Episode 1337: The 12 Month Millionaire with Vincent James

The best copy in the world cannot save a product the market does not want. In this episode of Sharkpreneur, Seth Greene interviews Vincent James, Direct-to-Consumer Legend and Author of 22 Books, who explains why he believes product selection and offer creation matter more than copywriting alone and outlines his Q Filter framework for evaluating whether a product has the qualities of a likely winner. He also discusses why the underlying psychology of selling has remained largely the same even as marketing channels have changed, and why entrepreneurs should focus less on hype and more on what the market actually wants. Key Takeaways: → Product selection is one of the most important decisions a marketer makes. → The biggest marketing wins often come from understanding what the market wants rather than from following personal preferences. → Direct response principles can apply across different media, even as the channels themselves change. → Modern digital marketing still relies on many of the same sales psychology principles as traditional direct mail. → Customer lifetime value and continuity can dramatically improve the economics of a successful offer. Vincent James is a direct-to-consumer legend and the author of 22 books, including The 12-Month Millionaire, which legendary copywriter Gary Halbert called “The most important marketing product ever put together.” His work also helped earn Russell Brunson his first 2-Comma Club plaque. Vincent specializes in helping businesses structure products, offers, and customer economics so lifetime value exceeds customer acquisition cost at a scale that makes the effort worthwhile. Connect With Vincent: Website: https://www.12monthmillionaire.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Therealvincentjames

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Sharkpreneur Podcast with Kevin Harrington and Seth Green. Kevin Harrington is the inventor of the infomercial, one of the original sharks from the hit TV show Shark Tank, and has generated over $5 billion in TV and digital direct response sales. Seth Green is the world's first trusted authority on cutting-edge direct response marketing, a bestselling author, and the only three-time marketer of the year nominee. On the podcast, Kevin and Seth interview sharkpreneurs who share straight talk on what it takes to explode your business.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Forty-nine faces looked to him in triumph. Over the last 12 months, they had each taken turns and promoted his business for a week at a time, driving over $987,342 in revenue. What if you had a network of 50 centers of influence who promoted your business every week for a year? Grab your copy of the number one Amazon bestselling book, The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Business with a Podcast. It's 33% off the Amazon price by going to ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Again, that website for 33% off the Amazon price is ultimatenpodcastbook.com. Welcome to the podcast. I am super excited for today's episode. So, my guest is none other than Vincent James.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  He doesn't know this, but he has had an influence on my career for decades. So, I saw Vince resurface at Funnel Hacking Live recently, and honestly, Vince, I didn't know you were still in the business. I didn't know you were still around. Obviously, we're going to talk about some of that. And when Russell said, "My first two comma club, my first million-dollar funnel was promoting Vincent James's book that I wasn't supposed to promote," I was one of those people. I still have the original coil-bound, really-thick version of 12-Month Millionaire, which I reread every single year and think is one of my top 10 best business and marketing books ever.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Oh, well, thank you.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  So, I am super excited to have you here. As we just mentioned, Vince is the author of 12-Month Millionaire, generated hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in direct response sales, has one epic journey story of rags to riches to rags to riches to riches again. Super excited to have you here. Vince, thanks so much for joining us.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I'm glad to be here.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  All right. So, for our folks who don't know, let's go back in time a little bit, because your journey and what you went through could, we could spend a whole, you have an all-day event coming up, we could spend all day just talking about that. Let's kind of do the short version. How did you get into direct response in the first place?

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I didn't have any options. I mean, I didn't have any options. I didn't have a father. I had an abusive childhood. My mother, I got thrown out at age 18, growing up on food stamps and welfare. My mother had, I have two sisters, we have three fathers. So, it's like, you know, in northeastern New Jersey, I didn't have many options. So, what was I going to do? You know, it's like, so I'm like, hey, let me maybe see this mail-order stuff, and you know, you could place an ad and you can get started small. And, you know, I, my uncle was like a big believer in psychics, which is, you know, I'm not necessarily a believer in psychics. But he was a believer in psychics, and I was 17 years old, and this psychic said to me,

• 3:31Speaker 02

  "Vince, you're going to write three books." And I was like, that's like saying, "Vince, you're going to be an astronaut." So, I was like, I thought it was, he was still wrong, because I wrote like 22. But, but yeah, so I got started in mail-order. You know, I had a rough start in that business, because it's like I had to learn how to swim without anybody, ever seeing anybody swim before. So, it's like, I didn't have like a mentor. It's not like it is today with, you could have like YouTube videos, podcasts, like in order, back then, like, you had to like spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get a course, somebody's course. I mean, my first course that I bought was a J. Abraham course, it's $2,500.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  I have it, yep, I have that course too.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  I mean, it was life-changing, right? Because I didn't, I didn't have, like I said, I didn't have any mentors. So, it's, I didn't have entrepreneurial role models, let alone role models. I didn't even know what this stuff was, like mail-order, direct response. And there were, you know, I would have got started online, but there wasn't online in 1994. I mean, there was, but I mean, not as a way that people are going to do commerce. So, I started with magazine ads and to subscribe, you know, the magazines had like a three-month lead time, and the guy at the magazine says, "Well, we can give you the subscriber list, you could mail them your ad." And I'm like, "Really? You could do stuff like that?" So, I mailed the ad, and then I'm doing direct mail, I'm doing space ads, and it just, you

• 4:59Speaker 02

  know, then I obviously, my first websites were probably 1997, which were ancient. I had, you know, I had the little counter on the bottom showing how many views, and I had the globes that spun and all that stuff that people had back in the early 90s, in the late 90s. I was between projects, and I had a girlfriend, and, you know, I, it was just, I just met her, so I still would listen to everything she said. I make that joke with her. And she's like, you know, my hairdresser was talking about this feminine, you know, breast enhancement supplement. I always wanted to get into supplements, because supplements go down the drain, you know, so any type of-

• 5:36Speaker 01

  You consume them, you need a new one every 30 days.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Exactly. It was a beautiful thing, and they're, back then, they were very inexpensive to produce and ship and blah, blah, blah. So, I always, for me to get into supplements, I had to have a very, very unique hook. A diet pill really wasn't, eh, you know, it's like, there's a million and one diet pills and this and that. So, when she said this one, I said, "That can't be true." And like I said at Funnel Hacking Live, when it's a claim that is hard to believe, that's usually something that's going to sell. You know, so it's like, so we went around, and we, you know, we couldn't buy the product online, and we went around, and it was a product called Grow Bust. And, and we found it, and I used to make the joke that I knew firsthand that it worked.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  You know, so, I'm part comedian, you know, part marketer, part-

• 6:26Speaker 01

  The jokes are free.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Okay, thank you. Yes, they are free. So, so, yeah, so, so I called the local supplier, and he says, "I make this already. I could, you could white, spilt your label on it." And just, I said, "What's the minimum order?" He says, "Three cases." Twelve in a case, 36 bottles, and you know, and where the stuff in the store was like $69, the private, the private label was $4. So, I was saying, $4. $59, $69, whoa, that's a, that's, this is a great, and they get, you know, so, yeah, we tested it, and we, you know, we, we added a continuity to it, and we grew that, and then I got into the men's product, which I was the creator of.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  I didn't, I wasn't able to white-label that one, believe it or not. I searched Google, and there was no results for that type of product. So, I said, you know, so we got into that, and that turned out to be even larger than the fem, the female one, for obvious reasons. And we were bringing in 40,000 new fronts, which I would call a new sale per month. And with a four-month customer life, we peaked at about 160,000 continuity, 166,000, you know, to be, you know. And when you add it all up with the shipping and handling, you know, we were doing about $8.8 million a month, which was about 100 million. And the thing was, was my ads, I was able to write them in a way that I was able to

• 7:55Speaker 02

  get a six-to-one ROI, lifetime value. So, we would put a million-two in ads, and then take out the close to 8 million. The company had about 50 million in EBITDA, off like 100 million in sales. So, it's like a valuation of like a three-times multiplier when I put, you know, my problem was, I was 90% on one product. So, there was a lot of risk there. So, my one whole goal with that company was, make more heroes, make more heroes, so I could, you know, maybe have a five, six-times multiplier for all, you know, and, and have something of value. But that was cut short, you know, because-

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yes, the longer version is in the book, which everyone, I would highly recommend. You absolutely have to go get it. It's a multi-day seminar in one book. If you apply what you learn in the book, and you can't generate serious results, you need your head examined. The book's called The 12-Month Millionaire. Why'd you decide to write it in the first place?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Well, because when my, when my company imploded, you know, I- I I took like a probation deal and I got I got like in that state, I could get up to one year in like the in like the county jail, unfortunately, I mean, you know, so I I wasn't around to like run a business. So I said, let me write a, maybe I'll write a book, you know, it's like, it's not my first book. The first book I wrote in nineteen ninety five, very small, you know, direct response book that I wrote. But yeah, this book, I I wanted to write this one because I figured, hey, you know, I built a company, you know, I've been in this for at the time, like seven, eight years. I built a company to twenty in twenty seven months to to in the equivalent of, you know, a hundred million in annual sales. I might have, regardless of what the product was, you know, marketing is the marketing, you know, so it's like, and

• 9:37Speaker 02

  the ability to companies that size don't scale themselves on their own internally financed. So I thought I had something to share. So I wrote the book, put it in the drawer, did ninety something days, came out. I was friends with Gary Halbert, who is a, you know, a lot of guys will like, there you are, there's my man, there's my man.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Holding up Gary Halbert's, the new edition of his flight file right now that his kids put out.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, I like a lot of guys will like quote like Gary Halbert and like Gary, how I quote Gary Halbert talking about me, you know, so it's like I sent him the book and he was like, there's stuff in here I didn't even know. So I'm like, oh, thanks, Gary. So I basically, I basically, that twelve month millionaire basically taught Gary Halbert stuff, which was, you know, crazy. And it's like twenty years later.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  One of the best copywriters ever.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's and just the way he thought about things too, just, you know, associative thinking and just his weird way he would teach with analogies. It's just, he was incredible. But yeah, for him to say that was was a, you know, was something that I'll, it's like a tattoo on me for the rest of my life that twenty years later, I still benefit from. He promoted the book. Every marketer bought the book. It was, you know, and it was, it was three hundred dollars back then. It wasn't, you know, and Gary actually.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I remember punching him sweating because at the time I was like, this is two hundred ninety seven dollars for a book. I'm like, I hope it's really good.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm like, I was even shocked because I'm like, you know, I was like, I wasn't thinking to sell it for that much. But Gary's like, oh, no, this is more than a book. This is, he's like, he's like, you shouldn't even be selling this as a book.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  You could have sold it for as a multi-day seminar for five grand.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's that, yeah, thank you. So, yeah, so it did good. And like every, every marketer was on it. Russell Brunson was one of those marketers. He was a twenty five year old kid with a thousand name email list. He was skeptical to buy it because he probably was three hundred was by a lot to him at the time. So it took him a long time to eventually purchase it. He did. Um, I mean, he has click fun. I mean, not saying that my book is responsible for it, but I can't, I can't guarantee that it wasn't either, you know, so.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  There you go. You can neither confirm nor deny.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. So it's a, you know, it's a billion dollar thing that he was able to build off, you know, so, and then actually then, I actually got in trouble for selling the book because I guess it's okay to sell the book. Just don't become too successful selling the book because then you piss people off. And then I ended up violating my probation because of this book. So I, so I stopped selling it. So in two thousand and six, I took it off the market. And until today, until current times, I have not released this book. If you bought a copy after two thousand and six, it wasn't a copy that I printed, you know, so, so, but, but Russell and I did an interview when he was an affiliate in oh, five for the book. He in oh, seven, he was kind of, what am I going to sell? I want to, you know, he was, he was between products.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  So he, so he took that interview he did with me and created a product and sold it and went and had a lot of affiliates and the copy that I wrote originally for the book, he used for that. It was really good. So he sold over seven figures worth of it in a week. And I was, I wasn't aware of it. I mean, not that I, you know, whatever, I was just wasn't aware of it. And being on the probation, I was like, you know, walking in a minefield as it was because you could get in trouble for, you know, I got in trouble for doing online seminars, which was a teleseminar that somebody put the MP three file online and some, and then they said, oh, that you're doing online seminars. And I got violated for that as well. And I'm like, that's, that is, okay, people, that's, that's getting crazy here, you know?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know that bureaucrats understand the world of digital marketing.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  No, any asshole could be a critic. Not, you know, anybody could leave a bad review on Rotten Tomatoes. Not anybody, not everybody could be Martin Scorsese, or even, or even the guy who did Toxic Avenger. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, anybody could be a critic, though. So, so yeah, so Russell sold the product, won his first, you know, made his first million dollars off one singular product off the Vincent James twelve month millionaire product, um, you know, and violated my probation again. And this time, there was no smack on the hand. It was, we're gonna, you know, we're really coming at you hard for this. And I was, being that I didn't do anything wrong, I, I was like, I can't, you know, because I, I just

• 13:49Speaker 02

  couldn't, I couldn't do what they wanted me to do. And what they wanted me to do was probably like three and a half to five years for violating this probation. So I said, you know, I, I took off, I took off, I absconded from probation and I lived the next eighteen years in the shadows, working for people, you know, you talk about the Mr. X book, I was really the Mr. X, you know, it's like, so, so I worked with a lot of people and like sixteen years, I just was getting tired of this, living that lifestyle. And I, you know, I wanted to, you know, I wanted to get my books out. I wrote these new books on all this, you know, people would be like, oh, it was dead time. And I'm like, well, I would never consider it dead time. I make that dead time a live time. I wrote all those books in that time. I knew I might not be able to collect on

• 14:34Speaker 02

  them in two thousand and twenty two or two thousand and twenty three, but I'll be able to collect on them eventually. So I wanted those books to come out so bad, badly. I mean, they could have came out if I was, if I turned myself in and they made me go to prison, the book could have been out because there's no term of probation then. And if they put me back, you know, let me go free, I could sell them. So I wanted these books to be in the public's hands so badly that I walked into a courtroom not knowing if I was going to be walking out in three and a half to five years. Luckily, I put it in God's hands and the judge was an excellent judge and he, he, he was fine. He, you know, being that I did it, my turn myself in, I got out, called up Russell, I said, hey, Russ, I heard you got pretty good experience.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  No one had to sell my stuff in large quantities. And then I told him what happened. And I'm like, you know, yeah. So, so that's kind of where we are now. And then he, he asked me to speak at Funnel Hacking Live. And I got to do my little comedy routine there a little bit.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  And, and now we're doing a live event where we're, I took the twelve month millionaire, the original one, and I updated it. I gave it a twentieth, updated it for its twentieth anniversary because that book deserves it. Gary Halbert called it the most important marketing product ever put together, which was pretty, pretty crazy coming from Gary's, Gary's mouth.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, you gotta still pinch yourself every time you, every time you look at that.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  To, I want to hug him. I miss him. You know, it's like.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  I have a fax framed from Dan Kennedy telling me a sales letter I wrote. He's like, this is pretty good copy. And I'm like, I cried and then framed it.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Right. Because these guys we learn from, right? So it's like to hear, it's like valid, it's the ultimate validation.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Who cares about a diploma somewhere? You know, I got my mentor, you know, giving me validation of of our skills, learning from their material. And then we add to it. We take their material and we add to it and we make it, we elevate it. And that's what I like to think that I did with the twelve month millionaire, and especially with the twelve month millionaire two, where that is written twenty years after the twelve month million, the original twelve month millionaire. And that, that, that book is like incredible. It's like, I, like I said, I wanted it out so badly that I was like, I'm, I'm gonna, I, I kind of like numbed myself and just walked into, walked into the flame, you know, and luckily it turned out well for me. I

• 16:55Speaker 02

  mean, it could, it may, it may not have, but regardless, the book would have been on the market. I already had the deal, you know, with Russell, so.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Well, that is absolutely incredible. So talk a little bit about, so there's the updated version, there's two point O, there's talk about the all day event, talk about the other things that come that that also that you're putting out along with the new edition of the book.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Russell and I are publishing a newsletter. We call it the Vincent James letter and, you know, an homage to the Gary Halbert letter. And that is basically going to be me because my story and my teachings, it's like, there's no way I could fit it in a half hour podcast, an hour podcast, even a book, you know, there's, there's just a lot, there's just a lot. And, and that's why, you know, with the, with the books and the newsletters and it's, it's just a lot. It's a lot. It takes. Days, like it would literally be like a multi-day, multi-week-long seminar.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  And obviously, Russell and everyone else, including us, are going to promote the heck out of that launch. What's your vision? What do you, if you, if you have a magic wand, what do you want to happen?

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Uh, I really don't, um, I'm not really like a launch guy. I'm more of like a long-term guy. So I would, I would probably like to be able to sell two, three thousand copies through cold traffic a month, have, you know, at least 50% of them stick, uh, on the newsletter. Have a six-month customer life, at least on average on the newsletter. So probably bring in, you know, a thousand times six, six thousand, six to 10,000 subscribers. I think that would make me very happy. And then Russell and I plan on doing, uh, two events a year up in Boise, uh, to the, for the subscribers. And there's all, there's other things that I'm including for the subscribers that we're not talking about.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  Cause I, you know, I'm putting that all on like the stick, you know? So it's like, it's, it's, it's insane that the, uh, the value to keep them, to keep, you know, to keep people subscribing for years.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Well, I can't wait for all of that. I signed up for all of it at Funnel Hacking Live. What do you think some of the biggest marketing lessons you've learned over the decades have been?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Oh my God. My biggest lesson, like what I would tell people was that it's not about copywriting. I mean, you have to know copywriting, but it's not all about copyright. If it was all about copywriting, you would have never had a failure after you had your first success. And it's not all about marketing either. What it's about is taste and not necessarily your personal taste. It's the taste of what the market is going to want. So the product selection is where it's at. Like I have a, I have, I have like a concept where it's like, that's why there's so many gurus. There's so many gurus because they know all the marketing tech techniques. The problem is they just don't know how to put it on, onto a product that millions of people want to buy. So they teach the techniques. It's kind of like a, kind of like a guitar instructor, right?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  A guitar instructor at the local guitar center, he probably knows a thousand chords. And he knows all the chords, you know, he's a great guitar player. His problem is he doesn't know how to put those chords in a pattern that makes, smells like teen spirit. Kurt Cobain maybe knew four chords, but he knew how to put them in that order. So it's a lot easier to be a guitar instructor than it is to be a rock star. So that's what my point is, is that the product and the offer that go together are the most important things. So I, my book, the whole first like hundred pages of the 12-month millionaire two goes over something that I call the cue filter. And the cue filter is the question filter. And the, what I say is every ad, website, whatever, asks a question.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And it's, you want my product or my service with this offer? Product or service plus offer equals question. That's all there is to it. So, um, I've been in the business, like I said, since 1994, winners, losers, winners, losers, winners, losers. You, you do that enough times, you say, I wonder if there's commonalities. And I said, holy crap, there's like 12 commonalities amongst all my winners. And the losers, although I loved them, I thought they were, I loved the losers. Well, before they were losers, I loved them, but, uh, they had less than six of the commonalities. I said, I wonder if this is true on other people's products too. So I started applying it to other people's products. And shit, you know, it's like very similar. So yes, the first part of that book is the cue filter,

• 21:22Speaker 02

  which is 12 questions that, uh, you ask yourself, you run your product through. And when you, once you know them and they're ingrained in your, in your memory, you start creating products with that cue filter in mind ahead of time.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  You have helped so many people through the books and now through everything else that through everything that's kind of come out in 2.0. What's your biggest challenge now?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't know. Cause like my, my, my, my challenge, this is what my challenge is. My challenge is I, uh, I'm brutally honest when it comes time to teaching. So I don't want to tell people what may need to be told to them to get to sell in the masses. You know, oh, I'm not going to find me jumping up and down a stage. You know, you're not going to see me jumping on a trampoline. You're not going to see me, you know, ooh, you know, I'm going to be like, tell it, just a straight shooter. Now that appeals only to a certain type of person, you know, I like to think a very intelligent person that doesn't want to be like, you know, told, sold a story. Oh, do, do what you love and the money will follow. I say, do what works and learn to love it.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, I, I have, everything I have is contrary. Um, you know, it's like, that's just the way that it is. So for someone like me to be very financially successful, my stuff would need to be five and 10 and 20 and $50,000 to appeal to just that higher end person who is like, come on, we know we're not going to like, you know, make a million dollars off a course about gardening. Okay, people, you know, it's not going to happen. You know, but they'll sell you that though. You know, the other, the other guys, they'll be like, oh, you know, my wife, she would love gardening. She would totally buy that course if you bought my course on that for 2,000 bucks. And, you know, me, I'm like, you know, your wife don't want to buy that course. Come on, stop lying to those people. And, you know, when people come to me and they're like, oh, do you think your book could help me?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  I look at some of them and I say, I don't think so. And it's not because it's the book's fault. It's because I don't think that they have the ability to pick a product that I, they can apply all my techniques to. So that's my challenge. My challenge is, is there enough people? I mean, I know there's people that'll pay a lot of money, but I don't want to, I don't want to charge a hundred thousand, $50,000 for, you know, is there enough people that could buy a book for 97 bucks? That could be sold the truth without being required to be, you know, lied or misled or, you know, oh, you know, fish like worms. Fish don't like pepperoni. If you like pepperoni and you want to catch a fish, you can't put pepperoni on the hook. You got to put a worm. I don't want to touch a worm.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  You don't want to touch, worms are gross. But if we want to eat the fish, fish eat worms.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Fish do eat worms. Your passion is obvious. What do you like best about what you're doing now?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Um, I, I'm at a point in my life where I think I just experienced so many like evolutions. Like I was there when the marketers were like this with the cavemen dragging their knuckles, you know? I was there before the internet. I was there. I, I wrote, you know, I was doing paid search in the year 2000. So it's like, it wasn't even, it's overture. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, we, we, uh, you know, I remember in the nineties saying like, these dorks are like being able to outrank me by putting all these white words at the bottom of their website and shit, you know, why can't they just make us, like, if I want a bigger ad in a magazine, I got to pay for it. Why can't I just pay for it? You know, I'm like, and you know, that's, that's paid search. Let them pay. I mean, the thing about paid search is that, yeah, that's them coming, them coming to you.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I mean, if you really want to make a lot of money, you've got to be going to them and then be hitting them at a right, you know? Hey, that's, that sounds like something I want to exchange my dollars for. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, uh, I'm just, I'm just at a point in my life where I, I don't think there's anything else I could amass. I, you know, I'm still, uh, and I've, uh, yeah, there's a lot of information that I have that I think a lot of people, if people benefited 20 years ago, I mean, there's a whole lot to be learned in 20 years.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Well, you're absolutely right. Let's talk about that. The world's changed a lot in the last couple of decades. You started, it was print ads and direct mail. Obviously the ways of reaching people have changed a lot. Do you think that the fundamental principles of psychology and selling have changed at all with that? Or is it just, we now have a plethora of media to use?

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think there's just a, there's just a whole lot, a lot, a lot more ways to touch people. I mean, a lot of those older ways don't work anymore. Like space ads will not work because the magazines are so small. Direct mail doesn't work for cold prospecting because there's no lists on the market. I mean, mail still works. I mean, our utility bills, if we don't pay them online, they still come to our mailbox. We're not going to be like, oh, you know, it's all about the internet. Now I'm not going to pay my credit card bill. You know, it's like, um, uh, but yeah, no, I mean, uh, online, digital marketing, yes, it's, it's, it's all the same stuff. It's just when I started doing websites, I was putting sales letters on my website. You know, one long website. And it's, you know, people used to look and say, what are you doing?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  I'm like, that's, you know, that's, it's not, it's like, I have a saying, I say, I don't know if I could curse on your podcast, but I say, same shit, different pipes. Stop over complicating this. The difference between a piece of direct mail and a space ad is the same difference between a space ad and a website. It's all different. How does radio compare to direct mail? Why would online be in its own bucket? It's, it's, you know, I, the thing that I would say that the major difference is, is that 20 years ago, there was a pizza pie with eight slices, eight advertisers, and they had to pay a lot, but they got a big piece. And nowadays that pizza pie is the same diameter, but instead of eight slices, it might be 50, 100 slices that are smaller.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  So there's a lot, a lot more people making a lot less. So all the more reason to be able to structure better questions. So you can get more people to say yes to your offer, your question. And that's what the whole, and that's what the whole book's about. The whole book is pretty much about that. I mean, sales copy, yeah, that helps, you know, angles and stuff like that. But if you put Mario Andretti in a Yugo and you put an 80 something year old grandmother in a Ferrari with an F1 transmission, she's going to beat Mario Andretti. So Mario Andretti is the copywriter, you know, the product is the vehicle. So.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  What do you think is the most overlooked opportunity today?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  You know, there's, there's, I, I really don't have an answer for that, to be honest, which I'm not, I don't, I, I like to have my, my, uh, my thoughts deep on that. I don't know if I would be prepared just to off the cuff to say what I think that would be without feeling genuine in my answer.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I, I appreciate your integrity. That is not, not a problem. So for our folks watching or listening, where is the best place for them to go to participate, to get the new book, to participate in the all-day event? Where can we send them?

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. Well, the, uh, the website is 12monthmillionaire.com, numeral one, numeral two, month millionaire, no hyphen. The, the live event is November 12th, um, and all the registration information is on that page. And yeah, it's going to be a nice, long, a nice, nice long event up in Boise, my first time in Boise. And we're, uh, we're looking forward to, uh, you know, really, I've been away for a long, not away, thank God. But I've been out of the spotlight for a long time. So I've been like pent up, you know, I'm like, uh,

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Okay, and ready to, I'm all fired up.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm ready to unleash the beast.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Awesome. Well, I can't wait. We're registered for the event. Super excited. Again, folks, that's 12monthmillionaire.com, 12 is the number one, two. This has been Seth Green for Sharkpreneur with Vincent James. Vince, thank you so much for doing the show.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you. It's, it's a blast, man. I loved it.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Our pleasure. Thank you, Vince, and thank you, everybody for watching or listening. We will talk to you or see you next time.

• 28:57Speaker 03

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