About Peter Hoppenfeld.
Peter Hoppenfeld is widely recognized as the “go to” attorney and advisor in the representation of direct marketers, speakers, authors, information marketers, “thought leaders,” entrepreneurs and domestic and international training companies and their founders in all aspects of their legal and business affairs. Peter is a seasoned transactional, commercial attorney with direct marketing, internet marketing, distribution, licensing, marketing, branding and operational expertise. On a daily basis, Peter helps authors, speakers, entrepreneurs, business owners and thought leaders create effective marketing, merchandising and expansion strategies. His mission is to rapidly, smartly and strategically grow people’s businesses, reach and revenues. Peter’s been described as “a lawyer who understands marketing and a marketer who happens to be a lawyer”.
Podcast transcript:
Welcome back to the urban monk podcast. Dr. Pedram Shojai excited to be here with an old friend, a consiglieri adviser. Peter Hoppenfeld has been, uh, the attorney and counsel. To a lot of the names that you would know in the health and the personal development industries. He’s been my attorney slash friend for a very long time. And, you know, in those off hours, Uh, when you’re talking about. We’re doing a film deal here and a book deal there, we start talking about the business and all the things that you see going right and wrong in the business. And Peter has a really interesting perspective having been around the block. Seen people find success, lose success, find their way, lose their way. And, , there’s, I think you’re going to really enjoy this podcast. Um, I brought him, uh, it’s raw. It’s real. You’re going to get a lot of the inside baseball, um, that you seldom hear. Uh, in this health and wellness industry. So we kind of, you know, we, we, we tear it apart a little bit. And i think we have a good time doing so so enjoy the podcast with peter hoppenfeld
Pedram Shojai: All right, Peter, welcome to the podcast. Always good to see you.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Oh, Pedram. It’s always good to be with you.
Pedram Shojai: Man, I’ve known you for better part of a decade now. Um, you’ve, uh, been my consigliere, uh, for some time, uh, navigating these choppy waters called the health industry. And, um, you and I have a lot of, uh, behind the scenes conversations that I would like to bring to the front because, uh, I think it’s going to be very helpful for my audience, my listeners, uh, to understand kind of the inside baseball.
Pedram Shojai: And also, you know, what their, uh, central role in this monster we’ve created is
Peter Hoppenfeld: Well look, Pedram, you and I know that we might talk for a half an hour about business and about the, in the so-called industry, and then there’s the seven minutes we spend with each other as Peter and Pedram. Um, That I value immensely, uh, because we know each other so well that we can both let down the bravado, let down our, our defenses and talk as, as, people. I, I said to you, what did I say to you four months ago? I said, Pedram, it’s time for Pedram to emerge strongly, deeply, passionately as the urban monk, right?
Pedram Shojai: I think we both missed
Peter Hoppenfeld: the world, the world needs you. ’cause we were so involved in transactions behind the scenes to get your message out. And I said, let’s stop working so hard to at all that tech and all that, those that finance and all that stuff.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Pedram, the world needs you talking to them every day. And that’s, I think what led to us kind of yesterday saying Maybe we should talk about this stuff.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm. Hmm. And I really appreciate that because it’s easy, it’s easy to fall into momentum, right? Well, this is what you do. Your business grows this big, you know, um, you know, I was doing films and series and, you know, there’s a, there’s a natural growth curve to every type of activity out there. Um, and even the Urban Monk falls for, uh, some of it, right?
Pedram Shojai: Where you, you don’t stop to question and say, just ’cause I can go there doesn’t mean I should.
Peter Hoppenfeld: People catch the wave and the wave takes over
Peter Hoppenfeld: and the adrenaline takes over and the adrenaline feels good and you just keep going and there’s another stage and there’s another opportunity and there’s another another. And then you have fans and you get caught up in
Peter Hoppenfeld: this kind of momentum that, um, stops you from being creative and, you know, has you copying the next great, uh, leader and. Your, your element of genuineness disappears. And from my experience over 30 plus years, representing a lot of thought leaders, for want of a better word, when they stop being genuine, they fail.
Pedram Shojai: So there’s a lot to unpack here because, uh, again, inside baseball, um, It’s easy for us to point fingers and blame the marketers and say, well, you know, everyone, you know, everyone’s leading these people astray. Um, but you, you bring up a really good point in that the audience is training the marketers to continue to bring the same garbage because no one wants to do the work anymore.
Pedram Shojai: And so that is, you know, it’s not a popular message, right? It’s something I’ve been talking about for years, um, is, you know, kung fu means hard work. Lifestyle is what you do, not the pill that you take, not the, you know, the promises that are out there. Um, and you’ve been at this, you’ve been in this industry for 35 years, right?
Pedram Shojai: What have you seen?
Peter Hoppenfeld: There’s a, there’s a couple of dynamics. On a macro level, there are people with talent and great ideas, thought leaders. Again, I don’t like the word, but let’s use it. ’cause unfortunately people self appoint themselves that, which I disagree with. They have a good message or they have a good book, or they have a good theory, and then they get caught up with, how do I bring it to market?
Peter Hoppenfeld: And they get aligned with the so-called marketing establishment, which has formulaic methods of getting a message across and selling stuff.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Fair.
Pedram Shojai: Fair. Fair. I mean, and, and, and disparate, disparate advice, but everyone’s right.
Peter Hoppenfeld: right. And that formulaic stuff. I personally, I read it every day and I hate it, but guess what? For the Pure Marketer, it works. It’s distasteful to me to see some very brilliant people with work and product and programs that don’t realize how misaligned their positivity is with the same old marketing crap. The same old marketing crap is fed by an audience of opportunity seekers. The buyers. Who will keep buying because marketers know how to push their buttons, their needs, their insecurities, and the buyers will always be buyers. You know, when we talk marketing Pedram, we’re always saying Our, our best audience buyer is our buyer well, and our best buyer is someone else’s buyer.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Well, let’s talk about the buyers. When I started this, in this part of my career, this part of my career, which has been almost my entire career, and I do more than lawyering, you know, it was pre-internet, it was Prefax machine, and it was, you know, infomercials and people getting on stage. And I learned early in my career when I got exposed to direct response, my advertising, that if I didn’t learn what the sales process was, I was just a lawyer saying no. And I started learning. Purposefully. For my own career, for my own ability to pay a mortgage, I had to learn what is the sales dynamic? What is that? This was platform speakers. Okay, what does that guy do to get that audience member to stand up and walk to the back of the room to buy something? And that still happens today, digitally.
Peter Hoppenfeld: You’re just not getting outta your, you’re just reaching into your pocket. You’re just putting your thumb to pay
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: to convert. Okay, what was that dynamic? What were the tricks of the trade? But what was the audience thinking? And I saw some of the best speakers in the world, many of whom had pure heart and soul. I’m not saying they’re bad. Uh, and it was a phenomenon to watch. The audience needs, wanted community. The audience were not happy, was not happy with their. Family life, their financial life, their personal life, their health, you name it, or all of that. And many of those buyers were multiple buyers. They would go, they, they were seminar junkies. And we see that today. We spoke up this yesterday. Many people go to a lot of these, a lot of these events. ’cause that’s their life. It fulfills a fraternal, a fraternal need. And I’m not being sexist, but a, a need to be part of a community.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And just so happens that community selling ’em stuff,
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: um, you know, a lot of times many of my clients have, be, have been successful in marketing strategies. Okay. And they become the how-to guys, the how-to gurus. Right. They figured out a way, not a bad, it’s not a bad thing. They figured out a formula, especially with new tech. Of marketing tools and strategies and methodologies that make it easier for other marketers to want to learn from them many a times.
Peter Hoppenfeld: It just, it starts off as a little germ in a mastermind where so-and-so says to you, P, you know, I’ve been doing X, Y, and Z. And you say, wow, I like to do that too. And the next thing you know, that first person becomes the guru of that type of methodology. Many of the buyers become bombarded or, or there are people who want to, they want to be like Mike, right?
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: The marketer wants to be the better marketer. The writer wants to be the better writer. And they go and they go to this program and this guy says, you must do 1, 2, 3, 4, and five. Great. Done. That’s gonna be my answer. Here’s a thousand dollars, here’s $10,000, here’s my subscription for the year. And then they hear about this other guy who says, you must do A, B, C, D, and E. And they go, great. my quick, that’s my solution. If I follow his rules, I’m gonna be successful. So if you ask me who am my most successful long-term clients who are honest, genuine marketers, the ones who go to one program and say, you know, one in three don’t work for me, but two and six do, and B, A and D just don’t, I can’t do that.
Peter Hoppenfeld: But I could do these other things and I’m not good with a podcast, but I could be good writing. And they put together this, this amalgam of what they’ve learned and have a genuine approach. And guess what? They become successful.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: So I don’t know if I just made, made a point, but.
Pedram Shojai: Do you, you made, you made a few points fir first off. The, you know, the, the, the people that I’ll hang out with, the people that I like are the ones that usually have a disdain for marketing, right? They’re just someone trying to help somebody. And then you see, you know, and you see, you see these douche bags come and go, um, making a bunch of money because they’re, you know, they’re, they’re good at, you know, managing the flock and telling people, kinda manhandling people and saying, Nope, it is 1, 2, 3, 4, and five.
Pedram Shojai: And if you don’t listen, you’re a terrible student and you’re gonna get kicked outta my community and we’re gonna ostracize you all this cult shit. Right? And there’s a lot of it out there. Um, and you see it work, right? As a genuine, you know, whether it’s a physician or a personal development person trying to help people, you’re like, damn, that guy’s crushing it, right?
Pedram Shojai: We, you, you and I had this, we had to send a cease and desist to this plagiarist douche bag using the urban monk. And we, and you know, it’s just like, what do you stealing Stuff happens all the time. Happens
Peter Hoppenfeld: It’s proof you’re doing.
Pedram Shojai: Totally. Totally. But people who are unscrupulous, um, and are, you know, much more willing to take advantage of people, get good at that game. And then you have honest people that have to make a living and claw through this attention economy so that people can see them and their work. And at the same time, you know, you’re told, well, this language is what you gotta use because this is where the fish are biting.
Pedram Shojai: And, you know, it’s, it’s a very difficult world to navigate, trying to do good and also get market share, uh, when the marketing messaging is, yeah, I’m paying rent and all of it. Right. And so it’s, it’s part Yeah. All of it. And, you know, you’ve seen people go the wrong way. You’ve seen people come and, you know, you have a, i I have a lot of respect for, uh, A lot of the clients that you have, right?
Pedram Shojai: Like people that have been in the industry that are helping people and, you know, whatever it is, just a small vertical, but their, you know, their intent is what is, is, you know, well, uh, aligned and they’re trying to help people. And then you see the people that lose their way. Who, who are the people losing their way and why not names?
Peter Hoppenfeld: So look, you know, it’s, we always talk about this. You’ll be at a, at a get together and you’ll say, whatever happened to so-and-so, he was killing it, right?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Whatever happened, you know, and people go from zero to hero to zero to hero to zero. It’s really hard to stay hero. Um,
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: your words get stale. Your, you get full of your ego. You assume you have more power than you do. I used to like say you can’t, I used to tell this story when I was, I was speaking a lot, you know, um, I represented Harv Ecker for a dozen years, and I, uh, while I’m a Met fan, I took the ball with my boys to the last season at Yankee Stadium, just for the sake of being at the old Yankee Stadium. And we’re sitting, I dunno if you ever there Pedram, it’s v it’s very tight. And it was very steep even in the, down by the field. And at the time, I was working on something with Harv and I, you know, the font on my phone at the time was a Blackberry was big. And I’m text harv’s texting me, and a guy behind me tasked me on the shoulder between innings.
Peter Hoppenfeld: He said, are you texting with Harv Ecker? And rather than say mind your own business, I said, yeah. He says, oh, I just saw him speak. He’s amazing. I said, yes he is. And I should have said, you know, mind your own business. And I would use it as an example of saying you can’t, you know, manage your business from a luxury box, you know, so I’ve seen clients who get so big of themselves and they become detached from their audience.
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Um, and the things that, that people latched onto, like Hof never did the thing that people latched onto originally. He maintained he was the same guy. Um, the message was consistent. It’s the clients who, oh, I’ve seen that back away from it. Or, the story was actually never that genuine. How,
Peter Hoppenfeld: how many success coaches do we know? Who are the most unsuccessful people we’ve ever met?
Pedram Shojai: Do what I say, not what I do.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Do what I say, do what? I can’t do what I say, but do what I can’t do.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Or,
Pedram Shojai: it selling. Selling shovels at the Gold Rush.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Or, you know, let’s let, let’s pay to become a best, best bestselling book author.
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I mean, that was going on. Gee, I wanna be a bestselling author in Amazon in some little niche bullshit, you know, category. So I can say I’m a bestselling author.
Peter Hoppenfeld: What’s that all about? That’s giving credibility to yourself so you could sell shit to your audience because you haven’t proved it otherwise.
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Um, so for me, when I, my observation is the clients who’ve self-sustained have been resilient from a business point of view. You know, it’s one thing to build a million dollar business, and I applaud anybody who builds a million dollar business, but to go from a million to five is immensely harder. And to go from five to 10 is a hundred times harder. And I’ve had clients grow businesses from their den to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Okay. And I’ve been representing several of those for dozens of years. And what they’ve been able to do is keep their eye on the ball and know when they’re in over their head,
Pedram Shojai: Mm
Peter Hoppenfeld: right? Know when to relinquish control.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Oh my God. Relinquish control to bring in people who are better skilled and the audience needs to do the same thing. They need to be able to self filter, um, be a little bit more self-aware that they’re being sold or to work on their own shit. Especially look post Covid, my entire professional practice changed on my say so.
Peter Hoppenfeld: ’cause it proved to me that a lot of the, the, the newbie clients I was working with were going on paths I couldn’t support. So
Pedram Shojai: taking, taking advice from people, telling them to do exactly what they were doing.
Pedram Shojai: I mean, look, there’s a lot of bad advice out there. I’m also, you know, lately I used to never say this, um, ’cause a lot of these folks are my friends, but if you start looking at who’s giving health advice out there, a good percentage of ’em have never seen a, a, a patient in their lives. They’re just good marketers and
Peter Hoppenfeld: then that’s the other problem. And, and they’re, and they, a lot of those leaders have fans who wanna be like, Mike.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I mean, like, for example, I’ll, I’ll just talk about health coaching and I work with some of the top teachers and trainers and organizations legit, you know, providers of training to turn out qualified health coaches. And then there are all the mail, mail order companies. And there’s gonna be a fallout ’cause someone is gonna get hurt. And look, I mean, there was, people were coming to me saying, I’m a doctor. I wanna become a health coach. I want to have national presence. Okay, how do I become a health coach so I can treat people around the world, And, and I’ll tell you, I helped a bunch of clients do it, but I won’t do it anymore. There’s a reason why there are licensing requirements.
Peter Hoppenfeld: There’s a reason. Public health reason why you just can’t hang a shingle. Yeah. I’ll work with people who are health coaches if they, as long as they understand that if it, if it smells like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. So don’t be a fake doctor.
Pedram Shojai: mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Number one, it’s feeding false hope. ’cause, try. ’cause we know this, the fact that you put, you know, people are being trained. Buy the kind of marketers we’re talking about that if you just put it out there and you buy this package and you put a website up and you do these things and you send out these, this series of emails, you’re gonna be a successful health practitioner.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And guess what? Bullshit
Pedram Shojai: There’s a lot of school that goes into that. There’s a lot of experience that goes into that. There’s a lot of internship hours and clinical rounds and things that prepare you to have this ultimate responsibility of. someone’s health, and even if you don’t overtly hurt this person, I’m of the opinion that if you waste someone’s time, you’ve hurt them because you’ve taken the precious heartbeats.
Pedram Shojai: They could have invested towards an actual solution. Having ’em run around a hamster wheel with your words,
Peter Hoppenfeld: Or worse than that, you deliver a message. That this, that stops people from calling their doctor
Pedram Shojai: you’ve seen that, haven’t you?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Oh, yeah.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Now there are legitimate good, well-known programs that take qualified, dedicated healthcare professionals who can’t market their way out of a paper bag, and that’s a positive thing.
Pedram Shojai: sure.
Peter Hoppenfeld: let’s, I’m not condemning everybody.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I’m saying there are situations, great programs, stupendous communities that I support with professionals with real credentials who need to get their word out and don’t know how. Okay, now I’ll criticize the fact that one size fits all doesn’t work for everybody on the marketing side, but there are a lot of newbies out there that have no training. They happen to like Dr. So-and-so I want, and they’re groupies and there happen to be a lot of so-called doctors who are nothing but thieves and snake oil salesman. But that’s been going on forever.
I hope you’re enjoying this podcast. Peter’s great. I’ve known him for years, like I said, and I just love the work that he does around keeping it real and keeping people sane so that they can continue to help people. Not everyone does so. Um, Look, there’s a lot of pills, potions lotions. There’s a lot of hyperbole. Obviously we’ve been talking about this. There’s a lot of weirdness in these industries. Um, The only place I’m going to do a plug here for my own commercial interests, because that’s how we keep the lights on. Is the program that is the one you should be paying attention to. And it’s called the temple grounds. Why? Because that’s where I teach the mind body practices, that Xi gong, the yoga, um, the stuff that helps you bring your attention back, the stuff that brings you back in your body to help you make better decisions and stop being in a. You know, influenced if you will, by so many of these narratives out there. A highly encourage it. Every student who has engaged in doing the work has been better for it. Oh my God, but you got to do the work, right? So this isn’t for the lazy. This is for the dedicated and, um, you know, my favorite favorite thing to do is teach people how to fish. That’s where I do it. So go to the urban monk.com. Into the store find the temple grounds. Come and go as you please. But that’s where I feel best doing the work that I do, because I know that if I teach you how to be a sustained healthy person, That that is the gift that will transfer into your family and your world All right. back to peter
Pedram Shojai: It certainly has. It certainly has that. See, that’s the thing too, is like there’s this. World of functional medicine, there’s this renaissance happening where you can really, really radically transform your health and your life and, you know, wonderful things that are now available, you know, outside of the kind of main street doctor paradigm.
Pedram Shojai: Um, and there’s just a lot of people making noise saying Me too, but are not actually doing that type of work. All you gotta do is write up along it. Um, and those are the ones that I’ve seen, you know, potentially really hurt people. Um, and at the very least, waste people’s time and take their valuable resources and money, um, and create problems for the entire industry.
Pedram Shojai: ’cause there are well-intentioned doctors that, you know, should be in that seat.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Look, I’m a, I’ve represented a lot of people in functional medicine, and I, I applaud it and I dig it, and it makes, it, make, gives me self-satisfaction. But there are also people who are abusers. They just latch on the, to the label. Okay. And they think I’m just, they’re gonna just kind of ride the coattails, but they’re not serious.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah,
Peter Hoppenfeld: And they’re, they’re even, they’re, that’s where the real danger is. Okay. You know, uh, but that, that kind of opportunism is happening, been happening for generations.
Pedram Shojai: yeah. Nothing. I mean, listen, the circus has gone through every town, but there are these guys that famous, famous names that are out there trying to convince you that you’re an expert in something. So all you have to do is hang a shingle and be the expert, um, and, and, you know, start your business and they’ll take your 10, 20, 10, 20 grand to like, you know, convince you that you’re, you know, ready to go and you’re an expert.
Pedram Shojai: But, you know, I, I come from the school of kung fu where I don’t care how damn good I am at anything that I purportedly know. I still don’t call myself an expert. Minimum 10,000 hours. And I’m still like, I got the, my, my teeth kicked in for the humility of saying, you ain’t shit. Right. You’re, you’re still learning.
Pedram Shojai: Um, and
Peter Hoppenfeld: appointed thought leader, my friend.
Pedram Shojai: that’s it. That’s it. And those are the ones that, you know, scare the hell out of me. Right. Those are the ones that don’t know enough to know that they don’t know anything.
Peter Hoppenfeld: They believe their own bullshit. And you look, we know there was a phase, I don’t know, maybe six, seven years ago. Well, that was what the big push was. Everybody could be an expert. Really For me, I, I’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s, that’s why they call it a practice. I learn something new every day, right? And there’s nothing short of experience. Um, but poof. This is how you make yourself an expert.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Poof. This is how you make yourself a bestselling author. I remember the day your book came out ’cause I was going to a Spruce Springsteen concert in Hartford, Connecticut, and you told me your book was out. And it was more exciting that day than going to the damn concert because I know, I knew the sweat and the tears and the effort. Okay. To bring about a book that was about your life. And at the same time, if I, you know, I could have made two other phone calls to four other people who would say, oh, you wanna be a bestselling author? Gimme a hundred grand.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Oh, you know, the, the, the economy of reality, or
Pedram Shojai: Well, to be an Amazon bestseller in a micro category. What’s that?
Peter Hoppenfeld: it’s about motive. What’s your motivation? What’s your
Peter Hoppenfeld: purpose?
Pedram Shojai: What’s it? Well, if your
Peter Hoppenfeld: makes you
Pedram Shojai: be a bestseller, that’s, I mean, okay. Why
Peter Hoppenfeld: you’re right. Exactly. You know why? ’cause people think on their sales page, if it says bestselling author, that means shit to their
Peter Hoppenfeld: audience. Oh, he’s a bestselling author. I’m gonna buy that. Hey look, I’ll go, we’ll go behind the curtain.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Right? I just read 25 pages of copy from you. About weight loss. And if I showed that copy to my standard copywriters, direct response copywriters, they would’ve said, never gonna work. This is not useful. Why? Why, why would anybody read this? But they didn’t, they wouldn’t understand, okay, you had an important message to deliver over a week that will be delivered over a week.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And guess what? You’re not selling anything. You’re just educating people because you have earned the respect of your audience. Um, and the c you said to me, you know, you rep respect many of my, my long-term clients, guess what? They’ve all done the same thing. Um, so I like to talk, you know, I go back in history a little bit ’cause I’m old. And you know, I, I’ve been doing this a long time and the technology’s changed and I’ve just added tools to my tool belt and that’s been my success, fine part of it. 2008. Prior to that, I worked with a lot of live seminar companies. The model was driving people to a ballroom, selling them stuff and getting as much money as you could, could outta their pocket that day. On the mo, at that moment, 2008, what happens? The banking system collapses. The economy’s in a tailspin. We had the mortgage crisis. Nobody was buying big ticket stuff, but guess, and at the time, if I said to you, you buy in, do you buy content on the internet?
Peter Hoppenfeld: You’d say to me, the internet is free. Who’s buying anything? Nobody gonna buy training. What are you talking about? In 2008, everything changes. One of my clients, Ryan Lee, who I love dearly, is a fitness expert, but he’s teaching, working with special needs kids in a local children’s hospital, and he’s writing newsletters about fitness, and he’s getting response. He’s not asking for anything. And then he learns how to build a community. He says, you know, if you, if you like me, would you buy a subscription for 9 95 a month, a year before a marketer like him would be charging $5,000? And it’s the beginning of the, the, this phase of direct response. Build a community cook, you know, nurture them, build trust, don’t be greedy. And everything flipped. And I watched it happen.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Um, and the ones, and many of those clients from that generation who are now, I guess, the OG of direct response, not bad for an old guy. Still have tight-knit communities. And then I have other clients who come in, make a quick kick, quick hit, don’t give a shit.
Pedram Shojai: We started by talking about. The audience training, the, the business and the audience being what kind of drives, how things go? Um, something I’ve been saying for years, again, not popular, but I don’t care, is, you know, look, first of all, we grew up in a world where, you know, we, we’ve been selling sugar cereal to children and just, you know, quick fixes to everything.
Pedram Shojai: And so marketing has gotten tighter and tighter around saying, it’s okay. You, you can be lazy. ’cause my solution is gonna, you know, you’ll drop 50 pounds with my shit, no problem. And so it’s become a race to the bottom everyone admits it beyond closed doors. But, and this is the thing, I’m, I’m talking directly to my listeners now.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Right.
Pedram Shojai: They think you’re stupid, they think you’re lazy, they assume you’re not gonna do the work. you’re, you’re expected to just buy the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Because that’s who you’ve become to the industry. How do we change that? Right? How do we fix the humans that are the currency of a system that isn’t serving them anymore?
Pedram Shojai: It’s not, right?
Peter Hoppenfeld: The other element to that, Pedram is advertising. When I grew up was Madison Avenue, and now it’s not even Main Street. I. It’s in your bedroom.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah.
Peter Hoppenfeld: So your audience who buy this stuff, that avatar is being shared. So without getting too big brother-ish, the impulse buyer is known. The impulse buyer is
Peter Hoppenfeld: targeted. Okay? So what the audience needs to, the new audience needs to be educated that they’re being sold. Now, look, Amazon changed the world, but we’re not talking about Amazon. Amazon’s a big freaking department store. What we are talking about is that targeted message that’s intended to get under your skin and scare you, or it’s intended to make you feel like you’re missing out. Fomo, or it’s intended to make to say that you are lazy, and this is gonna make it easy. Okay? Or it’s intended to, to prey on conspiracy theories, to dispel the expertise and experience of your doctor, your pharmacist. If I see another piece of copy that says, this offer may not be around long enough because big pharma’s gonna shut me down. Bullshit or buy now because we don’t know how long we’re gonna have inventory. Bullshit. I think we need to train people to see the stupid messages. Formulaic marketing. You wanna know the formula. Health
Pedram Shojai: him.
Peter Hoppenfeld: simple. There’s a problem. A lot of people have this problem. A lot of people would like a solution to the problem. It’s been going on for generations. I have a secret. I can solve the problem. Would you like me to solve the problem? I’m an expert. I did all this research. This is the simple solution. Wouldn’t you like to have the simple solution? Wouldn’t you pay like a lot of money for it? Well, what if I told you I can help you for less than a cup of coffee, the cost of a cup of Starbucks, buy now, but buy a lot now.
Peter Hoppenfeld: ’cause we might run out and this offer may disappear because big pharma doesn’t want us to do this bullshit. That’s it. That’s the formula. And guess what? Behind the scenes I will talk to a lot of copy chiefs or clients. And the same thing happens in financial, off financial offers, not so much in personal development. And we will say, gun, why can’t we write elegant copy? And the answer is, it doesn’t sell. So I’m not saying don’t buy. I’m just saying buy for the right reason. Another example, C B D, when the first marketers were selling C B D, they wanted to go through that same formula and promise the shit out of it, but legally they couldn’t. And I told ’em they couldn’t ’cause there were no studies because it was illegal initially, it was, you know, categorized with the T H C model.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Though there were no clinical studies about C B D, everybody wanted to say they cured X, Y, and Z A year, two years goes by and I, this was the message, and I still say it today, client, somebody comes to me, I’m selling a C B D product. And they’ll say, great. The news media has already educated the public about C B D. Nothing you say is gonna convince somebody who’s not interested or never heard of it to buy it. So don’t bother. ’cause the more you do that, the more trouble you’re gonna get into. So C, B, D is vitamin C.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm,
Peter Hoppenfeld: People are looking for it, give them better pricing and better quality done, but they still feel like my my buyer needs that story.
Pedram Shojai: hmm,
Peter Hoppenfeld: So the buyer needs to be able to call bullshit on their sellers.
Pedram Shojai: hmm. The b the buyer looking the next thing, the thing, you know, hail Mary, hail Mary, hail Mary. I’ve got too many problems to be able to resolve them with lifestyle and changes. That’s gonna take too long. So now, you know, I, I lost too much on the last couple hands in poker. I gotta go all in and that all in mentality on a, on a poker table, it’s called playing on tilt.
Pedram Shojai: And you know, that’s the guy that’s gonna be off the table in a little bit yet in our health. and our health decisions for our wellness. Uh, I’m sorry, was it ol? No, it was mangosteen. No, it was, uh, you know, Quicksilver this or whatever that, and it’s always the silver bullet that has to replace the next one.
Pedram Shojai: When’s it gonna stop folks?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Look, think about the music, man. The, the movie, the play, right? Was it Rob, Robert, pre Richard, Robert Preston would come to town and sell, you know, be selling instruments. It’s the same thing. It’s been going on forever. Snake old. We’re the, we’re the snake. Old salesman. Salesman. Phrase come from.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: People innately have, apparently, innately have, and I don’t wanna talk like I’m a sociologist. I’m not. Although sometimes I play social worker. Um, people want an easy fix. They want an easy fix for their health. They want an easy fix for their career. For their pocketbook. The same kind of dynamic sales dynamic is in selling business opportunities. Ultimately, the buyer, we’re talking about Pedra is an opportunity seeker. I wanna be a health coach. I wanna, you know, buy and sell Bitcoin. I wanna, you know, you name it.
Pedram Shojai: Day trade
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah. Day trade just did one of those.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah,
Pedram Shojai: Mm-hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: yeah. you know.
Pedram Shojai: flip side, the flip side is the world could use more health coaches, um,
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah, yeah.
Pedram Shojai: they were to integrate into a broken medical system and help intermediate where lifestyle, um, has become a real, uh, you know, challenge.
Peter Hoppenfeld: But here’s the challenge. And I don’t know if it’s the buyer or the seller or combination. They can’t leave well enough alone. Okay. So if the, the, the the person teaching people to be health coaches could just like take the, the approach like Sandy Scheinbaum test health coaches coach, lifestyle coach, they don’t test, they don’t go beyond, they stay in their ra in their guardrails. Okay? I have other clients who say, no, it’s okay for you to do functional medicine testing and tell people what to do. And I go, I don’t know about that. And I’ve had that argument. And those are credentialed people. And then you have other folks who say, oh, people are making a killing term creating health cultures.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Well, I’m gonna do the same thing and I know nothing about it.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And we know people in health and wellness who have zero, they always show up. Reinvent themselves over and over again. They have nothing to do, no training about health.
Pedram Shojai: Nope. But they know, but they know how to pimp a podcast.
Peter Hoppenfeld: they do. And they know how to show up and they know how to glance at hand and they know how to bullshit and they know how to raise money
Pedram Shojai: yep.
Peter Hoppenfeld: and then they fail and then they schmooze. So good they come back again now. Yeah. Pedram, if we could have health coaches stay in their guardrails and not be dangerous, let’s
Peter Hoppenfeld: make a million of them.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah. Useful. Really useful to,
Peter Hoppenfeld: Big time. Big time.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Big time.
Pedram Shojai: and millions of people suffering from lifestyle diseases and chronic diseases destroying the western world. Makes perfect sense.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And if we could take your sleep program, your di your, your teaching teaching about weight loss and fitness that’s not full of bullshit. You. I just read an eight, nine day, you know, sequence of emails that sold nothing. My God. Now, will people come to you for the opportunities that you do make available?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah, they will, because what you do is build trust and you don’t lie.
Pedram Shojai: Rare breed. And, and, and here’s the thing, and this is where I also want to, you know, I have a lot of friends in the business. You ask ’em what their goals are and they all say, I wanna be a billionaire. You know, I wanna build a space rocket and get off the planet that we killed. You know, and I say that tongue in cheek, but like everyone wants to have, you know, a nine figure business going to 11 figures.
Pedram Shojai: And, and you know, I, I honestly like, I look at all these guys and I’m like, well, maybe I should, I should be, you know, hungry like that. And I just take one look at my kids and say, you know what? I’d rather spend time with them. I’d rather live a healthy, balanced life and be the husband and the dad and the community member that the people around me deserve.
Pedram Shojai: And yeah, sure. Make a living. But why, why? What is that inherent thing to need to be so damn successful that you lose your way? And I think that’s a plague in not just health industry and personal development in the world, right? It’s, it’s, it’s wall street’s, demons, you know, moving into everybody.
Peter Hoppenfeld: You know something? I think it come, it’s, it’s at a deeper level. Uh, and I’ve had my successes and I real, I’ve realized that I lived on adrenaline for many, many years.
Pedram Shojai: And you wonder why he couldn’t sleep
Peter Hoppenfeld: yeah, no shit. You know, it, you, you get a, you get a jolt out of it, um, until the jolt doesn’t work anymore.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Or until it doesn’t make a difference anymore. Um, I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think
Peter Hoppenfeld: a lot of that is deep rooted, either because you have role, people have role models of high achievers, or they aspire to be a high achiever because they didn’t have that role model, or they think it’s the end all and be all in panacea that if you make a lot of money, your problems go away. Uh, and that’s just not the case. Um,
Pedram Shojai: You were, you were part of this, um, you’ve been with me for a, a, a long time now, and so this, this, uh, movie I did with Robert Kiyosaki and, you know, you could say whatever you want about Robert Kiyosaki’s, uh, you know, his elaborate character, but I find that his message on finance was really refreshing, which was if you could just get your passive income to exceed your monthly bills, you’re free.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah,
Pedram Shojai: So if you got $2,200 a month and you know, family overhead or $22,000 a month, and you just think to buy your time back and find financial freedom, Along those lines, instead of saying, I need a billion to get outta this fucking mess. Right. I, I found it to be sobering.
Peter Hoppenfeld: well the first direct response client I represented 30 plus years ago, and I knew nothing about this world, was a guy named Charles Gibbons, the famous, or infamous, depending on how you look at it. Charles Gibbons, or Tragic, who at the time had a book called Wealth Without Risk. This is pre-internet. He was teaching personal finance strategies.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Some were smart and some were stupid, but he generally had pretty good utility. He was running five infomercials, running different programs all over the place out of Altamont Springs, Florida. He had his demons. Okay it, he got stubborn. He had made some pretty, some I learned, you know, he made some statements about his life, which turned out not to be true, which was his downfall. But to this day, there’s nothing that’s been replaced that’s replaced it.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I have a lot of people talking about success and a lot of people talking about buying and selling options and crypto and trading and signals and all kinds of stuff. The only pro client I’ve had that remotely talked about the ED gave the education that people just don’t get. Was Ramit Seti back in about 10 years ago who was, had a book called I’ll Teach You How to Be Rich. And it was targeted about 20 somethings who were coming outta college and had no clue how they, that they even needed a check account, checking account. Um, and so maybe part of the dilemma we’re talking about is a lack of understanding of how money and finance and how it affects your life and what, what’s real and what’s not.
Peter Hoppenfeld: It’s just not taught
Pedram Shojai: I wasn’t taught it, we’re immigrants. Be a doctor. All your problems will be solved. Just be a doctor. How many broke doctors have you worked with, Peter? How many doctors who make terrible financial decisions do you know?
Peter Hoppenfeld: 99%. ’cause there was no training about it.
Peter Hoppenfeld: None
Pedram Shojai: Yeah,
Peter Hoppenfeld: loose. Here you go.
Peter Hoppenfeld: All this clinical experience heal the world. That’s it. And, They, you know, then they’re searching for the magic bullet ’cause they can’t pay the rent. And the public perception is you’re a doctor, you’ve got it made.
Pedram Shojai: yeah. Well, and, and you play along because once you get outta medical school, you get rid of the Toyota ’cause doctors drive cayennes. And so you are now on the hamster wheel of needing to make more money to look like the doctor You are on the outside, right? And you know it, it goes back to, you know, the words kung fu uh, work hard, eat bitter.
Pedram Shojai: You can watch all the Jet Lee movies out there and still not know any kung fu. The only way your kung fu gets better. It’s to do the damn blocks, the punches, the kicks, thousands and thousands of hours of hard work that makes you a better martial artist. But it’s not just a martial artist. It’s a metaphor for life.
Pedram Shojai: It’s the work you put in. And so I’d like to come back to that for our audience. Um, not about the pills, it’s not about the promise. It’s not about the hyperbole. It’s about what you do every single day to advance your life in a positive, meaningful direction. again, that’s not, I can’t sell that in a bottle, but that’s, that’s the medicine.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Which is why I said to you, About six months ago. The world needs the urban monk to deliver a meditation or a mantra of the day. Because I think especially now, there’s so much information. There’s people are facing, not even garden hoses, they’re facing fire trucks worth of stuff hitting ’em every day, and you tend to filter out the stuff that’s mindless death scroll, right, or that seems to be the easy way out. If anything, I think it’s easier for the marketer to find your moment of weakness to get you to buy something than ever before, because do you want to watch the news? What’s true, what’s not? You wanna watch, follow politics. I’m not gonna get there, but world events, climate change. Okay. Yeah, you’d love to watch the meme of the golden retriever or the message that’s cute in selling you the magic pill. So I think self-discipline, learning how to turn it off. Not that easy. I mean, I try, it’s like I say to my wife, you know, like, by nine o’clock, 8 30, 9 o’clock at night, can we watch something mindless now?
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Right,
Pedram Shojai: when they get you , my mindless, mindless is guard down state, right. Mindless without advertising may be okay. Mindless with advertising. I’m not smart enough to watch that for very long.
Peter Hoppenfeld: right. Well, I’m talking mindless without
Peter Hoppenfeld: advertising. ’cause unfortunately mindless with advertising, it’s what gets you to click
Pedram Shojai: Yep.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And,
Peter Hoppenfeld: you know, look, let’s, let’s be clear straight to your audience. We’re not just talking about money. Marketers want you to, want you to want you to convert. What’s that mean?
Peter Hoppenfeld: They want you to click. Okay. Every time you click, you tell the world more about your own insecurities. So that first 10, those first 10 clicks are just adding to the code. And the 11th thing you see is a thing you’re gonna buy.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And guess what? You might have been set up for that buy.
Pedram Shojai: Might’ve.
Peter Hoppenfeld: You were set up for that buy. You know, I, I am, I’m loathed to be, I am criticized by my family for, um, viewing the world with rainbows and unicorns.
Pedram Shojai: They, they now have AI
Peter Hoppenfeld: that, I don’t want to give that up, but a healthy dose of skepticism. Go goes a long way. AI just makes it faster
Pedram Shojai: talk about the auspices under which we are here few months back, and it’s taken a while to turn the ship. You’re like, I, you know, I miss the urban monk. The world misses, the urban monk. Come back. But I wanna, I wanna share with my audience some of the context there is, it’s not like I was. Doing cocaine and driving Maseratis and like lost my way along tho those lines, I was hell bent on producing high quality media that I thought was saving the world.
Peter Hoppenfeld: and it was, and it
Peter Hoppenfeld: does.
Pedram Shojai: it, and it was, and it does. But I have had these sobering realizations that there is just so much information that if you can’t stop and take time to think for yourself, if you can’t take your attention back from the barrage, you know, there’s a hundred thousand podcasts telling you everything you should be doing, and you listen to three of ’em and you’re already confused and you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know what the hell to do because the information barrage won’t stop.
Pedram Shojai: And so I found myself well intentioned, creating more and more high quality media to help people and realized. Oh, perfect example, 10 part series on the microbiome, talking about the science of lifestyle and how to eat and how to combine and, and have the right, you know, uh, balance of phytonutrients so you could live a healthful life.
Pedram Shojai: And you know what our customer service blew up with. Yeah. Yeah. What probiotic do you recommend?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Look, I like to back to the word genuine. Okay? I read copy every day. It’s snitch what I do, and it. Lets me be it. It’s why people come to me because I can speak the language of the marketer, good or bad. And the only way to do that is to see the messaging. The messaging that works formulaic or not is the messaging that’s genuine, that doesn’t have any clunkers. For example, and I give this example, if I went to a Bruce Springsteen show and in the middle of the concert the pianist, Roy bitten, hit a bad note. When I leave the show, what am I gonna remember? The bad note, when I’m watching something, an ad, a podcast, listening to a podcast, if something is just off, I’m gonna click away. So I have clients that have a voice and they bring in a new ri, a new copywriter, and that copywriter writes bullshit. Same old, same old. I push it back and say, that’s not how so-and-so speaks. The audience isn’t gonna go who? Who kidnapped Pedram. He doesn’t talk that way. So for me, E, your ability now, that’s the, don’t let it go to your head, Mr. Pedro. Your ability to look at the camera and give a word of wisdom to a community that respects you is what we need. So I was working with you on a lot of projects that were full of immense value in the long term of the world, but required you to be doing things like raising capital, like managing people, like being a producer, which you’re good at, but it was taking away a. Your, the ability on a daily basis to look at the camera and say to the audience, Hey, I know it’s tough. Think about this. Or Hey, take a break from the world. Think about that. And look, you could’ve said to me, fuck you, you, what do you know about me?
Pedram Shojai: Hmm.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I’m just saying it ’cause I’ve watched you in action.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah. And you were right. You were right. Just because I could be good at multiple things doesn’t mean that’s the best use of my time on planet Earth.
Peter Hoppenfeld: You still gotta pay the rent.
Pedram Shojai: You still gotta pay the rent, but, you know, look, God, God always provides when you’re, that’s it. When you’re of service, you’re helping people. Money, money shows up. So it was never, it’s never been about the money for me, it was about, oh, you know, creating all these huge projects to help more people. And I don’t know if the mass media thing.
Pedram Shojai: Is what it’s cracked out to be. Right? Because there’s so much of it. It’s so dilutive that people have come to expect content while they just sit there and not listen because they wanna be entertained. And my training was to shake the shit out of people and have ’em wake up. And that’s not how docuseries work, right?
Pedram Shojai: That’s how real talk works.
Peter Hoppenfeld: And the other thing is there’s this, and the marketers are at fault of this. And that’s that you, the message is you can only be effective you if you reach the masses. And I tend to disagree. Uh, you could be very effective in a, a community that’s aligned, you know, you build. You, you build groundswell with the first 10 people. 20 people. So again, there are people who keep score by how many views they have or likes they have, or subscribers they have, or emails they have. And those ultimately turn out to be false. Um, a false scorecard because this, the guy with the million names on his email list just went from here to zero. And who gives a shit because he lost side of the ball or he didn’t respect his audience, or he got too big for his britches, or he hired the wrong people, or he missed understanding the marketplace, or he lied. So I, I’d, you know, I’d rather be standing with a smaller audience that’s genuine. That will listen to you maybe and buy from you and live with you long term. So the clients I have who have been around a long time, they keep scoring different ways.
Pedram Shojai: Hmm. It’s funny, you go to these business conferences and you know, people are like, Hey, how many employees do you have? How big is your team? How much you bench bro? Right? And, and it’s just this really trite, fraternal, you know, Cox Wingy thing is not reflective of a, you know, net profits or success or anything on the business side either, right?
Pedram Shojai: How big is your team? Doesn’t mean anything. Um, and it also is, I think, asking the wrong question, right? To your point.
Peter Hoppenfeld: People have said to, I’ve gone to conferences and I’m, I try to avoid lawyer conferences. How big is your firm?
Peter Hoppenfeld: It’s like, who the fuck caress?
Pedram Shojai: Yeah. How much time do I spend with my wife? That’s a better question, right? How much time do I get with my grandkids? That’s a real question. And you know, that’s where I think you and I get along Dandy, right? Is your family guy first. Right? You’re, you’re of service first. And, uh, you know, I think it’s just something important to remember, right?
Pedram Shojai: If, you know, if you’re getting your health messaging from someone who’s taking uppers and, um, you know, pretending to be something that they’re not to, you know, keep, keep the raw going. That’s, you’re, you could burn out just like they will.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Again, to being of service to the audience. It’s like, you know when you see that message from the guy who said, I’ve made gazillion dollars, but today only you could buy this ebook from me for 39 bucks. Don’t you think that if he made a gazillion dollars, he wouldn’t be asking you for 39 bucks?
Pedram Shojai: He’d be on a fucking beach
Peter Hoppenfeld: Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah.
Peter Hoppenfeld: But you know, shame on all of us. It works.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah.
Peter Hoppenfeld: It does.
Pedram Shojai: We have to take our attention back. We have to take our power back and learn to think for ourselves again, that’s like sacrilege because marketers want you stupid and and impulsive. But if you can’t master your own impulses, you’re not gonna master saying no to the cheesecake after dinner either. You’re not gonna master many things, and so bringing your focus back, bringing your attention back, not easy, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s the only game in town.
Pedram Shojai: It’s the most important skill you can learn is to get your agency back.
Peter Hoppenfeld: You know? How often do you. Be in a situation where someone says, I just saw that so-and-so says, you know, some news source tells you X. And we all are faced with the fact that it’s hard to know what’s a real, real source. Um, again, without sounding like my life is full of skepticism. ’cause it’s not, you gotta take the time and not be so impulsive.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Um, I’m talking from this fear that I’m dealing with on a daily basis, but the audience needs to train itself to listen and look and build up their gut in terms of feeling what’s right and what’s wrong. Are you being played? ’cause there’s a whole world out there trying to play you.
Pedram Shojai: listen, uh, 10 years ago you might have lost two thirds of your, uh, your customer base by doing this talk, and I’ve watched you fire people and just, you know, whittle it down to the authentic few that you care to represent. And I appreciate what you’ve done in your career doing this, Peter.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Uh, yeah, I, I, a lot of what I’ve said is probably not for, would, not, would not be very popular, but guess why? I don’t really care?
Peter Hoppenfeld: Because I’m encouraged by the clients that do come to me that I do work with who have honor and integrity and those that don’t, I don’t work with. I told you I got a piece of copy the other day that reached, that broached the subject matter that was morally reprehensible to me, and I returned it. And the money, uh, life’s too short.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah,
Peter Hoppenfeld: But, you know, I’m not condemning the whole industry.
Pedram Shojai: there’s plenty of good people trying to help. a lot of really, really big problems the world has that need solving, and there’s some really good, well-intentioned people out there trying to help you, but separating the wheat from the chaff, that’s hard.
Peter Hoppenfeld: yeah, yeah. I, you know, and look, I, I work with a lot of clients who sell a lot of stuff, and that’s quality, that’s consumer products, that’s, that’s supplementation, that’s training. I, I respect them. Um, and I’m able to have honest, forthright conversations and they hear me out and I may not, may not agree with their decision, but I know that it comes from integrity and honor.
Pedram Shojai: Yeah. Yep.
Peter Hoppenfeld: I’m a
Peter Hoppenfeld: big fan of that.
Pedram Shojai: and I know we’re outta time. I, uh, I appreciate you coming forth with this. I really honor, um, our conversations for you. You all listening and you can see why I’ve been working with Peter for years. Um, everyone needs a, a, a sobering conig airy in their corner to remind them of, you know, what their priorities, you know, stately were.
Pedram Shojai: And you, you know, look, you, it’s, you’ve, you’ve kind of, you know, you, you’ve been a great friend. You know, in the years, in an industry that’s full of hype and hyperbole. It’s just been nice working with someone who’s just like, Hey, I miss Pedram, where you been? Right.
Peter Hoppenfeld: Well, well thank you. But it’s not just a conig area like me. I think everybody needs a good, trusted advisor or a good friend. And to take the moment, I think the message is take a pause before you make big decisions. Talk it through. Talk to your wife. Talk to your family. Talk to someone you trust and say, am I, is this the right thing now for me? If you feel like you can’t make that yourself,
Pedram Shojai: Yeah. I love that, Peter Hoppenfeld. Love you, man. Thank you.
Peter Hoppenfeld: always a pleasure, Pedram.
Pedram Shojai: All right.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that podcast. I certainly did. Peter’s always a delight to talk to. Like I said, this guy’s been around the block. He’s seen it all. No bullshit, no frills, you know, look, we’ve all got families to feed. We all have a certain amount of heartbeats left on planet earth. How are we contributing to the betterment of society? You know, there’s some great people doing great work out there, and there’s plenty of scumbags in every industry.
So just watch out, right. Just watch out. I hope you enjoyed this. If you did share it far and wide and. Um, As you know, now Peter has really inspired me to step back into being the urban monk and doing this. Because I’m. They happy doing this right? Chasing after movie deals and all this stuff that I’ve done over the years has been fine. Nice. You know, feather in my cap, but this is the most enjoyable part of my week. And I hope you enjoyed what you listened to here. Go ahead and share. Um, check out all the stuff that I got on my website. There’s all sorts of new, new, new, uh, in terms of courses and programs and stuff that I’ve kind of leaned into to be a little bit more supportive to my community. So just go to theurbanmonk.com see what this guy’s up to and i will see you in the next podcast.