This program is brought to you by thepodcastfactory.com.
Hey, Canine Crew, Doberman Dan is revealing his most successful evergreen income secret. Discover how to start your own lucrative income stream with an investment of less than $100 and only a few hours of sweat equity. Now you can pocket an extra $1,000, $5,000, even $10,000 or more each and every month. All the details are revealed at EvergreenIncomeSecret.com.
Prepare yourself for the uncensored, nothing held back, no BS reality of how business and life really work. Doberman Dan is off the chain.
Dan: Hey, good to be back with you. Doberman Dan here. J.R., how's it going?
Jonathan: Why is your voice so different from what we were just talking before? It's like you have a radio voice.
Dan: Well, it's my radio voice. Prior to this it was like, Yeah…em…just been up to not much really. But then when the red light comes on it's, “Hey, how ya doin’?” So… And, also, because I'm excited. We have a guest today. We have with us one of my favorite writers, a copywriter and a fiction writer, which I think is a rare thing, Richard Armstrong. So, Richard, thanks for being with us today.
Richard: Doberman, it's a great pleasure. I'm delighted to be able to talk with you today.
Dan: I feel the same way and I've got to get something out in the open right from the start. Well, first of all, I was I was telling you earlier that I wanted to talk with you anyway because I'm really curious about your new book, so now I get to kill two birds with one stone—I get to find out about what I want to ask anyway and record a podcast—but I’ve just got to get this…I’ve got to be totally transparent with it.
So the new book, The Don Con, I'm looking at it over there on my bookshelf, but it's here's where the books are and then The Don Con is pulled out because it’s next up on my reading list, but I haven't read it yet and I have a darn good excuse—because I know I'm going to totally get sucked in if it's even half as good as God Doesn't Shoot Craps, your first fiction book. That book, man, I could not put it down. I literally lost out on work time because I got sucked in and I couldn't put [03:00] it down. So, this one I thought, yeah, just the other day I would saying, Yeah, I'm going to start The Don Con, but I'm actually, again, being totally transparent, I'm late on a deadline on a writing project, and I knew if I got into it, man, the client’s going to be really pissed off because I'll just get sucked in and I'll blow off work to read your book.
Richard: Well, I've got some really I've got some really bad news for you, Dobie. The Don Con is harder to put down than God Doesn't Shoot Craps. That's what everybody has told me and I love to hear that obviously, but I have heard that over and over and over again. People read it in one night, two sittings. Somebody just told me that they were just like you they were in middle of something that they had to do that they were on deadline, but they couldn't stop reading. So, I really do love to hear that it.
The one thing that some copywriters have told me, that they like the God Doesn't Shoot Craps a little better. Dan Kennedy, for example, told me this. He liked the first one a little bit better, but the main reason is just because it's about a direct mail copywriter and this one is not. This one is about an actor. There is, however, a brief appearance by somebody who I won't reveal but who was very important in your life, and he's no longer with us, but he makes an appearance in prison, if that's not too much [info? 04:24].
Dan: I wonder who that is.
Richard: And anybody who's a direct mail copywriter will recognize that this character was at least somewhat based on this person.
Dan: I can't wait to get into it. Now I'm really glad I didn't start into it or who knows how late I'd be in my copy project? Speaking of copy, so how does a copywriter get started with writing fiction? Or was it vice versa—you were a fiction writer and started writing copy?
Richard: No, it was definitely the former because I never had any interest whatsoever in writing fiction. I mean, I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be a novelist or a short story writer. Not even in college did it occur to me that I had any particular interest in that. I will say, however, storytelling, as you know better than anybody, Dan, is extremely important in copywriting. The ability to tell a story is a great skill to have in copywriting and I had noticed over the years that I have the touch of that skill.
When I first started in this business, storytelling had kind of fallen out of favor. It was big in the ’20s, begin the ’30s, but by the time I had started in the ’70s, people thought, well, storytelling leads are not that good because they take too long to develop, and back in the ’70s we all believed that we didn't yet know how important it was to write long letters. We all believed it was better to write short letters.
And so, [06:00] storytelling had kind of fallen out of favor and I didn't write many packages that were based on stories, but every now and then I'd be in a situation where I had just a great story dropped in my lap by the client and I couldn't think of any other way to do it, so I’d go ahead and tell the story and I noticed something very interesting happening. Every time I lead with a story, the package would work and would work like gangbusters. And then I thought, Well, that's probably a coincidence and I'll go back to doing it the way everyone else is doing it, and then four or five years later, I'd be in that situation again—somebody could drop a great story in my lap. I had to use it. I did it and it would work.
And so, after this happened three or four times, I went, “Well, you know, maybe storytelling is a good way to write a direct mail letter,” and since that time, I'd never looked back. Nowadays, when I started direct mail project, I'm always thinking, What is the story that I can lead with here? And there are only a few situations where I cannot find a story and I have to find another way into it.
All this is by way of answering your question, sort of the long route answering your question. I did not have any interest in being a fiction writer, but Bob Bly—I'm sure you know, Bob.
Dan: I know Bob.
Richard: He's like the he's a chemical engineer by training. He's the only person I know in the world that reads science Digest magazine. Okay. I mean, just he's got that kind of a mind. You know, he's a chemical engineer. I think it's science digest. It might have been nature, one of the other one of the other scientific magazines. And he Bob likes to promote his business, just by sending people and friendships as well. He sends people little clippings that he thinks they might be interested in. And he was reading Science Magazine, science scientists, whatever it is, and he encountered this little story about a new mathematical theory called Parrondo's paradox.
It's very complicated in terms of the math of it, but the principle is simple. The principle is that under certain situations, you can play to losing gambling games, and if you alternate between the two losing gambling games, Gambling Game A and Gambling Game B, and alternate, play one for a while and then play the other, then go back to the first one, if you do it exactly right, you can actually have a winning result, even though the mathematical expectation of both games is a negative expectation like a casino game.
And I knew that I was really into gambling. I've always been a big craps player. I love gambling. So he sent this to me and thinking that I'd be interested in it. I looked at it. I thought, My God, this is great, and my first thought was, Well, I'll take this concept to the casino and I'll make a million dollars. But Dr. Parrondo who is a real person, by the way, is a real mathematician. [09:00] He's Spanish. He works at the University of Madrid. He says, “Well, you know, the problem is you can't do this to the casino because they have to be a specific kind of gambling game. You can't do it with craps or blackjack.”
And I thought, Well, okay, I can't make a million at the casino, but I know what I'll do. I'll create a gambling system based on Parrondo's paradox, and I'll sell it to people and I'll make a million dollars that way. Then I thought, Well, maybe I shouldn't do that, because that wouldn't be technically legal if I knew for a fact that it didn't work in the casino. I shouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't do that, because that wouldn't be ethical.
So, my third thought was, Well, what if I write a story about a guy, a copywriter who is less ethical than I am—hard to find those people, but there are some less ethical than I am—and maybe he puts together a system like this and he sells it, and he sells millions of copies, and then, all of a sudden, he discovers that it really works and he realizes it'll stop working if everybody does it. So, he somehow has to get all those copies back from those people.
That was the concept for God Doesn't Shoot Craps and that's what got me into fiction writing, and that was some time ago, and about 10 years later, I got the idea for The Don Con and we can go into that idea, too. I'll let you decide.
Dan: Yeah, tell us about what The Don Con is about. Give us the overview, keeping in mind that I really want to dive into it after I finish this copy project. So, please know...don't ruin any.
Richard: Okay, sure. I won't. In fact, it's not the kind of story you can spoil except for maybe the last 20 pages or so come as a surprise, but it’s mostly a comedy, so it’s not something that I can spoil by telling you who the killer is or anything like that.
Here's the story behind The Don Con. It's about a washed up actor who kind of hit the high watermark of his career when he had a very, very small role on The Sopranos and now he can't make a living as an actor anymore, so he's forced to make a living by going to fan conventions and signing autographs for money. You know what a fan convention is, don't you, Dan?
Dan: Mhm, yeah.
Richard: It’s like Comic Con. Comic Con is like the granddaddy of them all. It's a huge one that's in San Diego every year, but there are hundreds of these all around the country. Some of them are very big like Comic Con; some of them are tiny. But the hero of this novel, based on his very minor career as a TV actor, goes around and makes money signing autographs at these fan conventions as an ex-actor who played a gangster on TV, and then one day there's a real gangster in his autograph line, and the real gangster makes [12:00] him an offer he can't refuse, namely, you are going to help me Rob all the celebrities at the next fan convention.
So, that's the basic story. What happens from there is that the robbery goes completely haywire. Our hero, the actor, goes to prison where, as I said, he meets somebody that you might know. Then he comes out of prison and he's thinking about revenge, revenge against the mafia don, and he decides to create this elaborate con game to screw the mafia don, and that's why the book is called The Don Con. “Con” is also the word that people who go to fan conventions use to describe fan conventions. They just call them cons. So, it's almost a triple entendre there.
That's the basic plot line and, if you're interested, I'll tell you quickly how I got the idea for this.
Dan: Yeah, I'd love to know that because I also want to talk to you about how you’re promoting it. I'm seeing you do it really unique.
Richard: The story of how I got the idea is really kind of amusing. I have a friend who was in this in Star Trek. He was one of the principal actors of Star Trek, not the first version, not the one with Shatner and everybody, but the second one, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Did you ever see that?
Dan: Oh, yeah. Which character was here? What's his name?
Richard: Patrick Stewart was the commander of the ship, Sir Patrick Stewart. My friend, Jonathan Frakes, was the second in command. He was commander Riker.
Dan: I know that guy. Well, I don't know. I know of him. Yes.
Richard: Well, I've known him for years and years and years because we did a play together years ago about way back in 1972. Glenn Close was in that play, as a matter of fact. It was quite an amazing thing that two of them went on to become quite famous.
At any rate, Jonathan is just a wonderful guy and we've remained friends for all these years, not close friends, really, because he went off to Hollywood, became a star, and I went into direct marketing, so we don't see each other that often, but we’ve stayed in touch.
And one time I was in Maine and I knew that he had a vacation home in Maine, and I just sent him an email. I said, “Hey, we're not too far from you from where you live and where your houses in Maine, and you're not here by any chance?” and he said, “Yeah, I am. Let's get together. Let's have dinner.”
So, we went together to dinner, together with my wife, and at that point I hadn't seen him in a long time and I was asking him what he was up to, and he told me that nowadays he doesn't do a lot of acting, but he directs a lot of TV. But he said that one of the things that he does for income is that he goes to these fan conventions and he signs autographs, and the amount of cash that he gets from doing this is just unbelievable.
He just signs an autograph, it's like $35 in cash. If you don't have anything for him to sign, then he'll sell you a picture of himself for another 15 [15:00], and then if you want a selfie with him, that's another 25, so he's making $75 cash from everybody who comes in the line to talk to him, and the line’s like 100 people long. So, he said the first time he went to one of these things, he did wasn't sure what to expect, and he came back with cash stuffed in his pockets, stuffed in his underwear and his shoes and everything, and he thought, Man, where has this been all my life? And so, now he does it all the time.
And, a couple of weeks later, I was back home and I was taking a walk, and I was just kind of thinking about that conversation, and I thought to myself, What if somebody tried to steal all that money? And that's how I got the idea for The Don Con.
Dan: Interesting. It's always cool to see where the ideas come from. They can come from anywhere.
Richard: Exactly, exactly. So, I thank Jonathan very much for giving me that idea and Jonathan also helped me with the promotion. He was kind enough to read it and give me a wonderful testimonial for it that we put on the cover of it. He's just been a very good friend.
Dan: Oh, that's cool. I'm really interested in how you're promoting this because—oh, by the way, I'm going to see you in another couple weeks at Dan Kennedy's event in Clayton.
Richard: Oh, great. I didn't know you were going to be doing. That's wonderful.
Dan: I'm speaking on the second day and that's the day you're being interviewed by, right?
Richard: Super, yeah, yeah.
Dan: So, I'll see you there. So, how are you promoting that? I'm seeing you do something pretty interesting. I was fascinated by the bonus report, How to Talk Anybody into Anything: Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Greatest Con Men, right?
Richard: Exactly.
Dan: But tell me about how you're using that in the promotion of this book.
Richard: Well, here's the thing. Fiction is notoriously difficult to market. I mean, no, literally, nobody knows how to do it. It's not that you can't market books. I've marketed books my whole life, but they've all been books by Rodale, books by Boardroom, all my clients. They're all nonfiction books that have a how-to component to them. Usually, they're either in natural health or in finance, so you can make a promise of curing your arthritis or you can make a promise of investment opportunities that will make you rich. There's a real transactional thing there and you can talk about the benefits of owning the book.
But what benefit do you use with fiction? There's almost none. And, as I say, it's notoriously difficult to promote. All you can really do is try to get it out there as much as possible, giving it away if you have to, and hope that people like it enough that they recommend it to their friends, because the only thing that we know for sure about fiction is that word of mouth works very well, but you’ve got to get it out there in some way in order to create that word of mouth. [18:00]
So, what I have done—and I did this with God Doesn't Shoot Craps, too—is that I created a traffic driver, a bait piece they’re sometimes called. It's called, as you said, How To Talk Anybody Into Anything: Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Greatest Con Men, and the derivation of that was, as I mentioned earlier, the key plot point in the novel is that my actor guy has to learn how to run a con, and I had to learn how to run a con because I'd never done it. I mean, I'm not a con man, obviously, so I bought about a dozen books about con men. Some of them are really terrific books. I read hundreds of magazine articles and studies and newspaper articles about con artists and drifters and flimflam men and everything. And what occurred to me and this whole process is, hey, this is the same stuff I've been doing as a copywriter for the last 40 years.
Now, there is a difference between a copywriter and a con man, and the difference...
Dan: Yeah, thank you for clearing this up.
Richard: The difference comes down to this. It's something that the law itself recognizes and, in a two-word phrase, it’s called criminal intent. A con man is a criminal and his goal is to steal money from you. Now, he doesn't do it by pointing a gun at you. He does it using persuasive technique, but his goal is to steal. He's a thief. Copywriters are not thieves.
Copywriters are we want to sell something to you. We want to give you something that hopefully is worth at least as much as what you're paying for it, maybe even more than what you're paying for it, and even more than that we hope to establish a long-term relationship with you, because one of the one of the key facts of our business is that we usually either breakeven or maybe even lose a little money on the first transaction and our hope is that we'll be able to sell you several things down the line in order to make you a profitable customer, what we call the lifetime value of a customer. So, we have a completely different kind of relationship with our customers than con men do.
Having said that, we use a lot of the very same techniques and during my study, my research, I found 44 different things that we have in common with con men, and so, I just wrote a book called How to Talk Anybody into Anything. You get that just by going to my website, which is TheDonCon.com, and download that for free. There's no cost to that. And then, of course, my hope is that once you get to the website, you'll see a little bit about the novel and you'll be inclined to buy that. So, that's that's the way I've been marketing.
Dan: I think it's a cool approach. I've not seen any fiction authors doing that. I think it's a great model. Well, it's a great model for anybody selling any book, but especially for fiction.
Richard: I think it's working [21:00] fairly well. I think it worked a little better for God Doesn't Shoot Craps because we have the direct mail connection, so I was able to identify specifically who my target audience was, which is direct mail copywriters, because God Doesn't Shoot Craps was or to this day I believe is the one and only novel ever written about a direct mail copywriter. So, I had a whole variety of free reports that I gave away in connection or in exchange for buying God Doesn't Shoot Craps. So, we're getting like gangbusters for that book, but this book is a little more complicated because I don't have…
I'm reaching copywriters through podcasts like yours, but generally my audience is more diffused. It's not just for copywriters, and so I've struggled with that a little bit, but I've been pleased with the sales. I've had probably more than 1,000 people download it, download the free book so far, and a fair number of those have gone on to buy the novel. So, like I was saying before, Dan, we're just trying to reach that kind of critical mass of novel readers where we reach the point where people start to recommend it to other people and that's what we're looking for.
Dan: Right, which is what happened with God Doesn't Shoot Craps, correct?
Richard: Yes, it did. It did. I mean, that book did very well. Obviously, it didn't make me rich or I would have stopped working, but it did nicely and it was auctioned for a film by a couple of Broadway producers and I made some money. I like to say I made more money from Hollywood than I did from writing the book, and it was just a great experience, and writing novels, in general, is a very satisfying thing.
I mean, for somebody who's made his entire career writing junk mail, what we do is probably the most ephemeral kind of writing in the world. I mean, 99 percent, even if we're lucky, it's 99 percent of the people who read what we write, immediately throw it away without reading it—1 percent respond, we're happy to get that 1 percent—but it means that what we write is very ephemeral. It's here one day and gone the next.
But when you write a novel, there's a little bit of a feeling of accomplishment there even if it does not go on to become any kind of a classic or anything. You do have a little bit of a sense that you made a mark on the world that's going to last a little bit.
Hey, Canine Crew, Doberman Dan is revealing his most successful evergreen income secret. Discover how to start your own lucrative income stream with an investment of less than $100 and only a few hours of sweat equity. Now you can pocket an extra $1,000, $5,000, even $10,000 or more each and every month. All the details are revealed at EvergreenIncomeSecret.com.
Dan: [24:38] The one thing I was wondering, after writing copy all day, or sometimes all day and all night, the excuse could be made like, Yeah, I’m tired of writing. I don't want to also dedicate time every day into writing fiction. So, two-part question then—what was the motivation and then how did you manage your time to squeeze that in?
Richard: My motivation in both cases was simply that I had a story; I had an idea, or I had an idea that while I was thinking about it, it developed into a story. And then the story just had to come out. It just had to come out. I had to sit down and write it in both cases, and I couldn't do anything else. So, it wasn't a matter of managing my time.
In both cases, I just called whatever client I was working for and I don't do this often. I'm very proud of the fact that I hit my deadlines and I think it's actually one of the reasons that I've been successful, because some of my peers are notoriously bad about that. Gary Halbert was one of the worst, as you know. I mean, if Gary told you it was going to be done in April, then he didn't specify which decade that April was going to be in.
Dan: Exactly.
Richard: But I was proud of myself and hitting my deadlines. But, in both of these cases, when I had this idea for the book, I said,” Richard, you can't do anything other than this.” So, I called clients and I said, “Hey, guess what. Your book, your project is going to be a month late,” and they were both okay with it. I think with God Doesn't Shoot Craps, I actually told the client that my grandmother had died and I was so upset I couldn’t. By that time, I’d probably used up my third or fourth grandmother, I don't know. You get up to about five. After you’d whacked your fifth grandmother, you know your clients start to catch on to you, but I just cleared the decks.
And the thing is, when you're writing fiction, it comes up fast. It really does come out fast. I mean, once you've worked out the story in your head and you know what the key plot points are, you know where it begins and where it turns and where it's going to end, it comes out so fast that in both cases, I would say, I had a first draft in about a month, and at that point I could just go back to working for clients and do the necessary editing and revisions and stuff like that in my spare time. [27:00] My friend, Bob Bly, I mentioned him again, he just read wrote his 100th book.
Dan: My God.
Richard: And most of his are nonfiction, of course, but Bob is one of these people who is a great time manager, but he also just has an absolutely unlimited capacity for work. And I just saw him down at the AWAI boot camp last week and he was telling the attendees down there that he writes his books for relaxation. So, he works from 07:00 in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, and then he says, “Well, you know, around four o'clock, I get real tired.” Well, duh. I guess you would get tired at four o'clock. But here's what he does. He says, “Well, at four o'clock. I'm so tired that I can start to work on one of my books for a couple hours to relax.”
Dan: Oh, my God.
Richard: I have to say I am not like that at all and that's why I have to focus on one thing at a time.
Dan: No kidding. My gosh, I feel like just a complete lazy bum compared to [inaudible 28:02].
Richard: I know. Doesn't that make you feel that way? I mean, frankly, Dan, some of the people who are enormously successful in our business, they're just people who love to work. My wife is like that. My wife can't watch television and just watch television. She has to be sitting there writing memos while she's watching television. I'm not like that. I can watch television for six hours in a row. And not even that, if the television is not on or I'm not where the television is, I can sit and stare into space for six hours in a row just like a dog, you know. I don't need to be working, but some people. My wife is one of them and Bob is definitely one of them. I had dinner with Clayton Makepeace down there at the boot camp, and Clayton, he gets up at 04:30; works straight for 12 hours.
And a lot of times, those of us who sell or offer copywriting advice, talk about how easy it is and how it’s a great way to be your own boss and stuff like that. What we don't tell people is if you want to be one of the very best in this business, one of the top earners, you’d better be a hard worker, too.
Dan: For sure. I find it interesting, what you said, that writing fiction, it just flows—it just flowed out and you probably had a first draft in about a month—that the first thing that came to mind, and I'm not going to remember his exact words, but Steven Pressfield who's written some really successful… Are you familiar with his…?
Richard: Read everything that he's written and huge believer in his advice, yes.
Dan: What is it that he said? It was basically exactly what you said. You had a story. It had to come out. That's what all great artists say that not doing it was simply not an option.
Richard: Yeah, yeah, Pressfield, he has an interesting story and I would encourage your listeners to remember that name and just go to [30:00] Amazon and buy every book he's ever written about writing, because they're all extremely valuable. Whether you're a copywriter or a fiction writer, by the way, because a lot of what he has to say is merely about professionalism. It's about sticking to it. It's about working every day. But he has an interesting life story because he wanted to be a screen[writer].
He started out in advertising like you and me, but he really wanted to be a screenwriter, and he went to Hollywood and he just bounced around as a screenwriter without a lot of success for the longest time, and finally got one script produced. It was something like “Godzilla Revisited” or something like that. It just sounded terrible, but he believed in it. He thought it was great. And, as you know, in the screenwriting business, just to get a film produced is a very big deal. I mean, people have long careers as screenwriters without ever having anything produced.
So, it was a big deal and he was so excited that it got produced, and it opened and closed in one night. It was just a huge failure, but he stuck to it, kept at it, and then one day he had an idea for a novel about golf. And he would tell his writer friends, and as he had an agent, he told his agent—he said, “I got an idea for a book about golf,” and then he’d say, “Steven, nobody in the world is going to buy a novel about golf. I mean, can you imagine anything less appealing than that?” “I've got to write it. This is my story. This is what I need to tell.”
And that was the beginning of The Legend of Bagger Vance, which not only became a huge bestselling novel, but they made a movie out of that, and I think...I can't remember if he wound up writing the screenplay for that, too. I think what happened on that was that he wrote the initial screenplay and then he got kind of forced out of it by the Hollywood producers, which is a very common scenario, but he made a lot of money. And then he went on to write several more successful novels.
But the reason why Pressfield I think is so useful to your readers is all the stuff that he has written about the writing process, about writing as a career is just enormously valuable stuff and I would highly recommend it.
Dan: I agree. Before we go, a couple quick question. With all your experience with all your successes, have you ever considered going into the business of sharing your copywriting expertise and how you do it?
Richard: I've only done it with the free reports that I have used to sell the books that we've been talking about like the How To Talk Anybody Into Anything, and then there was a whole bunch of ones that I gave away for God Doesn't Shoot Craps, which is still available, by the way, if you want to go on the internet and look that up.
Dan: A great book, highly recommend that. Just don't read it when you're on deadline because you [inaudible 32:56].
Richard: Not only is the novel still available, but you can [33:00] still get all the free reports and they're all about copywriting or for the most part they're about copywriting.
So, I've done that. I have never made a business of telling other people how to write copy. I just have a feeling I've thought about it, but I have a feeling nowadays especially there are so many people in that field and a lot of them are more successful than I am. A lot of them have things to say that I think are frankly more useful than what I might have to say about it. I've just been a little too intimidated I guess to get into that field and don't think it would be all that productive for me. I may change my mind light later. I may have a good idea that I want to pursue along those lines.
But, for now, I will leave that to you. I will leave it to Clayton. I will leave it to Bob Bly. I will leave it to AWAI and the others who have gone into that area. I think this stuff that all of you are producing is terrific and I am an avid fan of it. I read your email all the time. I read the stuff that Bob produces, that Clayton produces, that AWAI produces. I'm an avid consumer of it, but I don't feel like I am prepared to compete in that area, yeah.
Dan: Then, in the meantime, I've got another money making idea that I think is a sure thing.
Richard: I’m all ears.
Dan: And it's totally congruent with your recent project that we're talking about, The Don Con. At the Kennedy event, after the talk, you’ve got to have a booth set up where you sign autographs for money and you sell the book.
Richard: Oh, well, that's why I'm there. And, Dan, this was Dan's idea. I hadn't any thought of that. I asked Dan to read the book and give me a testimonial, which he did, which was lovely of him to do that—I know he’s an extraordinarily busy man—and I was just thrilled with that. But he wrote me a letter. He said, “I'm having an event in June. I want you to come. I want you to bring about 200 books with you, both The Don Con and God Doesn't Shoot Craps, and I want you to sign them and sell them at my event. And I went, “Well, okay. I think I'll do that, Dan. I'm going to give you a yes on that.”
So, I hope you're coming to that event, you folks who are listening to this. I think it's...I don't believe it's closed out yet. I think it's still available. And I hope you come and I would love to meet you if you do.
Dan: Awesome. Richard, thanks for sharing with me today. I really appreciate it.
Richard: Dan, this has been my favorite interview that I've done so far. It's just delightful. That's probably because you let me talk the whole time.
Dan: Oh, that was the whole purpose. Again, in the interest of transparency, I do have an ulterior motive. Speaking of mafiosos, one of their tricks is doing, quote-unquote—I’m doing finger quotes—“favors” for people.
Richard: Exactly.
Dan: Because, Don Corleone said, one day [36:00] I might ask you to do a favor for me.
Richard: And this day may never come
Dan: This day may never come. And so, in the back of my mind I'm thinking, Richard, one day I might ask you to do a favor for me. I already know what the favor is. I'm hoping if I wine and dine you enough, you'll come in and speak at an event that I'm putting on one day.
Richard: Oh, that goes without saying, my friend.
Dan: Well, thank you. I will look forward to that. And thanks again. Thanks for sharing with me and the listeners today. I really appreciate it.
Richard: I do, too. Thanks for having me.
Dan: Tell us. Tell us one more time where we can go to get the book The Don Con.
Richard: Yes, it's very simple, easy to remember website, TheDonCon.com. Go on there and just all you have to do is give me your email address and I will send you the link to get How to Talk Anybody into Anything: Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Greatest Con Artists, which contains these 44 secrets that we as copywriters have in common with con artists.
And, then, my hope is that you'll nose around the website a little bit. There's a little cartoon there that is actually one of these animated cartoons that will give you the plot of the novel and tell you a little bit about the novel. You'll see a long list of testimonials there from people like Dan Kennedy and also some television stars. There’s my friend,
Jonathan. There's some of the people from The Sopranos. Love the book.
And so, I just hope that you buy the novel also, and then if you buy the novel, of course, I have some more free gifts to give you so you can do...
Dan: How about that, spoken like a true marketer.
Richard: Exactly.
Dan: Thanks again, Richard. I really had a good time, and I appreciate it.
Richard: Thanks, Dan. It was my pleasure.
Jonathan: All right, guys, so that's TheDonCon.com. “The” Don Con, right? Yeah, so we wanted to just add that a couple more times. I already bought my copy of book.
Dan: Yeah.
Jonathan: But that is a wrap for today's show. Thank you, Canine Crew, for tuning in and we’ll be back on the next one.
Listen up, Canine Crew. The people who read this book will end up with your money, because it reveals a breakthrough new strategy that gets a rush of new customers, builds your business faster and brings in the highest possible profits. Even better, it does it with no giving away free stuff, no endless email sequences, no content marketing, no social media, and without all the other grunt work that rarely, if ever, results in getting new customers and making money. I'm talking about Doberman Dan’s international bestselling book. Go to JustSellTheDamnThingBook.com now to get your own copy for just a penny. That's JustSellTheDamnThingBook.com. It's only a penny, so go to JustSellTheDamnThingBook.com now.
This is thepodcastfactory.com
