Michael Schein | The Hype Handbook and How to Create an Atmosphere of Curiosity and Intrigue

Michael Schein is the Founder and President of MicroFame Media, a marketing agency that specializes in making idea-based companies famous in their fields. He works with clients such as eBay, Magento, The Medici Group, University of Pennsylvania, Gordon College, University of California Irvine, LinkedIn, and many more. 

Michael has also written for Fortune, Forbes, Psychology Today, and other publications. The title of his new book is The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and Boundary Breakers. 

In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran is joined by Michael Schein, Founder and President of MicroFame Media, to talk about Michael‘s new book and his strategies for becoming a successful person. Michael also explains how companies can create an atmosphere of curiosity and intrigue, and he also discusses some notable personalities that he mentioned in his book.

 

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Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:

  • Michael Schein talks about his background in the corporate sector and his transition into writing
  • What inspired Michael to write a book about the secrets to success?
  • How did people react to Michael’s strategies that are similar to those used by cult leaders?
  • How to leverage the 12 indispensable secrets to success in different industries
  • Michael talks about some of the people and strategies that he mentioned in his book
  • How companies can create an atmosphere of curiosity and intrigue
  • Michael shares his thoughts on the current state of affairs in the US and why it unfolded the way it did
  • The people Michael respects and admires in his industry and those he acknowledges for his achievements
  • Where to learn more about Michael Schein and his book

Resources Mentioned:

Sponsor: Rise25

Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing. 

Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally. 

If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing

A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network. 

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Episode Transcript

Intro  0:14  

Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.

John Corcoran  0:40  

All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. You know my story. I’m a recovering political hack. I’m a recovering lawyer. I spent years working in politics, including as a speechwriter stints in the Clinton White House and for California Governor. It’s been years also practicing law. And you know, 10 years ago, I discovered this medium of podcasting. I’ve been doing it ever since because I get to talk to smart people every week. And today’s guest is no exception. I’m also the co-founder of Rise25, where we help b2b businesses with the strategy and production they need to create a podcast and content marketing that produces tremendous ROI. And my guest today, before I introduce him, I want to give a quick shout out to Michael Roderick of Small Pond Enterprises. Michael’s been a friend for a long time. He originally introduced me to today’s guests and reintroduced me when he had this new book coming out which I’m excited to dive into with him. 

So Michael Schein, is the Founder and President of MicroFame Media, a marketing agency that specializes in making idea based companies famous in their fields. He works with clients such as eBay, Magento, The Medici Group, University of Pennsylvania, Gordon College, University of California Irvine, LinkedIn, and many many more. He’s also written for Fortune, Forbes, Psychology Today, and a bunch of different places. The name of his new book is “The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and Boundary Breakers”. I think that’s my favorite book title of the year for sure.

Michael Schein  2:09  

Yeah, you know, like, you’re going to forex subtitles are always long, I wanted to pay homage to that maybe

John Corcoran  2:16  

I think the Borat movie, The second was the, you know, I think you probably need two volumes, just to fit all those words on the cover of the book. But yeah,

Michael Schein  2:27  

I know, I know. It’s got you know, we it’s, it’s, you gotta put it all out there. You know,

John Corcoran  2:34  

it’s great. So, you know, you’re in New York, which we were joking about beforehand is kind of like, what better place to judge hype from then one of the most high places in the world legitimately. So one of the best cities in the world. I love New York, you’ve been for many years helping to engineer fame for many of your clients. So what inspired this idea of writing a book about the handbook? Why give away the secrets?

Michael Schein  3:01  

So there? There are a couple of things here. I mean, one is, is you know, what gave me the idea. And the second part is why give away the secrets. And they’re interrelated, but they’re actually different. And, and these differences are important, because, you know, I never thought I would own a business. I had no desire to own an agency, I wanted to do something kind of artsy, you know, I mean, I always thought of myself as a writer. And I still think of myself as a writer, you know, even though I try to do some writing every day, no matter what, but there are plenty of things I do besides writing, but I still think of myself that way. And after having fallen into a corporate job, at a certain point, I learned a lot for the first three or four years there because I was I was kind of an eighth kid when I went in, and I was a professional by the end of three or four years, but I was there for eight years, because I was scared to leave and I was really, really unhappy, you know, at the end. And so I finally got up the courage to, to leave. And I figured that I would, I saw an opportunity to write what’s called demand Gen content. You know, it’s a certain type of copywriting that I that I had read about writing white papers and things and I figured because I write well, and I’ve always been told they write well, that I would just get a lot of jobs, you know, and it turned out I did not and I almost blew through all of my savings and it was very, very scary. And I read every sales and marketing book that’s out there. And I certainly learned a lot but it didn’t help me at all in terms of generating new business. And then I thought back to my past when I was really interested in what I call benevolent mischief, you know, sort of bending the rules, but not hurting anybody. Not even bending the rules, you know, kind of raising a ruckus getting people entertained, you know, hyping things up Yeah, but But good things and I used to play in bands and you know, we had a real product, whether it was a good product, I don’t know, probably not. But people seem to enjoy it. But we would use hype, you know, we would put sound signs around New York that said, Dave Matthews must die, he was popular at the time, you know, and get people all worked up, and they’ve come check it out or whatever. So I thought to myself, well, all of the people that I stole those ideas from, like the Sex Pistols manager, and you know, just these, these, these Mischief Makers, they didn’t think of themselves as marketers, and either do quote, leaders either do propagandists, but no one gets people more energized attracts more attention than these unconventional marketers. So I thought to myself, okay, I didn’t leave my job to become a con artist. So I don’t want to hurt anybody or live anybody. But are there mass psychology principles at play here that we could use in an ethical way? So I started experimenting with it. And I was just so much more effective when I started using that playful point of view, rather than trying to figure out what the newest marketing technology or the newest sales funnel structure was. And so yeah, that led to a career. I mean, first, my writing career started to do well, and then it turned into an agency. Um, the reason I decided to write the book, though, was a little bit different I I am, you know, I guess it really bugged me that a lot of people who are not very nice people, and who I think do a lot of harm in the world, understand a lot of these strategies very intuitively, and use them to push garbage on people. And the people who are promoting good things, things that I find valuable, have this sort of either they don’t get it intuitively, but even even worse, they feel that it’s kind of beneath them to to look at the world the way it really is, and admit that human psychology is what it is. You hear me say that a lot. I don’t want to do marketing. I don’t want to do yeah, promotion, push. Right. Yeah. And so I guess I wanted it for various reasons. Things I see in the news, wrong directions that I think we’re going based on people pushing us in certain ways. It just became important to me to make the case to a larger audience than the large companies that I deal with every day that this stuff is important, and that it needs to be applied for good. And then to teach good people how to do it. Because I’m not worried that the bad guys are going to read my book and learn how to do this. They already know how, you know. Yeah, so that that was why I read the book.

John Corcoran  7:44  

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you mentioned like, cult leaders, for example, did you find as you started to talk to people about these ideas, that sometimes it was a little too edgy, or people wouldn’t get it? Or they would push back against it? You know, because that that could be, you know, for some people that it could be kind of a controversial idea, the idea of taking something that a cult leader uses and, and using those same strategies yourself, even if you are doing them for, you know, benevolent reasons.

Michael Schein  8:15  

Yeah, I mean, it absolutely did. In fact, I got fired from Forbes where I wrote a column because I was too controversial. I wrote an article about how you can look at louis farrakhan and the Nation of Islam and figure out, you know, how to apply their tactics to good and I wasn’t saying to be like louis farrakhan. But they didn’t like that. So they fired me. So yeah, I get that all the time. In fact, just a very, like a far left. I won’t go into my political beliefs, but they’re not far from anything. But a far left group found out the American Marketing Association was having me speak and they said, after all these years of having a hyper partisan office, it’s a disgrace that you would put this out there. So you know, yeah, I get it all the time. But at the same time, I feel like works of art, or businesses or anything really, that’s created, that everyone just kind of says, Yeah, it’s nice, doesn’t really make a huge impact on the world and stuff that people either really love or really hate. I’m more attracted to it right. Right.

John Corcoran  9:21  

So you’d like the fact that it’s getting people’s getting people worked up, get people are actually paying attention to it.

Michael Schein  9:27  

I like it. I mean, partially, it’s good when people get worked up from a height perspective, but also I just feel that I don’t know what your tastes are in music and books and this and that. But for me, the music and books that always appealed to me is stuff that other people heard and we’re like, this is awful, and other people heard and we’re like, This changed my life. It’s not I don’t like his Celine Dion, which is kind of like you’re doing the ironing and today, yes.

John Corcoran  9:54  

All right. So let me ask you about you know, It seems like it’s easier if you have something that can get people riled up, you know, that the ideas that are coming to mind or examples that are coming to mind are from politics, which I don’t want to get into. But that’s been top of mind because we’re recording this on course, November 2020. And it’s been front, you know, front and center. Even with the pandemic that’s been happening that, you know, some of the more controversial things have gotten attention. But what if you have a company and it’s boring? What if you have a company and it doesn’t get people worked up? You know, you say that in the book, you can create a community of acolytes to further your cause? Well, how do you? How do you leverage that? What do you do? Is it services or what you do is HR or something? Or you’re practicing law or something not that sexy or not, that doesn’t get people worked up?

Michael Schein  10:51  

It’s a really good question. Because I think a lot of times when people you know, I’ve chosen the word hype, which is a flamboyant term, I talk about picking fights, I speak in this way. And you think to yourself, well, that’s really great if you’re in professional wrestling, or if you’re the Sex Pistols. So I mentioned before, but it services HR, how can I use that? Well, whatever corner of the world you’re in, there are norms. There are ways that it’s done. You know, we do things this way. Right, right.

John Corcoran  11:28  

When we’re promoting a band, we don’t put up signs that say that the main singer is dead.

Michael Schein  11:34  

Well, okay. But I guess what I’m saying is that, so we were speaking before, you know, this, and I was talking a little bit about how I’m exploring a few ideas. And one of the many things I’m exploring right now is online courses. Now, to most people who aren’t in our corner of the business world, that is a very boring thing, the idea of online personal betterment, or online marketing courses, right? And I don’t know if I’m going to do that or not, we’ll see. And you said to me, I’d be really careful about online courses. And we kind of left it at that. Now. That’s a contrarian point of view. Everyone is out there right now, saying online courses of the future, the old way of education is bad, you need a scalable business. And if you hear that and save yourself, you know what, I don’t agree. This seems to be gospel lately, and I just simply don’t agree. And you go out with that message. That’s contrary and is a great example is a boring industry. You know, the company 37 signals, it’s project management software based Basecamp. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, that’s a very boring field, project management software, right. But they came out and they basically said, Listen, more is worse, less is better. And they wrote a book about it, and they made it their philosophy, more is worse in every way, complicating things is worse than in every way, working harder, for no reason is worse. And they had a reason to do that, because Basecamp is a hyper simple project management solution. And before them, it was gospel in that industry, that the more functionality you had, the better that was just a given. And they took that on. So I really think that human beings are human beings, you know, and it almost doesn’t matter how flat the hype is not the same as flamboyant hands. It’s about how do human beings react to stimuli in groups? Yeah, and

John Corcoran  13:44  

one of the ways to get attention is by being a contrarian. It’s funny, you mentioned that because that is a word that we have used over and over again this past year to describe ourselves, our company raised 25, because we say when, when in what we do with podcasting, we say it’s not about the downloads is not about the subscribers, which is what most people are talking about. For us. It’s about the relationships, but the people prefer you and I having a conversation meeting a great person helping one another scratching one out, one another’s back, you know, but you write about a number of different individuals in the book, from Spartan Race founder Joe de Cena, to Alice Cooper’s manager, Gary Vaynerchuk, who I’ve had on the podcast A while back. Talk to me about how some of them are, are they contrarians as well give me some examples of them?

Michael Schein  14:31  

Well, I mean, again, in the massively long subtitle, it says into 12 indispensable success secrets for a reason because what I did was I did a whole lot of research for this book more than I thought I would do. And I read countless biographies and looked at all kinds of crowd psychology stuff and interviewed people and I found that in this wide swath of people, everyone from Joe to Sam who does Spartan Race which is an extremely legitimate business, to The founder of the moonies, you know, you can boil all of this stuff down not until one principle but into 12 into 12 strategies and it can all and it’s just because our brains respond to those 12 kind of dynamics. One of them is,  I call it war not love, but that’s about being contrarian, but there are other ones too. So the example I use Joe to Santa to illustrate his packaging, there’s a quote from these guys, Elliot Aronson, and Anthony Pratkanis, there are these really legendary academic students of propaganda, their professors who really got to the bottom of propaganda, and they say, the essence of our prime misquote this, but the essence of great pop propaganda is a well designed package. So Gary the Cena basically, he has a long story where he was in finance and all kinds of stuff, but he eventually turned his life around by eating very healthily and by exercising in a very intense way. And he felt that other people needed to do this. So he created a company called peak and invested a lot of money in it and a lot of time and it and it bombed. I mean, it was a great product or service. I mean, this race these really great races, it made you healthier, but it bombed. And so he kind of was just like, Hey, be peak performance, right? I mean, he was just telling you how it was. And then he started I think you might have seen the movie 300 about the Spartans, and he thought to himself, well, now that’s something who doesn’t want to be a Spartan, who doesn’t want to be a discipline strong, you know, character, especially in our in our nerf wrapped world, which has changed or not as nerf, and we’re not cushioned as we used to be. But certainly at the time that he launched it probably very different from any other endurance race out there. Right. So he basically, everything was filtered through the Spartan lens, they even went to Spartan. You know, this guy, he packages himself this way, this guy, I interviewed him, he walked into our meeting with our rock, a giant, like mini boulder on a chain that was from Sparta. Like he could have been carrying a backpack with some high tech weights. I mean, I’m telling you, this guy had a rock, and he was carrying it around New York City. That’s packaging, you know what I mean? It’s that what is the core of what you are, and it must run through everything. It’s not just, hey, my website is really nice looking, you know, and I have great web copy, but I everything else is in congruence with that it is packaging, that filter can change everything in Spartan Race is huge. He made that change, same product, different packaging, and they’re just so successful.

John Corcoran  17:53  

That’s great. Now give me some of the other arguments of the 12 points in the strategies in the book. Yeah, I

Michael Schein  18:01  

mean, one is, is really embracing theatricality, and this is one that’s kind of similar that easily brings up your other point about what if I’m in it or whatever, right? So there are a lot of obvious theatrical characters who are hyper artists, right? They’re, they’re obviously the people in entertainment, but look at Amway, right? I mean, what what, what I find so interesting about Amway, is that Amway is a company that is so successful, that they have a sports arena named after them. And I cannot name any of their products I can now because I did the research for this book. But I mean, they have detergents, everyone knows the tide, whether this Emily’s detergent, right, and they have a mouth spray. If they’re not NACA, and the products might be good, I have no clue. You know, I’ve never used them. What makes them so wonderful is that they focus on their sales people and getting them so energized and the way they do that is with theatricality if you go to an Amway rally, it’s like going to a mega church rally or going to a rock concert, there’s lights, there’s music, they have people positioned down the aisles to make you stand up at the right time, you know, people get swept into this sort of transcendence. Now, are you going to do that? Are you going to create a big event like that? Maybe not? Probably not. But people forget about staging. We’re on zoom now, right? Yeah, we just had, you know, people are either if they give the minimum effort, they put their bookshelf in the back because I guess that makes them look smart, even though right, okay. Or they put some weird, you know, virtual background that kind of comes in and comes out. But it’s not enough to just put cool stuff in the background. What does it say about you? What’s your message? What’s your image? What’s your Spartan Race, you should be thinking about your staging all the time. Your clothing is a prop and you’re what you put around you as a person Right, so that’s another one. Um, there’s one that I call milk before meat. If you’re introducing a very new concept or concept that’s really hard for people to digest, people don’t like big changes, that’s very scary. So you want to come in with a small change, that is easy for them to accept, and then kind of grow it and grow it and grow. And you see that a lot. With religions, it’s a religious phrase, I mean, Scientology. By all accounts, their belief for people who are really in the church, is that we were created by aliens who live on the lip of a volcano and all this stuff. And I don’t want to remark on whether I agree with that or not. But what I will say is that it is very unusual compared to other world religions. But that’s not how they get people in, they get you in with this slight positive thinking message. It doesn’t even seem like a religion, it seems like a Tony Robbins seminar or or, you know, it’s Myers Briggs, I mean, they have BD meters and quizzes you fill out, it’s all about itself, right? I mean, there’s so many, you know, another one is, becoming a major. So what that means is you need to basically create this character for yourself, where you dial up your strengths, downplay your weaknesses, and turn your weaknesses into strengths. So a good example of that is Andy Warhol. You know, he was a guy who, when he was growing up in the 30s, and 40s, he was the opposite of what the ideal man of that time should be. He was gay, which was a criminal act at the time, and obviously gay, he was very skinny, he was balding, he had acne. And he turned every one of those things into his strength, his shyness, into this core mechanic attitude that everyone wanted to get his approval, he was balding. So he just went all out and got a silver wig that everyone knew was a wig that everybody knew is artificial, you know? So how do you turn your weaknesses into strengths and be consistent with that? So yeah, it’s this kind of stuff.

John Corcoran  22:08  

Yeah. And I just did an interview with David Rendell, who’s known as his Freak Factor. And he’s I want to say like six, eight or something, he wears pink, everything pink, you know, glasses, he’s got pink tattoos, all that kind of stuff. And perfect. The whole message is about to embrace, you know, what’s different about you, and to embrace your weaknesses kind of the same thing as you’re saying.

Michael Schein  22:31  

Another thing however, I do want to say that doesn’t mean that if you’re not the all Pink Guy, that you should be all pink. I mean, Edison was this grouchy guy who didn’t really like people. So he constantly told people about how hard he was working. Now, he did work hard. But he played that like crazy, because he didn’t want to interact. He wanted to be in his lab. So he would plant stories in the press around how he was working around the clock, and his clothing was rumbled. And this and that. So it doesn’t have to be flamboyant. You know? Right.

John Corcoran  23:07  

Right. What about you know, you also write about creating an atmosphere of curiosity and intrigue? So give me some examples of ways and you can, you can do that.

Michael Schein  23:15  

Yeah, I think that’s as much a reaction to where we’ve gone and where I think people miss the plot, you know, it’s so easy. You hear so much about calls to action now, right? That’s the new thing that everything you do must have a call to action? Like, what’s the point of putting up a flyer or putting up an ad? If it doesn’t say, click here and sign up to my email list? Right? Or if you even do some kind of print campaign, you would always have www dot blah, blah, blah.com. Yeah. And, you know, I’m just thinking about these lowercase and the marketing campaigns of the past that didn’t do that. And it built a lot of intrigue. So to give you an example, I’m in the 70s in New York in the mid 70s. In the Lower East Side of New York, these posters kept appearing that said, punk is coming. Now, this was before anyone, there was no musical genre called punk. In fact, a punk was kind of like when you say someone’s a punk like a dirty rotten scoundrel, right? And it’s prison slang. And it means something even worse than that, if you trace back the roots, and people would see punk is coming. And it’s a really cool font, and no one knew what that was. It was this weird term punk is coming. What does that mean? And it was just everywhere you went. And then eventually it came out that it was a magazine. And it was the magazine that covered what would become the punk scene and the thing blew up along that audience, if that would have had www dot punk magazine.com and the bottom where you could go read about the magazine that would have killed it. Yeah. Now eventually, you have to do the content. But everyone knows that’s the thing. So that’s very important, too. 

John Corcoran  24:56  

That’s a great point. Yeah. Great. Thank you resonate with anything Go out there, they’re resistant to do that, because they want people to go click on their thing or access to things that I want to ask you, we’re running a little short on time. But I want to ask you, we’re recording this in late November 2020. Your book is coming out in January 2021. Through a kind of a quirk of fate in history. We’ve been governed for the last four years without getting into too much politics, but by someone who, who would be considered kind of a hyper type of Trump, I’m talking about, of course, a showman, right? And in, you know, we just had this election where the electorate went for kind of the more plain vanilla type of thing. So do you think there could be a reaction backwards to something more boring? Or do you think that these things that you write about are going to continue to be relevant going forward?

Michael Schein  25:49  

So if I’m getting too political, let me know. But we’re talking about politics, right, considering

John Corcoran  25:54  

I worked in the White House, I’m okay with it.

Michael Schein  25:58  

We are in the worst crisis in 80 years. And it’s just flat out being handled terribly. Like there’s no arguing there’s been zero leadership. You know, we’re the richest country in the world, we have the highest death rate. There was an economic crisis.

Michael Schein  26:25  

There was, you know, the guy in charge basically said that in the states that I’m winning, we should keep voting and in other states, we should stop. So wacky, wacky stuff. There have been 26 water gates since this president began, and he still almost won. Yep. Like, after Carter, Reagan won like 46 states. Yeah. Yeah. Because there were gas lines. So I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, that’s crazy to me.

John Corcoran  26:52  

Yeah. Right. Right. So I guess maybe the message is that, you know, it kind of gets back to what you were saying originally, is that you have written down these principles, because you want to give them to the good guys, you want to give it to people who’ve got great missions, who just haven’t figured out the formula yet, so that they can use it for good.

Michael Schein  27:13  

You know, without giving away my politics, I saw that guy up there. And let’s just say he’s not my candidate. And I saw him saying things that just didn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t mean his policies, but that any other politician could not have gotten away with because they just weren’t true. And the level of dedication that people had toward him. It made me really driven to teach people who actually are telling the truth, and have good stuff to sell these tactics, because I think it’s damaging. Yeah,

John Corcoran  27:47  

yeah. Well, let’s wrap up with the two questions I enjoy asking. So number one, I’m a big fan of gratitude. So looking around at peers, looking at other professionals in your industry, who are doing similar things to you, who do you respect who you admire?

Michael Schein  28:04  

Yeah, there, there are a few. I’ll have to start with Michael Roderick. I mean, the guy who introduced us, you know, not only is he the most generous person, possibly on earth, He, I mean, I just had a conversation with him the other day where he helped me solve a big, you know, business problem, just out of the goodness of his heart. So he’s one and his new referral brand ideas are really quite good. And I’m really curious to see, I think that’s gonna blow up. Another one is Dorie Clark.

Michael Schein  28:36  

Yeah, she has become a friend. You know, there are a lot of business writers who have a book where it could really be a pamphlet, you know what I mean? I’ll read it. I’ll be like, yeah, there’s some good ideas in here. But it doesn’t really change the way I do business. Every time I read one of her books, or see one of her talks, or have a conversation with her, I come away with new ideas that actually either make me money, or I mean, me being on this podcast with you. If you know, I managed to get myself booked on countless podcasts. And it’s doing wonders for my visibility. And that idea came from Dorie Clark, because her idea was that a podcast is someone who is proactively downloading the episode and listening deeply. That’s more of a reader than someone watching a TV show. Or even seeing you in a bookstore. So I just think she’s great. She’s so full of good ideas.

John Corcoran  29:30  

Yeah, yeah, she’s great. I agree. All right, and then looking backwards even further, even back to your childhood as far back as you like, let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, much like the Oscars or the Emmys. you’re receiving an award for lifetime achievement. So who from your lifetime do you think are the mentors, their friends who are the business partners who are the peers who are the people that you would acknowledge in your remarks?

Michael Schein  29:53  

I mean, obviously, there are so many but for the purposes of this, you know, I said in the beginning that I was driven. First and foremost, by my early desire to be a writer, I came up with my agency work because of my desire to sell my writing. My writing fuels, you know, the work we do for clients, I’ve written this book. And I had a lot of great teachers who really believed in me and saw whatever talent I have and nurtured it, you know, I mean, even as path as far as first grade, we I went to an interesting school where we had a creative writing special, you know, and at once a week, and I would write these kind of funny stories and people like them a lot. And I made people laugh and that I had a teacher, Mrs. Lewis, who passed away recently, but she really encouraged me, Mrs. Rosenfeld. So yeah, I would say my, my English and I’m Mrs. Dorn. I mean, yeah, I just had some really good. Encouraging writing teachers. Okay. All right.

John Corcoran  30:55  

All right, Michael, where can people go to learn more about you and learn more about the book?

Michael Schein  31:00  

Well, yeah, you know, I mean, the book, you know, it’s if there’s a bookstore open near you, and they’re carrying books certainly go there first, but you know, all the online outlets, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all those places. Yeah. I mean, my company is called MicroFame Media. So it’s microfamemedia.com. Oh, I should also say, there is another Michael Schein out there. Who is this kind of thriller writer or something? I have recently become Michael F. Schein. So my website is michaelfschein.com. That’s my new moniker.

John Corcoran  31:37  

Very good. Very good. Well, there’s another John Corcoran out there who is the teacher who couldn’t read? So I’ve had that kind of albatross around my neck for many years. So I can relate. Well, Michael, this has been great. Thanks so much. And thank you, John. A pleasure. Thank you.

Outro  31:53  

Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.