Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer. When you hear the word hype, what kind of emotion does that make you feel for media marketing and business. It's about getting the word out about your product or service. When talking about people, though it can feel very self promotional and sometimes have a negative connotation. But what are the secrets you could and should learn and possibly employ? From the world's greatest propaganda self promoters, cult leaders, mischief marketers and boundary breakers that can help you learn from them? Do you have a high Pam book? Michael Schein is a writer, speaker, founder of microphone, media hype artist and the author of the hype handbook. And on this episode, we'll discuss hype, what it takes to become a hype artist, going from Arlene's grocery to the corporate office, L. Ron Hubbard, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, Andre the Giant, Alice Cooper, Basecamp, Flava Flav, Marvel vs. DC and a lot, lot more. So let's tune in to a hypothesis with a shark who deserves a little hype on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

Shark 1:27
Michael, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark's Perspective. You know, I hate to ask this question, but I feel like I've spent a pretty good amount of time with you just reading your book recently. But tell us a little bit about your background story. Yeah, thanks,

Michael Schein 1:40
Shark, so I own a company a marketing agency called micro fame media. But as you'll see, I don't even like the term marketing. I prefer the word hype, I like to say that we're an agency that generates hype for our clients. But we tend to work with what I call idea driven companies. So any company that's not selling, I don't know ball bearings, sheet metal, that sort of thing. companies that have an idea behind them will come up with a contrarian point of view for them, find a niche that they can operate in, and then do a bunch of activity once again, activity that I call hype that sort of turns them into the dominant figure in their niche. What I'm really what I've really been absorbed with recently, as I just published a book with McGraw Hill called the hype Handbook, which essentially looks at all of the best marketers, most of whom are not marketers. So I, when I was starting my business, I read a lot of the traditional marketing and sales books, and they helped me a little but not as much as I would have thought. And I didn't thrive, I wasn't able to sell myself that well. I was I was a writer beforehand, a marketing agency, and I was trying to sell those services. But then I started looking at unconventional figures like propaganda artists, and early rock managers and cult leaders and pranksters, and started applying their underlying psychological practices, but ethically, and I suddenly became a really good self promoter and good marketer. So I wanted to put these tools in the hands of more people.

Shark 3:16
Yeah, it's such an interesting way to look at it, though, because I think this stands out a lot we'll talk about a little bit later. It's it's often interesting, see, what is a self promotional tactic versus what is a true marketing tactic that may drive leads and sales and all that kind of good stuff for brands today? It's it's extremely interesting. Yeah. When you wrote it, were you inspired to write this strictly with looking at your own career? You said the previous books didn't really help you that much. What was the goal when you were reading those kind of books, and the disconnect with what the message was you were trying to tell?

Michael Schein 3:50
So it's really ironic that I now own a marketing agency, and that I've had success as a professional marketer, because I wasn't good at at marketing. And honestly, you have to ask yourself, what is marketing but at the very core, it should be any activity that gets you customers, or gets you the opportunity to get customers, the salespeople have to close the deal, but you have to get those opportunities. Right. So yeah, I mean, I was kind of an artsy, young person. I never wanted to be in business at all, ironically, as well, and I played in bands and one band in particular and I did a lot of what you might call marketing, but never thought of it as marketing. We did a whole lot of antics to promote our band. We were very theatrical. We would put out kind of offensive posters. We would i would dress like a nun. I would I got us on Showtime at the Apollo because I knew we would be booed off are your words of faith. Yeah. So um, but and we, we did much better than you might have done. People with my musical ability should have Done. I mean, we used to sell out this club Arlene's grocery ally, we got a lot of press. But you know, it's hard to become a rock star. So we didn't. And I got a corporate job. And I was there for the better part of a decade and became very buttoned up. But eventually, I left to become a writer, because at core, I was a songwriter. Before that I wrote fiction writing was always my thing. And I figured there was this market for content. I mean, this was the age of like, using white papers as lead magnets. And I had read an article that said that you could make three to $5,000, writing a white paper. So in my, my wonderful business plan was that I was going to write one a week and make $150,000 a year with no overhead and I could make the same amount I made it my job. Turns out, I couldn't make that happen. Because I was terrible at selling myself. And I probably wouldn't have been able to do that anyway. But um, it was really frustrating, because I would do these big generic sales proposals, and then people would just disappear off the face of the earth. So I started reading these traditional books, and some of them weren't good, I shouldn't say that the books were bad. It's just that for someone like me, it was all about so many of them, they were either very, very, very high level, or they were very tactical, it was about, here's how you set up a B testing with XYZ sales funnel, I mean, I remember what I read was how Google Plus was going to be the future. And it taught you how to use Google Plus, and it made all the sense in the world because Google Plus was LinkedIn with the biggest search engine in the world. But now Google Plus doesn't exist. So in other words, for someone like me, just that guy good at what he does, trying to generate activity and sales and energy around when I was doing it just, I just wasn't making it happen. So I almost burned through a year's worth of savings. And then I had this revelation that I used to be a good marketer, but I thought of it as hype, not as marketing, we used to joke about that, let's hype this up. So I started looking at people who didn't consider themselves marketers, and I am reapplying what they did. And I started to do well, I started to make sales. So that was the beginning of all of it.

Shark 7:16
So it's such a great point where you talk about your bands, and I obviously get to know a lot a lot about your experience as a future rock star early on. And in any book that tells me stories about L. Ron Hubbard, Gary Vaynerchuk, Tony Robbins, Andre, the giant, and Alice Cooper is a pretty good damn book to me. But Either that, or my brain is just a extremely crazy place to be inside. I'm not sure which one, it's fantastic to see all the different topics, keep my attention. But when you talk about your own struggles, whether it was being a musician or being a marketer, how much of it do you think came down to really is getting even goes to the content, promoting the content or promoting yourself or promoting your band, or you know, your company versus the actual quality of the content, the quality of your music, you know, and that's, that becomes an argument all the time, because a lot of these folks that are doing hype well, are fantastic at the self promotional stuff, and it gets some clients everything else. But there's a lot of those people, I wouldn't exactly march into battle with a lot of their tactics. Yeah, I mean, I see that where we live in I don't know if that was a question or statement, but

Michael Schein 8:26
Well, I think the fuzzier the product or service is the easier it's to do that. So if you're making a car point, you know, if you're producing a car, this happened with the Edsel, right, they did this massive, massive and very good marketing campaign for the Edsel. But then the engine started exploding. And now the Edsel is known as the worst car of all time. But if you're selling the 67 steps to personal achievement and happiness, that's like unfalsifiable. Like, you know, if you didn't achieve happiness and success, that's your fault. You didn't hustle hard enough, right? So these sort of fluffy products and services, you can use those same hype tactics without much there.

Shark 9:10
Well, you too, wrote a book in your youth like me, mine was when I was around seven, and I was basically, I was going to be a superhero video. Why take such a big gap? What caused you to you know, you did it, obviously, you told me earlier in your teens, and then decided now I'm going to publish a book after learning all these life lessons and stories. Well, if I'm honest, so I mean, I always wanted to lie a little bit. So

Michael Schein 9:38
yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I mean, why would I lie? If I'm honest, that's a verbal tic. Yeah, I'm about to lie to you. Well, yeah, I think I mean, I had wanted to write fiction. I used to write a lot of fiction. I still write fiction. I still mess around with fiction. And I have every intention of publishing a novel at some point, and I don't like to say at some point that I anything except for the fact that I'm actually working on it. It's just I have other things that that take up most of my day. However, the first book I wrote when I was 18, was called teenage road hogs. It was published by Macmillan. And it was a just a humor book, it was a drivers manual for teenagers, like an alternative driver's manual. And I don't know if you want to, I think I did it more to get into college than anything. I wanted to get into a really good college. I knew that writing was my thing. I was a little bit neurotic about that stuff back then, which I don't know why, but I was. And I just, I thought it was a good strategy. I, you know, that book was fine. I, I, I don't know. It didn't sell well. I'm glad I did it. But it wasn't what I would have done. I probably should have written a novel, you know what I mean? Sure, but but it but it helped me get into college. But you know, I don't know, over the years, I just, life is funny. I, my interest shifted for a long time, from fiction writing to writing songs. So I focused on that for a while. Then I had the corporate job, I got up every morning and wrote fiction, and came close to I got like one short story published and a lot of really nice notes saying you're a good writer. But however, that experience led to what I'm doing now, because I saw an article in Writer's Digest magazine, which told me about white papers. And that led to the business. So then when I was building the business, I built the business. I had a couple of years where I was really focused on that. And then, I don't know for the book, I I've written hundreds of 1000s of words on the topic of hype and various publications, I write for Forbes and fortune and psychology today. But I guess I wanted the right book. I mean, so many people write these books, leadership strategies for the 21st century, just have a business card. And I didn't want to do that. I mean, it's been I thought of this idea five years ago, just took a while.

Shark 12:02
You write a lot of great stories you write well, a lot of great stories. And I really enjoyed read a lot. And I thought of this question a few weeks ago when I read it. And it came early in the book as you talk about Alice Cooper, and where it started to sort of connect. And I think it's a little bit of what we think of was spectacles. But describe if you will, in your own words, what Alice Cooper did, which almost prevented him from playing at Wembley, before creating a massive spectacle that really is creating a lot of hype that the promoter did to create a lot of hype for his business.

Michael Schein 12:36
Yeah, so I love this story as well. Yeah. So Alice Cooper, which was the name of the band, not right, yeah, at the time he the singer took over the name, but the Alice Cooper band, they were like the first extremely theatrical rock band. And really the reason they became so theatrical, other than that was sort of their inclination was that their manager didn't really like their music. And he still Alice Cooper, the person's manager, so they had a tight bond. But the manager wanted almost saw it as a challenge. He wanted to promote them in spite of the fact that he wasn't a big fan of their music. So they collaborated to create this really theatrical presence over decapitations on stage, fake decapitations, all of this, the horror rock stuff that that they invented, and their manager Shep Gordon, his philosophy was that parents I mean, kids need to rebel at some point against their parents. So anything he could do to make parents hate Alice Cooper would make kids buy records. So that worked in the US, but they had trouble building a fan base in England, so he got them a gig at Wembley Arena, which is massive. But like two weeks before the show, they had only sold like 500 tickets, so it was going to be a fiasco. So what their manager Shep Gordon did was he commissioned he had a photo taken of Alice Cooper, you know, the singer, naked, with a snake draped over his groin, and had it blown up on a giant like a billboard, a full Billboard and mounted it to the back of a truck. Then he paid the driver to have the truck break down in rush hour at Piccadilly on Piccadilly Circus, which is like Times Square. It's the most trafficked area in London. So there was this giant, naked Alice Cooper in the middle of Piccadilly Circus at rush hour. So there were news helicopters flying over. People were going crazy that this is destroying the youth and this and that, and this is a disgrace. And so they sold out the arena and became one of the UK biggest acts and the idea is just beyond the spectacle in the theater. That's all very, very important. To to an extent, however, that us versus them thing people are just always looking To divide the find themselves against that is just one of if you read no other chapter or learn no other height principle that is the one that you need to learn.

Shark 15:09
Yeah, and it doesn't mean that everybody's gonna, you know, drape themselves with no oh around their groin that just thought it was incredibly interesting. Because when you think of so many people that are sort of rinse, wash, repeat with a lot of their strategy, and they don't get attention and wonder why. I mean, here it was music band, which a lot of bands were doing crazy stuff. But yeah, we're trying to look like the Beatles at the time or right like that. It's, it requires doing something different, which is, you know, pretty thoughtful. And I thought that was a really well done story. So had I

Michael Schein 15:41
want to bring up a point about that, just to chime in? Yeah, I think that's important. A lot of times what people say when they hear a story like that is they'll say to me, Well, that's a very entertaining story. But just what you said, I work in project management software, how am I supposed to do that? I just want to say that, I believe that in marketing, you start with the deep psychological principle. So I often start with an extreme example, to show the deep psychology. But you can distill that idea like in this case, the us versus them the picking fights, you can pick fights with an idea, you can say most project management software is too complex. And I believe in simplicity and and base camp did that. So this is not about learning how to be a flamboyant. lunatic. It's about understanding age old psychological principles before you pick which social media tool you're going to use. Exactly. Well, how

Shark 16:37
do you see the height then, in general, really applying as it relates to business? You know, if you're a solopreneur, or you own an agency or something like this, this makes perfect sense rock band, anything like that? If you're the marketing manager at a small to medium sized business, especially in the b2b space, what do you do with this kind of knowledge? How does somebody that's not the the front height, man, if you will take this and really leverage it? Yeah, no, it's

Michael Schein 17:04
a great question. It's an extension of what we were talking about before. So first, I should define hype, because usually people think of that, why did I pick hype, usually, people think of the word hype as a negative, you're like you're hyping something up that that is empty. The way I define hype, is any set of activities that drives intense emotion, to get people that where you're driving intense emotion to get people to do what you want them to do. And it might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing. And it happens in groups. That's what's different than persuasion, it's getting a group of people to have that emotion to move them in a certain direction. So let's use this example. So chef Gordon, his entire strategy for Alice Cooper was to pit Alice Cooper against parents, because human beings are attracted to contrary in arguments by nature, there's been a lot of scientific research done on we bond with other people strongly when we have something to be against that we're all against, rather than all being for the same thing. And you may think you're not like that you are, I assure you, and we can talk about why that is. But let's talk about a midsize b2b company Basecamp. So Basecamp is a project management tool, right? About as boring an industry as you can possibly get. It is a business to business tool that people use to organize their large scale corporate projects. Right. So how could those people hype things up?

Michael Schein 18:37
Well,

Michael Schein 18:39
they asked themselves the question the founders, these two gentlemen, what is a point of view in our industry that we are just fervently against? And they said, it's the idea, that complexity that when your clients say, jump, you say how high working around the clock that all of those things are necessary. They said not only are they not necessary, but they're damaging. So what they did was they wrote a book called rework that essentially said, fire your workaholic, streamline everything, do not respond to clients, when they tell you to do something, do what's best for them. It can wait till Monday, all of this kind of stuff. Now, why did they do that? Because their project management tool does about six things. It's the simplest tool in the market. And in the past, that would have been considered a negative because the status quo was to say that project management tools should do everything. But what they were saying is that that's not a good thing. Some project managing mentor should be radically simple for a radically simple workforce. And they blew up they don't sell to everybody. They're not as big as Salesforce, nor do they want to be Salesforce does everything, but they have diehard fans like evangelical fans, so and this is true for every height. strategy, it's human beings are more alike than they are different. We respond to the same stimuli the same way over and over again. And it's a code that you can crack it but the wrapping paper is is radically different. The products are radically different.

Shark 20:15
Do you think that hype basically requires, you know, can I use hype? slash marketing requires controversy? Because it's something you go into a little bit, and I'd love to know your viewpoint. You know, we talked about Donald Trump earlier. I mean, you wouldn't want to get into the political discussion necessarily. But you know, when you think of somebody like that, or Gary Vaynerchuk, I mean, these people create massive amounts of controversy, which creates a lot of the hype around them.

Michael Schein 20:40
I think controversy can be effective, but I don't think it's necessary. I think contrarian pneus is necessary, and I'm not splitting hairs. But what I mean by that is the stuff Donald Trump says it's just controversial, and whatever you think about him, there's no denying that he gets he's the most famous person in the history of the United States, maybe the world so he obviously is a good pipe artist. Um, contrary in this means something different contrary and mean, madness, in my mind means having a strong point of view. So we're the base camp guys controversial, not really, they're not going to be thrown out of high society for saying that. workplaces should be more streamlined as a perfectly respectable statement. But it's contrarian because they took a stand against the status quo of that world. So yes, I think a strong point of view is is pretty essential.

Shark 21:40
Well, I just there's so many examples, if you googling contrarian or googling, you know, the Alice Cooper picadilly. Or really just think about googling hype, tactics that can apply copywriting right so many examples. And you really go into each each one of there's 12 different principles in this book, one of the ones I wanted to jump in also was on chapter 10. You in the chapter I'll read you a quick passage, identify your own grand cause your own great drama, if one doesn't already exist, invented, this is the essence of theater. It's also the essence of hype. And I really love the the way that you package embracing theater and drama, talking about what that means to you is as you wrote through it. So

Michael Schein 22:25
this is another one of these things where Kagan in its most extreme form, it can be what we think of as theater lights and loud sounds. And a lot of people in a room if times were different, getting swept away by that group energy and that is effective. So in the business world, Amway are the masters at this, they have these these rallies, that get people worked up into a lather. And and you know, it's telling that Amway is products, I don't even know what they I wrote the book, and I forget what they're called. I mean, no one knows what their products are. But they're so successful, that they have an arena named after them. And that's because they get their sales people worked up into such a ladder, that these people buy inventory, sell inventory, and that's theater like that. Tony Robbins is his traditional theater, people. It's like a religious revival. However, theater is not just about that stuff. In fact, if you look at old theater, Greek theater, Shakespeare, there are no lights, there are hardly any prompts. But there's a story. There's drama, there's a protagonist, there's an antagonist, so everyone thinks they're the protagonist in their own story. And so, I use the example of Winston Churchill, if you listen to his radio speeches, British people were being bombed by the Nazis. And if they weren't killed, you would walk up to them and they'd be like, oh, we're cleaning up our yard after a bombing because he he just created this great struggle like the common British sweet stripper sweets, sweeper was a warrior, defending Liberty against the Nazi hordes. So it's good to think in terms of you're and you're not the protagonist, by the way, your customer is the protagonist. Every can customer you have is the hero in their own story. It's their movie, and the stuff you're selling them those are the tools to get where they want to go and they have all kinds of obstacles. So if you can create whatever it is, you're selling, as some lightsaber that lets every every schmo out there who thinks of themselves as Luke Skywalker, and I include myself in that category, then you'll go a long way.

Shark 24:42
So another chapter, chapter eight, make it scientific, I thought was really good because it's often that you don't really hear anybody discussing the scientific angle into a hype presentation. I thought it was funny because you reference Simon Sinek What did you see when looking at science is how it applies to Hi. It's said don't start with why it was too easy. Yeah, you know, I wish I would I thought, yeah. Why shark? Wow, I'm writing. It starts with how that's my I guess.

Michael Schein 25:18
Let's take Simon Sinek. Right Simon Sinek and empathy guy, not a science guy, okay? However, you look at him. And he always uses scientific terms to explain the most simple concepts. So they'll talk about the simplest thing. And a lot of it's valuable given it inspires people, whatever. But he'll make a comment about why, yes, starting with why, why we're purpose driven. And he won't just say, you know, start with why it's really important to have a purpose. He'll talk about the neuro epinephrine and the dopamine in your brain squirts on to the Did you know, he talks about all this brain research stuff. And he wears his little spectacles, his wire rimmed spectacles. And when I saw this guy, I thought he was a social scientist, or a college professor who just made it in this world. And then I found out his only experience before being this professional thought leader. He was an advertising man. So he knows that when you're selling ideas, you can say the same thing you can say, I mean, your grandpa will give you great advice. The other they'll say, Listen, I love what you do. If you don't have a reason for what you do Sunny, then you'll be really sad in your life. And you'll be less successful. No one's paying grandpa $150,000. Right. But if you add in epinephrine and dopamine, and the three prong structure and the triangle of this and the hat, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, suddenly, you're in demand. So the thing is, human beings are always looking for mental shortcuts. We don't have time and mental bandwidth. This is just evolutionary, I mean, I'm doing it myself science, you know, we're programmed by evolution to be efficient in our thinking. So if you hear an expert who has the right credentials, speaking, using charts and diagrams, and figures and eye candy and ear candy, what it says to your subconscious mind is this guy knows what he's talking about. He's an expert, I should listen to him or her. And it works better for simple and obvious ideas. If you're actually dealing with really scientific concepts and really hard stuff, you should actually simplify it a great, no, I

Shark 27:41
thought it was great, because it made me think of a lot of presentations I do at conferences as well, where, you know, you get up as a speaker, and you're really trying to connect emotionally, which is great. And a lot of that becomes how audiences look at you is are you entertaining, but entertainment aside, if you can back it up with some true science behind it, that's where it really where you hit that sweet spot to help them sort of reaffirm what they just heard was not crazy talk that, you know, was just made for Oprah's book club.

Michael Schein 28:09
So hold on. So look at the management consulting industry, right?

Shark 28:13
Yes. So to

Michael Schein 28:18
you with all due deference to my friends in this industry, you basically have a multi billion dollar industry where 23 year olds are being paid, or being or billing themselves out at $4,000 a day or whatever, to tell 55 year olds who have been doing a job for 30 years, how to do their job better. So I've seen some of the decks that these companies put out there. And they'll do a 50 page deck that has charts and figures and diagrams, and it's statistical analysis. And it basically will say, like, higher better, or do digital marketing.

Michael Schein 29:02
And if you

Michael Schein 29:03
get consultants drunk enough, they'll tell you, they call this stuff eye candy. They know what they're doing. They call it eye candy. It allows them to quadruple their rates.

Shark 29:15
When I think about the book, did you come to this book as a writer with a height mindset already ingrained in you? Or was this something you developed going through? Because having spoken with you before, I don't think of you as a height, man, that's not your personality? Like I think, as you said earlier, so much of the way we look at hype is the the Donald Trump's and the Gary Vaynerchuk and the flavor flavors and all these kind of folks. But you argue and articulated extremely well. And I was curious if this was something from a mindset standpoint, that you thought it's always been in you are something that you educated yourself on throughout this writing process.

Michael Schein 29:53
Yeah, a little of both. So no, it wasn't in me at all except for as an artist. It was I mean, I, I've always liked lowercase a art. I don't mean visual art, but books, music, whatever, that had an element of hype in it. I always liked the mischief makers in in art, rather than just someone who painted a pretty pretty picture like the Andy Warhol and the David Bowie's and whatever. However, no, I, in fact, that was why I started my business. And that was why I wrote the book, I was horrible at promoting myself. I am a people pleaser, I, it's not comfortable for me to ask for money. I'm sure you know, I'm a naturally terrible salesperson. I'm pretty good marketer, but a naturally terrible salesperson. However, what I did as the nerd I am was I said, this is a problem to be solved. So I said to myself, okay, is it that I cannot solve this stuff? Or is it that there are deep psychological principles that I can crack? And if there are psychological principles, and I can learn them from the people who do come to it naturally? Can I apply them ethically, because I didn't, I didn't leave my job to become a con artist. So So essentially, it's kind of like this. And I don't mean to compare myself to this, because I'm trying to do it for good. And I think what the people I'm about to discuss do is scummy. But there was this pickup artist community, you know that that guy Neil Strauss wrote the game about, and the people who were the best pickup artists, who systematically organized how to pick up women. They were almost to a one, horrible with women, because there were certain people a sizable percentage of the population, as evidenced by the 8 billion people on the planet, who are natural at getting the other gender to have sex with them. They just get it, they know how to do it. There are certain other people who feel awkward about that, and they don't understand it intuitively. However, there was this group of nerdy people who said, I also would like to be having sex. So they reverse engineered how the people who did it naturally did it. Now I didn't I don't think they went the extra step. If they didn't apply it ethically, they did some really nasty stuff. You know what I mean? But I think it was a little like that I had a few isolated incidents in my life, like with the band where I was good at drumming up attention. So I said, let's look at a Donald Trump, who, however you feel about him is just so natural, like getting attention. Well, let's look at but let's also look at Richard Branson, who's really natural at getting attention. Are there things that tie these people together? And can I learn them and dissect them because I want to give people like me, who aren't natural at this, but have awesome products and services, exactly the same tools that the scumbags come to naturally?

Shark 33:09
Well, and to the point earlier, that becomes how much of this comes naturally out of what's the quality of your music, your content, anything else versus the hype that goes around? possibly some best stuff? And I am what made me think about it. So as I was reading it, there's a friend that I know that's a leadership, motivational speaker, fantastic person, but not somebody if you knew this person outside of the persona, because it's there's a lot of hype behind them. They're hot mess. And it's, I find it very interesting then, and I just appreciate your honesty in it. Because there are a lot of people that are masters of hype and good for them. But it also can be a little bit dangerous. And I'm curious how you look at what is the bar that you want to set for measuring your hype? And the reason I say this is because that for so many people, when you look at Gary Vaynerchuk is perfect example, millions of millions of followers and fanatics. And for most people in their youth, you know, the early millennials and the Gen Z, it's really a pretty substantial thing to measure the number of followers rather than the quality of their content or who's actually buying from them.

Michael Schein 34:23
Whenever a new client comes to us, I always sit down with them myself. And I always start with desired outcomes, because it's not my place to say, but I question their outcomes. So people will often come to me and they'll say I want to do that social media thing. And it's usually not a millennial who says something like that. But what they're trying to say is I know I'm being left behind, there's a new world of marketing. I don't understand it, but I know I need this thing. And so I'll say well, if we're talking in in a couple years from now, or even one year, and everything has gone the way you wanted it to what does that look like? And they'll say, I want lots of followers. And I'll say, do you? Because if you really do, that's fine. But why? And what you'll often find is they don't want lots of followers, they want what they perceive that those followers can get them. And a lot of times, that's just simple, it's clients. But a lot of times, but sometimes it's not, sometimes they really, I mean, I, we had a client who had all the money that he needed, and he was in a phase where he wanted to make an impact. So it was important for him to have a following. So I think it's important to say, even if you're saying something like I need a book, I think it's important to say to yourself, what do I need? Why am I doing this? Like if you could get the same result with four followers that you could with a million followers, would you? would you do it? I would, because sometimes people it's funny, people will say to me, I'll be like, you know, I need all these followers, and I'll say, how much does your package go for? They're selling like a really big b2b tech package or consulting package. And they'll say $150,000 a package I said, so you need like, five sales this year? Why do you need a million Twitter followers of random people who don't have two pennies to rub together? Yeah, I'd rather you have 50 followers that are like

Shark 36:21
us anyway. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very interesting. Because you know, when you think of channels, I mean, one LinkedIn connection, that's a good connection is worth what 5000 Twitter followers that don't engage in any of your feed, or, you know, even Tick tock, you can get 10s of 1000s of followers on Tiktok. For most people, they haven't figured out how to translate that into any sort of business model. Other than just being a paid influencer. It depends on the business though, right? Like, if you're

Michael Schein 36:50 in the kind of business we're in, yeah, one LinkedIn followers absolutely worth more than that. But I have some friends from China who have a very successful business where they sell I write about them in the book, but they're personal friends of mine, and they sell like entrepreneurial courses, American style entrepreneur courses to Chinese people. And they've used the Chinese version of Tick Tock.

Shark 37:17
What is the effect the tick tock tick tock is Chinese by Oh,

Michael Schein 37:20
by but it's it's not it's like, it's not the same platform, it's owned by the same company. It's the same thing. But the Chinese, tic tock, and it's called something else in China. But the point is, they're selling a tiered kind, of course thing. So their first product is 45 bucks, it goes up to 150. Their top products are a couple 1000 bucks, but they need a huge deal flow to get the kind of numbers they need. And it's very systematic. So to them, it makes sense to have a lot of followers, it just depends.

Shark 37:53
Is it DOJ in DOJ and that that's, that's, you know, what it is, is a real value, obviously, to having social proofing, but I just find the Gary Vaynerchuk model interesting. And it's brilliant. for him. It is, as now an author of a book called The hype handbook. What hype Are you using to help promote the book? I mean, you're a musician.

Michael Schein 38:15
Well, I'll give you anything by you, someone you didn't I. So I mean, Now, again, let's define hype hype is not about being dishonest. It's not about not providing value. It's about driving emotion in a way that helps everybody The way I see it. You know, I wrote you an email that basically said, I wanted to profile you in an article of mine, which I do, because you're very good. But also, I put my book in front of you at the same time. And now I'm on your podcast. So what basically hat Now, I do want to write about you, I didn't reach out to you, because you weren't a good podcast. You're a fantastic podcast, there were many people I knocked off that list. But it falls into my secret society principle I gave you something of value true. And as a results I'm on your show. So I that that's one I mean, I've been doing everything to promote the book according to my high principles. And it actually it's been out for a day at the time of this recording and it's the number one new marketing book release so it has it

Shark 39:23
well I will tell you this, what really wasn't height to me that that got you at least on here. Or for me to say anything positive about sheets that you read wrote nearly 200 pages of a really good book lol Thank you. There's a lot of people who come to me seriously that bring their hype and telling me their pitch. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And so there's a lot of books that I've unfortunately read and then turned down not to be too picky but you know, I got to be interested in it really picky. Yeah, well, you just got to be interested in there's a lot of books that don't pique my interest in so this one thoroughly didn't a thoroughly I enjoyed reading it. It's very good be trading too. If you're spending any time it's at the beach, so I highly recommend it.

Michael Schein 40:06
And I just want to say to make this a love fest for a minute. Yeah, that that means a lot coming from you. It's a really, I really, really liked your show. And you've talked to some of the the some of the marketing writers out there who have written books that I've gotten a lot from that small circle, you've got the grades on there. So to be in that category really means a lot.

Shark 40:25
Oh, no, absolutely. And I sincerely mean it. Well, Mike, what do you do for fun? Nothing. Just for fun, um, yeah, you know, a lot,

Michael Schein 40:38
a lot of things. I mean, I have a 10 year old daughter, I actually enjoy hanging out with her. That's one thing. I like to read a lot. I know that doesn't sound like fun for a lot of people. But I like to read fiction. I just enjoy reading. I play a little bit of guitar. lately. I've been I write fiction. Lately, I've been I took up a martial art, which is funny, I took it up doring COVID. And I just needed something in my life like that. And I found the right seat who I said to her, you're probably not taking on new people. So since we can't touch hands is what they call sparring in my martial art Wing Chun. And she said, No, you know, you can learn a lot. So that's become really meaningful to me. Maybe the first time I get punched in the face, I'll feel differently. But something tells me I won't I'm really,

Shark 41:27
there's never a bad time to take up a martial artist, somebody who I've used the principles that I learned even as a toddler in martial arts to just the way to deal with a pandemic, and the self discipline and all the things needed to help get through pretty nutty times. I just won't be traveling to China, anytime to practice. kung fu but so one of the most important I

Michael Schein 41:48
want to say I'm amazed by the life lessons I'm learning Like I said, I mean it I feel like everything applies to life. I remember the first time I was learning seeing them cow, which is the I know, you know it, but it was the it's the foundational form of of this martial art. And it's hard to learn in the beginning, because there's a lot of parts, so I was just kind of going through it. And I said to my sifu, can I break it down into pieces? And she says, What do you think? And I said, Well, that's how I would do it. And she said, Listen, I don't want you going on YouTube and finding new stuff and moving ahead, but within the motions I'm giving you, you can learn them however you want. And that's such a great life lesson. It's like, here's the framework. But within that framework, you can play, you know, and do it your own way. And I just I keep finding things like that over and over again in this thing.

Shark 42:40
Well, kung fu with dummy will help you get through a lot of frustration. I like the one in dummy. I'm not up to it yet, but I can't wait to do that. Alright, well, a question I asked everybody. Since you're on a shark's perspective, I literally almost said a shark detective. That'd be a good ad that your shark or a shark detect. Exactly. So my question is all my guests on the sharks perspective is what is your favorite kind of shark and why? I like

Michael Schein 43:06
that Hammerhead because I mean, it's amazing to me that evolution or creation or whatever you believe in created something that looks like that. That thing is an amazing creature. It's

Shark 43:17
they're absolutely beautiful. And I actually hope to see another one or a few of them in just under two weeks now. So on another dive. All right, Mike, it's a special time the show. How are you ready for the five most interesting, important questions that you're going to be asked today? I hope so. Alright, number one. David Bowie or Alice Cooper, you write about both of them alive really was never

Michael Schein 43:42
done by but but but he is my favorite human being of all time. Really. As a person, he's the most creative, interesting human being that I just admired him so much.

Shark 43:54
Well, I will say I was never a Bowie fan of his music. But I liked reading in the book. I didn't know that he was a saxophone player. And that was his true passion. He was not the guy you would think of as a you know, the less dance guys a saxophone player. Alright, well,

Michael Schein 44:10
it's hard to say that you're not a fan of his music because his whole thing was that he would basically make an album invented genre and then move on. I mean, the guy like Ziggy Stardust is like there's one Ziggy Stardust song that like every Ramones song came from then let's dance is totally different. Lowe is totally different. So they're like 10 David Bowie albums and I don't really care for but the ones that I love or like my favorite albums,

Shark 44:35
yeah, no, not me. I like dance and I love under pressure. That was that the two ready wrote under pressure but they were they were brilliant together. Alright, number two, DJ Khaled or flavor flyff to amazing hype man.

Michael Schein 44:54
All right, public enemy is like my favorite hip hop group. So I got to pick flavor flavor, because they're just from from just a pure rap perspective, I'm a huge fan of theirs so well and

Shark 45:03
they said don't believe the hype is a sequel. So

Michael Schein 45:05
Exactly. I mean, I basically named the book after one of their songs.

Shark 45:09
Okay, so number three is sort of a little bit of a twist on that. Hip hop and rap music. Which I'll say early rap in the hip hop era. Or punk music.

Michael Schein 45:21
I mean, punk I mean, punk is my favorite. I mean, my whole aesthetic is punk even like the rock music I like because I have broad musical tastes like I like the early Beatles better than then the late Beatles because it's more stripped down and just I just feel like the punk thing has informed everything I've done it just the Do It Yourself elements of it. The Miss GVS elements of it, it was actually very arty music. It people think of it as like boneheaded. But it wasn't at all. So I think that aesthetic just informed every single thing I do.

Shark 45:56
Fair enough. All right, number four, your comic book guy as well. So I know this. Marvel, or DC.

Michael Schein 46:03
Really weird. I like DC better. I was the only kid in my school. Who who was into comics who liked DC. I don't know why I know. Yeah, I know that Marvel had the more complex stories and all this but I just something about DC was more readable to me. But now I look back. I mean, DC did watchmen DC did a lot of really interesting stuff that dark night when I was a kid, which was, you know, in the reading comics in the late 80s. So yeah, well, I like DC Mark

Shark 46:34
DC had the superfriends on and so I that's maybe where I came to it. I did like you were always interesting look at comics with what with the exception of Batman, what were what were the ones with natural powers versus in DC versus the ones in Marvel, who gained it through some sort of scientific experiment or something. And that's there's a point. And yeah, to me on that. So that could be some sort of inner psyche subconscious thing to that is so interesting. That's true. Well, spider man. Oh, man, all of them hope they all came through some sort of via Captain America, Captain America, they all came through some sort of science exploration, the only ones in DC in DC

Michael Schein 47:18 Green Lantern was given his ring by an alien. How Jordan

Shark 47:23
wouldn't necessarily call that scientific.

Michael Schein 47:25
They weren't scientific. No, it was usually it was more like mist of gold or science fiction. But yeah,

Shark 47:31
but Cyborg I was gonna say is really the only one that was created. Other than Batman and Batman, you could say he was using his natural ability. Cyborg was the only one in the DC world that really was heavily using a lot of tech and things giving to them. But everybody on the Marvel side was a scientific production, if you will, and everybody on the DC side were exceptional Batman was born. And then Superman, you know, when you stripped everything away, he was a complete alien.

Michael Schein 48:01
J was an alien. That's who he was. And it's, you know, this speaks to a deeper point that one day if I if I had another kind of career or writing topic, I am really fascinated by why people like what they like and what it says about them. I just always wonder you form these tastes right? And then why do you love what you love and other people don't and and what does that say about you? I just would love to explore that someday. A lot of bad dark places probably first probably for certainly for me. I mean, if that's if you've looked at what I like, that's most certainly true.

Shark 48:36
Well, number five, this is a very dark Question number five and the most important question that you're going to be asked biscuits or cornbread, corn bread. That was the easiest one for you to answer. I really ly like cornbread combos really good. Well, Mike, where can people find out more about you, the agency the practice, keep up with your thought leadership reading grab a copy of the book and more.

Michael Schein 49:00
Sure, well, I'm gonna throw a lot out there and I know people probably won't be listening to a podcast with a pen so I'm sure

Shark 49:06
they're on that I'll put them in the notes. Yeah. But um, yeah,

Michael Schein 49:10
so the book is obviously it's awesome if you can get to a bookstore but that's not happening as much these days. So it's an all the typical places Amazon or Barnes and Noble online all those outlets. You know, my company is micro fame media. It's micro fame. media.com. I have an author page, Michael F. Shine, calm, spelled weirdly s ch AI n. And actually one of the things I do that I have the most fun with. I have been researching this stuff for a long time. And in doing so I read books that are that are weird, but entertaining in their own way. So I'll read biographies of some of these hype artists, strange old crowd psychology books, a very far cry from the typical marketing books or business books. So I started to I would round those off And send them out. And it's become a community we call by book club people go back and forth with me and other members on email. We have a lot of fun with that. So if you're interested in that it's highbreed.com slash list.

Shark 50:14
Well, Mike, thank you again for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Michael Schein 50:18
Thanks, Shark. It was such an absolute pleasure.

Shark 50:26
So there was my conversation with Michael shine a writer, speaker, founder of Microsoft, a media hype artist, and the author of the hype handbook. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Shark 50:38
First, love the example he brings up early in the book about Alice Cooper in creating that us versus them. This is such a great tactic for looking at differentiation. So many people in companies compare and copy, not enough create their own uniqueness. And that is not meant to only literally be us versus them, but also not doing enough of that differentiation. Love the comparisons to music. So few people and artists create their own categories of music, like Bowie did, let them try to copy you and not the other way around. And to do that you don't even have to wrap a snake around yourself like Alice Cooper did, you might have to go shark diving like I do, though.

Shark 51:13
Second, really enjoy his definition of hype and so many examples of high partisan definitions for each of them. Each one of them created a set of activities that have given a group of people something to do and act upon whether you think of it is Tony Robbins, Gary Vee Donald Trump or any of the people he mentioned throughout the book, really take a moment to think about what makes them such powerful orators and hype artists. They speak well, but they all in different ways, leverage hype to make people take real action, and it's really worth the study.

Shark 51:44
Third, many thanks to Michael in Psychology Today, who featured me in a write up for best podcasts for business leaders, very humbling and I'll admit that I could do a lot more to you know, hype myself. His book is a great Guide to Understanding the science behind a lot of this it's an excellent read that I enjoyed at the beach when hanging out before a diving trip.

Shark 52:03
Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at asharksperspecitve dot com. Thank you again for the privilege of your time, and in the immortal words of flavor flavor. Don't believe the hype is a sequel and join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.
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