Back in 2006, Jay Abraham, aka “The 9 Billion Dollar Man,” interviewed Michael Fishman, aka “The World’s Greatest List Broker.”
I randomly came across a transcript of this interview a few days ago.
The interview was messy. Jay Abraham had to keep running to the toilet to pee. And he was talkative. For much of the interview, he riffed ad hoc while Michael, who was supposed to be the one sharing his expertise, just kept saying “um-hmmm.”
And yet, while it’s messy, this interview is pure gold.
It’s gold because of the unique insights Michael Fishman has about the psychology of direct response buyers. But the thing I want to share with you today is something Jay Abraham said, right at the end.
Because the whole purpose of this interview was to create a kind of calling card for Michael Fishman. A thing that demonstrates his knowledge and insights, that he could use to drum up new business.
So at the end, Jay Abraham, who might be world champion at spinning up lucrative business ideas, gave Michael two pieces of advice on what to do with the interview.
The second and I suspect less valuable piece of advice was to find potential clients, write to them and say, “A lot of people told me this tape opened up their eyes and made them a bunch of money, thought you might like it.”
This is good. It’s what many businesses, including many direct response businesses, are doing in essence.
But I think it pales in effectiveness to the first piece of advice that Jay gave Michael.
And that was for Michael to go to everybody he knows… ask them to make a list of people they would like to send this tape to… and then to send it, along with their letter of endorsement.
The mathematics definitely checks out. Because if you know a 100 people… and they know a 100 people… suddenly that becomes a very big space. One that you might have a hard time exploring on your own.
Just as important, the psychology checks out. Because there’s a huge wall in the human mind between “known” and “unknown.” And you want to be on the “known” side.
There’s a broader lesson here too. But I saved that for people who are subscribed to my daily email newsletter.
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