Mark Schaefer: How to be seen, heard, and found

Mark Schaefer_Wes Schaeffer.m4a:

Mark Schaefer_Wes Schaeffer.m4a: this m4a audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Wes Schaeffer:
Mark Schaffer, my brother from another mother. Welcome back to The Sales Podcast. How the heck are you?

Mark Schaefer:
I could not be better and I'm serious.

Wes Schaeffer:
I know we were talking earlier. We both got tiger blood from the COVID. And so --

Mark Schaefer:
Hear me roar.

Wes Schaeffer:
Hear us roar. So, man, if -- I can't do podcasts as fast as you write books. What the heck is going on? How are you such a machine, man? Cumulative Advantage: How to Build Momentum for your Ideas, Business and Life Against All Odds.

Mark Schaefer:
That is my new book. Well, I know this sounds weird because I've written a book about every two years, but I do not have a plan to write books. I only write a book when I have a huge idea that I think will help a lot of people. When I see something going on in the world with my customers, my clients, my students that I don't understand and I get obsessed with, I just go to this weird rabbit hole and I don't come out 'til I figure out the answer to the problem.

And I think the the problem that every salesperson, every marketing person, every business is facing today, it's really one big thing. How can we be heard? How how can we be seen? How can we be found? And my gosh, it's getting so hard. There's so much content out there and so much competition, and I'm not the kind of person to roll over and say, oh, well, it's hard, too bad. I want to figure out what do you do? I mean, what practically can an individual or a business do?

So I worked on this idea about creating momentum. How do you create momentum? And it led me all the way back to this research that started 50 years ago and this concept called cumulative advantage. And it says that momentum builds if you have some initial advantage, and then there's this pattern that sort of occurs, and if you follow this pattern you will distance yourself from your competitors and they will never catch up.

So this has been shown in athletics, education, business, entertainment, health, just about every field, but it's all been in academia. It hasn't really been applied to a practical way to our lives and our businesses. So that was my challenge, to crack that code and figure out how do we take this pattern and apply it in our lives. And that's what the book is about. And people are really, really loving it. It's affecting people in a very powerful way. So that's been really rewarding to see.

Wes Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm. I think Malcolm Gladwell kind of -- it's bringing to mind I think it was in the book "Outliers."

Mark Schaefer:
It was, exactly. You're right.

Wes Schaeffer:
Did that influence you or do you just run across that?

Mark Schaefer:
I connected the dots a little later. I'm a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. I definitely style my writing after him. You know, at the core of all of Malcolm's stories, there's like some statistic or some research. So he tells us big, long, winding story. And then he said, well, of course it's that way. Stanford University found in 1968, da-da-da-da-da. And my style is sort of like that. And I remembered the piece in "Outliers" about -- basically what he's saying is that today's -- the success we have today is is not necessarily always deserved; and the failures that we have are not necessarily deserved either, that we're all sort of riding the crest of a wave of things that happened a long time ago, and these build in a certain way, and that -- and then I linked this idea.

There was this research done by a guy named Frans Johansson showed that almost every successful person and every successful business started with a random event. And it's kind of mind-blowing, to tell you the truth. And I do this little test in my classes or workshop. I'll say, now think about where you were 10 years ago and where you are today. How did you get to where you are today? Did you have a vision and say that's where I'm going? Or were you inspired to do this because of a person that you met or a book that you read or something -- you know, a podcast that you listened to? And it's always -- almost always -- some random thing.

In my own life I can point to the fact that in the early '90s, I was stuck in my job. I was in this marketing job, this Fortune 100 company, and I was looking around, what am I going to do next? And the Internet was beginning. And I was looking at this thing and I thought, I think there's some interesting business applications here. So if you could imagine, I went to my boss and I said, I would like to get an AOL account and put it on my expense account. He thought I was crazy. You thought this was the biggest waste of money, but he agreed.

So I was the first person in this Fortune 100 company to be on the Internet. Three years later, company wakes up and says, oh, my goodness, we need to have an e-business department -- a global e-business Department. Who shall run it? Mark Schaefer, you've been on the Internet longer than anybody. It's you. And that really kind of explains why I'm talking to you today, because I had this idea back in the early '90s. I pursued the idea with my boss. I didn't just let it drip, just didn't let it go away, evaporate. And the timing was good because the Internet was exploding.

And then built up a successful department, momentum, momentum, momentum, and then eventually started my own consulting practice and here I am with you. So I can make this direct line between our conversation today and our social media connection and the friendship we've had for years. I can make a direct connection to asking my boss for an AOL account in the early 1990s. That's sort of how life works.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah. And it's -- so I want to explore both implications of that. Because, I mean, on the one hand, someone could use that as an excuse to say, see, this is why I never do anything, but it's not worth it by blah, blah. But I mean, the reality is, it's like, well, the old adage, you know, life is not what happens to us, but it's our reaction to what happens to us. Right? I mean, you were --

Mark Schaefer:
That's the key idea is that you've got to know when these doors are opening and you've got to go through that door with great power and great effort and great confidence. You know, look, making good decisions still matters. Working hard -- of course, you've got to work hard. But it is interesting. You know, when I when people read the book, they kind of say, you know, I never really thought about it that way, but it's funny that all these sort of things happened. But the key thing is they make good decisions. They were aware that this was an opportunity and they had the guts to sort of go through with full force.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah. And it does take a little bit of guts. Like, were you were you nervous when you asked your boss to expense it? Did you think he'd fire you or call you out?

Mark Schaefer:
I mean, that was -- that was really -- that was really low-risk. I mean, but there have been a lot of things I've done in my life that were very nerve-wracking.

Well, look, I'll tell you something, Wes. You know what's the most nerve-wracking thing a human being can possibly do, I think is write a book. It's because there is no greater risk to your personal brand than writing a book, because it's not like a tweet you can take down later. You write a book, you can't say, oops, got it wrong. Sorry, it's out there. It's your legacy. It's permanent. And, I mean, it's so stressful. When I finished writing this book, I had nothing left. I worked so hard on this book. It took everything out of me. You know, I needed a break. It was just exhausting. And then when you put it out there, you know, I thought it was a good book. I thought it was a solid book. But you just never know. You don't. You don't know until people start to read it. And much to my delight, people have absolutely loved this book. And they -- a lot of people said it's my best book.

Wes Schaeffer:
So walk me through your book writing. You said you never intend to write a book; an idea grabs you. I mean, is it literally like you stumble upon something and then that's it? Your heads down for three months, six months, a year, however long it takes, and it pops out? Or is it maybe there's a thread you kind of look back after three months or six months or a year, you go, oh my gosh, I need to assemble this? Is it a little bit of both?

Mark Schaefer:
It is generally the same process each each time. This book was a little different because I had a pandemic in the middle of it. We could talk about that.But generally it goes like this. Let's use Marketing Rebellion, for example.

I'm so fortunate I get to go around the world, talk to CMOs at big companies and small companies and startups and non-profits and hospitals and universities. And in these conversations, I kept hearing the same thing. People would say, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like we're falling behind. Our marketing doesn't work like it used to. And I kept hearing this over and over and over. So I had a theory that technology was moving so fast that people were feeling overwhelmed. But I got obsessed. Okay, so there's a problem here. Everywhere I go, people feel they're overwhelmed and falling behind. What kind of a book would I write to solve that problem?

So I thought this was a technology issue. I was wrong. I was one-third down the path of working on the book and I realized it's not a technology problem; it's a people problem. Our customers have moved away from us. They're always on. They have the accumulated knowledge of the human race in the palm of their hands. They expect more from companies and from marketing.

And I sort of had this moment, I'll never forget it, where I thought, I don't know if I even know what marketing is anymore. How do you really connect to these people in the way they want to be connected? And so that was the idea. Figure this out, so then I wrote an outline. Here's what I think the chapters would be: 10, 12 chapters. I make an Evernote file for each of those chapters. And then for about nine months or a year, I just watch the world and I see articles or blog posts or interviews I slap them into those chapters. Oh, this would fit here. This would fit here. Look at this research. That's exactly what I was saying. Oh, look at this. I need to interview this person that would fit here.

And then I write normally over the Christmas holidays because I can't stop and start. I need a long period of time to write this book and so I'm usually too busy. But in the holidays, everything slows down, the consulting and everything; the speaking slows down. So I pull out my Evernote files and if I've done a good job all the research is there and now I need to weave it into a story. So it's a very efficient process. It takes me about nine months or a year to gather the researchers, gather ideas, make sure I'm right, you know, and then say, okay, boom, it's time to write the book. And that's that's how it works for me.

Wes Schaeffer:
So can you write it all in two or three weeks?

Mark Schaefer:
I can usually write it in about maybe six to eight weeks. And then I'll send it to beta readers and they'll tell me that some chapter's all wrong, I need to do it over and and then eventually I'll get it to a final editor to correct my grammar or whatever it needs to be corrected. So, I mean, I can write it -- let's put it this way. I can put together a strong first draft in about six weeks.

Wes Schaeffer:
So let's say somebody has got an idea. They've got a body of work, but they don't have -- they never been published; they don't have a contract. Should they pound through any way, get it written and shop it?

Mark Schaefer:
Nope.

Wes Schaeffer:
Should they do chapters?

Mark Schaefer:
You should self-publish. Just self-publish. You know, it's very easy and inexpensive to self-publish today and the real and I've done it both ways. My first three or four books were through McGraw-Hill and and I was very lucky to have that experience because that was the tail end of the heyday of traditional publishing than traditional publishing with the Internet began to die. And it's -- you know, look, you publish through one of those big publishers, they're not going to promote your book. They're not going to support you. They're going to take most of the money and they're going to expect you to sell 5,000 copies, which is really hard. If you can sell 5,000 copies, then why do you need a publisher? Instead of making $1 a book, make $8 a book and just self-publish and do it yourself.

And there's other advantages. You own that property. You own that work. If you go through a publisher, you don't own it. They own it forever and can do whatever they want with it. And I've had some bad experiences with that. And it also gives you flexibility because if you self-publish, you can buy as many books as you want for $3 or $4 apiece. The books that I published through McGraw-Hill, if I wanted a case of those books, I'd have to go to Amazon and buy them the same price as everybody else.

Wes Schaeffer:
Wow.

Mark Schaefer:
So there's a lot of advantages to self-publishing and it's really not not that hard and it's not that expensive to.

Wes Schaeffer:
Cool. So your book, Cumulative Advantage -- Life -- Against All Odds. So did you know -- did you know we were going to have the toughest of odds coming at us? This would have been, what, Christmas of 2019? Is that when you were putting it together?

Mark Schaefer:
Well, actually, because of different things that were going on in my life, I actually started writing this in the summer of 2019, started to gather some ideas and then had about three or four chapters written and the pandemic hit.

And so I sent the chapters, I mean, not in the pandemic -- but we had political discord, we had social justice protests, the streets are burning, people are dying in hospitals -- with a pandemic. Everyone's locked in. I'm thinking, what am I doing writing this book right now? So I took some of the chapters that are written and I sent it to this friend of mine, who is it's a very, very brilliant man that I trust, and I sent him these chapters. I said, is this still a book?

And he read the chapters and he sent me an email back and said yes in capital letters and three exclamation points. He said, not only is this a book, he said, this is your legacy. This is going to be the best book you've ever written. So that sort of gave me the validation to keep going.

But without question, the pandemic colored the the tone of the book and there's examples in there and there's connections in there to what's going on -- and how could you not do that? So, yeah, I mean, the pandemic -- and look, it's right now, you know, the entire process is now I'm in the marketing of the book and it's difficult to market a book in the pandemic, too. Right? We still have 20 million people unemployed or underemployed and people are still watching their money and they don't have as much time to read books because they're working at home and home schooling their kids or whatever, whatever, whatever else is going on.

So, I mean, it's taken a toll on every aspect of the process. But for me, it's an idea I had to get out. The time is right to get it out. So ship it. Ship the work. It's time to ship the work and see how it goes. And luckily, it's been going really well.

Wes Schaeffer:
So you started writing it before COVID, you finished it during COVID?

Mark Schaefer:
Right.

Wes Schaeffer:
How much did you have to go back and rewrite or did you realize you were you were already on to something and actually had prepared you for what was coming?

Mark Schaefer:
Well, the funny thing is the "against all odds" part, I had it in the title even before the pandemic -- because life's hard. I mean, life is really, really hard. And we're at a point in this world where even if we're doing our best work, even if we're great, we're still being buried. It's just almost not fair.

I can remember -- Wes, you might even remember this. I wrote this blog post in 2014 called "Content Shock." There's a really famous post. It literally went viral; was shared thousands and thousands of times, had thousands and thousands of comments on this thing.

And a few weeks after I wrote this post, I Googled it -- "Content Shock." This is a word I made up. I wanted to see who else is writing something about content shock. I couldn't believe this. I was third in the search results. Now, how is that even possible? I made it up. I was the author of this post. And what happened was the most powerful content didn't move to the top. The most powerful websites did. So these are websites that mention my post. I mentioned this idea, but they were more powerful than me and they got the credit. So it's like, wow, what do you have to do, what do you have to do to stand out in this world? And that's just one example.

But there are elements that surround us in many aspects of our life. We just think, oh, my gosh, what do I need to do? And so my take on it was, look, when great isn't enough anymore, what do you do? And the problem that I solve, I think, with this book is momentum. How do you create momentum?

And I went back to research to the start of the 1960s, I discovered this research and this pattern, and I think it fits. I think it's the right -- the right idea for our times.

Wes Schaeffer:
So somebody is going to be listening to this saying, "Great. Ten years from now, I'll have momentum and I'll be rich and famous. Right now I'm eating beans and weenie." You know? So is that just part of the hard life? You might as well get started because it may take you five or 10 years. So, you know, when's the best time to plant a tree, right?

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah. Well, look, there is an element of that. And that's the connection really between this book and that other book I wrote called "Known." And in that book it was about building your personal brand. One of the things I mentioned in that book and in this book is that these things -- momentum, success for your personal brand -- it is not an overnight success. It just isn't.

And I tell a story in this new book about I had a chance to hang out backstage with the Black Keys, very famous rock band. Now, when I hung out with them, they were just on the cusp of big fame. They just released, like, their big breakthrough album, and everything was going nuts for them. Then when I saw them, they were still playing a venue, maybe 2,000 people. So I asked Patrick Carney, I said, what what was the catalytic event? What was the thing that just made you burst on the scene? Finally, he said there wasn't one. He said, we've been touring for seven years. We've had seven albums. And every tour is a little bit better than the last one, and every album is a little bit better than the last one. It's just steady, steady work, steady, steady progress.

You know this. If you look at your podcast downloads for your show, right, they go up, up, up -- there's no big spike. There's no big hockey stick.

Wes Schaeffer:
Oh, the servers get shut down when I publish yours.

Mark Schaefer:
[laughs] Oh, that's good to know, "Mr. Momentum," Mark Schaefer is on our show with us. So, I mean, my blog subscribers, it just goes up and up and up and and as that goes up, your personal brand is going up, your reputation is going up, your access is going up; your ability to call in favors from higher-level people is going up. Your cumulative advantages is going up right. Your momentum is going up.

But there is no silver bullet there. There just isn't. And all of this takes commitment, resilience, grit, determination. It just does. It's just like what Patrick Carney told me; there was no moment that that took them to the top. Now, a year and a half after I talked to them, they sold out Madison Square Garden in 15 minutes. But they were in their ninth year by then -- their ninth year. So no substitute for that consistent hard work.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah. All right. We're going to make people buy the book. We won't give everything away. But I do want to know about the porcelain club [sic].

Mark Schaefer:
The Porcellian Club.

Wes Schaeffer:
Oh, Porcellian -- I'm misreading.

Mark Schaefer:
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer:
You know, hey, I'm from Louisiana. English was an elective, man.

Mark Schaefer:
[laughs] Oh, that's a great line. That is a great line. I'll probably steal that.

Yeah. So one of the stories in the book, so I wanted to set the book up and show how it's easier for some people to have this momentum than others. And I told this story about the Winklevoss twins, and you might -- the name might seem familiar if you watched "The Social Network" movie about Facebook. The Winklevoss twins were the chiseled good looks, six-foot-two rowers who came from a millionaire family. They grew up in the Hamptons. They went to private schools. They were at Harvard. So you're thinking, wow, these guys, they've got everything going for them.

And then they got selected for the Porcellian Club. So the Porcellian Club is the oldest private club. It's a secret club. The oldest club in America is formed at Harvard in the 1700s; secret club, all-male club. And if you get tapped to be in this club, you basically have a network of powerbrokers, the people highest in government and business and the military and the judicial system and the universities, they're all your brothers and they will open every door just because you're in the club. That's it. You just if you're in the club, you your success is set. There's even sort of a rumor that if you don't make a million dollars, your first million dollars, by the time you're 40, the Porcellian Club gives it to you, so that everybody is guaranteed of being a millionaire by the time they're 40. They call them the Porcs, if you're a Porc. So it was my way of telling the story to say you just look at their lives.

And just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then if you can imagine, they were training for the Olympics. They were in I believe it was the 2016 Olympics and they were rowers. So they were unemployed amateur athletes. And yet they had enough money to go toe to toe with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg in a lawsuit. By that time, Facebook was on the cover of Time magazine, one of the most powerful companies in the whole country, and they were able to basically get them into a corner and get a huge settlement from Facebook. They took part of that in stock. Three years later it's worth half a billion dollars. And it's just like, oh, my gosh, there's just no way these people can lose.

Now, I come from a family of plumbers. I went to West Virginia University and you know what? I paid for my whole tuition. The reason I went to West Virginia University is I couldn't afford to go anywhere else. But I had -- but I've created momentum for myself. I've been successful. I've been able to go through these doors of opportunity. I've been able to make smart decisions, take risks, connect to people who can help me and build momentum really on my own terms.

And that's the point of the book, is that, look, very, very few people have a life handed to them like that, like the Winklevoss twins. Most of us have to fight and scrape and figure out a way to go forward. And what this book does, it shows there's a pattern. There's a path that you follow to create this momentum. It doesn't have to be all random.

And here's what I guarantee. When people read this book, they'll never see the world the same way again. When you meet a new person and they start telling you about the success of their business, you'll you'll hear, aha, that was the initial advantage. Aha, that's the seam they went through. Aha, that's how they got awareness. And you start to see this pattern in people's lives, in businesses and you'll start seeing the world through a lens of cumulative advantage.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah. That's awesome. So going back to West Virginia, even at your Fortune 100 company in the '90s, I see people -- I see two common threads or themes, if you will. Some are like, you know, at an early age, I'm going to create a cure for cancer. Others are like, I don't know, I just want to give my kids a better life than I got; you know, like not very specific, but specific in a way, right? So how precise, how specific should you have your goals? And do you have -- you know, do you want to you want to sell a billion books and help a million people become millionaires? You know, or is it just, I want to have a better business,; I want to make a dent in the universe, however that may come to pass? You know what I'm saying?

Mark Schaefer:
I think it's a really great question. I hadn't thought about it that way before, but I think it could go either way. So, for example, when I was a little boy, my dream, my vision, I wanted to be either a baseball player or an astronaut. I didn't dream of being a digital marketing consultant or an author. It never even crossed my mind. I didn't write my first book until I think it was 49 or 50 years old when I wrote my first book. So it's not like I had some plan. But like most people, we didn't really follow our passion; our passion followed us. My passion was baseball. It didn't end up being my career. But I want to tell you something. Yes, I love what I do. I love what I do. It's so rewarding. It's so interesting. I have fun every day. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So in a way, I kind of fell into it in a way because of these random things that happened in my life. So I didn't necessarily have a goal. I didn't start out with a goal of saying I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to be a teacher. I mean, I had some idea of what my life might look like. Now, I also think goals are important. And I do think you can apply this model of momentum to goals. And I'll give you a great example. I was talking to a fellow who's an owner of a very large company who just read this book, and he said this was really helpful for me because I could see what was missing. I could see what the next step is for me to get this momentum. I covered number one, I covered number two. And I see. Yep. Now, I need vast awareness. That's what I need to be working on.

So it just created clarity for him to achieve his goals for his company. He said, okay, this makes sense to build the momentum. This is -- now I see where I'm stuck and I know exactly what I need to work on to get to the next level. So it's a great question. Thank you for asking it. And I could see that it works in both circumstances.

Wes Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm. So you -- going back to publishing -- this is self published, right?

Mark Schaefer:
Yes, it is.

Wes Schaeffer:
But you have a hardcover edition. How are you -- how are you doing that? Are you not going through KDP?

Mark Schaefer:
Well I went -- so KDP is owned by Amazon --

Wes Schaeffer:
Right.

Mark Schaefer:
-- and ACX, which is Audible. That's owned through Amazon and it's really, really efficient and simple to publish through Amazon. And that's where most books are sold anyway these days. So why not just take the path of least resistance? And then there's another company that I use called IngramSpark that does the hardcover book. And I mean, they do a beautiful job. I have a friend who's in the publishing business and perhaps is even a little snooty about it, and she got a copy of the hardcover of this book and she couldn't believe it. She said, this is a beautiful book. It's a high-quality publishing job. And so really, there's not -- I mean, there's not a downside to self-publishing today. It takes a little more effort, of course.

But it for me, it's sort of a fun, creative project, to see the layout come together and the cover come together. I don't do these things, but I just find people who can help me, who can do a good job. They're pretty easy to find and they're not very expensive. And you can publish a book pretty efficiently today.

Wes Schaeffer:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's cool. Very nice. So where should we send people? Just send them to Amazon? You want to go to your website?

Mark Schaefer:
Well, both places, you can find interesting things. Amazon, of course, you can find my books, you know, audio, Paperback, hardback, Kindle, whatever your preferred format.

Mark Schaefer:
Now, if you go to my website, which is Businessesgrow.com, right on the front page, on the landing page, there's a great big banner for the book. You can click that. And on that page for the book, there's free stuff.

So for example, there's a workbook if you want. It has chapter summaries. If you want to use this with your team, if you want to think abou -- you know, think this through a little more deeply for your business. There's study questions that go with the book. There's additional material that I'm writing after the book that's available there. There's a free video you can download. I don't -- and all these things, I don't even ask for an email address. Just go take it. If it can help you with you, with your business, go for it.

Wes Schaeffer:
Very cool. And I made the mistake the first time you were on because I'm linking to your past appearances. So you were on 241 back in the day and even 129 before that so. You're like a staple around here.

Mark Schaefer:
What number -- what number is this one.

Wes Schaeffer:
This one is going to be roughly 496.

Mark Schaefer:
Wow.

Wes Schaeffer:
Maybe up or down one.

Mark Schaefer:
Well, congratulations. What consistency. That's one. Yeah. We're in the 9th year of our podcast. And it just again, it just grows and grows, grows a little over time and you just keep sticking with it. And it still brings me joy. I have fun every time I do it. And I think that's important because obviously you love talking to people. You love learning new things and that comes through. That joy comes through. And that's why people love your show, Wes.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah, thank you. But I was going to say I mispronounced your website because it's plural. Businesses.

Mark Schaefer:
Businessesgrow, yeah. A lot of people make that mistake. See, I thought I was being smart because I didn't call it Schaefer because nobody can spell Schaefer.

Wes Schaeffer:
Oh my gosh.

Mark Schaefer:
There's ten different ways to spell Shaffir.

Wes Schaeffer:
I know.

Mark Schaefer:
Or more, as you know. So I thought, well no one would ever find me if I make it Schaefer-something. So I intentionally made it "businessesgrow" because I figure everybody can remember that and usually they can. But I do get a lot of "businessgrow" instead of businesses. Businessesgrow.com, and that's where you can find my blog, my podcast, my books and really lots, lots of cool free stuff for businesses of every size.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah I get Shaver. I get West -- oh, West, like East? I'm like, my name is not West.

Mark Schaefer:
Yeah. Shaffer; Schafer.

Wes Schaeffer:
Oh, why do we have to end this on such a down note? Come on. I was all happy 'til now.

Mark Schaefer:
Oh.

Wes Schaeffer:
I know. So I'm like, come on man. Schaefer beer, Schaefer pants. Come on, get with the program.

Mark Schaefer:
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer:
Oh well.

Mark Schaefer:
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer:
All right. Businessesgrow.com, and I'm on it now. Yeah. I linked through it and yeah, you've got all kind of --people can order an autographed copy from you; bulk orders; the story; the video; you've got a study guide. Good grief -- graphics.

Mark Schaefer:
Yeah. And if you get the audio book, there's a PDF with all the pictures in the book that you so that you can follow along with the graphs and charts. And again, it's all free so have fun and go for it. And the audio book is kind of special because people in the book whose stories are in the book, they narrate their own stories, which just kind of fun.

Wes Schaeffer:
Yeah, very nice. Well, I need a lot of pictures, so I appreciate you putting those in there.

Mark Schaefer:
Well, now I understand since English was an elective. [laughs]

Wes Schaeffer:
Can't take me anywhere, man. All right. Mark Schaefer, thanks for coming back, man. Great catching up with you.

Mark Schaefer:
Thank you, Wes. Always a delight. Thanks so much for your good work.

Wes Schaeffer:
All right, man. Have a great day.

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