Brad Weimert: So, Marshall Sylver, you found magic when you were ten?

Marshall Sylver II: Yup.

Brad Weimert: It transformed into something different when you…

Marshall Sylver II: I got hypnotized in a show.

Brad Weimert: At 16.

Marshall Sylver II: At 16.

Brad Weimert: In your high school auditorium.

Marshall Sylver II: At my high school. And it made me realize that if that was hypnosis, I say you do no question that hypnosis is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. And I think that so many people don’t realize it’s not hard to hypnotize people. It’s hard to bring them out of the hypnosis they’re already in.

Brad Weimert: You told me that. So, I want to talk the business side of this because you’ve found this mechanism. You did not find a way to monetize it. 22 years old, 23, you moved to Hollywood and you see David Copperfield, who I grew up thinking, “How the f*ck is he doing this?”

Marshall Sylver II: Right.

Brad Weimert: Right? And you thought, “All right. I don’t want to live in the shadow of that. I want to do something that’s different. He’s already got a lot of runway, a lot of wind behind the sails.” Where do you go from there in terms of business?

Marshall Sylver II: So, for me, what it was, was I went through eight jobs, eight departments in two years and came full circle back to hypnosis. And I realized that hypnosis is real magic.

Brad Weimert: Meaning at the age of 30?

Marshall Sylver II: At the age of 23. So, from 21 to 23, I went through eight jobs, eight apartments in two years. And the last gig that I had before I made a full-time devotion to hypnosis as a career was I was a DJ and I got paid $250 for four hours work, which is decent money. Back then $62 an hour was good money. And I was working military bases, spinning discs for four hours while they had exotic dancers dancing. So, I’m 22, almost 23 years old. I’ve got these seminude women dancing and I’m spinning the discs and they don’t want to have anything to do with all the military people because they’re dangerous. I’m the deejay. I’m safe. So, they just want to hang out with me.

Brad Weimert: Dream for a 20-year-old.

Marshall Sylver II: Which was quite the circumstance.

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Marshall Sylver II: Wasn’t fulfilled, though.

Brad Weimert: Shocking.

Marshall Sylver II: And one day, I saw a flier for a guy that had been a deejay. And his name was Skip. And the flier was for Skip The Hypnotist, and he was performing on the military base. Well, I knew Skip. He used to do the gig with me. So, I called my buddy up and I said, “What is going on?” He said, “I’m not a deejay anymore. I’m a hypnotist.” And I said, “Well, that’s awesome.” He said, “Yeah, I used to earn $250 for four hours. Now, I make $2,500 for one hour in the same exact location.” And I said, “What did you do?” And he said, “I studied with this guy.” And so, he told me the name of the guy, supposedly the best hypnotist in the world, and it was $3,000 to go do a 50-hour course, ten hours a day, five days straight. And I went up to go do the training with the guy and halfway through the first day, I knew that I knew. And I think that that’s the biggest bridge most people have got to make is you’ve got to, again, know who you are. And I knew that all those previous years of studying hypnosis without application, if I’m studying now with the number one hypnotist in the world and he’s doing what he’s doing and I know what he’s doing, I know.

And so, I left the class, got back in my car in L.A., drove back to San Diego where I lived, and cold-called a nightclub chain called Carlos Murphys, booked my show four nights a week, and went back up to L.A. Halfway through the second day, the instructor’s angry that I’m late, that I didn’t show up for the first part of the class, didn’t show up for the afternoon on the first day. And he’s saying, “People just don’t commit. They’re never going to get anywhere without committing.” And I said, “I was so impressed, Gil, with what you taught me yesterday, I went down to San Diego and I booked my nonexistent show four nights a week.” And without missing a beat, he says, “And that’s the exact reason people succeed is they commit to making things happen.” And that’s business. Business is not waiting for things to be right. Perfection paralyzes. They’ll never be right. I say put out crap and then put out crap 2.0. It worked for Microsoft. It’ll work for you. And you know, it works for anybody that does software because software is never done. And so many people, that perfectionism is what stops them, “I’ll write the book when I really ready,” or, “I’ll launch the podcast,” or, “I’ll start my company,” or, “I’ll be innovative,” and you’ve got to do it now. You got to put out bad stuff so that you can rehearse, review, and revise.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, I largely agree with that. I had sticky notes all over my first house that I ever owned that said, “To have a standard of perfection is to have no standards at all.” And what that ultimately meant to me is I didn’t want to put out crap. So, what it meant to me was put out a highly reduced version of V1. And so, the iPhone, the first iPhone that came out didn’t have copy and paste. That’s f*cking crazy. But I love the example because they were like, “Look, we’re getting this thing out. No, it doesn’t have everything but what it does have works and it’s solid.” So, most people would not spend $3,000 on a course when there’s…

Marshall Sylver II: Oh, it was every dime I had.

Brad Weimert: That’s crazy. And so, you from the beginning had this mentality of let me learn from the best and figure out and let them show me the path. And today, functionally, that’s what you’re selling also.

Marshall Sylver II: That is what I sell. And it is what I do, though. We teach what we most need to learn.

Brad Weimert: And so, how did you get there? So, you watched this course. You learned hypnosis. You knew that it was the thing for you. You’re 23 and you’ve spent the last dollars you have. And that’s a far cry from having sold 600 million in courses and seminars.

Marshall Sylver II: Yes.

Brad Weimert: So, what was the next step?

Marshall Sylver II: So, the first step was go with what you know. Build on the existing foundation. So, I’m an entertainer. I was a magician. I’m an entertainer. I know that piece. So, I started off with a show, started off doing the aforementioned nightclubs, and I got a corporate gig. And the corporate gig was for Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisees. And so, they pay me $2,000 to come do a show at their franchisee conference.

Brad Weimert: Do you get free chicken?

Marshall Sylver II: Say that again.

Brad Weimert: Did you get free chicken?

Marshall Sylver II: No, I didn’t. But I made everybody chickens and made one of them Colonel Sanders.

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

Marshall Sylver II: Yeah. So, Colonel Sanders running around with a fake accent after all the other subjects. And this drunken franchisee walks up to me at the end of the presentation end of the show, and he says, “That was a great show. That was so much fun. Can you hypnotize my employees to show up to work on time?” And I said no, except I can hypnotize you to communicate better so they will.

Brad Weimert: Ouch.

Marshall Sylver II: Well, he looked at me, and to his credit, he said, “Wow, that was good.” He said, “What would you charge to teach me that?” I’d never taught anybody that so how could I know what to charge? So, I’m one of those people that I like to throw numbers out and see how the world responds so I said, “One day training, $25,000.” And he said, “Can I bring nine of the other franchise partners? Can I bring nine other people, ten people total? And we can split it?” I said, “Absolutely.” He put it together. And so, now I’m making $25,000 in one day. That was when the bell went off for me. That was when I said, “Ah, people will pay more for their business than they will for their entertainment.”

Brad Weimert: No question.

Marshall Sylver II: And so, that was the beginning. And as they say, the rest is history. You know, we just did a small event, 65 people, general public. And again, I’m of the nature that certainly I am in front of 15,000, 20,000 people at a time from time to time. I’d rather have a thousand buyers. You know, if the 15,000 people have a thousand buyers, I’d rather just be in front of a thousand buyers and not bother with the other 14,000. Some people want to be in front of the other 14,000. Some people want that ego stroke. I don’t care. I just want to be in front of the buyers.

Brad Weimert: I largely share that mentality and it’s actually one of the interesting considerations for this podcast because I largely am speaking to people that are eight, nine, ten figures, that are beyond a million. Yet, it’s super relevant information and the net is way larger below a million, right? And so, I struggle with that to some extent because the exposure below a million, A, is good for everything in terms of just eyeballs and, B, there are people in that group that are going to f*cking make it or f*cking kill it.

Marshall Sylver II: Well, and they need you. They need you.

Brad Weimert: And I like that part of it and I want to serve that. I want to provide that. But to your point, you want to be in front of the thousand people that are buyers versus the 15,000.

Marshall Sylver II: Well, I guess, I think two different points. Yes, I would agree that we want to help those other people that are non-buyers and maybe they’ll move over and be motivated. Maybe the one that was only at the conference because they got out of work for the day will say, “Wow. How great would it be if I didn’t want to get out of work for the day? How great would it be if I was doing something that I didn’t want to avoid?” And so, maybe they’ll make the turn but for me, the piece that I was wanting to communicate is that what I do isn’t about ego anymore. You know, I’ve had the accolades. I wrote a video. Some people would call it a sales video these days. It was 28.5 minutes. And in the first year, I did $120 million in sales. So, I laugh when I see people say, “Oh, yeah, I wrote this video sales letter and we did $2 million,” and I’m going, “Okay.” I created an infomercial and I didn’t even have any money to produce the infomercial. I had $10,000. So, the entire infomercial was produced for $10,000 and then it went on to do $120 million in the first year.

Brad Weimert: So, you said the rest is history. I want to talk about the history. So, you found this thing fortuitously where you said, “Hey, I’m a hypnotist. I’m going to talk to the chicken people,” and you had fun doing it. And then you stumbled upon this idea of, “Oh sh*t, I could help the business actually be better at leadership functionally, $25,000 for the day.”

Marshall Sylver II: Yup.

Brad Weimert: So, from there, again, there’s still this gap to 600 million in sales.

Marshall Sylver II: So, what was the gap? That’s a good question.

Brad Weimert: What was the next jump where you thought, “Hey, you know that there’s money there. How do I formalize a business or some structure?”

Marshall Sylver II: I’m in Vegas and I am doing my show and I’m making about $80,000 a week.

Brad Weimert: Hold on. So, you had a show in Vegas at the time.

Marshall Sylver II: So, when the infomercial hits, I met $22 million that first year off, $120 million in sales.

Brad Weimert: Hold on. So, right away, early, when you’re 23, 24, you do this, you’re doing the hypnosis from stage for groups and you do the infomercial right then?

Marshall Sylver II: No. The infomercial came about ten years later when I was 31, 32 years old.

Brad Weimert: So, you’re doing the same type of thing until that point?

Marshall Sylver II: Yeah. And I’m making good money. You know, I’m doing my show, I’m doing seminars. And even in my late 20s, I’m doing a million, 2 million a year. And I’m having a good life. That’s the biggest thing is I’m doing what I love. Never feels like work. And then the infomercial hits in my early 30s. The first year, I net $22 million. I don’t want to give 13% to California, and I want to open up my show in Las Vegas. And so, I immediately moved to Las Vegas and open up my show there. Now, I’m doing what I wanted to do for years, and that is star on the Strip in Las Vegas. I’m working five nights a week, 75 minutes a night, and I’m making $80,000 a week. By anybody’s standards, that’s a good life. That’s a good life.

Brad Weimert: And what era is this?

Marshall Sylver II: This is, well, right around 2000. So, late 90s, early aughts.

Brad Weimert: So, this is super relevant. So, people that are younger don’t really understand how inflation works. And I’m 43 and I’m just f*cking figuring it out like truly and truly in the last couple of years I’ve been able to step back, look at it, and think, “Oh, the numbers aren’t the numbers but they were when I was growing up. Right? Making $1 million when I was growing up…

Marshall Sylver II: Doesn’t mean anything now.

Brad Weimert: No. Making $1 million when I was growing up is now like 2.2 million a year.

Marshall Sylver II: At least.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, making $2 million, $2.5 million, $3 million a year in 2000…

Marshall Sylver II: Was a lot of money.

Brad Weimert: Very significant.

Marshall Sylver II: It was a lot of money and I was happy. Then the infomercial hits. I make $22 million in the first year, moved to Vegas. I lose, I don’t know, $2 million in the first three months of opening my show because I’m spending money on marketing. I’ve mounted the show. I’m on the main stage of the Sahara Hotel. I’m paying for everything and it’s not working. And so, what I believe is you keep tweaking things until you find the combination. And so, I kept tweaking things and eventually, I tweaked it and I figured it out. We go from struggling to sold out overnight, figured out the tweak.

Brad Weimert: What was the tweak?

Marshall Sylver II: It was momentum. So, I’m not able to sell tickets. It’s just I’m fighting against Cirque du Soleil and I’m not Cirque du Soleil. I’m Marshall and I’ve got limited funds and it’s just me on stage. You know, it’s just me. But what I did was I hired a band of people that went door-to-door in Vegas and they sold my tickets that were selling for $30. They sold the tickets for $3 a ticket to locals. And so, the locals started descending upon my show. So, now anytime somebody was in the casino, there would be lines through the casino to get into my show.

Brad Weimert: Crazy.

Marshall Sylver II: Now, we got a buzz. I’m doing two shows a night. We got a buzz of people leaving my show, walking back into the casino saying, “Oh, my God. Best show I’ve ever seen.” And so, we created that momentum. And pretty soon the momentum took over and I’m making a boatload of money. I go from there over to the Stratosphere. I build my own showroom. I pay to build a showroom because there wasn’t one there. And I’m there for a year. And once again, I’m making big money. I’m working five nights a week. I’m having a great time. This guy shows up at the end of one of my shows and he’s from China, from Taiwan specifically, and he’s speaking broken English and he wants me to, he buys two sets of my products, which at the time was like a lot of money. It’s probably like a couple of grand. So, it was highly unusual for someone to buy two sets of my product. He buys two sets of the product.

Brad Weimert: Hold on. You have a product.

Marshall Sylver II: I have all the infomercial products.

Brad Weimert: Got it. Okay. We kind of skipped this part. So, the infomercial, you were selling a product.

Marshall Sylver II: I was selling a home-based product that taught you how to reprogram your brain for better relationships, more money, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual well-being called Passion, Profit, and Power.

Brad Weimert: Got it. And so, you sold it. You had this breakout year. Crazy. What was the number?

Marshall Sylver II: I netted 22 million.

Brad Weimert: Crazy. So, you netted 22 million that year selling that product. And from there, you went to do the stage thing in Vegas. You’ve got your own shows in Vegas where you’re doing the hypnosis thing from stage and doing $80,000 a week. Are you still selling the products during these times?

Marshall Sylver II: Yes. That was the thing is that I have a belief that if you have an audience, you should sell them something. And so, even though I’m doing my show in Vegas, at the end of my show, I would give away a couple of products, my nonsmoking kit and my fat loss kit to the audience. And I’d say, “Who else wants these products?” And everybody in the room, “Yeah, I do. I do.” I’d say, “There’s good news. They’re available out in the foyer after the show. I’ll be out there to sign autographs, take pictures with you. And if you buy product, I’ll sign your products as well.” So, this man from Taiwan buys all of my products a couple of thousand dollars’ worth. He wants me to autograph everything. And as is a common insight of the Chinese culture, at least, he wanted me to take a lot of pictures. And so, I’m getting kind of weary and it’s wearing thin on me. And I’m about to tell the guy, “Let me just give you your money back. I really don’t want to take a picture with this product, a picture with that product,” but he’s going on and on. In the midst of him standing there, he says, “You bigger than Elvis in Taiwan.” “What do you mean? I’m bigger than Elvis in Taiwan?”

“Your infomercial on all the time.” “My infomercial is on all the time in Taiwan?” He goes, “Yeah. You biggest selling infomercial of all time.” And I’m not insulting anybody. That’s just kind of the accent that he did and I’m doing it poorly. And I said, “That’s interesting. Who’s the promoter running my infomercial?” Because my infomercial wasn’t running in Taiwan. What happened was somebody had hijacked it and they bootlegged it and they dumped all my products over into Chinese and they were selling all the product, but they weren’t paying me a royalty. And so, he gave me the name of the promoter. I called the promoter up and I said, “Are you the guys that carry Marshall Sylver’s infomercial”? And they said yes so I said, “Where are you sending the royalty checks? Because I haven’t seen them.” And so, they started paying me. The other thing this guy says, though, he says, “I want to bring you to Taiwan to do your show at night and do your lecture during the day.” And I said, “I don’t know. What language do they speak in Taiwan?” He said, “They speak Chinese.” I said, “I don’t speak Chinese.” He says, “We use an interpreter.” I said, “I don’t know if hypnosis will work through an interpreter.” He said, “We’ll pay you $50,000 a day, ten days straight, pay you the half million dollars upfront.” I said, “I think it’ll work just fine. It’ll work just fine.”

And so, we booked the ten days. I go to the entertainment director of the hotel and I said, “I’m going to take my two weeks of vacation on these dates.” And he said, “Oh, great. What are you going to do? You going to go hang out on the beach or something?” I said, “No, I’m going to go to Taiwan. They’re paying me $0.5 million for ten days work.” And he got kind of a funny look on his face and he said, “Let me get back to you. Let me check and see if we can let you go.” And he gets back to me. He said, “You can’t go.” And I said, “What do you mean? I’ve got the vacation time coming. It’s a four-wall. I pay for my own room. I built my own theater. What do you mean I can’t go?” He said, “If you leave, we’re going to shut your showdown.” And I said, “Well, I’ve already cashed the check. I’m not giving it back. I’m going.” And so, I called their bluff and I go over to Taiwan and sure enough, I come back and they had shut my show down. I’d come to find out later on, the entertainment director knew that if I went out and earned that kind of money, I was never coming back. And he was right. So, I don’t know if we talked about this in the first interview. I come back, I get a call from Ron Legrand, the real estate guy.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, we did. So, I want to pause you on that because if you haven’t heard the other episode, you need to go listen to it.

Marshall Sylver II: Yeah. Listen to Episode 1. I had a lot of goodies in there. And the other episode was shot at my main residence in Las Vegas. So, at any rate, that changed my whole business model.

Brad Weimert: So, from there, we’re going to, you know…

Marshall Sylver II: Just kind of fast-forward and condense it.

Brad Weimert: Yup. Jump over this. So, you went to somebody else’s stage.

Marshall Sylver II: Got on stage.

Brad Weimert: Speak on somebody’s stage at their seminar, sell from stage, and crush it. And you also got a lesson in pricing at that.

Marshall Sylver II: And I got a lesson in being rewarded for not my time for what I produced.

Brad Weimert: Love that.

Marshall Sylver II: And that is the distinction. So, the fast forward of everything and how did I go? Certainly, I had a big boost on the front end doing 120 million in sales with the infomercial the first year. Another 100 million the second year.

Brad Weimert: Which has to change your relationship with money and the way that you look at these things.

Marshall Sylver II: It didn’t change my relationship with money. I just had a whole lot more of it. I’ve always had a really good relationship with money, except it’s kind of like that line from the Social Network. A million is not cool. A billion is cool.

Brad Weimert: I love this. So, I don’t want to skip over this part because you spoke from stage. You crushed it. You made something like several hundred grand from stage that day.

Marshall Sylver II: And I made $400,000 in 90 minutes.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, you realized, “Hey, speaking from stage is a thing and I can monetize this way.” The gap from there to current state is super important because you’ve had these successes of you’re making a couple, 3 million a year as you, right, as a one-person business. But you’ve also got these products moving. You had a big product launch through an infomercial. Then you realize, “Hey, I can sell this more systemically from stage.” So, now you get into a different era, which is I was this guy promoting my shows in Vegas, having sort of a standing thing every night in Vegas, crushing it. Now, I’m moving into I want to basically do courses or do seminars. So, how did you think about the transition in business itself at that point? Because that’s a different thing. And did you look at it that way or did you just say, “I’m going to roll with it and see how it goes?”

Marshall Sylver II: The big distinction for me and the one that should matter to anybody watching this interview is I realize the greatest value anybody has in their business is an existing customer. And I think most businesses spend the majority of their efforts on customer acquisition going after new customers. And I realize your current customer already likes you. So, when I seek to make more money, there’s one question I ask myself, “How do I help my existing customer do better? How do I help that existing business that I’m serving make more money?” And usually, it’s through nontraditional revenue, finding revenue streams that they wouldn’t even think about. And by helping my customer find nontraditional revenue, what happens is now I open up all sorts of pots of gold for them that they wouldn’t have looked at that require no additional effort, no additional cost in marketing, no real additional sales push on their part because the customer that they have will automatically need whatever that is.

Brad Weimert: So, we go into this in not like super deep but we go into some detail in episode one about this. But what you’re basically talking about is your model turned into speaking to other people’s audiences to sell your product in your seminar or your service, which is where we started today, which is if you don’t have the mindset…

Marshall Sylver II: You don’t have anything.

Brad Weimert: You’re not going to execute. Yeah. So, did you figure that out from around the grand seminar at moment one? Or did you figure that out later that you wanted to monetize through other people’s stages?

Marshall Sylver II: I figured that piece out through Ron Legrand. I instantly realized that I would make more money not asking for a speaking fee by actually speaking for free. Now, times change. And these days there’s kind of a weird phenomenon. I don’t understand it where people just get on people’s stages just to speak and they’re neither compensated for speaking nor selling anything. So, they’re just getting up so that their brand is recognized, “Everybody knows me.” I don’t get it.

Brad Weimert: Long tail.

Marshall Sylver II: I don’t get it and I don’t like it, frankly. And here’s why I don’t want to get it and here’s the reason I don’t like it. I think that you train people on how to treat you. And if I’m teaching people that my time is not valuable, that I don’t need to be compensated here. You know, you said the word, long tail. I’ll play the long game and I’ll figure out how to monetize it down the road. Okay. Well, if I’m going to monetize it down the road and that’s not offensive, then what’s offensive about anybody wanting to monetize it now? And if I’m going to teach businesses how to make money, wouldn’t it make more sense for me to teach them not to play the long game? Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to teach them, “Here’s how you monetize it now, have your customers joyfully hand you a credit card in the short term, and then in the long term, hand you the credit card repeatedly?”

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I can see I’m visualizing two different avatars of people listening. One is like, “Oh, that makes sense. Let me figure out how to monetize the audience.” And the other is thinking, “Whatever, old man. This is how it used to work in the past. That’s not how it works today with social media.” And I think that both are actually beautiful sentiments.

Marshall Sylver II: They’re choices.

Brad Weimert: And what I think to the latter, the important…

Marshall Sylver II: First of all, they call me old man and I’m not old. I’m level 61. I just want to be clear on that.

Brad Weimert: I very deliberately use those words.

Marshall Sylver II: I’m over it.

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Marshall Sylver II: And by the way, we’re at my beach house. I’m already way over it.

Brad Weimert: Ridiculous beach house. And for those that can’t see this, we’ve got the ocean immediately behind us. You’re probably not seeing our faces because of the light from the ocean.

Marshall Sylver II: And I, for one, am cool with that.

Brad Weimert: I feel great about it. Yeah. But I think the relevant point is that both mechanisms work and there isn’t one way to do things. And this trend of let me get attention and capture attention that is popularized by names that are pushing that narrative.

Marshall Sylver II: Let’s take a look at that because…

Brad Weimert: Well, let me follow the point. So, that’s fine, right? And that, yes, maybe that’s the case, but most people do that for the sake of the vanity metric and don’t actually capitalize the way, don’t actually produce an ROI or an impact the way that they could if they did it a different way. They’re so caught up in getting an audience, getting attention, getting the numbers that they’re not actually selling to the thousand. They’re just speaking to the 15,000. Right?

Marshall Sylver II: Right. And I don’t even know that it’s just vanity. I think it’s a combination of vanity and insecurity.

Brad Weimert: Oh, yeah, for sure.

Marshall Sylver II: And the reason I think it’s vanity and insecurity is that person that has that audience that doesn’t sell anything to that audience, they’re afraid if they sell anything to their audience, they’ll lose eyeballs, they’ll lose followers. I don’t want to make an offer. I don’t want to be sketchy. I don’t want to sell them things and be sleazy like that when for me, it’s a brand. It’s all about the brand. And if your brand is one that you never sell anything, yeah, it’s going to be abrupt if all of a sudden you’re selling something. And you might have to ease into it by giving something, though that is a part of a sales funnel. You got to start off by giving them something, but it’s a part of a sales funnel. I sidestep all of that and how I sidestep that is I believe that which we experience fully vanishes. So, I believe people have a subconscious state that they resist being sold, that that’s a common denominator of most human beings is that they resist being sold. How do you overcome that? I stand on a stage and within two minutes of being on the stage, I say, “Who here believes that today I may try to sell you something?” And everybody says yes and I say, “I will not let you down.”

In fact, I’m not going to try to sell you anything. I’m going to sell you something. It’s good for me. It’s good for you. It’s good for the entire economy. Everybody wins. Well, now my culture and my brand is defined. He sells things. Now, I don’t have to apologize about selling things. You know, somebody says you’re just trying to sell me something. I say, “Are you new? Yes. That’s what I do for a living.” You’re just trying to sell me a car here at the car dealership. Oh, yeah. That’s what car dealerships do. That’s what we do. And so, I think that the challenge for so many, and you said it best, “That’s not how it works, old man, on social media.” I would agree that the distinction on social media or anything delivered digitally, any kind of even digital marketers is all watched. Digital marketers that actually do well digitally, they sell well online. They have their sales page, but if they do a live event, they fall flat on their faces. And the reason they fall flat on their faces is they’re not actually good at human interaction. They’re just not good face-to-face. And so, they’re embarrassed that they’re selling. In fact, they’ll often promote their events and say, “Nothing’s going to be sold. This will not be a pitch fest.”

Brad Weimert: Which is fine.

Marshall Sylver II: I don’t get it.

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Marshall Sylver II: I don’t get it. Because if I’m here to teach other people how to make money, then the core foundation of what I’m teaching them is how to sell things. So, there’s a couple of well-known motivational speakers who teach people how to sell things, but then they don’t sell things. They don’t close. And I find it just ironic because they’re standing on stage saying, “This is how you sell things. Oh, by the way, I have books and tapes. They’re available at the back.”

Brad Weimert: Well, look, I think part of, for me, as somebody that grew up in pretty intense sales, like, I’m going to sell you some sh*t right now or I’m never talking to you again ever kind of sales and I’m still going to ask you for referrals either way. Yes. I grew up in that space and, for me, I think that the phrase, “They can sell ice to Eskimos,” is offensive. And I think that the notion of sales gets perverted by language like that and by the notion of a used car salesman and the people that are, and you’ve alluded to this, but the people that are very good at sales elect to sell the products that are going to serve the market buying them. And if the market buying them doesn’t want them or it’s not a good fit, then they don’t want to sell it to them.

Marshall Sylver II: No.

Brad Weimert: And when they know that they need it, they will go to no end to make sure that they can sell it to that person because they know that they need it.

Marshall Sylver II: It’s a moral and ethical obligation. So, when you believe in what you’re selling, you have a moral and ethical obligation to sell it. And when you don’t believe in what you’re selling, you have a moral and ethical obligation to stop selling it even if it changed midstream. But you said something. You said they can sell ice to Eskimos and then you followed it up with sleazy car salesmen. And what’s interesting to me about both of those, once again, they’re frames. Yes, I can sell ice to Eskimos. In fact, Eskimos appreciate ice more than anybody because it’s their life. They’re the ones that do more with ice than anybody else. And sometimes people think, “No, you’re selling ice to people that already have a lot of ice.” Okay. Well, they already have a lot of ice. Once again, clearly, they have a use for ice or they wouldn’t have a lot of ice. Then the sleazy car salesman, well, everybody needs a car. So, what makes that person sleazy? That person is using sales techniques, techniques or tactics. Got it. So, what if a person wasn’t using sales tactics or techniques? What if a person was so good at influence, it was simply the way they communicated? That’s how they communicated things.

You know, again, it’s the person who has to force themself to work out versus the person who says, “No, I like my racquetball with my wife. I don’t even think it’s a workout. It doesn’t feel like a workout.” So, for me, that’s where we want to get people. We want to get people to Steve Jobs level. Steve Jobs was a master salesperson and presenter, but you would never know it. People would just, “Oh, no, he’s just talking about his products.” No. Everything about that presentation, he played every ace. He wore the same black turtleneck and blue jeans every single time. Why? Because he wanted him to look unimportant. He wanted him to be baseline. And the thing he held in his hand was the miracle, the center of all attention. Nothing to do with him. When he spoke, he spoke in very low dulcet tones. Why? Those tones speak directly to the subconscious mind. That’s why a hypnotist that doesn’t have a cold uses those tones because they vibrate on a frequency that speaks directly to the subconscious mind.

So, the key, and we talked about this a bit before, is the person that’s presenting and 90% of the presentation is content and the 10% is closing, it cannot be that way. The whole thing needs to be content and the whole thing needs to be closing. There can be no separation. And if there is a separation, therein lies the challenge and that’s where I step in. And I say, here’s how we stop you from pitching and we help you start presenting.

Brad Weimert: I love that. I think that it serves everybody to think about life through the lens of it’s all one thing. And when we hire new people inside the walls of Easy Pay Direct, look, there’s consistently a leadership consideration around crafting narrative, reminding people, managing, etcetera. And when we hire people, I very much believe that the job starts for that person with the initial exposure. And so, how the job post is written and/or what platform it’s on and then the experience going through the interview process and then the onboarding process up to the initial days of working, the initial month, getting onboarded, those are all part of hiring. And I don’t look at that any differently than any other sales funnel. They’re all part of the sales funnel of doing it. But if you don’t look at it that way, then it creates incongruency in the process for the buyer. And in this case, it’s the new employee. I think we’ve all been at a thing where suddenly you get the pitch and you’re like, “Ehh.” And it turns you off. If it’s all of the pitch the whole time, it’s more comfortable.

Marshall Sylver II: And I don’t know if it’s a pitch if everybody knows what the intention is from the beginning.

Brad Weimert: If everybody does.

Marshall Sylver II: Right. And everybody agrees upon it.

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Brad Weimert: I think that’s my point.

Marshall Sylver II: Yeah. It comes back to the timeshare thing. “Hey, you know Mr. and Mrs. John Q Public, nine out of ten people have no intention of listening to my presentation. They’re just here for the free stuff, the goodies. One couple out of ten, they have an open mind. They’re good people, and they’ll at least keep an open mind during the presentation. And they won’t make up their mind until the very end. Now, I don’t care whatever you are. Whatever you are is fine with me. It would help me, though, to know which you are. Are you one of the nine that are just here to pretend like you want something? Or will you really give me a sincere opportunity to show you our product?” Now, the customer, consumer has one of two choices. They can either tell the truth. Now, we’re just here for the goodies. That’s fine. Or they can lie, which is more likely what they’ll do. No, we’ll give you serious consideration. Well, if they lie, guess what? They’ve got to act like they want to buy for two hours. And if they do lie and say they’re going to give you a consideration, two hours of lying to me, acting as if they want to buy makes them want to buy.

But let’s imagine they tell the truth. “We’re just here for Cirque du Soleil tickets. We’re just here to go to Disney World. That’s all we want. That’s the only reason we’re on this timeshare tour.” Then the salesperson says, “Thank you. You have no idea what pressure that takes off of me because I’m a commission-only salesperson. That’s how I earn a living. And if I don’t sell to you, I don’t get paid. Except you telling me you’re not going to buy right up front makes me feel better because now I’m going to give my whole presentation and I don’t have an expectation. I know I got to pay my rent somewhere else, except I still have to do the two-hour presentation. I apologize. I can’t just give you the tickets. So, would you do me a favor? It would help me practice, and it’ll make the time go a lot faster. Would you pretend for two hours that you wanted to buy that you liked my presentation? Would you help me out with that?” “Okay.” Well, now they pretend for two hours again. And if you act as if something’s true long enough, it becomes true. And they buy. We gave David Siegel of Westgate Properties a 50% bump with that technique.

Brad Weimert: Amazing.

Marshall Sylver II: And I call it totally non-covert selling. Don’t be covert. In fact, just the opposite.

Brad Weimert: I love it.

Marshall Sylver II: Tell them exactly what you’re doing. In my seminars, like I said, I do a section where we teach inside of Turning Point, my foundational course, which we’re going to once again gift your viewers that anybody the first 50 people that contact my office and say that they are guests of Easy Pay Direct that we’ll give them two tickets to Turning Point. At any rate at Turning Point, I teach influence. I teach all these strategies of influence. And then I have some random person in the audience stand up and I say, “I made this offer yesterday for this $5,000 offer, and you didn’t go to the back. You didn’t buy. Can you tell me the reason?” And then they’ll tell me the reason. I don’t call it objection. I call it resistance. And the reason I don’t call it objection is an objection is outside of us. When I train salespeople, I tell them, “Call it a piece of resistance.” And your job is to play with that customer’s resistance. Don’t take it personally. Just play with the resistance. Make them okay for having that resistance. And so, what happens is they give me their resistance and in front of the whole audience, I play with it.

And in front of the whole audience, I use the techniques, gambit strategies, communication processes that I just taught the whole room with the person I’m communicating with, and I close them on the spot. And they grab their credit card and they walk to the back of the room. They plunked down on the table and they buy the very thing they didn’t buy yesterday when I went through that process with them again. I go silent. I just let them walk to the back of the room. When they get back to the table, I turn to the rest of their audience and I say, “Do you realize you just watched me do what I just taught you? Did it seem natural? How many of you would love to have that same level of skill and belief and congruency selling your products and services?” And of course, all the hands go up and they get it. And it comes back to that idea that I wasn’t covert. I wasn’t underhanded. I wasn’t trying to slide something in. I said, “I’m selling you right now. I’m closing you right now.”

Brad Weimert: Yeah. So, it’s 2023, nearing the end. And through the decades that you’ve been doing this…

Marshall Sylver II: 40 years.

Brad Weimert: I’m curious. Was that the approach from the beginning or did it evolve into that?

Marshall Sylver II: It evolved.

Brad Weimert: So, I ask partly because in the era of the Internet, the last 25 years, and specifically the last 15, things change quickly.

Marshall Sylver II: People think that.

Brad Weimert: Well, okay, you can give me the counterpoint in a second but things change quickly. And so, what I mean by that really is that the amount of data that hits you is so much larger than it was in 1995.

Marshall Sylver II: Yes.

Brad Weimert: And so, you might see a pitch in 1995, in a year, or if you’re a seminar junkie, you might see a handful. In 2023, you might see a thousand in a year because everything is a pitch online. And so, marketing is iterative but it’s the same thing over and over and over and over and over. So, the infomercials that ran in the 80s, some perversion of them is running today.

Marshall Sylver II: And they call them video sales letters.

Brad Weimert: Right. A VSL or now it’s maybe a YouTube ad, right? Maybe it’s a three-minute YouTube ad or five-minute or whatever. Or it’s 90 seconds.

Marshall Sylver II: Like, I saw one of yours the other day.

Brad Weimert: Well, thank you.

Marshall Sylver II: Good stuff.

Brad Weimert: You know, we throw ours out there.

Marshall Sylver II: Yeah. I pulled out my credit card. I had to call the number. Filled out the form.

Brad Weimert: So, as things have changed, I think there was an era that I can remember in when the Internet was, when commerce on the Internet was newer, call it 2007, 2008, 2009, where the illusion of scarcity which was bullsh*t but the illusion of scarcity…

Marshall Sylver II: Usually it is.

Brad Weimert: …was effective. Now, today, the illusion of scarcity, people call your bluff. “Hey, one-time offer. Hey, I’m doing this thing live.”

Marshall Sylver II: Or if your name is Billie Jean, “I’m retiring for the 30th time.” Did I just say that out loud? Yes, I did.

Brad Weimert: We will take that up with Billie Jean. Billie Jean, we’re going to talk about this.

Marshall Sylver II: No. And I love Billie, and Billie does great stuff. I think that’s a bad gambit, though. Well, if you’re not actually retiring, I think that’s a bad gambit because one of the things that I believe is there’s no gray area. So, again, if he’s actually retiring, God bless. That’s awesome. But if you’re not actually retiring and it’s a gambit, people will call you on that BS sooner or later.

Brad Weimert: That’s actually my point, right, is that and I would argue that the mechanism that you’re using now probably would have always worked, and maybe it did. And that’s why I ask.

Marshall Sylver II: And it still does.

Brad Weimert: Did you use it in the beginning? But the idea of, “I’m not bullsh*tting. I’m going to tell you exactly how it is right now, I am going to sell you something,” expectation from beginning to end is effective today.

Marshall Sylver II: Yes. So, that I thought you’re asking me something different.

Brad Weimert: No, I’m asking you if that always was for you. And if you always…

Marshall Sylver II: No, I didn’t always from the beginning say I’m here to sell you something. It happened fairly quickly because I realized that the sooner I got people over that piece of resistance, the audience sits there when you’re presenting and they’re like this and they’re just looking at you. And the moment they realize you’re going to sell something in your presentation, they go to this, “What are you going to sell me? What are you going to sell me?” And then when you finally tell them, they go, “Okay. Now I know.” And they uncross their arms. So, why wouldn’t you want to get them to uncross their arms early? Here’s what I’m going to sell. In fact, I teach people if you’re going to make an offer, tell them early on what the offer is. Tell them full retail. And if you’re going to discount it, tell them you’re going to discount it. So, I’ve got an event. It’s called Turning Point. The tickets sell for $3,000 apiece. Of course, that’s not the investment you’ll make. I’m going to reduce the investment and give you a better than money-back guarantee.

So, in that phrase, I said a bunch of things, didn’t I? Manage the expectation, the investment’s $3,000. I’m going to reduce the investment, give you a better than money-back guarantee but I also said the words, “That’s not the investment you’ll make. You’re going to invest a lot less,” which is highly assumptive, isn’t it?

Brad Weimert: It is.

Marshall Sylver II: It’s me saying, “No, you’re going to invest.” Of course. I mean.

Brad Weimert: Highly assumptive and the open loop.

Marshall Sylver II: Yes. And so, when it comes back down to it, once again, I believe you don’t say anything that’s not true at all. Never. Always tell the truth. You can create scarcity. You know, there’s the digital marketers that say, “Oh, yeah, we’re throwing this in the ball. The offer ends here. We’re going to throw the ball. Never coming out again.” Well, if it’s never coming out again, that’s fine. But usually, they’re lying. Usually, it’s in the ball. Maybe they pull it out in a year or six months or whatever. That’s still a lie. And I don’t believe in lying. I don’t think you have to. You can say if I have a $60,000 event that I’m teaching at my home and I know there’s a diminishing return, if I have more than 20 people at the event, I cannot give the same service that I could give with less than 20 people, limited to 20 people. That’s real. It’s factual. It’s a line not in the sand. It’s a line in the cement. And so, that’s real. So, yes, I believe if you’re going to craft an offer, you need to figure out what is the scarcity. Where do we draw the lines? How do we define this in such a way that it’s a limited number of people?

You might say Easy Pay Direct might say, “We, unfortunately, don’t work with people doing less than a million bucks a year.” Well, you do need service. Unfortunately, with what we do, we just don’t have the bandwidth to give you the service that you need and we’d be happy to refer you to somebody who can take care of you. Somebody calls me up and says, “Hey, can you do a nonsmoking hypnotherapy session with me?” My response is, “I don’t really do that.” “Well, money’s not an object.” “Okay. It’s a million bucks.” “A million bucks? I don’t know if I have a million bucks. Okay.” Or, “A million bucks okay? I want the best.” Well, they’re going to pay me a million bucks. I’ll find a way to want to do it. But I don’t want to do it, so I’m going to throw out something, a number, that would preclude anybody from working with me.

And so, again, I don’t think things change. I think their representation changes. I think the frame changes. I think the infomercial of the 80s and the 90s is now the video sales letter in the landing page of today. I think that the infomercial star, in fact, I even said this the other day. I was in my massage chair and I was meditating and I was thinking about things and I said that. I said, “The influencer is the infomercial star of yesterday.” That’s what they are.

Brad Weimert: Definitely. But wrapped differently.

Marshall Sylver II: Not even wrapped differently, I don’t think. It’s presented in more pieces.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. When I say wrap differently, I think that the social construct around them is different. And so, I think that we are in a, and I think this is all fluid, but I think we’re in an era currently where there is an illusion for a young generation, the youngest of the generations of adults that think that there is some value in the influencer people. And I think they’re starting to realize that it’s a gameable system and that they’re not providing value in many cases or that it’s just entertainment and that is the value. And I think they’re starting to figure that out.

Marshall Sylver II: I think what happened was the gatekeepers went away.

Brad Weimert: Well, right. So, infomercials, there were only a few of them.

Marshall Sylver II: Because there were only three networks.

Brad Weimert: Right. Relatively speaking. And you weren’t a celebrity if you were doing an infomercial.

Marshall Sylver II: You were. You’re too young to know this.

Brad Weimert: You were of a specific… How did that feel?

Marshall Sylver II: I feel good. I feel really good.

Brad Weimert: I love it but I wasn’t that young, right? So, I grew up.

Marshall Sylver II: But you are because Tony Little and Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, who are both born out of infomercials, that’s how they got their celebrity. If Tony’s infomercial through Guthy-Renker had not hit, he wouldn’t be where he is.

Brad Weimert: 100% agree but Tony wouldn’t be a celebrity today had he not done the Netflix series, I Am Not Your Guru, or Netflix show, I’m Not Your Guru.

Marshall Sylver II: He was already established.

Brad Weimert: He was established but not across the board. What he was, was an infomercial person. So, he was selling sh*t on infomercials. And so, there was a category of people that had value from and liked him but he wasn’t an influencer. For that reason, the people that liked him loved him. The other people dubbed him a “motivational speaker.” Air quotes. And I was in the first camp, by the way.

Marshall Sylver II: I respect that. And I would agree to have a different opinion on this that he still view that way. I’m still viewed that way. You’re still viewed that way, that there are a number of people that think Gary Vee is full of crap. There are people that think Grant Cardone is the worst thing that ever happened on the planet. And again, if we cater to people that don’t like us, we’re out of business.

Brad Weimert: I agree. I just think that the frame of society has shifted where there is the opportunity to see people in different ways and form your own opinion slightly, where previously all you had was it’s an infomercial. Now, you have this multi-dimensional kaleidoscope of what the f*ck is an influencer? And so, my mother, looking at the influencer in her 70s versus a 15-year-old looking at the same influencer draws a different conclusion about the celebrity status of that person where an info product person, an infomercial person in the 80s was an info product person, right? They were just selling some sh*t on this infomercial.

Marshall Sylver II: Maybe.

Brad Weimert: Okay.

Marshall Sylver II: But again, having lived through that, having lived through the experience on both sides of it, if I had known what I know now, then I’d be worth $50 billion. I just didn’t know. I didn’t realize that’s what that was. And so, we had this discussion in part one of this interview 95% of all podcasts shouldn’t be. There’s no value. They’re bad content. The challenge is everything gets reversed. It used to be the cream rose to the top because the gatekeepers only presented the best content. Thousands of infomercials never got on the air. So, today people have podcasts that nobody listens to. Back in the 80s and 90s, people produced infomercials that tested and nobody bought so they never ran the media to them. It’s the same thing now. There are people that say, “Oh, I’ve got a million followers on Instagram.” Great. Do you sell anything? Do you make any money at all? Does it really matter how many followers you have? Because if you’re not monetizing, it doesn’t mean anything other than your vanity’s intact. And I think that that is a whole another conversation for another time that, again, people have to understand what’s their motives. I’m a business person. My children, as we were having this interview, went out to go trick or treating. It’s Halloween while we’re recording this.

Brad Weimert: It’s been very weird. We’ve had weird creatures wandering out there while we’re talking for the last hour.

Marshall Sylver II: It’s a good life, though.

Brad Weimert: Yes.

Marshall Sylver II: And I’m at a different stage of my life where like I said, I’m lazy and still making millions and millions and millions of dollars every single year doing exactly what I want to do. Could I formulate things and make more money? Absolutely, without a doubt. Do I want to jump through those hoops? Do I want to work 50 or 60 hours a week? No, I don’t. Not interested. You know, we’re watching the sunset behind us. It’s going to be a beautiful one. This is what I like. When we wrap up this interview, I’m going to go jump in the cold plunge and hang out.

Brad Weimert: I love that. So, on that note, for those that aren’t watching, I’m going to lift the curtain and show what we’ve got. And sorry. You’re going to see the little light ring as well because I don’t care. Great. So, like you said, we could talk about this, another conversation for that.

Marshall Sylver II: So, I want to just add one last thing to that because you’re an influencer, except you went about it the opposite direction. Am I right? And I don’t know your history. You launched your business first.

Brad Weimert: Hundred percent.

Marshall Sylver II: Then you launched your podcast. So, you were somebody like Gary Vee did that in that process, too. He already had a successful business and then he said, “Hey, I’m going to talk to people about my business.” You did the same thing. I think that’s the smart way to go. A lot of people go the other route. They say, “Hey, I’m going to launch a podcast. That’s going to make me famous and then I’m going to start selling things or have a business.” And again, okay, I just don’t get it.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. And my belief is that there’s space for both. And I think that the MrBeasts of the world who are focused on entertaining…

Marshall Sylver II: Well, again, he’s a whole nother product.

Brad Weimert: He is a whole another product. He’s not even a fair representation.

Marshall Sylver II: Well, he’s the reverse of the whole engineer.

Brad Weimert: Exactly.

Marshall Sylver II: He’s not even in it for the money.

Brad Weimert: Now, he’s an entertainment product, though.

Marshall Sylver II: Yes. And he’s not in it for the money. He’s purely in it for the entertainment.

Brad Weimert: Totally. But to your point, he was focused on getting attention and then selling sh*t afterwards. Monetizing. And you’re right, he’s a bad example for that reason. But I still think that so I’m a bootstrap person. I have my whole life held on to this belief that it’s not a business if it doesn’t make money. And so, what are you doing if it’s not make money? But I struggle with that because it’s hard to argue that the Ubers of the world, the Amazons of the world that go for years running at a net loss aren’t of value to the world. So, those are.

Marshall Sylver II: That’s a different kind of enterprise, though.

Brad Weimert: Agreed. But those are a value to the world.

Marshall Sylver II: Absolutely.

Brad Weimert: The parallel there is that the content producers that are creating entertainment that monetized later, whatever they’re doing to get eyeballs if they monetize later through another mechanism, fine. I think that’s great. I lean in your direction but I also, as I’ve continued through life and watch specifically our clients that have a huge audience and they’re like, “Oh, I should sell supplements to my audience. Oh, I should sell a coaching program.” I watch all this happen, and I just think that there are a million entrepreneurial paths and whatever you want to do, I will watch you do it. And I’ve got the one that I think is okay, right?

Marshall Sylver II: Yes. Well, and that is it. So, that’s full circle. I love being on stage. I love interacting with people. You know, having ten siblings growing up dirt poor, my background people say, “How are you so good to people?” I have ten siblings. So, it was psychological warfare to sit down at the dining room table and see who was going to get the last hot dog and who was going to actually get ketchup on their hotdog because there’s a limited amount of ketchup. And so, for me, I’m amused at human nature. I’m amused that people and what they do. This whole business of Halloween is a multibillion-dollar business. For what? It’s a completely made-up holiday. It was All Hallows Eve. It was the night before a Christian holiday and it was created so that what? People could sell merchandise. And you take Halloween or Valentine’s Day or any of these very non-religious holidays and what were they put together for? Purely for commerce. And again, if you’re not selling something, you’re not actually in business. And if you have a hobby, awesome. If you enjoy your hobby, don’t pretend it’s a business, though.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I’m with you. Well, we’ve covered lots of things. We keep talking for seven hours, but the sun is setting.

Marshall Sylver II: How beautiful is that?

Brad Weimert: It’s amazing, man. It’s amazing. Last time you pointed people to Sylver.com. Any closing sentiments for people listening or watching?

Marshall Sylver II: No. I’ve had a great time chatting with you. I love your energy. I love what you’re about. And I love the fact that we don’t agree on a lot of stuff. It just makes for healthy rhetoric. I think that’s the biggest thing that I would like to leave people with in this interview is you don’t have to agree with people, number one, to really like them a lot, number two, to get great value and challenge your own thinking, and then finally, to realize that ultimately we get everything that’s going on in our brain, that our identity determines whether or not what we’re getting is appropriate for us or not. And if our brain says, “That’s not me, I deserve better than that,” guess what? You’ll reject that thing that’s not good enough for you and you’ll keep going for the thing that’s more appropriate for you. The thing is, though, in order to raise your net worth, you’ve got to raise your self-esteem. How do you raise your self-esteem? Better conversations inside of your head, better surrounding yourself with people that would lift you up and be positive and feed you in ways that would make you realize we’re in this together. And so, that’s the last message.

If you’d like to check out Turning Point, contact my office, send an email to AC like air conditioning, [email protected] and tell them that you heard me on this podcast. You’d like two tickets for Turning Point. Or you can just call my office at 1-800-92POWER.

Brad Weimert: I love it, man. Marshall Sylver, brother.

Marshall Sylver II: Good stuff.

Brad Weimert: Likewise.