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

Wes Schaeffer (00:01.581)
Michael Drew, Crazy Hair Day, all the way from Lehigh, Utah. Welcome to the Sales Podcast, man. How the heck are you? I'm good. Man, I'm not lying. I told you this. I tell for a decade at least, I've been telling, I've been talking about this book. When did this come out? Let me see. Let's find out exactly. 2012. So yeah, over a decade.

Michael R. Drew (00:11.724)
I'm great. Wes, how are you? It's great to be here.

Wes Schaeffer (00:28.971)
And I got it, think right when it came out. for 13 years, I've been talking you up, man.

Michael R. Drew (00:34.126)
I mean, you might be talking about more because Roy and I have been doing that presentation since 2003.

Wes Schaeffer (00:39.637)
Yeah, well, and I was, I was there. was hitting Roy's classes when he was still in the strip mall in Buda. So before he bought the prop really, maybe he had the prop, he hadn't developed any, he didn't have Tuscan Hall. But you know, I was, I was going to Tuscan Hall events.

Michael R. Drew (00:54.37)
No, it isn't upstairs in the attic in that space. And then they moved outside to the slightly bigger space and then.

Wes Schaeffer (01:02.241)
Tuscan all has an upstairs?

Michael R. Drew (01:04.309)
No, no, no. I'm saying at the Buda location. He had his ad office downstairs and then upstairs in the attic.

Wes Schaeffer (01:06.951)
okay.

Wes Schaeffer (01:11.472)
there was an upstairs there. thought it was just like a little, just a little strip center. don't, I I went there a couple of times for his free. He would do his free like Friday thing or monthly thing. I didn't know there was an upstairs. have, do you have a couple of offices?

Michael R. Drew (01:20.174)
Yep.

So they had two buildings right next to each other. And they got the second building the year before that they decided to start building the Academy. So you have to remember, I've known Roy since 1999, 1998 actually. what did do? Well, you know, I worked with a publisher called Bard Press and Ray Bard was the publisher and published the Wizard of Athens trilogy.

Wes Schaeffer (01:26.502)
okay.

Wes Schaeffer (01:33.868)
Gotcha.

Wes Schaeffer (01:39.276)
well. How did y'all meet?

Wes Schaeffer (01:46.752)
yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (01:53.195)
Yep. Yep.

Michael R. Drew (01:53.966)
I was 19 and Ray said to me first day on the job, Michael, we publish business authors. What our authors want more than anything else in the world is to be a New York Times bestselling author. What I want you to do is go figure out how the New York Times and other bestseller works. And as a young, naive 19 year old, I'm like, yeah, sure, I can do that. so funny enough, what I literally did is I called the person at the New York Times and said, hey, I'm Mike Drew with

Bard Press, could you tell me how your list works? And of course, the gentleman, his name was John Wright, laughed at me and said, no, but keep calling back kid, you're kind of fun. We'll keep talking. I called Bob Hughes at the Wall Street Journal, same conversation, Jackie Blaze at USA Today and so forth. And so I started talking to them and having some really basic conversations. And then within about a month of that, Ray came to me and said, hey, our next book is Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads by Roy H. Williams.

I need you to make it a New York Times bestseller. I'm like, okay. And so I went and met with Roy at his old office there in Buda. He had a different type of office with a big giant barn and some other things. And we came up with a plan, which was to mail an advanced copy of the book to the general manager of every radio station in the country with an offer that said, again, 99, if you buy 20 copies of the book,

from a specific bookstore that I informed them to buy it from. And if they run 200 radio

Wes Schaeffer (03:23.233)
Was it like a local bookstore or from one specific?

Michael R. Drew (03:26.318)
It would have been from a local bookstore, like a local Barnes and Noble or local Books of Million or look at the time borders were still in business, right? So it would have been a specific store in their area in their market so that we got the sales reported. And so we had that plus they had to run 200 radio ads.

Wes Schaeffer (03:43.159)
So, I'm sorry, tell me again, so the offer was if they buy 20 books.

Michael R. Drew (03:47.148)
and run 200 radio ads promoting the book. And they could they could run it overnights or whatever like an unsold inventory, which is fine. Which is what a lot of them did. But we had we had almost 800 stations out of the 6000 US stations participate. And, you know, Yep, yep. And we not only did we do we mail, I then oversaw

Wes Schaeffer (03:49.996)
Wow.

Wes Schaeffer (04:05.589)
You mailed to 6,000 stations? You mailed a physical book?

Michael R. Drew (04:15.264)
a team that did all of the follow-up. I personally talked to about 2000 stations over a three month period of time. So it's where Roy and I actually developed the relationship because I wasn't then working out of the Bard Press office. I was going down to Buda to Roy's office and working from 7 a.m. till 5 p.m. every day. And then Roy would be like, hey, come in my office. And then I would just be he'd either have somebody was talking to.

And I would just sit there, be a fly on the wall, or he and I would have conversations for half an hour to an hour. I did that every day for three months. Right? So that's where he and I developed that, the personal relationship that we have. And of course I launched that book, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, number three on the New York Times and number one on the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list, is my first of now 131 consecutive New York Times bestselling books.

Wes Schaeffer (04:48.545)
Mm.

Wes Schaeffer (05:07.213)
So, okay, so let's finish this. they buy 20 copies, they run 200 ads, and then what do they get for that?

Michael R. Drew (05:17.162)
thank you. Royd created a training library on VHS at the time, because we were back, so back then CDs were there, but VHS was as common or more common than the DVD. And basically what we said is that, the book as a third party testament states and proves that radio is the best form of advertising for a smaller, medium sized brick and mortar store or business.

What we're going to do is we're going to give you those books as ammunition. We're then going to give you 12 tapes of training from Roy and Roy's going to train your sales reps on how to use the book to be able to go generate more advertising revenue. And so we had all those stations participate. Now, certainly one of the reasons we got our foot in the door is Roy back then, I think was the number five buyer of radio in the country, you for Radio Inc.

He was already a big name before I started working.

Wes Schaeffer (06:14.765)
So these stations would know him?

Michael R. Drew (06:17.496)
Yeah, they know who he was.

Wes Schaeffer (06:19.017)
Okay, okay. So, how...

Michael R. Drew (06:20.622)
He used to speak at every radio bureau convention for every state every year. He would do 50 of those a year, right? So anybody who either read Radio Link, which is the top trade publication, went to their state trade convention would see Roy. And then he was a huge buyer of media as well. fifth back then, I think the third now in radio.

Wes Schaeffer (06:28.929)
Hmm. Hmm.

Michael R. Drew (06:50.286)
in terms of total volume of radio bias. So, yeah, everybody knew who he was.

Wes Schaeffer (06:56.685)
So how does that math work out though? I mean, you got 6,000, you mailed a book, and let's say it's $5. I mean, you may know the actual math, but I mean, there's 30 grand right there to mail out.

Michael R. Drew (07:11.054)
He spoke, so it's a great question. this is the question is one that we have with every author to start off with, which is the revenue from the book against the marketing cost. before I go into his numbers, what I'll say is I have 131 New York Times bestsellers. Seven of those authors made more money from the sale of their book than they did on marketing costs. However,

110 of those clients permanently increase their gross revenue by a million dollars. 10 of those clients permanently increase their gross revenue by 50 million dollars or more. And seven increase their gross revenue by a hundred million dollars or more. So the math, if your measurement of success is revenue from book sales against marketing cost will almost never make sense. And to be honest, the seven books that

Eventually made money took a few years and sold into the millions of copies before it broke even because there's so little revenue for from a book, but the book as a relationship building device as a Conversation starter is a really great tool to be able to build and grow your business Right you you tried pendulum. I I get I hear at least two or three times a week from somebody who's wrote pendulum

who wants to talk more or interview me about Pendulum or whatever else. It has nothing directly to do with my business, Pendulum. mean, there is certainly a reason why we did it and there is a tie in, but it's not as direct as you might think, but it's still a huge audience builder and relationship builder for me. And so on Roy's Costs, he spent about $400,000 to sell about $400,000 in books.

He could have given away 20,000 books and pay the retailers for that and spent the same amount. The difference though, beyond the radio spots, is that there's a big difference between somebody who is given the book. Like you read Pendulum, you are in the Pendulum, you want to know and talk about it. If you gift that to somebody,

Wes Schaeffer (09:25.133)
Wes Schaeffer (09:30.239)
I have underlined and written notes in Pendulum. I've done a podcast review of Pendulum.

Michael R. Drew (09:33.326)
There you go.

Michael R. Drew (09:37.742)
Nice, nice. So, so, so that you're you've read it. If you give that book to somebody who has no intention, who had no intention of reading it, they probably aren't going to read it. I'll tell you, Roy is my one of my best friends and mentors gives me books all the time. I might read 10 % of them. Maybe, maybe not because he has good intentions. There books I probably should read. There he has reasons for doing it. It's just, I have to

Wes Schaeffer (09:45.579)
It won't be red.

Michael R. Drew (10:05.102)
psychologically, physiologically be ready to read that book. so gifting 29.

Wes Schaeffer (10:10.625)
Well, the problem is he also gives you bourbon and wine. So, I mean, I can't read and drink. I'm just saying I'm weak.

Michael R. Drew (10:17.602)
Well, know, so about a third of the attendees are Jews and about a third of them are Mormons and they don't drink and they go to all of those events too. you know, you don't have to drink the whiskey from the whiskey ball or the beautiful wine.

Wes Schaeffer (10:28.525)
I understand, I'm for me, I'm just saying, I remember walking into that first Friday event, you 9 a.m. and there's that cooler of, of, of non bowling alley beer. I still call it bowling alley beer, you know, Bud Light. Yeah. There's no bowling alley beer here. And he had wine and he's up there sipping a little red wine. I'm like, where am I? It's like, I think I'm home.

Michael R. Drew (10:41.134)
Purple Cops.

Michael R. Drew (10:57.848)
Yeah, in the academy we do things differently because we want to create pattern interrupts. In school, we have an education, we have an idea of what education looks like sitting at a table and being taught a certain way and whatnot. Roy's like, no, we're going to disrupt that. We're going do it differently because that's what creates something that's memorable. If it reflects everything that you've already always done, then you'll forget it pretty quickly. So he's done an amazing job, both originally at his office in Buda, now the Academy of

of curating events and experiences that you can only experience there that is not relatable to anything else that you might do.

Wes Schaeffer (11:35.169)
You know, it's interesting two things. It was 2012. I was at a conference, a software conference, a software that I've sold for many years since 2008. I wrote a book on their software and I was sitting there with the woman that had gotten to know a big entrepreneur and she was a New York Times bestselling author. And I'm having lunch with her and she said, if she said the same thing, if you have $400,000, you can be a New York Times bestselling author.

And I was like, what? I mean, it kind of hurt my soul. I'm still kind of naive in business. I know people can be cruel and evil and blah, blah, but I still hope and give people the benefit of the doubt that it is what you see. to hear it's gamed so much.

Michael R. Drew (12:28.62)
Well, so let's talk about that because there's gaming and there's understanding the game, which are two different things. Right? If you're playing baseball, you want to understand all of the rules of the game so that you can play at the highest possible level. Gaming, would be corking the bat or putting cuts on the baseball as a pitcher to be able to get better grip or whatever else. That's gaming the system. Knowing how to pitch better or how to catch better or how to hit better is not gaming.

the system, it's playing the game better. So there is a distinction between the two. But the reason why the why even that fine line came in is that between 1880 to 1980, the average number of books published each year was about 40,000 copies. The average retail bookstore even today, but back then as well, carried on average about 100,000 unique titles. Of those unique titles between 70 to 80 % are what we call

backlist titles, which are your perennials, your classics, and last year's best sellers. So the remaining 20 to 30 % are frontlist titles, new titles that are coming out that year. And so historically in the United States, most books that would be published by a major publisher would actually make it onto retail shelves. And so then something happened in 1980 that changed everything.

the proliferation of the personal computer and we're processing and then every Tom, Dick and Harry and Amy and Sue and Sally thought that they could write a book and they started to. When I started in the industry in 98, there were 76,000 books published, almost double what there was in 1980. Last year, there were 1,076,000 books published by publishers, not self-published, not POD published, not published through

KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing. That's from small, medium, and large publishers. They're all still vying for the same shelf space of 20 to 30 spots. And so what you have then is a change in the model where historically the publishers would make the author. They would send the author on an author tour. They would get speaking gigs. They would get TV shows, radio shows, or whatever else. And they would actually own it. And they would give...

Michael R. Drew (14:54.626)
basically a percentage of royalty to those authors. But when we got to a point where anybody could publish, like there was no such thing as self-publishing pre-1980. To be able to figure out printing and all of other things was too expensive, and then distribution, of course. So as we move from 80 until today, the model had to change. Publishers had to look at things differently, and the modeling, therefore, had to look different. But one of things that is important to observe from a book standpoint,

is that the majority of books, 80 % of books still sell through retailers, online or off. Yes, authors do have direct sales, there's special sales, but most books still sell through retailers. And while most people think today that Amazon sells most books, they sell the most books, but they don't sell the volume that people think. As the number one book seller, they sold 16.6 % of books last year. 16.6.

Barnes and Noble in contrast the number two retailer in the space Primarily brick and mortar sold 11.1. So Amazon so almost 50 % more than Barnes and Noble, but now you're only at 27.7 percent of all sales If you take all online sales Amazon Barnes double.com and books of millions all of the online sales it represents about 24.3 percent of sales right so

It's a huge number, but the brick and mortar sales represent 75.6 % of, or 7 % of sales, right? So the brick and mortar, these are US numbers. The thing is the US is the biggest book market. You go to Europe, you have French and German, Portuguese and Italian and Greek and all of the other languages. And so they have very small, unique markets.

Wes Schaeffer (16:35.861)
And is it these are US numbers? OK.

Wes Schaeffer (16:43.287)
Sure, sure.

Wes Schaeffer (16:47.917)
you

Michael R. Drew (16:52.814)
Whereas US publishing can expand a little bit to England and South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, but as an individual book market, it is the single largest book market in the world. Even in India or China, they've got multiple different languages. It's not the same. So, yes.

Wes Schaeffer (17:10.283)
Yeah. So you're saying, so 75 % are still in the store. That's amazing. Cause like I'm such a hermit. It's like I go to church and I go to jujitsu in the gym. That's about it. I know, but I used to, mean, I drive right by a Barnes and Noble every day on the way to jujitsu. And I used to stop in there all the time. You know, we got seven kids.

Michael R. Drew (17:15.383)
Yeah.

Michael R. Drew (17:25.132)
Well, James saw books. Some churches have bookstores in the church.

Wes Schaeffer (17:39.837)
We used to go, especially in the summer, before we got solar. And it's so damn hot here in the summer and electricity was so expensive. We'd go to the little kid section and we'd go sit there in the middle of the day because it was cooler. But I I went all the time. I love thumbing through books and magazines. I got so many books. But I don't don't go to a physical store anymore. I haven't been to Barnes and Noble in years.

Michael R. Drew (18:02.445)
I thought.

Michael R. Drew (18:07.31)
It's certainly down from where it used to be. But the thing is you also have to consider that grocery stores sell books. All grocery stores sell books, a smaller number, but they still sell them. Walmart sells books. Sam's Club sells books. Costco used to sell it all the time. Now they're in and out, but they sell books. Any big box chain sells books. Target sells books. Even Office.

Wes Schaeffer (18:18.976)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (18:22.614)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (18:35.169)
My library, so dude, I got a stack. They had this $5 per bag sale. It was epic. I got all these classics. It was awesome.

Michael R. Drew (18:39.854)
Yep.

Michael R. Drew (18:45.454)
Yeah. And library, library, so books too. So you've got, you've got, you've got all of those different things that just add up. So, so success from a book standpoint still is predicated upon distribution. And so what happens with a book is you have the, was describing backless titles versus frontless titles. Well, the objective is to go from being a frontless title to sell enough volume within a 60 to day, 60 to 90 day timeframe to become a backless title. So literally.

Whether a book lives or dies is based on what happens at the retail level in 60 to 90 days. And so what you want to consider with that is that a book is bought, this is not how many copies to make, a title is made at the corporate level. And then the books are shipped to the individual stores. But the individual store's internal inventory management system is what determines whether or not they carry the book on an ongoing basis. And so

Wes Schaeffer (19:40.429)
Right.

Michael R. Drew (19:41.966)
to have a book that works long term, you have 60 to 90 days to create the sell through of the book. And the important thing to note with that that most people don't realize is that in publishing, books are 100 % returnable by the retailer to the publisher if they don't sell. Right? And so with that brings in interesting dichotomy. Now, the fact that they're returnable allows for them to have that movement of new titles to put in the store on an ongoing basis.

Wes Schaeffer (19:57.869)
Mmm.

Michael R. Drew (20:10.508)
because they're getting rid of the ones that didn't sell and putting in new ones. But it does a couple of things. Number one, it's created a merchandising condition in publishing, which all books now have to pay for. And in publishing, it's called co-op. So if we applied to grocery stores, you walk into a grocery store, you want to buy a can of soup. What's your favorite brand of soup?

Wes Schaeffer (20:34.207)
I have no idea. Campbell's.

Michael R. Drew (20:36.002)
Dambles? Okay, do you have a specific condom soup that you like?

Wes Schaeffer (20:38.955)
The big meaty one.

Michael R. Drew (20:40.846)
All right, cool. So you got a big, meaty one. So if you had a big, beefy brand X that was a fourth of the price of the Campbell's Soup big, beefy brand that you like, which do you go with?

Wes Schaeffer (20:57.387)
I go with the cheap one.

Michael R. Drew (20:58.83)
with a cheaper one, that's transactional marketing. That's people that you're right, you're transactionally. But what happens is one of the tactics that Campbell's deploys is they pay the grocery store chain to have their soup at hip level. And they do the same thing in publishing with books. So every front list title that you see on retail shelves is paid for by the publisher. And that's irregardless of whether they sell zero books or all of the books. They pay it.

And it's a per unit expense. And so what they look at is the placement in the store, the number of books in the store and the duration of the co-op. Most co-op is about a two week timeframe. And so what you look at is if it's spine out in category, it's a dollar per unit. If it's face out in category, it's $2 per unit. If it's end cap on the end of the aisle where there's fewer books and more exposure, it's $3 per unit.

If it's on the table at the front of the store, it's $4 per unit. If it's point of purchase or special display, it's $5 per unit. Then at the airports, Hudson's and W.H. Smith and others, it's twice that. And so they pay that for every book. So let's say the average is $3 a unit and they put 50,000 copies out on the shelf. That publisher is paying $150,000 to buy the shelf space, whether they sell zero books or all 50,000 or anywhere in between.

And they're paying the printing costs, say $2 a book, now you're at $5 a unit, now it's 50,000. They're out of pocket cost to do that is $250,000 before they ever sell a single book. And so what ends up happening is the, everybody has to pay the co-op. The retailers, there's so many books, so many publishers. The co-op is a guaranteed thing. Obviously printing is a guaranteed thing. And so what you have to do.

Wes Schaeffer (22:35.862)
Right.

Michael R. Drew (22:52.672)
is not only have that in place, the co-op and the printing, you also then have to come to the table with a marketing plan and strategy that incentivizes the stores to bring in inventory of your book so that it's there. And then that execution of that strategy in theory is what creates the sell through of the book at the retail level that creates the model that lets the book stay on the shelf beyond the first 90 days.

Wes Schaeffer (23:18.583)
So.

1999, Roy does this, right? So $400,000, that'd be $600, $700,000 today, right? So.

Michael R. Drew (23:33.655)
Wizard Academy, his platform was smaller, right?

Wes Schaeffer (23:36.653)
Yep. So what, how does somebody know that that's the best play for them? You know, I mean, you, gave some great numbers of how many extra million, 10 million, a hundred million. Uh, but I mean, that's, that's 131. There's, there's probably others that spent $400,000 and didn't get there.

Michael R. Drew (23:58.838)
Well, funny enough about today, about a third of our clients are folks that I talked to and then somebody else sold them smoking beers that they can do it for less. And they went out and spent a bunch of money and failed because the reality is, that there are rules in the industry that have to be followed. don't set them. I just understand how to play the game of baseball publishing better to be able to hit better and throw better and catch better and all of those things. Right. And that's.

Wes Schaeffer (24:19.34)
Right.

Michael R. Drew (24:26.05)
That's the actual objective of working well. Other folks do try to game the system. They try to find ways to draw from

Wes Schaeffer (24:34.229)
Yeah, no, I get that. But I'm just saying, like, if I'm sitting here right now, I got seven hundred thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket. It's like, well, first I got to write a book that is good. mean, I know you can game the system and even a bad book can get some some publicity, but it won't have legs for the long haul. mean, Roy's books are timeless. I still recommend them. So if I got seven hundred grand burning a hole in my pocket. Like, how do I know what why is

Michael R. Drew (25:00.718)
So it's good question. It's a good question. So I'm going to answer it in a semi-long response. I'll get to it fully, but let me.

Wes Schaeffer (25:04.193)
this the right avenue.

Wes Schaeffer (25:14.263)
Cause look, I want to buy a NASCAR. I just want the sales whisper on a NASCAR. So, you know.

Michael R. Drew (25:19.118)
So, obviously, you look at the ROI on everything and the saying is to hammer everything as a nail. And really, at the end of the day, what my business does is build thought leadership businesses. A book is just the biggest tool. It's not the only tool, but it's the biggest tool that we use in building that business. And so we look at it in context of does the book

Wes Schaeffer (25:20.909)
you

Michael R. Drew (25:49.782)
deep in relationships with existing customers or start new conversations. Roy talks about gravity well, and what he and I through our research for pendulum, we refined gravity well down into is what we call the 12 steps of intimacy. Direct response marketers, which I refer to as douchebag marketers because they're like pickup artists trying to get into their customer pants, like pickup artist trying to get a woman's pants only they want to get the wallet, right?

They focus on that transactional marketing of selling a can of soup. The manipulative tactics that get you to buy my cheap brand of beefy, buffy beef over camel soup, whatever those tactics are. But when you work in the world of thought leadership and influence, your objective isn't to sell a commodity, it's to change someone's mind, their heart, their body, their soul, their way of thinking.

Right, you're trying to transform the individual in some capacity. And that is distinctly different. To gain the trust for somebody to say, I'm gonna let you change my body, right? That's a huge level of trust that you've got to have in that person for you to say, yes, change my body or my mind or whatever in that way. And so the model that we look at is building relationships through intimacy. And so the work that we found was by, that we,

clarify Roy's gravity well concept with and what we replace funnels, which is what direct response marketers use the funnels, which is a push process, which is by the way, if you rependial, I'm a very me modality versus a we modality to push versus pull, but they're pushing to be able to get the immediacy of the lead and the sale. Building a relationship is antithetical to that. Building a relationship takes time.

It takes investment by both parties. And it, in terms of the relationship, pays out in a much bigger way. It's got what we call LTV lifetime value, greater lifetime value to build a relationship, but it takes longer to get there. So the value is greater, but it takes longer to get there. And the reason why direct response marketers get so much attention is because they're talking about the immediacy of what's going on. If you run this ad, you're going to get this result, which equals this revenue. And so they, Roy likes to call people who do that.

Michael R. Drew (28:13.198)
short dick weasels who are stepping all over their dicks because they're focused on the short term versus what creates that long term relationship.

Wes Schaeffer (28:23.085)
But don't you need a balance sometimes? mean, it's the old adage of, you know, eat the rabbits while you hunt the elephants.

Michael R. Drew (28:30.136)
So yes, but here's what you need to know. And a rabbit will never be an elephant. And so what happens is that the transactional markers say that everything comes in from the rabbit hunting. And what you want are elephants. Where you're really going to build the thing is that. And with that, happens is the process of doing both, they conflict with each other. let me explain the 12 steps because I think it'll make it clear.

Wes Schaeffer (28:59.223)
No, I get it. But it's like, I'm working with small local businesses and I got a soft spot for these guys, but a lot of them struggle. I'm doing a response, a big postcard, nine inches by 12 inches for local businesses to affordably get the word out. And these people, struggle.

Restaurants are struggling. know, general contractors, electricians, plumbers, they don't see the big picture. They kind of get it, but like, you know, they can't stroke a check for 40 grand, you know, to hit 40,000 homes over six months with an ad, you know.

Michael R. Drew (29:47.054)
Which I understand, but what I'm saying is that, and Boyd talks about this very plainly in the Wizard of Oz trilogy, the problem is that once you're on the sales model of Burn and Churn, you're on the sales model of Burn and Churn and you're now addicted to it like any other addiction because now you have to do that. The actual amount of work to do Burn and Churn and to build a relationship are the same. The difference is the payout.

Wes Schaeffer (30:16.105)
Yes, but if somebody's struggling, you know, if they're barely profitable.

Michael R. Drew (30:16.728)
things.

Michael R. Drew (30:22.734)
So, I would step back, I would tell a business owner, step back. I would say, you need money for your business, but you're serving a customer. They're a human being and what they're interested in is what problem you can solve for them. They're not interested in that you have a business problem. They're interested in they have a problem that you're going to solve. And if you then humanize that understanding,

Wes Schaeffer (30:24.001)
How do they get there?

Michael R. Drew (30:52.105)
Again, the analogy that I would use as being a pickup artist, the objective of a pickup artist teachers is to teach men how to use psychologically manipulative tactics to be able to go into a bar club or event and to be able to use those tactics to manipulate three women into having sex with them. Right. And it works. It works predictably when you have tactical, how are women applying these models? You're to get three of them that'll sleep with you. But

the probability of any of those relationships being a long-term relationship is less than 3%. And so the question is, do you want, because literally what they're doing, because the short-term money is so important to them, what they're doing is they're acting like that pickup artist to be able to generate that short-term revenue, which means that they are objectifying their clients. And in the objectification of their clients, they're actually

doing two things. They're not building long-term relationship, but they're also communicating to audiences that they just want to objectify them. And so they get branded and viewed as a company that just is trying to sell them and to objectify them. That's why car dealerships, as an example, often get a bad rap. But I work with vendors all the time on my house or business or whatever else. It's the same thing. When a company, if I feel like I'm being sold,

I'm actually, I don't feel good about it if I hire them and more than likely I'm not going to buy from them because of that, because of experience.

Wes Schaeffer (32:26.049)
Right. So how do you know so much about pickup artists? Have you been reading this guy?

Michael R. Drew (32:35.662)
I'm Daniel Strauss. There's another gentleman who goes to the Academy who's a former and reformed pickup artist, Tucker Max. And Tucker goes to the Academy and he's reformed, he's no longer there. What occurred is he and I became friends and at the Academy I started talking about the 12 steps of intimacy and he would be in the room and he'd be like,

Wes Schaeffer (32:48.402)
yeah, no Tucker.

Michael R. Drew (33:02.798)
Michael's right. do the exact op, we used to teach this stuff on the opposite for, for the pickup artist work. So I know from discussions and ongoing stuff from one of considered top experts in the space, or least formally that, that the pickup artist work is what direct response marketing is. And it's in contrast to the relationship marketing.

Wes Schaeffer (33:14.445)
.

Wes Schaeffer (33:22.615)
So here's a funny story, right? This is probably...

We were in this, we've been in this house since 2010. So was somewhere around 2011, 2012. I think let's go with 2012. That's kind of the theme. I think it's the pivotal year for me. That's the pendulum year for me, you know, but I digress. I was, I was working on a blog post and so I wanted to do a post on like top sales books. So I do a search and get all these different results, you know, top 10 sales, best sales books ever, blah, blah, blah.

Michael R. Drew (33:39.981)
Very good.

Wes Schaeffer (33:55.917)
And I'm seeing all these books. I'm like, OK, I got that one. Got that like I got all of them. I had 95 % of them, but I saw rules of the game and I'm like. What is that? And it's a pickup artist and I'm like. I can't buy that, so I literally I went and found. A bootleg PDF so I could skim it. And then I'm like that I had a dumb wife and like I'm buying these pickup books, so it's.

It is for research. And but it's so good. mean, it's. It's sales 101, you know, but from a transactional standpoint, I mean, it because I tell people all the time, selling is courtship, selling is dating. There's a game, there's a rhythm, there's a choreography to this, you know, and.

Michael R. Drew (34:45.74)
But the distinction is with your local businesses is I would ask is what they're selling a commodity and therefore transactional or is it something that is actually relational? Because if they're selling commodities, if they're selling something that is not relational, then by all means use those tactics. They are really good for that because the customer's relationship is to

the transaction not to the individual product.

Wes Schaeffer (35:18.861)
It's so I agree 100 % on that. It's there are also even to deepen a relationship. If you're going for the true relationship, there are still parts of this that come out just from human connection and communication. You know that you can pick up from this because I I've never been a hard closer teaching. I hate that stuff, but it's like I think we need to know it. I tell people all the time. Fish don't know that they're wet.

Right. And so we're immersed. mean, I would say most marketing out there are the douchebag direct marketers. It's that type. And so be aware of what's going on in there. But there are still even in the in the relationship type sale. There's a dance that there's big, if nothing else, because we're bombarded by the other stuff, we have to know how to dance within that.

Michael R. Drew (36:09.486)
This is.

This is why we use the 12 steps of intimacy because what Desmond Morris did is he mapped out at the subconscious level, all of the actions that are required to build a long-term pair bonded relationship. as a real quick synopsis on it, back in the late 50s and early 60s, there was this question within science, is the homeo sapien primate a pair bonded or promiscuous species of primate? Because you go from the bonobos that will screw anything interspecies,

to the gorillas or chimps who have one or two mates per life and everywhere in between. And there was actually a way that an anatomical way of each species of primate that would, you could tell exactly how promiscuous or pair bonded it was. And that was the percentage of the size of the male genitalia of that species. Well, the homeosapien male happens to fit smack in between all primates. And so,

there was a real question, are we a promiscuous or a parabolic species of primate? So Desmond Morris, who was a zoologist and clinical researcher, he had actually a show on PBS in the late 70s, early 80s. He did the research in the field and what he found was that human beings have a unique trait that other species don't, which is a need for emotional security. And so based on that need for emotional security, we have a bias for

pair-bonded relationships while still desiring promiscuity, but we have that bias towards pair-bondedness. So then as a researcher, he asked the next relevant question, which was what then determines a long-term pair-bonded relationship? And so what he found was that at the foundational level of building the relationship, that there are these 12 fundamental steps of intimacy that must be followed. And if you skip more than one, so any two, two and four, three and five, five and nine,

Michael R. Drew (38:04.462)
10-11 doesn't matter what it is. If you skip more than one step, the probability of that being a long-term relationship is the same as a one-night stand, less than 3%. And his analogy was like laying tile. If you start off at one end of the room, half inch off, by the time you get to the other end of the room, you're a foot off. But you don't, at the beginning of the relationship, at the beginning of lay of the tile, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. It doesn't feel big. But as the relationship gets deeper and longer,

Wes Schaeffer (38:23.596)
Yep.

Michael R. Drew (38:33.39)
that chasm becomes wider and wider and wider. There's a portion of modern marriage counseling today that's about relaying that tile based on what it does for Morris. But what Roy and I asked while doing the research for Pendulum is in marketing and advertising, what's the difference there versus in building relationship versus a pair-bonded relationship? So a couple of things came up. One is pair-bonded relationships happen in an intimate environment. Marketing and advertising are always done in non-intimate environments.

The second thing that we determined was that the psychological, physiological, emotional, and mental needs that I have in an intimate environment are the same things that I have in a non-intimate environment. And so if that's the case, but non-intimate environments have, they're not intimate by definition and they can at best emulate intimacy. What that then requires in marketing and advertising is to consciously do

in a non-intimate environment, all the things that you subconsciously and unconsciously do in an intimate environment so that the other party feels respected and not objectified like the woman being picked up by the pickup artist. And so what you do then is what we did is we correlated the toss ups of intimacy for pair bonded relationships to the toss ups of intimacy for building a relationship with your customer. Because again,

intimate or not, human beings are human beings, human beings. We're not actually changing when we're in a non-intimate environment or an intimate environment. And so in, in knowing that, what you're able to do is more consciously do the little things in marketing and advertising and in sales that reflect what happens in an intimate environment so that you don't violate the things that build those.

Wes Schaeffer (40:02.285)
you

Michael R. Drew (40:26.636)
those steps. What happens in selling in direct response more specifically is that they're trying to go from step one, two or three to step eight, nine or 10 and skipping everything in between. And in reality, you need to go through all of that. Now, I indicated that if you skip two steps or more, that it's a transaction. If you have a model set up for 12 steps of intimacy for your customer, what you're conveying to them is respect and that you want to build a relationship.

If they then decide to skip more than one step, that's fine. You'll take them on as a client. But the other thing that you'll note, and this is for my business and in all of my clients' businesses, is if somebody skips two steps, you know they're not likely to stick around. They're coming in transactionally, even though it might normally be sold relations, they're coming in transactionally, and so they're gonna get what they want, and then they're gonna be gone. They're gonna be gone after that single service. So based on that, you can then define and say, okay, well, we're not gonna put,

Extra extra work into it because it doesn't matter what we do. It's transactional They just want this thing. We're going to give them exactly what what we promised and and then move on

Wes Schaeffer (41:31.639)
So how I equate this to getting off of drugs, right? And I've had family members go through detox and it's fricking brutal. You know, but if somebody, they are churning and burning, Hey, I spend five grand a month on ads and I make 10 grand and it keeps the lights on and I don't know what else to do. You know, it's like, well, take that five grand.

shift your marketing, go towards longer term, blah, blah. It's like, in a year from now, you'll make 20 grand a month. But for six months, you may not make anything. I mean, how do people get off of that cycle?

Michael R. Drew (42:12.002)
What's up?

So one of the things to consider is, well, there's the adage, it works smarter not harder, but one of the things to consider in life is that there's always a trade off of time, money, or quality. So you never sacrifice quality. That's something that in business you should never sacrifice. So then it's a question of, you sacrificing money or are you sacrificing time?

If you want to grow your business and you have a limited amount of budget, you're going to do it properly. You're going to spend more time. That's the place where you were going to put more investment. And as part of that, it's also worked smartly. For a lot of businesses, I would ask, are you part of your local BNI? Are you part of the local Better Business Bureau? Are you going out to the networking events? These are things that take time, but not a lot of money. Not a lot of money, but things that increase the...

the exposure and the relationship capital that you're building. So I'd look at those kinds of things, but I would also say, look, we need to come up with a strategy where you're doing more work. So as an example, even from a book standpoint, I could take one of your clients through my book outlining process. They would end up with, as part of that outline, 64 different topics that we know what the title is, the big idea, we know what the story is, we know what the nuts and bolts and the hope are.

They could get on their computer or on their phone and film a video fleshing out each of those 64 things and then publish a video. That's time. They have to publish it and then go out and talk about it. Then they could strip out the audio. There are tools that do it for cheap or for free and create podcast segments. Then they could transcribe that with Google and they do it for a little or free.

Michael R. Drew (44:06.582)
And then convert that into, and edit that into a blog post and then pull out some quotes for social media posts and get that out there. Like these are, these are things that you could certainly put a team around you to do it at a higher professional level, but you could also do it at the less expensive level and do all of that work yourself and get it out. That's, that's, the type of thing that can be done. if you don't have money, it's about figuring out how to then best spend your time.

Wes Schaeffer (44:35.221)
Yeah. And dude, it's hard. mean, most people are terrible. They're terrible at sales and marketing, you know, and they become an entrepreneur. It's like Michael Gerber's E-Myth, you know, the entrepreneurial myth. You said most people are not entrepreneurs. They're technicians with spartic fits of entrepreneurism and they just, people cannot communicate. And I think it's, I know it has gotten worse. mean, raising my kids.

They're squared away, but their friends are not. You know, I'm working on a book. Please date my daughters. Cause you know, two years ago, the word, the word of the year was Riz, you know, and it was, you know, the, need and, know, I forget my subtitle, but like the need to develop Riz, you know, charisma in business and in life. People cannot communicate.

And, you know, whether it's the internet and social media and smartphones and then COVID and work from home and everybody's they can they can game they can text, but they cannot communicate these. My daughter just went on to her junior prom with a bunch of friends, juniors and seniors. And they're all athletes. And these girls are beautiful. And most of them did not have a date. They just drove to get my wife drove them.

And it's like, boys, what, are y'all doing? You know, cause like I'm torn, right? As a dad, like I'm glad boys aren't pawing all over my daughters. But conversely, like I got 20, I got a 20 year old, like literally never really dated, no boyfriends. Beautiful blue eyes athletic. Yeah. I got a 22 year old, she's 23. She's had a couple long-term boyfriends, but you know, dude just broke up with her, broke her heart. I mean,

These are smart, athletic. My junior curvy, I'll just put it that way. Blonde, blue eyes. like, okay, I'm glad. I'm glad boys aren't talking to her, but, I'm sad too. I mean, they should be dating, right? They should experience courtship and understand relationships and

Michael R. Drew (46:46.03)
You

Wes Schaeffer (46:58.317)
But companies do they my son, he's doing great as a realtor and he's always been entrepreneurial. He's my second son. He was buying cars in high school. He'd buy trucks, Jeeps, disassemble them, like take the lights off, take, sell the tires, put regular tires, take the big winch off, sell that, put it in stock. He would drive it for three months, make three grand on parts and sell it for three grand, you know? So a kid in high school making six grand on one vehicle when others are like, you know, making 15 bucks an hour waiting tables.

So he's totally entrepreneurial, but he can't write. I'm helping him write a report as an agent, how to get more listings. He throws in the chat GPT, he thinks it's good enough. I'm like, dude, no. No. So how do these people learn how to market, how to communicate? mean, they're great plumbers. They're great chiropractors. They're terrible marketers.

Michael R. Drew (47:41.112)
Yeah.

Michael R. Drew (47:52.834)
This is, is, this is why we have the Academy, right? I mean, this is why, Roy is that Roy wrote his books and why we put the courses at the Academy together because what we're it's a communicate, it's a nonprofit business communication school. It's not really marketing. It's not really advertising. It's business communication. And that's what we teach at the Academy. So one of the things I would advocate is, you know, if you've got a small business client, get them out to the magical worlds of Wizard of Ads course at the Wizard Academy. Like that's a.

That's a simple way. for you, for your clients, you probably could get Daniel, the chancellor, if you asked him to extend your rate, which is half off to your clients. That's I can't promise you that he does that, but I've seen him do that in the past and something that can happen. I would say get him to the account.

Wes Schaeffer (48:41.461)
No, they gotta bite the bullet just like I did.

Michael R. Drew (48:44.27)
Well, they have by the the boy, but there you go.

Wes Schaeffer (48:46.337)
Fight it once, then you get half off. Hey, I did it. Now, so funny story, right? So I game the system or I worked within the rules of the system. So do you remember Steve Clark?

Michael R. Drew (49:01.932)
Yeah, I do. Still this guy. Out of Florida.

Wes Schaeffer (49:04.247)
So, know, yeah, and I was a sales guy, right? And so, and I was living in Austin and I was doing well in sales. I'd made a hundred grand at least in sales since 98, 99. But I had a bunch of kids, you know? mean, but we left Austin at the end of 04 and we had five kids. Then we had two more. And so, so I'm doing fine, but man, I was like, you know, 2002, 2003.

You know that time frame like three grand, four grand. was like, man, that's a grip. And so I just, I was reading his books. I'd go to the free things and, um, but he came out with a virtual class and Steve Clark was teaching. was a 12 week teleclass. And this was the end of Oh five. He promoted it hard and early, like interval fight. It started to early Oh six. They wanted to make sure he could fill it, but it wasn't that big. I mean, it's like 35.

45 people, I mean, it wasn't hundreds. But I prepaid for that and I got my company to let me expense some of it, but it was just 600 bucks. And they were like, and hey, you're a graduate, this counts. I was like, yes. So it was the cheapest class he had ever offered. And then he didn't do it for very long. I don't think he even did it again, but that got me in. Man, I've spent thousands.

Michael R. Drew (50:24.846)
So for you, who want to deploy that something Chris Matic, who is one of Roy's top writers does a monthly advanced writer copy course online and you can do the same thing.

Wes Schaeffer (50:37.803)
Yeah, there you go. So, well, I'll steer people to that. But it's like, you know, you gotta... You value what you put into something, you know, and now like it's so much better with the housing and all. It's like, just get your butt there. I mean, everything's paid for. Great food, great booze, great rooms. The accommodations are first class, man.

Michael R. Drew (50:49.122)
Yes.

Wes Schaeffer (51:05.075)
and the teaching and the networking. Holy crap. It's... I go back for reunions every now and then. I take my mom. She's out in Bastrop and we'll go out. I just love being there.

So good stuff. So man, who should contact you? Just authors? mean, do you work with businesses in general?

Michael R. Drew (51:24.238)
So, well, we work with business owners and we use books as a way to promote their business. Well, I'm known for the 131 New York Times bestsellers. That's about 30 % of our work now. What we really do is build businesses for influencers and thought leaders. We're not doing brick and mortar stores. We're dealing with folks that are changing someone's heart, or soul, know, something that

that is a harder sale in that capacity. But if you're a business owner who is building that kind of a business, then we can work. And a book may or may not be one of the tactics that we use. It's one we use a lot because it's repurposable and reusable in a lot of different ways, especially in terms of our 12 steps. But we're not like most direct response marketers who focus on one tactic. We define outcome. This is what I'm sure you do with your client. Define outcome.

Define the measurement metric, define the strategy, and then define the tactics. What most direct response marketers do is they define the tactics and see what works. And that's the wrong way to do it. Outcome, measurement of outcome, strategy, and the strategy that dictates the tactics. So that's how we do it. And if the book is a tactic that builds the business, then we do it. But if it's not, or at least not for right now, then we don't do it.

Wes Schaeffer (52:47.191)
Yeah, cool. And so are you, are you on your own? You know, are you part of the wizard of ads community?

Michael R. Drew (52:55.758)
I'm certainly plugged into that community, but I own my own company for bestseller. We do a book retreat at book retreat comm So yeah, I own my own company

Wes Schaeffer (52:58.903)
Right, okay.

Wes Schaeffer (53:06.413)
Okay, cool, cool, Very nice. So where should we send our listeners? Where?

Michael R. Drew (53:13.27)
I think they'd probably enjoy bookretreat.com for your audience. It's really simple, you know, because we do book retreats, but it also talks about our other services. If somebody's interested in what I call platform building, they can email me directly. And my email is michael at promotedbook.com, M-I-C-H-A-E-L at P-R-O-M-O-T-E-A-B-O-K dot C-O-M.

Wes Schaeffer (53:38.717)
Very cool man. Well I could talk for a while. We didn't talk about Pendulum. I'm gonna point him to my review of Pendulum. How about that?

Michael R. Drew (53:46.422)
You can do that. Absolutely. And I say some of the content you're welcome to share. And if you'd like to me back, I'm happy to come back and and be more go deeper on on whatever you'd to go deeper on.

Wes Schaeffer (53:52.301)
Yeah.

Wes Schaeffer (53:56.653)
Dude, you have a standing invitation. You got a link to my calendar. So I don't want to overstay my welcome, but I will nudge you regularly from now on since you threw that out there. Careful what you wish for, man. You got the sales whisperer. You're now in my sights. You're my crosshairs. I'm drag you down. gonna do my jujitsu. I'm gonna grab you. I'm gonna hold you down and put a microphone in your face.

Michael R. Drew (54:01.365)
All right.

Wes Schaeffer (54:21.227)
You just thought that hair is crazy. Wait, wait till I get done with you.

Michael R. Drew (54:24.248)
I have no hair when you're done with me. I get it.

Wes Schaeffer (54:26.509)
Dude, I got beat up yesterday. I'm so I'm too nice to these guys. These little guys that go hard. I'm an old grandpa, man. I'm a lover, not a fighter, you know, but you know that.

Michael R. Drew (54:39.51)
Absolutely. You be doing what you're doing.

Wes Schaeffer (54:43.492)
Michael Drew from Lehigh. Thanks for coming on the show, man. It's been great catching up with you. All right, man. Have good day.

Michael R. Drew (54:46.85)
Thank you my friend, was a real pleasure.