Right now, we're actually at a better competitive advantage, because e-commerce stores are killing
Sears.
They're killing Kmart.
Literally.
They're killing Walmart.
Are killing Main Street and retail stores.
The reason is, is because like I said before, we don't have the bureaucracy.
We can test concepts.
We can cut concepts.
We don't have big, bloated infrastructure that we have to carry.
We can move quick, think quick, test quick, scale quick, cut back quick, and move on quick.
That's something that was unprecedented.
There's never been a time in mankind where the common person, somebody like me ... I
never graduated high school.
I never definitely went to college ... where I'm running a multi-million dollar business
from my apartment, and I'm running circles around some of these big brands right now,
and these big companies, because they just can't keep up with the creativity and the
speed of implementation that my company has.
Hello, and welcome to The Robust Marketer.
Today I am lucky to have Ronnie Sandlin, the founder and operator of the School of Hidden
Knowledge, a education platform that teaches, among other things ... Oh, we lost him!
It's all right.
He's back.
I actually didn't fall.
Just my webcam.
Don't be alarmed.
Nice.
No worries.
He's all good.
He has a Medic Alert bracelet just in case.
He teaches ... The Hidden Knowledge is essentially, A, it's affiliate marketing, entrepreneurial
knowledge, but it's also about the hidden drivers that make people behave in certain
ways and want certain things, and it's the stuff that you may not always think about.
It's a way that you can think about reaching your customer in a fairly profound way, from
what I've come across.
Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Ronnie.
How you doing?
Sure.
Great.
Thank you for having me, Eric.
I'm stoked.
I love the stuff that you guys put up.
I love the podcast, and I'm excited and humbled that you have invited me here.
Yeah, well when I first got into this space, and I was just looking around there, I think
I reached out early on, right when I was getting started.
I saw what you were up to, and knew that you were ... Talk a little bit about what you're
doing in this space.
You're an independent affiliate.
But you've also got this school.
So run us through your hero's journey, basically.
All right.
Well, yeah.
Totally.
I started, like most people, struggling, knowing that there's a lot of money can be made online.
Unsatisfied with any career prospects that I had.
I actually never went to college, so I was in boiler rooms, in sales after sales job.
Very unhappy.
Typical before and after affiliate.
Experimented with quite a few things.
I remember a point in my life where I was like, "If I could just figure out how to make
five grand a month online, I would be the happiest guy in the world."
And that's funny to me now, to think of how short I was selling myself, but my big a-ha
moment, when I felt like I started really fulfilling that hero's journey arc, was when
I woke up one morning, and I had written an advertorial, and this is what got me in my
copywriting journey, really just going deep into this journey.
Uh-oh!
It's happening again.
It's not an earthquake, guys.
Everything's okay.
Okay, so basically I woke up, and I wrote an advertorial.
Went to sleep ... Well, I launched it that morning, then went to sleep, because it was
one of those paper call things where you have to wake up early at the call center.
Anyway, I made 1,000 bucks when I had woken up, and I had never made more than like 200
or 300 bucks online.
That was the big a-ha moment for me, where I was like, "Man, there's this copywriting
thing and understanding how to get inside that person's head.
And understanding who your prospects are."
There's so much more to this than I was even aware of, and it really brought me down the
rabbit hole.
Beyond the hero's journey, and more into a rabbit hole of how deep persuasion and influence
goes, and how little of it is being taught in our industry right now.
And how powerful it is, and how powerful it's been for me and the people I've shared this
information with.
Very cool.
As far as hero's journeys go, I've been watching a lot of Moana these days, because I've got
a three year old, and she's obsessed with it.
But I know that sometimes you have to go into the realm of monsters to complete your hero's
journey, so it doesn't sound like it's out of the normal here.
Let's talk a little bit about what some of that hidden knowledge is.
What are some of the tactics that you use, essentially, to get inside your consumer's
head when you're trying to write copy for them?
I came across some of your stuff where you were talking about ... A lot of traditional
people talk about "features and benefits."
You've really just got to hammer features and benefits.
But I feel like what you advocate is going at least one or two levels deeper than that,
even.
Not just like, "Hey, you don't always need a hammer.
You need a hole."
And the question is "Why do you need that hole?"
You go even further, to talk about the why, and what are people's pain points?
What are people's insecurities, for instance?
What are some of the tactics you use to dig deep?
There's already these systems that work.
So going back to what you said, was actually very insightful and profound, where you said,
"You have to go and fight the monster to become the hero."
There's actually this scene in Star Wars, and I'm going to show you how this all ties
in, but there's a scene in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker and Yoda go to this cave, and
Yoda says, "You're not ready."
And he goes in, and he says, "You're going to go fight your biggest monster."
And Luke Skywalker goes in, and it's Darth Vader.
But it's kind of this dream sequence.
We've all seen this sequence.
And he kills Darth Vader, and he takes off the mask, and it's himself.
Which is such an allegory for our biggest monster, and our biggest person we have to
defeat is ourself in order to continue this journey.
But also, once you understand how powerful those symbolisms are, and how powerful stuff
like that can be when you embed that in your copy, that is extreme power that I use when
putting my copy together.
I use a lot of Carl Jung's work, and the people who have gone after Jung, his students, such
as ... not Edward Bernays.
Joseph Campbell, who wrote Hero with a Thousand Faces.
You can just read Hero with a Thousand Faces, and if you apply that in your methodology
in writing copy, and even vertical discovery, there's so much money to be made, because
now you're understanding this psychological journey that goes on in people's minds that
makes it irresistible.
For example, the flashlight.
Who knew a flashlight was going to be such a breakthrough product in our industry?
But it was that person who was able to put that two and two together and say, "Protect
your family."
And it became, not a tool anymore that everyone had ... Everyone has a flashlight.
It became a survival mechanism.
A lightsaber, even!
A lightsaber.
A tool.
A weapon.
A way to protect your family and yourself.
That person who created that copy was tapping into that very, very deep, deep level seeded
stuff in our brain.
It's irresistible.
It's like he took a blue chip product, a product that quite frankly everyone already had in
their garage already, and made everyone buy two or three more of them at an extremely
high price.
So that's how powerful this stuff is.
And the thing is, because so many affiliates have just scratched the surface of the power
of this, they're just a photocopy of a ... They know that the tactical flashlight works, but
they don't know the psychology behind why the tactical flashlight works.
And once you understand that psychology, you can make anything work.
You can make toilet paper.
You can make toothbrush.
You can make ... The whole industry's open for this type of strategies, and that's what
makes them so exciting.
Yeah.
You threw up a whole lot of stuff there.
So first of all, for people that aren't familiar with Joseph Campbell.
I'm sure a lot of our listeners are, but when I start these podcasts by talking about the
hero's journey, that's specifically what that's about.
It's about this idea that in order to ... It's the idea is that every person is on their
own journey in which they are the hero, and there are certain archetypal things along
that journey that you have to do.
At one point, you have to face your father.
Or it's like Pinocchio, and you have to redeem your father.
You have to go to the bottom of the ocean into the belly of a whale.
When we talk about Campbell, or Jung, I'm really interested in, as well as Jordan Peterson
is someone I- Oh, I love Jordan Peterson.
I've been listening to a lot.
He really understands the power of these archetypes as well.
And you also threw off another really interesting one, who's another one of my-
Oh, my Lord.
Oh, good Lord.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
I'm just going to stop fucking with it.
You also threw off Edward Bernays.
Now, he's from the school of Freud.
He's actually Freud's nephew.
And to me, it's the most interesting story in all of public relations, probably one of
the most interesting stories in all of modern culture, is this idea that Freud's nephew,
Edward Bernays, took Freud's theories over to America and started the world's first PR
firm.
And his two examples that always come to mind, that I think about, were how he ... It was
just super manipulative.
Cigarette companies came to him and said, "Women aren't smoking.
It's taboo for them to smoke."
And he was like, "Okay, here's what we're going to do.
We're going to tie cigarettes to the suffragette movement."
When women were fighting for the right to vote.
"We're going to organize, and we're going to orchestrate this event where all these
women march through the streets for their own rights, and we're going to have all the
news cameras out there, and then at the end of it all, they're going to light their torches
of freedom."
And they lit up their smokes, and it was this phallic symbol of power, and it totally changed
the idea of women smoking in the United States, to where it became avant-garde and cool for
women to do that.
The other one was Duncan Hines cakes weren't selling because they came up with this new
instant line, and housewives at the time were feeling that it was cheating.
They couldn't get away with just making a cake not from scratch.
And so Edward Bernays said to them, "Make them add an egg."
And they were like, "But we don't need to add an egg, it's already in the cake."
He's like, "Just have them add the egg."
And that was the Freudian aspect of adding their egg to this thing.
It's really amazing, when you dig under the surface, what you can find.
That's why I said it's a rabbit hole.
For me, once I started going deep into it, I was like, "Do we even have free choice?"
Those types of questions, I started asking myself, because it's like, "Wow, there's so
much of my life, personally, that I was affected by because some person was making money and
profiting off of my emotions, and insecurities, and fears, and all these things."
So it's also good to know these things, to protect yourself and to understand how powerful
this type of marketing is.
Because I don't see anyone talking about it.
I don't see anyone talking about it.
Especially on this kind of Machiavellian level.
No.
And as it relates to marketing, and as it relates to the society we live in now, as
well, right?
We live in a world ... If we're talking about these occulted tactics of archetypal manipulation,
and things like that, you don't think there's some underground lab somewhere in-
Oh, absolutely!
You know what I mean?
Or they're like Disney.
Disney.
There was a reason why Pixar and Disney ... I mean, there's so many companies.
They already know this.
This is not something they're telling everyone, because once your tell people your strategy,
your secrets, they have defenses against it now, and it becomes less effective.
Disney's doing this.
On all their biggest Disney movies, they're using these very, very strong psychological
tactics.
And all these big brands are doing it.
Not onto the level that we can do it now, because they're still held back by political
correctness, and corporate bureaucracy.
Now is the best time than ever to utilize these strategies without any form of bureaucratic
restriction, or any form of actual reprimand of a boss, to getting fired, or having some
political correct machine coming after you.
Like Kendall Jenner's Pepsi commercial that brought the world down on them, on the sugar
water company.
Absolutely.
And we're in a position, too, where we can test out these tactics, and we can have results
within two hours.
We can say, "Yep.
That worked way better."
Or "No."
And it is a great time to be alive for a marketer, for sure.
It's the same thing.
It's like we talk about Big Brother.
We talk about Big Brother in the data, and this and that, but it's also an era where
we have full access to this data on Facebook, as marketers, as well, in order to try to
elevate yourself in a way that gives yourself freedom, financial freedom, career freedom,
all these things.
The oracle is turned over to us at this time- [crosstalk]-
And who knows if that will be the case forever?
Well, right now it is.
That's what I tell people, we have that window of opportunity, because right now, we're actually
at a better competitive advantage, because e-commerce stores are killing Sears.
They're killing Kmart.
Literally.
They're killing Walmart.
Are killing Main Street and retail stores.
The reason is, is because like I said before, we don't have the bureaucracy.
We can test concepts.
We can cut concepts.
We don't have big, bloated infrastructure that we have to carry.
We can move quick, think quick, test quick, scale quick, cut back quick, and move on quick.
That's something that was unprecedented.
There's never been a time in mankind where the common person, somebody like me ... I
never graduated high school.
I never definitely went to college ... where I'm running a multi-million dollar business
from my apartment, and I'm running circles around some of these big brands right now,
and these big companies, because they just can't keep up with the creativity and the
speed of implementation that my company has.
Yeah.
Talk a little bit about, because I've talked with Drew Eric Whitman about copywriting,
and he's a features and benefits.
He's the Dr. Direct.
And you talk with people who, everyone has their own spin on how they're teaching things.
How did you settle on this idea of the School of Hidden Knowledge, this sort of occulted
aspect of, literally, of hidden knowledge?
Why did you go this approach?
It's obviously working, but how did you hit on it?
Well, for me, it was like this stuff is hidden.
There's not people teaching it.
If you look at my library, I have stuff like Evolutionary Psychology.
I have all of Joseph Campbell's books.
I have The Power of Myth.
The Anatomy of a Psyche.
This isn't stuff I learned in marketing books.
This is stuff I put together from very, very high ... These sources that are esoteric,
and are collegiate, are hard to digest and hard to process.
But once I was able to understand it, I've spent the past decade of my life reading these
books and understanding it, and I applied it to my own brain.
And then once I applied that to marketing, I realized this is hidden knowledge.
This is very, very hidden knowledge.
This is not to say features and benefits, they're not powerful, because they are powerful-
They have their place.
Yeah.
They have their place.
I'll tell you exactly where their place is.
There's three different brains inside the human brain.
This is a theory called the triune brain theory.
So there's the reptilian part of the brain, the mammalian part of the brain, and then
the human, the neocortex part of the brain.
Which is the newest part of the brain.
Obviously, human beings are very new to the evolutionary chain.
The oldest part is the reptilian part, because we sprung from the reptiles, evolutionarily
speaking.
That's fight or flight.
That's protect your family.
That's why the tactical flashlight was so powerful and impactful, because it was speaking
to the reptilian part of the brain.
Now the brain that's the second part, that's powerful, because obviously we went from reptile
to mammal, and we've been mammals longer than we were humans in the evolutionary timeline,
so if you speak to that brain, that's where you're talking about acceptance, tribal acceptance,
pack acceptance, hierarchy.
Okay?
That's when you're talking about the BMWs, the Bentleys, the Mercedeses ... I say Mercedes.
Mercedes.
The Louis Vuitton.
Those types of hype brands that speak to those types of acceptance-
Status.
Status.
And that's why you see so much power in that type of stuff.
And then you see the lowest level for our marketing, which is features and benefits.
Which is talking to the human part, which is the logic and reason, which is the least
powerful part of our brain.
Our whole brain is governed by emotions, and fight or flight, and this reptilian part,
but we have this relatively new part of our brain ... But the problem is that this is
how marketers are marketing.
We're saying "features and benefits."
We're saying, "This flashlight has 15 lumens, and it has an on and off ... " It's like,
"Nobody gives a fuck."
They care about whether or not the right flashlight can protect their family.
But that's what features and benefits are for me.
How I structure it, is I hit them with the emotions first.
I hit them with the tribal acceptance second, and then I hit them with a few features and
benefits.
Because they've got to go through their ... Antonio Damasio talks about this.
He's a neuroscientist, and he talks about how decision making goes through the emotional
part of our brain first, and I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm butchering this explanation.
He has a book called Descartes' Error.
Antonio Damasio.
You've got to read it.
And he talks about how all of our decision making is processed through the emotional
part of our brain, so we can't even make a decision ... In fact, there's people with
brain damage that have that part of their brain damaged, that can't even make a logical
decision if it hasn't passed through that emotional part of their brain yet.
Meaning that, if we're not hitting them on an emotional level, we're failing.
We're failing big time, and we're not going to get the conversion.
How it affects us directly in what we do: We're not going to get conversions.
We're not going to get the profit.
We're not going to be able to scale, and we're not going to be eating sushi, and fucking
making big stacks of cash, like we all like to do in this industry.
That's what it comes down to.
That's really, really, really interesting.
And yeah, Descartes, like, I was really into Descartes when I was in school, and the idea
of the brain in the vat, essentially.
The "I think, therefore I am."
I think of it like a world view, where it's like ... It's also like a simplified version
of The Matrix, which is the idea that all of this is some sort of simulation, and for
all we [crosstalk]- Have you read Bauliard?
Who?
Have you read Simulation/Simulacra?
Bauliard?
No.
Ah, bro.
You got to read that book.
It's basically like Plato's The Cave on steroids, and dude, you gotta reads it.
It's basically how everything we have in our world is just a symbol of a symbol.
We don't hunt anymore.
We go and buy pre-packaged food from the supermarket, and how we're so far removed from the actual,
real world.
And that's where the base of The Matrix comes from.
That's one of the books that influenced the actual Matrix is Bauliard.
A lot of Bauliard's work.
And he talks about how we're just a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy
of a real, actual civilization, and how if we understand that as marketers, we can tap
so far deep into the mind, that we're fucking making so much fucking money, too ... The
reason why I'm not making 100 million a year is just simply cash flow at this point.
It has nothing to do with anything beyond that.
We're just printing money at this point, once we've figured it out.
Super, super interesting.
You've got to go through these various levels.
You've got to plumb the depths- You don't mind if I smoke weed, do you?
Yeah, no.
That's- A little bud.
It's a good conversation!
It is!
I'm having fun here.
Get ... Right on!
I don't have my one-hitter on me.
It's out of my bag there.
Let's just jump tracks, just because you forced the issue here.
Let's talk a little bit about ... I heard through some friends, a thing a lot of people
I know are experimenting with microdosing.
A lot of people are experimenting with tweaking their chemistry in certain ways in order to
optimize their behavior.
I'll enjoy my weed, and I don't know ... It's also, like, I'm in Victoria, BC, where there
are less Starbucks than there are dispensaries here, in Victoria.
Is it legal in Nevada as well?
Yeah, it just became super legal here.
It's awesome!
Nice.
How does it relate to your marketing creativity?
Is it something you leverage, or is it just something you like to do?
Yeah.
Well, I smoke a lot of weed for ... I'm not saying to do it or not to do it.
I know that almost every marketer I know smokes a lot of weed.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
And then as for the microdosing, I'm on and off about it.
I don't see huge differences in it.
I just like the idea of it.
I do more of like actual dosing of acid, and that's fun.
And I've got- Heroic doses.
... some good insights.
Yeah.
I love that.
I'm a big ... and not as much anymore, but I've done a lot of acid, and shrooms, and
DMT and Ecstasy, maybe I shouldn't even keep going.
But I've done it all, and I love it all, and I think each of it has its place, and it shouldn't
be frowned down upon, necessarily, as long as you're responsible and do it with the right
setting.
I love it.
I think that it expands consciousness.
It's helped me think about things in a different way.
I clearly am quite an eccentric person, and I think that's part of it, was because I've
done a lot of these mind expanding drugs that have helped me see the world from a different
filter and a different lens.
That's the best way to describe it.
It gives you a different lens or a filter, like an Instagram filter, and you're like,
"Ah!
Dude.
That's a cool way of seeing the world."
It's the same world, it's just a different way of looking at it.
In a way, to me, I keep trying to put this together in words, but it's like we have these
ideas that there are these hidden powers.
There is a way of viewing the universe that is above the material, or below the material
sense of the world.
And it's almost like drugs, in a way, clue you into that, in a way, that allow you to
access it going forward.
It allows you to access that mindset.
It allows you to access that level of archetype, in a way that maybe you couldn't if you were
sober.
Yeah, there's so many layers.
Even understanding the layers of how the brain works, that's mind expanding.
There's so many ways of expanding your mind, and I feel like that goes back to the hidden
knowledge.
There's so few people talking about this.
Now there is, more and more, and I think that's great, but it's something that I think we
should be excited.
Especially, as marketers, we're not robots.
This is what's going to keep us competitive as automation takes over, is our ability to
keep expanding our consciousness, and our ability to think way outside these different
reality patterns.
Because all artificial intelligence, or AI, can do, as of right now, is work within these
environments that we've already established.
Machines aren't dropping acid.
Not yet.
Not until ... Strong AI drops acid.
That would be a trip.
Dude.
Well, the book The Age of Spiritual Machines.
I have the Ray Kurtzweil, The Singularity Is Near ... Oh, here it is.
The Age of Spiritual Machines.
That's the one you gotta read where, hey, maybe machines will be dropping acid.
They may be our future religious leaders.
We may be worshiping ... It's not there yet.
Until then, that's how I would stay creative, is just doing these things that are going
to help me.
I see them as exercises that help me stay looking at the world a different way, and
I think that that is what makes us above average in what we do.
It's important to have a healthy amount of respect for them.
When you drop acid when you're in high school, or do mushrooms, you're in high school, it's
this wild hedonistic trip kind of thing.
But I feel like intentionality is really important, as you get older, when you tap into these
things.
That you really have something in mind as to why you're doing it, what you hope to get
out it.
And treat it with a healthy dose of respect, because they're extremely powerful substances.
Absolutely.
Well, you gotta be careful, because just like with anything, with alcohol, with too much
caffeine, too much Red Bull, if you do it too much, you can hurt yourself, hurt other
people.
Then that's what gives the whole thing a bad reputation, and bad ... If you do it, and
you do your research, and you know your dosage, and you do it in a safe space, and you're
not doing it as a way to ... There's always, there's restrictions.
Limitations.
As long as you know yourself, I think experiment away.
Go to Burning Man.
It's a good place to do it.
Go to these transformative festivals all around the world that's happening, and I think you're
going to find some great people.
And the good thing is, most of these people, you go to Burning Man, you're going to run
into a billion dollar, million dollar, multi-million dollar business owner.
There's a reason why high level people do that type of stuff.
Yeah.
This is a broad question, but what do you think is going down right now?
I've been listening to some podcasts right now.
I've actually been listening to a lot of podcasts about Vegas.
I've been trying to parse what's going on with this situation in Vegas right now.
And I was listening to one last night that was talking a lot about the context of what's
happening in Vegas, and literally how receipts across the board in Vegas are down right now.
That these traditional, even these giant casino conglomerates are feeling the pinch that Sears
is feeling, and that these big, established companies are ... It's like as people wake
up in certain ways, the old institutions are losing some of their potency.
Is that something that you're feeling in the United States?
What are you feeling on the ground in Vegas?
What's the mindset there?
Well, I'd see Vegas as popping right now.
I love Vegas.
I'd see it as, it's come back, in my opinion.
But overall, where I see shit's going down, it's first off, people don't have the buying
power, because we have millennials that are trapped in student loan debt.
I think if Generations Xers had, what, maybe $10,000, that they were unlucky in student
loan debt, and we have millennials with $100,000-plus in student loan debt.
So they just simply can't even go to Vegas and enjoy themselves, which is unfortunate.
I think what we're going to see is these old institutions crumble.
We're going to see the education institutions, like universities, these old school, traditional,
well-established ... We're going to see places like-
Post-modernist.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to see that ... Yeah, post-modern, dude.
We're going to see that crumble.
We're going to see non-traditional stuff flourish.
Like non-traditional business.
Non-traditional, like e-commerce.
Businesses like us that aren't traditional, and you can't put your finger on us.
You can't sum us up in one textbook.
And so what's going to be happening is ... We have to change.
We can't just keep putting a whole generation of students into student loan debt for jobs
that don't exist and will never exist anymore.
And until that implosion happens, and we can restructure our society, we're going to be
the titans of the new world, and right now is our opportunity to stack, stack, stack,
and grow, grow, grow, so when the economy does collapse, and it will collapse soon,
we're in a position to actually expand our wealth by buying hard assets.
That's why I tell internet marketers that are making over a million dollars a year,
"Don't be a fuckboy and buy a Bentley.
Stack your money.
Buy assets.
Buy apartment complexes.
Be prepared."
Now, when you say "the crash is coming," are you saying like 2008?
Or you're saying like, "No, like an actual system reset."
Because 2008 was a blip, really.
Yeah, 2008 was not a system reset.
It was wealth transfer.
It was another giant wealth transfer from the middle class up, basically, I feel like.
And it pushed people further down into the margins.
Pushed the one percent higher.
Or the .0001% potentially higher.
But what do you forecast?
You're thinking that we're headed to something much more serious than 2008.
I mean, the numbers are on the wall.
We have $1.9 trillion in student loan debt.
We have baby boomers that ... They simply don't have the money to retire.
They're working until they die.
We have the auto industry that's collapsing because of ride share.
We don't have people buying cars like we used to.
They can't afford them, anyway.
We have traditional education collapsing.
We have Dodd-Frank that just got ... So basically, they're about to ease up on lending regulation,
which just like what happened right before the housing market collapsed, we had what?
Four or five years of credit glut, which is just about to open up, and I see it opening
up right now.
It's not looking good.
We don't have home ownership at a high rate.
There's nothing about the economy that signals a very strong, healthy ... Automation's taking
jobs- Except the stock market, right?
The stock market is soaring.
Well, the stock market is soaring because so many of these companies are leveraging
automation, and laying off employees, and seeing record profits, so ...
And concentrating wealth further up.
And concentrating wealth further up.
So I wouldn't see that as an indicator of a strong economy.
You can talk to the average millennial.
They're living at home.
They're $60,000 in student loan debt, and they have no ... They're 30 years old, and
they have no savings.
Not a recipe for a new golden era.
No.
I don't think so.
I think it's going to be a golden era for guys like us, that are non-traditionalists.
That are able to see the patterns on the wall, that are able to build systems, build online
businesses, accumulate wealth, and then use that time of this next Great Recession that's
going to hit, and use that time to consolidate our wealth.
But if you're going to be a fuckboy about your money, yachts and travel ... I love travel.
I love doing this, but I've seen a lot of people that just spend their money like it's
no tomorrow, which I've done before.
I love spending my money.
But I do see it as a time to conserve, build wealth, buy apartment complexes, buy stuff
that's going to be wealth-enhancing.
And then when all shit breaks loose, we're fucking balling.
All of us will be balling in this industry.
I see it as this is the best industry to be in.
And that's what people do in crises, too.
I was just reading an article in Entrepreneur, Com Mizra, I just connected with him.
And he wrote an article specifically about when the world is falling apart, that's when
the smart people buy.
They make money on the buying- I'm ready.
... not on the selling at that point.
Yeah.
I'm ready, dude.
I'm ready.
I'm not trying to sound like a carpetbagger, but I'm fucking ready for this collapse, man.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So what else do you have on the go here?
What are you building towards right now?
You're also running straight-up affiliate campaigns as well.
What's your favorite traffic source these days?
I love Facebook.
I love YouTube.
We're doing a lot of YouTube.
We're doing a lot of Instagram.
We're doing a lot of Facebook.
Those are our three main things that we run.
But Facebook's Big Data.
As long as you stay compliant, you can leverage their Big Data algorithm, and it's just incredible.
I think it's one of the crème de la crème traffic sources available to us right now.
Cool.
I wanted to ask you, a term that keeps popping up in my feed all the time right now ... I
actually ended up on a big thread on it yesterday.
What does the term "red pill" mean to you?
Oh, man, that's a loaded question, because everyone has their definition of what red
pill ... To me, it just means being aware that-
Woke!
Just being aware.
Just being woke.
Just staying woke.
Just staying woke to- Woke AF.
... the system.
Understanding the system's not your friend.
The government's not your friend.
The only person that's going to be taking care of you is you.
To me, being woke is just building systems and building wealth.
I have no person that held me accountable, except for me.
And for me, that's the ultimate side of woke.
Because there's a lot of people that say they're woke, but their side of woke is being a victim.
Being a victim of circumstance, and that's not my definition of woke.
That's interesting.
I wanted to ask you, not necessarily where you stand on the political standpoint, but
what do you make, from this perspective we've been speaking about, of Trump?
Do you feel like Trump is someone who is putting a wrench in the machine that has been churning
along for years, and years, and years?
Or is he just another layer?
Is he a destabilizing element that's in the system, and he's part of the way the system
wants to go?
What's your read on Trump?
I'm curious.
Trump is just, he's a joker.
He's a wild card.
Not joker in the sense of he's like a clown.
I mean more of like- The archetype.
He's the archetype of the wild card.
I'm not saying he's good or bad, but at the end of the day, not one person understands
this economy.
If anyone's going to tell you they're going to fix the economy, they're going to bring
jobs back ... How are you going to bring jobs back?
All of them are being automated.
The bottom line is, I just listen to that, I see Trump as ... He's a funny guy.
He cuts through the shit of the political clutter, and I like that about him.
At the end of the day, I don't see him as any type of savior, or any type of leader,
that I'm going to follow that person as my end-all resource of how to live my life.
The guy's just a character.
I think he realizes that the presidential role, you don't really have a lot of power,
and he plays it up- Except to nuke.
He can nuke.
He can nuke- I think that's a lot of power!
But at the end of the day ... That is true.
That is weird.
We do have a weird way that we distribute power here in America.
And I don't know.
I can't change it.
All I know is I can change myself.
I'm going to move to Puerto Rico, get that four percent tax rate.
I don't think anyone's going to nuke Puerto Rico.
I just try to stay neutral and just pump my cash.
You know what I mean?
Let other people argue and be broke.
Yeah.
Now, I like that.
We talked a little bit about this, but in your mind, so if you're trying to market shit
in America, what is ... Say you're trying to market to Middle America right now.
I try to market to marketers, essentially, but you're trying to market to the huddled
masses, the people coming up, the young people who are disillusioned.
What mindset are you attributing to them?
I guess there's probably lots of different ones, but give me an overall picture of some
of the things you're trying to tap into if you're trying to market to the youth of America
right now?
Okay.
Well, I think the average person has 0.75 best friends.
Don't quote me, but something around that.
It's really sad.
What I do is, whatever vertical that I'm going into, I will spend two to three days watching
YouTube videos ... Just for example, I made a couple million dollars in student debt.
I must have spent 36 hours, probably more like 100 hours, watching YouTube videos of
people describing their struggle with student debt.
I just put "my struggle student debt" on YouTube, and people have their v-logs or whatever,
like "Day One of My Struggle ... Day 40 of My ... " Whatever.
And I would watch those, take notes, and really start to understand the vernacular that they
used, the type of person they are, their struggles.
So student debt, for example, they couldn't move out of their parents' home.
They couldn't buy a car.
They couldn't own a home.
50% of their paycheck's going to a student loan bill.
Their job that they have was probably they could have gotten it without the degree.
And they're miserable, and they don't see any way out of this debt.
Obviously, that's an easier one, but every industry has their major pain points, that
if you really focus on that vertical, and on that industry ... Even something like solar.
These people have specific pain points, and specific things that you can really, really
get into, and understand about that consumer, and put that in your copy.
To answer your question, there's not one broad stroke way of describing Middle America, because
I think what the internet has done, has created hyper-partisanship.
So there's no such thing as Middle America anymore.
There's just people that are online, that are getting on these online groups, becoming
hyper-conservative, hyper-liberal, hyper-libertarian, hyper-Republican, all these things.
If you tap into those little demographics pockets, try to understand those tribal things
that they do, so going into the mammalian part of their brain, then you'll make a lot
of money.
And then there's this whole other group of people, these disaffected.
The disaffected youth that have slipped into a form of nihilism, I almost feel like.
I'm on Reddit all the time, and I feel like those are the dank people.
The ones making wild memes, and playing around with racism because it's provocative.
Even though they're probably not racists, but they're throwing around ... That's like
where the frog comes from.
It's amazing the way communication is evolving so rapidly, and people are getting so detached
from meaning in a lot of different ways.
It's funny, the hyper-partisanship is happening, and it's happening right alongside this weird
disillusion.
I just feel like in America, and the world right now, there's a high degree of cognitive
dissonance.
I feel like there's people who are having, in their daily life, to hold very different
ideas of the way the world works.
They see that the old models aren't working.
They don't quite know what the new ways are.
I feel it's a really strange time to be alive.
Yeah.
Well, we have our own hyper-partisanship within our industry.
We have our own way of talking, CPM, CPLs.
Our own thing.
Affiliates.
We do our own thing.
Stack that money, and iStack.
All that stuff.
We have our terms, and I think that our industry that we're in, we're in a very good community.
We're in a very good tribe.
I don't think there's a better tribe out there to be involved in.
And as long as we stay in this industry, in my opinion, I think all of us are good.
Unfortunately, I see, it's going to be suffering for a lot of other people.
But the good thing is, for us, it won't be.
Yeah.
And putting ourselves in positions, especially, to be leaders and trainers.
To help bring people in to this new paradigm.
I think it's probably a pretty good position to be in.
One of the things that we walk the line on is the difference between skills-based training
and biz op.
I know, in order to make real money, you have to be able to take your product, and you have
to be able to take it to the general market.
You have to have ways.
A lot of our marketing is, we call "in group marketing," because it's based in people know
STM, people know Affiliate World Conferences.
They know us because of them, and we're getting in their face a lot.
But how do you walk that line, in terms of the biz op versus skills training?
Okay, that's a tough one, because we're an industry that it's got to be a little combination
of both.
People want skills-based training, but at the same time, if you just give them a skill,
it's not the best way of training.
Elon Musk has a very, very good philosophy on education, where he says, "Somebody needs
to see a working model first, before they actually conceptually understand how that
functions."
You can't expect somebody to build an engine, just by researching the concepts behind it.
They need to see how the actual working- The car.
Yeah, pick it apart, and break it.
Probably a Ferrari.
Yeah.
Probably a Ferrari.
Right.
So I think that it's tough, because we've got to [inaudible].
There's a lot of bad business opportunities, there's a lot of bad opportunities out there,
just straight up scammers, we'll call it what it is.
And I think that what you guys do is such a high level quality of education, and that's
hard to do, because the industry's moving so quickly.
What you put out today isn't necessarily going to work tomorrow.
Going back to biz op versus ... What was it?
Biz op versus the- Skills-based training.
... skills-based training.
It's hard to look at it from the lens of either.
We kind of have to invent this new way of training.
I see it as like Mastermind.
I don't know if there is a word for it.
I wouldn't call it biz op.
I wouldn't call it a skills-based training, either.
And I- It's not a money-making system, either, necessarily-
It's not a money-making system.
Yeah.
But it is a hybrid of that.
And I realize that, having done the amount of webinars we've done at this point, and
having done the cold traffic funnels that we're building, you have to be able to dangle
the vision, first of all.
You have to dangle the vision of what it's like.
We're privileged, because we've been in this industry for a while, and we've seen it transform
people's lives.
We've had it transform our own lives in different ways, so we're not coming from a false prophet-type
position.
We this shit.
We're in it all the time, and we're living it.
But I find it's an interesting line to walk, for sure.
Yeah, and this is a new paradigm.
It's new.
It's obviously, the old ways of viewing education doesn't work anymore.
And we're on the forefront of inventing a new way of education.
A new way of knowledge transfer.
And a new way of creating a system to actually teach people real stuff that works, that isn't
just theories that are a photocopy of a photocopy, that some professor that drives a Volvo is
trying to show in a PowerPoint presentation to a bunch of stoned 19 year olds.
It's new.
We're pioneers in a way, in that sense.
Some people don't like the whole guru thing.
I get a lot of guru hate, and I get it.
There's a lot of shit out there.
But at the same time, I think the best way of doing it is supporting the good training,
like the stuff that you guys put out.
Supporting that and creating a real community around quality training.
Then making it harder, a barrier of entry, for the bad stuff to come in and make the
actual quality education in this industry look bad.
Because bottom line, people need education.
You can't just expect people not to have education.
They're hungry for it.
Somebody's going to provide it.
It's either going to be somebody provides great education, or somebody that is providing
subpar, scam, crap education.
And we need to fill that upper void in that marketplace, is just what it comes down to.
And you touched on it, too.
A community is such a big part of it.
I play ball hockey every week, and I was out with my friends last night, and they work
different jobs.
Some of them are middle managers.
Some of them are in government.
Some of them are landscapers, or whatever.
But I was recounting my day, and it was like, "Well, I spent an hour reading up on this,
and then I engaged the community in a forum, and had 30 people respond to me, and then
we had a dialogue back and forth about something."
It is.
It's easy to take the community that we have for granted, but the people that you meet
in this business, who are all striving for self-improvement.
They're all striving to improve their businesses.
They're all taking it fully upon themselves.
They're not waiting for a promotion, necessarily.
They're creating this out of nothing.
It's been a huge eye-opener for me, and especially this jump I've made into the iStack family,
working with the STM crew, and all the people I'm meeting through this.
It's really a privilege.
I also have a daily ping pong rival with the guy that I've hired here, Andrew, to do our
marketing.
They're like, "You play ... What is your job title?
That you get to play ping pong for [crosstalk]-" Boss.
And I'm like, "You've just got to get up and move around, right?"
Yeah.
Totally.
So here's my most important question.
What are you going to be for Halloween?
I'm like ... George Lopez.
I think.
I'm going to try that one out.
What are you going to do there?
Are you just going to rip off other people's jokes?
I'm going to do that.
I'm going to wear suits.
Work it.
Yeah.
I look like George Lopez, so I can pull that off.
Oh, I get it!
I'm going to do Stone Cold Steve Austin let himself go.
That's what I'm going to do.
Are you going to do "Suck it!"
Are you going to go around saying "Suck it?"
I'm going to say "Suck it!"
I'm going to be drinking ... I've got to get Keystone Light.
And I'm just going to just be- I don't know, bro.
With all the Weinstein shit going around.
Dude.
All of these institutions are crumbling, right?
They're crumbling.
Yeah.
It is a wild time.
And so what's our final words to people?
We want to urge people to go out there and explore the archetypal things that live below
the surface.
Think about the brain with these three different ways, from the reptilian brain, to the mammalian
brain, to the neocortex.
And have your marketing permeate right down to that level.
Yeah, in a nutshell, people always ask me what books.
I'm going to get this question, I know ... A hundred times.
Reading anything by Carl Jung.
Read anything by Edward Bernays.
Read anything like Ogilvy on Advertising, and I think you'll be good.
And also, Joseph Campbell, and then you can even watch ... Joseph Campbell had some great
stuff, like, or whatever.
I can't- What [crosstalk]?
It's on Amazon.
It's a DVD.
You could actually just watch Joseph Campbell DVDs on Amazon, or watch his lectures.
Good stuff.
And just jump in.
Life is too short to get rich slow.
We're in a privileged industry, and a privileged spot in humanity, and you don't want to be
that person that misses the good times, and wishes that you could go back in time and
redo it.
That's something that we're, obviously, in our marketing, we play on quite a bit, is
this ... We're marketing to marketers.
Everyone knows we're in this kind of gold rush that's happening right now, and it's
this idea of like, "Hey, here's the best path.
Here's the best knowledge you can acquire in order to do this.
And you don't want to miss out on it!"
It's this FOMO.
This idea of you don't really want to miss out on these experiences while they're happening,
because you want to make- You don't.
Yeah, and everyone wonders, "Am I making the most of this opportunity?
Am I sharpening my skills in the right way?"
I think that's something that people should keep in mind.
But speaking about good experiences.
This is something else I'd like to discuss towards the end of the podcast.
What are some things, besides grinding, and building your wealth, and spending it wisely,
what are some of the things that float your boat?
And pot, and things like that, as well.
What are some things that you strive for?
What are some of the peak experiences that you're out there trying to have on the weekends,
or when you travel?
What do you love doing?
I love just family, relationships.
I have a beautiful girlfriend, who's my fiancee now.
Well, not yet.
Very soon.
I've been with her for nine years, so it's weird to call her my girlfriend.
It's kind of like, "Hey."
But I have a great family, so I spend time ... Just stuff that makes human beings happy,
man.
Like family.
Travel.
I love to travel.
I'm constantly traveling.
I love eating sushi.
Eating well.
And I love knowing that I'm creating a real future for not just me, because it's easy
to do, but also for my parents, who, I want them to have a comfortable retirement.
My in-laws, I actually do like my in-laws- Nice.
Important.
I try to be a good person, man.
I just try to be a good person.
My girlfriend just calls me "a chubby, happy guy."
That's it.
Nice.
Well, that's a hell of a persona, and I think you should stick with it.
Ronnie, thanks so much for coming on The Robust Marketer today.
If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?
Connect with me on Facebook, Ronnie Sandlin, or Instagram, whatafuckinglife.
What a fucking life, or- What a fucking life.
Just Google me.
I'm easy to find.
Come find me, and I'd love to share with you, and have you as a part of the community that
we have over here.
Awesome.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Eric.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Thanks, Ronnie.
Have a happy Halloween!
All right.
You, too.
Take care.
See you.
Bye-bye.
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