No boring ideas: Why great Promotions are more than just great sales copy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sean Macyntire (00:00):
During the bull market, we didn't have to pay
attention to all that stuffbecause the association that
people brought to our packageswas crypto go up, right, stock
go up.
I make money.
Yay, yay, yay yeah.

Rob Braddock (00:12):
The conversion rate for like a good promo is
now half of what it was in 2018.
And those are the people where,if we're talking, we're like
they're crushing it.
And those are the people where,if we're talking, we're like
Crushing it now is your fuckinghalf of what you were six years
ago, which is like what thehell, dude?

Brian Hicks (00:35):
But everyone's like no, we're just going to keep
doing the same shit.
But there was a group I wouldsay a core group of people here
where we bucked the trend, andthat's what that's.
The role of a legit guru is tobuck the trend.

John Newtson (00:48):
All right.
So today we've got an esteemedpanel of copywriters.
Everyone here knows Brian Hicks, whose conversation has FinPub
lost its soul.
Got like so much feedback fromeverybody, not just founder of
Angel Publishing, but amazingcopywriter in his own right.

(01:10):
Sean McIntyre been writing copyin FinPub for 10 plus years.
Worship Mark Ford, all the biggroups, lots of big winners, has
an amazing YouTube channel, andthen, of course, there's Rob
Braddock, who we let come inbecause it's Rob, that's Rob and
that's pretty much it.
But the reason I wanted to dothis today was there's been a
lot of conversations about copyover the last few years and we

(01:33):
were just having it earlierabout a lot of people how easy
it was to sell and how youdidn't really have to think.
You just had to kind of writeoh, crypto's going up, we have a
crypto newsletter, buy it.
And now people have to think alot more.
And there's an aspect of copythat to me is not a sales letter
and I think of it as promo.
And so I'll tell you a quickstory from Clayton Makepeace

(01:58):
back in the direct mail days,when he was selling coins, and I
always loved this idea.
This, to me, gets at the heartof what promo is is they were
selling a rare coin set andbefore he writes the promo, he
took them.
He took a bunch of the productand he mailed it to Reagan
Thatcher, gorbachev, a wholebunch of people, and so the

(02:19):
promo was a picture of BillGates was a picture of all these
people at the top of the deckand the headline was they've got
theirs, now you get yours.
And so that is a creativesolution where it has nothing to
do with the value of theproduct.

(02:39):
There's a concept around thepromotion itself that was
created that grabs attention,adds credibility, it does things
that you wouldn't do if youwere just looking at hey, I have
these coins, here's the copythat I would write around that
it's a promotional idea.
And so that was the genesis ofthis conversation was how do you

(03:01):
think like that?
And so, to start with, I waslike you know, why don't we talk
through like why that'simportant, or how you see that
idea of promo versus newsletteror VSL, and then maybe a bunch
of other examples, becausethere's a lot of great ones in
this space.
So, brian, what's your thoughtson that?

Well, we used to have a letter here called
Like-Minded People, and wheneveryou are writing a promo or a
newsletter, you have to tug onthose emotional triggers.
That you're one of us, I'm oneof you, okay.

(03:42):
That you're one of us, I'm oneof you, okay.
And so that everything that wedo here at well, at Angel I
can't speak for Agora or anyother place, but we always try
to connect with our readerthrough through things like that
.
Um, you know, I never heardthat story before.
The gold, the, the, the rare.
It's one of my favorites.
I've never heard that before,but that is genius.

(04:02):
I've never heard that before,but that is genius.

But yeah, Clayton, I guess he's the one that wrote
the promo is already making aconnection to the prospective
buyer, the client.
And hey look, reagan got his.

Now it's time for you to get yours and you
want to be like him.
Yeah, it's a very direct thing.
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, whatwe're talking about here is
stuff that you're going to findin like Don Miller's story brand
or like, hey, whipple, squeezethis.
Like this is stuff that brandadvertisers have been doing for
30, 40, 50 years.
You know, ultimately that youtell me that story and I think
Michael Jordan on Weezy's boxwhat we're talking about is
tapping into every directresponse package, every great

(04:48):
direct response package, theysay like either taps into greed
or fear, greed or fear.
But if you look at some of thegreat breakout packages, there's
a lot more nuance there.
There's a lot more attention tosubtler associations.
Some of these packages reallydo put the B in subtle when it
comes to stuff like that, and sowhat you'll find is that you
know, the big packages that havebroke out for our industry have

(05:10):
been a lot like that, wherethere's been more attention paid
to brand or the sort of nascentassociations people bring to
the products that we're tryingto sell.
And again, like during the bullmarket, we didn't have to pay
attention to all that stuffbecause the association that
people brought to our packageswas crypto go up, stock go up.

(05:30):
I make money, Yay, yay, yay.

Yeah.

And I think one of the problems that the industry
faces as a whole actually is theamount of sameness, right of
sameness, right sameness in theum, the type of content that's
delivered.
Sameness in the way it'sformatted.
Sameness in this, in the wayit's sold.
Sameness in the way that youposition a guru.
Um, like, it's really commonfor people not to know that they

(05:58):
didn't buy this product fromyou, because everything is so
similar in its tone andexpression and like, when you
bring a brand, there's, likealways been this tradition,
direct response that anythingrelated to branding is, you know
, bullshit doesn't sell, butit's like, well, there's
trillions of dollars sold usingit.
It's just understanding what itis is very different and it's

(06:19):
basically the relationshippeople have with a company, and
so with us it's kind of theguru's brand.
It's like people know Brian,people follow Brian.
They don't follow me for stockinvesting advice, because if
they did, they would be broke.
But, rob, what are yourthoughts on this?

just as a concept, yeah, so everything you said is
right and this might not sound.
I'm sorry my phone is going offand I have my phone open so I
can look at the notes I made, soeveryone knows.
Um, I think a lot of itactually has to do with

(06:58):
transparency, like in a radicalamount of transparency, and it
might not sound like that atfirst when we're talking about
brand, but the reason everythingsounds the same is because
everyone's just copying everyoneelse and that that's not
transparent and it's not full ofintegrity and I really think

(07:23):
people throw those words around.
But I really think if anyone'sgoing to break out in the future
, it's going to be because theyhave a radical transparency and
integrity.
Just had the bitcoin havingright.

(07:43):
Every guru on earth was doingbitcoin having promo.
We got to do a bitcoin having.
You know, even if they weren'tlike a crypto guy, really, you
know it's like someone will putout a, a bitcoin having promo,
and it's I can't stand that shit.
But they're like okay, you knowwe can make like some quick

(08:04):
money and then move on to thenext thing, right?
So I would much rather like, Iwould much rather see someone
put out a anti-crypto promoright now and talk about right
and talk about when was the lasttime there's been a hot take in
this industry?

Well, so I think, like on a basic level, this
issue gets to two things.
One was the essence of what yousaid in FinPub has FinPub lost
its soul?
And the other one is this ideathat, like, I don't know how to
get attention unless it's justpoint at the attention that's
already there, and one of thethings that, like I know about,

(08:45):
like, look, we need we sell intotrends.
It's easier to sell into trends.
We should not stop doing that.
But if your only reliance ongetting people's attention is
that, hey, this is a trend thatthey're already interested in,
like you have a creative problem.

What do you mean when you say we sell into trends
?
I think I know what you mean.
But when you say we sell intotrends.

I think I know what you mean by it.
Bitcoin is going up, so we sella Bitcoin crypto newsletter.
Right Like when cannabis washot, you had cannabis promos and
cannabis products.
Right Like, that's a verycommon.
That's part of what we do.
It's not the only thing we doand it's not always the thing
that we've done.
There have been things likegreat promos in history, like
Dow 50,000 that were not.

That's coming true right now, right, right.
Um why do?

why do we?
Why, I understand what you meanand it makes perfect sense, but
just for the sake of friction,why, why Like?
Why do we?
Why do we do that?
Because, all right, let's saywe have a, we have a thing going

(09:51):
on.
You know, we have a publishingbusiness and we don't have a
crypto thing and like, yeah, Ican see cryptos going up, but I
don't, I don't believe in it,right or, or whatever.
Why?
Why would I like sell, sellinto sell into the trend?
You know so, and I think that'spart of the problem.

Why am?

I?
Here's something I've been letme make I'll forget.
I actually forgot already justin the time it took me to say
I'll forget.
You know, when you're doing awriting, a promo, and you talk
about like all the predictions,right, that a guru's guru's made
, and a lot of times likethere's some fancy copywriting

(10:31):
fudging going on with that.
But I was thinking about thisthe other day like Facebook came
out with like earnings thatlike a couple of months ago,
smashed expectations, right, itwas like the big news ago
smashed expectations, right, itwas like the big news.
And blah, blah, blah.
There wasn't one effing guru infinancial publishing that saw

(10:54):
that coming.
Every one of you hotshot gurusthat like I call this, I call
this, I call this my proprietaryindicator.
Okay, how come no one calledthat?
So we have just people.
If the gurus are just reactingto what's already happening, and
then, and then we're justselling into a trend that's

(11:16):
already happening, like what doI need the reader, what do I
need you for?

You go ahead.

I I'm.
I'll defer to you if you wantto respond to that first, but I
have maybe two things that Iwould probably say.
I mean, I think the first thingis, ultimately we're talking
about human psychology andhumans.
One trick about humans is thatthey believe that whatever is
happening now is going topersist into the future.
That's just a fact, and humansare terrible at predicting the

(11:47):
future because of that, and somarketers naturally lean into
that, naturally want to leaninto that, and one of the things
that you see with a lot ofgurus is you don't see a lot of
contrarianism anymore.
You know people who buckagainst trends because they're
often ridiculed for that.
They're punished for that,oftentimes for years.
Like just look at Michael Burry, who was like ran over the

(12:10):
coals by his own investorsbecause he spotted the housing
bubble in what?
2005?
Imagine watching all of yourmoney decline for three years,
millions of dollars, untilyou're proven right.
Investment newsletters used tobe about ideas like that,
because there was a stronglittle pocket, a market for that

(12:33):
.
That was not being served.
And I think that goes back towhat you've been saying, which
is all these people are movingin this one direction.
Whenever that happens, what youoften find is that there's a
little pocket of people thatgets left behind, and not enough
financial newsletters, notenough promos have been really
serving that group of peoplethat perhaps don't like crypto,

(12:56):
that perhaps don't want the hotnew cannabis stock, that perhaps
want something that iscontrarian, that is interesting.
Those are the pockets where youcan actually extract a lot of
value, because you can deliver alot of value.
There's a reciprocity therethat I don't think a lot of more
contemporary marketers havebeen paying attention to,

(13:17):
because it's a lot easier to gofor the quick money, and I think
that's what's happening interms of what you're talking
about.

Oh yeah, for the quick money and I think that's
what's happening in terms ofwhat you're talking about.
Yeah, Our industry, you know,we, we used to pride ourselves
on Talking about things that themainstream media couldn't talk
about, wouldn't talk about, wasjust too scared to talk about it
.
Talk about it.
Okay, Angel Publishing we gotour birth was really on a single

(13:48):
idea, One idea that nobodythere was some people out there
talking about this but it wasone idea that took Angel
Publishing from zero to herewhere it is now, and that was
the idea of peak oil.
Okay, and for years we ran andif you look at Google analytics,
you'll see the search history.
All that search was from us,from us publishing about it, and

(14:11):
then we published a book aboutit and everything cars, you know
, renewable energy, solar wind,all that.
And then also, you know,because of peak oil, is the you
know it's the end of easy to getcheap oil.

(14:32):
All these drillers went backwith this revolutionary new
technology fracturing, frackingand went back to these old
legacy, legacy oil fields likethe Permian and the Bakken, and
went back and took us, you know,made America the number one oil
producer on the planet again.
So, the role of for me, therole of a newsletter guru is not

(14:58):
to talk, is not to sell intothe trend.
We're anti, we should beanti-trend, or we create the
trend.
Um, and that is a very you know.
Peak oil is a very good exampleof somebody in our industry
taking an obscure topic and justblowing the doors off of it.

And so actually, this is like I agree, I think
that's the magic of a greatnewsletter.
I think the issue is that somainstream trends are really
good at grabbing attention.
They're just really crappy atconverting them right, because
you can get the like Bitcoin isgoing up.
The idea then is to buy Bitcoin, and so you have to have some

(15:41):
other part of the story that'snot there in order to convert it
Bitcoin, and so you have tohave some other part of the
story that's not there in orderto convert it, and so, or to
take a contrarian view, or tobring something up out of
nowhere which is like peak oil,but when it's not like, that's a
harder thing on the front endin particular, but it's also
what makes a franchise, I feellike, makes it makes a business,

(16:01):
is, is, is those kinds of ideas.
And so to keep to kind of circleit back to the idea of like
promo, it's like I think whatwe're saying is like there's
this issue that we struggle with, which is there's an ease, a
promotional ease.
With big trends, it's reallyeasy for all of us publishers,

(16:22):
copywriters, marketers to eithersay I'm not going to sell
anything to the trend.
Then you miss the attentionarbitrage that you have, or I'm
just going to sell whatever'spopular.
Then you have a trend letter,which is a great business if
you're a trend guy, buteveryone's not, and so I think
like the idea of coming up withpromo ideas and I have an

(16:43):
example that was in trend too,but you were about to say
something.

Well, I was just going to say, john, you know
it's also a crowded field whenyou talk about, you know, when
you're doing a promo, that's,you know mainstream, you know
mainstream trend.
I saw I don't remember who thisguy, he's an older guy, he's in
our industry, but I saw aYouTube ad from him and his
first pitch was like hey, stoplistening to those 22 year olds

(17:10):
that are promoting with TikTok.
And you know he's kind of right.
You know I maybe I just wasn'tpaying attention, but man, I am
just seeing like ad after adafter ad after ad for algorithms
and robo, you know, and I'mjust like this is our
competition.

Well, the algorithms that's a funny thing
aside the algorithms promotesameness, right, Because it's
like oh, this gets attention.
That's why you have dancetrends on TikTok, right, Like
everybody does the same dance,because the algorithm promotes
sameness.

I mean, we all want the customer, we all want as
many customers as we canpossibly get, but at what cost?

Yeah, but here's, let me throw this promo concept
out, because this was perfectlyon trend, and one way to look at
trends is to be counter trend.
It's also to be ahead of thetrend where it's like, well,
this is what's shifting, likethis is a new, the next new
thing.
Mike Palmer had a talk he didone time where he said it's

(18:12):
basically that you're like, well, what's the next part of the
story that hasn't been told?
And so you're telling that.
And so I always think of um.
Jed Canty wrote that JohnBoehner promo for the National
Cannabis Investors Institute.
So cannabis was huge.
There's a big trend.
Everyone's talking about it.

(18:36):
Boehner this is the promo partof it is John Boehner was a
speaker and he was the leadingopponent of cannabis
legalization on the Hill.
Then he retires from that,changes his mind and joins a
cannabis company's board.
Now they manage because that,like all small caps, need some
kind of distribution andeyeballs.
They were able to get Boehnerto come on and do a promo

(18:58):
webinar with them, where he'slike, hey, I was against this.
Now, I was completely wrong.
Here's why.
And so the trend was theyweren't counter trend, they were
saying that one, thislegalization is going to speed
up.
Even the hardest opponents areagainst it and they found the
perfect avatar of that opponentto be on the thing.

(19:22):
Like the whole idea of thatpromo was itself a spectacle,
right, but it was on trend, butit was talking about the next
part of the trend and that to meis like that's a phenomenal
promo because he gets so muchattention and then you also have
from the customer standpoint.
There was a lot of people atthe time who were still on the
fence like I'm hearing about itbut I don't know if I should get
on, and so now that perfectlyspoke to them.

(19:45):
So there's a lot of things thathit with that and it was a big
blockbuster.
It did phenomenal.
I don't remember the numbersright now, but cool promo, not a
sales letter or a VSL, a promo.

I have an example of a promo like promotional
thing I did.
It's probably one of thebiggest flops in the history of
financial publishing.
Thing I did it's probably oneof the biggest flops in the
history of financial publishing,I'm happy to tell you about it.
We can beat that, I'll tell youabout it.

(20:17):
But I, like I'll tell thatstory real quick and then
eventually I want to come backto it where I think it's bigger
than that.
I understand, like, what thispodcast is about promo or
whatever but I think it's muchbigger than that and like the I,
the reason you have to do thinkindividual promo, like a promo
at a time, and like thisindividual promotion, is because
you don't most gurus don't havea, don't have a brand, they

(20:42):
don't have a universe Right.
So I do want to come back tothat.
But so, keeping with the themeof like promo, this was, uh,
2018 midterm elections,marijuana was on a referendum in
like 11 States.
I remember that.

(21:03):
So this is going to be like abig deal.
Like if 11 States all pass someversion of medical marijuana or
decriminalization, then I can'tremember, but like at that
point, it's like 46 states.
You know it's almost like defacto federal decriminalization,
okay, so I came from the worldof politics.
I'm like this is my wheelhousedude.

(21:23):
So I came from the world ofpolitics.
I'm like this is my wheelhousedude.
So the promo was we were goingto do live, genuinely live
election night coverage of allof the all, like as the votes
come in.
Like we're doing a CNN paneland it was a Ray Blanco the guru
, and we hired Montel Williamsto be.

(21:45):
He was a big uh uh marijuanaadvocate.
We got David D uh, danKennedy's right-hand guy, okay
and so.
And then the concept was it'sgoing to be like CNN, we're
going to watch the results comein, and we actually did this.
We're going to watch theresults come in and we actually
did this.
So you'd be like whatMissouri's coming in Missouri?

(22:06):
Yep, it looks like with 82% ofthe vote counted, it looks like
medical marijuana is now, youknow, in Missouri and we'd kick
it to Dave D and Dave D had likea map like of like going over
each thing.
Dude, this was so awesome, itwas so great.
And then he's pitchingthroughout.

(22:27):
So we do like the update.
Blah, blah, blah.
So Missouri.
So we're going to hear from Rayin a second what that means for
all of these pot stocks.
You know, blah, blah, blah.
So if you want to get like thelatest report, the spin was we
don't even have the report ready.
Ray Blanco was going to stay uptonight.
After all, the polls close likeup until midnight writing the

(22:51):
latest fucking marijuanainvestment report based on what
just happened hours ago.
Make sure you're awake, like atseven in the morning, cause
that's when the email is goingto come through, right, and he's
pitched.
So we're pitching like clickthe button now for the whole
promo, um, and then we kick itback to Ray and he's like, yeah,

(23:11):
okay, well, with Missouricoming in, blah, blah, blah, we
do that for the whole night.
God, it was so good, like sothis is going to be like you
know, $5 million, like thatnight, probably.
Those are like those days ofAgora with the amount of people
we had on the hot list.
We could see the number ofpeople live watching, watching,
and I say watching.

(23:31):
Why was this a bomb?
The decision was made to hostit at like a studio, like off
site studio and whatever 2018,whatever they ran tests,
everything was good, whatever.
It didn't go out.
The packets were wrong.
So if you're watching it,there's no sound, and then now

(23:55):
there's there's no sound, andthen like maybe you'd get like a
freeze frame of a picture andhear sound, and then maybe you
would, you'd hear sound and itwould start over from the
beginning, like you're hearingthe audio from the beginning,
but they're they're 30 minutesinto the pro anyway super bomb.
I think we made like a couplehundred grand the next morning

(24:15):
just with like emails we sentout.
But I want you to imagine thatthat did $5 million and just
think about so in terms ofpromotion.
That's like that was a that'samazing promotion.

That's an amazing story and, sadly, when you
couldn't repeat with that storybecause it's so tied to that,
one specific situation and techcould destroy it.

Well, no, if you want to change the subject, I
want to change the subject, butI wanted to sort of like yoke

(25:02):
together that anecdote with theJohn Boehner promo.
With what you X, stock, go up,sell, make a million dollars buy
Lambo X pattern.

did 30 million.

I know.

Right, but there were a lot of ones that didn't
do anything.

Yes, and what I'm saying is that like there
are times, like fat times, whenthose sorts of promos do
extremely well just because ofthe dynamics of the market and
demographics that we're speakingto, and then there are times
when the market needs somethingelse.
Then story tends to do a littlebit better.
Late 90s same story Stocks,tech stocks go up by tech stocks

(25:39):
.
That was the story.
Nobody needed anything else.
Around 2000s they neededsomething else and it was peak
oil.
People were more ready to heardifferent ideas.
With pot stocks in particular.
That was a fantastic story.
With John Boehner switching,that was a fantastic story.
All of those are much biggerthan pot stocks go up.

(26:01):
Pot stocks go up.
And I think what we're the.
It is incumbent upon us now tofind bigger stories that make
promotions, that make investmentnewsletter ideas bigger than
what they are, because nobodywakes up sweating into mess it
in the morning going I want tofuck a newsletter 100%, 1000%,
and what I think we should do isI think there's different like.

I want to go through a few examples, more
examples, and then hone in on Ithink there are certain types of
big ideas that have beenapplied to promos that we can go
into.
Fernando Cruz has done anamazing job in a bunch of ways,
and he has kind of some patternsthat he repeats in different
creative ways, and then I think,kind of where we're leading,

(26:49):
though, is that it's more thanjust the promo.
It's how does the editor andguru become more promotable, how
does the franchise have an ideathat becomes more fundamentally
promotable, that allows formore creative things to do, and
then there's just the sheerballsy willingness to try

(27:10):
something different and crazylike that.
And so do you have any otherlike promos that you can think
of?
That, like the idea of thepromo itself was a bit of a
spectacle and added, rather thanjust the story of the
investment.

This might have to be one thing.
When they like cut and pause, Ihave to really think about this
for a second.

Well, I can jump in and then you can go.
Yeah, I think about there was apromo that Matt Inslee did
where, like there was some codeor something like that and they
filmed like inside of like abank armored car, and so they
had footage of like the armoredcar and like the whole premise
was like the delivery of likethis code in a USB drive that
was so valuable, and so, like,the beginning of the promo was

(27:55):
all about like the conference ofthis USB drive to the guru,
being like the secret to makingmoney is inside this USB drive,
and so it's all about justbuilding up those associations
that people have, like, oh myGod, like they're transporting
this code in an armored car totheir offices, wow, and so

(28:15):
that's really what Spectacle cando intrigue and, ultimately,
investment in people's mind forthe things that you're trying to
build interest for, without youhaving to be like and look at
all these benefits and look atall these features.

This is great and that's where I think of like.
I mean, wealthpress did somestuff like that too with the
armored car Um.
There was the um, I think.
I think this went back to toMartin Weiss in 2009, when they
were basically going to shortthe market and everyone was so
scared that the market was goingto keep going down and so they

(28:51):
did their million-dollarcontrarian portfolio, where he
put a million dollars into anaccount and said I'm going to
put a million dollars of mymoney into this account and
trade it alongside you and thatwas a huge winner.
Of course, it was like at thealmost to the day at the bottom
of the market.
Then they repeated that at theMotley Fool when they did their

(29:12):
first back end and they had likea $12 to plus million launch.
Then Bill Bonner the Bonnerletter what was the name?
Oh yeah, they did that with.
They had Chris Mayer, who Iremember at World Financial Like
, this guy has our best trackrecord by far, but we had the
hardest time selling him.
And then they finally had agreat promo for him because they

(29:33):
said bills like I'm going toput $5 million of my money into
an account and so like, and thenshowing that right.
And then I go back to thetrading side and think of that
same concept applied in adifferent way.
Tim Sykes, early on, went to Iforget how many banks he had to
go to.
He had to go to, like so manydifferent banks, to pull out a
million dollars in cash of hismoney.

(29:54):
And he had a million in cashand it looked so good that he
had big-name rappers stealinghis photos without him in it and
saying it was like them,because it's so hard to get a
million cash.
And so that idea of puttingreal money into stuff I did this
in a launch in 2009, 2010,where we put 50 grand into an

(30:18):
account and had the guy's motherfollow his instructions to make
the trade and show that shecould make successful trades,
and so like that is like arepeated idea.
Right, yeah, um, any othersthat jump out, we can get to
Fernando's long.

I was thinking about this Um, a lot of that
like the spectacle type of stuffwas with the hot lists, a lot
of the times Right, and I wasthinking.
It just hit me the other day Iwas like I don't does, no, no
one does Hollis anymore.
I was like when, when, whenwho's done a hot list recently?

Um, andrew Taylor just talked about the test when
they were like, can we get ridof these?
And he's like, so, let's likeso, let's actually try doing a
hot list and just starting topromote the promo for the same
amount of emails and the sameamount of time, and the hot list
won.
I forget it was like 60%, 70%,higher.
Who did that?
Alta, oh, alta.

We're going to try that idea of hot list by
building it on our Discordchannel.
So it's still in the works.
I'll let you know how it does.
But you know we're we'reliterally trying to figure, just
like everybody else, um, justtrying to figure out how to.
You know, um, you know, collecthot names.

(31:37):
And right now I know, uh,oxford club is having a really
good success with their war room, is it called?
Yeah, and so we're going to tryto do the same thing here, and
my idea is, instead of us alwayshaving to try to go after the

(31:57):
customer, I want the customer towake up in the morning and say,
hey, I got to jump onto thisangel discord channel to find
out what's going on.
So the market's already rightthere for us.

Okay, we'll see yeah, yeah, I mean that that
goes back to just branding, likeliterally building something
that people gravitate towards,rather than like making
something that people getdespite you know their
misgivings.
And so, ultimately, I thinkwhat you're doing, what war room
has done, is, you know likewhat a lot of these tiktok old,
you know like.

(32:27):
Meet Kevin on YouTube isanother example where he's just
in discord and being like hey,I'm making, I'm buying calls on
Tesla today, you can join onthis trade, and then he only
shows on YouTube the ones thatwork and that's it yeah.
Yeah.

I think that, again, that's the.
The radical transparency ispart of the like as part of that
, and the what we're talkingabout in terms of like the
spectacle and promotion and hotlists right, that's all part of
entertainment.
What I've been like pushingright, it's like from a front

(33:09):
end perspective, because if youdo entertaining stuff initially
and you build the brand andpeople come into your universe,
then not only do you havesomeone like forever and a
million different otherpotential revenue streams, like
all of those guys like havethere's guys like that make a
million different otherpotential revenue streams.
Like all of those guys likehave there's guys like that?

(33:29):
Make a million dollars a yearselling coffee mugs?

like Crowder right.

Right Coffee mug like Republican, like shit
talker.
I don't get the connection.
It makes a million bucks a yeardoing it, cause whatever he
gets people into the universeand once you have people in that
universe, then I think youdon't have to do like.
Not everything is a like.

(33:57):
We got to come up with a crazypromotion for this thing.
We got to come up with a crazypromotion for this thing.
You have the people in theuniverse because they came in on
like a more traditionalbranding.
Know like, trust.
I know like and trust this guy.

And selling the relationship first like a great
front end, a great likeacquisition piece in my mind was
always that, like you might beselling a particular idea, but
you're selling the idea fromwithin the context of the guru's
worldview, because you have tosell that relationship.
And if you can sell thatrelationship you have a lot more
leeway afterwards.
But if you never sell thatrelationship and you just sell,

(34:34):
the trend which I think we kindof alluded to earlier is all you
have is a buyer, not a customer.
And I had a conversation lastFriday with Joe Schriefer and he
made this point.
I thought, really well, he'slike.
Really well, he's like, he'slike coming back and he's like
you know.
I want to kind of write some ofthe wrongs that I felt like I
did first time around, right,and one of them is this idea

(34:55):
that like, just because somebodybuys something doesn't mean
they're a subscriber, right, acustomer isn't a subscriber.
A subscriber is someone whosubscribes to your ideas.
They subscribe to this guru,they subscribe to the story of
the business, whereas a customerjust bought the newsletter and
he could care less, right, andso like that distinction, I
think, is what you're getting atwith branding and everything

(35:16):
else.

And there's levels to that too.
You know, there's a buyer,there's a customer, there's a
fan, and then there's a discipleand ultimately, what we can
accomplish, what one canaccomplish with like what you're
trying to do, is something thatbrand agencies have been doing
for years and years, which isbasically leveraging earned

(35:38):
media, which is, if you havedisciples, you know at the
highest level that you can go.
You have these people that areliterally going to be doing
advertising for you.
Why do we all know AndrewTate's name?
You know, like that, he hasdisciples.
He doesn't just have fans,right, he has people who
actively will go to the mat forhim.

You know, for better or for worse.
A great story from in theindustry on that was in, I think
, 2005.
There was a big $25,000 Agoramarketing conference and Porter
Stansbury spoke and he's likethere is no model.
We're all different, but in hismodel because he wasn't doing
free at the time he's like okay,if you don't pay anything
you're not listening to me.

(36:20):
If you pay $100, you realizeI'm talking in the room or
something right.
And he goes up the chain andhe's like I don't believe you're
actually listening to me untilyou've paid $25,000 for the
Atlas Club or whatever.
He's like then I have yourattention and that's like the
disciple.
He's like I have that guy'sattention, like he's listening,

(36:41):
I can help him.
Everyone else has marginallayers of both attention and, I
guess, loyalty to the business.

Earlier about how everyone sounds the same and,
like you know, if you changed acouple lines of every promo, you

(37:08):
could swap out guru names andthe promos could stay the same
and other would be different.
But and there's a, there's afew gurus that you can't do that
with, where they have theirunique voice right.
So, like he was getting them inlike differently than how I
think, like the uh, the futureis, but uh, he can do that

(37:30):
because you know Porter was hadhot takes or contrarian.

Hey, he, he, he did not have a crypto newsletter
.
Yeah, he's one of the only onesthat said no, I'm not Cause, I
don't cause, I don't believe init, so I'm not going to do it,
we don't.

No, we don't have a crypto now.
Thought about it.
We're about to launch a.
Well, this goes back to theunique idea of our industry.
I'm helping launch a new cryptothat's based on the coin will
be backed by gold, but goldthat's not above ground.

(38:06):
It's gold that's been proven, aproven resource that's still in
the ground.
So that is I mean.
For me, this is probably themost excited I've been in a very
long time.
So it's you know and that's thething Every guru, every
newsletter has to have.
You know who is Bill Bonner,what's he stand for.
You should be able to likeright off the top of your head.

(38:27):
No, no, right away.
A lot of people in our industry.
You can't do that, yeah.

And then creating a promotion around somebody.
That's where, like to yourpoint before about, like you
know, you always have to have agreat promo or creative idea if
nobody gives a crap about theguy.
Creative idea if nobody gives acrap about the guy.
Um, but before we go into, Iwanted I really do want to dive
into, like, how do we make afranchise and a guru like more
promotable?

(38:54):
Let's run through just a fewmore examples.
Um, if I can, because I'm gonna, it's an anatomy if I say I
forgot to do these, becausefernando has done a bunch of
amazing things.
Right, he had.
They gave away Bitcoin as partof their Bitcoin promo.
Right, so you would get Bitcoinback, and that turned out to be
a really good win for theirpeople.

(39:14):
He did the Meginar, which wasthe webinar with the most –AR,
where the webinar was live on aprivate jet flying to
Switzerland.
What was another one that hedid?
He did Glenn Beck, which is abig name with an audience.

That was a really good one.
It was interesting because atthe time, like if you remember
how that was done, like that wasGlenn Beck's show.
It wasn't just like the Bonneridea or John Boehner, that was a
cool idea, right, but the GlennBeck idea essentially the promo

(40:00):
was a Glenn Beck show, right,when he was doing the chalkboard
stuff and flipping it over andwriting all that stuff out, he
turned Glenn Beck's show into apromo.
That was like really good.
He came with audience, he wasrating fans.

And then a version of this that didn't work as
well was Raging Bull tried to dothe Shark Tank Angels and
Entrepreneurs, and Money Map Jetagain had Robert Herjavec from
Shark Tank on their Angels promoand it did great.
So they got Damon John to dosomething, but it was a really

(40:37):
good example of, I think, whythings don't like.
It's a big name but it didn'twork at all Because they
basically had him saying stufflike uh, my team did a research
who's the best trader in america?
And it's.
This guy had nothing to do withdamon john's shark tank
experience, the, the privateinvesting, any of the things
that he was a authority for anda celebrity for, and they just

(40:59):
tried to make it like have himsay this is the best trader in
the world and you know it didn'treally work.

Uh, similar promo to that was the neil patel
promo that moneybap did.
Um, you know, it was like neilpatel's deal flow and that was
the one with herjavec?
Oh god, well, it wasn't withherjavec, it was before that,
because it was with um mike wardwas the the, the host and he
was speaking to to Neil Patel totalk about like private deal

(41:27):
flow.

Yeah, I thought.
I thought that's the one on theyacht right.
It was before.
Oh, they did a version beforethat.

Okay, yeah, and the one with Neil Patel.
Um yeah, that was all about,like you know, private deals and
deal flow and stuff like that,but that that promo was really
differentiated because of justhow incredible the offer was.
Like you want to talk aboutlike differentiating yourself
based on spectacle.
That offer was like waydifferentiated because of that.

But Well, the whole franchise.
So Jed, with both those theNational Institute for Cannabis
Research or investors and Angelsand Entrepreneurs basically
created what the franchiseshould be as part of the initial
promo, and so the offerconstruction was integrated into
what the business was going tobe for the customer.

Yeah, yeah.
Imagine that making yourfulfillment before you try to
sell it.

Crazy, crazy.
Did we have a list of otherones?
I thought I had a couple morethat were different.
So, like in here there's likeguys like so, just as a kind of
a summation.
Then you have things like GlennBeck and Boehner, who you have
a big name, a celebrity, come in, that is relevant, that's key

(42:40):
relevant.
Then you have things that arelike giveaways, like the bitcoin
thing.
Then you have things like hey,the experience of this promo,
like your um election nightpromo or the jet nar or
something, is like itself, likethe format of the of the promo
is a bit of a spectacle itself.
You have offer spectacle, um,and then you have, I think, your

(43:07):
Fintertainment thing, whichmaybe we can cut a piece in
later to show people.
It's basically like AnthonyBourdain on the road kind of
promo.

Yeah, not exactly, but yeah.
So the idea of Fintertainmentis.
I have to give a shout out toMisha Brent, who like co-created
the idea with me and likepushed me to do it, cause I was
like very reluctant and oldschool like for a while, right,
but then I just kept seeingstuff like go down, go down and

(43:40):
down across the board.
I don't know what angel stuffis, but I was talking to someone
from one of the Agora pubs theother day asking them like you
know what what are yourconversion rate?
You know, people are prettyopen about that kind of stuff
Like what do you need to workfor to go external and whatnot?
And it's essentially almostexactly half of what it was like

(44:07):
in 2018.
Like a uh, the click throughrates are half.
The conversion rate for like agood, a good promo is now half
of what it was in 2018.
So and those are the peoplewhere, if we're talking, we're
like they're crushing it.
Those are the people where, ifwe're talking, we're like
Crushing it now is your fuckinghalf of what you were six years

(44:32):
ago, which is like what thehell, dude?
But everyone's like no, we'rejust going to keep doing the
same shit.
So that's why we're like, ok,like what's got to be different,
and that's why I think like,yeah, the entertainment thing
was born.
Sorry, was I supposed to go ona entertainment rant or not?
No, I like, and that's why Ithink like, yeah, the
entertainment thing was born.
Sorry, was I supposed to go ona entertainment rant or not?

No, I like this Okay.

So yeah, sort of going back to like everything we
said about integrity and nolike and trust and have a brand
and bring people into youruniverse, and then all that, and
then multiple streams ofrevenue than multiple streams of
revenue.
Um, it's not just like that.
The first one that we did,which no bullshit is coming out

(45:11):
today in hours, um yeah, is thecon.
It's a lot of people pullingyou, pulling Right.
And a lot of potential clientsgoing.
We're going to wait to see howthis first one does before we
kind of check, right, so.
So the idea is not just that.
The idea is that a way to makemoney is essentially ancillary.

(45:39):
All of us participate in someway with some form of
entertainment.
Right, us participate in someway with some form of
entertainment, right, we watchYellowstone and, like you'll
binge watch it for like three,four or five hours, right, and
then the next thing you know,there's Yellowstone beer in the
fricking supermarket.

(46:01):
It just so happens that the thefirst idea that was picked up
Chris Rowe, true Market Insiders, and this is called Uncommon
Opportunity yeah, it's the ideaof taking the Anthony Bourdain
show and mashing it with afinancial thing.
The pitch was always like okay,have you seen the Anthony

(46:22):
Bourdain show?
Yeah, okay, you like it.
Yeah, okay.
Have you seen the AnthonyPordain show?
Yeah, okay, you like it.
Yeah.
Imagine if, at the end of theshow, he was like oh, yeah.
By the way, if you want to getlike the recipes for all, like
all the food you saw today,including that like Nona who
made the secret sauce in herkitchen, you can get the Sicily
cookbook Just go on my websiteand get it.

(46:43):
He would have sold $10 trillionworth of that stuff.
Right, so it's.
But that's not justentertainment, it's not just
that idea.
That's the first and probablythe easiest.

I'm trying to give people like a core.
I haven't seen a visual rightLike because it looks like that,
like.
So here's the here's the editor, the, the editor of the guru is
like on film he's on the road,he's traveling, he's talking in
different locations.

Yeah, so he's investigating.
He's investigating an investingopportunity, but he's not doing
like an hour long sit down withthe CEO in the office.
He goes to this town andthere's a backstory of the town
and the rise and fall of thetown, and he sits down with the
bar owner and it's unscripted.
He sits down with the bar ownerand I was like, hey, what are

(47:30):
you hearing?
Like what's this?
What you know?
Give me the inside scoop.
And they're literally doingshots of tequila, like 10 in the
morning.
And then, uh, you know this, uh, this particular thing is it
ends up being we reveal thatit's healing.
And this particular thing is itends up being we reveal that
it's helium, like he'sinvestigating a helium drilling
thing and it's on Navajo land.

(47:52):
So then we go out and it'sgorgeous man.
We go out to this 4,700 acreranch with a drone shot and a
Navajo leader with his horseswho's like, who sort of like
gives his blessing.
You know, he's like, again, allunscripted.
We're like, hey, man, tell us,like, what do you think about
the, the helium stuff?
And so it's a show.

(48:16):
The idea of entertainment, whereeveryone needs to go is
entertainment, like I wouldwatch this show on netflix
anyway.
Oh yeah, by the way, there's away you can make money, right.
So another example would be itdoesn't have to be that like
just that style.
If you're a day trader, howwould you do that?
Well, there's like there's away to do it.

(48:38):
I promise you, in the nextcouple years, there will be a
show similar to an idea of, likethe real house, the real
housewives of day traders.
So that will be a show.

Like this is actually.
There's a lot of stuff that'shappened here actually, so I'm
going to go back, throw back toTim Sykes, the probably original
trading influencer he got.
He got notoriety originallybecause he was featured in this,
this kind of like crazymagazine called, uh, just trader
, which was like wall streettraders and all this other stuff
, but they were like having likecrazy, like wolf of wall street

(49:13):
parties was what brought downthat group, um, but he was
featured in there.
And then he started going onlike these different reality
shows like there was one thatwas something like that like way
ahead of its time, that wastrading or making money focused,
I forget which, and he was theyoung jerk on there who was
crushing it and then he starteddoing, got PR.

(49:35):
He went on like he got bannedfrom CNN Is it CNN or he was on
Below Deck.

He was on Below Deck.

Yeah, but he got banned from one of the news
shows because he brought modelsin and bikinis to carry his
charts, stuff like that.
But he played it up right, sohe was trying to be like
entertaining.
And then you have, with thesuccess of Shark Tank and other
shows.
Now you have Darren Marble, whofounded Issuance, which is a

(50:06):
cap raise platform for reggaeand stuff.
He has Going Public, which is ashow about like it's a reality
show about a company goingpublic and they're trying to
obviously get.
And then you have UnicornHunters with like Steve Wozniak
and Lance Bass from NSYNC doingkind of like the Shark shark
tank for startups kind of thingas well.

(50:27):
So this is a thing that'shappening, this transformation
of, or combination of, mediaentertainment models with
investing more and more.

I used to make my all my new employees and even my
old employees.
I always made them watch a halfhour episode of Bob Ross.
Bob Ross, his business model isno different than our business
model.
The show was free, you can justwatch it on PBS Right.
And the entire time, as he'spainting, he's telling you a

(51:05):
story.
He's invisible, he's sellinginvisibly to you, because at the
very end of each show he saidhey, you know, drop us a line,
we send out a newsletter.
I might be in your town nextweek or next month or whatever,
and then he would collect allthose names.
And then what did he do?
Sold him paint supplies, so Ithink of.

And he made, did he?
Do?
He sold them paint supplies.
So I think of, and he made afortune.

He made a fortune, he made a fortune Based on.

I was having a conversation with Adam
Richardson about yourentertainment and we ended up
talking about Rick Steves RickSteves Europe on PBS.
He built a I think it was likea $70, $80 million business on
the back of that where he wasdoing tours and backpacks and
everything else.
Because you just followed alongwith him in the video and like

(51:52):
he built a relationship, youlike how he travels, you like
what he's and he built a wholebusiness off of media like that.
So we know it works, you knowit works.

Someone who's done a great job of this.
Accidentally, I is Dave Portnoyfrom Barstool Sports.
So I think like to wrap yourhead around it, because I don't
think, like, does everyone haveto do entertainment?
No, like, could you just likedo a newsletter for the next 20
years and make a killing?
Yeah, some guys probably will,but Dave Portnoy is like hacked

(52:24):
American culture.
But Dave Portnoy is like hackedAmerican culture and like it
was.
He started with a free gamblinglike gambling picks newsletter
that he would hand out.
And now, if you go there, likeduring the pandemic, there's
like no sports, so he couldn'tbet on sports.
He started day trading and waslive streaming it and was like

(52:45):
losing millions of dollars,right, and it was so
entertaining I loved it, right.
And so, like, I'm one of thepeople that you were talking
about, like, I came into, Istarted watching Dave Portnoy do
pizza reviews.
Oh, yeah, right, years ago.
And then, the next thing, youknow, like, oh, now I'm on the
website.
And the next, the next thing,you know, they had for a minute

(53:07):
they ended up stopping itbecause I I signed up for
barstool gold.
I don't pay for shit, but I waspaying like five bucks a month
for barstool gold, and then theywould be like, oh, we're doing
this special whatever you canget these purple barstool
sweatpants for whatever.
I have two pairs of purplebarstool sweatpants and then,
and that, you, two pairs ofpurple barstool sweatpants and

(53:29):
then you know all the stuff thathe's doing.
Then they have all these otherbrands under the barstool thing,
which again was a free pickslike newsletter, you know,
betting picks, and now they havelike 20 different brands and
each one has a podcast and eachpodcast has merch and they do

(53:49):
events and all of that.
All of that because people wereentertained and then they got
into the universe and nowthey're there, like, I might
want to really be in youruniverse, right, like, and so,
instead of thinking about thisis where, like, copywriters are
going to have to become copyproducers and gurus, like,

(54:13):
especially if you're like tryingto find a new guru.
You know, I'm sorry, but thetrack record brand beats track
record every day of the week.
Some of the worst track recordpeople are the ones selling the
most stuff right now.
Right, but I want to get intothe universe, like, I want to

(54:35):
know the other stuff that you do.
You know, like I don't know.
You like have a motorcycle andlike I want to know.
I'm like, yeah, this is like acool guy that I want to be
associated with.

That's what we do in our discord channel.
If you go on our discordchannel, I bet you 50% of the
stuff that we talk about isabout the economy, investments,
the other stuff, hey, I just gotback from Florida with my wife
and, you know, play pickleballevery day.

This is the this, this is the cool stuff, and this
is why, when you're trying tofind a guru, like, gurus are
going to have to be interesting,right, they're going to have to
be able to talk on camera.
They're going to like.
If you follow Porter'sInstagram, this is where I'm
like Porter, please God.
And this is with like all dorespect Like the Porter's
brilliant, but he's postingawesome shit that he's doing on

(55:26):
instagram, like um, constantlyfishing what is it?
Deep sea fishing with fuckingsailfish and and I'm like bro,
this is this is the thing.
No, he's posting on instagramand like eight people see it to
the fish and are right on theboat.
Part of the not only would Iwant to come in on that and just

(55:47):
like cool, I want to followalong on this thing.
Oh yeah, how does how this guymake all this fucking money?

Oh, so Tim Sykes, he did this.
He's done so many likehilarious things that I remember
him telling me that they did,and this is literally so.
Like I met Tim in the beginningwhen we helped him launch his
first uh newsletter service andand like I remember like having
the argument with him that heshould show his statements that

(56:12):
showed he actually turned 12,000into 4 million rather than just
the profit thing that he owned,um, and he was like this very
like quiet, thoughtful, like itwas, it was an act, and then he
morphed into that person and soat the point that, like later on
we were sitting down in, was itAustin?
It was Zach, I think it wasAustin.

(56:33):
It was LA, and Tim comes in.
He just got back from Vegas, hedrops his backpack and
literally stacks $40,000, fellout of his bag, like he's
already, like he morphed intothat guy.
It was hilarious.
But he did this thing where onthere was a they joke they call
her the Instagram madam.
It was a.
It was an agency where youcould pay and they would get all
the Instagram girls to toadvertise your handle, and so

(56:56):
for his birthday he had all theInstagram models like hold a
sign up when they're turnedaround or whatever.
Like happy birthday to Tim andhe just sat on Instagram and all
these dudes were like oh my God, how do I be like you?
And he's like oh, thanks, man,buy my shit.
Thanks, man, buy my shit.
Over and over again.
So like that idea that, likepeople see stuff on Instagram,
they're like why are all thesegirls Well, he paid 15 grand for

(57:19):
them to do it and like how do Iget in that position?

Here's how I did it Buy my stuff you remember.
Rest in peace.
Jim Dines Every conference backin the day, dines wherever the
conference was.
He would contract out the localmodel agency and you used to
call them dinettes.

And he would hire these beautiful women to
man his booth at theseconferences and his booth, his
booth, was always the mostcrowded one.
All because guess, it relatesto hot, sexy models as well, you
know, as all things do.
But it really comes down tolike let's talk about what we're
talking about here, you know,because we're giving specific

(58:20):
examples.
But what are we really seekingfor?
We're looking for the magalog.
That's ultimately what we'retalking about here.
You know, there was a period oftime where sales letters were
the thing, and then somebodycame up with the idea of, like,
what if we disguise a salesletter as a magazine?
And it just took off in termsof response.

(58:40):
And then came the booklog, andthen came the VS.
We are just looking for thenext format to convert what we
have that we know is fatiguing,into something that feels bigger
than it is.

That's why we're starting to test stuff on
Discord.

I would say that there's a couple of things there
.
One that relates to both ofthose.
One is like you're a hundredpercent right, a hundred percent
Right, and those format thingstraditionally from a promotional
standpoint were like the youknow it's disguised, that's why
it works Right.
You can't tell immediately thatit's an ad and that's why, like
, oh, it breaks through, thatlike kind of attention

(59:21):
resistance.
Um, but the mag along and booklog were tied to a delivery
format of direct mail.
Yeah, e-letter comes along.
You have a delivery format inemail.
The VSL, as video comes on,becomes more like it got through

(59:41):
the webinars.
The same thing.
It's a format that people wereused to getting content on, and
so then you put promotion inthat content form and the two
mixed together withFinnertainment and like that
kind of docu-series kind ofapproach.
Now you're saying this is howyou watch stuff, but your
delivery content then has to inthat model.
If that becomes yourpromotional model, your content
delivery model has to also thenfollow that.
Like they have to be mergedtogether or else it doesn't

(01:00:03):
really work and so it changesthe entire nature of the
business, just like the peoplelike Cody Sanchez and other
people who have social firstkind of businesses their whole
content production system instaffing is built around social.
Yeah, then they have theirnewsletter.

Brian Hicks (01:00:18):
Yeah.

John Newtson (01:00:19):
So it will change the nature of the business.

Rob Braddock (01:00:23):
The big miss with the people who don't get it is
because they associate it, youknow, forever.
People say like, oh, we got togo younger, we got to get the
younger people.
And then everyone says, no, youcan't do younger right, because
they just don't buy.
It's always going to be 45 to75.

45 to 60.
I think these are sweet 45 to60 white Republicans.

Fine, right, that could all very well be true,
that's fine.
But and then those people, thepeople that are 40, eventually
become that age and then becomeyour customer.
But what those people aremissing is that it's a format
change.
Like the person who's 15 yearsold right now I'm just using a

(01:01:10):
very young age for likehyperbolic explanation is not
going to be opening up an emailand clicking it.
I don't think you know, 40years from now, when they're now
like the target demo, therewill be some new delivery
mechanism.
So people are missing it becausethey associate like, oh, you

(01:01:31):
want to do like thisentertaining stuff.
No, I don't want to go for theyounger kids.
It's not about going for theyounger kids.
Like 60 year olds are watchingJoe Rogan, you know, or watching
Yellowstone listening to JoeRogan Joe Rogan, by the way,
another perfect example of auniverse you know he does three
hour long uh podcasts whichpeople listen to.

(01:01:53):
So that shows I feel like youcould be entertaining.
People will listen to yourstuff.
It doesn't have to be a fiveminute video and then, like you
know, he'll interview a guyabout aliens building the
pyramids and then, like he'sselling alpha brain like
supplements or some shit, right,I mean it's.
But once you're in the universe,man, you know and you're like

(01:02:14):
this is my guy, because he has aworld view you're, yeah, you're
in the universe and like, okay,yeah, and the ufc is one of
those things, and alphabiohacking is one of those
things.
Like if you, if you were goingall out as a guru, like, yeah,
cool Trade.
Like you're super intomotorcycles or whatever, and
like, so am I and like this andthat and you go sport fishing
and oh yeah, trading is also oneof the things you do.

Right, I have a great memory of how this must
look.
On the customer perspective, Iremember I was at this Internet
marketing event with when I wasworking with make peace at you
know, um, and I was talking tothis guy.
Frank Kern had just spoke andthis guy had, you know, he's
like 20, making you know, 70, 80K on his own business for the

(01:02:58):
first time and he's like, he wasso excited to meet Frank Kern
and I remember him talking.
He's like Frank is everythingthat he's.
He literally said this he'slike Frank is everything that I
want to be and he's like frankis everything that I want to be.
And he's like, and he goes downthe list, he surfs, he does this
, he does that, he just wentdown this list.
It's like he's everything thatI want to be.
And I was like, oh my god, likethat's the avatar, like he was
so like, like just overwhelmedwith a chance that he could run

(01:03:20):
up and talk to the guy who wasliterally his hero because he
was successful in anon-traditional way, lived a
lifestyle on his terms thathappened to match who he was and
what he aspired to.
And so I always remember thatit's like he's who I want to be.

It's like like-minded people.
John, yeah, it's almost like heknows something.
So, just to get back on theemail thing, 91% of all email
doesn't get open.
So and I, you know, I startedin this business in 94 and I can
remember, I can still rememberBill and Mark saying um, you
know, the mailbox is gettingcrowded, it's getting crowded

(01:03:58):
and email is definitelyovercrowded now.
And so we, we're doing, we're,we're taking on a different
approach here.
Now we're starting to testother things.
We can be called omni-channel,where we hit them with
everything that we can getTikTok, youtube, instagram,
texting, sms, past couple ofyears instead of us chasing down

(01:04:18):
the customer.
I want the customer to chase usdown, and that's why we're
trying to build this Discordcommunity to where it's.
You know, it's people.
We don't have to ask them tojoin, they ask us to join.
And so I think that's where,for me, I always ask, I ask my

(01:04:42):
employees what's the first thingyou do when you wake up in the
morning?
Right, you know.
I mean, besides, you know, goto the bathroom or whatever.
Do you check your email?
No, I check my phone, I checkmy text messages, I check, you
know, social media, and I thinkthat's where we got to be.

Over time.
Yeah, I think it's interestingto say that because my interview
or conversation with MattMcGarry, who was acquisition for
the Hustle and Milk Road, hehad a thing about the kind of
morning brew world's concept ofcontent in that it was that it
was like they're trying to buildhabitual content.
I just want to check this realquick.

(01:05:19):
In the morning it's a thingthat's part of your day and I
thought that was a reallyinteresting frame, that habitual
content, which is exactly whatyou're saying.

I mean, newsletters aren't going away, email is not
going away, it's just a very,very crowded space.

right now, the direct mail box is no longer
crowded.
Yeah, I think that's one ofthose things that especially on
the back end, like mailing tothe house file is probably
really productive.

Sean Macyntire (01:05:45):
I think more people need to go back to
physical fulfillment, especiallyfor high-ticket products.
Yes, yeah.

Now to transition a little not transition, but to
kind of pull out a point hereabout like the franchise and
standing out, like I think thatyou can build a guru in ways
that are totally unique, thatyou could never mistake him for
someone else, right?
And I think there's less energyput into that than there

(01:06:12):
probably should be.
And so I have, I have, I have adream for Charles Mizrahi, who
a lot of you know, you guys didwork with him, you know him.
He's very New York, um, he'sborn and bred in New York.
He traded on the floor, he wasa Barron's top-ranked money
manager.
He's a value investor, he's aBuffett acolyte, he's an
Orthodox Jew Very New York.

(01:06:34):
And so my dream for him was andwe never really got it launched
in a way that I thought wouldhave been good, maybe we're too
far ahead it was the Park AvenueInvestment Club, avenue
Investment Club, and the ideawas to make him like Mr Big in
Sex and the City, mr New York,with the black car limo, new
York locations, walking aroundthe city, like everything is,
like he's plugged into the NewYork financial scene and social

(01:06:58):
scene in his community andreally bring that forward.
And it was way too early, likethe media wasn't there.
But I always thought that thatidea of like taking someone like
that who has a strongconnection to like in his case,
a place but it doesn't have tobe a place that is associated
with finance and making him likekind of like the touchstone

(01:07:19):
avatar of like New York investor, like that could be an amazing
brand if you did it right.
You could also do it terriblyand it wouldn't work, but I
think there's a way to do itthat is probably easier now than
it would have been 10 years ago.
I think we thought about itbecause of like the way that
media works and the way it works, and so I think those ideas
like that are probably an areathat is really ripe and rich for

(01:07:43):
creativity in the space tostand out.

We used to call him Uncle Chuck, but that's a good
example of where branding beatstrack record every day of the
week.
Charles had a great trackrecord, but we just could not
figure out how to sell him atall and I don't know, has Agora
figured out how to sell him?

He's doing well at Banyan, but he's not the
biggest.
But, yeah, it's harder becausehe's right and for someone like
that in particular, I feel likeit's important.
If you have that situation,okay, well, it's not the ideas
of the investments that'sgetting people excited.
So then, what else do you haveto sell?

Just to stick on Charles for a second.
If you're going to sellFentertainment to anybody at
Agora, the person you want totalk to is Aaron DeHug.

Well, that's problematic, unfortunately.
Oh yeah, aaron just left Banyan.

Then, never mind , you're SOL my bud.
That's funny, dang.
Yeah, no, because of all thepublishers at Agora, who Aaron
was the one who actually likegot video that got and really
understood what we're talkingabout here and understood that,
like the business needs to go inthat sort of direction and,

(01:09:00):
yeah, he would be the personthat you would want to talk to
to self-entertainment.
Yeah, he would be the personthat you would want to talk to
to self-entertainment, becauseeverybody else who's currently
at Agora right now, like Agora,had to circle the wagons a
little bit, and you're not goingto circle the wagons over the
crazy asshole who wants to try abunch of new things.

No offense, I have it tattooed on me.

No, but here's the thing, Mark Bill they know
that you're right.
We I think we're all sittinghere we know that you're right.
And it's not the entertainmentthat's right, it's the need for
that new format, the need tostart paying attention to brand,
the need to start reallygetting back to what this
business is about, which isestablishing a relationship with
customers.

This is funny because I think yesterday right
Porter sent out an internalletter and he brings up the idea
of brand and direct responseand how it needs to be more than
just direct response and thatthe relationship is important.

Yeah, yeah, no, I pitched.
I pitched a show idea to Porterlike a year and a half ago.
He was like no.

Strong opinions yeah, yeah, yeah, he has strong
opinions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, just for the record, you know, when
internet was being born Taipanmy old division that I worked
for we were the first ones toactually embrace the internet.
We had our first website,started building an email list,
and Bill Bonner was like this isgoing nowhere.
But you know, bill is smart,he's smart enough to realize

(01:10:38):
when you know maybe he doesn'tknow everything, and so he
allowed us to do it, and youknow.
Then he started daily reckoning.

Yeah, I think his um just as an aside, I think his
willingness to let everyoneexperiment is probably the only
way that they could havetransitioned from direct mail to
the internet, because a lot ofdifferent ways you could have
gone, yeah, and a lot ofdifferent ideas and people be

(01:11:08):
able to settle out and figureout hey, this works Like.
If it was just a commandstructure straight down, they
might not have made thattransition so well.

One of the things that just popped into my head so
it's kind of a slightlydisjointed but not totally is
with the idea of likeentertainment, especially, you
know, bringing people into youruniverse, front end in an
entertaining fashion.
The the more you go towardsentertainment, the further away
from ftc scrutiny you are.
And so, like right now, man,like what I'm seeing, are people
starting to use language thatthey weren't using in 2020.

They weren't taking a year and a half Right.

So it's like guys, fuck man, is that cycle just
going to keep repeating itself?

That's a phenomenal point is that like
these big kind of promotionalideas because you're relying on
that or you're relying on therelationship with the?
It's less dependent on claims.

In this first promo we're doing, for example,
this first entertainment promo.
There's no testimonials inthere, there's zero claims in
there, there's no percentages inthere, there's no talk about
previous stock picks in there,nothing.
And you might hear that ifyou're in the industry and go,
what?
That's fucking impossible.
No, it's like it's a veryentertaining show that builds

(01:12:31):
trust and credibility with theguru.
And then, like I said, and atthe end, oh yeah, like, if you
want to find out everythingabout this thing, just go ahead
and get this report.
But you know, so I can sleepwell at night.

No, it's not going to be a knock on the door.
I the thing that I like aboutthat is it reminds me of like
plague of black, black debt, oreven the E-myth, revisited.
Like if you read those booksand you get to the last page,
it's an order form that you cansend in, like the book is a book
.
It's not like it will mentionthe newsletter every now and
again, but in passing, but it'slike you'll read the book and be

(01:13:05):
like if you're reallycaptivated by that idea, like
there's never a point in thebook where it's just like go to
the last page and send this inbecause then you'll make a bunch
of money.
No, it's just.
It's just a natural object, aperson's experience and
acknowledging that there aregoing to be some people that
will want to take action afterthat, naturally, it's the art of

(01:13:35):
the invisible sail.

That's how Bob Ross , that's how he made his fortune
.
You had no idea when you werewatching the Bob Ross video that
he was a salesman the entiretime, until the very end.

And even then you were like you still didn't get
it and talk about like having apersona that people to this day
love.

Yeah, he's bigger now than he was ever
before and he's been dead for 30years, I think on a note that
you mentioned, you know that theneed for a guru to
differentiate themselves.
I think that that's going to bea unique challenge for a lot of
our businesses going forward.
One kind of to your point.

(01:14:15):
It reminds me of something thatyou said on Kyle Milligan's
podcast, which is that every manhas to have a code, and like
when you said that I was justlike fuck, yeah, every man does
need to have a code, but moreimportantly it's from the was
just like fuck, yeah, every mandoes need to have a code, but
more importantly it's from thewire.

Okay.

Fair enough but you know afro-po, we're in
Baltimore.
But like, not only that, butfor a guru, they also have to be
willing to broadcast their code, they need to wear their code
on their sleeve.
A guru who does this reallywell, I think, is Tom Dyson on
their sleeve.
A guru who does this reallywell, I think, is Tom Dyson Like

(01:14:51):
, if you read Tom Dyson'seditorial, there are certain
themes, almost like classicalmusic, lemotifs like that just
come through and weave throughhis editorial again and again
and again and again, and like hewill restate the same idea in
many, many different ways acrosseditorial.
So there is that sense ofrelationship and being built
with this person because youknow what they stand for, you
know where they fall on thesides of debate.

Which is the essence of it.
We're in buffetingcommunication, exactly.

The problem with that, though, is that it's hard
to find credible gurus who cando that, because most of the
people let's what would be ourideal pool of gurus to pull from
somebody who was on Wall Street, somebody who, like, has some
accolades from Wall Street,somebody who doesn't want to be

(01:15:35):
on Wall Street anymore, and soyou're pulling from that.
And what do we know aboutpeople in that pocket?
They're shit writers.
They probably have a terriblepersonality, you know, they're
all math geeks, like.
So, like, the idea of likeusing entertainment to sell
these people is like.
Well, of course, they're allgoing to be bad on camera.

They suck I think, but I think that I think, that
I think actually, this is theshow.
Like you, you can invest intraining them to be better.
Yes, it does, but it does takeinvestment.

Yeah.

But I do think that there is this thing of like
the quality of what they bringto the table, and I don't mean
just in terms of their analysisand track record, but the
quality of what they bring to afranchise, kind of to the
essence of like, well, what isthere?
Is there a perspective?
Like, do you really have aperspective?
And then if you do, because alot of them don't, but if you do

(01:16:28):
, is anybody going to care aboutit?

Yeah.

And so, like that is harder.
It's harder to find people whohave sorry, it's harder to find
people who have a code and liveby it than it is to find people
who can write something oranalyze something.
Yeah, yeah, analyze something,yeah.
And like I remember Claytonsaid this about, like when he
was talking about Martin causein the nineties, um, like Martin
had his rating agency and hegot called to Congress and of

(01:16:52):
course they took pictures.
They use those photos likecrazy.
He testified in front ofCongress and it was like, on
paper, martin is a lion.
You meet him in person and he'smuch more sedate and this and
that, and Clayton was alwayslike what, and he's much more
sedate and this and that, andClayton was always like.
What I try and do is take whoMartin is and just make him
bigger, and that's what he doesin the promo and I think that

(01:17:12):
has to be in the editorial thatyou have to be bigger, like
bigger versions, like lionizedor idolized versions of who you
are and what you believe in.

Well, we just came out of a period, john, where you
knew where people you.
Well, we just came out of aperiod, john, where you knew
where people.
You saw their code.
We were talking about thisearlier, covid, okay, here at
Angel.
Well, we first we bought this.
I bought this building in 2019,renovated it for a year, moved

(01:17:44):
in January 1st 2020, and thenhad to close it.
But when everybody came backwell, and some people never came
back people were still wearingmasks, people were still afraid
to stand next to you, but therewas a group I would say a core
group of people here where webucked the trend.

(01:18:05):
And that's what that's the roleof a legit guru is to buck the
trend.
Um, I was telling Rob thisstory.
Um, I have a house in Floridaand in May of 2020, you know, we
, you know everybody was stuckhome.
I was like screw this, let'shop into the car, get the dog

(01:18:28):
and we're going down to Florida.
Florida was open, we get downto Florida.
First off, people thought I wascrazy for driving all the way
down from Maryland to Florida.
But as soon as we got there thenext day, florida restaurants
in Sarasota started to reopen.
I told my wife hon, book therestaurant we're going.

(01:18:49):
We got to show people that it'sokay to go out.
So we go out to the restaurant.
I take a picture.
It's still on my Facebook page.
I take a picture of my girlsand my wife posted it on
Facebook.
The caption first restaurant inthree months.
The reaction was 50-50.
50% of the people was like, hey, great job.

(01:19:12):
The other 50 were like how dareyou?
You're not taking this seriousenough.
But the entire time I wastelling my wife somebody has to
be the first one.
Somebody has to be the firstone to get out there and show
the rest of America that it'sokay, it's okay to go the first
one.
Somebody has to be the firstone to get out there and show
the rest of America that's okay,it's okay to go back to normal.
And that's the exact same thingthat gurus have to do.

(01:19:34):
They have to not just telltheir readers, they have to lead
by example as well.

Yeah, and I think it's more than just leading by
example in terms of like aninvesting trend, than just
leading by example in terms oflike an investing trend, like
that scenario you just describedin, like the perfect world
would be part, would besomething you put out to your
universe, right, and they wouldbe like, yeah, that's my guy.

Now I'm going to go buy a t-shirt or whatever,
you know.
I mean, right now people arebuying Donald Trump golden
diapers.
For the same logic.
That's really happening rightnow.

Well, that's what I always tell people.
I'm like, look at, like, howmany people follow Tesla versus
following Elon Musk, right?
Like yeah, like that.
Like saying controversialthings being, you know, like
taking a stand, whether peopleagree with it or not.
Like yeah, it's definitely, andI say that well, not to cut you
off.
Like taking a stand whetherpeople agree with it or not.
Like yeah, definitely, and Isay that, well, not to cut you
off.
But like going back to Buffett,like Buffett took a stand inside

(01:20:33):
finance in ways that, likepeople like ridic, people forget
that people ridiculed Buffettlike crazy.
And then like there's that greatsun Valley story that opens his
biography Snowball, where he'sin Sun Valley, the billionaire's
retreat thing and all the techthe 1990s tech gurus are there

(01:20:56):
and he gets up there and hetells a story and they're
laughing at him, they'rethinking like he doesn't
understand the new economy, hemissed the boat, he doesn't know
anything.
And he tells a story about carsand how there were 3 000 car
companies and at the time youthere's no way you could have
told that ford was going to bethe winner.
The only thing that you knewfor sure was the short horses,

(01:21:18):
right, but he has, like thisvery clear perspective on what a
good investment is and what hedoesn't invest in.
And he was getting shit on forit.
And then he, but he stuck tohis guns and he stuck into
people and same thing.
They're like I love that guy,like he's my guy and they're
like buffett acolytes right.

Um, yeah, but sorry you were no, I, you, you,
what you just said, thatanecdote was better than any
bullshit I could have said.
Um, buffett, I think, is areally good example of you know
that takes a very politicalstance, a very sociological.
You know, I'm planting my flagin this idea and, like you said,
it polarized.
People, you know, divide a roomand everybody talks about you,

(01:21:58):
and that's ultimately what we'retalking about when we're
talking about branding andfinding a guru who can you can
build a brand around.
You know, buffett is like onthe softer side of that, the
more investing and nerdy side ofthat, but you can certainly
build a brand around those ideasas well.
In the exact same way, buffettties his morality to the

(01:22:18):
investments and investment ideasthat he picks.
Not a lot of investment gurusin our business do that.

Yeah, no, he absolutely does.
Like he's phenomenal in that hehas so many parts of him.
And I think, in general, likeyou can look at finance and see
like there are great casestudies of gurus in mainstream
financing.
They mirror or parallel gurusin our space People like Buffett
, people like Thiel, people likeSchwarzman, people like Buffett

(01:22:45):
, people like Teal, people likeSchwarzman and you have like the
rises and falls of people whoare just chasing trends and you
have all the same stuff.
But like guruship matters infinance as much as it does in
newsletters.

I mean, Bill Bonner is a great example.
You know, when I was startingat Agora, I was, and Bill Bonner
hated stocks, still hatesstocks.
He likes gold, that's it Right.
And land, I guess, yeah.
But you know, even during thedot-com mania of you know,
between 97 and 2000,.

(01:23:18):
You know, he just kept sayingit over and over again.
Remember his famous quote aboutAmazon, the river of no return.
He still uses that today, Eventhough Amazon's up what?
100,000 percent.
So, but you know, bill hasmissed every bull market, you

(01:23:39):
know, in my lifetime and heseems to be OK with that.
He's built an entire brandaround that.
He became a billionaire off ofthat.

Yeah, curmudgeon yeah, yeah, and it's not again.
It's not just.
It's not just his investingethos although that's part of it
.
I like he's one of the fewpeople or like whatever he puts
out.
I read when like bill bonnerdiary when I was out man loved

(01:24:09):
reading that and like he'stalking about like fixing the
roof on the place he just boughtin ireland or getting in the
getting in the fights with thenative population in the
mountains of uh, where does hehave the ranch, what you know?
argentina yeah, argentina.
Yeah, well, he's like uh upthere to like plant the vines

(01:24:32):
for the vineyard and I'm likethis is awesome.
I read all of it.
It's so interesting.
His writing style is so uniqueand none of it's about investing
, like he has those other things.
But I'm just man.
This is the super rich guyliving his life in this
particular way.
I love it.

It's so entertaining.
Right particular way.
I love it.
It's so entertaining, right.
That like kind of, yeah, uh,for sure.
I do think that that, like, Itry and think about this a lot
and I don't know why, becauseI'm not writing for anybody at
this point I don't write anymorebut I think about, like, what
would be of like kind of howwould you, how would you elevate
or create a kind of a gurubrand that you know would be

(01:25:11):
sellable, right?
Like what kind of things couldyou do that are so out of the
box?
And I think this is an areawhere we don't think what's
possible.
And I always use this examplebecause it's so obviously true.
We're right, here in Baltimore,you got all these newsletters
in Baltimore, you guys are inBaltimore.
Gore's in Baltimore, marketWise is in Baltimore.
You are also journalists.
Gore is in Baltimore, mark Wiseis in Baltimore.

(01:25:32):
You are also journalists.
We're all journalists, right,it would take basically an
application process to start tobe able to show up at the White
House press room, and you're notgoing to get in every time, but
all you got to do is get inthere a few times when they're
doing economic stuff, right, andI wouldn't say I'm a journalist
in that I wouldn't positionmyself as a journalist to your

(01:25:53):
readers per se, but it puts youin the room when big things are
happening and one of the thingsbesides being like counter trend
that people pay for is I wantto be counter trend because the
guy's on the inside right, hehas access to things and he
knows things that I don't knowand you can get into all these
places.

(01:26:27):
I did this experiment and Iended up like talking to a
bunch300 billion fund.
It was $60 billion at the time.
It was the UAE sovereign wealthfund.
He was coming to do deals withnewsletters.
Nobody wanted to talk to him.
I think about Porter had thisgreat promo it was a backend
promo, did it like 19 million?
And the headline was basically along headline about how he had
this dinner with all thesepowerful people and I was like,

(01:26:49):
man, I could put people morepowerful than that in this room
and we did.
We had billionaires, more thanone, people who own
multi-billion dollar hedge funds, all this stuff and it was like
, well, it wouldn't take thatmuch work to have any of your
editors or gurus start to pluginto places like that.
Not because there's moreinsight, necessarily, but

(01:27:11):
although there will be insight,but because the stories you
could tell from it and thethings that you could spin off
of that to your readers, theinsights, the relationships, the
way you could build somebody up, and so to me I always thought
that that would be like pick anarea, like how would be the
dream thing for a guru, and likeyou could actually just dev
into that and get him thoserelationships and help them find

(01:27:34):
that.
That would be to me like it'skind of like the another
direction to go with this, whereit's like he becomes more
promotable, right.

Um, well, I mean , we're talking about the, the
dust that falls off of moth'swings.
Like you know, everybody wantsto like, everybody wants to be
dusted with greatness.
Yes, you know, like everybodywants to touch the bishop's
robes.
You know what is the logic of aback end?
It either has to be bigger,faster, it has to be closer to
the guru.
And what we're talking about isgetting a lit like people,

(01:28:05):
regular people, wanting to havea little bit of greatness in
their life.
And so, you know, I use theanalogy of like dust falling off
of a moth's wings because, likepeople want to have the
experience of being close enoughto something that they can
actually be caressed by it.
And so what you're talkingabout is, you know, again,

(01:28:26):
michael Jordan on a Wheaties box.
It's getting that guru into theroom so that the associations
we have with that person now aregreater than what they simply
are.
Right?

And with that video model it becomes instantly
credible and interesting, right?
So, like, imagine like you'rekind of doing the Gary Vee thing
of documenting, but you'redocumenting like hey, I'm about
to walk into the White Househere and then the video watches
you walk through security, youdon't even have to say what
you're doing, yeah, right, butit's like that kind of stuff
that you could do in such aninteresting way.

(01:28:59):
Um, I remember Mike Wardtelling me and this is the
height of money map was.
He was like, yeah, do you wantto be a guru?
And I'm like I'm not.
He's like, but I've been doingso much work on the business
development and networking sidethat like he um say, hey, we're
trying to get ahold of you knowwhat's the same Bruce?

(01:29:19):
Um, he was founder of canopycannabis, the deck of corn.
He was the big, the guy incannabis and I forget his I
can't believe I'm forgetting hisname right now and I was like,
well, we like met him last weekand filmed with him some stuff
so I can give you his adminsemail address.
We have all these other peoplethat you know, guys investing

(01:29:40):
with Bill Gates's family officeand things like that.
And he's like you know, because, from his standpoint, we can
sell that stuff like crazy.
Just the relationship network, alot of his guys, like they
hadn't been in finance for along time 20 years ago.
The relationships have degraded,they don't have the connections
anymore and so, likeconnections is something that we
can sell and I was like, well,man, you can just like that just

(01:30:02):
tastes like a little bit ofelbow grease.
Like you can do that,especially when you already have
a publishing asset, becausepeople want to be featured in
the news, they want it to befeatured places.
It's not hard to go out and dothat and I think that that's
something that is it's not partof regular publishing.
But I think you can very muchgo out and create an amazing set

(01:30:24):
of relationships that wouldthen feel unique.
Like how are you going to standout?
Like this is the guy that I seeall the time on Capitol Hill,
in the White House, and he'sdoing things that related to
that, and so if he's investingin defense, is he you know?
You could make those thingshappen in such a way, make it so
visceral with video now, thatit's like, well, you're just
associated with that, likethat's my guy for that.

Why do you think no one does that now?

There's two, three things I think.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
I think one is it takes extraeffort.
It's not part of the day-to-dayrunning of the business, right,
it's a little extra.
Two, it takes a guru who'swilling to go above and beyond,
right.
So if he's a staff, he doesn'talways want to do that If he's
not really interested.
Three, I think people don'treally like they don't know,

(01:31:20):
they don't know that you like.
So I had this experience, thiskind of like mentor of mine in
china.
It was more of a I was buddhistand all this other stuff, but
he I was, and he I always usethis story.
He built a railroad with thegovernment that he put no money
in.
He organized it, createdbillions of dollars worth of
real estate, did it because hethought it was good for the

(01:31:41):
people right to bring thedevelopment in.
But he orchestrated this wholething.
He ended up getting accused ofrunning a shadow government.
All this other stuff had toleave for a while but he stopped
.
Like China was going to invadeTaiwan in the 90s and he
brokered peace talks and stoppedit.
And he was a monk, had no money,right, and so I'm close friends

(01:32:01):
with the family.
That was his main supporter andhis probably top Western
student is like my best friend.
We got to meet him, he was myteacher and it opened my eyes to
how you can maneuver.
So there's this game, this kindof thing that we would talk
about with his student.
It's kind of like any room inthe world, right?

(01:32:23):
So pick a room in the world theWhite House, saudi Arabian
Palace there is a social path ofconnection from where you're at
to there.
There are different lengths,different levels of difficulty,
but you can get anywhere.
You can get into any ecosystem.
It's just a.
It's a, it's a mental practiceand that's not a normal thing,

(01:32:45):
right.
But once you apply it like Istarted applying it in 2018
playfully, just thinking likethis would be kind of fun and
sure enough, like ended up inplaces that I never thought I'd
end up, and then 2020 kind ofput a hold on everything.
And then I had to reassess like, hey, what direction do I want
to take this now?
And then had a thing with mypartner, had to get that settled

(01:33:05):
, and now I'm sitting here likereassessing there's a lot of
meat here on that exercise, butfrom a publishing standpoint, I
think that, like, you can doalmost anything.

I just want to say really quick one.
That's an amazing fucking story.
I love that and I want toemulate that for the stuff that
I put out into the world.
But secondly, I would say thatthere is one other reason, in
addition to the ones you listed,why a lot of gurus and a lot of
publishing businesses don't dothis.
What have we been talking aboutwhile we've been at this table?

(01:33:39):
We've been talking aboutindirect associations, sort of
like the subconscious storiesthat we build around things.
A lot of times you'll talk to aguru and say, hey, why don't we
do this?
This would be really cool.
And if the guru is from WallStreet and they've been sitting

(01:34:00):
in a cubicle doing DCF analysesfor 20 years, they're not going
to inherently or intrinsicallyunderstand why that would be
good, or intrinsicallyunderstand why that would be
good, what the benefit of thatwould be, especially for either
a marketing or for astorytelling standpoint.
But I mean just on that note,like it goes back to what you

(01:34:24):
were saying before about how,like yeah, gurus can be trained.
But one thing that I've reallydiscovered in working with
people, especially on theeditorial and fulfillment side,
is that it's easier to teach anEnglish major or a marketing
major how to write aboutfinancial than it is to take a
financial person and teach themhow to write, because there are
just so many barriers and blocksto understanding things from a

(01:34:48):
more lateral thinkingperspective.
To understanding things from amore lateral thinking
perspective, like kudos to youfor finding a guru who is
willing to actually buy intoyour idea, because I can imagine
a lot of more traditional,especially gurus from Wall
Street, would balk at that idea.

(01:35:09):
One because they have this sortof false perception in their
head about the reputation thatthey want to protect, and they
would think that anythingrelated to entertainment would
undercut that, which is silly.
But that's kind of where we areAt least that's my opinion.

Yeah, no, I don't disagree.
Maybe it's just a matter oftime, right Like there's a final
snowflake that causes theavalanche.

I think actually that that's a really interesting
point because there is a lot ofresistance to what kind of
comes off is, and have heardthem use the term carnival
carnival barking.
It's a lot of difference thanlike feeling like you're Billy
Mays pitchman versus AnthonyBourdain Right, I think,
visually like, because it is it.
It is a social acceptance thingfor some of these guys.

(01:35:53):
I had a guy who was like he hada $100 million hedge fund at
this point.
He used to work at MorganStanley, had crazy connections
and things like that, and he waslike don't ever, ever tell
anyone.
I have a hundred million dollarhedge fund and I'm like why?
It's fucking embarrassing.

(01:36:14):
It's embarrassing.
A hundred million dollar hedgefund is nothing.
It's nothing like on wallstreet.
Like you talk to guys andthey're like you know we have
people in our space.
Well, I had a 31 hedge fund andit's like that doesn't?
That only gets you credit.
People who don't know anything.
That gets you.
That loses you cred with peoplewho do know anything.

Because having 100 million dollars, 200 million
dollars, is like oh you're, thisis your starter fund, huh like
yeah, so I guess it's just a youknow, a matter of time until,
like, a full transition takesplace.
That's just my guess, like I'msure people resisted email at
first well.

So you know that's .
The idea of a full transitionis interesting, right, because
of what it's it implies is thateveryone's going to switch over
to one thing, and I think that'spart of the problem is this
belief that we're going toswitch over to one thing rather
than creating a unique space andthat includes your media
choices and includes your formatchoices.
And it includes because I don'tthink.

I think that's what when I say full
refracturing, I agree.
When I say full transition, Ithink we're fracturing, I agree.
When I say full transition, Imean where it becomes a standard
and common practice.
Some people do it and somedon't.
But like pitching the ideadoesn't get you a.
What the fuck are you talkingabout, right, you know?
It's just like oh yeah, wedon't, we know it works for
those people.
That's what I mean when I sayfull train.

You'd be surprised how many people don't want.
I mean, they're given theopportunity to be a guru but
they never seize one.
We've had a lot of editors herewho have just let slip through
their hands, and so it takes adifferent kind of personality.
It takes a different kind ofpersonality.

(01:37:50):
Some people are just contentwith the status quo.
I myself, I mean, you know myguru status is fluid.
Sometimes I'm a guru andsometimes I'm not.
Yeah, I'm guru fluid.
Honestly, I just really justgot back into the game just a

(01:38:13):
year or two ago.
So it's, it takes a differentkind of personality to really
really sort of seize it and, youknow, milk it for all it's
worth.

I mentioned earlier, copywriters are going
to have to become copy producers, right, and that's part of it.
Like finding, like recruiting aguru, like casting calls, like
you know, it's going to go morethat way than the traditional
way where you get assigned tosome boring guy.
You've got to figure out a wayto do something interesting.

(01:38:45):
You go find the interestingperson and turn it into the
thing.
I think that's where wherewe're going.

Yeah, I have a suspicion that we would have an
easier time finding that personwho has already built a small
following on like YouTube, forexample, and then just going
them, bringing them into theecosystem.
Sure Like, do it the MNA way.

There's some phenomenal like little letters
out there.
Right now I talked to Sven fromundervalued chairs if you've
seen them, so I'm gonna tell youhis he has a conference that he
he added, and once I tell youthe name of the conference,
you'll understand sven's alittle bit.
He's cut a little bit different.
The name of the conference isweird shit investing, and he's

(01:39:28):
like there's nothing in herethat you will ever find Talked
about.
He's like band investments, likeeverything right.
It's like weird stuff and he'salways traveling and doing stuff
and so, like people like that,coming into the space, forming
relationships with bigger pubsand doing things, I think, yeah,
you're going to find that'sawesome.

But it's also somebody who's I want to sign up
.
Yeah, I already going to findthat's awesome, but it's also
somebody who's I want to sign up.

I already want to sign up, but it's somebody on
the ground who's buildingsomething for the first time.
I think that has thatexcitement.
It's harder to get somebodywho's employed to get on the
plane, go out and do some crazystuff.
Then, like Brian coming back,like Brian, brian, he's going to

(01:40:12):
do what he's going to do.
If he likes the idea, he'll doit.
There's no limits on him inthat sense.
If he doesn't like the idea,he's just not going to do it.
But if he likes it, likethere's nothing stopping him
from doing whatever the hell hewants, because he runs the show
and like he loves the businessand that like it's a.
You know all I want to do, johnexcept for, maybe, your wife
telling you how to do it I lovemy wife too.

All I want to do is play pickleball every day.
That's it.
That's all that.
That's that's where I am inlife right now yeah, you have to
.

And you have to have, like, if you have a
publishing company and whatever,you know, these businesses are
all set up differently.
But you have to have apublishing company, that's okay,
with brands doing what they'regoing to do.
And sorry, to go back to theBarstool sports analogy, you

(01:41:04):
know there's the CEO who runs itand he has his own thing and
then he's got 20 brands.
He doesn't tell them whatthey're doing their own, they're
kind of operating independentlyand doing their own thing under
the umbrella.
You know he's not saying no,don't do this, no, and
micromanaging and that kind ofstuff.
And so the publishers, you knowsomeone's going to have to be

(01:41:25):
okay with that.

Yeah, and there's also like a timing thing here
too.
That I think is just in generalright now is we're still we're,
we're still crawling out of theworst period in industry
history in 15 years, Um, and sopeople have to kind of
recapitalize.
Things are working again.
Let's kind of focus onfundamentals, get things working
again, and so I think you'reprobably going to find more
appetite for creative attempts.

(01:41:47):
Which is why I want to have theconversation now, I think is
over the next few months, sixmonths, year like, as things
kind of continue to come back.
Then there's more cash to trythings, there's more appetite
for that kind of thing than likekind of the hey I'm, I survived
, Woo, yeah, that's, let's gethealthy again.

And you know, I think we're all in agreement on
the panel that there is a needfor new channels, there is a
need for new formats, andthere's always going to be a
strong resistance to every newthing, like at every single
level of management andimplementation, because new is
attractive but it's also scary.
You know it's an alluring thing,but yeah, it's.

(01:42:34):
It's going to be an interestingperiod of years here because,
you know, at the same time allthese changes are happening, a
very large portion of the steady, steadfast, like stable
demographic that we've alwaysbeen speaking to they're going
to start dying off a little bit,right, and so I'm not saying

(01:42:55):
that we need to start speakingto, like, 23 year olds who, like
, want to learn day trading ontech talk.
I'm just saying that there'ssomebody who just turned 30 and
suddenly became aware, you know,suddenly had a concept of the
cosmos appear in their head andsaid you know I should get my
finances in order.
You know I should probablylearn more about finances in the

(01:43:16):
stock market, and there'salways going to be an influx of
new people that want thisinformation, but where they want
to get that information isgoing to constantly shift and so
, you know, really ultimately.
Right now, it sort of feelslike, as we're making this
transition, we're stabbing inthe dark a little bit.

That was part Well to that point.

You know I try to get my information.
You know, on a firsthand basis,I have nephews and they're in
their 20s right now.
And you know on a firsthandbasis I have nephews and they're
in their 20s right now.
And you know I wasn't surprisedwhen they said, oh, uncle Brian
, you know I'm a big investor inBitcoin.
That kind of makes sense.
But I was surprised when theysaid, uncle Brian, you know, do

(01:44:04):
you own any gold?
I was like, yeah, a lot of it.
And I was like this gives mehope.

(01:44:28):
You know, they're in their 20sand they're talking about
central bank, crypto, dollarsand all this stuff.
And I was like, wow, okay,there is hope.
These 20-somethings areactually talking about stuff
that I've been talking about forthe last 30 years.
So there is going to be.
There is going to be and I youknow I don't want to.
I also do airsoft.
You know what airsofting is, soI do airsofting with my son and
whenever I you know, wheneverwe're playing, you know there's
always a group of you know olderteenagers and guys are in their
twenties and all that.

(01:44:49):
Whenever you know we're eatinglunch or something I can hear
them just talking about.
I'm going to buy some more goldtoday or tomorrow, whatever,
and I was like okay.

So that's our future subscribers.
So in my FMS every year I do astate of hip-hop thing and I did
this whole thing ondemographics this year.
Demographics this year and thatwas the thing was that the
younger generations areinvesting on a percentage basis
at extraordinarily high numbersrelative to previous generations
and they are consuming contentin different places, different

(01:45:21):
platforms, and that's part ofthe shift that's coming Right
now.
You have like, and AndrewTaylor did some actual study on
this at Investor Place and hesaid that we think of them as
the late-stage boomers as ourprimary customers, but according
to his data, it's already it'sGen Xers mostly.
And early, you know, like Gen X,so you're like into like

(01:45:43):
mid-60s.
But, that's still the so if youthink about it from a lifecycle
standpoint we always had thisconception, and I think it's
true is that people come intothe market in their 40s, 45, and
they really start to thinkabout investing for retirement.
And then they're real hardcoreinto retirement and then for the
first few years afterretirement figuring out how
they're going to generate income, and then it kind of gets.

(01:46:05):
They're at where they're at andsome people stay, but most of
the market kind of fades out,and so what we're seeing is that
millennials hit 40 two yearsago.
The first one is leading edge.
They invested at levels thatnobody else ever had.
Gen Z is investing at like 17,18.

(01:46:26):
They started at levels and so,yeah, it's a transformation of
the audience.

My son is 15.
He has a stock account.
I mean it's custodial, but Imean he asked me and my wife
he's like you know I want toopen up an account and I was
shocked when his firstinvestment was a dividend-paying
stock.

Nice Good for him.
Now, I think, just on that noteand this sort of ties into what
we've been talking aboutvis-a-vis branding, but, like
one of the things that I'venoticed in my my career has
certainly been shorter than yourguys' but, like over the course
of that career and also knowingpeople that have been in the
career for a long time, there'salways an allure like a sort of

(01:47:09):
shiny object, like glow aroundmore illiquid markets, more
illiquid opportunities, thingsthat are just like beyond the
scope of the mainstream.
I think crypto is attractiveright now because it's still
kind of a little bit of a painin the ass to buy crypto.
Becoming less so like anybodycan sign up for a Robinhood
account in five minutes and getone.

(01:47:30):
And becoming less so likeanybody can sign up for a
Robinhood account in fiveminutes and get one.
But somebody who's 62 and justheard about Bitcoin for the
third time and is like I amgoing to buy a Bitcoin, that
person doesn't know the chain oflike OK, I can get Robinhood on
my phone, I can get a Bitcoin,and so one of the things that I
think is happening, especiallywith stocks, and it's happening

(01:47:50):
across our businesses we'restarting to see fatiguing
numbers, not just because of thenature of promotions that we're
putting out, but also becausestocks are a little bit old hat.
Like younger, people don'treally want to invest in stocks.

Well, there's a few things there.
One is there's fewer than everbefore.
Yeah Right, there's fewerstocks.
Period, part of the JOBS Actand the whole Reg A funding
space was kind of to create amodel that almost looked like
the early IPOs of the 90s andstuff, so that they could get

(01:48:25):
there and hopefully go public tocreate a new kind of wave of
pubcos.
Whether that's going to work ornot, we'll see, but there's way
fewer of them than ever.
At the same time, like retailparticipation, like 2020, market
participation was it's astraight lineup right and it
stayed so.
Like, market participation issuper high on the retail side.

(01:48:48):
It's at record-breaking levels,and it stayed at
record-breaking levels while wewere in the shitter in FinPub.
And so there's this interestingdichotomy of hey, there's
people investing in publicmarkets at a level that they
never have before.
They ain't buying our stuff,and that's possibly because of
this generational issue.

Well, it's also because there's never been age
aside there's never been a timewhere you could get access to
free information, moreentertaining and interesting

(01:49:31):
financial information, like bysome dude that like better done,
better researched, than thefulfillment not just than the
promos of the biggest companiesin FinPub and also their
fulfillment.
You ever get one of these likemasterclasses on options

(01:49:55):
training and you know that you,like, we've all written for and
then like, you can go on youtuberight now and get that and get
hours and hours and hours of itfor free and it's better than
what we sell.
It just is like anyone got aproblem with me saying that tell
me and I'll send you YouTubelinks of people crushing what
you're putting out that trend ofinformation quality and move to

(01:50:18):
free is definitely like apersistent trend.

You also have with the sub stack guys, like you
know.
You say a lot of the financeguys can't write but some of
them can, especially some of theanalysts.
Finance guys can't write butsome of them can, especially
some of the analysts and some ofthe Substack letters from real
niche experts who are like thisis like the top three analysts
in this sector is writing athing on Substack.
He doesn't have a hugefollowing but he has.
I think a lot of the topcustomers in the space are out

(01:50:43):
there seeking information,People who are real investors,
consuming things and they'reshowing up on places and like I
know a few of these guys andthey're getting questions from
retail people who aresubscribers, Right, Um, and so
like those spaces, like we don'texist in a vacuum, for sure,
and the free information umtrading in particular is harder
because it's skill based and soif you're doing education,

(01:51:06):
that's like people are on thereteaching it, Investing is, it
moves.
So the information is there,but like you can still sell,
like I love this guy, I want todo it, I want to see what he
thinks, and so it's back toselling first.

Well, so on those YouTube channels, because I mean
there's anything man, there'sname it.
I can go like I hate financialYouTube channels.

How much do you need?
I know, name it, I can go likeuh, I hate financial youtube
channels how much do you need I?

know, like this dude, he's got one right, right,
like you know how much do youneed in uh dividend stocks to
retire?
Like if you have this much likereally done.
Really well, like right, greatmarketing, great thumbnails,
great headlines and then greatinformation yeah, this, this is
a I mean this is probably abetter big conversation.

I think that there's a movement to that that
probably needs to happen intowards being more of a it's a
combo niche media company where,like it's not just the
newsletter, there's an eventfocus, there's community, like
you're doing discord.
I think building like somethingthat is more robust than simply
the information is kind ofwhere we have to go.

Sure, but like where I was going with that,
those channels, youtube, it'ssaturated with them, but I'm
still going to choose the onethat, like I feel like, is like
my guy, right, right.
So it's a you know, and you cansee that by the subscriber
count.

That's also why I actually personally, I love long
form because and I consume alot of short form, like everyone
but I found that, like anythingthat's long form that I
listened to, like I'm I'm abuyer of that short form stuff I
consume like, oh, it'sinteresting, but that doesn't
convert me to anything.
Yeah, long form If I'm like wow, convert me to anything, but

(01:52:53):
long form if I'm like wow,because you get to know the
person you get to know whatthey're looking at things, you
get to understand them and thenlike you build that relationship
and bam, you're.

you know, well, you've also subconsciously
committed yourself to that justby spending that time You're
like.
Well, that time I spent musthave been worth it.

Right, and that's also where I think that kind of
tying this back to some of theother conversation.
I think that the use of apodcast shouldn't be as a
substitute for an e-letter.
They're fundamentally differentthings and what you can do with
the podcast is build thoserelationships.
It's the guests you can get onright, that add, like the

(01:53:24):
expertise you can build.
That is not your investmentpicks, but it's like hey, wow,
he's connected with everybody,he has all these relationships,
he's plugged in over here.
His credibility and the thingsthat he's talking about that are
not directly like I recommendthis stock, but are, hey, he's
picked gold, he's got RandySmallwood, who's the head of the

(01:53:46):
World Gold Council, on thereand they're talking deep and
then they're going to go dosomething afterwards.
He's connected and heunderstands that space.
Oh, and it's over here too, andthen that that's stuff that you
can then bring into your copy,into your editorial for the
recommendations.
But the two things aren'tnecessarily.

They can be, but I don't think they have to be the
same thing, you know, yeah um,most of the time you think about
it, we're asking people to buy,you know, like a back-end
$1,500 product, whatever 2,0002,500 bucks and like the
entirety of like.
My concept of knowing thisperson is like maybe a paragraph

(01:54:25):
of copy that could beboilerplate copy for every other
guru.
I was on wall street and then Idecided like I wanted to work
for the regular guy Right, and Iwas like or or, here's the big
shift, wait, I was on the CBOE.
And then I like that's the bigdifference, you know.

But here give me 1500 bucks, like uh, where um
angel Suarez did thispresentation in the first London
FMS that I did, and he'stalking about this issue of like
well, I'm selling PaulManpilli's.
He's like this is who I'mselling and he takes pictures of
Xerxes from the 300, theSpartans like golden god and
puts Manpilli's face on it andhe's like this is what I'm doing

(01:55:08):
to him.
In the copy it's not theparagraph.
It's like you're gonna thinkpaul is the greatest thing in
the world period by the timewe're done with this.
Yeah, and it's like versus, likeyou said, like right there's
literally people I know who,like they're cutting and pasting
bio sections from yeah, what apromo to the next one.

I mean, just think about it.
It's like you do it yourself.
Like, why do we expect the, the, the readers, to behave
differently?
You just said you do it.
You personally consume hoursworth of content and like, get
to know a person, right, andthen maybe you know, maybe do it
.
Why do we treat the potentialcustomer differently?

(01:55:48):
Say here, asshole the potentialcustomer differently.
Say here, asshole, trust me,boilerplate, boilerplate, buy
this thing.
Geez, why are conversion rateshalf of what they were?
I don't like, why is no onegetting this message?
And one of the things thatmight be, I think, is that with
this potential shift, or whoevershifts or doesn't, there might

(01:56:10):
be a longer sales cycle, right,with, like direct response,
click bang, boom, okay, we knowwhat the conversion rate is.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe if I watched, if Iwatched, I'm just throwing this
out, this is off the top of myhead okay, if you had a pub and
we just put out so much freeinformation and videos and not

(01:56:33):
just about trading, abouteverything, right, your personal
life, et cetera, and like,could we track and see, okay, we
didn't sell anything at the endof this, but we noticed that,
like, the conversion rates onour other videos or other promos
went up half a percent.

This is already proven to a point.
So, um, uh, I think it was atthe legacy like kind of mash,
right.
I went to um, they were talkingabout the trajectory trajectory
of leads versus paid customers,right.
So, um, they're inverted.
So if a customer buys here, hisbuying goes, goes down right,

(01:57:12):
he'll buy a few things, right,and it goes down Leads.
They start with nothing andthen it goes up.
And what we found in differentgroups has had versions of this
is that if you do have good leadgen and you do have good
relationship building innewsletters, that that lead it
does take longer but he tends tobe more valuable because by the

(01:57:32):
time he buys he's so committedto you that you're a better
customer, right?
Um?
And then a related story wasfrom money map, where mike ward
was like you know, when theywould bring a new guru on, he
would not launch a front end.
What he would do is say you'regoing to write a, uh, an
e-letter for six months.
We're not going to launchanything until we start hearing
from subscribers, hey, do youhave anything to buy?
And then, if that doesn'thappen, eh, contract's over.

(01:57:57):
If it does happen, they knowthey can launch the first
product at a back-end pricepoint and move front-end unit
numbers the only time you can dothat.
But it's because of that freerelationship that's been built.
And so with e-letter content,we know that's true and I think
the problem is that the e-letteris super, super crowded in the

(01:58:18):
inbox.
Um, so I think, with like, butto your point, I think it's
already proven that, at leastconceptually, that's true, right
?

um, people who come in and consume the content,
the long-form content, buildthat relationship, become better
buyers yeah, yeah I um, I wantto touch on some points that
you've also been talking aroundtoo, because this is also a
source of frustration for me,with our industry a little bit
too, which is that you know,some of the best copywriters and

(01:58:49):
marketers in the world work forAgora, but the moment they sit
down to make a YouTube video, orthe moment they sit down to do
something that's like just inslightly a different format,
it's like every principle ofcopywriting and good marketing
goes out of their head and liketo the point where, like I'll,
I'll see like a Paul ManpiliYouTube video and be like who

(01:59:12):
are you making this?

for oh, I do this terribly, like I just start my
things I don't think about likethe copy structure and video
structure the way I should.
I know I should, but I don't doit.
I do think I was having thisconversation with somebody else
a couple weeks ago and I waslike you know what I need to do.
I was like you know what I needto do, not just YouTube, but
like I need to go like watchmovies and docuseries and shows

(01:59:35):
the way that I watched or readnewsletter or promos when I
started to become a copywriterDeconstruct the beats of the
visuals and how it's set up,because that's one, it's just
the idea of doing that isinteresting to me, but that's
how you learn deconstructing, tointegrate it into how I think,
because I haven't done it yet.
It's a gap.

Well, I mean, if you want to go meta about this
particular podcast, we can gometa about this podcast, because
I've been living on YouTube forlike the last five years, like,
for example I got this conceptfrom Ed Lawrence, but it's
something that we're allfamiliar with which is, you know
, say you have a target, youknow, with one at the center and
10 at the outside, and one is adisciple, a person who's just
like, if you send them an emailthat says buy MFR, and then it

(02:00:23):
takes them to an order formdirectly, they'll buy.
That's a one, and so you canmake content for a one.
And then, if you go all the wayout to the 10, now we're
talking about like entertainment.
Now we're talking about likegoing very far afield, trying to
get as people who might not beinterested in the topic
whatsoever, but they're kind ofintrigued, they're kind of
interested in what you have tosay, they want to be entertained

(02:00:44):
and normally, like fin pubstypically target like your three
to six range.
There's not a whole lot ofattention being paid to
entertainment, which is why Ithink that there's space for
what you're trying to do in ourworld, but when it comes to like
a podcast like this.

(02:01:05):
You have to sort of decide like, ok, based on the packaging,
based on the thumbnail, based onthe title, like it's exactly
like a sales letter.
You know, you have to thinkabout when we're talking about
branding and things like that,we have to think about who this
stuff is, for whom this stuffbelongs or is going to, and one

(02:01:34):
of the things that I think is amajor obstacle that a lot of
more old school DR copywritersgoing to have to contend with as
we shift into more brandingstuff is paying attention to
stuff like that, because not nota whole lot of that is done and
that's often as simple as likeputting a sizzle reel at the
front of your video, like hiringa really good graphic designer
yeah, like I think about this,for for this podcast too, and
I've, I've one.

It's just me doing it, so I'm not doing a whole
lot.
But two, I have a commitmentinside FMS.
I have another business that Ido, that's not directly related
to this, but the FMS stuff.
I made a commitment for theevent that it's going to be the
ones and twos in that scenarioperiod, because I don't want,
because I don't want it, becauseI don't want to like.

(02:02:12):
One of the benefits of an eventlike FMS and the community like
FMS is that it's the exactopposite of traffic and
conversion.
Right, you go to traffic andconversion.
There's 6,000 people here.
It's going to take you threedays to find one person that you
can actually do business with.
When you go to FMS, it's like95% of the people in the room
will do business with you andwill want to do business with
you and so.

(02:02:32):
I'm very careful about like Idon't want to expand this
audience dramatically.
It's a very tight audienceintentionally.
That's also a good excuse to belazy on that stuff.
But you're 100% right, becauseI think about that too.
Like there's times when I'mlike, oh, I should do a sizzle
reel with this.
I'm not trying to get moreviews on youtube, it's more of a
.
I use it there to host stuff,um, but there is other stuff

(02:02:56):
that I do that I'm like, if Idon't do that, I know it won't
work.
Yeah, at all, because it has toright.

But I mean, we can go back to what we know
about e-letters too.
If you don't start an e-letterwith like a captivating story or
a stinger or somethinginteresting, something that to
attract, even if you have like aone, they're probably going to,
you know, either not payattention or the attention will
fatigue over time.
And so, like you know, we, likeyou could, we can say that use
another analogy here Like whatwould you rather read a

(02:03:23):
scholarly article or MalcolmGladwell book?
You know, like that summarizesthat scholarly article.
Like we want and we crave, evenfor stuff that we're interested
in, we crave it to be packagedin a way that is palatable to us
.
And I think that you know, aswe shift into entertainment or

(02:03:43):
to different channels, a lot ofcopywriters and marketers are
going to have to really startpaying attention to that kind of
stuff in a way that they neverhave.

Yeah, 100%.
I think you're 100 right onthat.
Well, any final thoughts?

why are you looking at me?

wait for your wisdom on high no, um, no, I
don't.

Final thoughts I think this was good, yeah.
Final thought let me think okay, um, yeah, hey, everyone that I
pitched a f entertainment showidea to and you said, no, by the
time this podcast comes out,the price doubled asshole.
So, uh, because, uh, the firstone will have been out by then.

(02:04:35):
So there you go, feel free tocut that out.
No, no, I'm not cutting thatout, I might go into sizzle reel
I like that.

I like that I, just on the note of
entertainment, like I wasthinking about this stuff too,
and I actually I have a have acouple of YouTube videos coming
out.
One of them, you know it's it'sactually based on an old Mark
Ford you know piece of contentthat he put out like around his
early to rise days about, likethe cost of use.
And so what I did was I waslike I took that piece of

(02:05:04):
editorial and I thought, likewhat could I do in my life to
make this interesting andcaptivating?
And so right now I'm working ona YouTube video called
Lamborghini versus minivan, andso I hired about 12 supermodels,
I got, I rented a Lamborghini,I went to Mark's house, I filmed
this.
It's coming out on my channelrelatively soon, but it's just
like trying to pay attention tostuff like that.

(02:05:31):
And I think that you know, likeI've, the stuff that I'm doing
is stuff that you, in parallel,have been thinking about and
working on too.
So I think that the zeitgeistis there, like the need for
something like greater spectacle, greater branding.
That's all there.
You're on discord Again.
We're all sort of rowing in thesame direction, but parallel to
each other.
It really just comes down to amatter of, like you know,

(02:05:53):
somebody is going to crack it ina way that none of us has
cracked it yet and we're stilltrying to figure out, like,
who's going to be that person,what is going to be the new
format, what is going to be thenew like modification to the
model, and I don't think thatyou know.
Again, like I said earlier,we're still stabbing in the dark
a little bit.

Yeah, but we're seeing a lot of good signs.
I know there's social to phonefloor stuff.
You're 60 to 100 millionlibrarians out there with that
model.
Yeah, You're seeing lots ofdifferent things working on the
small space that aren't scalableat all but are coming in and so

(02:06:36):
it is like the transformationof the environment is like slow,
slow, slow, slow, slow and thenall at once.

Hockey stick.

I mean, yeah, we can talk about the
transformation of the formatting, but at the end of the day,
guys, it's all about ideas.
Our industry is built on ideasthat they can't get anywhere
else, and we just have to keepreinventing these ideas.

(02:07:07):
Reinventing these ideas.
You know, like I said earlier,angel Publishing was built on a
single idea called Peak Oil.
We've gone from Peak Oil now toa cryptocurrency that's backed
by gold, and it's still in theground.
That's cool, and it's how wetell the stories.
We're storytellers and ourreaders want to live through us.

(02:07:33):
And you know, look at Bill.
You know, sometimes I feel likeBill is living this romantic
life.
You know, he's fighting withthe rebels in.

Argentina.

You know, a couple of his buildings get burnt down
by them, but he's living thelife.
He's Ernest Hemingway meetWarren Buffett.
That's a great title and I wasreading something from him from
a few years ago and now he'sbeing referred to as Don Bill.

(02:08:11):
And I have a friend who livesin Columbia, the country
Columbia, and I was like youknow, tony, what does you know?
Instead of senior, what doesDon denote?
He's like that means you're themaster.
So Don Bill, nice.

Nice, awesome, all right.
Well, anyone wants to reach you.
Brian, you are on, obviously,angel pub and in the discord fms
pro um linkedin.
You guys have a podcast.
Uh, as well, sean, you haveyour name, your podcast uh,
youtube channel.

If you want to hear me talk about writing stuff
, search, copy that show onyoutube.
If you want to see me talkabout writing stuff, search,
copy that Show on YouTube.
If you want to see me talkabout financial stuff, search
DIY Wealth on YouTube.

There you go.
I'll link those up, mr Braddock.

Bigideapromoscom.

Yep and FMS Pro Discord You're in there I am
Awesome.
Well, thanks, guys for doingthis.
I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me Cool.
Thanks for letting us use thestudio.
This is amazing.
Yeah, it's cool Killer, allright.

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