SOW 39: Rock Star Marketing with Craig Duswalt Creator of the ‘RockStar System For Success’

Craig Duswalt

On this episode of Speaking of Wealth, join Jason Hartman and Craig Duswalt as they discuss Craig’s RockStar System for Success. Learn how publishing a small book of tips can promote your business. Craig discusses why having a title is much easier than remembering a name, and he divulges his Seven RockStar Rules for standing out from the competition and becoming the go-to person in your industry.

Craig Duswalt is the creator of the RockStar System For Success – How to Achieve RockStar Status in Your Industry. Craig’s background includes touring with Guns N’ Roses, as Axl Rose’s personal manager, and Air Supply, as the band’s personal assistant. In his presentations, Craig shares numerous stories of his days with Guns N’ Roses and Air Supply, and behind-the-scenes encounters with some of the biggest names in entertainment; people like Bono, U2, Metallica, Queen, Kurt Cobain, Steven Tyler, Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, George Michael, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Robert Plant, Elton John, Gianni Versace, Rolling Stones, Nine Inch Nails, Dave Navarro, Rick Springfield, Eddie Money, Michael Hutchense, and a bunch more.

Craig was also an award-winning copywriter, working as a Creative Director for a Los Angeles-based ad agency until opening up his own ad agency, Green Room Design & Advertising, which was named the 2002 Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year. Craig combined his backgrounds in both music and marketing, and is now a professional speaker and author, promoting his RockStar System for Success all over the country, teaching entrepreneurs, small businesses, home-based business and the self-employed how to promote themselves and their business by thinking outside the box at his 4-Day RockStar Marketing BootCamps every March and September in Los Angeles. Craig Duswalt also speaks to corporations on how to market like a RockStar, to colleges about drug awareness, and at numerous seminars, associations and conferences, teaching entrepreneurs how to use outside the box marketing techniques to attract clients, and how to stand out from the competition by throwing televisions out hotel windows — Like a RockStar.


Audio Transcript

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Jason Hartman: It’s my pleasure to welcome Craig Duswalt to this show today. He is the RockStar who teaches the RockStar system for success, and we have a lot to cover with him. He has got a tremendous background. And if you want to be a rockstar in your industry whether it’s being a speaker, and author etcetera, be a rockstar at trade shows whatever that is Craig is the guy that can really give us some great information about that today. Craig it’s a pleasure to have you on the show.

Craig: Well thank you Jason for having me, pleasure myself.

Jason Hartman: So you’ve got a fascinating background really working with rockstars. I mean real legitimate big name rockstars that —

Craig: Like real rockstars, yeah.

Jason Hartman: We all recognize, absolutely. Tell us about your background first if you would?

Craig: Okay, basically just out of college. I got a job at Westbury Music Fair in Long Island New York as a runner backstage. And I basically worked at Friday and Saturday night. Friday night I was working backstage, Saturday night they came to do a second show. They liked the way I was working at the first show backstage. They said you know what we want to hook up with this guy, and they asked me to go to on the road with them, and I toured with Air Supply since seven years. So just because I was doing you know being a positive guy backstage even though it was a very menial job, I got a job with one of the top bands at the time touring with Air Supply as their personal band assistant for seven years.

Jason Hartman: Well, you know what that goes to show you Craig that you do a small job well. And it leads to a big job, and it reminds me of the quote, and you are up in LA so you know you are around the Hollywood world. There are no small parts, only small actors.

Craig: Oh I love that, you know that. I used to be an actor myself, that is absolutely true. And what I teach at my boot camps is always do your best, and you know never know who is watching. And I teach that all the time because you know I easily could have went in there, this was a very menial job. I mean all I did was getting drinks for band, pick them up to the airport drive them to the hotel. I was the lowest on the totem pole but I did it well. I always had a positive attitude. The guys, you know you only get a minute to impress them but less than that. And they liked me the night before came back the second night, and the next day, they sent a limo to my house to pick me up, and took me to the airport, and a Learjet took me to Connecticut, and I toured with them for seven years simply because I had a good attitude in a very menial job.

Jason Hartman: That had to be a fun life.

Craig: Oh my gosh and at the time Air Supply was huge. I mean they were — the great thing was 95% of their audience was women so for a 21 year old guy just had a college that was pretty good. And then while I was with Air Supply one of the security guy for Air Supply talk about being in the right place at the right time. So this guy he became the manager of Guns N’ Roses. And there is a whole story there how that happened, but once again he was a positive attitude guy, and he was a hard worker. So he became the manager of Guns N’ Roses, and after touring with Air Supply I took a couple of years off, and he called me up one day, and he goes, are you ready to go back on the road. And I’m like what do I have to do? He is like you basically you have to baby seat African rose. And I’m thinking to myself, now wait a minute, this guy is in the news every single day for something that’s not so good, but it was a lot of money so I said alright. And I toured with Guns N’ Roses during the Use your Illusion world tour in the early 90s I toured with them for four years. I was as personal assistant person then became his personal manager, and basically managed this whole life and kept him out of jail for four years that was my job.

Jason Hartman: Kept him out of jail that’s funny.

Craig: Yeah.

Jason Hartman: Well Craig this really does translate into the corporate world doesn’t it? I mean —

Craig: Absolutely.

Jason Hartman: I mean fascinating background, I think every kid at one point or another especially boys wanted to be a rockstar at some time, no question I did. But tell us about the transition, the leap from working in this the music industry to the corporate world?

Craig: Well, it was quite interesting actually. Basically, it was Guns N’ Roses I’ve decided to get normal again. And you know everyone says why would you ever quit that gig? And I’m like try touring with for four years living out of a suitcase, living out of the hotel. You know I interviewed Duff McKagan the bass player for Guns N’ Roses on my stage. And he said during the height of their career he was the loneliest person in the world. And for people that hear that they don’t get it, but I lived it, and it’s very lonely on the road because you are meeting people just for one night, and then you are off to meet other people another night. So there is never any connections, there is no real friendships so it gets very lonely. So I toured with them for a while with Guns N’ Roses, and I just decided you know I just got to get normal again. I wanted to — you know I was getting older. I wanted to get married, and have kid. So I took my marketing background that I had in graduating college, and I decided to get a job as a senior copyrighter. And then I became a creative director for an ad agency, and then I opened my own ad agency. And I said to myself in this ad agency I was able to use you know ad agencies do the more traditional marketing, you know the print advertising catalogues, way back then, and that kind of stuff. And my clients were like Baskin Robins, Disney, ESPN, the Los Angles, so I just had some pretty big account.

But what it made me stand out from everybody else was the little outside of the box marketing type techniques that I learned with Guns N’ Roses, how they attracted 80,000 people to a concert, and how we can take those theories, and then put them in everyday life, and the corporate world. So now I’ve decided it has a little thing I can do here, I can teach traditional marketing to my audiences, and that’s what I do now. I do these RockStar marketing boot camps that I teach traditional marketing, but I incorporate a lot of how to stands up from the competition, how to do things different than everybody else. And as just like you said in corporation you know corporation is doing things like everybody else is doing and they are not going to stand up from that competition. So it was a way for me to introduce like outside box marketing techniques used by rockstars for corporations because marketing is marketing. It doesn’t matter what the product is? It’s still marketing and those trick that you can do, and now with social networking you do so many more things to get out there basically for very little money.

Jason Hartman: Well, so 80,000 people I mean boy I tell you, I find it rather challenging to fill a room with 80 people. Now 80,000, yes they are paying a lower ticket price some of them, but how do they do that? I mean what were the tricks that these bands were using to attract such big crowds?

Craig: So I will use Guns N’ Roses for example, so their mission statement, let’s call it. They didn’t have an official mission statement, but their mission statement was to be the baddest boys of rock and roll. They said we are going to do everything bad, we are going to be late for concerts, you know absolute late all the time, and we had marketing meetings. How the heck I was — I will just give you an example. We were in Denver Colorado, and there is 80,000 coming to a show in Denver Colorado. The next show is in say Kansas City Missouri at Arrowhead stadium, and we only had 40,000 people coming instead of 80,000. How in two days are we going to get 40,000 people to come to this concert to fill up the stadium, and so we are not embarrassed because Guns N’ Roses could never not do a sold out show.

So we had a little meeting in the morning one day, and we would say something its time to throw the television outside the hotel window. And so one of us would go to Axl’s room, I’m not saying this really ever happened. This is just a theory. So one of us might have gone to Axl’s room, take the television, and throw it out of the hotel window into the swimming pool making sure that no one was in the pool to make sure no one got hurt obviously.

And then at the same time we would be out there asking telling the person downstairs — I would go to the hotel manager, and say here is $25,000 sir I have no idea how this happened but rumor has that the television fell outside of Axl’s and I don’t know how to fix that. And then at the same time the publicist would then be does contacted at same time saying okay I think I saw the same television fly out of the window. So to make long story short, we would be in the newspaper the next day, and everyone would say oh here they go again.

The bad boys of rock and roll are being bad, and with the next show would sell out because we were in newspaper doing something bad because the idea is to keep with the mission statement of being as bad as possible, and catering to those needs of the audience. So it was interesting Howard Stern had this thing they did a survey on in his movie they said you know half of the people listen to Howard Stern because they love him, and half listen to them because they hate him. And it’s the same thing with Guns N’ Roses. People came to see Guns N’ Roses because they wanted to see what would happen next. So they just threw the television, they got in the paper.

They were being very, very bad. Now they are coming to the concerts to make sure to see what they are going to do now because obviously Axel Rose does things like that. Now do not tell businesses to do this. You know I do a lot of seminars in hotels, but I do tell them how to get into the newspaper. How to do things differently stand up in the competition so you create a buzz of some sort. And you know there is just legal ways of doing that as well instead of getting in the paper because I’m not going to be there with $25,000 to bail you out of jail and stuff like that.

Jason Hartman: But that all says to me though is it says, that have a clearly defined brand, and don’t stray from it.

Craig: Yes.

Jason Hartman: Alright so people know you for something. They know you for something specific, so these were the bad boys of rock and roll. But before that you work for Air Supply, I mean come on. Talk about a contrast, okay so —

Craig: And you know what’s really funny? I will give you an inside scoop here. Air Supply partied more than Guns N’ Roses.

Jason Hartman: Is really? That’s funny.

Craig: I know it’s funny.

Jason Hartman: But what was their thing. I mean do they have a clearly defined brand like that everybody knows their music of course but what else was –?

Craig: I mean their thing was very clearly defined. They sing love songs, nothing but love songs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All their songs often love, all out of love, making love that have nothing at all, all these songs about love, so there everyone was saying thing like you know you need to be more rock and roll and stuff like this and go with the times. Well they sound their niche. I mean they attracted 95% audiences’ women to their audiences, and that was their niche. And it was 20 to 45 year old women that just love coming to hear love songs. And then you know it’s really funny the guilty pleasures of many men that I know loved Air Supply but they never admit it, and it’s really interesting.

Jason Hartman: It’s not macho enough, right?

Craig: Right, exactly.

Jason Hartman: So what else did you — what else can people do to become a rockstar of their various niche? I mean do you want to take it like segmented, like speaking authorship tradeshows, etcetera?

Craig: What I basically teach people I personally believe the first thing people need to do to become a rockstar in their industry, I truly believe this just because when I did it, it’s just changed the whole world for me. It was to write a small book. And I say a small book because that’s very important because so many people get very, very overwhelmed when they say oh my gosh, I have to write a book. Craig is telling me to write a book, but I always tell people just write a 96 page book, just a quick little book on something what’s happens is because I have taken the overwhelm way out of writing a book. They tend to write instead of 96 page book, they always write the 150 to 200 pages book, so it’s a little bit thicker. But once I wrote, I wrote these four books in nine weeks, and as soon as I did that like I wrote this book, Marketing Your Small Business On a Shoestring Budget because before I was rockstar guy I was America’s shoestring budget coach teaching people how to save ton of money in marketing and advertising.

And I’ve wrote this book Marketing a Small business on a Shoestring Budget, and two days after I wrote the book, literally two days after I got it in my hands, I put the website up, and a casting director from Los Angles calls me and says this words, I hear you are the expert on marketing your small business on a shoestring budget, and I am like on the phone telling, yes I am because I had a book. And she said she saw my book, and she realize oh my gosh, I need this guy on my show. So I have to screen test within one day for my own reality TV show.

I was one of the three finalists. I ended up losing out to Bill Rancic, the guy that won Season one Apprentice, but I almost need I almost got my own reality TV show simply because I wrote a book. And I also use the book for this reason as well this is how it stands out. Because of when I print books, I print about 2000 books, and because I spend a lot of people to this print that I use that we get really good deal. So I can get about a $1 a book for 2000 books.

So if that you print 2000 books for $1 a book, $2000 as if I sell 200 of those books at $10 each only I now have my $2000 investment back. I have 1803 books left over. So what I do is when I go to networking events, when I go to associations anywhere I’m in a group of people instead of handing out business cards which everyone else does, I give people my book. And they think oh my gosh, this guy is giving me a $15 book for free, and I want to know.

Now on the book it says Craig Duswalt RockStar System for Success, and they say why is it called RockStar System for Success which is what I want them to ask. And so then I say well, I used to tour with Guns N’ Roses, I was Axl Rose’s personal manager which gets a group of people around you very, very fast because they all want to get the Guns N’ Roses story.

And they say what you are doing now, and I tell them well I keep these RockStar marketing boot camps every March and September in Los Angles. And inevitably they go home, and they sign up for the boot camp because I have given them a gift. They are interested in the subject, and now all of a sudden they have created a fan. If I did that with the business card just doesn’t had the same effect. So the book is the first thing you need to do I personally believe. And then they are speaking like you just said, and other little things that you can do on the internet as well. But the book for me is the main part of it.

Jason Hartman: And what about trade shows, I mean that’s one that a lot of speakers I don’t think really consider. And when I say that I’m talking about actually being in the trade show itself the exhibit hall not on the stage of the podium because of course there were speaking sessions, but the actual trade show part of it. What about rockstar show success there?

Craig: Huge success. I actually have as I may I have a very good way to attract so say you have a booth at the trade show, and I believe everyone should go to a trade show, and promote whatever you are doing. I have a great way to get people to come to your table at this trade shows, and its one of my outside the box marketing steps. I have about 50 of them now I share at my boot camps. And then they are all very, very outside of the box, but this is a great one for trade shows. So you are at a trade show, you go into a trade show let’s just say it’s in Vegas, and you have the booth setup in the trade show. How do you get people to come to your booth without having the booth with the free prize and all that and I have modeled that come because we own the model agency as well so I have pretty girls or good looking guys standing up or handing out fliers its simple good stuff.

But before the trade show even starts what I do is I hire six guys and girls dressed at the show first. They are dressed in black suits with a black tie and a white shirt. And each of them their job for the day is when people are flying in and coming to the airport to go to the trade show their job is the whole design is the Rockstar Craig Duswalt www.rockstarmarketingbootcamps.com as if they are waiting for me to get off the plane with my entourage, so I have like six of them standing next to each other as this I have six limos waiting for me and my entourage. I must be like, oh my gosh I got to see who this guy is. and their job all day is to go to baggage claim, to baggage claim, to baggage claim, meeting all the people that are coming off the plane for the trade show, so in their mind is the same oh my god, I have to visit this guy’s booth because he is huge. Obviously he is doing something very, very great and that’s why I get a ton of people who comes to my booth and sign me up because they are like the perception is oh my gosh this guys has six limos waiting. He must be hugely successful. That’s just a weird tip.

Jason Hartman: Oh that’s not a weird tip at all. I mean impressions like that are everything, so that’s —

Craig: Yeah exactly.

Jason Hartman: Anything you want to mention its online. I mean those are live things that you’ve mentioned so far.

Craig: Right oh yeah we do a whole section online stuff. You know obviously its really funny when I do these boot camp studies and when I do get speaking on the weekend when I ask the audience, , how many of you only a small business only a few people are going to raise their hands or when I ask if there is an entrepreneur, Everyone raises their hands. How many of you have a website, and believe it or not to this day still 20% may be even 15% of it, 15% of the people do not have the website still which blows my mind, but so the first thing you need is obviously a website.

You need someone, I call it you need an online hub, and an offline hub. The offline hub just come to my boot camp every March and September in Los Angeles. The online hub is my website I have craigduswalt.com, rocktheirmarketing.bootcamps.com. The idea is I drive all my traffic to the website so I have social networking. Obviously I use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn all those as the business tool to drive people for the website. So what I do is I talk about because I keep with my brand I talk about Rockstar stuff. For example, last year I think it was Kanye West pulled the microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hand at the Grammy’s or something like that.

Jason Hartman: I was very upset with him over that because I am in love with Taylor Swift.

Craig: That’s hysterical so you would have like this posted around, so anyway I wrote a post about that because that’s my brand is Rockstar, and it was a very Rocskstar thing that happened. It was a very bad thing that happened, but I tied into some marketing principle and what I did was I posted it on ping.fm which went to my Facebook site. It went to my blog. It went to my website. It goes everywhere and I got a ton of hits that night on everything because people were googling Kanye West, and I am really good with Search Engine Optimization in getting people to come to see my site that I had the ton of hits that day because I used something that happened in the news and tweeted of Facebooked about it tying it into my brand.

So I came up with some marketing techniques that you could have used not by grabbing the microphone at her hand, but I had keywords in there, and Kanye West and took Taylor Swift, so I do things like that all the time to drive people to the website. I use Facebook as a total above business tool. A lot of people say oh I don’t want to invite people I don’t know I have liked almost 5000 friends the max on my personal I think I know 200 of them. You know everyone is like but they are not your real friends. I have friends in New York that’s what I am trying to say. How do you know that many people in Los Angeles and I am like oh, I don’t know that many people. It’s the database is what it is, so I use that.

But the biggest things I use are YouTube, and I use chat room. Now picture this because I toured with Guns N’ Roses and Air Supply. I go into their chat rooms telling them I am the guy that was Axl’s personal manager during the height of their career. Well, of course everyone wants to ask me questions because I know a lot of stuff, and I feed them just enough information to get them excited about Guns N’ Roses and inevitably what happens is just like the offline marketing is so what you are doing now? I do the September boot camps and think of this all of these Guns N’ Roses fans back then are probably all businessmen right now, businessmen and women so they own their own businesses so they work for corporation so now they become my audience, so I go into chat rooms with Air Supply and Guns N’ Roses, tell them who I am, talked about them with like minded people because we have the same interest, and then they ask me inevitably what you are doing now.

And the same thing with the Kansas city chiefs, you know because let’s everyone says me yeah but you’ve Guns N’ Roses and Air Supply those are cool chat room, so you’ve that going for you what about yes? I don’t have that background, so I am a Kansas City chief football fan, and a huge fan. And I go into chat rooms, and I commensurate when we do bad, and I celebrate when we do good, and I form a bond with people online talking to them about real everyday stuff, and once again they always say so what you do for a living and I would rather work with somebody that I know that I have a connection with than someone that I don’t, and that’s why those work and then I use YouTube. YouTube is huge. Every video that I ever did with Guns N’ Roses, I am in there making of Estranged the video which is one of their songs. I am in a couple of other videos. I put those.

Anything that I was with, with Guns N’ Roses and anything that I do now as far as speaking I take clips, I make [Unintelligible 0:23:43] put them on YouTube, and there is a million little tricks that you can do on YouTube to get thousands of listeners. I keep that at my boot camp. To make long story short it’s all about keywords in the title bar. It’s about keywords in the description. Most people put a YouTube description like this is the video of me and I said, and for one of my videos for example there was a story about Guns N’ Roses. In the description I wrote down every Guns N’ Roses song because people are googling in Welcome to the Jungle, Paradise City so they are in my description those words, so if someone is googling Welcome to the Jungle my video probably comes up. It actually does come up a lot now because I have done some other things to get that along stuff, and once again at that YouTube video I drive them back to the website. In the chat rooms, I drive them back to the website or to my offline marketing boot camps.

Jason Hartman: So you’ve got all these ancillary satellites funneling people on the website now?

Craig: Exactly.

Jason Hartman: I want to ask you about collaboration in the moment, but before we get into that if there are any of the sort of seven Rockstar rules that you didn’t mention yet Craig please mention those now. You’ve kind of interwoven them into the talk here.

Craig: I kind of interwoven but there are couple of that I did not. One of them, and I will go through this very, very fast because they are very basic. But you know what about basic is, is that no one does the fundamentals anymore. No one does the basics anymore, and nobody wants to just get rich quick, and so I have Rockstar rules and these seven things that I did immediately when I first decided I am going to be the Rockstar speaker. I am not going to do these 14 jobs anymore. I am going to do anything like you said before I focus on one thing. I do it well. I do that very, very well. Everything is Rockstar brand. Everything is Rockstar marketing and so these are the seven things I did to get this going.

First was get rid of the clutter. I truly believe that if you have a cluttered office, or a cluttered house, or a cluttered mind you will not be able to be creative and you get stuck. Number two is stop procrastinating and I don’t need to say much about that. Number three is bring music into your life. Every morning my wife and I wake up to our favorite songs because it puts us in a great mood for the day, and I play a lot of music in my Rockstar marketing boot camps, and when I am done playing these songs everyone has a smile on their face because they are just so used to being bummed out for the day and when you hear your favorite song and when you hear it on the radio, when you hear it in your house it just puts you in a great mood. So I always tell people bring music into your life.

Next way is go and tell no man. How many of you guys has the greatest idea in the world to only have someone like your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your aunty, your uncle say oh its done before, oh you can’t do that. You don’t know what you are doing, or you are not good enough to do that, and then that passionate idea that you had gets knocked down little by little by little and all of a sudden that is totally gone and you don’t do it. Another one is now focus follow one course and feel successful. I had 80 coaching clients that I work with right now, and every single one of them says I am good at this. I do this. I wanted to do this. Everyone says I should do this, and they find out — they do these 10 things and none of them very, very well like I just said focus on one thing become that Rockstar speaker, become whatever your brand is just a little bit drink it, breathe it, and then you will be successful.

Number six I think and that is do something then tell everyone how you did it, and this is basically a coaching program. One example is I wrote this four books in nine weeks, and everyone said how the heck did you do that, so then I created a three CD set and an action guide that’s how to do it what I did the 30 day program. How to write a book in 30 days so I got paid for writing the book and I sell books, and I get on stages because I wrote a book and now I am telling the ones to everyone how I wrote the book which is the coaching program. Everyone has something like that where they are expert, something in their background that people want to know without having to figure it out to themselves so you can make extra money telling people what everyone what they want to know by a coaching program I would say knowledge is the new currency basically.

And number seven is schedule it. This is my favorite one because this goes back to stop procrastinating. If you schedule something like a book launch or a seminar and you tell people at this seminar I am going to have these products available to you, and you don’t have the products ready and you have 80 to 100 people coming you will get it done. Your mind will not let you fail, and because you have people coming to an event to or something that you are launching that you’ve told the world about and you don’t provide for them then you are going to look very, very bad and that won’t happen so you schedule something, you put a deadline on it and because of that you are now able to do the project that you probably would not have done because you usually don’t tell people about it so those are the quick turn arounds.

Jason Hartman: We will back in just a minute.

Introduction: Did you know that we offer one on one coaching? This includes six months on one on one coaching. For more information go to jasonhartman.com.

Jason Hartman: What about collaboration Craig I mean when you talk about that are you referring to affiliate programs are you referring to getting these famous rockstars like the lead singer for RSB Wagon at your events talking?

Craig: And it’s all of it. I collaborate. Now, what happens is because I have done pretty well as this Rockstar marketing speaker guy, I get a lot of joint venture opportunities. I get like 5 to 10 a day via email or via a phone call so that can get a little dangerous because I am so focused right now I am like two years go, three years ago I would have said yeah, so I will partner with you. yeah so I will partner with you, so I will partner with you and then your whole business is gone and you are not doing what you are focused on doing.

My main focus is to stay focused on the Rockstar brand, so if something comes along that it helps the Rockstar brand, then I am very, very interested. But if its just an offshoot thing because someone wants to tie into my database then I really have to start weeding out, but it is collaborating with anything like I bring Rockstars to my event because my brand is Rockstar marketing so I feel I should have a Rockstar, but what does that do for me and obviously gets me pictures with the Rockstar it gets me in with the in crowd and it gets me on their stages. You know when all REO Speed wagons are so in LA. Now Kevin Cronin was going to say do you want to come for the concert? I used — when I was with their supplier I sang on phase with them, roll with the changes and things like that would start happening again because now we are buds, and we formed a relationship because I have this Rockstar brand and he is a Rockstar, so I help him, and then he helps me so I collaborate with those types of people all the time because that’s my brand.

This other that I do is I give this example of my boot camps. Its all about taping into each others database that’s why we do joint venturing and the best example on rock and roll was Ben Crosby and David Bowie did Little Drummer Boys together. Two completely opposite brands, two complete opposite styles of music, but they sang this Christmas song together in the video and sold millions, and I could imagine the agents or managers saying no, we should put this two together. I want to tap into your database. David needs more people so you can tap into Ben’s database, then it was a great, great collaboration between two music people that had no business being together and it was a huge success.

I ran a theater here in town a little Broadway style type of theater in Los Angeles, and I used to bring in Broadway type of shows but I didn’t have a lot of money at the time because we were a non-profit and they want to think so much money in the theater but I wanted to put on good show, so he said how the heck am I going to tell 60,000 people in our community to come to our theater, this new theater, and so I partnered with the trash company because they send out bills every month, and I asked them can you put a little insert, and I will give you a of our season, our 2002 season and at the same time I will give you sponsorship and put your name of your company in life, so they could say a garbage company and a theater can partner together I truly believe that if you think outside the box who would someone that you can tap into work with to where you both benefit and that’s where we keep a lot of the boot camps as well.

Jason Hartman: Those are some very interesting bed fellows no question about it I mean.

Craig: I know right.

Jason Hartman: You nobody would think that you could mix those times of entities together.

Craig: I know. And that’s where we talk about a lot is start thinking definitely then everyone else thinks. You know you are in a real estate world, real estate agents. Most real estate agent send out a post card with a picture on it with a sold sign you know as a post card, and that’s fine because that’s what everyone does, but imagine someone that does something just a little bit differently to stand up from everybody else to get more business, and that’s basically what I believe everyone should do.

You know a lot of this regular business owners I in the last year and a half I’ve had, I think its like 89 or 90 something people have written books. You know back to the book thing, and these are non-authors. And every one of them that’s written the book I have a mortgage broker here in town. She wrote Stress Free Mortgage, and now she is like the top mortgage broker in town just because she wrote a book and she is not doing anything different in her marketing. But now she is the expert and everyone is like, you wrote a book, you must really what you are talking about.

Jason Hartman: No question about it I mean I published nine books now. None of them are big and famous, but they do a lot for me in my business. And when I published my first book about 11 years ago now, I just couldn’t believe what happened my speaking career just the fees increased, I could sell books at the back of the room. It was a tie in for future opportunities. The book is a great business card, and I will tell you my next project is not a book. I have a few more books in the pipe that are just sort of based on my shows and so forth, but my next project is actually a documentary film, and I think that will be a phenomenal type of business card.

Craig: Dude, that’s huge. I am actually doing one myself. I think that’s phenomenal. The radio that you do this podcast that’s the great little niche I mean not many people do that, and that’s what makes you stand out because you do these other things that people mostly well aren’t doing. Everyone is like, how the heck I am going to do a podcast. I mean it’s so easy but people get overwhelmed by the idea of it. How am I going to do a radio show? Oh my gosh you want me to do a documentary. Are you crazy? But if you think about it that’s exactly what you should do as the business person.

Jason Hartman: Everybody has expertise and now it’s easy to share. In today’s world, you don’t need anybody’s permission to share your knowledge and your ideas with the world. You can just do it. You can go direct. You can create a documentary with a couple of video cameras that are Prosumer cameras and an Apple computer with Final Cut Pro software.

Craig: There you go. You are so speaking my language. I love it.

Jason Hartman: Incredible what you can do nowadays and you just don’t need to get a publisher to pick up your idea. You don’t need to get a network or a movie studio. You just do it; you go direct to the consumer. You go direct to your tribe, your audience; tribe is that golden closet, so that’s where you can do. Hey I’ve got a couple more questions for you. But first of all I want to tell you the listeners about the offer you have and this can all be found at speakingofwealth.com/offers. Let me repeat that. It’s the website for the show speakingofwealth.com/offers, and tell the listeners if you would Craig about what are you offering and then let me circle back with a few more questions.

Craig: So like I have mentioned a couple of times every March and September in Los Angeles I do these Rockstar marketing boot camps. They are four day boot camps, and they are basically designed to help you think outside the box. Take your business to the next level, you know the typical business stuff that everyone talks about but its really, it’s a very excavating four days, its not — it’s the bunch of speakers not selling just the bunch of inspirational speakers. I am on there the most four days.

I basically teach, basically for four days long. You know social networking how to affiliate marketing anything with internet marketing like I said outside the box marketing techniques, tricks that you can use on the internet to get people to see all that stuff we teach for four days, but even more than that its not a bunch of talking heads on phase. I integrate music. I integrate games, and it’s a fun four days, and you don’t even realize you are learning, and by the end of four days you walk out there like what just happened.

So I do that every March and September in Los Angeles for $997 and you get to bring a friend for free, but if you go to your website that you just mentioned we will put a deal on there as well. I would say listen to this show where we will tie in and upcoming boot camp whenever the — just go to that website to get an update of what boot camp is coming next where it is actually in Los Angeles, and I have Rockstars come all the time. I always have a business Rockstar. I’ve had like to recall the Presidents and CEO of the Arizona Diamondbacks. And he talks about winning off the field, so I always bring a business Rockstar, and then I always bring a Rockstar. I’ve had Kevin Cronin from REO Speed Wagon. Eddie Money, I’ve had Ray Parker Jr. of Ghostbusters. I had Russell Hitchcock the lead singer of Air Supply. I had Duff McKagan the bass player of Guns N’ Roses, so I’ve had a pretty eclectic group of people, so it’s a fun four days, and we will just make a deal on your website. Its usually $997 a person to go but its buy one get one free to the website, and then we will make another on the website itself, but there will be much in September in Los Angeles.

Jason Hartman: Fantastic so again speakingofwealth.com/offers and that’s offers not to be confused with authors they write books.

Craig: Yeah it’s right.

Jason Hartman: So its offers, so you focus on the small business the entrepreneur’s home based business. In this economy it’s hard enough to have money to start and sustain a business, and then it’s even tougher to get money to advertise and do that kind of stuff. You talked a little about driving traffic to websites. Did you have any more tips on the lead generation, traffic generation stuff?

Craig: Well, I — its all about the social networking. And it’s all about and it is mainly like I said before all those I used seven areas to drive people to the website online. It’s mainly like I said LinkedIn. LinkedIn is another one that I use. I become like an expert on LinkedIn. I answer questions. We always have these discussion groups. I always help people. Here is another one to drive traffic.

If you are a local business for example and you just had a local audience, you just — you are a small business or an entrepreneur and you just want to focus on your local area, I would tell people in the title bar for example of your web page, and most people don’t know what that is, but it’s the title bar that upper most part of your website page that no one even realizes that usually says about us in the About Us page and contact us at the Contact Us page. If you put like I live in Santa Clarita, California, so if I put Santa Clarita speaker Santa Clarita marketing seminars there, anyone that types in Santa Clarita marketing seminars or any like anything local like that they would come to my website first because its in the title bar.

I teach people how to use your local city name to drive people to your website by putting that keywords, the city’s name keyword all throughout your website as well, so that people like when I look at homes in Santa Clarita, I would type in Santa Clarita homes with in Google and obviously I would come to anyone that had anything to do with homes in Santa Clarita. I tell businesses to do that as well, so that’s the local search company, a local search type of trick.

There is always ways of driving more traffic to your website using videos. I put videos everywhere on YouTube like we talked about before, and I was going to say one more thing and I just totally lost my mind, but it’s basically using all these keywords basically in your website, and in everything that you do, driving people back to your thing. Oh I know what it was? I — if you type in marketing seminar and you would agree that marketing seminar is a huge thing on Google I mean that you probably know.

Jason Hartman: Very, very generic keyword.

Craig: Very generic thing. There was and I think I am still on the first page. I was number one for a very long time because in my title bar, the first words in the title bar was marketing seminar, and the last word in the title bar was marketing seminar, so it’s a trick that the Google fighter apparently look at this title bar in their Search Engine Optimization and most people pay like $1500 a month or $5 to $1500 a month getting a search engine optimization company to search to optimize your sites.

90% of what they do is changed that title bar, so ask your website person to just change the title bar. No one does it. and not even graphic designers out there know how to do it because they always — they put about us to about us page so they remember where that page was because then in the title bar it tells them all that would be About Us page, and no one changed it, so if you are one of those people that changed you still had title bars, and you are one step ahead of everybody else.

Jason Hartman: And Craig your book is entitled Brand on the Run. It reminds me of that old song Band on the Run.

Craig: Right exactly.

Jason Hartman: And I read it that way because I thought this guy that’s been on the music industry, right? Why did you call it that? I mean what does that mean Brand on the Run?

Craig: Well, actually that’s not the title of the book. The title of the book is the Rockstar System for Success. One of the things I talk about in the book is to brand on the run.

Jason Hartman: Oh okay.

Craig: But it is a very big part of the book, but I totally believe do you remember Sergeant Pepper’s the Beatles?

Jason Hartman: Sure.

Craig: When they did their concert they dressed in that garb for every single concept so they were branding through their clothes all the time. So when I go to speak at seminars and when I go to trade shows, and when I go to all these events, I have dressed in ripped jeans and I wear a rock and roll kind of shirt that’s not had been in the Rockstar kind of jacket, a very, very Rockstar light jacket with crosses on it and stuff, so when I go to these seminars where everyone is just business casual which is what they are supposed to do. I totally stand out from the competition. So now everyone says well, once again Craig yeah but you are the rockstar guy so you get to dress like that.

But we as business people don’t, but then I give this little story. There is this guy Glenn Morshower. He is — he played Aaron Pierce on the show 24 for seven years, very famous character actor.

Jason Hartman: I like Aaron Pierce. He was a good — he was one in the secret service.

Craig: That’s right he was the secret service guy for the President and he had this major story line going on because the President did something bad and he stood up for his rights. Anyway he has become very, very well known as that guy. You know he don’t knows his name, but he speaks at my seminars all the time. His name is Glenn Morshower. And he is a very good friend of mine.

Well, Glenn is also a motivational speaker now. And when he did motivational speakings or would fly to do movies he would be on a plane dressed in sweats and a hat, so he wasn’t recognized and he could kind of go undercover, so he would get on the plane and he would fly home, and everything would be fine, but he started saying to him stuff after he came to one of my boot camps. He is like do you know this Brand on the Run thing? I am going to try this, so he literally wore the same suit. Now, that’s the only suit that he wore on the show.

Jason Hartman: And let me guess and he had a little earpiece in his ear too.

Craig: Now, he didn’t go that far.

Jason Hartman: Okay.

Craig: But that would have been really good, so he is sitting in the literally first time he did, he wear the same suit that he wore on the show and he is sitting in the waiting room before they go on to the plane, and he is sitting next to this gentlemen and this gentleman says okay I just have to ask. You are Aaron Pierce from 24? Correct, and he goes yes I am and he goes so oh my god. It’s a pleasure to meet you and what are you doing here? Oh I just came back from this speaking gig. I was a speaker at this, whatever he was doing. And the guy that he met was actually a major promoter for conferences of seminars, so he got a $10,000 speaking gig because he was dressed my Aaron Pierce whereas if he was dressed in the sweat suit, probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

When he was on the plane same day same flight he got another speaking gig, so the guy that sat next to me in the airplane. Now he goes everywhere because he is a motivational speaker and he really wants to promote his speaking through the brand of Aaron Pierce. He gets speaking gigs all the time, and he meets people in airports and meets very interesting people, and he tells everyone the first thing he leaves him with I am a motivational speaker not I am an actor which he is, but I am a speaker because that’s what he is selling because he can’t really sell the acting in an airport, but he can sell that he is a motivational speaker that’s how people address the part all the time just whatever your address that part. I have a kindergarten teacher that teacher parents how to get their kids for kindergarten that’s for coaching program. And she wears a jumpsuit with the ABCs on it. You know something simple like that and that’s all you need to do.

Jason Hartman: That’s fantastic so all the world is indeed a stage as Shakespeare said.

Craig: And we are just merely players.

Jason Hartman: Yes and then Rush later did in their song Limelight so it’s all —

Craig: The Limelight, I love it.

Jason Hartman: You are a rock and roll guy.

Craig: You are a rock and roll guy, Jason aren’t you?

Jason Hartman: Yeah I love a lot of this great old music. It’s good. Well, hey Craig, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. Phenomenal success you’ve had and really great to hear all the stuff again everybody go to speakingofwealth.com/offers to learn more and we really appreciate having you on the show Craig and I will see you next weekend.

Craig: Thank you so much Jason I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care. Bye.

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The Speaking of Wealth Team

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