Jay: I think the first step is to write a seven-sentence guerrilla marketing plan. I give my students five minutes to do it. The first sentence tells the purpose of your marketing; what physical thing do you want people to do—visit a website, call an 800 number, look for your product the next time they’re at the store, answer your email, clip a coupon. What do you want them to do physically? The second sentence tells the prime benefit or competitive advantage that you thread in order to accomplish your purpose. You may have 100 benefits. Pick the main one. You may have 54 benefits. Pick your competitive advantage that your competition doesn’t offer. The third sentence of your marketing plan lists your target audience or target audiences. The fourth sentence lists the marketing weapons that you’ll use. There are 100 different guerrilla marketing weapons. Sixty-two of them are free and the fourth sentence tells the marketing weapons they’ll use. The fifth sentence tells their niche in the market place; above board is positioning—what do they stand for. But the first word they want to enter people’s minds is the name of their company. The sixth sentence tells their identity, not their image, but identity that which is their company personality. The seventh sentence tells their marketing budget, which should be expressed as a percentage of projected gross sales. If you start with that plan and then commit to that plan, that’s how the whole thing works. That’s where the magic comes from.
[Music]
Michael: Hi. This is Michael Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com. I’m pleased to present you with an incredible interview with the Father of Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson. Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best selling marketing series in history, “Guerrilla Marketing,” plus 24 other business books. His guerrilla concepts have been influencing marketers so much that today his book appear in 37 languages and are required reading for many MBA programs worldwide. Jay was a Senior Vice President at J. Walter Thompson and in Europe as creative director at Leo Burnett Advertising. He writes a monthly column for Entrepreneur
magazine, articles for Incorporated magazine. Here’s what you’re going to learn in this fascinating interview. You’ll learn what Jay Conrad Levinson’s first job was in advertising. You’ll learn the secret Jay learned from Hugh Hefner when he worked at Play Boy. Hear how many hours a week Jay worked and why it has never changed for 32 years. Wait until you hear what Jay’s father did in his nine to five job. Lean the story of how Jay got a 33% response with the one page direct mail sales letter. Hear a little secret of what Jay considers the most important thing he has ever learned in marketing. Learn Jay’s favorite two books of all time. Did you know that Jay plays poker? Find out on what night. Learn how a literary agent can help you sell millions of books. Hear how much Jay’s made as a royalty on his very first book. Find out what edition of Jay’s Guerrilla Marketing book is his biggest seller. Learn the key to how to get your book published, printed, and looking as good as any book in the bookstore for only $10.00. You’ll have the website and the company name in this recording. You’ll get the 800 number to the best postcard pack people in the United States. Learn the reason why 90% of all marketing campaigns fail according to Jay. Discover the best day of the week for making money online and it’s not on Monday. You’ll get the links to two websites that will show you the best Internet research of how people are behaving online. Hear the truth about the Got Milk commercials. Are they successful or are they bombs? Learn how to write a seven-sentence guerrilla marketing plan in under five minutes. You’ll hear Jay’s surprising philosophy on money. And finally, learn Jay’s true personality and take the same exact personality test as you listen to this interview. Have a pen and paper ready for your personality test. Put on your seat belts and let’s learn from the Father of Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson.
Michael: I want you to do one thing. Do you have a pen and a piece of paper in front of you?
Jay: I have a piece of paper and now I have a pen.
Michael: I want you to write down numbers one through five and under each number I’m going to give you something to put by it.
Michael: Number one would be “not very.” Like not very interested. Number two would be “just a little.” Number three would be “somewhat.”
Michael: Number four would be “ordinarily.” And number five would be “very.”
Michael: Keep those handy because throughout our talk, I’m going to give you a certain amount of words and I’m going to ask you tell how the word relates to you based on that scale, okay.
Michael: But the first thing we’re going to do is I want to ask you starting from last night, what time did you go to bed last night?
Jay: I went to bed last night at 2:30.
Michael: 2:30—what were you doing up until 2:30? Most people don’t go to bed at 2:30.
Jay: We had two visitors. My daughter is visiting from Olympia, Washington and a business associate came up from San Diego. And then we had two people join us from Berkeley. We all went to dinner together and then we came back to the house just to talk business and listen to music. And then when everybody left, my wife and I watched the American Idols results and West Wing.
Michael: What’s your favorite TV show that’s on currently; we’re February 19, 2004? What do you really like on TV?
Michael: This reality show craze has really hit a chord with American, wouldn’t you say?
Jay: Well, I liked Real World. That probably was the first reality show. And that was my favorite show for a long time. And now the only one I watch is Survivor. But, yes, it’s opened a new genre. You almost knew it would because it showed people being themselves with no script.
Michael: How long have you been married?
Michael: Wow! How many children do you have?
Jay: One daughter visiting here now from Olympia, Washington. She has three children.
Michael: And so, you’re a granddaddy?
Jay: I sure am three times over.
Michael: So, you went to sleep and what time did you wake up this morning?
Jay: I woke up at 11:00, showered, cleaned up, read the San Francisco Chronicle, drank a cup of coffee. Then the out-of-town visitor who stopped staying with us came on over.
Michael: Do you read the San Francisco Chronicle every morning?
Michael: What else do you read every day?
Jay: I read a little bit of Time magazine every day. Those are the only two things that for sure I read every day—little bit of Time magazine and the entire San Francisco Chronicle. If I have time then I read other books. As an author, people send me book and they send me manuscripts. So, I do a lot of reading that I didn’t plan on.
Michael: Are you a fast reader?
Jay: I would say no. I’d say maybe a little slower than average.
Michael: Do you watch the news every day?
Jay: Yes, I watch the news every day. I’m very settled—either CNN or CBS.
Michael: You mentioned you’re pretty booked up during the day. You’re doing teleconferences or training.
Jay: Today, yes. I work a three-day week. I’ve work only three-day week since 1971. So, it’s rare for me to be working on a Thursday. But here I am. I did a tele-class earlier today. Speaking to you right now. After this, my weekend begins.
Michael: So, since 1971 you’ve been working a three-day week?
Jay: I’ve been working a three-day week from my home since 1971.
Michael: Have you been working out of your home since 1971?
Jay: Always worked from my home Monday’s, Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions. As a person writes books, you’re invited to speak. When I give talks sometimes they need me to speak on a Friday or a Saturday. So, on those days or on those weeks those are exceptions. But 99% of the time, I work Monday’s, Tuesday’s and
Wednesday’s only. I stop working about 6:00 on a Wednesday. My weekends are four-day weekends.
Michael: Wow, that’s great. So, what do you do on your time off?
Jay: Skiing or ride rivers or hike or lurk California or San Francisco or take advantage of the Redwood Forest or the tide pools that are so close by.
Michael: That’s wonderful. Now, have you been in that same home, the one that’s currently on Ebay for sale?
Jay: Yes, we’ve been in this home since 1933 and now it’s up for sale. We’re hoping to sell it before April 4 or on April 4.
Michael: Was that your first home?
Jay: It was the first home we had in California. We moved here from Chicago from a home we had. And we moved right into the house I live in now. We rented it at first. Then we had a buy it or lease. So, we bought it. Now, after 33 years, it’s up for sale.
Michael: How do you like Ebay? Do you use Ebay?
Jay: No, this will be my first experience ever on Ebay. I’m a total neophyte. Most people I know, know far more about Ebay than I do and I’m the one who’s supposed to know about modern technology.
Michael: Oh, Jay, Ebay is absolutely incredible. As far as a research tool for markets and know what is out there in the market and what are people willing to pay, you have thousands and thousands of niche markets, big markets. And you can see the proof right with people’s wallets right on Ebay for free.
Jay: That’s such a good point, Michael.
Michael: It’s really interesting. A lot of the marketers, maybe the guys who headed the new Internet generation are not that computer savvy. How computer savvy are you? Or when the Internet came into being, how did you deal with that? Did you adapt or are you fighting it still?
Jay: I’m an early adaptor of almost everything you can name. So, I went online in 1993. I accepted a word processor because I’m such a fast typist, I didn’t like wasting the time hitting the carriage return so I got a computer so that I wouldn’t have to hit the carriage return. And it wasn’t until about 1995 that I went online—actually 1994 that I went online. I’ve been online 10 years and had a computer for longer than that. My first computer I got in 1983. I’m a fairly early adopter of technology and I’m pretty much of a neophyte with technology. And yet, I do all of the research for my books online myself. I’m able to find things on the Internet. I use email like crazy. I’m very computer illiterate.
Michael: Do you have any of the high-speed connection?
Jay: I’ve had a high speed connect—I was the first one in my city to get one. I’ve written 31 books that I’ve authored or co-authored. Of those, 17 are guerrilla marketing books.
Michael: And would you say the guerrilla marketing series is what you’re best known for?
Jay: Yes, I know for sure that the guerrilla marketing books—having sold 16 million copies in 39 languages—that’s probably what I’m best known for.
Michael: That’s incredible. Well, I want to talk more about that and I think we’re going to get that into some of the questions. I thought about what am I going to talk to Jay Conrad Levinson about. I though this is something fundamental and so elementary when we’re marketing is to give the marketplace what they want. So, instead of me trying to dream up what I think my listeners and your listeners would want, I thought, let me send an email out to my entire list. Let them know I’ll be on the phone with Jay Conrad Levinson for 90 minutes and that a large part of the talk will be questions. And I wanted the questions to come from my website members and visitors from all over the world. So, that’s what I did. And I got a bunch of different questions and a lot of them are excellent questions. I’d like to go through some of those.
Jay: That’s wonderful idea Michael. You are living the idea of interactivity with the way that marketing is changing and communication is changing. So, I’m delighted that you’ve picked that kind of a format and that your readers have responded.
Michael: Yes they have, and a lot of readers we appreciative. Why guess when you can do the research on the Internet and see what your market wants. And it’s almost so simple that it’s overlooked so often and you just give it to them.
Jay: You’re so right. That’s the key of succeeding with any kind of thing with business is find out first what the people want and then make it for them because you already know that there are people there. Some people come up with a product that nobody wants.
Michael: Well, here’s the first question. It’s from Peter Elwin from Sidney, Australia. And he wants to know who has been your most influential mentors over the years and what were the most important lessons you learned from them and applied?
Jay: Wow, thank you Peter. Those are good questions that I have an answer because I’ve thought about it. There were two mentors I had—pretty much diametric opposites from each other. Both were the Presidents of advertising agencies. I didn’t have to mention, my father and I had a great relationship. I don’t consider him my mentor. I did not have an older brother or anybody who was a childhood hero who was playing shortstop for the White Sox. So, my first idol and mentor was a man named Howard Gothage who ran an advertising agency in San Francisco called Weiner and Gothage. What I learned from him was how much fun it could be to work in marketing and advertising. I’d never realized that it could be that much fun. And he showed me how much fun there was. I don’t think he had the best advertising agency in the city or in the state or anywhere, but the people who worked there had a ball. And I realized how much fun that could be.
Michael: You worked for him?
Michael: Was that one of your first experiences with an agency?
Jay: That was my first job. I was his secretary.
Michael: You were his secretary?
Jay: Right, because I typed fast and was willing to go to shorthand school and wash windows and get his hot chocolate every day, I got the job.
Michael: Do you type in shorthand?
Jay: No, I just type regular.
Michael: How many words a minute do you type?
Michael: And how long were you his secretary and then did you move up with the agency?
Jay: I was his secretary for six months and then he offered me two things. He said, number one I’ll give you a business card, an office with a window, and a promotion to executive secretary. He says, I’ll double your salary from $5,200—I was making $100 a week—from $5,200 a year; I’ll double it to $10,000. I’ll do that or I’ll get you a job as a copywriter at an advertising agency he said because we’re too small to need more than one writer and I’m it. You should be a writer. He said so take your time; double your salary and be my executive secretary, or have me get you a job as a copywriter.
Michael: So, what did you do?
Jay: I chose to get a job as a copywriter. It was with a company called Richard Meltzer in San Francisco and from there I went to Play Boy in the very early days of Play Boy when Hefner was still walking around in his robe and drinking Pepsi Cola’s. And I realized he was not a mentor but I realized from Hugh Hefner that you don’t have to have any talents as long as you’re aware of you limitation. He does not have any talent in writing, but he surrounded himself with the best writers and editors. He had no talent in photography, so he brought in the best; purchased their photos from the outside. Yet didn’t have a clue about art, but he taste and he knew people who were great art directors and artists. So, by surrounding himself with talent, he built the Play Boy empire. And I thought, my God the man has no talent for anything except he knows his limitations and he does have a vision. It was creatively frustrating for me, a creative person, to work at Play Boy because they had an established identity and an established voice and I would have been loony to advise him to change that identity. I went to work for Leo Burnett Advertising and Leo Burnett at the time was the best advertising agency on the plant. I worked there and I saw that Leo Burnett became my real mentor. The things he taught me about advertising and about writing and about people and then the need to write in what he called searchly English, which is language that anybody can understand. And he fervidly believed that you should never work past five o’clock or bring work home or work on weekends. He felt that if you couldn’t get your work done in the normal 9 to 5 hours you ought not have the job working at his advertising agency.
Michael: What year did you start with Leo Burnett?
Jay: I started working there in the early 60’s. I left and went to run the credit division of their London office if the late 60’s. And then when I came back, I was pirated away by J. Walter Thompson, the largest advertising
agency in the world. And after a few years there, I wanted to move to a warmer climate. Chicago was just way too cold for my ears. So, they wouldn’t transfer me, so I sought employment in San Francisco. Got it on my own. But I found out that when I started working from my home, I could accomplish in three days what used to take five days. The reason is because I was protected from meetings and from committees and from memos and from nice people coming to shoot the breeze.
Michael: Was that a frustration in all agencies you work?
Jay: It was a leading frustration and yes, the memos were, too. The nice people coming in to talk, now that wasn’t a frustration, but it got in the way of me completing the assignment I was working on.
Michael: And your assignments were specifically copywriting?
Jay: Yes. Copywriting and conceptualizing what the whole advertisement would be. So, if it was a television commercial, I would have to determine the visuals because television is a visual medium. Then I’d have to do the writing that went along with that.
Michael: Was this all done with a group of people; like around a boardroom table?
Jay: No, I’ve never been able to work with other people. This was done by me, in my office, all alone. And I didn’t invite anybody in.
Michael: So, you pretty much took the whole project on yourself?
Jay: Yes. And then I would have 12 projects and I would take on maybe five and delegate the others seven to people who worked for me.
Michael: So, when you were with Leo Burnett, is that where you got your fundamental training on copywriting?
Jay: Absolutely yes, Michael. Leo Burnett is the other person who I would list as a mentor in my life. And there haven’t been any others. After Howard Gothage and after Leo Burnett there was nobody else. Not that I learned all there was to learn, but because I found that I just could read a lot. I didn’t need any other mentor. I had to do a lot of thinking on my own, figuring things out on my own because when I worked for them, I learned how to function in an advertising agency in a corporate environment. But working on my own from my home, I had to make that up as I went along. There was no precedent. My father always had a nine to five job and that’s all I had had. So, I didn’t have any mentors in the life I’m leading now and
had led since 1971. I never read anywhere that you could work three days a week and work from your own home and sleep late.
Michael: What did your father do?
Jay: He was a sales manager for a container corporation; a firm in the mid-west that sells corrugated boxes.
Michael: Did you grow up in Chicago?
Michael: How old are you now?
Jay: I was 71 three days ago.
Michael: In what part of Chicago did you grow up in?
Jay: I went to Hyde Park high school. I lived in South __ and then I moved up to the mid-north. I lived right off the lake; right off Lawrence Avenue on a street called Castlewood ___.
Michael: My father is from Chicago. He’s 73. He went to Finn high school.
Jay: Why they were an enemy of ours. They were a class act on the north side. We tried to be as good as them on the south side. But unfortunately your father’s probably a Cub fan and I’m a die-hard White Sox fan.
Michael: Remember those numbers one through five: not very, just a little, somewhat, ordinarily, and very. I’m going to give you a word. Just give me the number that would correspond with it. The first word is calm. How would you describe yourself using that key with the word calm?
Jay: I would say (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Michael: The next on is follower?
Jay: I would say a (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Michael: And the next is people person?
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Michael: And the next is decisive?
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Michael: The next is free, meaning carefree?
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Michael: Next is double-checker, double-checker?
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
To see Jay’s personality test results go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/audiovault/AC99JayConradLevensonInterview.htm
Michael: Thank you. I’ve got one more question from Peter because it was so good. If you had to begin all over again with no money, fame, reputation, or contacts, what would you do and how would you go about building a fortune, as a marketer is today’s day and age?
Jay: In the very beginning I said no at time I should have said yes.
Michael: Give me an example of one.
Jay: I had four clients and then a fifth one wanted me to do the marketing for them and I thought because I’m so busy with four, I won’t take on the fifth. So, I said no. Later on when I lost one of those four clients, I though darn it, I should have said yes to those people because I could have always found the time in my three day week just taking care of them. And I wouldn’t have a problem. I wouldn’t be so close to the edge.
Michael: When you went to work for the agency and I guess he somehow influenced you with a three day week or a five day week or not taking work at home, were there days where you did work a lot longer than that in the earlier days?
Jay: No never. I was always able to finish by five. I never, ever would have dreamt brining work home. I wanted to be with my wife and child and I never would have thought of working weekends. He didn’t talk about the three-day week or even put that idea in my mind. All he put in my mind was the idea of professionals are able to get their work in normal business hours and there’s no need to be a workaholic.
Michael: When you’re on your time off, do you generate a lot of ideas when you’re not working and you’re doing things like hiking and recreational stuff?
Jay: No I try not to. And they don’t automatically come. I’m really not thinking of ideas. Instead I’m trying to live in the moment and in the here and in the now and in the environment I am. It’s hard to have ideas when you’re making turns on an advanced ski slope or when you’re climbing up a waterfall.
Michael: I would think so. That’s some good advice. What things in your business do you think not be delegated to others? And this is by David Jennings of Melbourne, Australia.
Jay: David who lives in the city with the most beautiful buses on planet earth. That is a question I’ve asked myself and come up with an answer that I’ve lived with. And I’m happy he asked the question. And I’m happy I came up with these answers. I believe that you should never do anything that you can’t delegate. I think you should delegate as much as possible. However, in my case and in my business two things I never delegate are number one the writing and number two the planning. I want to do the planning myself. I want to do all the writing. I just can’t delegate it because I have a certain voice I trust and believe in. And in so far as the vision, I’ll do anything to help achieve that vision and it’s hard to delegate your vision. It comes from so deep within. But, I delegate everything else.
Michael: Give me some examples in your business today of things you delegate. What are some examples?
Jay: I have a web master who maintains our website; keeps it fresh. He has an assistant who does the real ho-hum part of writing code and keeping the website up to snuff. We have a person who delegates everything to do with joint ventures. People approach us more and more to do joint ventures with us. And I’m getting more and more clueless as to how they work. So, we brought a man on board who’s an expert on joint ventures.
Jay: He gets a percentage of whatever he brings in by the joint ventures. So, it’s no loss for us and it causes him to work harder and smarter because he cashes in on the eventual payout. I believe strongly in profit sharing with anybody. We’ve never had employees until two months when we hired my daughter. I’ve never believed in having an employee. We delegate photography. We delegate art. We delegate design. I have a weekly phone call on our guerrilla marketing association. I delegate that phone call to somebody else. We’ve put up daily marketing tips on our website. Every day a new tip. And I gave a research man all the books I’ve read and I said why don’t you pick the tips from out of these books. So, I’ve delegated that editing portion, that editing part to him.
Michael: Now, are you the person dealing with all these people or do you have someone else doing that?
Jay: As much as possible I have someone else doing that to keep me free to do the writing and the planning.
Michael: Since we mentioned your website, why don’t you give us the names of some of your websites; the URL addresses?
Jay: Well, the two most important I’d like people to know about are www.gmarketing.com. That’s the biggest one. And the one that’s the most fascinating is called www.guerrillamarketingassociation.com. And that’s got the most exciting thing we’ve ever offered. For an author, when he writes a book—my book appears in Barnes and Noble or Borders or Amazon—but there’s five things in the book I wish I hadn’t said because I didn’t know those things at the time I wrote the book. And I also think of five things I didn’t put in the book because I didn’t them at the time. They are just redevelopments. And the Guerrilla Marketing Association enables me to publish information monthly to really keep serious small business owners up to speed. We have a coaching forum. They get to ask questions and I get to answer them or one of 39 or 40 trained guerrilla marketing coaches. And we have a weekly phone call every Wednesday evening—a one-hour call. Anybody can ask me any kind of question. So, rather than writing a book, my last book is called, Guerrilla Marketing For Free, came out in September of last year. But, now instead of a book, we are doing the Guerrilla Marketing Association, which lets me relate to the members and give them advice so they can act on. Some man last month told us he wrote a book he wants to get on the best seller list at Barnes and Noble; how should we do it. We gave him suggestions. Last week he told us now he’s number one at Barnes and Noble. This was done with a phone call, an
hour phone call. You can’t do that with a book. You can only do that back and forth with people in real time.
Michael: Do you record the phone calls?
Jay: Yes. If you join www.guerillamarketingassociation.com, all the phone calls we’ve ever had are published there.
Michael: How many of them are there, how many hours?
Jay: We started doing the phone calls in April of 2003. We have a phone call for every week from April 2003 until last night, February 18, 2004. That’s a lot of phone calls.
Michael: Yes, and they last about an hour each?
Jay: They’re an hour each. But people can listen to them and go back and listen to them over and over and over again. The calls are exactly one hour.
Michael: What kind of service do you use to record the calls—a conference calling service?
Jay: Yes, we use a conference service out of Atlanta.
Michael: What has been your most successful marketed product and with that product was there any one way in which you marketed it that stands out. That’s from David Jennings, Melbourne, Australia.
Jay: The second book I wrote was called, Secrets of Successful Freelancing. I’ll say it again, Secrets of Successful Freelancing. It was 43 pages long and was sold for $10. And I ran ads in the back of writing magazine and artist magazine and photographer magazine. Every time I would spend $100 in ads, I would get $1,000 in book sales. And so that really worked. But then, I found that there was a list of freelancers--a list of 10,000 of them. So, I wrote a one-page letter—this was the days before email—to the 10,000 freelancers in the United States. And I offered them the book, a $10 book. I told them if they buy it and don’t like it, send it back and I’ll send them their $10 back plus a dollar just for giving it a shot. What happened is 33% of the people, 3,330 people ordered the book. And that was an amazing response rate. So, I thought I may as well now doing a
mailing to a million freelancers. But, I found out I had purchased the only list of freelancers that existed.
Michael: And these were freelance writers?
Jay: Freelance writers, art directors, photographers, accountants. So, I just broadened the idea from the word freelancers to anybody. I wrote a book called, Earning Money Without A Job. I identified about 150 ways that people do freelance other than the freelancing methods I just mentioned. That was a break through success because it was at a time in the 70’s that people were beginning to consider the idea of small business. Big companies were laying off hundreds of thousands of people at a time. And here I was telling people how easy it is to start your own business. And then of all things, in response to students because my books led me to teaching a course at Berkeley, my students asked me to recommend a book on marketing for people with big dreams but limited budget. And I couldn’t find such a book anywhere. So, I wrote that book and I called it, Guerrilla Marketing. That book took on a life of its own. So, by being responsive to the needs of society or to the people who were unemployed and then in response to the needs of my students. These are the people with the big dreams but the empty pockets. By responding to those people, I had the biggest success I’ve ever had. It’s just what you said in the beginning, Michael, I found out what people needed and then I created a product for those people. I wasn’t thinking in terms of making money at all. I was only thinking in terms of giving people what they needed. It wasn’t my opinion of what they needed; it was what they said they needed.
Michael: What stimulated you to write the freelancing book? What got that rolling?
Jay: When I realized that I had been working a year on my own, from my own home three days a week, I realized there was nothing special about anybody being able to do that. So, I wrote a book about it. That’s what Secrets Of Successful Freelancing was. My nephew said, well, Jay you wrote that as an instruction manual for yourself. But the truth is I wrote it about what I was doing. It was exactly 100% about how I was able to go on working a three day week and spending a lot of time with my wife and daughter and becoming a better and better skier as the years advanced because I had so much time on the slopes. On week days there were no lift rides. And I think the most successful thing I ever learned was to be responsive to people’s needs. And we started our conversation today by you telling me that was your opinion. I also think that it’s not a matter of working less, but working more effectively. I don’t think I work any less than other people. I just don’t waste my time in meetings or reading
memos or having unnecessary conversations. I work about as much now as I did when I worked full time at an advertising agency.
Michael: I’ve got some more descriptive words. Are you ready?
Michael: Number 11 is traditional.
Jay: I would say (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: Taste--I would say (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
To see Jay’s personality test results go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/audiovault/AC99JayConradLevensonInterview.htm
Michael: Great. Here’s a question from John Eckcroff. What are the two best books on any topic that you’ve read recently other than yours?
Jay: Oh, boy. Okay. Al Reis wrote a book called, Focus. And the book Focus talks about famous corporations that everybody’s heard of. And it talks about the humiliatingly stupid and expensive mistakes that they’ve made. And anybody who reads his book will feel a whole lot better about themselves when they realize that some of these big companies really got in trouble because of what’s called corporate ego and because they lost their focus, they started diversifying into areas really beyond what they ought to be doing. That’s one of the better books I’ve read on business in a long time. I’m also fascinated with book, Fast Food Nation, which I read last year. Fast Food Nation was like a tell-all book about fast food of all kinds in the United States and the differences between the franchises. And John asked for two books, I want to add one more because I’m reading everything by Jon Krakauer. It’s True Adventure. After that I read Eiger Dreams, which is about mountain climbing stories that he writes about. And then read Into The Wild, which told about an ill-fated expedition a man had into Alaska. Just finished a book called, Under The Banner of Heaven, which is sort of a tell-all book about the Mormons in year 2004. And those are fascinating books all by Jon Krakauer. But I would put Focus and Fast Food Nation as two of the best books I’ve read in a long, long time.
Michael: Great. Thanks for sharing that. Here’s a question—I don’t have who it’s by—but it says you have told thousands of individual personally and in groups what to do and how to do your techniques and the evidence overwhelmingly actually mind blowing. But your ideas work. How is it so few people follow through and apply these insights to fulfill their ambitions and what in your view are the different stumbling blocks they create for themselves?
Jay: Gosh, what brilliant questions. The people who find stumbling blocks and the people who don’t consider the ideas I read about are the people who would give a five when you would say the word tradition. They are bound by the tradition of their parents and their grandparents, and they think life is supposed to be a nine to five job. And they think life characterized by
having too much month left over at the end of the money and characterized by the concept of a job they don’t look beyond that idea, they say if you were to put ten tunnels down and hide a piece of cheese at the end of one of the tunnels and put a mouse at the other end, the mouse will find the cheese. And if you move the cheese, the mouse will, again, find the cheese. They say if you take a human being and put the human being at the end of the tunnels and hide a piece of cheese, the human being will find the cheese. But if you move the cheese, you will never again find the cheese. They keep going down the same tunnel. This is call unemployment. It’s called unable to make ends meet. But it’s the tradition they learned when they were in school. No one talks about self- improvement when you’re in grammar school or high school. And even in college, everything is oriented to a career and not the idea of freelancing and being your own person and running your own company or having multiple streams of income. So, I think tradition and family expectations is what gets in the way of most people. That’s why they don’t think in terms being free and working according to the structures that they set and setting an income that they want for themselves rather than what the boss wants. And giving themselves raises whenever they feel they deserve it rather than being at the mercy of somebody else and working the hours that are comfortable for them and their body clock rather than the hours that have traditionally been in that business or that office or that factory.
Michael: I see. Do you do it any writing or work with children to believe in entrepreneurship or believe in their ideas? Any projects like that that you currently do?
Jay: No, only while my daughter was in school and that was in her grammar school and her junior high school and her high school when I talked about the life of an entrepreneur. I haven’t done any since then to children. Although people who don’t know what I’m talking about and this idea of structuring their own work existence, they are like children in my eyes.
Michael: That makes sense. It all comes to a matter of them believing that it is really possible.
Michael: Here’s a question by Pam McKinnis from Lagrange, Illinois. She wants to know how do you get your ideas on what to research to find the next topic you will write about?
Jay: God, what great questions. I subscribe to a lot of Internet newsletters and marketing newsletters. And I’m on a lot of mailing lists that are considered spam. When I get spam, which everybody gets, I figure that one out of every 20 will have a good idea in it. So, the other 19 I can click
away after checking them, but the 20th one may have a gem in it. And when I go through newsletter, I just spend maybe five minutes maximum. But I’m looking for the titles of something that might be of intrigue to me and my readers. And if I’m intrigued by it, then I’m assuming that my readers, my audience, will be too. So, by doing a lot of skimming, a lot of reading of daily newspaper, by reading some of a national weekly new magazine on a regular basis, by watching the news every day and by subscribing to certain sources of marketing information, that’s how I’m able to get new ideas and keep up. Plus I play poker. On Monday nights, I’ve got a poker game that’s 18 years old and all these guys in my game not only do they want to take my money, but they want to give me ideas that I can put into my books because they know I’m a writer. They know I write columns and have a newsletter. And they know that I write books about once a year, so they give me ideas. Friends of mine in business send me clipping or send me something or websites that they thought would be of interest to me. There are lots of good ideas out there and I have a lot of help from a lot of friends who just send me good ideas.
Michael: Let me ask you this. Let’s say you come up with a great idea for a book. Are you working on one right now that isn’t public yet? Or are you working on a book currently?
Jay: I have envisioned a new book, but I haven’t started on it yet. I can’t until I start doing it.
Michael: Let’s say you have that idea and you do it and you complete it a couple of months. What’s your first step to market that book? What are you going to do after it’s written and it’s edited? Do you print them up before you market it? Tell me a little bit about the process.
Jay: I email the manuscript to my publisher. My publisher is in the East Coast. They take care of producing the book, getting it into bookstores, getting it listed with Amazon and getting it reviewed.
Michael: Do you have a contract with your publisher?
Michael: Can I ask who your publisher is?
Jay: It’s Oughton Mifflin.
Michael: How long have you been with them?
Jay: I’ve been with them since 1984.
Michael: Have they done all your books or just some of them?
Jay: John Wiley has done maybe 40% of my books. Fifty percent have been done by Oughton and 10% by Avon or New American Library.
Michael: So, if you came up with this new book, are you under contract with this current publisher or could you present it to anyone of your previous publishers?
Jay: My contract says I have to first sell it to my current publisher. And if they say no, which they have sometimes, then I give it to another publisher and then my current publisher says why were we so dumb as to say no. Guerrilla marketing books seem to sell increasingly with time.
Michael: When you set this deal up, everyone has dreams of selling a million books and you’ve sold 16 million. So, tell someone who maybe doesn’t know about what this whole situation is like. Let’s say you land a deal with a publisher, what kind of offer can you expect from a publisher and how is it structured and how do you make money? Is it something that you can negotiate? Can you get into some of the details?
Jay: Yes, I sure can. First of all, I use a literary agent. My agent, who represents a lot of different authors and knows a lot of publishers on a first name basis, he takes 15% of anything that I get. That means that he then comes up with how much money I’ll get because he wants to get the most for me because he gets 15% of that. And he knows what my publisher wants at the time.
Michael: Did you have a literary agent before you had a publisher?
Jay: No my first book I self-published. My second and my third book I self- published and finally one of my books was reviewed and then the literary agent called me and said do you have an agent. And I said what is that? And he said, well, I will represent you to publishers and get you more money and better deals and get you to be a Book of the Month club selection and get you in all the big bookstores. So, I said, okay. And I noticed when I signed a contract with the publisher; the agent goes over it first and makes about 16 changes. And they’re all changes in my favor and I would not have thought to make those changes if I didn’t have an agent.
Michael: So, you would advise anyone to get a good agent?
Jay: Yes, it is definitely worth the 15% you give them. They then try to get the most money for your book and they jump on the publisher to get them to publicize your book. But the truth is, publishers, they usually get a little
tour for you go on, so I get to go to maybe three or four cities and speak at bookstores and speak to groups of book sellers. But then you’re kind of on your own. I give talks. I give talks to Chambers of Commerce. I give talks to national conventions and I talk about guerrilla marketing. I grant interviews to anybody who wants to talk about guerrilla marketing. I write columns and I articles about guerrilla marketing. If I see that somebody’s copying my ideas on guerrilla marketing, maybe talks or teaching courses or writing pamphlets or articles, instead of suing them, I call them or email them and I compliment them on their taste in selecting guerrilla marketing and I offer them discounts on books or membership in our association. And so, I don’t believe in suing because I know that time spent in court is deducted from the time you spend in heaven. So, I spend no time in court. I never sue anybody. I encourage everybody who wants to copy me and by doing that I’ve grown the guerrilla marketing brand to the point that it’s in 39 languages, which means, Michael, I don’t understand 38 editions of my own book. But the world is embracing small business more than ever before and as a result they have a need for what I write about. I just happen to write the right book at the right time; at the time society was becoming more enlightened and evolved and moving out of that job realizing that it is not as secure as they thought it was. And they’re opting more for self-employment—that it is easier than ever before because of the Internet, which does make everything a global market. Last night we made our telephone call for the association and we had people on from pretty much around the world on our phone call because it’s become truly a global society. And I find that by speaking, writing; that will make the book sell. Also, when you write a book, you’ve got to have in mind what happens if this book is a success. And that means what happens is you’ve got to have another book because people want something. I’ve always asked that. I’ve always had that idea. And my agent has always pushed me in that direction. He always says, Jay, if this book is successful, what are you going to write next? And he causes me to think in that way. So, as a result, I’ve always had a next book in mind. I do now. Right now I’m doing this interactive book, which we call the Guerrilla Marketing Association. And I’m finding it’s a very gratifying way for me and for all readers to talk to me one-on-one and for me to talk to them and learn from them. Learn what they are interested in and what they care about just as you did when you sent questionnaires to your audience, to your people, Michael.
Michael: That’s excellent. So, the publisher is the one who decides what languages it’s going to be published in?
Michael: And they take care of all that?
Jay: Yes, and the publisher is supposed to take care of all publicizing of your book. But everybody who has written a book knows that that they just don’t plain do that. That’s why we wrote a book a couple of years ago called, Guerrilla Marketing for Writers, which shows writers who have written a book, okay, do you want to make your book a best seller, here’s how to do it.
Michael: Now, let’s go back to the time you wrote that one-page direct mail sales letter and sent it out to those 10,000 freelancers. That’s a pretty incredible response. Now, I don’t know what you make on each book, but what can someone expect to make if their agent negotiates a half decent deal? What do you make on a book and then when you look at that with your success as a copywriter and I’m sure you have a good understanding of mailing lists. There’s writers who can sell millions of books like Agora Publishing and some of the other big publishing houses. Have you ever had any desire to do that? Or does you contract keep you from doing that?
Jay: Well, my contract keeps me from doing that and my publisher treats me so well that I like to maintain my loyalty to them. But a question you’ve brought up twice and I should have answered the first time and this is the real honest to goodness answer. And of all the things I’m saying during this conversation, I think this is one of the most important because it’s so easy to write a book these days. How much money did I make from my first book? And the answer is the publisher gave me an advance of $10,000. And I would say that I made about $3 to $5 million from the book because of the doors that it opened because of the speaking invitations that it led to and the offers to write columns and articles and conduct seminars and teach courses. It opened so many doors that I don’t measure the size of the royalty. That’s minor league by comparison to the opportunities that unfold once you have authored a book. And these days you don’t need an agent; you don’t need a publisher. Publishing on demand—just look it up on Google. Here’s what happened, here’s what it’s like. A person I know wanted to write a book for financial planners. He needed help. He wanted to call it Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Planners. His name is Grant Hicks. I said okay. He wrote the book and he said, Jay, do we have to take this to your agent? I said, well, we have to show it to him first; I’m contractually bound. He has to show it to my publisher. So, he showed it to my agent and my agent thought it was too limited a market, financial advisors. He showed it to my publisher. My publisher thought it’s too limited a market--just financial advisors because my books generally have a more wide appeal. So, Grant found out about publishing on demand. And now—mind you I’m telling you the truth, this is what goes on now in 2004—he calls a phone number for a company called Trafford and he says print one copy of my book and mail it to such and such an address. Trafford prints up a copy of the book. It’s gorgeous.
It looks as good as anything you’d find in Borders or Barnes and Noble. It’s beautiful color cover, beautifully produced paper stock, gorgeously set type and bound. They mail it to one person. They charge him $10 from publish, print, bind the book and mail it. He charges $25 for the book. So, he has zero investment. Trafford is not like to old days when you’ve got to print up 5,000 copies. They said, hey, we’ll do it one at a time.
Michael: Is Trafford one of the biggest and best?
Jay: They’re the ones that Grant Hicks found. I don’t know if they’re the biggest or the best. I’m just giving you a true story of something that happened to a friend of mine from Canada, and his real cost were $10 to print the book and mail it and $25 is what he charges. He said also, I could pay the same $10 and charge $85 for the book. He says but I try to charge what I think it’s worth and I think it’s worth $25. So, technology is such that you can now print up your books one at a time. You don’t have to give 10% to an agent. You don’t have to worry about getting it into Barnes and Noble or Borders if you have a mailing list online. But if not and you want to get it into Barnes and Noble or Borders, then it’s going to be a much easier job for you if you do have a book distributor or a publisher. And life really becomes easy, if writing is what you’ve chosen to do, if you do have a literary agent because there’s lots of things to do and you want to be freed up to do only those things you love to do, speaking and writing.
Michael: I’ve got ten more descriptive words. Gregarious?
Jay: I would say four (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: I would say (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
To see Jay’s personality test results go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/audiovault/AC99JayConradLevensonInterview.htm
Michael: That’s great. Another question from Paul Guthro of Mound, Minnesota. These days’ consumers are being bombarded by commercial messages; they’re everywhere, even in the restrooms. Consumers can’t escape. What is the most cost effective way to break through this clutter and make an impact on a potential customer?
Jay: Paul, thank you for asking such a brilliant question. You’re right. We are being bombarded with more messages now than at any other time in history and it’s going to get worse, which is why Guerrilla Marketing now preaches the idea of consent marketing and that means don’t try to make the sale with your marketing. It’s just too hard these days. Instead, only try to gain consent from people to receive more marketing materials from you. Most people will withhold their consent. This is a good thing. Those are good people with means. You can save your money by not mailing to those people or not contacting those people who are not interested in you. A small percentage will give you their consent. You can focus your marketing efforts on broadening their level of consent. Here’s an example. A woman runs the most successful summer camp in New York State. She runs little ads in the camping directories in back of normal magazines that have camping directories. Does she try to sell the camping experience?
No, no, no. All she tries to do is to get people to send for her video. She has a booth at the camping shows that inevitably spring up in the Northeast about this time of year. And does she try to sell the camping experience at her booth at the camping show? The answer is no, not at all. All she tries to do is get people to send for her free video or take her free video home. When the people take the video home and they view it, they see friendly counselors and happy campers. They see wonderful equipment, beautiful settings. Does that video attempt to sell the camping experience? No it doesn’t. All it tries to do is to get the people who own the video now to call for a free in-home appointment. Eighty-four percent of the people who make an appointment end up signing their child up for that summer camp for that year and probably for the next year and probably for the year after that—and not just that kid, but that kid’s brothers or sisters or classmates or cousins. So, that woman who practices consent marketing spends very little, invests very little in the marketing process. She breaks through the clutter because she does not try to make the sale. All she does is offer something free and valuable. And then she builds on that consent. She’s realistic enough to understand that everyone in the world is not going to be her market. Her market is going to be just a small segment of the universe. But that small segment is enough for her to have the most successful summer camp in New York State. And you can be sure there’s a lot of competition out there. And many people these days are no longer aiming to make the sale, but just to gain consent. The most practical piece of advice I can give is the most important words in the English language these days are the subject line that you put in your email. And if you can have a subject line that gets people to open the email and if you can have an enticing couple of paragraphs in your email that direct people to a website, most people will not go to that website. But of the people that are going, they have given their consent and broadened it a few time in just a few instances. First they responded positively to your subject line and open the email. Secondly they read the email and they responded positively by going to the site. So, the momentum is started with those people. That’s the way these days to break through the clutter. Don’t try to do it all at once. Attempt to do it a step at a time.
Michael: Great advise. Now, that story is a blueprint that anyone can take that idea and model it for their business or service. Where can someone find a laundry list of these ideas? Are they on your site of actual case studies that your guerrilla students have had successful ventures with these ideas?
Jay: They’re happening at a daily basis on our www.guerillamarketingassociation.com site. Our www.guerillamarketingassociation.com site has a live bulletin board where people ask questions about what they should do launching their business. They ask us to check their website. We give them opinions.
They respond and maybe tell us how they’re doing. So, we get to see before our very eyes people spring from an idea to a success. And they chronicle that. And, of course, we have the case history because all the forum boards since we started are available for everybody to read. Plus we have stories, 30 new ones every month and videos by experts about these small success stories. A lot of them are chronicled in my book, Guerilla Marketing Third Edition. That’s the biggest seller. A lot of them are in the new book, Guerrilla Marketing For Free. But these are stories in which your people can participate if they join the Guerrilla Marketing Association. And we do that because we love see success unfold before our very eyes without even having to wait for these case histories to take place. We see them happening from week to week right in front of us. We hear them happening on the phone every Wednesday evening. And we people’s fear turn into a bit of information and that turned into excitement and that turns into a passion for what they’re doing. And then we hear the sound of their voice when they report on the successes that they had. They also report on the failures that they had and we guide them on ways to avoid those failures. You see a book can’t do that. But the interactive nature of our www.guerrillamarketingassociation.com is what it’s all about—it’s all about nudging people, and helping them, and being there for them 24/7. And I mean that—24/7. And I find when they post a question; sometimes I think this is a question that’s over my head. But one of our coaches answers it and then another coach amplifies it. Then two more coaches add something else and the person, who asked the question has a treasury of good answers because our coaches are authors, are professors, or ex-Fortune 500 Presidents. They’re entrepreneurs who have succeeded and they want to share what they’ve done with the association.
Michael: Let’s talk about your coaches because there are a lot of people who promote coaching programs and you end up getting some high school kid on the phone who is reading scripts. Can you tell us the qualifications that you apply before anyone becomes a coach to give the public advice on guerrilla marketing?
Jay: Well, we make all our coaches go through a rigorous training, Michael. If people go to www.gmarketingcoach.com, they’ll see we have a very in- place; serious coaching program that is 12 weeks long and it is very interactive. It takes place online and by telephone. And it’s not a matter of all talking and the coaches listening. It’s a matter of us talking and the coaches doing. And they turn in written exercises and they prove that they have learned each step along the way during the 12 weeks of training. And when they have completed all the course work and those phone calls, they are ready to coach people. And a lot of them have turned their coaching certification certificates into good business for themselves because no longer are they just another business coach. They are a certified guerrilla
marketing coach and people can read what they’ve been through just by going to that www.gmarketingcoach.com site. So, it’s a tough thing. And then to some people who have taken that coaching, they want to train with me one-on-one. In my office here in North California, we offer master training, which is five days of training where they hear all of the details of guerrilla marketing. But, first we have to be sure a person is a certified coach before we do that.
Michael: So, people pay to go through the coaching program and then once they’re a certified coach—almost like a consultant—they can go out and generate their own business or do you help them by providing leads from some of the people inquiring about coaching?
Jay: All of the above, Michael. They’re on their own to do whatever they want. If they want leads from us, whether it’s for clients or speaking, we give them all the leads they need. We give them all the opportunities they need.
Michael: Give me the website again if anyone wants to check that out.
Jay: It’s www.gmarketingcoach.com.
Michael: Here’s another question from Tom Cohen from Yorkshire, England. Often I have ideas and insights that have been overlooked by big companies. How should I approach them so that we can both benefit, them by using the idea and me getting paid for it? My concern is that if I present the idea, they can thank me kindly and say they were working on it anyway.
Jay: That will probably happen and if everybody who had a good idea waited to do it by the numbers, we’d be a very faltering society. You’re going to have to realize that almost anybody who sees your idea will rip you off, but you’ve got to proceed ahead with it anyhow because people really aren’t interested in copying your idea or taking credit for what you’ve done. You’ve got to just operate on faith that if the world needs your idea, they will adopt it. And, yes it’s true that companies may take it away from you, but far more companies are honest and will not take it away from you. Companies greatest fears these days are being sued for a new idea that they’ve inaugurated because they think they came up with it themselves, but somebody will say I worked for you 18 years ago and I gave you that idea. And then they sue the company for $11 million. Companies are terrified of things like that happening. So, my advice is don’t worry about it being stolen. Instead, just try to breath life into your idea. That’s hard enough thing on its own. And just don’t worry about it being stolen or copied.
Michael: Here’s a question from Mark Ardonnetto, Elk Grove, California. I’m getting plenty of traffic to my website, but the conversion is minimal. What must I do to improve the conversion of visits to sales?
Jay: Mark, you’ve got to do what the Internet is best at that means it enables you to test. You can test offers. You can test freebies that you’re giving away. You’ve already started a test. You know you’re not converting much. That’s good. That means you’ve started your test. Now what you have to do is start tweaking. It’s not going to be one eureka moment or an epiphany that’s going to happen. Instead, you’re going to start making little tweaks here there. And you’ll find out that by changing one work or changing the color of the type or making it higher on the page or by offering a free report or having a newsletter or something you can make little tweaks to, that will make incremental increases in your conversion rate. And you should be constantly testing to see if you’ve tweaked enough to a point that now you feel you’re getting a healthy and responsive rate. It’s all a matter of testing. And it used to be expensive to test. Mark, it isn’t expensive anymore. You know that the cost of changing of the offer or the text on a page or maybe the people you’re attracting are wrong because the equation really is 80% on the people and 10% on the offer and 10% on the creative approach that you’re using. So, you’ve got to be sure your attracting the right kind of people in the first place. As Michael said in the very beginning of this conversation, go where the needs are and start filling those needs. Maybe what you’re offering on your page is not filling needs. Look at it from the standpoint of not of yourself, but of the people who visit. What do they need? Are you offering that? And if you’re not, then look again. Try to fulfill a need.
Michael: Great. Thank you. From Fritz Thorpe, Cincinnati, Ohio. Are postcard packs a good way to reach the affluent household? Is there a better way? What is the future of postcard packs?
Jay: Postcard packs are a wonderful way to reach affluent people and medium people. They had very high response rates in the year 2000; 85% of people who tried postcard packs repeated. They repeated it because it worked well for them. And if you want to get double the response rate from your postcard pack, tell the publisher you’d like your postcard to be put on top of the pack. And since nobody else asks for that, you’re going to get a very high response rate. And then ask the next time, hey, you put my postcard on top the last time, the response rate was so good, please do it again. I think the future of postcard packs is very bright and growing especially as the world becomes tired of getting junk email and certainly junk faxes. Junk mail is coming back. Direct mail is going to be stronger and the strongest form of direct mail is postcards. And the most inexpensive way of doing postcard marketing is postcard packs. They’re a
wonderful way for you to really keep cost down, reach a targeted market, and say the right things to the right people. I can even give you an 800 phone number for the best postcard pack place in the United States. From independent investigation, I hear this is where it’s happening. This gets you a free brochure Mark, and you’ll find out what I’m talking about— (800) 323-2751. That number is going to work stateside locations that Michael has mentioned. So, (800) 323-2751 and then say please send me your free brochure. And then you’ll realize that you really can get high response rate from a postcard in a postcard pack.
Michael: Here’s another question from Bob. My question would be for Jay, all of your years in marketing, what is the one marketing strategy you used that paid the greatest dividends?
Jay: I was here when this happened and this is what I learned that made the greatest dividend by far. I was working at an advertising agency in Chicago. We were called into a cigarette company in New York. We were called in because they had a brand that was in 31st place—not a very good ranking. And it was perceived as a feminine cigarette. And although it was true in those days more women smoked than men, men smoked more cigarettes. And they wanted to change the perception of the brand so that it would be perceived as a more masculine brand. Can you do that, they asked. We said we’d give it a shot. So, we went back to Chicago. We immediately sent a couple of photographers and an art director to friend’s ranch in West Texas. And we told them to spend two weeks shooting pictures of what goes on in a ranch. We said shoot pictures of cowboys on a real ranch. Don’t tell them what you’re doing. Make these un-posed pictures. We said don’t have any cows in the pictures, just men and/or women in the pictures—just men, horses, and beautiful scenery. While they did that, we invented a fictional place. We called it Marlboro Country. We came up with a theme line, which was come to where the flavor is, come to Marlboro Country. And in those days because it was legal to hawk cancer on radio and television, we rented the music to the Magnificent Seven—$50,000 a year. We presented the Marlboro campaign to Marlboro brand group in New York. They loved it. They agreed to invest $18 million in it the first year once they saw those pictures gorgeous photographs of real cowboys and it said come to where the flavor is, come to Marlboro Country that really hit the nail on the head for the Marlboro brand group. So, the Marlboro was on radio, television, magazines, newspapers, billboards all over the country. And he became a cultural icon in the course of the year. We went back to Philip Morris, the parent company of Marlboro, to get our high-fives and our compliments and our bonuses. We find out that this brand that had been the 31st largest selling cigarette in the country was now ranked 31. And focus group
interviews in ten cities showed us that this brand that had been perceived as a feminine brand was still perceived as a feminine brand.
Michael: Even with the cowboys?
Jay: Even though we had a year’s worth of showing these macho cowboys doing what cowboys really do on a real ranch in un-posed pictures. So, now we switched to February of the 2004 and we see that Marlboro is the number one selling cigarette in American. It’s number one to men. It’s number one to women. It’s the number one selling cigarette in the world. In fact, one out of every five cigarettes sold in the world is a Marlboro. But here’s the shocker. Absolutely nothing has changed in the marketing. It’s still cowboys. It’s still the Marlboro man. It’s still come to where the flavor is. There’s no more radio or television. But it’s the theme of designs and layouts and signs and billboards, the same models that for some of those poor guys did die of lung cancer. So, it shows us what makes marketing work and what makes marketing work is amazing. There’s a one-word answer to the biggest insight I had on marketing. Anybody who really has made a fortune in marketing gets this insight eventually. That one word answer to what makes marketing work is commitment. And the heroes of the Marlboro, which is noted as the best marketed brand in history are not the guys who came with words or the idea of being cowboys or even the people who came up with visuals. It’s the Chairman of the Board of Philip Morris who didn’t fire us or toss it out the window when he invested $18 million of his dollars and his brand didn’t budge.
Michael: How long had it been going—for a year?
Jay: One year and still stayed the 31st. It took about two years for it to start moving and it moved skyward, upward ever since. And when they cut if off radio and television, it still continued moving upward because of the commitment that showed the cowboy to that brand and I learned, oh my God, it’s not a magic moment or a magic formula, it’s having commitment. It’s what makes marriage work. It’s what makes a business work. It’s what makes a person run a marathon. It’s what makes people succeed in anything. It’s commitment to their cause. And that’s the insight I learned. I learned it in a very expensive way. Most people don’t have $18 million. We expected it to really be hit over the head by Joe Coleman, IV, the Chairman of the Board of Philip Morris. He said, well, you fellas told me this was going to take commitment and I’m willing to hang in there. And Leo Burnett was there in the room. And Leo Burnett, who understands a thing or two about marketing, he expected us to be fired, as well. But he also had said ahead of time, this is going to take a while. People do not want to separate from their brands in a hurry. People want to hang on to them. Commitment was insight I learned.
Michael: Do you remember that day when you guys were all in there? Who came up with the idea, talking about it and putting it together?
Jay: The person’s name was Tom Larkland. He was from Park Forest, Illinois. He’s the person who had the idea of cowboys and the idea of calling it Marlboro Country. I was the one who had the idea of using the music from the Magnificent Seven. Other people--Bob Eden--contributed to the creative flow and force of that idea. Notice, Leo Burnett, whose name is on the door, he didn’t come up with words, but he created the atmosphere where we could come up with something like Marlboro Country. It was a team effort.
Michael: What a great story. Thank you.
Jay: What a great insight. I taught me the meaning of commitment loud and clear, up front and personal, and in real life.
Michael: Yes. They could have quit too soon and just around the corner they would have been there.
Jay: Everybody does, Michael, 90% of marketing campaigns that fail aren’t because people had the wrong plan. It’s because they abandoned it too soon. They thought it would happen faster than it really happens. It doesn’t happen in a hurry.
Michael: We’re talking more image type advertising. And a lot of the visitors to my sight are direct marketing savvy. So, there is a difference. Let’s say you had that sales letter you wrote for that first book and you sent it out to 10,000 people. If no one responded, you could send that thing a third and fourth and fifth and sixth time for the most part, no one’s still going to respond. So, we’re talking about two different types of advertising?
Jay: Well, you’ve got to know what to commit to. And you’re right. In direct marketing, if you don’t get response the first time, you can’t hang in there. It’s a different thing. That’s not a matter of changing somebody’s identity and happening slowly over time. In direct marketing, you’re measured by the minutes. You’re measured by the project. You’re measured by the mailing. There’s not room for failure in any of those.
Michael: Well, a lot advertising gets a lot of flack. They call it image advertising and it’s talked as wasteful. I’m sure a lot of it is. What are your views on that—if someone saw those Marlboro campaigns at first? It took a year for the impact to show the results, but many people today if they saw that they would think what is this? It’s image advertising. It’s not direct responsive
in nature. How can someone differentiate when they’re watching advertising to know which ones are image, wasteful and which ones appear to be like that but could be successful and big hits.
Jay: It’s really a combination you need, Michael. You need a combination of some identity ads telling people who you are and why you’re good. At the same time, you’ve got to be making special offers to them. And if you don’t have that identity—we don’t use the word image advertising because an image is a phony thing defined in the dictionary as a façade—but identity stems from your true personality. Every brand, every product, every service has a personality whether you know it or not. And if you communicate the kind of personality you want people to know about and at the same time if you’re making special offers to them, then you’re going to be doing both things at the same time. Gaining a share of mind, which should come before you gain a share of market. If people get a direct mail letter from you and they’ve never heard of your company, they’re going to respond differently than if they get a direct mail letter from you but they’ve heard about your company. They’ve read an ad or seen a commercial. Now they know more about you. They may want to learn even more. You’re going to get a higher response rate to that offer.
Michael: I’ve got ten more descriptive words. The ten last ones. Are you ready?
Michael: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: I would say somewhat.
Michael: Action oriented?
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: I would say four (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
Jay: (Circle one 1 2 3 4 5)
To see Jay’s personality test results go to http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/audiovault/AC99JayConradLevensonInterview.htm
Michael: Here’s a question from Gary Winn from Arlington, Virginia. It’s been talked that giving something away for free is good way to generate leads. Since so many people are giving away free e-books and products online, it’s becoming harder and harder to even use free stuff as a lead generator. How do you generate leads in spite of this set back?
Jay: By offering something for free that’s different from anything else that’s being offered for free. People love free things. The problem is with everybody and their cousin giving away free things, it’s hard not to duplicate the offerings of others. So, you have to have more creativity in what you give away for free than ever before. And if you’re creative in what you give away for free, the concept of free will still always help you get attention and become a great lead generator. But more creativity is demanded than ever before. One of the ways that creativity is being demonstrated is giving away free things that can be photographed. Show a person a picture of what it is that you’re offering for free rather than just the words. Some thing photographed in a way that looks more enticing. And some very sophisticated marketing people are now selecting the freebies that they’re going to give away based on how photogenic they are rather than just on the thing itself. I know a business that became the second largest fundraising business in the United States by taking
photographs of $1.19 gifts and putting them on postcards and then sending them to powers at major schools and saying we will give you a free pen clock or a new quartz calculator if you just respond to this postcard. And by showing photographs of the things, the response rate went way, way up. It’s just a matter of exercising creativity and selecting what you’re giving for free and in presenting it.
Michael: Great. Thank you. Here’s a question from me. Why the name guerrilla marketing? Where did the name guerrilla come from?
Jay: I had written a book, which had 521 ways for people to market in a low cost method. At the same time, a man was being interviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. He name was Blair Newman. He was a boyhood friend of Bill Gates. And Blair said that the economy was so tough that these days companies are going to need to use guerrilla marketing. And I thought that’s a great title for the book I just wrote. And so I used that phrase. He called me five years later and he said are you the guy who wrote Guerrilla Marketing? And I said yes. He said who do you give credit for coming up with that title? I said I give Blair Newman credit. He said well this is Blair Newman. I said thank you Blair. I said I’d never take credit because you’re the guy who coined the term as far as I’m concerned. He said, well, that’s all I cared about. I just wanted to know if you were taking credit or giving credit where it’s due.
Michael: That’s great. You played it straight.
Michael: Here’s a question by Tim Boast from Sarasota, Florida. It has been demonstrated again and again that long copy sells with direct mail and print advertising. What have you learned about the transferability of the long copy concept to the Internet? With the tendency of the Web to be such a highly visual medium and with attention spans increasingly shorter and the tendency to surf through to other Web location so compelling, does long copy have a place on the Web? If so, what’s the best way to structure and present it in order to gain maximum effectiveness?
Jay: I have an answer for you Tim. The idea is take your long copy and first serve it up as short copy. Make a concise digest of it as possible. If that short copy is enticing enough, it’ll get people to want to read your long copy. Then your long copy will be much easier to take if you have a lot of sub-heads and if you have short paragraphs. Studies show, and this is true also of Internet word count that a long copy message readership falls off dramatically after 50 words. But between 50 words and 1,000 words there’s hardly any drop off at all. The people who don’t care will weed
themselves off. The people who do care will want to learn everything they can, although you would think that the tendency is toward shorter copy. I think the reverse is true. It’s very short copy emails that send people to quite long copy websites where people get to get all the information they need. The idea is not to think in terms of long or short copy, but how much information must I put forth to let a person make an intelligent purchase decision. And sometimes that’s quite a bit of copy. Never be self- conscience as to how long your copy is because the people who are your hottest prospects are praying you’ll tell them everything. They don’t want you to hold back and they don’t want you to fall prey to the idea of white space or short copy. They want information. They’re about to spend a lot of their money and they need information to avoid making a mistake. Don’t be self-conscience. Realize that the people who don’t care will weed themselves out. The people who do care love you for everything you’re going to say.
Michael: Great. Thank you. Here’s from Henry Schuffler of Washington, D.C. How do you thing guerrilla marketing principles change or should be adapted when applied to Internet marketing? Will you be writing some form of guerrilla marketing for the Internet?
Jay: Well, we’ve written three books. One called, Guerrilla Marketing Online. Another called, Guerrilla Marketing Online Second Edition. And another one called, Guerrilla Marketing Online Weapons. So, we started writing guerrilla marketing books and applying it on the Internet a long time ago. I wrote Guerrilla Marketing with Technology. I also talked about how to behave yourself online. But because we’re learning so much about online marketing, we get to put the new things into our Guerrilla Marketing Insider, our monthly publication. For example, we now know the best day of the week to mail emails for making money. Not for getting responses or not for getting people to download your offering, but for making money. Friday is the best day. Well, we learned that through a lot of testing.
Michael: How much better than the other days?
Jay: It’s maybe 70% better than Tuesday. While there’s a lot of reasons, but testing enables people to find that out. Now if we put that in our books, that fact may change in a year and the book will be outdated, but people won’t know that because books stay on shelves a long time. That’s why we’re publishing our things digitally and updating them monthly because these insights into the Internet do change on regular basis. And we’re learning things because a lot of people are doing testing. And by going to Jupiter and Forrester sites where they publish the Internet research that’s up to the moment, we’re learning how people are behaving online and how to get them to respond to you.
Michael: What were those sites you just mentioned?
Jay: Jupiter (www.jup.com) and Forrester (www.forrester.com). Those are two sites that are very rich with Internet research information.
Michael: Of consumers and how they’re behaving?
Jay: Yes. I hope Henry avails himself of those kinds of marketing insights.
Michael: Could you just repeat the URL for anyone who wants to go there?
Jay: It’s www.jup.com and www.forrester.com.
Michael: Here’s another question from Charles Jenkins. Hello from an American businessman in Soul, Korea. He attended one of your weekend seminars in beautiful Corte Madre several years ago and then he went to one of your buffet receptions where he was introduced to your gracious wife. Along those lines, is it true that the Got Milk celebrity mustache commercials cost millions, but even today produce little increase in sales and consumption?
Jay: I’ve heard that. I sure don’t have any hard and fast figures, but I have heard that. They cost millions to produce and they didn’t make a big change and that campaign got a lot of visibility and a lot of feel good for milk. But I don’t think it did change sales because as people are becoming more nutritionally enlightened, I think they’re shying away from lactose.
Michael: Here’s a question from Peter Djordjevic of Middleburg, Virginia. What is the absolute step one a new business should take regarding marketing strategy?
Jay: I think the first step Pete is to write a seven-sentence guerrilla marketing plan. I give my students five minutes to do. The first sentence tells the purpose of your marketing; what physical thing do you want people to do—visit a website, call an 800 number, look for your product the next time they’re at the store, answer your email, clip a coupon. What do you want them to do physically? The second sentence—all the sentences are short by the way except for the fourth. Second sentence tells the prime benefit or competitive advantage that you thread in order to accomplish your purpose. You may have 100 benefits. Pick the main one. You may have 54 benefits. Pick your competitive advantage that your competition doesn’t offer. Thread that. That’s the second sentence. The third sentence of your marketing plan lists your target audience or your target audiences because most people have multiple target audiences. The fourth sentence
lists the marketing weapons that you’ll use. There are 100 different guerrilla marketing weapons. Sixty-two of them are free. They’re all listed at www.guerrillamarketingassociation.com.
Michael: And they can see this plan and do it themselves?
Jay: Not the plan. They can see the list of 100 marketing weapons, in any of the guerrilla marketing books, and at the www.gmarketing.com site they can read the structure for the guerrilla marketing plan. The fourth sentence tells the marketing weapons they’ll use. The fifth sentence tells their niche in the market place; above board is positioning—what do they stand for. What’s the first word they want to enter people’s minds when the people hear the name of their company? The sixth sentence tells their identity, not their image, but their identity that which is their company personality. The seventh sentence tells their marketing budget, which should be expressed as a percentage of projected gross sales. Example, in 2003, the average American business invested 4% of their revenues in marketing. And if would have a seven-sentence marketing plan, it should only take you five minutes to do those seven sentences. It forces you to focus when you put it into seven sentences. When you put it into seven sentences you can share it with other people on your team and they can understand what you’re getting at without putting them to sleep. And if you start with that plan and then commit to that plan, that’s how the whole thing works. That’s where the magic comes from, starting with a plan and then committing to that plan.
Jay: And it’s all covered in the details I just mentioned at www.gmarketing.com and the 100 weapons are at www.guerrillamarketingassociation.com.
Michael: Tell me about the affect of the Internet like Barnes and Noble and Amazon on the sales of your book compared to distribution through the traditional bookstores?
Jay: Well, they made sales of my books go up primarily because of the global nature of the Internet. When I wrote Guerrilla Marketing it was in English and for some reason it went to Japanese and then it Chinese. And now, as I mentioned, it’s in 39 languages. That’s because of the global nature. So, we’re having more translations and more books sales. And Amazon is a very easy way for people to buy a book. I love Borders and they have almost all the guerrilla marketing titles all the time, but I have to wait in line when I buy those. And it’s just so easy to use www.barnesandnoble.com or www.borders.com. I think the ease in
ordering books has caused almost all author’s book sales to go up. Plus if you have a dedicated site such as I do, www.gmarketing.com, you could order the books right there. And I think just by making it easier for people to find the books and order the books and pay for the books, everybody’s book sales go up. And I’m not even talking about e-books yet.
Michael: Do your books on Amazon and in the bookstores, aside from there being a sale, do they sell around the same price or do some bookstores sell them for more and some for less? Who determines that?
Jay: It seems the booksellers determine that themselves. And when all is said and done and everybody makes their price cuts, the prices seem to be pretty even all in all. I can’t say that __ has the best price or Amazon does because various booksellers have specials at certain times.
Michael: Where are most of your sales coming from; Internet based on your website or traditional bookstores?
Jay: Traditional bookstores.
Jay: No, Amazon sells a lot of guerrilla marketing books.
Michael: Here’s from Jason. Big business does a branding and image recognition marketing. What part does branding play in guerrilla marketing?
Jay: Right now it is the single most important thing that we are doing. We have 31 books. We have about six co-authors. We have an association, and we have tapes and we have a lecture series. We have home study courses. And we are now taking all those diverse types of brands and unifying them as a single brand consciousness and a certain specific brand look. All of the books look slightly alike. They have a camouflage motif, but we’re going to have more standardization in all of our guerrilla products and we are uniting ourselves as a brand. We have been having meetings these past two weeks with members of the guerrilla family, which means co-authors and director of our joint venture, the people who do the research for our website. And we’re all meeting and seeing that we have a very large brand, easily the best known marketing brand on planet earth. And we’re finding ways to make it even stronger realizing that some of our people have audio-visual capabilities and we’ve never been using them. So, we’re beginning to be more brand conscience than ever before realizing that unlike toothpaste where there’s a lot of them, we are the biggest and oldest and best known of all the marketing brands. And we’re going to do something about that by offering more services and having more
connectedness between the various branches of the guerrilla marketing empire. We’re offering an MBA program, a guerrilla marketing MBA program through a new entity called the Guerrilla Business Academy. So, we are more brand conscience than ever before and you ain’t seen nothing yet because a year from now our brand will have solidified even more. We will have had our summit meeting. We will have the input from fellow guerrilla authors.
Michael: Do you have a licensing department for your brand?
Jay: Yes we do. We have been very slow to grant licenses. But we have granted a few to the right people. They’re having enormously good results. So are we.
Michael: Here’s a question from Lynn Fletcher. What’s the best strategy for promoting referrals from top clients?
Jay: By asking for them and telling them the truth and letting them know how important referrals are in your business. Letting them know we can keep our prices down if we get referrals from past customers. Make it easy for them. Offer to write the referral for them if they’ll sign it.
Michael: When do you ask—before or after?
Jay: The moment the sale has been made is the best time to ask. As soon as the sale has been consummated and they’ve paid for it, they feeling a sense of positivity. And while they’re feeling that positivity, that’s the time to ask for the referral. Just ask for the names of three people or five people who might benefit from getting on your mailing list. Don’t just ask for an open- ended question. Maybe you can give them a reward or a free gift if they give you the names of people for referrals. But the best time to ask a first time is right after the sale. And then ask a month later and then ask six months later.
Michael: You could literally stop prospecting just based on that one referral strategy, would you agree?
Jay: That’s exactly right. We have a lot of clients who now get 85% of their business just from referrals enabling them to cut their marketing budgets by smithereens because we teach them the important ways to get referrals and how important that is in your business venture. We have a process by which people can automatically get referrals from now on. That will all be revealed in the seminar.
Michael: From Ian Pritchard of Great Britain. Jay, what is the one piece of advice you would give me to encourage people to upgrade from what will be a free membership to a paid membership?
Jay: I think by offering content that is available nowhere else. I think that you’re probably not going to get them to upgrade unless you could offer them something that’s just not possible to get except by upgrading with you Ian. And I think that you’re going to find it’s not to hard to develop a platinum version of whatever it is that you are selling. Give them something that they can’t get elsewhere that you have never given before. And it should be something that has obvious worth and value to them.
Michael: I’d like to know what drives you? Also with a book deal, should you go to a small house or a big house?
Jay: If you’ve got the right book a big house has more distribution connections. And they’ll probably have more muscle to put into the promotion of the book. However, there are some exceptions to that. Some small houses like Ten Speed Press out of Berkeley. They’re not big compared to Random House, but they really get behind a book for an author. And so, I still say that in most cases, a big house is going to be a better bet for you, but I’m very strong on self-publishing these days especially with the advent of printing on demand. The first part of the question, could you repeat that please Michael?
Michael: He’d like to know what drives you, what gives you your drive and ambition?
Jay: I feel the need. I hear it in the people’s cries. Small businesses aren’t making it and I know I have information that can help them and that drives me that I can help solve people’s problems.
Michael: What’s the biggest satisfaction of your career?
Jay: Far and away it’s when a talk and somebody comes up to me and they say, I read your book four years ago and I attended your talk two years ago, but my business is now 12 times the size it was before I learned about guerrilla marketing.
Michael: That’s a good feeling.
Jay: When I hear that, that’s what get me off.
Michael: Tell me about your student that you’re most proud of over all the years?
Jay: I wrote a book, Earning Money Without A Job, and a guy called me from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Michael: How long ago was this?
Jay: This book was in the 70’s. He interviewed me about the book and I told him about I work a three day week from my home and he said I ought to do the same thing. No, no, no. You have a job at the Chronicle. You’re a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. You’ve got a wonderful job. I said, 80% of the people in America are unhappy with their job. You have one of the best jobs there is. He says, no, Jay, I like the idea of working from home. I like the idea of working an abbreviated week and most of all I like the idea of calling your own shots. He said I’m going to resign from my job as a reporter at the Chronicle. He said I’ve read your book and I really believe in what you’re saying. I said I think you’re nuts if you quit your job. But he quit his job and he formed Banana Republic. So, Mel Zeigler the owner, founder and creator of Banana Republic was a reporter for the Chronicle who interviewed me about Earning Money Without A Job. And it influenced his life and it turns out he gave up something good for something better. Millions of people are very well and happily retired because of Mel Zeigler.
Michael: What has being a hugely successful author done for your life? If someone was to sell 16 million books, a book that helps people, what could they expect in their life?
Jay: It’s a wonderful feeling to know that you did what you wanted to do and other people benefited as a result of it. A lot of people do what they want to do, but other people aren’t benefiting. And I just feel really blessed that I’m able to what I love to do, which is write, and that a lot of people’s lives are better because of what I’ve written.
Michael: Here’s a question, I don’t know who it’s from, several years ago you wrote an excellent book called, The 90-Minute Hour. In it you wrote of the value of listening to tapes like those offered by Michael Senoff at www.hardtofindseminars.com while driving and doing other tasks. What new techno-methods would you suggest for maximizing the value of time in today’s world?
Jay: Well, I still think that listening to tapes is one of the best ways. I think that engaging in weekly surfing for one hour on the Internet and seeing what’s there, you learn how to find things faster and read through them faster. I think the quality of search engines has become so good that it’s possible now to find better information faster and easier than ever before. I think those are technical innovations that don’t get enough information. Last week, USA Today ran their cover article on the growth of Google and they
showed a picture of a Google page and of all things there was a picture of Guerrilla Marketing right smack dab in the middle.
Michael: Here’s a gentleman, John Dunn from Windsor, Connecticut. He’s launching a live tele-coaching business to help small business owners increase their sales and profits. How or what guerrilla marketing strategies and tactics would you suggest to acquire clients?
Jay: I think he should engage in surveys and ask questions and then get clients based on the answers that he learns. He should find out what are the most important things he offers in the eyes of his current students or clients or customers and by finding out from them, he’ll know what to say to attract more people just like them. I think the good ideas come from your current students or clients or customers. If you find out what got them excited, that’s how you find more people just like them and the same things will excite them.
Michael: What’s you philosophy on money? Obviously, you’ve made a lot of money from your books? What was your philosophy before you had a lot of money and once you got a lot of money did your philosophy change?
Jay: I think I spend less time thinking about money than anybody I’ve met in my life or anybody who listens to your words. I’ve never cared about it or thought about it. I just cared that we had enough to pay the bills. I’ve never bought stocks. I’ve never bought bonds. I don’t believe in that stuff. I don’t want to spend one second of my life checking stock tables in the Wall Street Journal. I know people who have made a lot of money that way. I have a total distain for it. All I want is enough to pay the bills and I don’t care about growing an empire. I don’t care about accumulating a lot of money. And I feel sorry for people who really are financial advisors and think about investing other people’s money. I think that’s a sorry waste of the only life that you have. And money is necessary, crucial way of keeping our economy afloat, but I’m appalled at how many people’s lives devoted to following money, trading online, and trying to grow their financial empires. I think they’re missing out on so much on the sweetest things life has to offer. Money is not one of those things.
Michael: Who do you turn to for advice?
Jay: I would say my poker guys.
Michael: Your guy friends? Do you ever hire copywriters to do writing for any of your projects?
Jay: No, I do it all myself.
Michael: You do all the writing yourself?
Jay: I have never hired an outside writer.
Michael: Well, Jay, I think that wraps it up. I think this has been great. You’ve been really gracious and forthcoming with all of your ideas and you’ve shared immensely. I really, really appreciate it.
Jay: I appreciate the quality of the questions from you and from the people who are fans of yours. This has been rewarding for me because it was so stimulating. You’ve got a bright group of people out there. I’m glad for the privilege of being able to talk to them.
Michael: Great. Have a great evening. I will be in touch with you soon.
Michael: Thanks Jay, Bye.
