Michael F. Schein | How to Get Everything You Want Without Having to Sell Your Soul

Srini Rao: Mike, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join

Michael Schein: us. Uh, pleasure to be here. I've been a long time listener.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So I always absolutely love it when, uh, you know, long-time listeners become guests because to me it's like the biggest compliment in the world that they've actually done something with what they've learned on the podcast and from all the other information they consumed.

Srini Rao: So you have a new book out called The Hype Handbook, which we will get into. Uh, but before that, as a long-time listener, you know, that I don't want to start by talking about the book, but I want to start with what I think is a very relevant question to the book. And that is what social group were you a part of in high school.

Srini Rao: And how did that end up impacting the choices that you've made throughout your life, in your.

Michael Schein: So even though I am 43 years old, which I guess makes me generation X, I was sort of an odd duck in that I was kind of like half nerd, half punk rock kid. So like I was weirdly obsessed with doing well in school and getting into a good college.

Michael Schein: I don't know where that pressure came from, but I was, I was that kid who sort of made himself a little bit sick, trying to get A's. Um, at the same time, all of my heroes were, were derelicts and scumbags because I loved really rebellious art. So I kind of had all of my friends from the honors classes. And then I had this other group of friends who were like, you know, the kids who drew dead Kennedy symbols on their, on their sneakers.

Michael Schein: So I certainly was not a jock. I'm not a very good athlete, but I sort of fit between those two.

Srini Rao: Um, so, I mean, over, over the course of your career, like how has each one of those groups influenced, you know, who you've become, where you've ended up?

Michael Schein: It's funny. I think that that intersection is section is exactly where I sit.

Michael Schein: I, you know, on one hand I'm still very ambitious and care about extrinsic motivations or extrinsic motivators. So, um, I didn't sacrifice everything to become a novelist, even though I still love to write fiction. I have tried to really master business so that I can turn my interests into money. Um, at the same time, even the book that we're going to talk about, I've always looked at on conventional sources of both inspiration and education that, that weren't sort of.

Michael Schein: You know, readily apparent the people who were kind of the losers in the loners, in the freaks. I always was, have been throughout my whole career curious about what they had to offer. So I, I think, I, I think I, I use that combination every day. So

Srini Rao: there's something you say later on in the book, which really struck me.

Srini Rao: You said when I was a freshmen at the university of Pennsylvania, I went from being a highly driven Ivy league bound, academic star of my high school class to a lost and lonely kind of guy early in the year. I realized what had kept me moving forward for so long was an obsession with getting into a top college.

Srini Rao: Now I'd achieved my goal and I couldn't figure out how to best take advantage of actually being there. And I think the reason that struck me so much was because I felt like I had such a similar college experience. You know, I've read books written by other authors who were at Berkeley at the same time that, you know, I was.

Srini Rao: And it sounds like they're describing a completely different university. I'm like this actually was possible. So why, why does that actually happen to so many people? Like, why is it that, you know, we get there and you're like, oh, you have this smorgasbord of opportunity, you know, to meet people, to have life experiences.

Srini Rao: And instead what you do is you check boxes that, you know, hopefully we'll get you a job.

Michael Schein: It's funny. Um, before I kind of tell my story on this, I want to say that one of the reasons I like your show and I, and I'm not saying this to blow smoke is because unlike so many of the sort of productivity, creativity, business gurus out there, you always talk about the struggles, the emotional struggles you've had and how you've wrestled with these things.

Michael Schein: And I feel like so many of the gurus out. I listened to their experience in college, how they like built six robots and landed, you know, a mission to the moon while they were taking an MBA and a degree in Spanish. And my experience was nothing like that. And I used to feel very bad about that because, um, I don't know if I can speak for other people, but I can certainly speak for myself.

Michael Schein: I mean, I had this overriding goal and I look back now on how important it was for me to get into a good school. And I should go into some sort of analysis to figure out why I cared so much, but I did. And when I got there, I thought my life was going to flower. You know, I was going to have fun, do interesting things, be a mover and a shaker.

Michael Schein: And I just sort of didn't find my groove. I didn't have that north star. I was in the college and it was kind of like, okay, I don't. I know that I'd like to become a writer, but getting good grades in college, doesn't really lead to that. I also know I'd like to be financially successful, but I don't want to go to Wharton, which is the business part of the school I went to.

Michael Schein: There are clubs that I tried out for like drama clubs that I wasn't quite good enough to get into. And I just like sort of floundered. It was, it was actually, college was difficult for me. I made very good friends, but I did not have a good experience in college for the most part.

Srini Rao: It's kind of funny. You say that I can kind of relate because I always kind of wonder what it would be like if I went back to Berkeley now armed with the knowledge that I've gained from all the books that I've read, um, movies that I've seen, you know, I, my ongoing joke is that if I went back to college, now I would approach it like van Wilder.

Srini Rao: I would basically be going to every club that I could, because I'm like, this is like a breeding ground for social opportunity and it, and I feel like I completely overlooked.

Michael Schein: I mean, I remember one of the saddest things that happened to me in college. I was with my friends in our dorm, um, on a Saturday night and they're still friends of mine, but we were calling prank, calling amusing ourselves by praying calling the radio station and doing accents and weird things.

Michael Schein: I don't know. Yeah. And we thought it was so funny and that at a certain point, the DJ goes, we have a show, what's your excuse for being inside prank, calling us on a Saturday night. And it was like the perfect comeback, but I was like depressed for a week. I was like, this guy is absolutely right. Why am I prank calling a radio station in college at 20 years old on a Saturday night?

Michael Schein: Like what, what I'm certainly no van Wilder.

Michael Schein: Yeah. So,

Srini Rao: you know, I wonder about this because, I mean, I think part of the reason that that sentence struck me was one, because it was U Penn and I know that new Penn being an Ivy league school probably has a lot of similarities in terms of the types of people who end up there to Berkeley. And what I wonder is how much of your experience do you think was the by-product of the environment you were in versus, you know, just you as a person?

Michael Schein: I think it was as with so many things in life, a mixture. I mean, I think, um, despite the fact that I found lifelong friends at, at Penn, we had an off-campus house. We did our own thing. The thing about Penn, at least when I was there, I graduated in 99 and I think I heard another guest say on your show, say this about their school.

Michael Schein: It was very fraternity driven. That was like the center of the social life. And also it even Ben Franklin founded the school. To be a pre-professional school. So like Harvard and Yale were like divinity schools and talk, the classics and, and university of Pennsylvania was started by Ben Franklin, who the ultimate kind of practical guy.

Michael Schein: And so Wharton and engineering are everything there. So even though the English department is fantastic, it was number eight in the country. You're kind of looked at as a second class citizen if you're not, you know, so, um, I don't know the combination of the fact that I wasn't into fraternities and that I was an English major.

Michael Schein: Um, I was like a bit of a weirdo there and it's funny then. And I don't know if I even dated a Penn girl my whole time. I would like date girls, like outside of the school. And when I finally went to New York, which is what I did right after that, it was like all of the things that made me weird in the rest of my life before that were suddenly very cool.

Michael Schein: And I started to sort of flower then, like when I first went to New York city after. So I think it was a combination of the two. It might, you know, I'm from Philadelphia and I moved to Miami when I was nine. So I think part of the thing was I wanted to go back to Philly cause I missed it. But, um, I don't think it was a perfect fit, you know, as a school.

Michael Schein: Yeah.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I mean, I can relate as far as Berkeley goes, but you know, so you mentioned you started a flower right after you graduated and you sounds like you really started to find your groove. I didn't, you know, until probably my early thirties. Why, what do you think it is that separates a person who starts to find that groove, uh, you know, in their twenties versus, you know, the one who's in their thirties and then, you know, what do you say to, you know, the young college students on the verge of graduation, listening to this feeling somewhat directionless

Michael Schein: to, to make them feel better?

Michael Schein: I would say I, I flowered in terms of fitting in socially and creatively, I did not flower professionally. So, um, I mean the first thing I did when I left. Penn was, I started a rock band and my parents were extremely upset about that. Um, and, um, we had quote unquote success in that we had a big following and all of this stuff, but we weren't making money.

Michael Schein: Um, my father would regularly have what I call closed door meetings. Every time I would go back home where he would tell me basically how I was screwing up my life. So I met a lot of girls for the first time, you know, and they were very pretty because it was New York. And, um, I had a lot of fun and I was create writing cool songs and playing cool music, but I wasn't professionally flowering.

Michael Schein: So I guess the one thing I might tell someone, because I've had some success since then, whatever that means professionally is that sometimes. The crooked path or the side doors, we'll get you there. Like you, you will use everything. I mean, I wrote a lot about that band experience in the book that just got published.

Michael Schein: Not only that I based my entire marketing approach, which is how I make my living on the lessons I learned playing in that punk rock band. So sometimes I guess it's such a cliche, Steve jobs said it, right. But about the dots connecting, sometimes you don't know how the dots will connect, but it's pretty painful when you're in it.

Michael Schein: Especially if you come from a family that prizes success and that sort of thing. Yeah. I, I kind

Srini Rao: of gathered that you did just based on the UPN thing, because I think that's pretty common in Indian and culture, right? Like we're very big on resume values, not eulogy values per se. Um, well, let's do this. Um, let's actually shift gears and start talking about the concepts in the book, but, uh, what I wanna understand is, you know, how you sort of arrived at this, uh, framework for basically, you know, talking

Michael Schein: about.

Michael Schein: What, what part of it was that, um, excuse me. I, uh, after I was in that band and it didn't work out, you know, and it broke up, I got a job. Um, I essentially got a very, very brass tax sort of job just because I needed to make a living. And maybe because of that emphasis on re resume values that were always there in my, in my gut somewhere, even when I forgot about them, I, uh, I did well.

Michael Schein: I worked hard, you know, I'm not a dummy. So I started to sort of climb the ladder and forget that I, that it was supposed to be a temporary thing. And I ended up being there for eight years and it was the most breast tax kind of thing. We, we, we ran customer service centers. It was a company called a business process outsourcing company that ran those call centers that are outsourced that pick up the phone.

Michael Schein: You know, when, when you call it. Um, for customer service. And I learned a lot, I mean, in the first three years I became an adult. I became a business person. I started to make a real living, but, um, I only was there for eight years out of fear. And by the end I was very, very, um, unhappy. And so I finally got the courage up to leave, which was difficult for me to, to get that courage together.

Michael Schein: But, um, I figured I'd be a copywriter because I had read some articles about those opportunities and I was good at that. Um, I was kind of the go-to guy at my job for that kind of stuff. And I figured because I was good at writing, I would just get writing jobs. And I didn't, I, I had about a year's worth of shavings.

Michael Schein: I burnt through it. I was on the verge of a lot of financial trouble. And so what really happened was I thought back to that second half of me, that sort of. Ms. GBS punk rock half. And I've always been interested in weird stuff like Colton propaganda. I don't know why it was just an interest of mine. Yeah.

Michael Schein: So, so, um, I just figured, you know, I got nothing to lose. Why don't I, why don't I try this kind of unconventional approach? We used to say, when we were with the band, let's hype this up, we didn't say let's market it. Right. So I was like, what if I think in terms of hyping stuff up, instead of marketing it and long story medium, it worked.

Michael Schein: I mean, I started to do well with the writing business and then it turned into a business business. Um, the, the reason I came up with the book though, was, um, it was funny. I, in my interest in propaganda and all this stuff, I read all of these strange books. So I was reading this book called the crowd by Gustaf Labon, which is this 1895 book of crowd psychology, trying to understand the Paris.

Michael Schein: And I was watching one of the first Trump debates and he, everyone thought he was a joke and he was saying all of his Trump stuff. And I was reading the book at the same time and I saw these connections and I was like, this guy's gonna win. So it just became, at that point, I just got fascinated that there's this universal set of principles that gets large numbers of people to almost act without knowing what's happening to them.

Michael Schein: And it just took off. It just started to foment from. Yeah. Well,

Srini Rao: I think part of the reason that I appreciated it so much was because of sort of, you know, the idea that it was unconventional and it, you know, a lot of it centers around questioning everything you're told. And I think it, I think part of the reason, you know, it was very resonant for me was because when I effectively did an about face from the entire online marketing world, Chris Ducker basically jokingly says, he's like, you basically told the entire online marketing world to go F themselves by not coming back to the blog.

Srini Rao: Well, it was like, I wouldn't go that far, but you know, it was like the very same people we would have had as guests, you know, back when we were called block SFM, we were suddenly turning down. Um, and I think that, you know, the way you started the book really struck me because it was a story about Gary Vaynerchuk and, you know, my, my, you know, like what am I, most things, things that I'm proud of is that we've turned him down multiple times to be a guest on our show.

Srini Rao: Let's start there because I think that that was really one of the big things that, um, really struck me because, you know, you open up the book by, by actually saying that you discovered pretty quickly that being good enough at what you do, isn't enough to get people to buy what you're selling and you open it with this, this first sort of idea of picking a fight and the person that you chose to pick a fight with was Gary Vaynerchuk.

Srini Rao: So let's start there.

Michael Schein: W well, yeah, that's very cool about turning Gary Vader's down. I think you're maybe the only person to ever do that by the way, three times, by the way. Yeah. That's, that's impressive. Um, well, yeah, I mean, at the core of a lot of what I call hype and just a lot of the things I've always been interested in from punk rock to propaganda, to, to Colts.

Michael Schein: Bond with people, quote unquote, like them by pushing against people that they say aren't like them. And that's just a very, very, very powerful, the human dynamic that creates ideas, the spread of ideas and, you know, dedication to, to, to a movement. And I just always intuitively understood that, but I wasn't doing it at the same time.

Michael Schein: I was honestly watching Gary Vaynerchuk very closely because you kind of can't avoid him. And also in my world, which was digital copywriting, he's everywhere. And I would just constantly hear him saying hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. You need to work. You need to, I mean, he would literally tell young people to tweet from the toilet.

Michael Schein: And then I would think to myself, you know, this guy started a digital agency. He used to have a wine selling company, which it seems like a good company, but I would ask around and I would say, What campaigns has this agency worked on besides promoting Gary Vaynerchuk. And no one could tell me one, there might be one out there, but no one could tell me like Ogilvy and Mather, Crispin Porter Baginski you can find out what great campaigns they've worked on.

Michael Schein: So I started to say, why is this guy constantly telling young people to work around the clock and screaming at them to do it? And it hit me that maybe he's helping Gary Vaynerchuk more than he's helping these young people and that this is happening just because it ties them to him, which is true. If you tell people to work on your behalf, relentlessly, they will bond to you.

Michael Schein: That's a cult tactic. So I wrote an article in Inc, uh, called why Gary Vaynerchuk is flat out wrong. And I basically said respectfully that even though I think he's a good and talented business person, the advice he's giving people to throw brute force hours into. Tweeting all day long is not a very good strategy if you're trying to build something great and not just selling stuff.

Michael Schein: And he saw this and he flipped out and I, I was no one at this time. I mean, I just happened to have a column in ink that I got through a friend and applied and he rescored it a video calling me out by name and chewing me out and getting very agitated. And then all his friends, fans chewed me out and it was like the start of my career.

Michael Schein: I mean, I got all these people started to pay me money. So it's like, oh, it's like a real lesson, you know?

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, w w one, uh, there's a lot of nuance here and I think it's, it's a lesson in context, right? And this is something I've been writing a lot about is that so often people tend to overlook context when it comes to the advice they get, particularly from people who are influential, because I know that you actually dissected the background of the wine store and mentioned the revenue.

Srini Rao: And it was like, okay, this isn't viable for most of the people he's giving this advice to. And then you also have this private interest problem. Like when you know, somebody like Gary or anybody else, so everybody needs to be on this latest app. I'm like, yeah, of course they do. If that guy is an investor in it, he has every incentive to tell you that.

Srini Rao: Um, so why do you think people are so blind to context? Like why did they ignore it?

Michael Schein: I think because we all want answers and we want simple answers. Or a better way to say it is we want a rock to cling on to, right? Because life, life is challenging. Life is difficult. The idea, and we're raised on the Hollywood movies and novels, where if you have, let's just talk about entrepreneurs.

Michael Schein: If you have a really great idea and a great dream, you'll eventually work hard and overcome your obstacles and achieve that dream. And when you run into real life and you see that things are complicated and not everyone wins and life is difficult. And sometimes there's a lot of loss in life that doesn't fit that story.

Michael Schein: So if someone is out there with obvious credibility, signifiers telling you that there's an a plus B plus C mechanism for achieving your dreams, and that person has done that, and that person looks like a superhero. We want to believe that it's it's, it feeds. A lot of our insecurities and a lot of our fears, um, and context is complex.

Michael Schein: I mean, look at, look at, I don't want to get political and I won't get into specifics, but look at the political situation, what wins the simple, you know, bromides that people are throwing out there or the complex policy procedure, either the policy policy programs, it's always the simple sort of non contextual stuff that wins the day.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's funny because, you know, we teach a, you know, a group of creatives and an unmistakable prime, and one thing I say over and over and over again to the people I teach is I want you to consider the possibility that everything I am telling you is complete bullshit. You know, in the context of your life, it might be like, this is why I always jokingly say the best Tim Ferriss experiment in the world would be to drop your kids off at his house for a week and see how it was.

Michael Schein: Yeah. It's very, it's very funny because even a lot of the, the quote unquote gurus who I really admire, like, um, I really admire Ryan holiday, you know, I, I think he's, he's great, but I also know that he's playing the Ryan holiday character. I don't think he's lying, but he's a whiter, he smooths off the rough edges, you know?

Michael Schein: And, and, and, and that's, and that's natural. I mean, it's funny, even my book, right. I call it, um, there's a subtitle, 12 indispensable success, secrets, you know, et cetera. And part of that was to be funny because it's a hype-y title. But part of it is that I know that people will respond to that at the, at the same time in the, in the final chapter.

Michael Schein: I say everything I'm telling you are a set of frameworks, but experimentation is. These things are frameworks. You need to conduct small experiments and be open to anything happening because that's, that's, that's the way the world operates in real life. Yeah. Well, I

Srini Rao: mean, I appreciated that, the fact that you, you said, you know, playing the character of Ryan holiday, cause I, I wrote this like 9,000 word article on medium, which to the state probably, you know, in the last year has probably been the most popular piece about the psychology of building an audience.

Srini Rao: And I said, whether you like it or not everybody who is a public figure is playing a character to some degree because it's not appropriate to be 100% authentic. You know, and people don't like that idea because it's uncomfortable, but let's, so I think that makes a perfect segue to asking you about something.

Srini Rao: Um, in this first session you said any of the most malicious people among us tend to have the most intuitive understanding of these principles at the same time. Most well-meaning people fail to understand or reject outright the psychological realities as a result, harmful products, ideas, and ideologies tend to gain the most traction while those that have the most potential to help people and move society forward often floundered.

Srini Rao: So how do we mitigate that?

Michael Schein: So this is almost in some ways, the question and the dilemma that it's at the heart of all my work and certainly of this book. So on, on one hand, the principles I'm talking about that I call hype, but, but really are, it's another way of saying mass psychology, right? Those stimuli that you can generate to get large numbers of people excited and emotional.

Michael Schein: So that they'll do what you want them to do. If you strip those strategies of their context, they're not immoral or moral. They're, they're just the way things work. I mean, you can pick a fight with an idea, not with another race, right? I mean, they're there, these strategies have no moral content and that's, that's obvious from the fact that even though it's a smaller number, a lot of extremely good people have used these strategies.

Michael Schein: I always use Martin Luther king because he's as close to a, a Saint as we have in this country. And as he should be, but he was a fantastic hype artist and mass manipulator. People don't want to hear that, but he wouldn't have done those peaceful protests if the media weren't there. Right. So, um, first it's important to understand why the quote unquote, bad people are on average, better at this.

Michael Schein: And so there's, there's this, um, cognitive scientists named Kathleen Taylor, who. Studies brainwashing, um, on a very nuanced level. And she presents this research that people with anti social personality disorder. So that's that basket of psychological personality disorders that includes psychopathy and extreme narcissism sociopathy.

Michael Schein: When they're put into a stressful situation, they, their heart rate doesn't go up as much as other people. So as a result, they're able to just act like, see the world as a chess board and act accordingly. Whereas the rest of us allow our emotions to get into the way. So a lot of times we think that these tactics are bad.

Michael Schein: It's not that it's, that the bad people are able to act more deliberately. So, so w w what I advise is get as close to that state, as you can, without losing the good parts of yourself, and the way you do that is through emotional regulation. Things like exercise meditation, martial arts, green tea, whatever that thing is that allows you to therapy.

Michael Schein: Whatever allows you to regulate your emotions. That is really how more people can, can get in touch with these strategies and tactics. Because usually it's our emotions that get in the way of us being able to execute. Even if we know what to do.

Srini Rao: It's funny that you say that because I know that, you know, you wrote about the seduction community and I was, you know, a member of the seduction community.

Srini Rao: And when you're describing, you know, what you just did in terms of personality traits, I'm like, that's all the people who led these workshops.

Michael Schein: And all of the enrollees, all of the followers tend to be people who let their emotions get in the way too much. Right? Yeah.

Srini Rao: Well, I mean, that's, that's what it is, right?

Srini Rao: It's it's you, you talk about selling, you know, take the most vulnerable group of people, promise them, you know, the thing they want most, a bunch of guys who want to just get laid or meat in the love of their life. And it's like, oh, these guys have a solution. Yeah, I'm all in. I mean, I spent five years on that.

Srini Rao: It was insane. Um, we'll

Michael Schein: come back. I'm curious. I'm very curious that this is me interviewing you for a minute because I wasn't actually in that community, but I was, I was kind of shy with girls when I was young. And then I just sort of by trial and error learned what was a little bit more attractive.

Michael Schein: And usually it came down to confidence and being playful and being okay. But, but it seems to me that people who are naturally good at courting and dating don't become. Seduction coaches. It's the people who were bad at it who had to reverse engineer it, but am I wrong? I mean, that would be my you're you're you're

Srini Rao: absolutely right.

Srini Rao: And the weird thing I think about that community that was so ironic is that, you know, I mean, Neil Strauss writes about this game and he said, you know, for as much as, as you know, these guys were good at getting laid, most of them couldn't keep a woman in their life. Right. And the thing is what I realized, you know, I did one of their boot camps back in the day.

Srini Rao: And I remember the guy who dropped me off the airport. It's like, what did you think? And I told him, I said, you know what? I've just spent three days with you. I don't know a fucking thing about you as a person. Um, I barely even know your actual name. So I think you guys have a lot of problems. Um, that's my kind of immediate sort of assessment.

Srini Rao: I mean, it, the, the brainwashing is really, it's really powerful. I mean, Neil writes about this in the book where he talks about this concept of fractionation, right? Like you leave and then you come back and you get deeper in. And I mean, it took my friends probably three to four years before we finally were able to just get out of.

Michael Schein: Together, completely cold tea, the way you're describing. And it wasn't

Srini Rao: about it because everything about it basically used principles of called psychology, which we'll talk about that because this is also something I'm incredibly fascinated by. Um, so we'll, we'll come back to that because I know you kind of get into that later in the book.

Srini Rao: So when you talk about this idea of picking a fight, you said there's nothing more effective for getting people to rally around a leader than the existence of a common enemy. While this doesn't mean you should go around calling people to commit acts of violence or cruelty, you will need to publicly take a bold stand about what you're against in addition to talking about what you're for.

Srini Rao: And I think that the reason that struck me was because people are terrified to do that. They're so scared. Like Justine Musk once told me, she said, if you have a bold and compelling point of view, it's going to piss people off and I can tell you firsthand, like I've had literally. We've had guests who have made listeners so angry, like w we had a, you know, uh, a guy named David Wood who was a coach here, a coach of some sort.

Srini Rao: And he started out the show talking about infidelity. One woman wrote me and basically said, I'm unsubscribing from the show. Your show is misogynistic and disrespectful woman. How dare you put somebody like this on it? And I said, look, we don't filter our desks. Right. What's ironic. Is that on the flip side of that, another woman hired that guy to be her coach, you know, same guest, two different interpretations.

Srini Rao: So, I mean, why is it that people are so scared to do this and how do they

Michael Schein: overcome that? It's funny, there's a Kurt Vonnegut quote that I'll probably get wrong. He says, if you, uh, he's talking about writing, but he says, if you open a window and try to make love to the world, you'll catch a cold. I mean, I think we all want to want to be liked, then we're afraid of getting in trouble.

Michael Schein: And sometimes there are repercussions. I mean, if you work in, in a, I don't know, a corporate office and you take. A bold stand. So many people's jobs are dependent on maintaining the status quo and not taking risks, despite all of their talk about disruption that you'll be in jeopardy. And I think we're just programmed for all of the social evolutionary, biological reasons that I know you talk about on your show and that your guests have to want to be liked to be accepted by the tribe to not make people angry.

Michael Schein: I think we're terrified that we're going to get a bad grade. We started business and we make people angry. Well, they could have bought from me. But the thing is, if you look at all of the people who are really successful, they all have people who disliked their point of view. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuck is a great example.

Michael Schein: I don't think it's a secret. This light, his point of view very much. I think he actually is harmful to a lot of his acolytes, not on purpose, but I don't think he helps them, but he's a very, very, very rich man with very, very, very dedicated followers. And I know a lot of very middle of the road, marketers and consultants who are struggling to get by no one even knows who they are.

Michael Schein: So how do you get around it? I don't know. I feel like that's, everyone's personal battle to fight. It depends if I'm just hoping that I've made a compelling enough case and that other thinkers are making a compelling enough case about how important this is. Uh, to stand for something and that you can just get past your hangups, just like I can't tell you how to have the courage to walk up to a woman in a bar.

Michael Schein: You can read the books all day long, but if you don't walk up to someone, you'll probably not have a date.

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Srini Rao: This acclaimed podcast features award winning veteran journalists, Richard Sergei, and acclaimed writer and producer Tavia, Gilbert. Find them wherever you get your podcasts. The stories of impact podcast is supported by Templeton world charity foundation. Yeah. Well, let's talk about this whole idea of creating a secret society.

Srini Rao: You know, you said that what hype artists know is that secret cabals of powerful people who are helping each other out in the shadows really do exist. It was how Edward Rene's got America eat bacon. Andy Warhol got people to accept soup, Kansas art, and how Dr. Oz gets people to accept strawberries as T's white, which I didn't know, by the way, no matter where you come from, how much money you have or who, you know, when you start out, it's a method available to you.

Srini Rao: So how does this actually work? Let's just take, for example, I want to create a secret society from my listeners. What did that look like?

Michael Schein: So what I find very funny, or at least interesting is that so many people who are complaining about why they aren't creating things in the world say that they don't know people it's who, you know, it's the old boys network that they're not part of.

Michael Schein: And if you start thinking. Powerful people that you want to get to know as human beings first and start using some of the wonderful technologies, not to just tweet around the clock, but to connect with these human beings. It's amazing how doable it is to become friends with interesting, important people who all have each other's back.

Michael Schein: So an example, and it's a lot easier to do now, because like, for example, before I had met you Srini, you were kind of a celebrity in my world because I know that's weird, right. But, but there's this niche of, of, um, of podcasters and of creativity, thinkers in this very corner of the internet. And you are, I looked up to you in that way because I listened to your show.

Michael Schein: So you have credibility signifiers. You do good work. You have follow-up. But I don't know, 299 million of the 300 million people, if not more, don't know who you are, but that doesn't matter. Right. It doesn't matter. And you're connected with the same people that the powerful people in your face, you know, Ryan holiday.

Michael Schein: Right. So,

Srini Rao: yeah. Well, I always joke that I'm the most, well-known, you know, well-known per I'm the most connected person that nobody has ever heard

of.

Michael Schein: Okay. So what I'm saying is you, people should focus on giving things to powerful people and important people that they have to give. That's desirable to them.

Michael Schein: It's cheap for you to give up. So I'll give you an example. Um, I mean, first of all, you have the podcast, so you can reach out to people and say, I'd like to interview you. And even if you didn't have a big following, which you do, even in the early. You can say I'm a big admirer of your work. I'd like to talk to X, Y, and Z.

Michael Schein: And you can, you know, my ego right now is puffed up because you're quoting from my book. I mean, there have been podcasts read a list of questions, right? So I think highly of you, right? So in other words, look for human connections. So one thing is something I used to do. I used to go on Twitter and I would monitor people that I was interested in meeting, and they would tweet their typical business stuff.

Michael Schein: And then sometimes they would tweet out something and I'm using Twitter because that's what, what was big when I was doing this, but they would tweet out something that was very human about themselves. So one example is Brian Clark, the Copyblogger guy, I saw that he was booking Henry Rollins as a speaker.

Michael Schein: And any mentioned a band or two, that was like an underground band. And I'm like, I think this guy likes the same kind of weird music. I like. So I tweeted him something about that and we became. Friendly. And we got to know each other because that's a human connection. Now, if I would have gone up to him and said, you know, uh, Brian, I'd like to pick your brain about, um, the mechanics of blogging.

Michael Schein: I assure you, he would have not connected with me. So it's about connecting over human things and then doing what you would do with any friend, you know, helping them out, you know, networking 1 0 1, but first try to connect on that high level based on stuff that you can give them that only you have to give.

Michael Schein: And it's usually not money. It can be something for your kids. It can be knowledge that you have, and it works really, really well. It's very. Yeah. Well, it's funny

Srini Rao: because, you know, I always said, you know, when I met my first mentor, Greg Hartle, who has been a guest on the show multiple times, and I said, you know, people, the big mistake they make, when, you know, connecting with influential people is they tend to look at metrics as opposed to who that person is.

Srini Rao: Greg had 150 followers, like he was six weeks in this project. And that I only, like, I always, you know, basically we'll choose people like this based on something I'm curious about. I mean, that's like my number one filter for podcast guests too, which makes book publicists insane. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, you know, he, uh, in, in the eyes of the internet, he was a nobody, like, I mean, you couldn't find a trace of his existence even today.

Srini Rao: And he was by far the most influential person, you know, that had a really tangible impact on where we are.

Michael Schein: Uh, I'll give you a similar but different examples. So, um, one of my very first clients after I started the agencies, this, um, guy, David Schreiner, And he had an intern named Chris Weller, young guy, you know, still in college and his senior year.

Michael Schein: And when I, and I've met a lot of interns in my day, but this, this kid, cause he was a kid now he's not now. Then he wa he's not now. It just was interesting. He just was an interesting speaker. He worked really hard. He just was interested in cool things. So I just always kept in touch with them over the years and I would hold dinners and I would invite him and I would give him some advice.

Michael Schein: And over 10 years I would just watch him get position after position after position. So now that my book came out, he is a senior editor at business insider, and I was just excerpted at business insider. But, but that's the other thing. Look for people who are interesting play the long game, you know what I mean?

Michael Schein: Just like you did. Don't look just at those metrics. What can this person do for me right now? But sometimes you can just tell that someone's going to help you in a way that maybe you can't that most people wouldn't say. Uh,

Srini Rao: well, let's talk about packaging. You know, you say that master hype artists understand that focusing on these sorts of details of betrays, a lack of understanding of the propaganda and the power of packaging.

Srini Rao: And you say, when you're deciding on your own packaging, consider what gap of meaning or emotion identity, you can help with what you produce, then create a name and image and a message that people can latch onto and use to make themselves feel as if they're part of something vital and monumental. If you can do that, people will follow you anywhere.

Srini Rao: You want to take them. And I think that, you know, why that struck me was in particularly because that really in a lot of ways was the story of our rebrand from being a show about blogging to one about creativity, because it was interesting. We would look at the iTunes reviews and people would say, this show is about a lot more than blogging, but you know, I'm not sharing it with my friends because they're not interested in starting blogs, so they won't listen to it.

Srini Rao: Right. You know, so, I mean, can you expand on this whole idea of packaging and, and where do people get it wrong?

Michael Schein: Yeah. So I think where people get it wrong is they say to themselves, you know, my website doesn't look very good. So I'm going to get a re designed website. I need a better logo. I need better PowerPoint slides or, or maybe in their clothing.

Michael Schein: They say, I'm going to an important meeting. So I'll wear a suit or a little more subtly. I'm going to an important tech conference. So I'll wear clean sneakers and inexpensive hoodie, right? So it's all, it's external surfaces. And while that's important, packaging can make you blend into the crowd as much as it can make you stand out and be noticed if you know, um, we've talked out music a lot because I'm obviously interested in it.

Michael Schein: But also because I think genres like rock and roll and hip hop, aren't really music they're as much theater and entertainment and business as they are music. And the reason clothing. I mean, if you see Jack. Guys or reggae artists. I mean, I saw the SCATA lights he's already, but they were wearing like mesh caps and like whatever they woke up in, you know, but, but rock bands and pop bands and hip hop bands, their clothing says something about them and they wear it all the time.

Michael Schein: So when Bano is in his techno experimental phase, he wore his wraparound sunglasses everywhere he went. And so what you want to do is think about what are you trying to say in the world and weave it through everything you do. So, so, and, and the best place to start with this, I think is not your strengths, it's in the gaps.

Michael Schein: So you, you found it in the gaps of the blog comments. So that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to look at your weaknesses. So my, my favorite example of this is Andy Warhol. So Andy Warhol. Came into the art team at a time where abstract expressionism was the pre pre-op, you know, predominant form of art.

Michael Schein: And the guys who created that were very manly men, you know, um, Jackson Pollock, very straight ahead, kind of guys and Andy Warhol, who was a kid in the forties, had everything that a 1940s kid, um, it had everything going against them. Other than his artistic ability. He was extremely shy. He was gay, which at that time was a crime.

Michael Schein: He was pale, he was skinny. He was bald. And he didn't try to hide any of those things. He took them and flipped them into the core if he was being, cause he figured that there must have been other quote, unquote freaks and weirdos like him. So why not package that for him? So he created this persona of shyness as an art.

Michael Schein: I mean, he would have these three word answers that the press would ponder over for weeks. He wore a silver. I remember reading about that. Yeah. You know, he would wear a silver wig instead of like a toupee or like a bald hairdo. It's like, I'm bald, but look at this thing. Right? So like, I guess it's thinking that there are all of these people out in the world just ready to follow you with all kinds of insecurities.

Michael Schein: And if you can be sort of the caricature version in everything you do, of all of their longings and insecurities and. You know, all of that, they'll, they'll, they'll go anywhere with you. And I think that's what you did. You created this home for creative people who were sort of not sure how to get where they wanted to go, maybe because of parental pressures, maybe because of being lost all of these things.

Michael Schein: I mean, if you had just done a thing, here are the 10 steps to being creative. I don't think you would have done as well, but it's your whole, your, your admission that you tried it and did it the wrong way. You discovered surfing the fact that you will say self-deprecating things like I'm the most unknown well-connected person in the world.

Michael Schein: For people like me and many other people, that's, that's your packaging, that's your persona. And it, and it, and it, and it gives us a home, you know? Uh,

Srini Rao: well, it's kind of funny. You mentioned surfing. Cause like I remember even my old business partner, Brian, and he said, I don't think that you would have had the sort of, you know, resonance you did with the audience without surfing, because he said it was this really bizarre element that is somewhat of a paradox to, you know, who you are in every other area of your life.

Srini Rao: Like Indian people don't serve shit. We don't do anything athletic, you know,

Michael Schein: other than creates a big part. Yeah. I'm sorry to cut you. Were you saying

Srini Rao: no, no, no. Other than play cricket, like that's apparently our most athletic pursuit and, but that apparently takes some serious skill.

Michael Schein: Yeah. A lot of really good Indian and Pakistani cricket players.

Michael Schein: That's true.

Srini Rao: Um, well, so I think that, you know, one thing I really loved was you, you talked about this idea of, you know, give the little babies, their milk and, and you talk about religion and you say founders and early evangelists of new religions are faced with a formidable task. Even though we often come to accept the convoluted doctrines of world faiths, once you, once they become mainstream, almost all of them strike people as bizarre, even dangerous when they first emerge.

Srini Rao: Yet some founders of new religions do manage to build massive followings around their belief systems, spawning leagues of followers who transform the founders, beliefs into the new status quo. And I love this because, um, I'm guessing given your interest in, you know, cults and, and the psychology of all this, you probably have seen the Nexium documentary.

Srini Rao: Um, and I was watching the, the sort of last night we were watching one on Scientology that, uh, Lear eMoney is w has done. You know, I think that the, the question that really kind of emerged for me is okay, great. Like we understand this and I think that that's, that's one of the dangers of being in a position where people look up to you and admire you, is that you have the potential to abuse that power.

Srini Rao: Um, you know, I know certainly that I've been in a position where I'm like, oh, I could abuse my power here, but that would compromise many of the things that I've done. And I see this all the time. And so I guess the question then is, okay, how do you do that without becoming, you know, the next Keith Ranieri and ending up in jail for 125 years.

Michael Schein: So there's a lot here, right? I mean, I, I think these principles exist, whether we want them to or not. And there are always going to be people who can figure, figure them out. Usually. The bad people, right? The, the Catherine Aries. So the fact that you could have abused your power and didn't is why more people like you need to understand this stuff.

Michael Schein: So what really bothers me and has bothered me for a long time is that the people who intuitively understand mass psychology well will often start Colts and steal from people and promote bad ideas. Whereas the people who are very well, meaning that they're, they're full of the kind of doubts you just expressed.

Michael Schein: Well, I can't really use these strategies because I might abuse them. Don't. You know what I mean? It's like, I, I was, I was talking with somebody recently about something I was worried about with my daughter. I have a 10 year old daughter and I was saying like, oh, you know, she's really spending too much time on the iPad because of this pandemic, but I've been a softie with her, maybe.

Michael Schein: Um, I'm worried that I'm a bad dad, you know? And, and my friend was like the fact that you're worried that you're a bad dad and you're trying to take steps to mitigate it is exactly why you're not a bad dad. So I think it's the same thing. I think more people who are well-meaning need to learn this.

Srini Rao: Yeah.

Srini Rao: So, yeah, I think that, that, that's, it's fascinating. So I wonder when you, when you look at this, you know, specifically talking about this example and you think about, you know, things like landmark forum, Tony Robbins, all these people, I mean, they're effectively employing, you know, mass persuasion tactics to get people to do things.

Srini Rao: You know, like I remember, um, I went to Steven Kotler's, uh, you know, Flo seminar. And one of the things he said is that did something really dangerous. And I remember, I think I wrote an article about this. You might've commented on it about why we should never make major life decisions after peak experiences.

Srini Rao: Yeah. You know, you look at what happens in a seminar room and what happens is, you know, these people basically put you in a state of flow. And then at the end of that, because you're in a state of flow, there's an upsell that ed Kotler actually says, the worst thing you can do when you're in flow is to make financial decisions.

Srini Rao: And yet so many people do. So even how do you resolve that sort of paradox? It's like, you know, I don't think Tony Robbins has bad intentions per se, but I can tell you just from seeing, you know, things like landmark where, you know, I, I know a lot of you, I know, cause I've done landmark and you know, the information is phenomenal.

Srini Rao: The organization has a shit show, but there are a lot of people who their whole life becomes landmark. And then they, you know, landmark says, oh, the only reason all the good things that have happened in your life are happening is because of us.

Michael Schein: You might be asking the wrong guy because I veer toward distrusting, um, the sort of figures that, that play on those things.

Michael Schein: I mean, what I often tell you and me both. Yeah. I mean, what I often tell people about Tony Robbins, um, I know a bunch of people who've done landmark and I also see. A weird dedication. That seemed unusual to me, you know, but with Tony Robbins in particular, I'll often say to them, instead of following what Tony Robbins preaches, why don't you try following what he does because they're often at odds.

Michael Schein: So like Tony Robbins will, will tell all of the people in the audience this advice, but it's in some ways for the reasons that you stated the incentives are misaligned because he's a marketer first and foremost. So the way he presents his advice is not just meant to give you the best possible advice.

Michael Schein: It's meant to get you in that flow state so that you buy more of his stuff. Otherwise, every person in that arena would be a millionaire and most of them are not. Um, most of them are far from it and most of them fall right back into a state of whatever misery they were in and then pay for Tony Robbins again.

Michael Schein: So maybe instead you should look at Tony Robbins and say, okay, This guy constantly promotes the fact that he does seven hour talks, where he doesn't take any breaks because that creates, um, a superhero dynamic. It makes him this magician and we tend to follow people who can do astounding feats. So is there any way you can frame what you do as more astounding as, as, as the, um, as the packaged version of Ryan holiday instead of the real Ryan holiday?

Michael Schein: So what I would say is, yeah, learn from people what you can learn, but if you're susceptible to being swept away, start by looking at what they really do and see if there's a discrepancy. Yeah,

Srini Rao: no, I love that so much. All right. So that makes a perfect segue to talking about this idea of, you know, being a trickster, which right off the bat, I think the, you know, immediate, uh, you sort of reaction for most people would be like a trickster.

Srini Rao: That sounds horrible. You say using the tools of the trickster is often the only way for those of us who. Start off without advantages to catch up. Fortunately, if you choose to avail yourself of this brand of benevolent mischief, which that is by far my favorite phrase in the entire book, like an Evolent mischief, um, you can do so in a way that actually adds to the lives of those around you.

Srini Rao: So I guess, you know, how do we become, you know, benevolently mischievous?

Michael Schein: I think a trickster is different than a liar. And I think our forefathers and foremothers were much wiser than us in this because in every mythology there was a trickster character. I mean, a lot of us know about Loki from the Avenger movies, but, um, that's based on a, on a real mythological character and almost every culture has a trickster figure.

Michael Schein: And, you know, Christianity turns the trickster into, to Satan, but it was never a satanic character. It was somebody who played with, uh, There was not a straight ahead. They always took the crooked road. They were a jokester, they caused mischief, but they always made the world better. In the end. They usually were the God of art, you know, like Hermes is the tricks during, in Greek religion.

Michael Schein: And he invented the wire, which was in Greek mythology, the first musical instrument. Right? So, um, all of this nerdy research to say that if we really think about it, this thing I'm calling, being a trickster or benevolent mischief, when not used to hurt people, makes the world a much more colorful and richer place.

Michael Schein: Um, people used to say about PT, Barnum, that they really knew that his, that his exhibits weren't real, you know, that they, that they were kind of fake, but they didn't care because it was so much fun. And it was always presented with a wink and a. So I think if you're starting in a position where you don't have the, a plus B plus C equals D path to success, like if you went to Wharton or, or, or, or whatever, um, to come back to our earlier conversation, I think it's important to think about how to create that fun sense of benevolent mischief in a way that doesn't hurt people, but also to know when to shift.

Michael Schein: So, so actually I think our friend Ryan holiday did this wonderfully. I mean, he has this persona now, um, which is probably what he always wanted to do, where he's a very serious guy. I notably serious guy. I mean, he doesn't joke a lot. He talks about ancient Greek philosophy. He he's very, um, almost stern, not in a negative way, but he, he, he really calls you to task and he's a writer and he's disciplined, but this guy started his career before he had.

Michael Schein: You know, I mean, I think his dad is a cop. I mean, he definitely didn't have heaven in. He was the guy who, you know, defaced his own billboards to get attention from Tucker max. He had Sasha gray on the American apparel billboards naked for a clothing company. And what was so brilliant. He shifted, he said he wrote a tell all book thing.

Michael Schein: These are all the things I did to be mischievous. Don't do them. But if you do use them wisely, wink, wink, and then he completely changed his image. Now, if he would have stayed a tricky. He would have ended up Dennis Rodman after a while. That's what you don't want to do.

Srini Rao: Dennis Rodman, who apparently can go to Vegas to hook up with Carmen Electra in the middle of the NBA finals and come back and still win.

Michael Schein: I mean, you know, that, that, that, that version of the bowls was ridiculous, but that's another story.

Srini Rao: Yeah. All right. So this is, you know, another thing that, you know, you, you talk about here is, you know, becoming a mag, a magazine and you say hype artists recognize what many of us do. Not that we see as extraordinary qualities are often inverted weaknesses.

Srini Rao: The magaz finds the gem buried in the dirt of his greatest weaknesses and broadcasts it to us as such. And to me, like when you say that I can't help, but think of Donald

Michael Schein: Trump. Yeah. That's a great example. So

Srini Rao: how do people do this? Like without becoming Trump.

Michael Schein: It's funny. Well, Trump does it, but he almost doesn't know he's doing it. He knows he's doing a lot of the hype tactics. He does. I mean, he's a very good at hype. I mean, he has other problems, but he's very good at hype, but I think he actually thinks he's, he's, he's a superhero. Like, I, I, I believe that he believes that he is the greatest, you know, the most fake president to ever take office, even though he weighs 350 pounds, you know what I mean?

Michael Schein: So he's a little bit diluted, although he does do that. I think maybe even a more attainable example is Thomas Edison or a better model, because, so here's the thing. If you're Tony Robbins, I mean, I don't know Tony Robbins, but when you see him, his very being is that of a superhero. He is massive. You know, he is a gigantic man.

Michael Schein: He's built like the superhero, his voice booms. He speaks for eight hours at a stretch. He lives in a castle. Okay. That's tough. Right. But you know, Thomas Edison was a guy who, when he came on the scene, he was the opposite of what people thought of as a scientist. Um, Charles Darwin was, was a gentle man. I mean, he was, you know, nobility and he used to take walks all day long and then like write for four hours and experiment and had this very leisurely sort of pace.

Michael Schein: This idea of working around the clock. To, to, to, um, be an inventor, sort of came from Thomas Edison. The other thing is we think that he is a superhero because he invented, recorded sound electric, light, a movie, you know, movies. He, he really didn't, he didn't invent electric light. He perfected it. And even his perfection, couldn't white more than a downtown area of, um, New York city.

Michael Schein: He needed a Tesla and Westinghouse to help with that, that he couldn't figure out a way to commercialize the phonograph for 15 years. And it was a mistake that they made while trying to perfect the Telegraph. So what he did was he, he hated, um, socializing. He found it uncomfortable. He was partially deaf and he was just kind of contemptuous.

Michael Schein: So instead of fighting that trend, that tendency in himself, he will. He flipped that into a strength. He said that he was so dedicated to inventing and in making the world a better place in science that he was working around the clock. So he would get the press to circulate stories that someone came upon him at, at midnight, in his, in his lab.

Michael Schein: And they asleep at his desk and said, Mr. Edison, you'd better come home. And he was like, oh yes, it is my wedding night after. All right. So what I would say is people look up to extraordinary characters, but no one is an extraordinary character and everyone is an extraordinary character. So the idea is don't lie about who you are, but look at your life as faders, take those things that people always compliment you about and dial up the attention of on them, dial down the other stuff.

Michael Schein: And if you can't do that or at the same time, take, make a list, write down all of the things you're insecure about. And then think about how can I flip that into a perceived strength. And it's a lot more doable than you might. Wow.

Srini Rao: So we, we kind of already alluded to the next sort of idea of finding a void and filling it kind of, you know, unintentionally that's where we started.

Srini Rao: Um, but I think the, the next piece that I loved was the whole idea of making it scientific. And there are two things that really struck me here. You said, you know, the real world, especially when it comes to human behavior is messy. And this is uncomfortable for many people, formulas, laws, and unchanging principles allow people to feel they have a bulwark against this chaos, and they will pay a lot for this feeling.

Srini Rao: And then you take the example of Simon Sinek, which I'd never really thought of, you know, him in this way, but it was just such a brilliant analysis that I was like, holy crap. You said that, you know, what makes his approach, especially sophisticated is his use of pre-existing scientific vocabulary to add glitter to what might otherwise be a common sense and hence conundrum concepts.

Srini Rao: In this regard, he comes from a proud tradition. So explain this to us in more detail. Cause I, that to me was just mind blowing. I was like, wow, that's.

Michael Schein: Well, something I found really interesting about Simon Sinek that, that I didn't know until I started doing research was his background. I mean, I always just assumed because of the way he talks and always talks about dopamine and neuro epinephrin and whatever, and that it hit spectacles and he has that kind of half British accent.

Michael Schein: I just always assumed he was like a social scientist or something like that. And he's only working experience that I know of that I can find professional experience before becoming Simon Sinek. The author of start with why and multimillion dollar speaker is advertising. I mean, he worked at big advertising agencies.

Michael Schein: He is 100% of professional market. So he's not a scientist. He's not gonna , he's not a cognitive behavioral guy. And he's giving a lot of advice about how people should live their lives, which might be great advice. I don't know, you know, but what he does is so start with why is that really that bold of a statement?

Michael Schein: I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's encouraging. It's great. I think it's fantastic. But he's basically just saying, you know, start, I mean, it's, it's another way of saying love what you do, honestly, but, but the way he talks about it, he talks about the release of various brain chemicals. When you start this way and he uses this, this, they call it in consulting, eye candy and ear candy.

Michael Schein: And people, you know, are very drawn, especially when it said confident. To heuristics, you know, we can't assess if someone is an expert every single time separately. So when someone speaks very confidently using high flown language, that's still understandable. We just assume that they're an expert. And so it's funny, if you have an idea that's truly, truly new, that can scare people.

Michael Schein: And in that case, you should introduce it very slowly. If you have an idea, that's not new, that's really a lot. Like everybody else's the best, but, but it's useful and helpful the best way to draw attention to that and drive emotion to it. And hence sales is to be Fiat's attrical and to use scientific jargon.

Michael Schein: So it's almost counter-intuitive if you want to get the opposite approach depending on where you are on that spectrum. So

Srini Rao: yeah, the first person that comes to mind when you've mentioned that as Dave

Michael Schein: Asprey. I know the name, but I'm not as familiar with it. So

Srini Rao: he does a whole Bulletproof thing. And I, I, you know, I remember, you know, somebody who I did a seminar with said, you know, the thing is that you can't use a sample size of one and call it science, but that's precisely what he's done and he's

Michael Schein: done it really well.

Michael Schein: Yeah. I mean, that's a great example. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Okay. So the last piece of this, um, you know, you talk about sort of, um, you know, there's two, two final pieces, right? Prayer and symbols, which I think that the thing that's struck me out of the parents symbols, um, thing was when you said, you know, you talked about Timothy Leary and you said, you know, what makes turn on tune in drop out, especially effective is that it works on multiple levels.

Srini Rao: It certainly has all the hypnotic hallmarks of repetition, alliteration and rhythm, our brains readily respond to at the same time, it provides marching orders to its audience. And I think that, that, you know, you see that, you know, sort of, if you look at Mel Robbins and her whole, whatever, the thing is a five second rule.

Srini Rao: When I saw that, I was like, I started to, I recognizing it everywhere.

Michael Schein: It is. So effect, and now this is something that Trump does really well. I remember in the original debates, um, he was up there against Hillary Clinton and she would be like, go to hillary.gov I'm with her, you know, this and that. And he just will constantly repeat, make America great.

Michael Schein: Again, like there'll be some crisis, uh, or some the latest scandal. And he'll say tweet out in capital letters make America great again. And the idea is that that language, it can mean anything to anybody it's make America great again. So if you think America was great, when black people, you know, were, were in subservient roles, that can mean that if you think America was great, when factories were here and not in China can mean that it can mean anything and it's punchy, it's short and he just repeats it and repeats it and repeats it.

Michael Schein: And we're wired to respond to that because. You know, that's how we learn language babies. Think about what a baby needs to do. A baby needs to listen to a bunch of random noises made with a hole in your face and within a year and a half to three years, turn that into a complex understanding. So your brain is running these statistics.

Michael Schein: So we're very attracted to things that on a biological level that make language personable and repetition is one of them. Um, you know, writing. That's why we have rhymes. That's why we have alliteration. It makes the pattern recognition happened quicker and it lasts forever. So just never underestimate the power of simplicity and of linguistic devices and of repetition, repetition, repetition.

Michael Schein: It just, you just burn things into people's brain now. Yeah.

Srini Rao: So I think the, you know, when I, when I, so, you know, you talked about embracing theater and drama and I, I, you know, I think that what I loved here was the, the 37 signals example, uh, about contrarian viewpoints. But I feel like that's what we've been talking about the entire time.

Srini Rao: And so in the interest of time, I want to talk about something that you say. You know, in this idea of setting a rock down to cling to. And the funny thing is, you know, cause I'm, I'm writing this new self published book that basically is questioning, you know, almost everything that comes out of the world of personal development and why I think a lot of it is misguided, but be reading.

Srini Rao: There are two things you stay here and you say that, you know, these books promise implicitly and sometimes explosively. If you want to understand everything there is to know about gaining power, accumulating wealth, building relationships, becoming productive and efficient. There's no need to look anywhere other than between their pages as such their authors, uh, attain all an almost magical or, I mean, part of the reason I kept that quote is I'm going to use it in my book because I was like, oh, I need that quote in my book.

Srini Rao: But, um, you know, I love that. So one, let, let's

Michael Schein: talk about that. So why do people buy into that

Srini Rao: aura? I mean, you know, I think it segues perfectly into the

Michael Schein: concept. So this may be one of the things that gets you hate now. So forgive me, but, um, I'm not a very religious. Person. I mean, I was raised Jewish, I guess I still think of myself as Jewish.

Michael Schein: Cause it's a culture as well as, as a religion, but I've always struggled, believing in religion. And I remember thinking about Christianity and I never understood when I was young. Why people believed it, it, you know, it, it, it, to me seemed really out there far out. Like I just, I, I couldn't wrap my head around why people, I felt that this was real.

Michael Schein: And then I remember just as I got older and had some, you know, as we all do some tragedy in my life and some things like that and looked at other people who had much worse tragedy in their lives, and it just occurred to me how comforting and awesome is it. And this is not a comment on whether Christianity is true or not.

Michael Schein: I don't know if it's true or not. That being said, the idea that your wife can leave you, your children can die. Your parents can die. You can go bankrupt, but Jesus will always love you no matter what, no matter what, you can become a, a heroin addict. And Jesus loves you as much as he loves the president.

Michael Schein: Right? And that is a rock that is this unchanging thing. And I just think having that is just so appealing to people. So to bring that to the book example, people will write these business books or self-development books. And they think that because they write a book, it's going to get them attention, right.

Michael Schein: And speaking gigs and coaching gigs and all this. So they write some book. I mean, in, in my world, in the business book world, it might be leadership strategies for the 21st century. And then they wonder why no one is paying attention. What the real Groo's do the really big personal development and business authors.

Michael Schein: Do they create a Bible, not a religious Bible, but it's basically the implicit place that I did. You can read this book and learn everything you want to know about everything. I mean the seven habits of highly effective people learn these seven habits and you will be a highly effective person full stop.

Michael Schein: That's all you need to know, master these seven things and you are effective at everything. You'll do you know, or Atlas shrugged, it's like a Bible for society. So like I even the 48 laws of power for people who love that book, I mean, these 48 laws will give you power. So if you can provide like an unchanging, a bulwark that is perceived to be unchanging, that gives you a lot of power.

Michael Schein: It really does. Yeah.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I love that. I mean, that was, you know, one of my favorites, uh, you know, in the book. So, you know, I want to basically come full circle talking sort of about, you know, cult psychology, uh, because you know, you, you know, in the, towards the end of the book, there are two things that you say one is that, you know, if there's one lesson you should take from this book, it's to stop saying, paying so much attention to the advice, hype artists give and start modeling what they actually do.

Srini Rao: And nowhere is this true, you know, then on the subject of work, but then you actually, you know, to bring us back to the whole seduction community thing. And it's funny, you know, when I read this. That just, it suddenly, it was like a light bulb went on off my head of oh, wow. Okay. But I know because I was one of these people who did exactly this and, you know, you say that, you know, um, when these failed pickup artists had trouble understanding, you know, is that the most successful, seducers never try to get anyone to do what they want to do.

Srini Rao: Instead they create an atmosphere that gives people a sense of excitement and comfort, which allows them to decide for themselves whether they want to embark on a new adventure and do this mastery over one's, you know, do to do this mastery over one's emotional state is essential. And, and, you know, part of the reason I brought that example up is because I don't think that's just about pickup artists.

Srini Rao: Like if you want to build an audience that's highly relevant right

Michael Schein: now, now that the piece you're speaking about is, is drawing people. It, making them feel like they made the decision themselves, which piece is it? Yeah, I it's, it's funny because someone wrote me an email. It was, it was a sort of a fan email slash critique and the person was right.

Michael Schein: And I wish I could fix this in the book. You know, you always see your mistakes, but what they said was they weren't, they were confused about, on one hand, I was saying that you should give people commands and tell them what to do and they'll follow you. And on the other hand, I was saying that you should get people to make their own decisions.

Michael Schein: And I didn't really make clear in the book that, that those two things can exist simultaneously. So I think on a global level, if you sort of give people, you're not saying that you, you know, you're, you're, you're not telling them directly, but you're saying just to the world, this is the recipe for success, health, wealth, whatever, they'll follow that.

Michael Schein: But if you're sitting in a room with people or a group of people and you try and you create the perception that you're trying to maneuver them into doing something they don't want to do, especially if it's for your own benefit, not for their benefit. Yeah. They will react. I mean, there's a concept called psychological reactants that I actually had in the first draft of the book, but then Jonah burger's new book came out, which is really good, but he had a whole chapter on it.

Michael Schein: So I, so I took out the term, but it's this, it's this concept that we are just wired. If, if people try to push us to do something and we perceive that, that they're doing it for their own benefit, they will push back, even if it's good for them. And so, yeah, I mean, um, I don't know what question I'm answering, but I think it's, yeah.

Michael Schein: You got to know that. I mean, I think so. I used to think that if someone wasn't doing what I wanted to do, I had a hang up about this, that I should push harder as it meant I was wheat otherwise. Um, I just, I don't know. It was the way I grew up or whatever, but you have to be strong. You had to push, you got to wheedle, but I realized that if you don't give people space to make their own decision and give them suggestions, if they're forced to do what you want them to do, they're going to sabotage you in the long run.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So, um, wow. You really have packed. This was so many insights. Like we went longer than we normally ever would. And, you know, just because I feel like there's so much here. Um, so obviously, you know, in a finished my final question, which I know you've heard me ask a thousand times, um, what do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Michael Schein: I think for me, it's become, you know, it, someone who finds side doors, you know, I am always so attracted to people who think they have a recipe for life. Find out that, that recipe isn't going to get them to an unmistakable place, but aren't willing to settle for that. So they try all kinds of side doors and that's what makes where they get to so unusual and weird it's like someone was trying to become.

Michael Schein: Um, a novelist, but that didn't work out. So they tried every crazy side door and ended up inventing narrative, video gaming. I mean, to use a random example, I always find those stories so amazing and those people so interesting that, that I think that those are the people I really find unmistakable.

Srini Rao: Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your stories and your insights with us. This has been one of my favorite conversations I've had this year. People find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything that you're up

Michael Schein: to. Yeah, well, the book is, is, you know, in these crazy pandemic times, I mean, uh, probably for most people, the easiest thing is to go to amazon.com or Barnes and noble.com.

Michael Schein: I mean, if you can, if your bookstore carries it and you can get there, that's certainly an amazing thing to do. Um, you know, my work is in a couple of places. I mean, my company is called MicroFame media.com. That's, that's a. A marketing agency. I call it a hype agency. Um, Michael F shine.com. Um, one of the most fun things or the things I enjoy the most is I have, there's a site that I, um, just a landing page called hype reads.com.

Michael Schein: So I stole this idea from Ryan holiday, but I twisted it through my punk rock lens. I mean, I was reading all of these strange, unusual, weird books of, you know, not stoic philosophers, but Colt leaders and rock managers and propaganda artists. So I make recommendations of those kinds of books and it's really become a community.

Michael Schein: We trade a lot of emails and have a lot of fun. So if you are interested in going deeper in these topics, that's a good way to do so

Srini Rao: amazing. Well, like I said, this has been absolutely fantastic. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.