Copy this, enlarge it, paste it there. You can put all the steps in and it does all the work for you, but it's still the soft skill of how does it look? Because it cannot do the soft skill. AI cannot only do the hard skill. It can only do 1, 2, 3, 4 steps. Mm, that's good. And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett Dyster. And as always, please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps.
But this week we're talking about marketing and creativity. I know the things that don't really seem to matter or go together, they actually do go together pretty well. You just don't really know about that. But this week I have Michael with me and he has a vast experience and knowledge in those types of things, especially high level authority in marketing and sales. And he's passionate about helping others achieve the success and growth for your business. So welcome to the show, Michael.
Thanks, Brett, for having me. I love to have a canvas to paint on. Thank you for providing it. You are welcome. But the first question as all my guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? I like coffee, but I actually am a tea drinker. But I love. I like both, but I'm more. If I had to choose, I'm a tea drinker because I think three all day long. But I love a cup of coffee. So for me, coffee is really the.
It's. It's the icing on the cake when I just sit down in the afternoon and drink a cup of coffee. I'm not just drinking coffee just to keep awake. I keep coffee because I really enjoy it. And with some whipped cream on top. Yeah, super. Like a specific type of, like, roast that you like or you just like any type of coffee as long as you can put whatever you want in it. I like. I don't like the heart with Starbucks. Is like heart roasted.
I like it not so over roasted because for me it's like that is a little bit over roasted. I like it stronger roasted, but not overly roasted. Not where it's bitter. It becomes bitter, bad bitter. Not. There's a good bitter and a bad bitter. And that's to. I don't really tell you. You're a coffee drinker. You're being generous. They just burn their beans. That's why I say you're being very generous about it. Yeah, yeah. No, and I understand. Perhaps people like it that way.
They think it's better because it smells better and draws people in. But I Think from the taste, it's too strong. Like you said, it's over roasted. Got you. And I gave a brief explanation of your expertise. We can give our listeners a little bit more about who you are and what you do. Yeah, I was born in Austria, Vienna, and I was a sick child. I went to school and in school I got punched in the face twice. The second time and because I couldn't read, I stuttered.
I only have eight years of college and not eight years of school. Now I don't have college, eight years of school and two of them I had to repeat. But in Europe they don't take you with you. And then I got into art and art saved literally my life. Like it saved so many people. When you adolescent, you want to belong and whatever, your girlfriend dumps you or something and then you see the movie or you see a song, it carries you through.
And for me, I created a lot of art and went into music and then was a DJ and then sold tapes out of my trunk and then produced fashion shows. And at 30 I figured out, I looked at this CV and looked through it and said, really? I couldn't be accountant or a manager or anything. I am an artist. And I think that was major, that I saw that myself, that feedback, hey, I tried, really, but no school, education, nothing. And when I said that at 30, when I said I'm an artist, I can't be something else.
So even if you, Brett, say oh, I don't see you as an artist, I am an artist. Because even if the artist in the eye of the beholder, but I couldn't do anything else, so I had to say I'm artist. And so it was a very strong decision. Not that I say, oh, I'm an artist, look at my stuff, but by the internal, this decision that I made opened me up to a lot of stuff. And then jobs came, the red jobs came. And I worked for Robert Evans, who did the Godfather in Chinatown.
And I was city arts commissioner of Newport Beach. And things just fell into. Not that I went for them, they just fell into a certain. But because I had that I think I owned I'm an artist. And the people say, oh, this guy knows about art. But I don't know anything about the product. I know all about the creation. Like we talking about marketing, we will talk about marketing. I know all about the creation, never about the product, because the product can be good or bad.
There's super companies that make a brand and it tanks and then they make a brand just willy nilly and Fast and it explodes. Got you. Yeah. That's the part of thing we want to talk about is like they created the creativity in marketing for a lot of people. Doesn't seem like it because marketing is very analytical. You look at the data, you try to figure out the best way to go with your campaigns. But there's a lot of creativity.
How do you start with developing like a good strategy for your product? Should you use your product? Should you figure out what do you want out of a product? Is that where marketers should start? Yes. I think Today, especially, Brett, 30 years ago, you could do whatever you want. But today, because it's so fast, it's quick, and everybody knows everything right away, it has to be an extension of you, every product. That's what I keep telling people.
If you create a car that you don't love to drive yourself, then don't be in the car business. If you don't make a toothpaste that you love, I never would buy another toothpaste than this. Then you are in the right business. It has to be you. There has to be something in you in the oven because it gives you the self esteem to say, brett, I know you're using this and this toothpaste, but my toothpaste, I've never had a better toothpaste, especially those two flavors. Try it.
And that's the best marketing, because you will feel that I'm convinced about my product. I'm not trying to be systemic about it. Oh, you need to say this and this. And you have to say, oh, all the teeth are falling out, but my tooth. Say the problem first. Right. With other things, all the teeth fall. My toothpaste is the best. That's. That doesn't work. That worked in 20 years ago, but now it doesn't. So now you really have to express your essence, what that is, what you have.
And when we look at the businesses, 95% of businesses fail after the third year. In the first three years, 95% businesses fail because of cash flow. So if you don't have your passion in the product, it's hard to sell it. It's hard to. Because we all, actually, all are human centric, which means each of one is one of one. And the way we communicate is like what we communicate now is through our six senses. And we dance with six senses. You and I don't know each other, but we can. We have to.
It's natural that you and I can talk to each other. Not that I teach you or you teach me so that we just Dance with each other and open our perspective. When you open the perspective, that's where you actually see the human potential that you and I can actually. You ask me a question, I never thought about it and then, wow, what comes out. And I think the marketing, the essence of every business, marketing or whatever you do for the masses has to be a representation of you. Look at who is.
And politicians are for everyone. Right. You hear nothing about old politicians, like unless Lincoln and Washington or Kennedy. Right. But you hear Picasso and they are all unique people. Frida Kahlo, you need all these. When it comes to artists, you know them, Mona Lisa, Da Vinci, you know those things because they are themselves. The politicians try to appease everyone. And that's how you should do your marketing. You should be. It should be having something of yourself.
And I think people start to get that, but they're still too afraid to really push that. I think that's where the creativity comes. You're not going to appease everybody. Not every business is going to appease to everybody. But in this appeasement era, I would say, because I would say a lot of PR people do appease a little too much to a certain extent. Where it's like, you really shouldn't just appease people just to appease. Appease them.
If you really care about it, then obviously you can apologize. But don't apologize for every single little infraction that happens because then you're spending all day apologizing and you look weak in to a certain extent. How do we become creative marketers? Find our niche, but just don't care about everything else. Because like you said, there's Picasso, there's Leonardo da Vinci from the politicians, there's Lincoln, he didn't appease everybody. He pissed off the whole South. Yeah, exactly.
That's pretty hard. Yeah. I think that you can't, first of all. And I think obviously awareness is the key. Think about when you married your wife. When you married your wife, first of all, you didn't know what kind of wedding ring she wants. I was with my wife two years, three years before. I would never have the guts to just give you a ring and says, because that's what I like, you should wear.
No, you can't even a person that you are with all the time, you wouldn't buy a partner of you a jacket because you wouldn't know what he likes. You say, okay, he likes blue. But when you get actually in the store, which is the same as which your wife says, oh, you, there's a blue jacket. You like, and right next there is a red jacket, right? And she said, no, I like this red jacket. And she said, what, you always wear blue? No, but this red jacket I like. We are all one of one.
We need to really let that in. We're not a generalization. All men are this way. All men. Women are this way. Men. There's more feminine men than any female and there's more masculine females than any male. So we have to stop generalizing and do the one of oneness where they say, oh my God, this is really interesting. That's attention plus marketing. If you do something that's 100% bread and I see whatever the product or service you give me, I said, wow.
Oh. And then when I know you, I said, yeah, that is totally bread. But I wouldn't even think about it. But when it's unique, you look at this and say, I have never seen something like that. Then you have the attention, number one. You want the attention, right? And then will people. Once you have the attention, people will look at it. But if everything looks the same, look at AI Gave. And we are both podcasters. AI with the podcasting. Not every, every podcast looks the same.
All the shields of podcasting, when you look at all the promo sheets, they all look the same. Because they are all. But because AI is a generalization. It is a generalization of what has been uploaded since 2000, whatever has been uploaded on the Internet. And so that's. It's blah. It's boring. So it's very important that you have a feeling of. And you love the product and service.
If you don't love the product and service, you know, in the old days, you can say, I'm going to make a gardening business. And you don't like gardening or anything. You just got a couple of people say, okay, we are gardening team. We bought a truck and we rent out and did gardening. You can't do that anymore. You can't. You can try it. You have no chance. And how do we get to that? Because marketing, especially in 2024, everybody's talking about AI. I'll be fair.
I use AI tools because I'm a one man show and I need to automate things. So how do we bring back that uniqueness into an AI filled industry, including podcasting and marketing and pr? Because everybody's talking about AI. It's like the number one thing for the past two years has been AI and how to a certain extent, great. AI is now AI is a tool. It's like a hammer, right? If you don't want to find a rock to get a nail to hammer in. AI gives you what? Copy this, enlarge it, paste it there.
You can put all the steps in and it does all the work for you. But it's still the soft skill of how does it look? Because it cannot do the soft skill. AI cannot only do the hard skill. It can only do 1, 2, 3, 4 steps. And the steps have given by you. If you say you take one step, four step, eight step, it's not going to work. It will do the fun for eight, but it will not. It will not. You would not have a flow. You are the person that have the soft skill that says, okay, that flows, right?
That's the first step. That's the second, that's the third step. It is fantastic to copy like a copy machine to copy. Remember the old thing where we have to in school we had to do it today. You click on. You don't need to think. You make a photo and print it. So yeah, it's a great tool. It's a fantastic tool. But if you want attention to your stuff, you want to market your podcast, you want to do your stuff. It has to be your essence. It has to be. Or whatever you love.
If you like love orange, then do orange as you're saying. And don't do what I see with AI so much. All these artifacts, they look all the same. It feels like everybody drew the same thing. It doesn't look like, oh, that's Brad's, that's Michael's, that's somebody else. It looks the same. And so how you can. How can you ever marketing. And now we're talking about marketing. How can you ever marketing when everything looks the same?
And marketing also, I think it's important that people really know that marketing hasn't. It's 1:1% of GDP since the Second World War. It's not a growing company. It's basically, you have Gold Colgate and I have Crest and I'm going market Crest. And then, you know, less people just get go get to Crest. It's just moving from one to another. So it is not marketing. Doesn't mean you were ever done. Because even if you're done with marketing, you have to keep marketing because.
Because somebody else will take your stuff unless you have one of one. And you gotta somehow make a one of a one. Either the product represents you because you are one of one. Nobody's bread. There's no other bread in this whole world like you or no mother Michael. And that's the Only way that we can. And I know it's hard because the industry says do what you make money with do you know, it's generalizing.
But really the generalizing does not help anyone because you hear about viral videos and podcasting and 1% of podcasters make 98% of the podcast revenues. 1%. And the same thing is 1% of viral videos makes 98% of the things. So the whole industry shares 1% except one person that makes most that's. And obviously systems always market. Oh, Brett. Let's say you have an episode that is unbelievable and it's viral. But any we don't know where nobody can predict that.
Otherwise everybody would do viral stuff. And let's say we have that. So then YouTube will say bread is a thing and you get an award and all this stuff. And then you get. And then later on you get advertisers to be on your show. The chance of that happening. That's why I say you need to enjoy what you're doing. If I don't love to talk to you right now I'm basically hurting myself and I hurt you because what should we talk if we don't want to talk with each other?
It's just you have to enjoy the time. Otherwise the time is over and you die. And you have done all this stuff for a hope that this is going to happen. And this is what we sell each other. We sell each other a lot of hope. Oh, you do this, you come to me and I'm going to get you through. I can just get you done. That's why I say I don't have three steps or five steps or what to do. I say what I did and hope.
Open your perception that because I know you have one of one perception and it something you can use from that to open your own perception to get more you to get more essential for you. All the leadership coaches. How many leadership coaches? There's not as much leaders as me. Leadership coaches. And why want people leadership coach? Because they want to finally be a leader or a successful person that they can do whatever they want to do. Meaning to be the one of oneness.
But you know, we know because we know leaders. When you are in a leadership, you're the least free. You cannot move. Once you are leader, you think you're free, then no, you have to play the game more than anybody else. And then the longer you are leader, the more disconnected you are from the masses. So I never want to be disconnected from masses. So that's why I never want to Be Elon Musk or anybody. Because it's crazy. That's. That. That is not freedom. That's torture.
True for some people, it's torture. For other people, they actually. I don't know if they enjoy it, but they do want to lead people in a better direction. For the most part. Not all leaders are the same and some can be pretty bad leaders at the same time. But this all part of what I say. I say more discernment than anything else is for people that don't want. Discernment basically means wisdom, understanding, where to go.
Basically using your intelligence to figure out people using your intelligence to figure out strategies. So in this time is it to discern how to differentiate yourself or your business from the pack? Because you said 1% of viral video or viral videos that do the best are about 1 1%. That's why it's called viral. Because a very small amount of videos get super popular for a week maybe.
So is there a bunch of like creative, I guess creative thinking, but also creative discernment or wisdom to figure out all these inroads, figure out who you are, figure out what strategies is the. Best, the most, the most successful percentage. When the people that actually look at creativity like I do is the one that. Not to be different sake, to be you. Because if I want to just be different or different sake, it's a headache for me.
Let's say I'm going to create a podcast that is we standing on our heads and we talking to each other and somebody comes by and spits on us. Just to be different, right? Just to get attention. And first of all, we're not going to have fun with that perhaps once, but then it's not going to be fun every week standing on our hands. And that is not. That's not us. We need to find what feels good to us. You don't make a thing about a theater.
You don't make a podcast about the theater because you like this, you like the coffee, the marketing that is you. And that's in the direction that feels good for you. And you might in a year saying, I'm going even in something else. In more the self awareness. I go more in the. And just coffee and self awareness which came from marketing. We all develop. We all are not the same. And that I think is the key because then you can work 10 hours a day because you love what you're doing.
When you love what you're doing, you can. It's also fulfilling. And there's a secret about fulfilling. It's like A an emotional feedback loop for you because what fulfills me is different. But then what fulfills you? So when it fulfills you, your job with your podcast, that means you are on the right track. That doesn't mean you've got to get a lot of money, but you as an individual on the right track of your path. And the money comes perhaps in 10 years.
But when you do things that really fulfill you, first of all, you're not stressed. You're not constantly stressed and say, okay, this is what I do. I'm not making money, but I'm fulfilled. I'm making just enough to survive, but I'm fulfilled. And I think that's good to know. And if you want to, we know from creation, from the, from the most success, the most percentage that you be loved by everybody. First of all, nobody can say it.
The best advertising marketing cannot say, this campaign will work. And from Fifth Avenue, in the old days, if Coca Cola came to Fifth Avenue and said, we want to use that company versus that company, they gave you a guarantee that 10%. They give you that you will increase with the marketing 10%. It's not available anymore. We moved out of that era because it was so little. So you made a little attention and you got it. You had a sale today. It's hard to. Very hard to do. Even a. I cannot.
And they didn't even pay that. They paid that. And it wasn't because the marketing company says, yeah, we guarantee that. And if we guarantee, we give you free advertising because it didn't get 10% or 5% increase for their marketing. Million dollar marketing campaign. And I think, so what I want to come back to the. What you say, what can I do creatively, right? Creatively is first of all, do what you want to do. So if you sell it at toothpaste, I'm just using that as a thing.
And you love animals, then just say, make an advertising. Because animals and toothpaste are never together. Then have animals in a way, in the right way, together with the toothpaste. So that cat want to steal your cool toothpaste and say, yeah, because it's all natural. It's just. But it has to be not different, but it has to be you. Not. I wouldn't. If I don't like animals, I would think, okay, Brad told me to use animals. No, I wouldn't do that. That is not the right thing.
If I love animals and I love the toothpaste that I have, I feel my toothpaste is the best toothpaste ever. And I love animals. And I said, okay, I make an advertising, a marketing campaign where do or have my. The toothpaste with the doggy face on it or whatever. And it's not a dog. Yeah, not a dog toothpaste. Or you can just come up with stuff. There's always. I could come up endless with stuff. But I have to like it. I have to, it has to be me. I like animals.
I don't like toothpaste particularly. So it would be bad for me to create a toothpaste. But I could do something else. What I like a certain food or something that I really enjoy or something and say even my dog wants to eat that food or something. So that would be for me. I hope I give your listeners a little feeling of how if it's not joy, don't do it. If it doesn't fulfill you, don't do the job. And so how can marketers stay that creative space when they're working?
Let's just put it practically. Could it be going for a walk? Could it be like writing something, handwriting? Because handwriting can actually induce a lot of creativity. Is it a lot of those aspects of it? Like how can they keep creative without losing that creative spark? Because we lose it every once in a while. Only when we try to be in a time frame or when we be linear. When we get linear, I what I do because I'm so nervous. I'm dysgraphia with my hands and stuff. I do a voice, voicemail.
So I have my phone, I'll go for a walk and I put it in the thing. I never get creative. When I look at. I can get creative in an art show when I go to a museum or to an art show outside art or I can in the morning, it's a different thing. And some people are really good at night. So I was actually a night person. I really got creative 8, 9 o'clock at night and worked till 4 o'clock in the morning. And now I'm like I'm going to bed at 8 or 9 and I get up at 4 and at 4 o'clock, oh my God. It just.
You are always. And it's a practice, the practice of how creative people can keep saying things is to practice. Because you basically have a communication with your non physical, right? Like when you sleep that you're not in a physical. So with your non physical and say okay, I feel like yellow, okay, I make yellow. It's not that yellow, okay. Because my non physical self says it's not the right yellow. So they have to write yellow and then say, okay, what am I putting in?
Okay, a pink, orange, Green. Ah, green. I put green in. And then you build that up and you communicate. And the more you communicate, the more you create, the better your communication gets and the better the product becomes. So if. But I think it is the best marketers are the ones that know the person that hires them. So the best marketers are they really. They're not just saying, okay, Brett, okay, give me a hundred grand, and I'm gonna make you a marketing thing. Those. That's not.
You dance with the. Because you are representing that essence of that person that has that service or product. And I think when you talk to a person and you become friendly with them, not in a professional way, but just normal. Just like what we're doing now. We're professional, but we're not talking like, okay, Brad, what else can I do for you? Cost you another half an hour. Cost you this. No, it's just to have a normal talk. Go for a coffee. That's.
I love that you combine the marketing and coffee. Yes, go for a coffee. Go for a coffee and talk. Or go for a beer and just sit outside and say, what is your vision? What do you want a toothpaste? Is that the right thing? Or perhaps you want a mouthwash. Perhaps it's not the toothpaste you want to start. Perhaps marketing is better when we start with a mouthwash because you have a higher chance. I'm just making stuff up. Or you say, I'm making a chewing gum.
You know, how is the chewing gum business? Because you're very oral. You like the toothbrush and you like the toothing. So let's feel it out and feel what feels better. And then we can always have the toothbrush later. We can start with the thing with the mouthwash. We can start with the chewing gum. And also when you include the customer. When. In the old days. When the old days, how it was, Brett, right? Oh, you have no idea. I'm the marketing manager.
Just. You hire me and then you come back with all these proposals and the guy doesn't like it. Why even doing. Why you jump into all these hoops? Why not just go up with him and say. And help him say, okay, what kind? Yellow? No, red. I like red. Okay, Red. Because it's not that you have something that sells that you create. Co create that with the guy who pays you to do marketing. You create that with him, you collaborate with him.
And then also he feels very good about your work because he was part of it. It's just. And it gives you a friendship for life. I've worked with people for life because they like working, they like the dance and every time we talk to each other we get clear on things and try things out and we both know we have no superpower. That's going to be the marketing of the century. It's good marketing or. And we also know how much we market. There's another thing also where to place the marketing.
Should I do a social media should do it outside with campaigns outside on the street should hand out leaflets, shall I hand off presents? Shall I give coupons? There's so many things and I think that when you hand out coupons you today in the old times it was good but today it's cheap. It's a cheap hand to out Google but oh, you want to save on laundry. Here's a laundry detergent cheap thing but it's nothing special. I think people like the bespoke.
I think in general even if it's cheap and it's bespoke the people like which in sneakers everybody has special sneakers. Everybody finds out and this is confirming that everybody is one of one and they want to have their own thing and it makes them fulfills them when they choose a sneaker. And the whole thing about the See that was perfect marketing. With all the cars, right? You can order your Porsche in whatever you want. Any, not even Porsche, Toyota. You can order exactly what you want.
And that binds you. That is not attention that binds you to that brand because you get a Toyota that you don't have to accept a black interior. You can order a Toyota with a green interior or red interior. And I think it's all the connection how you connect because then. Because what these people then do is if I see Brad, you bought that Toyota and you got your own yellow interior, right? It's a bright yellow interior and you love it. And I said God, you have bought, you have bots.
You've got to get your but you become an advertising for me market because I said what was the car that Bread had that made their own thing. I would never do a yellow but and then becomes. Do you see that when human work human centrically with each other collaborate and not selling I am you paying me for this and this then you. It keeps going. The marketing keeps on going and going and going. Look, the Porsche has nothing to do.
They do the same freaking car just with a motor or something different. But they do the same freaking car since 1937 or something. It's just it's basically the same shape. You know, it's, and it's the top, top thing. And there's nothing magical about their shape because there were so many cars. The E Type, the Jaguar E Type, they were all very similar. They're not good. We are not their number one.
It is the connection with the customer that you want always in marketing and Warshare are known as good, really long lasting cars and stuff. And so people are listening to this and they're basically wondering where can they find you online to learn more about what you do and maybe more about how to be more creative? Yeah. So number one, Michael M. Dot com very simple. Michael M. Michael with two L's. Michael M. Dot com there you can access my art, my music, my podcasts, my articles.
I write a lot of articles. They're all for free. I. My podcast is 30 seconds every Saturday and it's just a quote. And if you want to know about marketing and you want to know about creation, the creative process, not about da Vinci who was in. No, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm talking about our superpower, the number one superpower, which is creativity. We are collective creator species that work synergistically.
That's why we're all one of one and we dance with each other to find out synergistically how good we are together. So this every Saturday, 30 seconds, you think it's a question also and you answer that for yourself because I'm not telling. There's no answer for everyone. We cannot generalize. We need to stop generalizing and finding out what is us. And then the world becomes really interesting. You know when I can see you driving in a car that you put together that is interesting.
Not when you buy a white car that everybody else has with a black interior. That's just. Any final thoughts for listeners? Final thoughts. You are one of one. And you have also one of one. You're one of one. You have own fingerprints on eyes own thing. Nobody in the world, 8 billion people are 101. And you also have a own life perspective. And that should also clear something up in marketing because look at your own family. You should have the same life perspective.
You should be the same political party, you should be the same everything. And you're totally different. I have three siblings and they're all different. They have all the different life view, life perspective and they're all totally different as you know your own from your own thing. And when you see that, when you're aware of that, this is my final thought. And also when you're aware of that, you will be a much better marketer.
You will be a much better business person because you say the only thing you can trust is your own uniqueness. That's what you can. You can't trust somebody else's because there's nobody whom you're going to do. Everybody's different. All right, thank you, Michael, for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brand sharing knowledge on marketing and creativity. Thank you, Brett. I really appreciate you and thank you as always.
Please subscribe to Digital Coffee Marketing Brew on all your favorite podcasting apps and five star review really does help with the rankings. And join us next week as we talk to another great thought leader in the PR marketing industry. All right, guys, stay safe, get to understanding how you can be more creative and help your product sell and maybe help you sell more. And see you next week later.