it. I tell people all the time, fish
don't know that they're wet, right?
And so we're immersed. I mean, I would say most
marketing out there are the douchebag direct marketers.
It's that type. And so be aware of what's going
on and and they're but they're still even in the in the

(38:26):
relationship type sale. There's a dance there.
There's big if nothing else, because we're bombarded by the
other stuff. We have to know how to dance
within that. This is why we use the 12 steps
of intimacy, because what Desmond Morris did is he mapped
out the at the subconscious level, all of the actions that

(38:47):
that are required to build a long term pair bonded
relationship. So as a, as a real quick
synopsis on it, back in the late50s and early 60s, there was
this question within science, isthe homo sapien primate a pair
bonded or promiscuous species ofprimate?
Because you go from the bonobos that will screw anything inter
species to the the grills or chimps who have one or two mates

(39:10):
per life and, and, and everywhere in between.
And there was actually a, a, a way that an anatomical way of
each species of primate that would you could tell exactly how
promiscuous or pair bonded it was.
And that was the size, the percentage of the size of the
male genitalia of that that species.
Well, the homeo sapien male happens to fit smack in between

(39:31):
all primates. And so there was a real
question. Are we a promiscuous or a pair
of boded species of primate? So Desmond Morris, who was a
zoologist and, and clinical researcher, he had actually a
show on PBS in the late 70s, early 80s.
He, he did the research in the field and what he found was that
at the, that, that human beings have a unique trait that other

(39:53):
species don't, which is a need for emotional security.
And so based on that need for emotional security, we have a
bias for pair bonded relationships while still
desiring promiscuity, but we have that bias towards pair
bondedness. So then as a researcher, he
asked the next relevant question, which was what then
determines a long term parabolicrelationship.

(40:14):
And So what he what he found wasthat at the foundational level
of building the relationship that there are these 12
fundamental steps of intimacy that must be followed.
And if you skip more than one, so any 2/2 and 4/3 and 5/5 and
9/10/11 doesn't matter what it is, if you skip more than one
step, that the probability of that being a long term

(40:37):
relationship is the same as a one night stand less than 3%.
And the his analogy was like laying tile.
If you start off at one end of the room half inch off, by the
time you get to the other end ofthe room, you're a foot off.
But you don't at the beginning of the relationship, at the end
of the laying of the tile, it doesn't seem like that big of a
deal. It doesn't feel big.
But as the relationship gets deeper and longer, that chasm

(40:59):
becomes wider and wider and wider.
There's a a portion of modern marriage counseling today that's
about relaying that tile based on working dozen worse.
But what Roy and I asked while doing the the research for
pendulum is in marketing and advertising, what's the
difference there versus in building relationship versus a
peer bonded relationship? So a couple of things came up. 1

(41:21):
is peer bonded relationships happen in an intimate
environment. Marketing and advertising are
always done in non intimate environments.
The second thing that we determined was that the
psychological, physiological, emotional and mental leads that
I have in an intimate environment are the same things
that I have in a non intimate environment.
And so if that's the case, but non intimate environments have,

(41:45):
they're not intimate by definition and they can at best
emulate intimacy. What that then requires in
marketing and advertising is to is to unconsciously do in a non
intimate environment all the things that you subconsciously
and unconsciously do in an intimate environment so that the
the other party feels respected and not objectified like the the

(42:09):
woman being picked up by the pickup artist.
And So what you do then is what we did is we, we correlated the
toss ups of intimacy for pair bonding relationships to the
toss of intimacy for building a,a, a relationship with your
customer. Because again, intimate or not,
human beings are human beings are beings.
We're not actually changing whenwe're in a non intimate

(42:31):
environment or an intimate environment.
And so in, in knowing that what you're able to do is more
consciously do the little thingsin marketing and advertising and
in sales that reflect what happens in an intimate
environment so that you don't violate the things that build

(42:51):
those, those steps. What happens in selling in
direct response more specifically, is that they're
trying to go from step 1-2 or three to step 8-9 or ten and
skipping everything in between. And in reality, you need to go
through all of that. Now I indicated that if you skip
2 steps or more that it's a, a transaction.
If you have a model set up for 12 steps of intimacy for your

(43:14):
customer, what you're conveying to them is respect and that you
want to build a relationship. If they then decide to skip more
than one step, that's fine. You'll, you'll take them on as a
client. But the other thing that you'll
note, and this is for my business in all of my clients
businesses is if somebody skips 2 steps, you know, they're not
likely to stick around. They're coming in

(43:34):
transactionally, even though it might normally be sold
relationship, they're coming in transactionally.
And so they're going to get whatthey want and then, and then
they're going to be gone. They're going to be gone after
that, that single server. So based on that, you can then
define and say, OK, well, we're not going to put an extra, extra
work into it because it doesn't matter what we do, it's
transactional. They just want this thing.
We're going to give them exactlywhat what we promised and and

(43:55):
then move on. So how I equate this to like
getting off of drugs, right? And I've had family members go
through detox and it's freaking brutal, you know, but if
somebody, if they are churning and burning, hey, I, I spend 5
grand, 5 grand a month on ads and I, I make 10 grand and it

(44:17):
keeps the lights on and, and I don't know what else to do.
You know, it's like, well, take that 5 grand shift your
marketing go towards longer term, blah, blah, blah.
It's like in a year from now you'll make 20 grand a month,
but for six months you may not make anything.
I mean, how, how do people get off of that that cycle?

(44:39):
So, so one of the things to consider is, well, there's the
adage it works smarter, not harder.
But one of the things to consider in life is that there's
always a trade off of time, money or quality.
So you never sacrifice quality. That's something that you
envisage you should never sacrifice.
So then it's a question of are you sacrificing money or are you

(45:01):
sacrificing time? If you want to grow your
business and you have a limited amount of budget, you're going
to, to, to do it properly, you're going to spend more time.
That's, that's the, the, the place where you were going to
put more investment. And as part of that, it's also
worked smartly. Like I would I for a lot of
businesses. I would ask, are you part of
your local B and I? Are you part of the local Better

(45:23):
Business Bureau? Are you going out to the
networking events? Right.
These are things that take time,but not a lot of money, not a
lot of money, but things that increase the, the, the exposure
and, and the relationship capital that you're, that you're
building, right? So I had to look at those kinds
of things. But I would also say, look, we,
we need to come up with a strategy where you're, you're
doing more work. So as an example, even from a

(45:43):
book standpoint, I could take one of your clients through my
book outlining process. They would end up with, as part
of that outline, 64 different topics that we know what the
big, we know what the title is, the big idea.
We know what the story is, we know what the, the nuts and
bolts and the hope are. And they could get on their, on
their computer or on their, on their phone and film a video

(46:05):
fleshing out each of those 64 things and then publish a video.
That's, that's time, you know, they, they, they have to publish
it and, you know, go out and talk about it.
Then they could strip out the audio and there are tools that
do it for cheaper for free and create podcast segments.
And then they could transcribe that with Google, with Google
and do it for a little or free and then convert that into and

(46:29):
edit that into a blog post and then pull out some quotes for
social media posts and get that out there.
Like these are these are top things that you could certainly
put a team around you to do it at a higher professional level,
but you could also do it at the less expensive level and do all
of that work yourself and get itout.
That's that's the the type of thing that can be done if you

(46:51):
don't have money. It's about figuring out how to
then best spend your time. Yeah, it and dude, it's hard.
I mean, most people are terrible.
They're terrible at sales and marketing, you know, and they
become an entrepreneur. It's like Michael Gerber's E
myth, you know, the entrepreneurial myth.
You said most people are not entrepreneurs.
They're, they're technicians with fits, with sporadic fits of

(47:13):
entrepreneurism and, and they just people cannot communicate.
And I think it's, it's, I know it has gotten worse.
I mean, raising my kids, they'resquared away, but their friends
are not. You know, I'm working on a book.
Please date my daughters. Because, you know, two years

(47:35):
ago, the word, the word of the year was Riz, you know, and it
was, you know, the, the need andyou know, I forget my subtitle,
but like the need to develop Riz, you know, charisma in
business and in life, like people cannot communicate.
And you know, whether it's the Internet and social media and
smartphones and then COVID and work from home and everybody's,

(47:57):
they can, they can gain, they can text, but they cannot
communicate these. My daughter just went on to her
junior prom with a bunch of friends, juniors and seniors,
and they're all athletes. And these girls are beautiful.
And most of them did not have a date.
They just drove to get my wife drove them.

(48:17):
And it's like, boys, what? What are y'all doing?
You know, 'cause like, I'm torn,right?
As a dad, Like, I'm glad boys aren't pawing all over my
daughter's. But conversely, like, I got 20,
I got a 20 year old, but like, literally never really dated.
No boyfriends, beautiful blue eyes, athletic.

(48:37):
Yeah, I got a 22 year old. She's 23, she's had a couple
long term boyfriends, but you know, dude just broke up with
her, broke her heart. I mean, these are smart,
athletic, my my junior curvy, let's just put it that way.
Blonde blue eyes. I'm like, OK, I'm glad.

(49:02):
I'm glad boys aren't talking to her but but I'm sad too.
I mean, they should be dating, right?
They should experience courtshipand understand relationships and
but companies do they my my son.He's doing great as a realtor
and he's always been entrepreneur.

(49:24):
He's my second son. He was buying cars in high
school. He'd buy trucks, Jeeps,
disassemble them like take the lights off, take sell the tires,
put regular tires, take the big winch off, sell that, put up
stock. He would drive it for three
months, make 3 grand on parts and sell it for three grand.
You know, so a kid in high school making 6 grand on one
vehicle when others are like, you know, making 15 bucks an

(49:45):
hour waiting tables. So he, he's totally
entrepreneurial, but he can't write.
I'm, I'm helping him write a report as an agent how to get
more listings. You know, he throws in the
ChatGPT and thinks it's good enough.
I'm like, dude, no, no. So how do these people learn how
to market, how to communicate? I mean, they're great plumbers.

(50:08):
They're great chiropractors. They're terrible marketers.
This is this is This is why we have the Academy, right?
I mean, This is why, why Roy is at Roy Roy's books and why we
put the courses at the Academy together.
Because what we're it's a it's anonprofit business communication
school. It's not really marketing, It's
not really advertising. It's business communication.

(50:30):
And that's what we teach at the Academy.
So one of the things I would advocate is, you know, if you've
got a small business, like get them out to the magical worlds
of Wizard of ads course at the Wizard Academy, like that's a
that's a simple way. And for you, for your clients,
you you probably could get Daniel the the the chancellor if
you asked him to extend your your rate, which is half off to

(50:53):
your clients. That's I can't promise you that
you guys are, but I've seen him do that in the past and at
something that happened. So I would say.
No, they got to bite the bullet just like I did.
Well then, bite that. Bite the bullet, but get it.
Once you get half off, Hey, I did it now.
So funny story, right I so I gained the system or I worked

(51:15):
within the rules of the system. So I don't.
Do you remember Steve? Clark Yeah, I do.
Sales guy. So you know, yeah.
And I was a sales guy, right Andso and I was living in Austin
and and I was doing well in sales.
I'd, I'd made 100 grand at leastin sales since 9899, but I had a

(51:36):
bunch of kids, you know, I mean,but we left Austin and at the
end of O4 and we had five kids and then we had two more.
And so, so I'm doing fine. But I mean, I was like, you
know, 2002, 2003, you know, thattime frame, like 3 grand, 4
grand. I was like, man, that's a grip.

(51:56):
And so I just, I was reading hisbooks.
I'd go to the the free things and but he came out with a
virtual class and Steve Clark was teaching.
It was a 12 week teleclass and this was the end of O5HE
promoted it hard and early like end of O 5 didn't start so early
O six. They wanted to make sure he
could fill it, but it it wasn't that big.

(52:18):
I mean it's like 3545 people. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't
hundreds, but I prepaid for thatand I got my company to let me
expense some of it, but it was just 600 bucks.
And they were like, and hey, you're a, you're a graduate.
This, this counts. So I was like, yes.
So it was the cheapest class he had ever offered.
And then he didn't do it for very long.

(52:39):
I don't even, I don't think he even did it again.
But that got me in, man. I've, I've spent, I've spent
thousands. Who I employed that same thing.
Chris Maddock, who is one of Roy's top writers, does a
monthly advanced writer copy course online and you can do the
same thing. Yeah, there you go.
So well, I'll steer people to that, but it's like, you know,

(53:02):
you gotta you value what you putinto something, you know, and,
and now like it's so much betterwith the the housing and all
It's like just get your butt there.
I mean, everything's paid for, great food, great booze, great
rooms, the accommodations or first class man, and the, and

(53:24):
the teaching and the networking.Holy crap.
It's I go back for reunions every now and then I take my
mom, she's out in Bastrop and we'll go out.
I just love being there. So good stuff.
So man, who who should contact you?
Just authors. I mean, do you want to work with
businesses in general? Yeah, we work with business

(53:45):
owners and we we use books as a way to promote their business.
While I'm known for the 131 New York Times bestsellers, that's
about 30% of our work. Now what we really do is build
businesses for influencers and thought leaders.
We're not doing brick and mortarstores.
We're dealing with folks that are changing someone's hard

(54:05):
body, mind or soul, you know, something that that is a harder
sale in that capacity. But if you're a business owner
who is building that kind of a business, then we can work in a
book May or may not be the one of the tactics that we use.
It's one we use a lot because it's repurposable and reusable
in a lot of different ways, especially in terms of our 12

(54:27):
steps. But we're not like most direct
response marketers who focus on one tactic.
We, we define outcome. This is what I'm sure you do
with your client. Define outcome, define the
measurement metric, define the strategy and then define the
tactics. What most direct response
marketers do they, they define the tactics and see what works.
And that's the wrong way to do it.

(54:47):
Outcome measurement of outcome strategy and the strategy then
dictates the tactics. So that's, that's how we do it.
And if a, if the book is a tactic that builds the business,
then we do it. But if it's not, or at least not
for right now, then we don't do it.
Yep, cool. And so are you.

(55:08):
Are you on your own? You know, are you part of the
Wizard of Ads community? I'm certainly plugged into that
community, but I own my own company.
For best seller, we do a book retreat at bookretreat.com.
So yeah, I own my own company. OK, cool, cool, cool.
Very nice. So where should we send our

(55:28):
listeners? Where?
I think they'd probably enjoy bookretreat.com for your
audience. It really simple.
Yeah, cuz we do book retreats, but it also talks about our
other services. If somebody's interested in what
I call platform building, they can e-mail me directly and my
e-mail is michael@promotedbook.com.
Michael at PR0M 0TE A/B O OK dotCOM.

(55:52):
Very cool, man. Well, I could talk for a while.
We didn't talk about pendulum. I'm I'm a, I'm a pointing to my
review of pendulum. How about that?
Absolutely. And I say some of the content
you're welcome to share. And if you'd like to have me
back and I'm happy to come back and and be more go deeper on on
whatever you'd like to go deeperon.
Dude, you have a standing invitation.

(56:12):
You got a link to my calendar? So, all right, I want to
overstay my welcome, but I, you know, I, I will nudge you
regularly from now on since you threw that out there.
Careful what you wish for, man. You got the sales whisperer.
You're now in my sights. You're my crosshairs.
I'm going to drag you down, but do my jiu jitsu.
I'm going to grab you. I'm going to hold you down and
put a microphone in your face. You just thought that hair is

(56:33):
crazy. Wait, Wait till I get done with
you. I have no hair.
When you're done with me, I get it.
Dude, I got beat up yesterday. I'm I'm so I'm too nice to these
guys, these little guys that go hard.
I'm an old grandpa, man. I'm a lover, not a fighter, you
know, but, but you know that, you know.
Absolutely. Drew from Lehigh, thanks for

(56:55):
coming on the show, man. It's been great catching up with
you. Thank.
You, my friend, it was a real pleasure.
All right man, have a good day, $1000 and I'm probably about
$700,000 now. But look, here's my promise to
you. If you give me $400,000, I
promise to put you at the top ofmy Christmas list, OK?
You will get a gift. It'll be early.
It'll be nice, OK, for at least like five years, probably 10.

(57:18):
And I'll give you my cell phone,OK?
I'll be there for you. Crazy, huh?
But hey, that's life in the big leagues.
And, you know, I liked his, his reply on, you know, gaming the
system or. Or playing within the rules of
the game you know, knowing how to.
How the game is done. So it's a good analogy and a so

(57:44):
if you got a book in you, if if you want to go big, call
Michael, that dude can hook you up.
He will help you. I don't think that's in my
future anytime soon. But yeah, you never know.
I am working on, I'm updating the salesman away.
I am working on that. Please date my daughter.
So I got to buckle down and get that going just a lot on my

(58:04):
plate probably like you. OK, so you know, I mentioned the
the weekly Whisper. I did not mention 12 weeks to
peak. I am taking on a couple of
private clients if you want one-on-one daily accountability.
So obviously I can't take on toomany, but literally daily we

(58:24):
will talk, we will text, we willcommunicate to help you reach
your goals, faith, family, fitness and finance.
That's something of interest if you if you need that kind of
accountability to to buckle down, to focus to, you know,
detour ROM less, but better. And we all need that to a
degree. We all have too much going on.

(58:46):
You need to focus. There's a lot of distractions
out there, a lot of shiny objects, AI and social media,
you know, I call it pot porn andplayoffs.
Who's holding your feet to the fire?
And it's hard, right? You can't really have employees
do it. It's hard sometimes to have your
spouse do it. Maybe it's your partner,

(59:09):
co-owner, whatever. Maybe you don't have one.
So having a neutral, experienced, Gray haired third
party help you with that can be a big benefit.
So if you are interested in that, hit me up.
You can go to wesshaffer.com andyou know, there's links and
whatnot in the description here underneath each video and and

(59:32):
podcast, but reach out, you know, you get a link to my
calendar. My cell phone's there and it's
mine, right? I answer it.
So I just text me beforehand so I know who you are.
Get the help you need to grow toyour full potential.
All right, thanks for listening.I'll go sell something.

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