Michael F Schein: Creating Business Hype In 12 Easy Steps

Now to learn this knowledge that is so appealing to others took a bit of time to master.

As a few years back in time, Michael decided that he had enough of working in corporate America.

He was jaded, tired and quite frankly ready to follow his passions as a writer.

He had already worked out how many articles he needed to write to breakeven on his own terms and then build to glory and success.

However, along the way he realised that it was all very good being a great writer but how do you then sell those words of gold to make a living.

This was something that he wasn’t very good at, until he had enough about a certain online entrepreneur who shares the “Hustle muscle” route to glory.

Our guest wasn’t convinced about Gary Vaynerchucks messaging and called him out about it.

Suddenly he went from trying to break through the noise, to being an arrow hitting the target of hype and attention and things started to change.

So how can we take his principles and bring them into our own lives if like so many people we are scared to put our head above the parapet?

And what is the quickest way of becoming the news instead of simply being a part of the news?

Well let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Michael F. Schein

Show Highlights

During the show we discussed such deep subjects with Michael F Schein such as:

Why Michael believes that there are two types of entrepreneurs in the world today and the reasons why one group struggles to make things happen

Why creating a faux persona based on your insecurities turning them into strengths and then true superpowers.

Michael shares why he now believes that everything he did in his business in the early stage was wrong.

And lastly……

Why the simplest way to build success is to look at the good and bad of life and truly understand why these things have happened.

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Full Transcription Of Michael F. Schein Interview

Intro [0:00]
Life shouldn’t be hard life should be a fun filled adventure every day. So now start joining up dots tap into your talents, your skills, your God given gifts and tell your boss you don’t deserve me. I’m out of here. It’s time for you to smash that alarm clock and start getting the dream business and life you will of course, are dreaming God. Let’s join your host, David Ralph from the back of his garden in the UK, or wherever he might be today with another jam packed episode of the number one hit podcast. Join Up Dots.

David Ralph [0:42]
Good morning. Good morning friends. Good morning young Juan’s Welcome to Join Up Dots. Thank you so much for connecting with us and giving us some time to bring great content. We have a great guests who I I had a delight to spend a little bit of time just chatting to offline about four weeks ago, five weeks ago, as we spoke about many things and most of it couldn’t be recorded. And so we will leave it there. But he has a story that will resonate with so many of our listeners, and also inspire I would like to think a new way of thinking. He’s the author behind the hype handbook 12 indispensable success secrets from the world’s greatest propagandists. As he says your success depends on getting people to think of you first. But with so much competition in the marketplace, it’s become increasingly difficult to attract anyone’s attention. In a perfect world, ideas would rise and fall on their own merits. But of course, it’s not a perfect world. If you want your message to reach a big audience, you need a presence and a platform that shines it’s hard to do. But some people and companies always seem to be able to make it happen. They’re the ones who are always in demand as speakers sources, but articles and interview subjects. They’re the ones who can always find new business opportunities without effort. Now to learn this knowledge that is so appealing to others, it took a bit of time to master as a few years back in time, our guest decided that he did enough of working in corporate America, he was jaded, tired and quite frankly, ready to follow his passions. As a writer, he’d already worked out how many articles he needed to write to break even on his own terms, and then build to glory and success. However, along the way, he realised that it was all very good being a great writer. But how do you then sell those words of gold to make a living, this is something that he wasn’t very good at, until he had enough about a certain online entrepreneur who shares the old hustle muscle route to glory. Our guest wasn’t convinced about Gary Vaynerchuk messaging, and called him out about it. And suddenly, he went from trying to break through the noise to being an arrow hitting the target of hype and attention. And things started to change. So how can we take his principles and bring them into our own lives? If like so many people were scared to put our head above the parapet? And was the quickest way of becoming the news, instead of simply being part of the news? Well, let’s find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Michael F. Schein.

Michael F Schein [3:17]
David, it’s great to be here. It’s, you know, I’m a fan of the show. So it’s such a pleasure to be on this side of the microphone.

David Ralph [3:24]
Well, we’re both gonna suck up Michael, because I’m a fan of yours as well. And it was a delight because I got given your book to read. And as I said to you personally, most times, I kind of get through 30 pages of these books that I get given, and kind of given up, but yours I got almost all the way through until age got me me It started to fade. And I needed a book. So it’s a delight to have you on the show. And what I want to do is just go back, I referenced it in the introduction about how you decided to become an entrepreneur and build your own business, but actually found it more difficult to master even though you were very, very good at one thing. Now do you think this is a problem that sort of most new entrepreneurs and business owners have difficulty with their they have a focus on one thing, but their talents lie, but I don’t realise all the other stuff that I need to know.

Michael F Schein [4:22]
I think that there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. I think one kind of entrepreneur is someone who just loves the game of business, you know, they could be selling sheet metal or insurance or telemarketing, or what have you, but they just they love all of this stuff that goes into building a business for its own sake. I was not that kind of entrepreneur. And I think a lot of people who want to start businesses are not that kind of entrepreneur and those are the ones who are good at one thing and they say to themselves, you know, instead of using my skill to make someone else money or Or not using my skill at all, because I have to work in a job, I’m going to go out and work for myself and make money with that skill. And I feel like those kinds of people of which I was absolutely one often do have a hard time with the business part, because that’s not why they got into it. They didn’t, they aren’t doing business just for its own sake. So that’s where you get into different problems if you’re trying to make you know, a living on your own.

David Ralph [5:28]
And to give us a sort of time frame, from the moment that you went out on your own to the time you say, Gary Vaynerchuk, I don’t agree with your messaging, and everything started to rumble around you. What was the sort of timeframe of, of persistence, but not really getting your just rewards?

Michael F Schein [5:48]
So I guess it depends how you look at it. I mean, I, I never wanted to own a business at all. As I said, I never wanted to be involved in business. In fact, when I left college, I started a band, and I was the sole main songwriter in the band. And we were very theatrical, and we got a little bit of attention, more than my parents certainly thought we would get, but it didn’t work out. And I had to get a job. And I ended up being at that job for eight years, which I never expected. And every morning, after a certain point of when the euphoria wore off of getting a paycheck, which happened pretty quickly, I would get up very early and write fiction with the idea that, eventually I’m going to get out of this job, I’m going to sell some short stories, and then that’ll turn into a novel and whatever. And, you know, I sold one or two short stories, but they pay nothing. And I just couldn’t do it. And I felt increasingly boxed into a corner. So the whole time I was at the job. And I worked very hard, I ended up in an executive role. But the whole time, it was kind of like next year, I’m gonna go do my own thing. And eventually, I was reading one of my writing magazines, which I usually read to learn fiction tips in Writer’s Digest. And there was an article from a copywriter, a business writer who said that writing white papers could make you between two and $5,000, a white paper for eight pages. And I used to write them at work, because I was kind of the go to writer there whenever they needed something like that. And so I said to myself, Wow, this is great. I mean, I could just write, as you alluded to a white paper a week and, you know, make six figures. And so I even at the end of my tenure at the corporate job, I started trying to pick up gigs. And when I made like, $10,000, I went out on my own, and I figured, oh, this is great, you know, I have some money saved up, I’ll go out, I’ll be a writer before no time again, nope, not a business person, a business writer. That’s all I wanted to do. And the problem was, I had a year’s worth of savings. And I burned through it all. So I was ready to fold it up after a year. And then I did write that Gary Vaynerchuk article, and that got me a lot of attention. So you could say that it took a year to start making a living, or you could say that it took 15 years, depending on where you put, you know, the starting date.

David Ralph [8:16]
Yeah, that’s how the dots do join up. And it’s funny when you started talking about the band, I remember the story in the book. And it was interesting, because that is one of the things that isn’t really connected, but became a big learning point of, ah, I understand why we became popular because we were doing something different. And you tell a story about sort of David Bowie, and artists that would wear jeans during the day and then become sort of pop stars in the night and would struggle until they totally bought into the image all the time. And when you see the bands through the years that have a really strong image, like suppose, Duran Duran, for example, in the 80s. You You don’t think of him walking around in T shirts and jeans, you think of them wearing silk suits and being sort of very flash now in entrepreneurship as well in business, that ability to blend your branding your personal branding into a 24 seven thing. Does that kind of bring about a fake it till you make it attitude? do you do? Do you actually have to really feel like that because personally, I couldn’t think of anything worse than be podcasting and stuff all the time. I like to sort of disappear from it.

Michael F Schein [9:34]
Yeah, I think of it a little bit differently. You know, I think David Bowie was able to walk around as David Bowie whatever incarnation he was, at the time Ziggy Stardust or thin white Duke, because he took a nugget of who He really was, and he blew it up. I think he was comfortable being that guy. And I’m sure for Duran Duran was the same thing, especially when they were in their 20s money’s and walking around like that had a lot of benefits. So I look at it very differently because I agree I mean, going around being the podcast Guy 24 seven, you what kind of way is that to live. But imagine if you started instead of it you thought of it as looking at your weaknesses first and flipping them into strengths. And so what I mean by this is, if you’re trying to create this kind of foe persona, just because you think it will sell that’s going to be impossible to maintain. However, the irony is, if you don’t maintain it, people are going to see through it, they’re going to know it’s fake. But imagine if you made a list of all your weaknesses, all the things that you feel a little bit insecure about, because a lot of times in our insecurities, that’s where our true strengths lie. And if I might, I’ll give you an example from the book because I think it’s so telling. So instead of David Bowie, let’s look at Andy Warhol, right? He was a, he was always a good artist, but he had a lot of things that could easily have been considered weaknesses. He was pathologically shy. He was, you know, he was gay at a time where being gay was a crime. Not only was he gay, he was pretty overtly gay. He was a feminine he was stereotypically gay in the parlance of the time. He was balding at a very early age, he had very pale skin. But what did he do? He was very skinny. Well, what did he do? He took his shyness. And he turned it into this Andy Warhol aura of mystery. So people would ask him in the press, why do you paint cans of soup? And instead of giving some long paragraph about his artistic intentions, and how it was a commentary on commercialism, and this and that, he would say, I like soup in a very quiet voice, you know, and people would talk about it forever. Or that was

David Ralph [11:59]
very Michael Jackson. Well, there wasn’t that much difference in that impression.

Michael F Schein [12:03]
Or the impression Yeah, exactly. I probably did more of a Michael Jackson impression than a than an Andy Warhol impression. Actually, that’s true. Like soup? Yeah, yeah. Good thing, I’m not an impressionist, a professional impressionist? Um, yeah, it was similarly, I mean, the balding thing, he had that silver wig, he didn’t wear it to pay and try to cover it up, he made it glaringly obvious that he was wearing a wig. So I would say start with those things that you’re most insecure about, and flip them into strengths. And that’s quite easy to maintain. Because that’s really you, it’s kind of ironically, both you and your persona at the same time.

David Ralph [12:41]
Now, it’s a big leap of faith to do that, isn’t that because I know even in the online world, certainly I, I was kind of really embarrassed to launch my first podcast, even though it’s what I really wanted to do to put yourself out there. And I think everybody’s like that with their first blog post and their first pillar content or their first article, because we kind of think that it’s, it’s not good enough, it’s not close enough to what we actually want to do. So to be able to do that, and I never, I never realised that Andy Warhol was bald, I just assumed that was his hair. And so it totally went past me. Now, if we jump back to your book, then, because the first hype strategy that I was really interested in, and all these strategies as I was reading them, I thought, yeah, I understand this, understand this totally, was make war and not love, where you basically say, you know, start picking fights with the most authority status symbols that are contrary to your point of view, make make your own sort of ruffling of feathers. And as soon as you said that, I thought, Yeah, why? Why do we tiptoe around trying to be within the crowd? Why don’t we allow the crowd to look at us? Because we’re shouting loudly?

Michael F Schein [14:00]
Yeah. Yeah, I, I would say that, if you’re really bold, and you’re able to find a guru in your field, who you disagree with, and you can take them on publicly, as long as you really agree with that point of view that you’re putting out there disagree with their point of view and agree with the alternative, and you’re not just doing it to troll them. That’s a very, very effective way to get attention and to go the following of your own because those people already have attention. So you’re piggybacking on that. And also, there are probably a whole lot of people who feel the same way you do and don’t have a leader and you can be that leader. However, if you don’t have the stomach for that, or if it’s not your style and alternative which can sometimes be just as effective as picking a fight with an idea. So is there is there some point of view some sacred cow in your corner of the universe in your industry in your scene, that no one really questions but but could stand being Question that’s always sort of gotten in your craw. Can you pick a fight with that? And that’s a, that’s a great way to sort of stake out your own claim and build a following around yourself.

David Ralph [15:13]
There was a thing that made me laugh out loud on the on your book about the the amount of people that Donald Trump has picked fights with he and he doesn’t, he doesn’t just pick fights with individuals. He picked fights with it since he became president, Mexicans, Muslims, Rosie O’Donnell, the continent of Africa, CNN, NFL players, Harley Davidson, it just goes on and on and on. And even people like Greta thunberg, that you would think that you know, surely number one, she’s a kid and be she’s trying to do things for the right reason.

Michael F Schein [15:47]
You know, Mother Teresa would probably be on there and Nelson Mandela if they were still alive.

David Ralph [15:52]
Yeah. And probably David Ralph would be on there as well. I’m sure that he will, he will have a go at me. But it blows me away. But what he’s actually doing, he’s polarising and so certain people are going to go, No, I’m not with you. But other people are gonna go Yes, I am with you. So he’s starting to create his own. He’s new stream, isn’t he?

Michael F Schein [16:11]
Yeah, you know, whatever else you can say about Donald Trump. And there’s a lot to say he is really good at hype. And I know a lot of people will hear this and say, I don’t want to be like Donald Trump. And that’s okay. You don’t have to be. You don’t have to be a troll. And whatever you think about his politics, he does troll people. I mean, he says very mean things to people. However, he also gets more attention than anyone has ever gotten in human history. And his fans are insanely dedicated. And he’s always been able to do that. And so I would take the stuff from him that works and leave out the stuff that doesn’t and that that polarising thing that you mentioned that us versus them dynamic that he is constantly creating it. As human beings, it’s absolutely irresistible to us. And there’s there there’s actual science behind why that is, which we can go into if you want, but it is it is a huge part of why he’s been able to do what he’s done.

David Ralph [17:17]
Now, that’s, that’s kind of that ruffling of feathers. It needs confidence, doesn’t it? You really need to understand your positioning at that stage. So it’s not something I would suggest, but somebody who’s new, finding their own way should go, Oh, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna start picking fights with people, it very much means you got to know your, your side of the fence.

Michael F Schein [17:40]
Yeah, I mean, unless you want to accelerate your, you know, your growth. I mean, again, I don’t think you need to use the Donald Trump approach, I don’t think you have to troll be a troll, I don’t think you have to be mean, I mean, that story that you alluded to. So, Gary Vaynerchuk, which I’m sure a lot of your listeners know. And some don’t. He was the biggest internet guru in my space. 10 years ago, when I started the business, I was in this space, and nobody but I was writing online digital content. The reason I wrote an article about him called why Gary Vaynerchuk is flat out wrong in ink magazine was because I disagreed with his point of view. And I think he’s a great business person and has a lot to offer. But he this, this idea of the only way to grow on the internet is to hustle around the clock, I had my reasons for disagreeing with it. And my solution was different because I use a templated approach to writing. And so I wrote that article. But I never insulted his family, his looks, his voice anything about him. In fact, I was very complimentary, I talked about how what a great business person he is, I picked a fight with his idea. And he responded, which was great for me, because all of his fans were very agitated and told me as much, but I gained a whole lot of new fans and a whole lot of attention, which led to dizziness. So then again, I did have a strong point of view. But it leads me to ask if you’re going out on your own, but you don’t really have a point of view or believe in anything or have a reason that you’re starting your business or entrepreneurial venture. Maybe you should think about that before you go out on your own. Because the reason as much as we all want to go out on our own in business to make ourselves happy. The market doesn’t care about us the market cares about if you’re presenting something that isn’t already out there that people need. And if you’re if you don’t have a strong point of view, what that says to me is maybe you don’t have something that people need because it’s already out there. So it’s worth thinking about.

David Ralph [19:51]
Now moving on. Interestingly create your own secret society, that piggy backing principle. Once again, I got to this point and I thought Yeah, it almost seemed to me that you turn the world inside out. I’ve gone through the looking glass and I was seeing a different way of operating where you are actually more strategic about the content, you’re producing more strategic about the social media interaction, instead of just quantity. It’s like sitting back, sitting back, sitting back and then jab, which goes against what Gary Vee used to say about Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, hook, or hook. Right? What he used to say, I think it’s now you know, you you wait, you wait, you wait. And like the domino, you wait until the right Domino comes along, and you press the right Domino, you know, magic occurs. And so tell us what you mean by create your own secret society, that piggybacking principle.

Michael F Schein [20:50]
So everything I learned how to do to have whatever success I’ve had, I did wrong in the beginning, when I started my business, I did the Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab, Jab thing, I would go to every networking event that was out there, I would go to the cocktail hours and, you know, be in meetings where there are a bunch of solopreneurs like me, and I would pass out business cards and collect business cards and schmooze. And I would find that I was really good at turning these people into my friends, and even really good at having them refer business to me. But because they were at the same level as me, if not even less financially successful, no one had the dollars to afford what I was selling. So I said to myself, after a while of doing this, and failing, I would say, you know, what’s the difference between me and the people who have all of these connections and these old boys networks? Well, they’re just travelling in bigger circles. They’re doing the same stuff in me. They’re charming people, they’re helping people out there doing favours for people, so they can call on favours. But they’re travelling in circles where people have this stuff to make stuff happen. And I’m schmoozing with solopreneurs and massage therapists and nothing against those people. But they that wasn’t the world that had the power to pay me right. So what I started to do is I would look for ways to do the same things I was doing, but in circles that were bigger circle. So the first thing I did was I said, Okay, what do I have to give that other people need? That’s not hard for me to give. It’s cheap for me, but valuable for them. And I said, Well, I’m a writer, and I write for ink magazine. So I started going out to all of these conferences, because I knew that people were paying 3000 to $5,000, to get into these conferences. And I would say, Hey, I’ll write about your conference, right? So I would get a press pass to these conferences, but nobody knew that I would tell them if they asked, but I was now schmoozing with people who paid 3000 to $5,000 to get in, right. And so I started to interact with those people and do favours for them and make introductions. And before long, they liked me and they wanted to help me. Similarly, instead of using social media to, you know, try to gain a million followers of random people, I would, as you said, sit back and monitor the 100 people that I wanted to get to know and if they ever said something that wasn’t just business oriented or promotion, but that like revealed their human side revealed, maybe a common interest, something they did in their spare time, that I also was interested in, I would connect around that and what I realised is even the most successful people are human beings. So what I started to do was I started to build my own old boys and old girls network that could call on me and they I could call on when I needed to make things happen in my career because they say it’s who you know. And people say that with with disdain, I got to you know, you know, I can’t make things happen. But it’s easier than ever before. To get to know the right people. You just have to be very creative about how you do that. And the best type artists make things look like it’s happening grassroots. But really what they’re doing is they’re they’re interacting behind the scenes with a select group of powerful people that they’ve fostered who can make things happen quickly for them.

David Ralph [24:25]
And once again, the key thing to that is know your positioning where we’re talking about positioning all the way through and be sure that you’re actually bringing something but you’ve looked at it, you’ve decided what they’re lacking. And just like you were talking about Andy Warhol turning his weaknesses into strengths, you’re now turning your attention onto other people and finding their weaknesses and bringing your own strips.

Michael F Schein [24:50]
That’s 100%. Right. And I think what a lot of us do wrong is we think to ourselves, especially when we’re starting out and when we’re young or when we’re starting a new venture We say, Well, I don’t have anything to give, I don’t have any money. I don’t have big clients, I don’t have resources. But usually you do have something to give so so and you just haven’t thought of it that way. So for example, there was a guy that I interviewed who, for Inc, once, just randomly, someone put me in touch with him a PR company, who owned a $500 million company, so a very, very successful guy. And he had moved recently from Indiana to New York. And at the end of the conversation, I heard him saying things like, I really love live music. I wish I knew more places to go to in Brooklyn, you know. And so I thought to myself, you know, I don’t have, especially then I didn’t have much to give in terms of financial resources or connections, because that was when I was first starting out. But I do know a whole lot about live music in New York City, because I’ve been going to live venues in New York for a very long time. So I said, I’d be happy to point you around, show you around. And I did and that was very valuable to him. So this guy became a mentor. And he was largely responsible for giving me advice and connections, and even referrals that ultimately led to my becoming a successful agency owner. So sometimes you gotta be creative. Most of us do have something to offer. We just don’t think of it that way.

David Ralph [26:23]
JACK Canfield from the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, he was telling me that when he was getting going, there was a guy that he was so successful at doing some, I can’t remember what it was. But jack wanted to know what it was. And he contacted him and said, you know, if you’re ever in Los Angeles, could could I meet up? Could I buy you a coffee? And the guy said, Well, actually, funnily enough, I am in Los Angeles, but I’m going to be really busy whizzing between conferences and stuff. So jack said, Well, I’ll tell you what, and he was skinned at this time can build, he said, I’ll pick you up at the airport, I will drive you everywhere you want. That day, I will wait outside for you so that you just come out and get back in the car. If I can ask you question after question while I’m driving around. And the guy said, Yeah,

Michael F Schein [27:09]
perfect example.

David Ralph [27:10]
Yeah, there you go. So he didn’t have anything business wise, but he found the value point that the person needed it that’s that’s exactly what I’m saying. We’re like kindred spirits, aren’t we, Michael? Exactly. We know these things. Now, I want to jump on a bit. Okay. Because this was something that intrigued me as well. And honestly, if you’re looking for a real good business advice book, that is also pop culture as well. You’ve got stories about music and artists and history. And it blends a blend so many different streams. This is a good one. Now, hype strategy. 11 was one that was interesting. It’s about the Scientology guy, Ron Hubbard, and set down a rock for your followers to claim to. Now his whole story was fascinating, because he kind of created his own religion. When he had no place to create a religion. He was just he was just a bloke in the Navy. Tennis about

Michael F Schein [28:11]
a lizard.

David Ralph [28:12]
Yeah, he was a loser. So why are people like Tom Cruise and bat so enamoured to a loser from the Navy? Tell us about it.

Michael F Schein [28:22]
It’s really interesting. Yeah, it is a great story. So when I say he’s a loser, that’s not a word, I throw around a lot. You’ll think I’m the next Donald Trump. But I mean, he based on the fact that he built his career on telling people how to live their lives. I mean, this was a guy who is a pretty unsuccessful pulp fiction writer, he thought of himself as a war hero in the Navy, but he actually gotten a lot of trouble because he went to battle with magnetic signals that were coming from nowhere in, you know, on on a ship that he was, you know, piloting. So he was he was a strange guy and kind of messed up everything that he did. And basically what he figured out just through some sort of intuitive understanding of human nature, I think was a one two punch with him. One is that, you know, a lot of people are out there trying to become thought leaders and self help gurus and this and that, and they write some book called like, with some variation of leadership strategies for the 21st century or innovation for for today or whatever. But and they wonder why it doesn’t do much for them. What l Ron Hubbard did is he more or less created a Bible without calling it a Bible. So he wrote this book called Dianetics, which spoke very, very confidently about exactly what you need to do to become a fully realised person. So if you’re upset if you’re sad, if you’re not doing well in life, follow this you know, multi step programme that and you will, you know, solve all of the problems in your life and you know, most of us feel this satisfied We even if we have some success, we’re successful. In romance, we get the girl or guy of our dreams, we start worrying about our career, we’re successful in our career, we start getting down on our marriage, it’s just the human condition. So we most of us tend to have a void. And that’s why the human race does so well. But it’s also why we’re perpetually dissatisfied. But what religion does and when I say religion, I don’t just mean religions. I’m talking Tony Robbins, I’m talking Six Sigma, you know, any, any of these programmes that inspire sort of a fanatical devotion, they basically give you a path to follow that can be used to solve anything. And if you’re not solving it properly, it’s just that you’re not working hard enough, or you’re not implementing perfectly right. So people go to the Tony Robbins seminars, and they come out so charged up on and it changed my life. And when their lives don’t get better. Sometimes they do. But when they don’t, they don’t say Oh, Tony Robbins stinks. They say I didn’t work hard enough, I have to go to another seminar. So that’s the first part of it. And the second part of what he did is something I called give the babies their milk before you you give them their meat. So l Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer and his religion at the highest levels sounds a lot like science fiction if you become a hardcore Scientologist. You know, it’s it’s this idea that there are aliens who live on the lip of a volcano and they infused, I don’t even understand that something about aliens from a volcano that infused into every human being that is responsible for own negative thoughts. It’s weird stuff. And there’s like names he knew and this and that. It’s something that if l Ron Hubbard wrote a book about this belief system, you would read it and start calling for the men in white coats. And if he walked up to you with this and started talking about it, you punch him in the face, because it’s really weird stuff. It’s very different than what we’re used to. So what he did and what the most persuasive sort of religions and thought leadership people and anyone introducing a new idea, what they do is they wrap their bold new ideas in things that we’re familiar with, and they introduce them slowly. So when you go to a Scientology centre, it doesn’t really look like like a religious temple, it looks like a self help centre, they have, they have very technical looking machines that scan your impulses, they have questionnaires, it’s all in the language of personal betterment. And then slowly, but surely they start to implement, they start to put, you know, put the stranger parts of the theology in, because we’re not wired to respond well to dramatic change. So he sort of did a combination of these things, and it and it made him a gazillionaire and made his, you know, church, very, very financially successful. But there are elements of this, we, you know, even those of us not starting religions can implement to get our ideas across.

David Ralph [32:58]
But the strange thing about this story that I really sort of sat and looked at it again, was he had no formal education in psychology or philosophy, but wrote about it. And it the psychiatric community sort of said, No, this isn’t right, this, this, this stuff just isn’t it, but it didn’t seem to affect it in any way.

Michael F Schein [33:22]
So it’s so it’s funny. So um, in the beginning, the psychiatric community was open minded to what he had to say for some odd reason. I mean, he he didn’t start Scientology as a church he eventually did that to get tax exempt status. With you get in the United States, I don’t know about in the UK, but if you’re a religion, but um, originally he was, he was he was presenting himself as sort of a self help psychological institution. And for a couple of years, he was accepted. But then when scientifically minded psychologists and psychiatrists began to dig in, they began to there was no scientific rigour to what he was doing at all. So he began to, they began to discredit him. But what he did that I think was so successful, it goes back to the make war, not love idea. If you look at any Scientology doctrine, they’re very anti psychology. So Tom Cruise gotten a bunch of hot water a few years back, because he bashed Brooke Shields. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember this? I do. Yeah, do remember it. So she was very depressed, and I guess she was from postpartum depression. And she took it, you know, antidepressant drugs, which really helped her and he said that that was a terrible thing for her to do and because he they’re very against psychology and psychiatry. But what that does is you know, if people feel cold, do this all the time. If a cold feels persecuted, they bond together much more intensely. So like the back when they had the Waco siege, when the When the US government when the federal government was besieging the Branch Davidian, Colton Waco, and it turned into that big disaster that government persecution made these people bond much more strongly and hunker down and fight to the death. So, you know, when people feel like a certain other group is coming after them, it doesn’t make them say, Oh, you know what, that maybe this isn’t such a good idea. It makes them double, triple and quadruple down on their beliefs.

David Ralph [35:30]
As is still strange, though, isn’t it? Because you know, with that waco thing, I think it was David Koresh was and he he The, the leader of it, you know, from the outside, we just think, well, this is madness. This is, you know, what, what are people actually looking for? Now, this is interesting, because this is deep psychology based on on Well, you can use it for businesses to actually think what is somebody really looking for. And I think that most people that start a business go to about the first level, maybe the second level, and they certainly don’t go down to the real meaning of why that person is searching, or looking, or whatever. And it doesn’t have to be madness. But it would be wrong not to look at these mad people and think, well, what the hell they doing, because it’s working, but there’s got to be good in that, that you can take into your own life.

Michael F Schein [36:23]
That’s exactly it. I mean, that’s my life’s work right there. You just nailed it. And that’s why I wrote this book. Because, you know, there’s two ways of looking at someone whose ideas are clearly unusual, at the very least, and in completely crazy, you know, at the ceiling, you know, depending if you want to be kind about it or not, or if people are con artists, or they’re selling pure garbage. And it’s so obvious to see that it’s garbage. But people just buy it, and they’re more dedicated to it, then you who are trying to sell these wonderful products, you can say, you know what, these people are such jerks, and I never want to be like them. And, and this is ridiculous. Or you can say, you know what, these people are selling garbage and nonsense, but they’re still able to get people fanatically excited and dedicated to it. What if I dissected those ideas, and figured out what the psychological principles were because it’s so good at selling garbage? Imagine what could be done, if you were applying it to sell stuff with value. And I think what happens is, many of us who sell great stuff, we’re so confident in the stuff we’re selling, that we think it’s gonna rise on its own merits, like me with it, you know, I’m such a good writer, I’m going to get people to buy for me. But the cult leaders and these types of people, they know that they have to compensate for the actual lack of worth of of the actual content with really strong psychology. So I really want to get people who are selling good stuff to understand these tools, because often they won’t look at it, or they don’t take the time to learn it. And all the bad guys are taking the time to learn it. And as a result, the worst stuff gets attention. And it’s so ironic to me. And it’s kind of some equation that needs to be reversed.

David Ralph [38:25]
But seems mad to me Evo is we create a podcast episode like this. And we basically say, look, there are templates to follow, we can look at them good or bad, we can follow this one, and we can follow that one. And ultimately, it’s going to save you a lot of time. It’s not wasted time you spending three weeks whatever, really dissecting on the the history of the Waco, you know, disaster event and what caused that to work. But people don’t do buy. And that’s what I always say to them, you know, stop what you’re doing, and go deep on something, and you will come back with a greater understanding of the whole picture. But they just kind of want to just get stuff going just do stuff. And once again, they’re on the same level of everybody else. If you look at all the people like the Warren Buffett’s the Steve Jobs, that they were all obsessional, almost to the point of madness. And they stopped, and they stopped and they assessed and they looked and they honed their craft, and they went again, and they came back stronger. But I just see that majority of people nowadays aren’t willing to slow down and learn from history. And history is already given us the clues of how things work. There’s it’s success leaves clues, as they say.

Michael F Schein [39:49]
Yeah, I think you’re exactly right. I mean, what I always tell people because I’m in the I’m technically in the marketing space. I like to call it hype because so much marketing is in effect. active, but I own a marketing agency. And what I say to people is the minute someone has built some sort, of course around how to make a seven figure income using Instagram and sales funnels or whatever substitute your technology or your social media of the week, it’s already too late. Because someone has already squeezed all the juice out of that method, and there’s going to be a gold rush and you have no competitive advantage. What you need to do instead is exactly what you said, you need to look at the more fundamental principles, what is the deep human psychology, the sociology, the crowd dynamics, understand that, and then match the right tools to it. But people go the opposite way they want, as you said, a quick fix. They want to know that if they pair up Instagram, Twitter, and, you know, Tech Talk with with, you know, a landing page, they’re gonna make a million dollars, and it just doesn’t work that way.

David Ralph [41:02]
When you look back on your life, Michael, normally, I play sound clips galore for this show, and I haven’t done one I’ve just been engrossed in the conversation. But when when you look back at everything, since you started your marketing agency, is there a clarity now that just kind of beggars belief? And it’s a kind of leading question because I, I struggled with online business, and I struggled all the way through. And once it started to really hit home of the multi levels, and don’t focus on the top level, you’ve got to go three or four down, and then understand what’s happening below the ground, but you can’t see and then work backwards. I just kind of think to myself, this is obvious. This is so obvious. And are you the same with your sort of expertise? Do you look at it now and think, why did I struggle so long? It’s kind of just common sense. It’s there.

Michael F Schein [41:55]
Yeah, maybe not actually, because I think this stuff is simple. But it’s hard, right? I don’t think it’s easy. It’s funny. I just heard a podcast with a guy named Steven Kotler I think his name is he’s a, he’s a he writes about flow and about top human performance, he started with athletes and then move to all kinds of people were top performers. And he talked about how a book is the best mechanism for learning a good book, because what a book basically is, is some writer researcher, spends if if they really did the right job, hours, not hours, days, months, years, and they read 1000 books to get the material to put into this one book, and they distil it down into a book and you get the return on that investment. It takes you 10 hours to read it. And you get all of that knowledge. And the reason I bring that up is because for me to get to this understanding that I had, I had to read countless biographies of hype artists, I had to read crop psychology books, and then I wasn’t content with making it theoretical, I had to experiment and test it. So I, I went out, fortunately, I own an agency. So I would test some of the hypotheses that I made by looking at these other people. And a lot of them didn’t work. And it was only then that I could really say, you know, these are the 12 strategies of what I call hype, these emotion generating attention, getting tactics that really do work. I hope with the book, people get the benefit of all of my deep digging, because I’ve tried to do that thing that Steven Kotler said and distil it down into, you know, an eight hour reading experience or whatever. But yeah, I don’t want to pretend that it’s that it’s an easy road. It might seem obvious, but yeah, I think this is some some tough stuff. As far as it is, for me anyway, I don’t think I would have come to it naturally. Now,

David Ralph [43:54]
I read it, and I’ll be totally transparent to people out there. I loved it. I really did it. It just spoke to me. But I wonder whether I’ve got the knowledge that it then made sense to Did you think somebody totally new would be able to come along? And other than a collection of interesting stories really gained the depth that I did?

Michael F Schein [44:19]
I hope so. Um, I mean, I, you know, I feel like there’s not Kurt Vonnegut who’s one of my favourite writers, he has a quote that something like, if you open a window and try to make love to the world world, You’ll catch a cold right? So like, I feel like books and any form of creation, creative activity that that tries to appeal to everyone usually gets watered down and milk toast. So if you’re not set up to be a little bit counter intuitive in the way that you you know, if you’re the How can I say this if you’re the kind of person who wants to just follow step A, B, C, and D. Not really look at things in a skewed kind of way this may not be for you because this is looking at some very unusual people and very unusual ideas to get to what I think is a an ethical place and ethical path of success. But it’s called the hype handbook for a reason I really did try to create for any open minded person a working manual for promoting yourself for driving attention to new products and new ideas based on what really works not on the latest technology of the week. But I think the prerequisite is that you have to have an open mind

David Ralph [45:41]
well before I push you to the Sermon on the mic and bring the show to an end I’ve been building up to this and when I see the word fetish, it always grabs my attention when it’s tied up with Master effortless lifts doing effortless doing I’m I’m big on that at the moment it’s something that ties up with us as I say Wait wait wait wait jab it seems about the less you do and you really sort of focus in on doing the right things the easier life becomes which wasn’t the way in the past for me I was doing everything spinning so many plates it was untrue. So tell us about hype strategy 12 to bring it to an end before we send you back in time on the Sermon on the mic fetish work master effortless doing

Michael F Schein [46:27]
Yeah, I like that you fixed on this chapter I I I have. I have a lot of fun pairing these two concepts and you know making a fetish out of hard work well in yourself for other people while mastering effortless doing in yourself. So if you when I really started digging into cults, some commonality that I noticed with a lot of cults is that they really drum home the idea among their followers of salvation through hard work. So backbreaking work, so there was this cult leader named gurdjieff, who some people still like and and then he still has his books in the New Age sections of bookshops. But I think he was big in the 20s. I might have that wrong. But in any case, he had this compound and you would go there and there’d be Hollywood movie stars, digging holes to nowhere in his front yard. The moonies, the infamous moonies, they work regularly 65 hours a week for free on behalf of the Colts raising money for the cold. And so you might say, why is that the case? Why do they have them do this? Well, you know, in the case of the moonies, they get a lot of free work. But what it really does is, it’s an excellent mechanism for bonding your followers to you because if someone works like a dog on behalf of your cause, and then someone says to them, you know, let me give you a little bit of evidence about why this group is not so great, or why this belief system has flaws, you can either admit to yourself that you just wasted a year of your life working 65 hours a day for nothing. But that causes cognitive dissonance, which is that it’s really tough for human beings to hold contradictory ideas at the same time, especially ones that don’t flatter our self image. So the other alternative is to say, you know what, my friend is an idiot, they don’t understand. And I’m going to even work harder and bond myself even further to the to the cold. And what I found so interesting about this to come full circle, I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk this whole idea, and even people like Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone and Ty Lopez, they’re always talking about hard work. And obviously you have to work hard to be successful. No one ever, you know, became successful without working hard. But I asked myself, Why do these people spend so much time almost screaming at their followers that they’re not working hard enough? And I think that whether they do it consciously or not, it’s a way that they create a fanatical devotion among among their followers, you know, so if you’re out there, and you’re creating any kind of, you know, especially if you’re selling ideas if you’re selling coaching or consulting, but even if you have certain products, if you can foster among your followers, this idea that the only way they’re going to succeed is if they do the work, it will really bond you to them and it’s also a way to get more done in less time. You know, I mean, a real ethical version of this there’s there’s a company called Strategic Coach that I was a part of, to actually that I’m multimillionaire I told you about told me to do it when I first started my business and they charge a lot of money, and you go there four times a year. And these are really great workshops, but they’re just workshops. I mean, you you go there you spend eight hours with them. You have tools that you customise in person while you’re there, and then and they charge you $10,000 right, and then every quarter people come back and it would always buy In my mind, because the coach would say, how’d you do? And they would say, Oh, you know, I should have done more. I was really good in the beginning, but I, but I fell off the waggon. And the coach would say, you know, progress, not perfection. So the dynamic was so interesting when you when you run a marketing agency like I do, the harder you you know, you can work like a dog on behalf of your clients, and they’ll still say to you, I want you to work, I want you to get more results for me, where even if you’re doing great, you know, that’s just the dynamic, that client will try to push you to to better, better better. But when there’s a dynamic where the client actually has to do the work, they’ll berate themselves for not working hard enough. So I thought that psychology was so interesting. The effortless doing part is that the really successful persuaders they don’t dole their critical capacity by working around the clock, you know, they always the best ones, anyway, engage in emotional regulation practices, because if you are constantly wired and constantly stressed and constantly anxious, you’ll make poor decisions, you won’t be able to see the world like a chessboard the way that great hype artists do. So emotional regulation, which comes from sort of a more regulated, chilled out approach to getting work done is really important. Do you want to execute in some of these psychological principles?

David Ralph [51:24]
Probably Yeah, I agree and work hard. But don’t overwork justice, allow the, the rest to be as important as the doing. And it’s a it’s a real lesson that I learned over the last few years. Well, this is I could keep going on this and jumping back and forth over all the strategies, but it’s a real good read, and I totally recommend it. But of course, I totally recommend putting Michael on the Sermon on the mic, as well. So this is the part of the show, when we’re going to send him back in time to have a conversation with his younger self. And if he could choose a younger Michael, what age would he choose? And what advice would he like to give him? Well, we’re gonna find out because I’m going to play the music. And when it fades, it’s their time to talk. This is the Sermon on the mic.

Unknown Speaker [52:16]
With the best bit of the show, the sermon on

Michael F Schein [52:34]
Hey, they’re 27 year old Michael, this is 43 year old Michael, I hope you did not just have a nervous breakdown, since you’re talking to an old version of yourself. But let’s assume that you’re not. And I’m going to give you a little bit of advice. So you are now working at the results companies, which is a business process or outsourcing company in the solution development department and you’re feeling a little bit antsy about that, but you’re working like a dog to become successful. So let me tell you a few things. First of all, don’t feel bad that your dream of changing rock and roll with your band didn’t work out. Because in a lot of ways it did work out you guys sold out some of the most popular clubs in New York on a Wednesday night you were on TV. But more importantly, you’re going to use all of those things that you learned in all kinds of strange ways that you have no idea about yet. Also, don’t feel bad that you quote unquote sold out your dreams by taking this corporate job. You know, in the first three years, three, four years, you learned a lot you learn to become a grown up you learned about business which you’re going to use. You learned about grit, you learned about the realities of your life. But you’re going to have to make a decision about the next four years. And in this alternative universe, I stayed for an extra four years purely out of fear, because I had learned everything I was going to learn there. But I became so scared to live without this paycheck and my confidence in my creative abilities really went downhill. Don’t make the same mistake in about six months, you’re going to know everything you need to know take the jump sooner than I did. Get out start building up your freelance practice while you’re at the job but but jump soon because there’s nothing to be afraid of the real fear is staying there and not getting a jump on it because you’re going to have success. But if you had started even earlier, you’d be farther along sooner which matters. But the most important thing is stop focusing on the straight ahead path. Stop focusing on bashing your head against the front door. When you were in the band. You thought that the only way that you could be happy was to make it in the band. Now that you’re at the job. You think the only way that you can be happy is to make it and not as a novelist with your writing in the morning. But there are A lot of side doors, you can get to the same place that you want to go or something close enough by looking at alternatives by looking at strange and interesting opportunities to get to where you’re going. You can make a living as a writer without being a novelist, you can own your own creative practice while using business. But the important thing is to keep looking at those side doors. And ironically, it’s going to get you exactly where you want it to be, it’s going to get you to have a book in the bookshop, it might just not look exactly how you thought it would.

David Ralph [55:38]
Oh, you’re finished, you’re finished. I was I was listening to every word. Michael, what’s the number one best way that our audience can connect with you?

Michael F Schein [55:47]
I’ll give you Well, the number one best way to connect on me is just go on my personal website, which is Michael f shine, so am I CH, e, l, F, CH e i n.com. But um, there are a couple things, obviously my book is is the best way to to learn about these ideas, which is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those places, I think the most fun way to keep in touch with me, however, if you really want to have a back and forth was with me is I have a thing called the hype book club, where every month or two, I put out a roster of the strange and interesting books that I’m reading and researching. And they’re usually very entertaining. And also, you know, unusual and that you learn a lot from them about persuasion and marketing and human nature. And I sort of tried to give it my own spin in the way that I write it. And it’s um, it’s called, the link is hybrids.com slash list. And we’ve become a bit of a community, it started out as just a list, but we trade emails all the time, we we’ve really all gotten to know each other as a community. And it’s a whole lot of fun. So that’s, I think, a great way to keep in touch with all this stuff in the show notes. I

David Ralph [57:02]
know, it’s I just threw a lot out there right now. That’s fine, we will have it all on the show notes to make it as easy as possible. Michael, thank you so much for spending time with us today. joining up those dots. And please come back again, when you got more dots to join us or more hype to create because I do believe that by joining up the dots and connecting our past is the best way to build our futures. Michael f shine. Thank you so much.

Michael F Schein [57:25]
Thank you, David, this was an absolute blast.

David Ralph [57:33]
Michael, shine Yeah, it’s a real, real good book this one. Because so much of what we do online is about trying to get noticed. But very rarely do we actually stop to think how to get noticed, and creating your own hype so that you’re not just part of the news that you become the news really, really hit home to me. And every single article, every single chapter is a story in itself. And it jumps back and forth between sort of music of the 70s and music of the 80s and artists and history. And so you can come from it in many different ways. But certainly if you are in online business and you’re creating your own business, this is a book I strongly recommend purchasing. You can either go over to Amazon and find it or you can come over to Join Up Dots. But you will gain a lot of knowledge and save yourself a lot of time building a profile, getting your business up and running and ultimately making money I think this is this is one I 100% put my my weight behind. Until next time, my friends you have a great week you Look after yourselves, and I will see you again. Oh I look after yourself. See ya. Bye.

Outro [58:48]
That’s the end of Join Up Dots. You’ve heard the conversation. Now it’s time for you to start taking massive action. Create your life easy only live. We’ll be back again real soon. Join Up Dots Join Up Dots Join Up Dots. Gods. Jolene, Jolene