Cartooning and marketing are both creative endeavors, the only difference is that one is expressive and the other is strategic. This is how Stu Heinecke was able to easily transition from being a wall street journal cartoonist to becoming a marketer. He created Contact Marketing, a fusion of sales and marketing that supports account-based strategies to produce advantages for Business to Business clients. For the past two years, Stephen Perrine has been managing his mind so he can create content for multimedia and build brands in the wellness, fitness, fashion and lifestyle. He explains that if you want to work on 11 different platforms, you need to be different 11 times over. This will create a business that will keep paying you back as you build your next business.
We have Stu Heinecke and Steve Perrine. Stu Heinecke is a Hall of Fame nominated marketer, bestselling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. He’s also been a Wall Street Journal cartoonists and he’s really creative. I’m really looking forward to talking to him. Steve Perrine is a multimedia content creator, brand builder. He’s been editor-in-chief of so many different magazines. He’s written books. He is a fascinating guy. He’s got a book coming out with Danica Patrick called Pretty Intense and he’s got a TV show called Better Man. We’re going to talk to both of them.
Listen to the podcast here:
Connecting Virtually Through Contact Marketing with Stu Heinecke
I am with Stu Heinecke, who’s a Wall Street Journal cartoonists, Hall of Fame nominated Marketer, bestselling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and President of Cartoonlink Inc. He’s dedicated to producing unfair advantages for B2B clients using contact marketing, a fusion of marketing and sales that supports account based marketing strategies by enabling reps to connect with virtually anyone. I am fascinated to have you here, Stu. Thank you for being on the show.
My pleasure, Diane. Great to be here.
You have your own show. Before we go into what weâll talk about what, tell me a little about your show?
Itâs called Contact Marketing Radio. Contact marketing is a term probably not known to pretty much anyone. It’s a term that I came up with in my book to describe methods that people are using to breakthrough to people that are of great importance. You mentioned one of the Wall Street Journal cartoonists. I’ve been using my cartoons my whole career really as an unfair advantage. That’s where that comes from, but when I send the cartoon to someone and it’s about them and it’s really on target.
They love it. Like for Forbes or something, those things go up on the refrigerator doors and stay there for years. If I do it on a much more formalized fashion, let’s say, actually what I use is something I call a big board thatâs 18×24 inch, quarter inch thick foam cardboard that sent out as an art print, but that also on the flip side, has a message from the sender to the recipient really requesting the meeting. When people get these things, they love them.
I saw your interview with Gerhard Gschwandtner. He was on my show. I saw what you’re talking about it. This thing is just great. First of all, you are an amazing artists, cartoonist and you’re funny. I would love to get one of those things. This thing is huge. I would love to have that. You’re just so witty and funny. I love those cartoon that you see out there. I was looking at one about your niche marketing and this is the niche you want. You have this pie and you pick like the hugest piece of the pie. I love that sense of humor. How much does it cost you to send one of those things? Those were really big. You said it was 18×24 inch postcard.
By the time we’ve packaged itâs an inch think and then youâve got this beautiful packaging to use. It looks like it came out of a gallery. It’s 28 inches wide, 18 inches tall, and an inch thick. Here’s the thing, it’s not really all that much. Itâs not all that expensive to send it. All of this is predicated on the understanding that you’re sending it to someone as work. Someone who can bring a lot of business your way in some way either as a partner or as a client. If those numbers, if those economics are right, then it’s okay to spend, it’s like $14 to send a FedEx ground or $30 or something like that express. Not all that expensive.
For those of us who have zero talent in the area of cartoon drawing, do you have to be creative to get someone to talk to you? You can get a meeting with anyone. Do you have to be talented in that way?
You don’t have to be a cartoonist and you donât have to know how to draw. You don’t have to be able to draw, but you should be creative in your approach. You really want to be focused on who is this that I’m reaching out to, what are they interested in? What are their hot buttons? What gets them excited? Obviously, you want to reach out to them in a way that recognizes that or maybe even been close itself is not really quite what it is. There’s nothing misleading about it. It takes on that of what the person you’re reaching out to is interested in, what they’re looking for, what they need, and maybe what they feel about certain things? I suppose just playing into that. If that gave a crazy explanation of what’s really simple. Iâd like to share a story. One of the people who reached out to me who read the book and said, “I read it. Now, I’m getting these great results.” He really liked many ideas of the book, many approaches in the book, but he really loved the approach of sending a very, very personalized gift to someone.
At one point, he and his colleague found that both of the people that theyâve been trying to reach, no one’s been able to reach them. Theyâve been trying to reach this guy and they did a little bit of digging and they found that the guy’s really into falconry. They found a beautiful falconry glove, sent the guy a picture of it first via email saying we’re sending this. I hope to get a conversation with you about this. He wrote back and said, “That’s really cool,â but they arenât getting a response from him even at that. âThat’s really cool, but I’m not a prospect for what you’re selling, but thanks for doing that.” When the glove showed up, he was so excited. He called them back and he said, “I’m not a prospect, remember, but I have three friends who are CIOs who are looking for exactly what you’re offering and I’m going to make an introduction.” A multimillion dollar deal came out of buying and $95 falconry glove.
It shows a drive and commitment, and I think that’s a huge thing. I’ve seen Neil deGrasse Tyson and others I guess he collects these fancy pens, and he says everybody started sending him pens. Do you give a lot of suggestions and things? If not the drawings in your book or do you just say, be creative? What advice do you give people?
That would be terrible advice to tell them to be creative. Actually, it started at the top of your show, explaining what Contact Marketing Radio is. Itâs a continuation of this discovery process that happened when I wrote the book. For researching the book, I reached out to all these thought leaders in sales and asked when you absolutely must break through to someone of great importance, but somebody who is going to be very, very difficult to reach. How are you doing that? They shared with me all kinds of methods. Those congealed into twenty categories of Contact Marketing Campaign types from the book. There are lots of different ways of using gifts to breakthrough, but at the same time, and there’s over the top. One guy, he produced the contact letter to reach Larry Ellison as a full page ad and ran into the Wall Street Journal.
Did it work?
It did. It resulted on $350 million deal. Someone used the pigeon, I can’t say the CEOs name, but everyone knows this person’s name. He used a pigeon to reach him. They’re all over the top things and about my cartoons. There are also these really very, very sensible either information, research, insight-based or maybe media exposure-based. In fact, I’ll just point the camera right here. When you interview people for your show, there’s a bonding that happens. You and I are bonding right now. This is cool. We’re sharing something with your audience. Just reaching out and getting people to interview with you on a show, on a podcast or on a radio show is a great way to connect with people you want to reach out to offering research findings. They’re all kinds of methods for breaking through. Those are all in the book.
Itâs just fascinating because I was in sales for decades and I’m curious how you made this transition. It’s a very sales type background to be able to get through to people that helps. Your background was a cartoonist. How did you make that transition?
It makes almost no sense, does it? On why I’m a cartoonist or not or an artist involved in this at all. The thing is, I’ve been a business owner my whole career. It’s this duality of being a business owner. Really, the business that I own is a marketing agency. Marketing and cartoon, they’re are not too far off. They’re both creative endeavors and I’m probably partly creative. Marketing is also strategic. When I started my business, I wanted to create a direct mail campaigns for magazine publishers.
My first two assignments for Rolling Stones and Bon AppĂ©tit and both of those tests, mind you, what I did is I used, I thought I knew the cartoons. They get amazing metrics in readership surveys and these were a readership survey. The best way to remember parts of almost anything they’re in. I knew that personalization was going to be really a lot of fun to use in the cartoons and I just had a feeling that using that as a device, the involvement device to pull them into the mailing and then pull them all the way through to ordering was going to be really powerful.
Then again, David Ogilvy was out there. He is the founder of Ogilvy & Mather, probably the original thought leader in the marketing space used to say humor doesn’t work in advertising marketing. It proved itself right away because both of those data controls and then I thought, “The next thing I need to do to spread this to the rest of the publishing industry is reached about two dozen of VPs and directors of circulation.â I used my cartoons as my very first contact campaign and I got through to all of them. In fact, not only did I get through to all of them, all of them became clients. That’s also 100% conversion. It was worth millions of dollars. It started my business. That all came from using cartoons and marketing together, really sales. If we’re in business at all, we all sell. I’ve been selling my whole career. We all have.
You have this really cute sense of humor. People can draw cartoons, but if they aren’t funny, what good is it? If they don’t have a sense of humor, is there other ways to get that same ROI?
Definitely. I’ve just mentioned the falconry glove. Thatâs not humor. Itâs just paying attention to who the recipient is as a person. Thereâs one really cool story. Dan Waldschmidt is one of the top sales bloggers. He’s also an ultra competitive runner. He runs 100-mile races and wins. He also has one of the top blogs in the sales space called Edgy Conversations and a book out called the thing, entitled Edgy Conversations. There’s this nice edge, ultra competitiveness aspect to his brand. What he does actually for a living and he’s a turnaround specialist and he has this really interesting way of connecting with CEO’s of companies that are in distress.
He combs the business news every morning looking for stories and when he finds one, he has this beautiful sword made. This sword is made by the top maker who made all the swords for the movie gladiator, gorgeous pieces. It costs a $1,000 to do this, to make each one. He has the swords made and then has engraved with CEOs name and it has an inscription, âIf you’re not all in, you’re not in at all.” It goes in this outlined beautiful box with a handwritten note. By the way, handwritten notes seem to show up a lot in these really successful outreaches. A handwritten note that says, “I realized that business is war and I noticed you lost the paddle recently. I just want to let you know if you ever need a few extra hands in battle, we’ve got your back.”
There’s no branding except that you can see itâs really well-branded because there’s a knife edge. His brand is actually really representative in this because he’s not overdoing it, and because he is not overdoing it, he said essentially 100% of the time. He doesn’t sell every time. Spending $1,000 might sound like financial suicide, but the thing is, when he goes sell an engagement, that’s worth a million dollars and up. The numbers make sense. He’s being really creative. I mean, really, really creative in his approach, but he’s not drawing anything. Get really creative about, “This is what I do. This is the value I want to bring. This is how I want to represent it.” In fact, this sword informs the category of visual metaphors. I love visual metaphors as contact devices. I think Danâs is probably the best example I’ve come across.
Since you have this ability and you have your own show, do you monetize your show and if you do, what do you do to get in front of sponsors? Are you constantly connecting with sponsors with these cards or some other way?
I’m not worried about sponsorship. My direction in all of this ultimately is I have an agency called Contact. It’s actually a cartoon-like doing business as Contact, but I have an agency and we help enterprise sales teams breakthrough. There we do use the cartoons heavily. I have a lot of fun doing it. The really amazing thing about these content campaigns, whether it’s with cartoons or swords or something else, is that the response rates in the ROI, they could be just incredibly high. Actually, up to 100% response rates, which with direct marketing, we were always told is it possible to get. In contact marketing, we’re seeing them. Then the ROI, it’s pretty typical to see ROI in the tens and even hundreds of thousands of percent, which account is a number that is just utterly foreign with marketers.
Then now, you can get so much information about people through LinkedIn and the internet or whatever. You have an insight into what interests them, if they’re into falconry or whatever.
You were asking about monetization so my monetization ultimately is I want clients for my agency and there we do really well because when you help them do really well. When I like someone onto my show, I’m always looking to expand the knowledge base of contact marketing. What’s really interesting, Diane, is I did invent contact marketing. I started out by using my cartoons to do it, but as soon as I became curious about what everyone else was doing to breakthrough, I realized there are so many ways that people are using to break through to the people that are really critically important to them. We want to monetize that by bringing people into the shows and sharing their methods of breaking through, but also finding some of the people that have had a need for their enterprise sales teams still to help them get through. In that case, then we have a conversation. The interview, getting people on the show, and interviewing them opens those conversations.
It’s been so fascinating that I’ve had so many great people on the show and every person that’s on the show, you meet somebody else through them or you learn so much through them. I love sharing information. I’m a professor so that’s my thing, like education. I think that there’s a lot to be accomplished through having a show like this and I have had a lot of people who have their own shows on my show and some of them, unlike you, they want to monetize the show through sponsorship and they have a difficult time doing that.
I’ve had people like The Bag Lady and people that have had different ideas for how to do that. If you were going to monetize your show through sponsors, how would you go about it since you can get such a great chance to meet people through your contact marketing? Letâs use my show, for example. Let’s say business leaders. You have a lot of business people, success experts, you got consultants and writers. It’s people’s interested in business success, mostly entrepreneurs.
I would be looking for services and obviously products but really services that serve that audience and suppliers of that service who want to reach that audience. I think thatâs maybe too obvious. I was going to say, in my case, someone like a HubSpot would be great probably or Marketo, any of the marketing automation platforms, any of the sales automation platforms.
I’ve reached out to a lot of those types of companies and they have been great for my shows. I think a lot of people have shows that are a little more specific. They have either cooking shows or they have different kinds of shows and people ask me about this and then I thought, “I’ve got the expert here on the show.” I didn’t mean to put you on the spot with that, but I was just curious. I think that they don’t really have a problem finding the companies they want. It’s the problem of you can get in front of people but you still have to approve ROI. Are you having challenges with getting in front of people that works to get their attention, but then they have a hard time closing the deal I guess is what I’m trying to get to that part? Does your book help with that?
Itâs interesting that you asked that because in a strict sense, I feel that my job is to get those reps through the door into these conversations. The recipient is saying, “I love the way you think. That was unbelievable what you said. I loved it. There are this really positive bubble they’re in when they finally meet or talk. To present our ROI figures and I want high ROI, then really that does follow all the way through to the deal becoming an actual sale. Interestingly enough, I’m working on another book. The working title is The Weed Strategies.
I’m talking to all sorts of business leaders about their experiences and insights of what they’ve done, what they’ve seen work so it fits the model of what we do. They don’t have brains so they’re not thinking right through, they’re just programmed. There are programs who run these processes that have been honed over millions of years, hundreds of millions or billions of years probably. Weeds, theyâve been around forever. They just run these processes and what are the interesting thing that they’ve interesting attributes, they don’t think.
I guess you could say that they’re always optimistic because they never give up. They also persevere I guess is another attribute but they don’t care what you think of them. They don’t care. They’re not bothered by any of that. They don’t get depressed. I didn’t land where I thought it would. Then they have these tools that they use to really gain ground and protect it and just continue to spread and spread and spread. Gaining that territory, then defending their turf. What’s really interesting though is that know, first off, it will be interesting. Let’s see how a business can act like a weed to grow exponentially. I realize, this can actually apply to both businesses and individuals. Then I’m realizing also that it can apply to basically anything that you want to move forward, including the impetus for a sale. We’re researching that right now. How can we make the impetus for sale spread like a weed to the company that you’re targeting? I have to get back to it now.
I’m not fully formed yet but it is filling out. It’s really pretty amazing. Ultimately, I think one of the things that we can do to make sure a sale goes through is that, I keep hearing this constantly that sales are generally and buying decisions are generally not made by a single person anymore, but they’re made by a team or a committee or certainly a team influencers as well as the decision maker or makers. I think one of the things that really helps is to cover the other stakeholders. When they have a multitude of stakeholders engaged, I think the chances of a sale going through go up a lot. I was going to say, “I don’t know.” I know that’s not a guarantee. I was going to say, you are guaranteed to fail if you’ve never try. If you never try with those stakeholders, then you’re guaranteed to fail with them.
You obviously are very optimistic and I like that and you need that.
I’m a weed.
Itâs funny that you say that because I’m actually working on my book as it’s more about motivation and drive and that type of thing. How curiosity and all that leads to all of those kinds of qualities. What made you think, driven or motivated to become this Wall Street Journal cartoonist? That’s not easy to get in. A lot of people would love to have that. How did you get to that level? What motivated you?
When I look back on some of the things that have happened in my life, I wonder, where in the world did that come from? How did I think that would work? I’m little crazy to say that doesnât work but I guess you really got to believe that I have the thing also about life. There are all these opportunities. It seems they’re just hanging in the air and it’s just up to us to go. We have to build toward that. We have to build ourselves toward them, so you build yourself toward them.
Were you inquisitive?
Always, curious and mischievous.
I was definitely curious as well. I think there’s a big part of that that you need to be successful because you want to know how things work and why? You want to figure it out.
How did that work? How did I make that work?
That’s what I’m writing about. It’s very fascinating to me in and you’re obviously an excellent example of somebody that it worked well for. I love your cartoons, they’re just the best. Your work is just amazing. Can you please share how people can reach you and find out more?
The first thing I should do is mention that the book that I have out is called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone and you can buy that essentially at any bookstore except at the airport. Iâll actually fix that, but Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and so on. You can find the book there. You could follow me on Twitter and on Facebook. Twitter is @ByStuHeinecke. The other really good one would be LinkedIn and thatâs just my name is Stu Heinecke. They can connect with me really easily on either of those.
Itâs so nice of you to share all that information. I was watching a guy gave a talk and I wish I could remember his name, but he was saying how he got his book in front of people. He was so funny. He was saying he stuck it in the pockets of each of the seats on the airplane as he walk by just to make sure everybody read his book. I thought, “That’s a great idea.” It’s one way to get out there, but it wouldn’t make you much money initially. It was so nice to have you on the show, Stu. Thank you.
It was my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on.
You’re welcome.
Managing Your Mind To Create Content with Stephen Perrine
I am with Steve Perrine, who’s a multimedia content creator, brand builder, team leader and editorial specialists in the health, wellness, food, fitness, fashion, and lifestyle space. He has more than twenty years of proven brand building experience with deep experience in cross-platform editorial and marketing. Steve is a bestselling author, publisher and editor in chief. He’s a digital and video brand creator and content builder, a highly skilled, B2B and B2C marketing expert, speech writer and media appearance specialists. He is a team builder with an extensive history of turning around troubled media properties. He’s joined the AARP The Magazine as Executive Editor based in New York and I’m really anxious to talk to him about that. How are you, Steve?
I’m very well, Diane. Thank you so much for having me on the air.
You’re welcome. You’ve written all these books. You’ve got The New American Diet, The Men’s Health Diet, are you part of the Zero-Sugar Diet too? I’m looking at everything that you’ve done. When do you sleep?
I slept once. I think was 1990, I’m not sure, but it was great. Over the last two years, I’ve really taken a big step toward making sure that my time is managed in a way that makes sense for me. A lot of that has come from an emphasis that I’ve put on a passive income. Basically, the idea of building brands that once I have them for completion, I can send off into the world and they can continue to pay me back in the future. That’s really what I’ve been focused on and it’s been very, very helpful. I think anybody who wants to be working on a lot of different platforms at a lot of different times needs to be creating businesses that will pay you back in the future so that while you’re building your next brand, the brands you built in the past are supporting you.
For example, my next book is a partnership with Danica Patrick, the race car driver. It’s called Pretty Intense: The 90-Day Mind, Body and Food Plan that will absolutely Change Your Life. I’m very, very excited about it because it’s a book, but it then will roll out into PrettyIntense.com, which will be up and running by the time the book comes out and we hope to be doing some other things with this new business partnership as well. It’s a really terrific book not just for people interested in health and wellness, which is really my specialty, but for people who are interested in the mindset that it takes to be a successful athlete and a successful entrepreneur, which are very, very closely related. If you want to take stress reduction and focus and mindfulness tips from someone, someone who drives at 200miles an hour inches from other cars, is a really good choice.
How did you manage to connect with Danica? A little bit different than what you’ve been doing and I think, she obviously has an amazing following and she’s very successful. How did that come to be?
I’ve been fortunate enough to work with a number of celebrities in my book publishing career. People like Jessica Alba, Maria Menounos. I worked recently, a couple years ago, ghost writing a book for Novak Djokovic, the tennis star. The agent who put us together suggested that I craft something for Danica and she been interested in branching out into this area as well. I put something together and she took a look at it and said, “No.” She has some very strong ideas of her own. I flew down to North Carolina where she lives. We hung out and talked about the philosophy of health and fitness and realized that we really shared something in common, which was the belief that you can’t get people to change their bodies unless you get them to change their minds first. We all know relatively well that you should eat better and exercise more, but most of us don’t do it because most of us don’t have the mental setting that allows us to do that.
We decided together that we want to do is focus the first half of the book on what we call the pretty intense mind. The mindset of how you become and stay focused? How do you handle pressure? How do you remain mindful in high pressure situations and how do you dedicate yourself to something and stick with it when it gets difficult? Danica Patrick is a perfect person to take those kinds of tips from. We really focused the book on that and then after that you get into a very, very, and believe me, I can tell you this firsthand, extremely intense workout program and a terrific diet program with lots of recipes that she created and photographed herself. That’s been terrific.
You’ve got a couple of things coming out. I thought you have a TV show, Better Man.
Yes, the Better Man Show. Stemming from my background in health and wellness, I was approached by a friend of mine who represents a sportscaster, Brian Jones. Anybody who’s a fan of college football has seen him on CBS and Brian was looking for a TV project that wasn’t in sports. We created the Better Man Show, which is a type of show I’ve been wanting to do for many, many years. My primary background from an editorial perspective was as the longtime editor of Men’s Health magazine, Editorial Creative Director. I had always thought of something that would help men, empower men to improve their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual lives.
I created this show that we wanted to make not only useful but really funny. The absolute key to reaching men with useful information is to entertain and amuse them first. The same reason guys don’t want to ask for directions and they don’t want to go to the doctor. They don’t want somebody sitting in their living room telling them what they’re supposed to do. Itâs really about creating something that’s fun and entertaining and while we’re telling you some jokes and getting you pretty loosened up, we can also tell you some really great information.
One of the segments, Barbershop Therapy where Brian goes and talks about his emotional issues, but not with a psychiatrist, he goes to a barbershop. Our actor, the barber, gives him advice. Our co-host is Gwen Lawrence, who is the yoga instructor, was for more than fifteen years the yoga instructor for the New York Giants. Saw them through a couple of championships and she’ll take Brian into the gym and give him yoga moves that will help boost metabolism, cure back pain, manage snoring, cure a hangover, you name it. Each of these shows is broken into two to three minute segment.
My whole sensibility is cross platform and we wanted it to be able to make these into segments that could be sponsored on television or it could be sponsored in other ways as well. For example, if you’re a sponsor who thinks Barbershops Therapy is a great way to reach men interested in grooming, you could advertise on the show and hit 75 million people across the country. We can also customize the content for you so it lives on your website or you can share it on your social media channel or we can put product integration into the segment on the broadcast. Again, the idea of creating his show that that is comprised of somatic segments is an innovative twist in television programming.
Which station are you on?
We are a nationally syndicated. Around the country, you can see us in stations. In Las Vegas for example, we’re on the CW, in Tampa weâre on CBS, in Milwaukee, weâre on ABS. Check your local listings or better yet, go to BetterManShow.com. You can see a preview of the show and you can click on a link to find the local listings in your area.
I’m definitely am interested in all of the things that you do because you have this really interesting background. You joined the AARP The Magazine. Are you the Executive Editor there right now?
Yeah. I’m the Executive Editor for Special Projects and Features and I focus primarily on health and wellness as well as some other things. At AARP, you have a magazine thatâs unlike the rest of the magazine industry is actually growing. In fact, we just boosted our rate base 38 million readers.
How did you make such a jump like that?
A lot of it has been an improvement in the quality under our Editorial Director Myrna Blyth and our Editor-in-Chief Bob Love, both of whom have only been with the company for a couple of years. They brought in a lot of real thoughtfulness and have really improved the magazine. I think part of it also is the fact that we’re reaching a demographic of people who are 50 plus who are not getting useful information targeted to them from any other source. I look at my newsfeed on my iPhone and I don’t see anything that’s about me. There are great stuff about Kylie claws or Kim Kardashian or other famous people that I don’t know what they do, but not a lot of me and certainly not anything in the heath wellness sector. With traditional magazines dying out, there’s a real need for what we’re doing.
I’ve talked to Steve Forbes about this because I’ve worked with Forbes quite a bit and he was on my show and I’ve friends with Rich Karlgaard and a lot of the editing editors and people at Forbes about what it was like when this digital age took over and the magazine had to adapt. Did you go through a lot of that in your experience? The stress of the magazine going away and everything had to be digital?
First of all, nobody has done a better job than Forbes. You’ve seen a media company that knows how to take the print product and go digital in a big way. Certainly, fifteen years ago, most media companies had big battles and the big battles were between those who believed that you needed a separate team for anything that involved plugging something into a wall and that people who produced stuff like magazines couldnât understand things that were plugged into a wall. The battles raised so many companies, especially the bigger older company built digital organizations and the magazines and the books and other print and traditional media were left over on the side.
Often what happened was that the digital media did not fully understand the brand or the audience or the voice of the traditional product. Eventually and I’d like to think that I was one of the lone voices into the wilderness jumping up and down about this back in 2004 and 2005, but eventually most companies came to realize that regardless of your medium, whether you’re talking about social or a website or a newsletter or a print product or what have you, what really counts is two things, audience and content and consistency in quality and approach to those two things is what really matters. The same audience is absorbing the same content, whether they’re getting a downloadable PDF or there I’m reading your social posts on their phones or they’re ordering a book from Amazon that has your brand on it.
In the work that we did at Forbes, I worked with them on a brand publishing boot camp on a course based on some of the work that they did there. It’s very challenging, for advertisers and for different people in that industry to get their messages out, especially at scale. There’s a lot of things that I found was interesting just dealing with Forbes in general. When I interviewed Steve, he was saying how Craigslist killed the advertising, certain things and the different ads and the different things that they’ve handled. When I had Craig Newmark from Craigslist on the show, he didn’t think that he really had the impact that other people did. What do you think that Craigslist has done to the print ad situation?
I think that Craigslist and businesses like that, other digital businesses like that had the biggest impact on local newspapers. The local newspapers, it’ll live. That was their bread and butter was the local car dealership or the new Indian restaurant or what have you. They paid quarter-page display ads put on the classified. When a cheaper and honestly, probably more effective advertising medium became available, it really killed those local papers. That’s a big problem because what you’ve got now is you’ve got the ads, but you don’t have the news. We’ve gone from a place where you had news supported by ads to just ads. It’s really interesting how society has morphed that way. I do think that there’s going to be some new revolution that we don’t know about that it’s hard to see, but something has to come into that void now to take up the local content spot and maybe it’s now the growth of local television or local radio. Itâs hard to say.
What do you think of everybody having their own shows these days? You can do everything by Facebook Live. We have your YouTube show. Everybody’s broadcasting. How is everybody going to keep track? Is it going to just weed out, the people that are just making noise or do you think it’s just going to be more and more content and continue to spiral?
Itâs hard to say. I originally thought that there would be this consolidation of really strong content brands and that having a print element is what separated a brand like a Forbes or a Men’s Health from your average guy sitting in the basement in his bathrobe. It’s hard to say. I think that you are seeing more and more that we have personality-driven content and that people are going to believe Dr. Oz or they’re going to believe Dr. Ornish or they’re going to believe Dr.Hyman or whichever doctor they decided to speak to them. Or whatever expert they’ve decided speak to them. I think it’s going to lead to just further cleaving of us as a society.
It is interesting to see where things are going on and it’s hard to predict. I think a lot of people are trying to figure out what the next big thing is. You’ve definitely spread yourself into so many different areas and I’m fascinated by your story. I was watching you and you were on some 700 Club or some videos I was watching and you said you had lost weight and kept it off. Is that what got you interested into the health-related topics or did you start working in that industry first?
It really came from when I started working at Men’s Health and learned about health and nutrition and within an environment that promoted that kind of lifestyle. I started to focus on that, but also at the same time was able to learn so much about the nonsense that is out there. Which started in the â90s the no fat craze. I began to really become immersed in that and I think a lot of things that are still big ridiculous false hood, there are still people who count calories even though we’ve shown over and over again that calories don’t matter nearly as much as we think they do. I think the next big thing that weâre going to be looking at is metabolism. People talk about boosting your metabolism.
We’ve seen some of that. What do you think they’ll do different in terms of that?
What we’re not really talking about yet is the fact that metabolism is in many ways out of our control because our bodies decide what our metabolism is going to be.
People donât want to hear that though. They want to hear they can fix it. That’s going to bum out a lot of people, donât you think?
There was a study that came out last year about the contestants from the Biggest Loser and who would lost all this weight and who were now having to eat 500 calories a day and workout four hours a day to maintain their weight. The metabolism is a very delicate balance, we don’t have the research yet to be able to really understand how it works. I think if anybody who tells you that they have the metabolism cure is probably selling you some snake oil.
My husband’s obsessed with reading all these books on health because he’s a physician and he loves this stuff. What do you think of some of the diets that are Paleo, higher fat, that direction? Where do you stand on that?
I’ve been following the Paleo diet for the last couple of years. My work with Danica, she followed Paleo diet. More Paleo-friendly because I think there are certain things about diet that maybe don’t make that much then like why can’t I have lentils? In term of a high-protein, high-fat as long as they’re the right kind of fat, mono unsaturated fat. The low carb diet, that’s exactly where we should be.
My husband would definitely agree with that. I tend to try to sneak my sugar and I know I shouldn’t. That’s a hard thing. I happen to have a high metabolism and I think some of us that have that, we’ve gotten away with eating things that maybe other people can’t. It’s something that we really need to focus on, especially as you get older. The sugar thing and the inflammation and all the things that they’ve tied to it, it’s really scary if you think about it. I think that it’s getting a lot of attention and that’s a good thing. Do you focus on that and the AARP The Magazine?
Quite a bit, yeah. A big focus on information. We’re really starting to dig very deeply into weight loss over 50 because it’s much harder. It’s metabolic, itâs hormonal, itâs lifestyle choices and as people are beginning to see that the promise of living until you’re 90 or 100 or plus is a reality, there also being in understanding, “I don’t want to get like sick and fat and I’m 69 and then spend 30 years feeling like hell.”That’s what AARPâs focus is on is how do you live really, really well.
As everybody’s living longer, that’s the thing, and I think that there are so much that even the doctors, I was a pharmaceutical rep for fifteen years and I was amazed by how little some of them knew about these types of things. I think a lot of people go to them for their information and I think more people are starting to look to the internet of course for that. I think it’s always helpful to have the latest information out there and you really do share a lot of great content. Either through your books or your new book that I’m very fascinated in, Pretty Intense with Danica Patrick and then your TV show Better Man. I think a lot of people here would probably be fascinated by following you and finding out how they can get more information from you. Can you just share how they could reach you?
You can find me on Twitter @EatWellNYC and look for me on LinkedIn, Stephen Perrine where I give a lot of updates on our fitness and wellness initiatives.
Steve, itâs so nice having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing all that information. It was fascinating.
Thanks, Diane. I really appreciate it. Also, I really want to encourage everybody to go to BetterManShow.com because so much of the content that we’re coming across, we’re posting there and it’s really fantastic the kind of stuff. They’re entertaining but really useful information that we can share with guys and women who love them.
We get a lot of those on the show who listens. I hope they all check it out.
Thank you so much Stu and to Steve. It was really fascinating to talk to both of you. You have such different things you do. If youâve missed passed show, please go to DrDianeHamilton.com/Episodes or you can search for Dr. Diane Hamilton on iTunes. Hope to see you on the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.
About Stu Heinecke
Stu Heinecke is a Wall Street Journal cartoonist, Hall of Fame-nominated marketer, best-selling author of âHow To Get A Meeting with Anyoneâ and President of CartoonLink, Inc. d/b/a âContact.â He is dedicated to producing unfair advantages for B2B clients using âContact Marketing,â a fusion of marketing and sales that supports Account-Based Marketing strategies by enabling reps connect with virtually anyone.
About Stephen Perrine
Stephen Perrine is a multi-media content creator, brand-builder, team leader and editorial specialist in the health, wellness, food, fitness, fashion and lifestyle space. He has more than 20 years of proven brand-building expertise with deep experience in cross-platform editorial and marketing. Stephen is a best-selling author, publisher, and editor in chief. He is a digital and video brand creator and content builder, a highly skilled b-to-b and b-to-c marketing expert, speechwriter and media appearance specialist, and a team builder with extensive history of turning around troubled media properties.
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