h y p e a r t i s t s w i t h m i c h a e l f. s c h e i n

EPISODE 65

Hype Artists with Michael F. Schein

SEE THE SHOW NOTES AT: jenlehner.com/065

[00:05.010] - Gary Vee Hey, guys, it's Gary Vaynerchuk, and you're listening toThe Front Row Podcast with our girl, Jen.

[00:13.770] - Jen Lehner Our guest today is president of MicroFame Media, amarketing agency that specializes in making idea-basedcompanies famous in their fields. Some of his clients haveincluded eBay, Magento, LinkedIn and Citrix. His writinghas appeared in Fortune, Forbes, Inc, Psychology Todayand Huffington Post. And he's a speaker for internationalaudiences spanning from the northeastern United Statesto the southeastern coast of China.

[00:42.870] - Jen Lehner His book, The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable SuccessSecrets from the World's Greatest Propagandist, SelfPromoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and BoundaryBreakers, published by McGraw-Hill appears, everywherebooks are sold. Welcome, Michael F. Schein.

[01:01.440] - Michael F. Schein Well, thank you for having me, Jen. This is such apleasure.

EPISODE 65: Hype Artists with Michael F. Scheinjenlehner.com/065

http://jenlehner.com/065

https://jenlehner.com/065

[01:05.400] - Jen Lehner OK, so I told you at our little pre-chat how much I enjoyedyour book. It was really fantastic. Again, it's called TheHype Handbook, so we got to start right there. What isyour definition of hype?

[01:20.150] - Michael F. Schein So my definition of hype is pretty neutral, it's I just definehype as any set of activities that get a large number ofpeople emotional so that they'll take an action in somedirection that you want them to go. So that can be a verynegative action.

[01:37.250] - Michael F. Schein That can be a very positive action. It can be a completelyneutral action. But it's just based on the idea that humanbehavior is what human behavior is and people react incertain ways to certain stimuli and the morality hasnothing to do with it. Now, what you choose to do withhype is really up to you and your set of values. But Idefine it in a very amoral way.

[02:00.870] - Jen Lehner Well, most people do think of hype as negative, especiallycoming off of the last four years. Why do you think it'simportant for good people to learn hype?

[02:14.790] - Michael F. Schein We know how political can we get here? I mean, I guessit's no secret what my politics are the last four years, youknow, I disliked Donald Trump a lot, and that's putting itmildly. I thought he was bad for the country.

[02:26.850] - Michael F. Schein And actually, very early on know I have this habit ofreading very weird books about crowd psychology andbiographies of really strange characters. So I was on abusiness trip and it was one of the earliest, earliestdebates, like when Trump was going against 17Republicans and very few people thought he would win.And I was reading this book at the time called "TheCrowd" by Gustave Le Bon, which is from like 1895. Thisguy had seen the Paris Commune burn Paris to theground and wanted to figure out how crowds respondirrationally to certain types of words and messages.



[03:05.070] - Michael F. Schein And I was kind of like flipping through this book. Prettynerdy, I know, but also watching Trump. And I'm tellingyou, I was like, this guy will probably win the election. AndI came home to my like Crunchie, you know, yuppieLiberal friends and was like, you know, I think this guy hasgot a shot.

[03:25.620] - Michael F. Schein And they were like laughing at me and he won. So that'snot to say that I have some insight that other peoplecouldn't have, it's just that what human beings respond tohas been repeated over and over in history. We thinkwe're all individuals and we're all very much more alikethan we are different. We don't see the world accurately.We respond emotionally.

[03:48.670] - Michael F. Schein So, you know, the bad guys get it. And there are reasonsthat sociopaths and narcissists are more likely tounderstand how to get crowds whipped up into a frenzyand get them to do what they want. It's not the hype itselfis bad. It's that they're bad and they don't let emotion getin the way. They're detached. So the bad guys get it. Theydon't need teaching and what I struggle with is how somany people with great ideas and great causes and greatbusinesses are so reluctant to embrace the reality of howhuman nature works in human psychology.

[04:25.450] - Michael F. Schein That it was so important to me after that to make the casethat the good guys, quote unquote, availing yourself ofhype isn't just something you should do to make moremoney, but it's almost amoral imperative because weneed more good people getting their messages out therein a compelling way.

[04:42.160] - Jen Lehner Right. And you said in the epilogue of your book, whatyou just said now is that unfortunately, more more badpeople than good people are good at this because theykind of tend to be like sociopaths. So they don't reallyhave an emotional reaction of thinking, oh, you know,they don't really have that gut check. Whereas we regularpeople do so in this book, what I think you've done sowell is you've given us like some actual examples of



people good and bad throughout history with like reallybringing in great anecdotes and stories from the artscene, the music scene, ancient history back into biblicaltimes.

[05:26.060] - Jen Lehner And I just love it. But then at the end of every chapter, youreally break down. I mean, it's just a solid marketing book,but you break down some very doable, smart strategiesthat the everyday Joe can take away to sort of do a betterjob at typing themselves, I guess.

[05:46.470] - Michael F. Schein Yeah, that was it, I mean, when I got interested in thissubject. I asked myself a really key question and I wasn'tsure of the answer before I started researching it and thequestion was is this thing that I'm calling hype, this abilityto get large numbers of people emotional in order to getthem to buy whatever you're selling? Is that inherentlymalevolent? Is that inherently a negative thing to do?Does it have to rely on deception? Does it have to rely onessentially conning people, and if it did, I wanted nothingto do with it, not not just because I'm saying that andbecause we're in a public format here, but because I haveleft a job where part of the reason I left is I didn't feel like Iwas contributing enough to society.

[06:45.070] - Michael F. Schein And so I wasn't going to leave that job and then typemyself up and hype my business up in a way that didn'tfeel like it was making society better. I just wouldn't havedone it. I would have done something else.

[06:57.880] - Michael F. Schein However. I was also open to the possibility that thestrategies when you stripped away the content, theunderlying strategies were just based on the fact thathuman beings process information in certain ways andthat they want to be part of something bigger thanthemselves and that they look for transcendence. And Ifound out that was very much the case. I mean, that thesestrategies were universal, that they could be done withoutlying, that they could be done without deception.



[07:29.770] - Michael F. Schein And in fact, when done right, they actually add color tothe world. So, I mean, a lot of the people from rock androll and hip hop and, you know, are those are people whowear Andy Warhol, David Bowie, the hype and the art areone in the same. The art wouldn't be as good without thehype. And so not only did I become very comfortable withit, it became so interesting to me that you could actuallyreverse engineer these principles and that it didn't onlywork for the David Bowie and Andy Warhol, but that acompany like Base Camp, which is a project managementsoftware, the most boring industry you could think of,quite literally used the same underlying principles that anAndy Warhol used, but with very different content andbuilt the same kind of cult around their product.

[08:18.900] - Michael F. Schein And they didn't need to wear silver wigs or, you know,drape their offices in tin foil.

[08:25.440] - Jen Lehner But they did, like, take a bold stance. And that's whereyour journey starts in the book, where you kind of cameout against, like one of the most well-known modern dayhype men of our time, Mr. Vaynerchuk.

[08:42.390] - Michael F. Schein Hi, Gary.

[08:43.500] - Jen Lehner Yeah. And so can you tell us about that story and what allhappened.

[08:49.450] - Michael F. Schein You know, I'm really proud of myself because I've gottento the point in my career where whoever I talk to, even if Idon't know them and even if they haven't read my book, ifthey're in this world of like marketing and media andcontent knows that I'm like some sort of anti-GaryVaynerchuk. So that says something about how I've usedmy own medicine.

[09:10.360] - Michael F. Schein That being said, I really, really think Gary Vaynerchuk is astellar business person. just want to put that out there.Sometimes that gets confused. But in particular, I thinkwine library TV and wine library, his first business was a



fantastic business that delivered immense amounts ofvalue and was a brilliant marketing campaign.

[09:31.510] - Michael F. Schein So yeah, I used to write for Inc magazine and. I was at apoint where I was a freelance copywriter, that's how Imade my living and I wasn't doing very well. I mean, I waskind of trying to market myself the old fashioned waybecause I had 10 years of corporate life. It's like boiled myspirit out of me. So I had been doing that.

[09:53.620] - Michael F. Schein And then I just sort of got back in touch with mymischievous past and decided I was going to just not careanymore. I didn't have much to lose. I was going to saywhat I really thought that was going to be a little bit punkrock in my approach. And, you know, whatever happened,happened. And I was selling something at the time. I wasselling a type of content writing that was I was producinglots of articles for people using a systematic approach.

[10:18.070] - Michael F. Schein And they were actually good articles. They weren't likecontent mill kind of stuff. And I really believe that youcould do that. And I was proven right that you could dothat and generate a lot of visibility using systems, not justdoing social media yourself all the time, and Gary, bigmessage at that time was this idea of hustle that if you'renot and this is from him, if you're not tweeting from thetoilet at three o'clock in the morning, then you're notworking hard enough and you're not going to besuccessful.

[10:49.410] - Michael F. Schein And I thought that was not smart. Actually, I thought it wasvery smart that he was selling that idea. I think it madehim a lot of money. I didn't think it was good advice for allthe young people. I didn't see that many millionaires whowere following that advice coming from Gary's advice, theperson I saw getting richer was Gary.

[11:09.630] - Michael F. Schein So I wrote an article about that and it was called WhyGary Vaynerchuk Is Flat Out Wrong. And what was reallycool about it and terrifying was that Gary himself, the



great man himself, responded to little old me. And it reallywas a little old me at the time.

[11:26.280] - Michael F. Schein I was really, really unknown at that time and used myname and railed against me. And it was the beginning ofmy career, my new career. I mean, that fight that I pickedwith him and the fact that he responded so vehementlythat I did hit a nerve. It just the more his followers hatedme, the more people who thought the way I thought butdidn't have a leader to solidify around became fans ofmine. And to this day, I mean, I have a lot of fans of mywriting that ultimately became book buyers.

[11:59.040] - Michael F. Schein And it all started there so that having we form tribes muchmore readily by what we're against than what we're for.

[12:07.950] - Jen Lehner Right. And you talk about that as a tactic or a strategy thatpeople can use to grow their audience and elevate theirvisibility or whatever, and sort of planting your flag in theground. And you give a lot of examples of that. And that'sreally what I love about the book because, yeah, youknow, Gary Vaynerchuk and Richard Branson and allthese people are so visible. But it's like, how does theinsurance agent go? Right. Like what?

[12:39.490] - Jen Lehner What does he do? You know? And so I would ask you, likewhat I mean, and I hate to put you on the spot, but whatwould that insurance salesperson do to maybe put theirflag in the ground and be a little bit controversial?

[12:52.980] - Michael F. Schein Well, I mean, for me to answer that, I would have to talk tothat specific insurance salesman. So I'll answer that in twoways. I'll tell you the kinds of questions that I would askthat insurance salesman, and then I'll return to thatexample of base camp, because I think you're usinginsurance salesman as the example of a very brass tax.Not always exciting industry, right? Exactly.

[13:12.840] - Michael F. Schein Yes. So, yeah, I mean, when I work with clients, weworked this out before we do anything. So I'll ask twoquestions. And I talk about this in the book.



[13:21.840] - Michael F. Schein I say to whoever I'm talking to often the owner of thepractice, sometimes a high level executive.

[13:29.940] - Michael F. Schein I'll say what is a point of view in your corner of theuniverse that you absolutely hate, but that's promoted asgospel. And then sometimes they'll give me a verysurface level answer and I'll stop them and I'll say no.What is something that you hear people saying over andover again presenting as the way business needs to getdone in your world, that you hear it and you secretlydespise and then they go off on their soapbox. And thatreveals a lot, because you can say to somebody, I mean, Idon't know what the answer would be an insurance, butyou could say to somebody, what's what's something youbook?But why are you great at insurance?

[14:07.890] - Michael F. Schein Well, we give you the most fantastic service andpremiums are low with excellent coverage. That's nice.Fantastic. We're people oriented. People first, you andeverybody else. Right. But what if you say what's the pointof view that you hate? What if someone if they really gethonest and they say something like, you know, everyonesays that whole life is better because it's an investmentand that you shouldn't do term life.

[14:37.380] - Michael F. Schein But whole life is one of the worst possible investmentsyou could do. And you're actually hurting your family byusing insurance as an investment vehicle. I don't know if Ibelieve this.

[14:47.010] - Michael F. Schein I'm just saying that's a really unusual, weird point of viewthat most people don't have. Now we have something towork with. Imagine going out there and saying I'm the antiinsurance started out as this thing that people use toprotect their families. And now because of tax treatment,people are using it as an investment vehicle. And as aresult, X percent of people go broke before they can everprotect their families and don't actually protect theirfamilies the more insurance they have.



[15:14.220] - Michael F. Schein With our program, we use term life to get back toinsurance to where it was or something like that. Right.Suddenly you've got a battle on your hands becausethere are a lot of people vested in the whole life industryright now.

[15:28.770] - Michael F. Schein This might seem. Very boring and in the weeds, and I'mmaking it up as I go along, but if you're in that world thatgets heated very quickly and now you have something tosay.

[15:40.360] - Jen Lehner Yeah, no, I love it, you did a good job there on the spotlike that, so I've been toying with the thought myself andthat is a lot of the people in my audience are coaches,authors, coaches, subject matter experts, course creators.

[15:53.680] - Jen Lehner And it's very female dominated, at least my my world.Right. And. I mean, everybody uses the termheart-centered business, heart-center femaleentrepreneurs, right. And I don't know if Marie Forleo wasthe first person to coined this phrase. It's the first place Iremember seeing it. And I remember thinking that it wasso smart. It was such a smart term to sort of call out to sayit says so much in that. Right.

[16:17.180] - Jen Lehner Like a more about, you know, the service that I'mproviding, not about the money. You know, that this is somuch bigger than the money and there's so much impliedin that. But now it's for me, it's taken a turn that is soannoying to me. I'm so sick of seeing it because I thinkwe've gotten away from the fact that we had businessesto make money. It's OK to make money. Not only is it OKto make money, it's necessary.

[16:41.480] - Jen Lehner And also it's fun. And like I have been thinking aboutdoing something like that, maybe a little bit afraid to justmake everybody mad who is on their about page thatthey work with heart-centered entrepreneurs.

[16:55.460] - Michael F. Schein I think it's a great idea. I mean, I hear I'll talk to people likepotential clients and they'll say to me, I'll say to them,



what are your, I ask this question that basically tells me topaint a picture for the next year or three years, like whatdoes other success look like?

[17:12.080] - Michael F. Schein And they never talk about money. They'll always say inorder to expand the conversation. And I'm not making funof my clients, but it's like we're in business. We're notrunning a non-profit. So I'll say to them, listen, I get that.I'm like you said, you don't care about how much youmake.

[17:30.350] - Michael F. Schein And it turns out their goals are all about money. They'reembarrassed to say it. I mean, it's crazy. We're like inbusiness and we're afraid to talk about money.

[17:39.800] - Jen Lehner I know everybody tiptoes around it and we're all using theword impact like this impact.

[17:46.820] - Michael F. Schein That's what they say. That's what I meant. That's what theyalways say. And I'm like, no, you don't. I mean, sure youdo. But like, really, that's your goal to expand your impact.

[17:55.970] - Jen Lehner Right. And ideally, you're doing a thing that you love, thatlike inherently that's built into the mix, that you're going tomake an impact because. Right. And so, yeah. So it's OKto, like, say that you want to make money, so. Yeah. Allright. Well, I plan to do you know what though?

[18:13.160] - Michael F. Schein I want to say something about that. Yeah. So Marie, forLeo, she was the one who did it.

[18:17.210] - Jen Lehner Yeah.

[18:17.510] - Michael F. Schein You know in nineteen. I don't know. Sixteen, I don't know.1990. Whenever right after the Second World War if youtook a canva of the First World War, I'm sorry if you took acanvas and drew a bunch of cubes and squares andtriangles and showed that in a gallery there would beriots, people would write about that in the newspaperforever because it was so, it had so much to say. It was



about civilization didn't mean anything any more becauseof the chaos and slaughter.

[18:51.260] - Michael F. Schein It was the photography made and movies made,representing images useless. And it was so important.Abstract art and cubism. Now go to any interior decoratorand they're going to slap some weird, horrible abstract arton the wall as part of the wallpaper.

[19:10.310] - Michael F. Schein It's completely anodyne and meaningless. Now, if youpainted something lifelike, it would be more rebellious,you know, so people forget about the context. They seesomebody who was successful with a message whenwhoever it was, Marie, Forleo said heart-based coaching.That's because all of the coaches then were executivecoaches and it was all very cold and finance-oriented.

[19:34.130] - Michael F. Schein And yeah, like the world isn't black and white, eventhough it's good to communicate in black and whiteterms, people just forget about the context.

[19:42.260] - Michael F. Schein They just kind of follow their herd. But in this way, that likeif I follow the Marie Forleo blueprint, it'll work and theyforget that. If the fight's already been won, there's nothingnew for you to say, why are you in business if everyone'salready into heart centered leadership, that we needsomeone else saying that?

[20:04.130] - Jen Lehner Well, everybody is saying it right.

[20:05.840] - Michael F. Schein So it's useless to say that, you know,

[20:09.030] - Jen Lehner It becomes invisible on the page. It's lost all of itswhatever. So, OK, I'm glad we solved that problem.

[20:17.560] - Michael F. Schein Yeah. You owe me a plate of French fries.

[20:21.830] - Jen Lehner You got it. I actually make very good French fries. Youhave an air fryer.

[20:26.120] - Michael F. Schein Um, do I. I don't know.



[20:28.970] - Jen Lehner As soon as we finish this interview, you have to go andget an air fryer. Oh my God.

[20:34.570] - Michael F. Schein I might do that. I've been cooking a lot during thispandemic, so I might I might do that.

[20:39.020] - Jen Lehner You're also a health conscious person, I think. Right,because you talk about self- regulation.

[20:43.070] - Michael F. Schein Yeah. Although I fell apart during the pandemic, I'm prettyhealth conscious, but I can't say that I was as good as Iused to be during this. Yeah, I mean, the the plague 15 orwhatever they're calling it.

[20:55.310] - Jen Lehner Yeah, me too. So go get the air fryer it helps. It's the firststep to your way back. OK, let's see you talk aboutperfecting your packaging, which I loved this because youtalked about something that really puzzles me is you talkabout Zoom backgrounds and how like if you're going toshow up for and we're all on Zoom now and like you'vegot like yesterday's lunch, sitting in the corner or somelaundry, but really I don't ever see that. But what I do seeis that poor lighting, it just doesn't look, it doesn't lookwhat you're like, what you're trying to present.

[21:36.620] - Jen Lehner So if you're trying to present yourself as this, you know, Idon't know, polished together person and you're like,look, it's important to keep that in mind the packaging, butthen you give a lot of good examples of companies andpeople who have done that. Well, can you share some ofthat? I mean, I probably you maybe you don't evenremember, like, what's in that?

[21:56.560] - Michael F. Schein Oh, no. I remember it really well. In fact, to me, packagingis much more than what people take it as. You know, whatyou said is part of it. But those are like table stakes. Imean, if you have a video business and your lightingstinks, you know, that's like coming in your sweatpantsright to a meeting. However, I see packaging as different



than that. To me, it's almost like creating on purpose acaricature of yourself.

[22:29.440] - Michael F. Schein So so like. What you'll often see is people. They're tryingto present this unified version of themselves, so let's sayMarie Leo does this really well, right?

[22:44.600] - Michael F. Schein So let's say she pioneered the heart-centered leadershipstuff. But if you came to her Zoom meeting, it lookedperfectly polished in the background, but it was allchrome, silver and white. She was wearing a very sterilesort of business suit, you know what I mean? She had avery, like, corporate kind of face. Then when she did atalk, she read from her notes. In other words, packaging isthat if you stand for something, everything you do needsto be aligned with that.

[23:18.110] - Michael F. Schein And a lot of times it's to be found in your weaknesses, likeAndy Warhol was a perpetually or a pathologically shyperson, and he used that to his benefit. Whenever hetalked to the press, he would give these enigmatic one ortwo word answers. These tidbits like even in the future,everyone will have their 15 minutes before him. Peoplewould go on and on and on. He would try to say as littleas possible and let people fill in the blanks.

[23:46.760] - Michael F. Schein No one really knew what that meant at the time, you knowwhat I mean? We've interpreted it a million ways. So it's afunction of like figure out what your persona is out in themarketplace and embody that all the time. For manyyears, you never saw a kiss without their makeup. Theywere never photographed once throughout the entire1970s without their makeup. I mean, think about that featto the point where when they finally took their makeupoff, it was this big public event that means they werewearing their armor and their makeup when they went tothe convenience store like they were neverphotographed without the make up.

[24:28.160] - Jen Lehner And also, you talk about like so in this persona, you we allhave weird things or things about ourselves that are very



imperfect and we have things that well, like. Well, like youwere talking about Andy Warhol being very soft spoken,very, very thin, and so he just decided to go all in on that.

[24:50.780] - Michael F. Schein He was balding. So he put a silver wig on his head thatattracted attention to itself that everyone knew was fake.You could have had a cheesy toupee or thinning hair, buthe turned that into. When you think of Andy Warhol, whatdo you think of a silver wig? You don't even people whodon't even know what his face looked like know thatsilver wig.

[25:08.560] - Jen Lehner Yeah, it became iconic.

[25:10.060] - Michael F. Schein Yeah, you want to become iconic. That's a great word.That's exactly it. You want to become like the AlfredHitchcock sketch that like, you know, that little like thebelly and the face. You just want. You almost want tobecome a symbol with a few key signifiers that anyonecan identify you by. I mean, when I think of Marie Forleomaybe I'm thinking of the wrong person, but I think of pinkand like bubblegum kind of.

[25:36.430] - Jen Lehner Maybe it's a boy. But but I mean, that's close enough. It's avery light, happy, fresh vibe.

[25:43.570] - Michael F. Schein That's my point. There was much more to her. Yes. Andshe's a brilliant woman and I'm sure she's an insanelyshrewd business person. So she could have easily notuse that persona. But she knew that a certain type ofwoman was her target market. She probably is bubbly bynature, you know. And so everything about her to thecasual onlooker screams that thing.

[26:11.200] - Michael F. Schein Right. And that's very important, people are veryinconsistent with their packaging and they think that ifthey have a good logo and a good website and wear ablazer to meetings, that they've been packaged properly.And it's so much more than that for sure.



[26:24.160] - Jen Lehner Well, you talk about becoming a magist. Is that magazineImagists?

[26:27.700] - Michael F. Schein I even struggle. I was listening to an audio book with thatword the other day and they said, Magist.

[26:32.200] - Jen Lehner So I'm not even sure we'll become magic. Yes, exactly.OK, so so I love this might have been my favorite part ofthe book. So you bring Buddy the Elf in hand. And I waslike, that is just the most perfect example when you talkabout that.

[26:48.430] - Michael F. Schein Yeah. So people are really attracted to other people whothey perceive as being a larger than life and no one isperfect. But we see certain people as almost gods. Solike, I don't know Tony Robbins. Right. He apparentlyspeaks from stage for eight hours without a break. So thatseems superhuman. Or Richard Branson, who traversesthe Atlantic in a hot air balloon and almost dies andpeople are attracted to that.

[27:21.610] - Michael F. Schein So if you're saying to yourself, well, I'm not going to dothat. I'm not going to I'm not that person and most of usaren't. I'm not even sure Tony Robbins and RichardBranson are because they're very good hype artists. Sowhat do you do? Well, it's something that I call personalarbitrage. So. So basically. All of us are good at things thatin our own circles or in one circle is pretty commonplace,but in another circle might be considered veryastounding.

[27:53.400] - Michael F. Schein So I use the buddy, the elf thing. So in the beginning ofthat movie, he's in the North Pole for for the nine peopleleft on the planet who don't know about that movie. He's ahuman being who snuck into Santus bag and basicallygets raised by the elves at the North Pole. So he'sworking at the workshop and he's working on sketches.And they're basically like, how many did you finish today?And I'm going to get the numbers wrong.



[28:15.750] - Michael F. Schein He looks down really embarrassed and he's like, seventyfour like, oh gosh. Said Well meaning like he did a horriblejob. He only did seventy four Etch a sketch from scratch inone day. Right. And so he's a horrible elf, he's very slow.Other people are doing two hundred sketches in an hourand then he goes to the human world and he is like aphenom. He decorates the inside of Macy's like, like amagical wonderland.

[28:41.370] - Michael F. Schein Overnight he throws snowballs like Superman and knockskids down from a mile away. And I've seen it soundsridiculous, but I've seen this in real life. So I have thesefriends who I write about in the book, these domain nameSeabourne and Zugzwang, and they're Chinese businesspeople who grew up half of their lives in the UnitedStates.

[29:03.900] - Michael F. Schein So they understand American culture and theyunderstand Chinese culture and they're sellinginformation products that are supposed to teach Chineseentrepreneurs how to sort of embrace American styleentrepreneurship, which is still seen as more advanced, atleast for now.

[29:23.100] - Michael F. Schein So. When Xiu made a little bit of money, he bought aCorvette, now a Corvette is a really nice car, but it's not aLamborghini and it's not a Ferrari. It's a nice sports car.They look really cool, but it's a fraction of the cost of aLamborghini or even a Porsche.

[29:42.160] - Michael F. ScheinBut in China, that car is almost nonexistent, even more so than Ferraris and Lamborghinis. It just

they don't exist there and they look great. So we took apicture of himself with a Corvette and the level of successthat people perceived him at because he had this exoticcar was even more than if he had bought a Ferraribecause it was so exotic and it made him look like SteveJobs. Right. So what you want to do is think about theworld you want to be in.



[30:14.170] - Michael F. Schein And is there a skill set or personality trait? You have thatin one realm it's not a huge deal, but in another realm itwould be a big deal. So let's say you're a literary agentand you just happen to be amazing with fixing anything,fixing engines, building computers from scratch. If youwere working in the I.T. space, that's not a big deal. Butmost literary type people aren't good at that kind of stuff.So you can become sort of the the engineer, you know,the literary agent engineer.

[30:43.600] - Michael F. Schein You could become the Mr. Fix it or Ms. Fix it of that world.You can use that to somehow be seen as larger than life.And you'll be amazed. I mean, you'll be amazed at how alot of times the things that we think are no big deal areexactly the place where we can really build our perceivedheroism around.

[31:03.790] - Jen Lehner Right, and also how we talk about our magic. So I lovethis, I'm just going to read straight from the book you saidthe number one difference between magicians likeBranson that went across or you have Richard Branson,Richard Branson, I always like will say Russell Brand,Russell Gleason. And I always have to pause and thinkwhich which RB.

[31:25.930] - Michael F. Schein A secular guy who does the who does the sales funnels.Right. Who's always on my Facebook ad Russell Bertozzi.

[31:31.390] - Jen Lehner Is he muscular? But yes, he's always on your Facebookads.

[31:33.790] - Michael F. Schein And I really like big, you know, he's like, yeah, I mean,that's so exciting. I mean, he's he's you know, he's in goodshape.

[31:40.600] - Jen Lehner He's a hype man for sure. He is.

[31:42.820] - Jen Lehner One hundred fifty percent, without a doubt.

[31:46.870] - Jen Lehner All right. So you said the difference between RichardBranson, who sailed across the Atlantic in a hot air



balloon never done before. And the rest of us is not thesize and scope of their accomplishments. It's that theythink differently about those accomplishments. They havelearned to present an easy to digest version of reality, onewith a simple story arc in which they are protagonistsusing their powers to overcome clearcut obstacles toachieve a worthy goal.

[32:16.840] - Jen Lehner So no problem. We can all do that, right?

[32:21.130] - Michael F. Schein You know. Think about the way Gary Vaynerchuk orSimon Sinek talk. Compared to how most of us talk and Ieven struggle with this. We use disqualifying statementsand qualifying statements, and that is sometimesevidence of a smart intellect because there really is notruth and falsehood that we can access that easily. Right.

[32:50.130] - Michael F. Schein So we might say something like, yeah, well. I'm just oneguy, but the way I see it is and then we state our opinion,right, but people want a leader, people especially in apublic forum, they want someone that can tell them theanswers because none of us knows what we're doing andwe're all looking for others to tell us what to do. So if youlisten to Gary Vaynerchuk, he says you have to hustle allthe time and people who don't hustle all the time aregoing to be less successful.

[33:25.070] - Michael F. Schein Is that true, sort of. Not really. I mean, there are manycounter examples. But it's sometimes true, but he doesn'tuse sometimes. Simon Sinek in a much different style. Hehad this video a little while back where he said.Millennials were raised to believe that they all should geta participation trophy and as a result, they are not doingas well in the workplace, there are so many.

[33:56.330] - Michael F. Schein And he made this video went viral. Everyone was like, oh,absolutely. Simon Sinek, what a genius. All millennials likemillennials who live in south central L.A. and it hadnothing to do that. They were raised in the recession, thatthey came out in the recession. And I mean, they're justall eight billion millennials, you know, I mean and more



nuanced. In fact, he's a very smart guy. So I'm sure hedoesn't believe that that's true all the time.

[34:23.570] - Michael F. Schein But he's enough of a white man to speak in theseextremely bold. Unqualified sort of statements, and as aresult, we just accept it. Yeah, that's true. And so it'simportant to practice speaking with complete confidenceand authority. If you want to question your assumptions,do that before you go public. Figure out what you want tosay, but the more you waffle in public. And the more youspeak with sort of apologies and disclaimers, the lesspeople will see you as a magician.

[35:05.970] - Jen Lehner Yeah, and actually, everything you said about Simon Sinekwas so fascinating to me because the whole start with Ything, because that was the first one that went really viral.

[35:14.700] - Michael F. Schein His biggest still. Yeah,

[35:16.560] - Jen Lehner Yeah. And you were saying, like, he comes across as thisvery academic learned guy who's like pouring over likeresearch paper, is that right? But I mean, and not to saythat smart, he's obviously smart, but he was an advertiser.He worked at Ogilvy.

[35:34.020] - Michael F. Schein He's never done anything in his life besides marketing.And that's great. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.But the idea that he's this expert on science andneuroscience and all of this stuff is just a testament towhat a good hype artist and what a good marketer he is. Imean, that's another chapter in the book. Make itscientific. If you're if you're talking about concepts that arevery commonplace and that are hard to set yourself up,throw a little neuro epinephrine, dopamine neurons,neuroscience, amygdala formulas, but a little math inthere.

[36:06.570] - Michael F. Schein And people will just eat that stuff up because we'relooking for heuristics. People want mental shortcuts to letthem know that something is valid because we don't haveenough time to digest all of the information we receive.



[36:21.330] - Michael F. Schein So those kind of those kind of what we call ear candy andeye candy are the equivalent of a doctor who used towear a white coat. It shows you that they're a doctor, soyou don't have to assess every doctor separately.

[36:35.290] - Michael F. Schein And we do this on a very subconscious level and greathype artists, great marketers, great self promoters likeSimon Sinek understand this.

[36:45.090] - Jen Lehner Right. And just to be clear, because I know this, because Iread the book, you are not saying to just make upscientific data, it's just that there's enough there's enoughof it out there. And all this information is right at ourfingertips that it's easy enough to find stuff to supportwhat it is that you're talking about, right?

[37:02.940] - Michael F. Schein Yeah. So put it this way. I do it, too. So, for example. Yourgrandfather might say to you just in sort of kitchen tablewisdom, you know, if you really want to get people to likeyou. If you really want to get people to follow, you put alittle put a little grit in the shell, you know what I mean?Pull away a little bit, pick a little bit of a fight beforegetting them to come in your direction.

[37:30.520] - Michael F. Schein Right. And you might be like, OK, Grandpa, OK, whatever.But I can tell you, you know, oxytocin and this is true,oxytocin is a brain chemical that not only gets us to bondwith people we perceive to be like us, but it alsoprograms us to dislike people and ideas that aren't likeus. As a result, if you pick a fight with an idea or anenemy, you will attract people more. And my use ofoxytocin gives so much more credibility to what I'msaying. Now, it's true.

[38:07.490] - Michael F. Schein Right, but Grampa's wisdom might have been just as right,he knows it from life experience, I know it from a bookwhich one is better. But just by using terms like oxytocin, itgives that veneer of science that makes it much moreeasy to relate to and believe in.



[38:27.290] - Jen Lehner Yeah, I know so what you're saying is true. However, I dosee and it's just because I'm a marketer, so I'm just in thisstuff over all the emails and stuff. So I'm seeing so muchamygdala, so much cortisol, so much dopamine, so muchin everybody's emails. And I'm like, OK, now I'm now thegag reflex is coming up a little bit.

[38:50.690] - Michael F. Schein So the more the more you the more you're like everybodyelse. I mean, if everyone is doing something, it becomeswallpaper. Right. I would say the amygdala stuff is lazy atthis point, but there are other ways to do this.

[39:05.900] - Michael F. Schein I mean, there was this guy, Frederick Winslow Taylor, whocreated scientific management, which is still what all MBAprograms in America and all, like all big consulting firms,are based on this guy's ideas. And it turns out that everything he ever taught was based on one half completedstudy. Wow. It's called the Pig Iron Study.

[39:30.710] - Michael F. Schein And if you listen to his lectures, he uses mathematicalformulas to figure out how to get workers to be moreproductive, as if they're. Oil drills, not human beings withproduction T minus Z squared cubed, blah, blah, blah.And if anyone had just thought to ask tough questions tothis guy or thought to ask for evidence, they could havefigured out that there was no substance to this, but all ofthat packaging with the formulas in this and the that justmade it so easy to buy into.

[40:11.080] - Michael F. Schein No, I'm not again, I'm not saying to make stuff up, I'm notsaying that there's a lot of science out there and scienceis a good thing. What I'm saying is that I think a generalrule that that I didn't mention in the book and that you'rebringing up is once everybody is saying something, knowif everyone saying dopamine don't use dopamine, youknow, but there's other stuff to look up, a real study.

[40:35.250] - Michael F. Schein I mean, do the work, right?

[40:37.800] - Jen Lehner Yeah, no, I love it. I mean, the whole but like, I really justwant to go chapter by chapter and tell everybody what's



in the whole book. But I'm going to do that, I'm going tospare you although I think they would love it by the book.I want to know. So you are a freelancer before you are anentrepreneur. Why did you make the switch toentrepreneur or were you something before you were afreelancer?

[40:58.980] - Michael F. Schein Well, yeah. I mean, I thought of freelancer as anentrepreneur. Yeah, well, meaning that I was somethingbefore I was an entrepreneur. So I was I never wanted tobe in business. I'm like an accidental entrepreneur. Iwanted to do something in the arts.

[41:11.220] - Michael F. Schein I mean, I, I read very early and I was just a bookish kind ofkid and I wanted to write novels and fiction and whateversince a very young age. And then from there, as I got alittle older and carried a little more about being cool, I gotreally into music like punk music and rock and roll andstuff. And I wanted to I really thought in my youngignorance that I was going to, like, change rock and roll.

[41:36.060] - Michael F. Schein And I tried that and failed that. But I went to New York andstarted a band and we had a following and everything.We did well, but we didn't make it, quote unquote.

[41:48.360] - Michael F. Schein So I needed money and I got a corporate job and Ithought I'd only be there a year or two. And I ended upbeing there eight years. And it was because I did wellthere, at least on the surface. I'm you know, I'm kind ofsmart, I guess, and I'm a certainly a hard worker.

[42:04.050] - Michael F. Schein And so I started to do well. I'm very heart-centered now.Being heart-centered was the worst thing you could be. Itwas it was in the call center industry. I had to like black inmy heart at all.

[42:16.230] - Michael F. Schein Yes. So yeah, but no, but, you know, I started to make aliving and, you know, I learned a lot in the first three years,but by year eight, I was like, really?



[42:27.570] - Michael F. Schein Really. I think I had a mild level depression, actually, Imean, honestly, because I just felt like, I mean, world'ssmallest violin, but I, I felt that there were things I hadcertain gifts and I was not using them and I was just sortof wasting my life out of fear. So I eventually quit. It washard to do. And I figured because I was a good writer, Icould become a freelance copywriter because I washearing that they were paying three to five thousanddollars to write an eight page white paper.

[42:58.340] - Michael F. Schein So I figured if I did a whole bunch of these every year, Icould make a really nice living being a writer. And itturned out I was really bad at sales and I just couldn't getpeople to buy from me. I mean, I had a few clients andthey would rehire me, but it wasn't enough to make aliving. And I burned through my savings. And so I had tofigure out how to market myself. And I tried kind ofcorporate marketing, all the marketing books, and it didn'twork. And so I sort of went back to my old punk rock pastbecause I used to be really good at promoting our shows.

[43:29.690] - Michael F. Schein And we would call it hyping up our shows. We would dothings like put up really offensive posters. We used to putup this poster that said Dave Matthews must die andthings like that. It worked. I mean, we used to sell out thisclub, Arlene's Grocery all the time.

[43:45.440] - Michael F. Schein So I was like, well, what if I kind of got back to who I am? Iquit my job for a reason and I started to hype up myselfand it worked. And it worked so well that people startedto ask me to market them, not do their writing.

[44:00.920] - Michael F. Schein And before I knew it, I had a business on my hands. Sothen I started learning about business. And it was sointeresting becoming an entrepreneur, having an agency.Sure, I learned some things at my job, but like what Ineeded to learn to thrive in that, especially in terms ofoperating the business, once I brought the clients in, wasjust so different than what it took to work in a largeorganization. So I had to learn to be an entrepreneur.



[44:29.100] - Jen Lehner Wow, so what about now, what are you working on nowthat you're especially excited about?

[44:34.380] - Michael F. Schein Yeah, a bunch of things. Well, I still have the agency andthat's my bread and butter. And we do great work with alot of great clients. The book is so much fun. I mean, itcame out a couple of months ago and originally, my kindof cynical reason for writing the book is that I felt I neededa book in the business I was in.

[44:58.440] - Michael F. Schein But since I'm a writer first I got obsessed with the project. Iwanted to write a book, not just a business book. And so Igot so into it, and I almost feel if I've succeeded with thebook, I'm proud of it and I feel like I've come full circlebecause I always wanted to be a published writer.

[45:17.880] - Michael F. Schein And I'm very proud of this book as a book beyond thebusiness. And so that's exciting. And it's getting buzz. Imean, it's fortunately selling well and people are noticingit. So that's very gratifying.

[45:28.920] - Michael F. Schein And, you know, having that experience has made merealize how important it is to me to not just use what I'velearned to market companies. I love that work a lot. At thesame time, I really feel kind of coming back to thebeginning of the conversation that. There are so manypeople who are really harming the world right now,hyping up their bad ideas, that it's become reallyimportant to me to put this stuff to expose the bad guysand also put these tools in the hands of the good guys.

[46:04.840] - Michael F. Schein So, yeah, I'm doing my first online workshop now, which isa ton of fun. I'm working on doing more, more high level,speaking to larger audiences and working insideorganizations, really teaching these concepts, not justusing them to market products and services. So that'sthat's probably what I'm most excited about right now.

[46:26.530] - Jen Lehner All right. Well, so let's hype up the online workshop. Is thatavailable to our listeners or is that just for, like a selectgroup?



[46:33.910] - Michael F. Schein Well, right now it's a select group, but it's going to bebased on demand. So if I hear from a bunch of peoplethat they want to do it, I'll do another one. And if peoplewant to bring me into their organizations to do what theycall an impact work, to teach their teams in theorganization the strategies and or speak in front of agroup, I'm doing that as well. But yeah, I, I can certainlygive anyone my email address and if they're interested infinding out more, I'm going to be doing future ones.

[47:07.690] - Jen Lehner Is there a dot com we could send them to.

[47:10.540] - Michael F. Schein Not for this because I've kept it very know for you, just foryou like. Oh yeah. So there's a couple of dotcoms so onegreat way to get in touch with me. So my personalwebsite is michaelfSchein.com. So that's s-c-h-e-in dotcom. The business is microfamemedia.com. A really goodway to keep in touch with me is something called theHype Book Club.

[47:34.510] - Michael F. Schein So that's hypereads.com. And actually the members ofthe first workshop came through this group. It wasbecause this has become such a community. It waspeople in this group that did the workshop. So I read all ofthese crazy books and the ones I find the mostentertaining and useful. I send out descriptions of them,try to be a little bit funny with it every so often, and it'sgone from just being that sort of newsletter to being thisback and forth conversation.

[48:01.450] - Michael F. Schein So all of the emails come from my direct email inbox andpeople respond to them and I respond back and it'sbecome this really cool community that we call the bookclub. So that's a great way to keep in touch with me.

[48:14.650] - Michael F. Schein And I'll also just give my email address, because I lovegetting just messages to it. And it's [email protected] like Michael, Frank, Sam atMicroFame Media dot com. So at the name of the



company dot com. So anyone who wants to just whateverask me anything, say hello. I love getting emails.

[48:33.430] - Jen Lehner OK, great. And I just want to say what I told you in the prechat, which is I think the book needs to become adocumentary. Truly, it isn't just a business book becauseyou have done such a great job bringing in these richstories that I've never heard before. It just really was reallya joy to read. And I didn't expect that based on the titlehonestly, not that it's not a good title, but you know what Imean.

[48:59.350] - Jen Lehner So it was a really nice surprise. Number two, I think youdo need to create an online course that teacheseverything that's in the hype handbook and then comeback on the podcast to hype the online course and thenew book, which I'm sure is right behind this one.

[49:14.830] - Michael F. Schein I'm going to take you up on that, because that's totallywhere my head is at. That's my bold new horizon. Andthat's always the most exciting thing to be working on,that unknown terrain, which is where I'm at right now. Butthe first workshop has been great.

[49:27.340] - Michael F. Schein I mean, I have enjoyed every minute of it. And I think theattendees have to we've really formed a nice littlecommunity.

[49:33.220] - Jen Lehner Wow. I am not surprised at all. Well, Michael F. Schein,thank you so much for joining us today. I enjoyed it somuch that I say thank you for joining us today. What Imeant is

[49:42.850] - Michael F. Schein I did enjoy it.

[49:45.100] - Jen Lehner Good, good. Thank you so much. And I'll see you nexttime because you have to come back.

[49:48.940] - Michael F. Schein I will be there. Thank you, Jen.



[49:53.730] This episode is brought to you by the front row VIP, aprivate membership hub for entrepreneurs looking togrow their businesses with smart marketing strategies,productivity hacks and solutions for systemizing.

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