Amber Vilhauer | The Book Marketing Guru of Choice for Mike Michalowitz, Les Miles and Other Best-Selling Authors

Audio Transcription

Speaker 1:
On today’s show, we interview the book marketing expert of choice for the legendary motivational speaker, Les Brown.

Speaker 2:
It was hard laying on the floor of the Penobscot building, looking out of the window, daydreaming saying, Les, can you do this? Can you make this happen? I used to listen to tapes Dan and day out of Bob. See you at the top of my great friend, SIG [inaudible] and Dennis Waitley and different other motivational speaker than Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and DEXA saying, don’t let nobody steal your dream. I used to ask myself, can I do this? And something said within me, you’re the one.

Speaker 1:
She’s also representing the bestselling author in the top podcast or the profit first podcast Mike Michalowitz, her name is Amber, Phil Howard, and her game is marketing books.

Speaker 1:
Oh boy.

Speaker 1:
Yes, Andy asked thrive nation. On today’s show, we’re interviewing a woman who can help you with websites, marketing, and book launches and much, much more. Amber, welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you?

Amber Vilhauer:
I am fantastic because I love what I do. And part of that is getting to talk to you and all of your amazing listeners, so thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
All right, let’s, let’s clear the air here right away. Cause I know there’s somebody out there who’s Googling you right now. They, they saw your show come up today on Spotify or iTunes or iHeartRadio. Give us the current with the correct pronunciation of your last day. What, what, what is the correct, what is the official correct pronunciation of your, of your last name. So the listeners out there who are trying to sound it out are going to get it right.

Amber Vilhauer:
It is Ville Hauer. John Joel comm that used to call me Amber Bond bill Hauer. But sometimes people will spell it as H. O. w. E. R but it is actually V. I. L. H. a. U. E. R.

Speaker 1:
Are there people in your extended family that pronounce your last name differently or is it everybody a university agreed that Ville Hauer is how we say

Amber Vilhauer:
Actually I think people just avoided it entirely. Clay.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Okay.

Amber Vilhauer:
Heard anybody most pronounced that they just try not to say it.

Speaker 1:
Okay. All right. That’s fair enough. Now you’ve had a ton of success at this point. I know a lot of people are going to Amber Ville, howard.com right now to check out more about you. It’s Amber Ville, howard.com. Amber, obviously a M B E R Ville Hauer V I L H a U E r.com. You’ve had a lot of success, but to take us back to the beginning what was your life like growing up and, and you know, where did you grow up?

Amber Vilhauer:
Yes. People tend to look at influencers or successful people and think, wow, they were just born that way. They have their stuff together and that was not the case for me. So I was not the straight a student teacher’s pet, you know, happy person that you see today. I, I’m, I was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. Loving family had every opportunity. Except for some reason I was targeted in school and I was not well liked as not well received. I experienced bullying. I felt really lonely. I was the girl that would eat lunches alone or hide in the bathroom and when you have that experience growing up, it is, it’s just horrible clay because you feel like you don’t have a voice and even if you do have one, you don’t want to use it and you just try to stay below the radar and how that then kind of grew into my lacking confidence, my not wanting to reach out and get to know people. I just suffered a lot and it wasn’t until about my early twenties that I got this job selling Cutco cutlery that changed my life. That company opened me up and got me to see who I really am and the rest is history after that. Really

Speaker 1:
You are one of the many guests that we’ve had who got their start selling Cutco knives. Some of our frequent listeners will know this. I keep hearing this over and over again, but yet there are some people who had this same training and they reflect about their time selling Cutco at you know, with, with bitterness, not, not a place of betterness. It seems like all of the successful entrepreneurs we’ve had on the show love Cutco knives, but you know, a lot of people do a Google search for working at Cutco and they say that the experience was not favorable. Why do you think so many successful people credit the training they got at as a, at Cutco knives as being favorable when so many people who are not doing so well with their career so far are saying that Cutco was not a good thing?

Amber Vilhauer:
I think like with most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. And for me, when I showed up, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to talk or sell or anything else really. And so I just did what they told me to do and it worked. And not only did I end up being one of the top sales reps in my office out of my training class in that first weekend, but that recognition that I got reinforced, Oh, I just do what they tell me to do and it works and that is exactly what I did. I just did more of it. And by the end of that summer, I finished number two in my office. I was competing at a national level. I went into management, I started breaking national records and management and it just kept growing from there. And I put a lot into it. I was all in because I wanted to know when I’m really made out of and that company supported that mission. But I think there’s a lot of people in life that just aren’t ready for that and they want to kind of sit on the sidelines or have other people do the hard work. But that’s not my path.

Speaker 1:
Well, how do you walk us through how to sell a Cutco knife? I want to hear you because you can teach people how to sell books and how to sell books and books and books and books. You are so good at helping people launch their marketing and their websites. I want, we’re going to get into that, but I want to know the brass tax. How do you sell a Cutco knife?

Amber Vilhauer:
Thank you. Because it’s all related and first of all you have to have belief in your product. That’s number one and it is easy to believe in Cutco because it’s so superior. It’s very quality and the way that they teach you to do the presentation, the quality speaks for itself. I don’t really have to say a whole lot except for describing the features and the benefits and the facts really, but the, the magic part unfolds itself naturally inside of the demonstration. So if you have full belief in your product and it sort of sells itself, then it becomes more about building a relationship with the person that you’re talking to. And that is the same rule that I applied today. Even right now with you, clay, I’m building a meaningful relationship with you. And that’s what matters to me first. So in those meetings I would sit down and the first thing I would do before I ever even talked about Cutco is I would get to know the person sitting in front of me.

Amber Vilhauer:
What was it that made magic show up in their eyes when they would just light up and go on and on and on about their kids or their dogs or the trip they just went on as a thing they just bought. And we would spend time really connecting in that way. Then I would show the product that sold itself and then I would make a sale. And then after that they would refer me to many of their friends because they liked me so much and they believed in the product and if it was enjoyable for them, they had no problem sharing that with other people. So basically to sum up, I knew that building relationships was a really important aspect of it and then I wanted them to do word of mouth advertising. So my job actually was really easy and I got paid really well.

Speaker 1:
What kind of a questions would you ask when you’re sitting in the, in the living room of a [inaudible] where you usually, where are you usually sitting at a living room or a kitchen table when you were presenting?

Amber Vilhauer:
Yeah, I tried to do it by the kitchen table because I would ask them to go get food from their refrigerator that we could cut up and whatever.

Speaker 1:
And what kind of questions would you ask? What kind of questions, what kind of questions would you ask these to build that rapport?

Amber Vilhauer:
Well, you can actually tell a lot about a person, the you walk into their home. So the first thing when they first opened up the door, hi, you must be Amber. I looked them in the, I’m shaking their hand and I’m immediately looking around. There might be a dog that comes up to my lap and Oh my gosh, you have a dog. What’s the dog’s name? I mean, you’re just literally looking for cues. Anything right out of the Gates that you connect with yourself. Oh, I have a dog. And so how long have you had yours? And now we have something in common and I just keep listening to them and I keep trying to find things that get them more and more and more excited in the conversation. And the more excited I get them, the more connected we are. And then the rest is so natural and easy.

Speaker 1:
But if you don’t have rapport then the whole thing doesn’t work. I mean you have to kind of crack the egg, right? You got to build that rapport right away. Where you kind of a funny report builder.

Amber Vilhauer:
No,

Speaker 1:
No. You didn’t use a lot of humor?

Amber Vilhauer:
No. not, not too much. I mean, I didn’t really have to, you’re meeting with a lot of Housewives and they are naturally nice people and so I tend to match their temperament. So if somebody was very excitable, then I would elevate my energy to be excited with them. If somebody was calmer, then I would calm my energy down or my, you know, presence down to kind of meet them where they are to everybody is going to be a little bit different. I did definitely have clients that were jokesters and then it was like, okay, I’ve got to turn up that dial. I would have other people that I would walk in and they were rushed. They weren’t in the mood, they were just turned off and so then I had to meet them where they were, start the presentation right away and then I had to start building rapport through out the demonstration and when I would crack a smile, I would just build off of that and I would keep building and building until the end. They loved me.

Speaker 1:
How much of your success was related to maybe doing door to door sales of the Cutco knives or or was all of this referral based or where’d you get your leads?

Amber Vilhauer:
Only referral base because early on at that time in the company, when I started working there, the laws had changed where you were required to only meet with referrals. You had to get good at building rapport and asking for referrals.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Now, now, where were you living at this time in your life?

Amber Vilhauer:
Tucson area,

Speaker 1:
Tucson, Arizona. And you’re selling Cutco knives. And how old were you at this time?

Amber Vilhauer:
I started when I was 18 years old and I was going to college at the time, so this was just a part time job that turned into a major passion of mine and that ultimately led to, they invited me out to Denver to help run the division. So now I’m a 21 year old and I am helping to launch new district offices. I’m recruiting heavily every single week. I’m, I’m running management training meetings for the region. So things grew pretty quickly.

Speaker 1:
And were you doing these training meetings at like a Panera bread or at someone’s house or at a corporate office or where, where were you doing these trainings in Tucson?

Amber Vilhauer:
Always the corporate office. Yeah. Every district manager had to open up, you know, lease office space and they had a receptionist as a formal business. It was just young people operating them.

Speaker 1:
Well I’m on your website now right now, Amber Ville, howard.com and it prompts a few impromptu questions here. What work have you done with on your site? It shows some of the people you’ve worked with. Another guy whose name is commonly mispronounced, but Mike McCalla. What’s the profit first author or Les Brown? What kind of work do you do with these people?

Amber Vilhauer:
Actually you, you brought something up in the very beginning about common mispronunciations. If you Google Mike [inaudible] and find a way to his website and his logo, there’s like a little audio icon where you can listen to the common myths.

Speaker 1:
I’m going to click it right now.

Amber Vilhauer:
It is hilarious.

Speaker 1:
I’m going to click it right now. I’m clicking right now here. Pronounced Mike McCalla woods. We don’t usually look again for some. Let’s, here we go. Your lovers call him Mike Michelob and Schmitz. Nice farmers. Call him Mike. My cow has tits. Whoa. Shinda river dancers told him Mike my clogging and splits. Wow. And haters and old high school friends, which may be one in the same. Call him Mike. My cow. Wow. So, ah, so what, what is your relationship like with, with Mike and with Les miles?

Amber Vilhauer:
Mike and I are super close. I am currently his book launch director. We are gearing toward an April 28th launch of his next book, which is called fix this next. And Mike and I share a common friend. We’ve known each other for years and we also host a two day live event together called author up live, which teaches authors how to market and launch their book based on the marketing and launch I’m doing for Mike. And so we’re very good friends. We do all sorts of fun things together. Les Brown is also a client, launched his book, made it a number one bestseller, a book called fight for your dreams that he did years ago. And so now I’ve launched about Oh 30 35 number one bestselling books on Amazon. That was something that I did years ago. A publishing company out in California asked me if they could pay me to teach me how to launch books so that I could do it for them.

Amber Vilhauer:
And I said sure, I’ll do that. I mean that was back then the early stages of my business when I said yes to everything, you know, cause I was looking for where was all of this taking me, what did I want to do? And it ended up being a total blessing out of those early launches for books. I started to learn a lot about marketing and I was also studying other trends, trying out different things and you know, then you start to get more advanced with your marketing and your launches. And now, you know, with Mike, our goal is to sell 10,000 copies of his book just the first week. So the book launches keep getting more advanced.

Speaker 1:
Now you have had a lot of success as a book marketing expert too. Where did, when, I guess, when did you figure out first figuring out what you wanted to do professionally and how did you go about starting your company?

Amber Vilhauer:
Honestly, I sort of fell into it once. I was about five years into Cutco and into management. I felt like I had gotten as much as I was wanting to get out of that company. So I left, I got this random side gag just until I figured out what I wanted to do next. And that random side guide was event planning and it was these two people that were putting on a local event in Denver teaching entrepreneurs how to get money into their business and how to market online. They had some of the top internet marketing experts at that time coming in talking about Google AdWords and SEO and blogging and keywords. I was so fascinated. I thought, now this is a challenge and I love a good challenge. So I went home and I taught myself code. I set up my own website. I started blogging about my discovery and finding but how to make get results online.

Amber Vilhauer:
And I started working with the publishing company to launch their books and I started building websites for their authors and started getting other companies to send their clients my way so that I didn’t have to stress out about where my next client was coming from. Meanwhile, I just got to test and play and see what worked online and it just continued to evolve from there, but it really wasn’t until maybe five years into my 10 year journey with this company where I thought, huh, maybe I’m onto something here and actually started to take it really seriously.

Speaker 1:
I didn’t do you, did you, what kind of event planner did you, did you work for a at the time was it like for birthdays or weddings or what kind of event planner?

Amber Vilhauer:
No, it was just me, myself, and I saw an ad. I saw a need and I said I can run these events because I was running this back when I did Cutco as a manager, we would host these 300 400 person events.

Speaker 1:
So did you see an ad for someone looking to hire an event planner or what kind of ad did you see? I just want to kind of understand this because you are a very malleable human who seems to, with grace and ease switch careers.

Amber Vilhauer:
Yes. Actually kind of a funny story. This couple was looking for an assistant, somebody to come walk the dog and check the mail. I thought, well that’s easy, you know, until I figured out the next thing. So day one of this easy job, they say, we’re running this event, take a look at our brochure and tell us what you think. Because they knew I had studied graphic design in college. I took a look at their brochure and I thought, Oh man, this brochure is awful. So I went home and I redesigned the entire brochure, then typed up a three page document about why I felt this new brochure was going to get them better results. And it that next day when I handed it to them, they asked if I would work for them full time. Starting with running this event, we actually did two back to back. They had me involved. They had seven different companies, so they had me involved in all sorts of things. But as a result of these events, I decided that maybe I would give it a shot at having this website agency.

Speaker 1:
So then from there, how did you go about, how did you grow go from having a website agency to become somebody who is working with really, I mean some people who are very notable. I mean the profit first book is legendary Les miles. I mean everybody knows him. How did you go from there to working with these big names?

Amber Vilhauer:
It’s all about relationships. My friends and I think being kind to people delivering value first as Bob Burg is the Go-Giver would say one of my, one of my favorite books. I mean I’m really somebody that is intuitive. I’m here for others. I am in service, I’m smart, I continue to research and learn and I have a mind that can make connections really quickly. And so when you combine all of these things in the building rapport, I would have a relationship with clay. And let’s say that you and I really hit it off. We find a commonality. You’re going to start to think, Oh, maybe I should refer Amber to so-and-so who’s getting their lot book launched. Or you know, it just happens really organically. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising and it just so happens that a lot of people are singing my praises because I give to them and I love and that makes all the difference.

Speaker 1:
Do you eat anything other than fish oil? I’m looking at your photo here on your website. Do you all eat entirely? Just kale and fish oil.

Amber Vilhauer:
I can’t stand fish oil.

Speaker 1:
Really.

Amber Vilhauer:
It’s really not a big fish person at all. But kill occasionally.

Speaker 1:
You look like you live on kale. Do you, is kale the only thing you eat? Well, the side of fish oil?

Amber Vilhauer:
No, no, I think it is a, I think it is just working out and eating well and having balance.

Speaker 1:
Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Now, so let’s talk about this now. So you go out there, how’d you get your first 10 customers? Was it was all word of mouth and all of your first 10 customers were word of mouth?

Amber Vilhauer:
I would say mostly yes. But maybe not in the way that you’re thinking. So when the publishing company came to me and asked me to launch their books, I started to see that their authors needed website development. So I went to the coaching company and I said, Hey, while I’m launching these books, why don’t you send your authors to me and I’ll build their websites and give you a commission. They loved that idea. And then that’s when the idea was born to me to develop collaborations or strategic partnerships with other companies. So then I did that for a local web development company. They could just outsource some people directly to me. Then as one of my first 10, I do have to include this there was a Canadian company that was starting up a blog and they found me organically through Google. I had been blogging a bunch. They found me and asked if I would help manage their guest blogging program. And I said, sure, I can do that again. Back when I was saying yes to everything and so it was pretty organic though. I had a ton of word of mouth. As soon as I had my first clients, they would refer me to others.

Speaker 1:
Well, I’ll make this very actionable for the listeners out there, the blogging thing, I find that blogging is a lot like a taking a message in a bottle. You know, you throw the message in the bottle into the ocean and because you don’t get an immediate response, you might stop throwing messages. And, and I’m not encouraging people to litter the ocean with messages in bottles, but working on this. But eventually, I mean if you throw enough of them out there eventual Lee, somebody’s gonna find the bottle. What kept you encouraged to keep writing your blog was, was it a daily blog or a weekly blog? And then what, what kept you encouraged to keep riding it when you didn’t see immediate results?

Amber Vilhauer:
My writing was a little sporadic, but because I was so excited about the things I was learning and then I would go just turn that into a blog post. It happened probably more frequently than say weekly, which is what I do now. I think that, you know, I knew the value of content marketing just through what I learned at that event that I ran. And so I knew that eventually it would pay off. I knew it was not going to be a short term exchange. And so I would just have to stick with it because Google wants to see that you’re consistent and you’re frequent and you can go the long term. But because most people give up, that actually gives me an advantage because then I start to get Google to pay attention to me even further after a certain period of time. So I also have learned that my particular audience, they’re watching me very closely, but they do, they don’t engage at a high level. When you’re dealing with higher performers, they’re not spending a bunch of time commenting on blogs. They want the information and they want to go take it to action. So I think part of it is knowing who your audience is.

Speaker 1:
You just said, you, you, you have like so many knowledge bombs per capita. I love this. You said you want the Google wants consistency and I wrote a book on this called search engine domination that so many of our listeners have downloaded or purchased where we talk about this and we provide case studies of clients who’ve been able to grow their companies by 40% 60% 70% and we point out companies like a, I’ll just give a few but full package media.com or Shaw homes.com where you know there’s homebuilder grows from 35 $37 million a year of revenue to $80 million of revenue. A one of my longterm clients. But the consistency with which they add content is so important. Talk to me about the consistency and why that matters for Google as well as for the people that actually use your website.

Amber Vilhauer:
Well, I mean for the people that are using your website, the imagine it this way, that you are literally conditioning people, right? So if you do, you want to audience an audience that it like you’re only around some of the time and they can’t really get a good read on you. That’s not how I want my audience to perceive me. I want them to look at me as stable because that’s who they want to invest in when it comes time to delivering a particular outcome. So you really are conditioning the marketplace on what to expect from you. A certain level of professionalism, a certain level of I have my stuff together and that’s important. It grows confidence and trust for search engines. I like to think about it like every time I publish a bot blog posts, I’m sort of slapping Google a little bit like, Hey buddy, pay attention to me and I want a lot of flaps, right?

Amber Vilhauer:
So that Google continues to see me and pay attention to me. And the more that that happens, the more my ranking start to increase because the reality is content is the backbone of the internet. It is what keeps Google valuable and in business and they want to stay valuable and in business. So the more you’re publishing these blog posts, it’s making them more valuable. They’re going to reward you with traffic, which helps grow your business. So it’s just important. And the last thing that I’ll add too, sometimes with blogging, it’s almost like you’re, you’re working after an indirect result. And what I mean is I’ve had very large strategic partners choose to do a collaboration with me because they’d seen my consistency in content marketing. They’d seen that effort. They see that I’m, I’m here for the longterm and I’m willing to put in the work. So even though that wasn’t necessarily like a website sale, that was a relationship that produced hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars because they wanted to see that. For me, speaking is the same thing.

Speaker 1:
No, Amber, my my good, my good friend and cohost and partner, dr Zellner is in the booth. Dr Z, how are ya? I’m fantastic. Hi Amber. How are you doing?

Amber Vilhauer:
Oh, Hey, nice surprise. Glad to have you here.

Speaker 1:
He owns a bank. Oh, stop it. Would you stop? What are you focus on that I only own like a 10th of it. And then I’ve started all these great businesses from scratch and that’s, I feel like that’s your, I’d be like, I just feel like when you tell someone that you own a bank that’s like a really like a what you know, but he also was an optometrist and then he also had is still is an optometrist and he owns an auto auction and a durable medical equipment company and he’s a phenomenal dancer. But my favorite thing is my thoroughbred horses. I have a horse ranch. That’s my favorite thing and I want to ask you is when you look at this, you’re on our website here, you’re senior Amberville Howard’s website. Does she look credible to you? She absolutely does, yes. Okay. She it. Okay.

Amber Vilhauer:
Holding my breath there for a minute. That was scary.

Speaker 1:
She’s a, she’s a beautiful young lady and she looks very credible. She had, I love her website and look, you only need scale scale your online business. I love giving you strategy systems and speed. Now, Amber, I want to ask you this because you said something and I want to get Z’s take on this too. You said high net worth individuals don’t typically engage a lot on social media. Amber, I agree with you, but can you please explain you mean by this? Because I think a lot of our listeners out there, I think of engineers, doctors, dentists, they’re chasing an impossible dream. They’re an engineer. And a lot of times they’ll ask me, clay, I’m not getting a lot of engagement on my social media posts. And I’m going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Homes, homes. Because home skillet, you are a doctor or a dentist or, or an engineer. And a lot of people who are, you know, building a hospital aren’t on social media all day engaging and going thumbs up on, on architectural renderings. But can you kind of explain what you mean by that? Because that’s a powerful knowledge bomb for somebody out there.

Amber Vilhauer:
Well, the way I like to look at it is that we all want information. We all want to be educated, we all want to know the shortcuts. We all want to know what are we missing, right? That is why content marketing is so valuable because people will always type in questions into Google or they’ll be looking at social media post trying to find out what they’re missing. So there is a lot of value in people are watching, but they’re not necessarily engaging. And it could just be that they’re not a social person, they don’t see value in it. You know, what does it give back to them to give you a thumbs up? Right? They may not get the point of it or they just may be busy. And so it doesn’t mean that people aren’t watching. That’s why people need you to be consistent and frequent. They need you to be stable and responsible and you know, taking action in your marketing. But if you’re not getting engagement, I wouldn’t totally freak out because it could be that they need that information and they will move forward with you. But if you just think, Oh, well, nobody’s paying attention, so I’m just going to stop, well then you better find some other really amazing way to market your business because that’s a big one. You don’t want to lose that on,

Speaker 1:
You know it just occurred to me as he, that I am a, I’m a really, really terrible person because I listen all the time to the Ross Golan podcast. Yes. But Devin, I don’t think I’m a subscriber. I don’t think I did. I just, Devin passive aggressively muted you. I’m not a subscriber. It’s one of my favorite podcasts. David, could you try to help me fix that while we’re on the show here? I can do it. I would like to subscribe to the and the writer, his podcast cause I listen to it all the time. And then to the Oprah masterclass cause I listened to that too. And I want to subscribe to TD Jakes. So why didn’t you subscribe? Cause I think I’m one of the people she’s talking about. I just don’t do that kind of thing. You’re definitely one of them. I don’t subscribe. I don’t comment on anything. I don’t leave comments on things. I just don’t, it’s not my nature. See, it’s not my nature.

Amber Vilhauer:
I do very rarely. I mean, I will actively try a couple of times a week to look through social media, various just a couple minutes at a time, like a few things, smile or whatever. But other than that, it’s just, it doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention, I just don’t have it.

Speaker 1:
Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to guilt you into tweeting at me today and I’m going to guilt myself into tweeting at you. And that way we each have some sort of interaction. So neither one of us depressed.

Speaker 6:
Yeah.

Speaker 1:
Oh, hi. Nice nosy. Explain to me, why aren’t you on social media all day? Commenting, liking, sharing, friending. Why aren’t you doing that? I mean, you do own a bank

Speaker 6:
Because that’s a job. I’ve worked hard not to have a job. I mean, I know people that spend hours on there are, you know, talking, discussing issues and discussing things and spending time on those. And then I’m just like, why? What’s the point? I mean, you work hard to be able to go do the things you want. I mean I’ve, I do very, very, very, very little on social media. And it’s because I don’t want to, I mean, it’s kind of frustrating sometimes to get on there and see all the back and forth and all the tip tats and all these, you know, people that are just outrageously about one thing or outrageously about something else. And you’re just kind of going, I don’t even want to put that. Ignorance is bliss. And so I like going to my little life, being ignorant of some of the debates and challenges of some people.

Speaker 6:
I get it for a business. Why? It’s a powerful, you know, the Google, thank you Al Gore, the internet. And I know that it’s part of the new you and I grew up, it was, wasn’t around, we didn’t know anything about it. You didn’t have to use it to market your business. But now there is a component of that. So I have people that do that for my businesses, but that doesn’t mean you know, now that where I am in my life where I have to physically step in and do it. But you know, and I’ll tell you what, every now and then one of those you know, when a good review slips through, he gets Jimmy. It’s like, Oh, we’re so good where the world loves me. I mean, we’re really doing wonderful. And then every now and then when those bad reviews come through, you know, it’s like, wow, how can they walk away now?

Speaker 1:
Steal your joy if you’re not careful. I know it can know. Charles, I want to ask you this question. We have Charles Cola here. Amber, if you’re keeping score at home here, Charles Cola, he owns, he and his wife, they own three large gyms, fitness centers, kind of like a Chick-fil-A meets planet fitness. And a Charles just got back from his cruise chickens. We’ve got this wonderful lady who Amber, she is a book marketing expert and she works with you know, the, the guy who wrote the, the profit first book and Les miles and other big names. I want to ask you though, Charles, why don’t you spend the vast majority of your day on social media friending people commenting? Why don’t you spend the vast majority of your day doing that?

Speaker 6:
Vast majority of that time is not revenue producing. And so I focus more on those revenue revenue producing activities for, for for us,

Speaker 1:
You heard it here folks. So it’s not revenue producing. Okay. So let’s talk about some revenue producing things. You have written this, this great book elevate every experience. Talk to me about this, this book you’re working on, elevate every experience. What it first inspired you to sit down and to write this book?

Amber Vilhauer:
Well, I have a really unique vantage point in the online marketing world because not only am I out in the world constantly researching and testing and proving and refining, but all of the clients who come to me and we’ve, we’ve launched nearly a thousand websites now and they all have their unique vantage point on what’s happening in the marketing world. They’re, they’re complaining to me about various things. And then I have my colleague, these are some of the biggest influencers in the world coming to me and they’re complaining to me about certain things, but I’m all of this data and the data shows me that we are in trouble. The online marketing world is crazy right now because we’re supposed to be connected more than ever before. Right. Thanks. Thank you. Social media. Yet we are all feeling more disconnected. We are feeling isolated and alone and you know it’s causing depression and other things.

Amber Vilhauer:
And so I’m also seeing all of these internet marketers telling people, Oh, it’s just about the size of the list. Get that list as big as you can and push them through the funnel. There is no real conversation about the fact that these are human beings out there and we have an opportunity to create real impact in change. And so I don’t treat people like they’re a part of some lists. Like there are part of some number, I want to treat them like a real human being. And my feeling is that marketing to the masses with that old mentality is what is going to start killing businesses. And it’s certainly not setting a good example for the new business owners coming in. So this book is all about how to develop personal connection to scale your influence. And the reason that I call it elevate every experience is because when writing this book about how to create connection with people, I, I could feel the naysayers saying, well sure Amber, it’s easy for you because you’re a prettier, you have a good smile or whatever.

Amber Vilhauer:
And so I had to come up with a way of explaining this that anybody could adopt. And when I’m trying to make a connection with somebody, all I’m really trying to do at the end of the day is just elevate the experience. So if you and I are dialoguing right now on this podcast, how can I make you smile? How can I make your day? How can I make you feel seen and heard and loved and valued? And if I can just do that one, then we’re off to the races. We have this relationship. And I can offer you my services or I can extend my network to you and we can just do more powerful things together than we can alone. So that’s what the book is about.

Speaker 1:
You know, a one way to, to really wow me and to build a connection is to wow me with your vast knowledge of womp rats. Do you know a lot about womp rats?

Amber Vilhauer:
I can’t say I do, Darren.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Okay. Have you, you, do you watch when you get a miss, do you watch a lot of star Wars growing up?

Amber Vilhauer:
Little bit, yes. I mean, I love star Wars, but can Sam is star Wars junkie?

Speaker 1:
Okay, well there’s a scene Z are you into womp rats? Of course. He’s mind what, what respected star Wars of fishing yourself being down with a lot of womp rats. I don’t know a lot about that. Let me queue it up real quick. This is Amber. Give you a great, now this is a great scene from the first star Wars here, heavily shielded and carries a fire power greater than half the star fleet, you know? And so Luke, now he’s like, okay, okay. Okay. He turns to his good buddy he grew up with and he says the following line, and I watched the behind the scenes and star Wars here. They explain the scenes. And George Lucas didn’t want anyone to know that Darth Vader was in fact Luke’s father because he thought they would spill the beans. So they weren’t. They were only allowed to read the lines for that day’s taping.

Speaker 1:
So Luke says Mark Hamill, the actress says he looks at the lines for this scene and he says it has the word womp rat. To which I asked George, what is a womp rat? To which he says it doesn’t matter, just read it with more intensity. Go faster. And so here’s the, here’s the line. Let me get your differentiation are designed around the dirt, should be here just worth talking to area is his. Here we go. Two meters wide. Small thermal exhaust port right below the main point. Here we go. Oh yeah, the shaft leads directly to the reactor system. Oh, here we go. That’s how you blow it up, which should destroy what’s going. This is impossible to blow up the station. No, no, no, but not not Luke two meter rat. Here we go. Set up a chain reaction. The shaft is ratio did show. You’ll have to use proton torpedo. That’s impossible even for a computer. But Luke says that’s not impossible because it’s not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats and my T 16 back home. They’re not teenagers, they’re not. My cheesy is the bulls. I want brats and everyone’s explaining to in the interview, he’s like, I didn’t know what a T 16 was. I didn’t know what a wall prep was and I didn’t know you could bulls-eye one, but it was my line,

Amber Vilhauer:
Larry.

Speaker 1:
Oh my gosh, yes, yes. Okay, so let’s talk about [inaudible] taking the experience to the next level. I’m going to throw out some ideas here for you and you throw out some concepts and you tell me how ha, how important it is to make it better. If I’m working on a book with you, how important is that cover?

Amber Vilhauer:
Oh my gosh, it’s extremely important.

Speaker 1:
Do you work on the covers? Do you help your clients with the covers?

Amber Vilhauer:
I don’t personally design them, but I absolutely critique them and I demand that they are better than the first drafts appear.

Speaker 1:
So you’re saying people do judge a book by its cover? Is that what you’re 100% Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. That’s just been shot away right there. So you’re, so you’re saying that the cover has to be good. Let’s talk about the website that you built for these authors. Do you ever see people with a great book and a great book cover, but a bad website or vice versa?

Amber Vilhauer:
Constantly. Yeah. Offers, don’t they want to sit in their cave writing their books? Typically the average author, they really don’t have the technical skillset to really understand how a website needs to be displayed to convert. They don’t like this social media thing. They don’t want to build an email list and to be responsible for emailing those people. The business side of authorship is really intimidating and daunting for most authors.

Speaker 1:
Why?

Amber Vilhauer:
Because it’s a lot of work and they’re creative beings. They just want to sit and create and write where it’s quiet and easy. It’s easier for them. You know, when we go into the online world, it’s sort of like, you know, you’re stepping out onto a plank and there’s a bunch of sharks below. I mean, that online world is, there’s so much to it, it’ll gobble you right up. You’ll get completely overwhelmed really easily, which is why it’s important to seek out people that you like, that align with your core values that you trust and just listen to their advice cause everybody’s going to have different advice. So you know, it’s okay that my following wants to really just hear advice from me instead of 50 other people because then you’re going to get competing advice. It’s going to be overwhelming. But there’s a lot of advice out there that’s for sure.

Speaker 1:
Now, let’s say I have a book right now and a, it’s already written and it’s, you know, what would give us some [inaudible] without giving away all your secrets in your book. You know, I know you’d want to save some of the secrets or maybe you want to give away all your secrets. I don’t know. But what would be some practical steps that all the listeners should take if they ha if they do have a book? Cause we have a lot of listeners that listen to this show that write books. If they have a book, it’s already written and it’s, let’s assume it’s good. What can they do to market their book?

Amber Vilhauer:
So if you already have a book that’s published, I will start by saying it is possible for you to do a relaunch of that book and you can set a campaign date, you can rally your online community, you can engage some of your friends and partners and colleagues and have a big online splash to read, launch the book. A lot of people don’t know that. So I’d like to start start there. So, and you could have sold 10,000 copies of your book up to this point, but you decided to have a relaunch, have a big campaign day, and then sell another 10,000. You can continue to do this. There’s no limit to how much you should relaunch your book. A lot of authors then get sort of a one and done thing, but the real value is in continuing to sell that book for years to come.

Amber Vilhauer:
A lot of authors are going to sell more copies of their books through speaking engagements. So if you’re that type of author, you can be really successful in getting the conference to buy enough copies of your book to fill all of the attendees coming in. Yeah, you’re selling copies in bulk. A lot of podcasts are great to be on. They’re pushing a lot of books. The other thing is in your relationships with the people that she know and asking them to do a mailing, can you send a little promotional email out to your email following about my book and here’s why you would want to do that. I think part of the, the mindset that authors needed to get into is not to feel bad about asking people to share their books because ultimately it’s not about you as the author. This is about the, that you have the opportunity to serve that are reading your book. And if you do things in service of them, then you can overcome, you know, any gross feelings about asking for help or getting more speaking gigs or asking your friends to send out a mailing. But you have to take action either way.

Speaker 1:
So you think that the bias that the average person has is they don’t want harass people with email marketing or, or any kind of marketing at all. They just want to sorta not promote the book because they risk maybe, you know, feeling bad about oversharing it or that, that kind of thing. Is that, that kind of add?

Amber Vilhauer:
I really do. I really do. Because authors tend to be more quiet, calm people, they’re not, you know, like some, there are some salespeople that could walk into any fricking room and sell you anything. Authors don’t typically have that kind of grit. They, they are gentler souls usually. And so you have to find a marketing plan that suits who that person is, has and grow some of their courage, grow their grit and confidence. But my job is really to give them tools and approaches that makes sense to them so that they can ask without getting in their own way about it.

Speaker 1:
So what are some of the order, some of the, some of the steps you’re going to be taking with a Mike to help him launch his newest book?

Amber Vilhauer:
Well Mike and I have been working together almost a year on this launch so far and we still have another four months to go. Okay. So one thing to be thinking about, if you want to have a significant launch, you need a significant amount of time to prepare for that. And we’ve been doing anything from running live events to drum up kind of some ambassadors that are going to help us to promote the book and get buy in early on. Yup. We’ve done webinars to help him bring in well over six figures in revenue to help it reinvest back into the campaign. A lot of my work comes in building relationships and getting connections for Mike. So if he already has a really heavy hitting influencer, I might have a conversation with that person to figure out how they want to contribute to the launch and what we can do back to them to make it more of a win win.

Amber Vilhauer:
And I found that a lot of big influencers have a hard time keeping up with relationships. So that’s one of my great strengths is to keep nurturing those relationships, keep them informed of what’s happening within the launch, give them someone so that they feel compelled to give back in an even bigger way to support the launch when it’s time. And the other thing that I would say big focus for this launch is going to be on livestreaming. And so we’ve been preparing Mike on different things that he can be doing in the meantime to sort of build up momentum and a social media platform for that. But I have been refining and testing a live streaming protocol on how we can get his other colleagues and influencers to do a live stream with Mike and then how to have that go viral. And we’ve been approving different techniques and now that’s going to be a big component of his launch. April 28th live streaming

Speaker 1:
Live stream. Okay. So you, you you know, you’re, you’re a book marketing expert, but you’re also a marketing expert. Or do you consider yourself more of a book marketing expert or a overall marketing expert for businesses? How would you classify what you do

Amber Vilhauer:
Overall marketing. And it just so happens that I can launch a book too. I mean, whether I’m launching a product or a program or a membership, I mean, it’s all kind of the same strategies. You pick a day, you get a bunch of people to help you. You want as many sales in one day as you can get. How do we do that? And you have to have a lot of marketing knowledge to prepare for that. You have to be very structured, organized. You have to have that website and the online platform being really dialed in and you have to be a people person. You have to really know people.

Speaker 1:
What what role do reviews have as it relates to book sales? Do you need a lot of reviews on Amazon?

Amber Vilhauer:
Yes, it’s social proof just like anything else. But interestingly enough, there is a group of people that will only collaborate with you if you have a certain status and part of that status comes in review. So for example, if you have more than 1000 Amazon reviews, then okay, maybe I’ll, I’ll have a conversation with you and see if we can play together. I mean, so there is just like with on on a podcast, if you have more than you know, a hundred episodes on your podcast, that means that this is something really serious to you, let’s say. So the numbers do speak, but also in general, I mean with reviews, as long as you can, you can visually see that the reviews are, are different versus meaning they’re not templative. When I get a range of reviews, then I can usually trust those reviews. And if the reviews are saying overwhelmingly this is a great book, then I’m going to be compelled to buy it just to, you know, just based on the reviews alone.

Speaker 1:
Now, if in our case a Z, you and I, we have a quite a few shows we’ve done here. Z. you know, she said it can’t really do anything. Well, she said that if you have more than a hundred, it shows you’re serious. Okay, so we have 1,810. Does that mean that we’re really seriously crazy, seriously crazy. What does that say

Amber Vilhauer:
In the head at that point? I don’t know. [inaudible]

Speaker 1:
No, I don’t work with you at that point. Like there we go. Okay. We get that badge. We get that badge. We can wear Sears. You’re sick. You’re sick. You’re so sad. Okay, so Amber, I’m going to have rapid fire questions now fromZ and Charles and I around the corner. Rapid fire. Here we go. You come across as a very proactive person. That’s how I would perceive you. So I want to know what time do you wake up in a typical day? I mean, what are the first four hours of your typical day look like beyond your kale and fish oil breakfast?

Amber Vilhauer:
I’m waking up usually between four 30 and five 30 in the morning because that is my only time for self care. I’m working out, I’m taking my time, getting ready, really getting in the mental game might be listening to a podcast, a book or it might be watching some Netflix. Who knows? And then I get my son up. I have a little three year old boy who’s amazing and I get him ready for school and then I hit my office somewhere between eight and nine and then we’re off to the races.

Speaker 6:
Oh, he, okay. Rapid fire and my, but actually you touched on it. Why don’t I segue, I’m on your website. I’m looking at it. You’ve got a picture of you and your son. Is that, is the picture on your website really your son or is that a male? A little model you hired to take the picture. Oh yeah.

Amber Vilhauer:
Fun and clay. You will like this. My son’s name is clay [inaudible].

Speaker 6:
Oh, come full circle. That’s a great, Oh, comes full circle. Humble. She is going to mindfulness. She said that’s good. Changing the kid’s name just for the product. It stands for super humbleness. Yes. Super humble. It’s hard to just exude super humbleness. You know what means? It’s hard when you have that much humbleness. Yeah. Well at least at least now there’ll be attractive man out there today. The clay. I mean, that’ll be right. It can’t hurt the day. And also me and her literal, a Z big head. Large cranium. Large creature. Yeah, exactly. That’s what’s on my head is so large. Ember. Seriously. How did you, how did you get into all of this? How did you, did you just wake up one day and Clyde, we have touched on this cause I was a little bit tardy coming into this show. You were on time. I was, I was early on the call to her. That’s what, Oh, Kelly’s earlier. So how did you if you’ve already answered that, just walk us through it. So where we want to go down more, give us the deep, the dirt. I want the deep dirt dirty secrets of how you became the book wizard. You are now. Yeah, exactly. Cause a lot of people were out there going, wow, that’s really cool. What she’s doing. How did she get there?

Amber Vilhauer:
Honestly, well, like I have touched on this and that when you put yourself out into the world and you have courage, other people just tend to start coming in and you go and you talk to them. They want to teach you what they know and then you help them with this other thing. I mean, it was honestly very organic. It kind of felt like more divine. It’s not like I had a business plan and I went out and I studied or I went to school for it. It really is amazing. Google can teach you a lot. I think the important thing is figuring out who to trust, who to listen to. Being really proactive, testing for yourself, not just trusting what some other Joe said, but I actually tested it myself. I know what works and I’m very creative and innovative and so I have my own spin on things. I test that and it works, so it’s really just hard work. Having courage and being on top of your industry and learning.

Speaker 6:
I love it. Now, who are some of the early things or people that you did trust? Wouldn’t you say it’s learning who to trust? Who did you, who did you trust? Who were some of the early, early ones that you were like, I’m going to trust this. I’m going to trust what I’m reading. I’m going to trust what I’m hearing. I’m going to trust this person or this thing. [inaudible]

Amber Vilhauer:
Definitely at that event that I ran, there was a gentleman named Eric Graham and it, back then he was known as the conversion doctor. And I knew immediately that I could trust him because he knew everything about his, I took copious notes. This was a man you could tell at three o’clock in the morning. He’s testing, does the green button work better or the orange button. I mean he knew everything about conversion. So we developed this friendship and I, it started by me just showering him with praise. Thank you so much. I loved your presentation and he got to know me and he liked me. The next thing you know, he’s one of my greatest mentors. And so I think you can just tell based on the way people present and and how detailed they’re willing to go with it.

Speaker 6:
I think that is a very, very important thing. You just went over right there and that is finding someone who’s an expert in the area that you want to go into and then attaching, finding a way to burrow in and be and have them become a mentor. Because a lot of people look at someone and say that that person’s really smart. They know what they’re doing. Gosh, if they could only be my mentor, Oh, vote me out of the audience, please pick me. Please pick. But, but you are proactive. You, you got on his radar, you said the right things, you followed up with the right things and you found a mentor because one of the two things that we think people learn is mistakes and mentorship. Right? And I think that’s a very, very important thing. And clay, expound on that how, how she found the right mint. She found the right sensei.

Speaker 1:
Okay. We all know we could learn from a mentor’s were mistakes, but I’ll give an example that happened on Saturday. Z. Do you remember the Christmas party that we had on the 60th floor of the tallest building in Oklahoma last Saturday? Do you remember that party? It’s hard to forget. Okay, so you, you presented to me a gift, which is relates heavily to the literary space and I posted on it on, on Twitter. We put that out there and I’ll show you the picture. Here’s the, here’s the picture. Here’s the, here’s the picture. Here’s the headline. Ah, there we go. And so the, the book that the headline says, 2019 Christmas party from clay to Z with the world’s number one wife, Vanessa, and the world’s number one literary agent. He fought Reese jundallah. She’s the one who started Foundry media, which represents Elon Musk’s book and the subtle art of not giving an F and Chris Kyle’s book and Z. How did you get her to the Christmas party? My friend. I mean there’s Jesus. She is the ultimate literary a mentor for me.

Speaker 6:
Well, I’ve got some, I’ve got some dirt on her so she kind of had to, right? No, no, she’s, she’s best friends. She’s best friends with my sister and we jokingly, I grew up, I have five brothers and one sister, so there’s six boys and one girl. So she was always kind of the, you know, the, the princess of the family, if you will. Right.

Speaker 1:
Reach out to her. And thankfully she said yes to represent me on book projects moving forward.

Speaker 6:
Right. But, but anyway, best, jeez, the best. But she’s very good friends with my sister. So in our family we, we celebrate a holiday, which within a holiday, so you have Christmas and then we celebrate, my sister’s name is Maryann. We celebrate Marianne, miss [inaudible]. It’s a celebration around her. So she flew in, she flew in, we had all these activities and functions and really fun things going on. And then she brought with her, I encouraged her to bring, she did a little girl weekend, brought ephod and her other friend and that came in and then we surprised you at the party is awesome. And I was expecting more tears. I was expecting you to really break down a little bit more than you did, but you were stoic. You hung in there tough. You’re a tough nut to crack the time. There you go. Let it out.

Speaker 1:
Not everybody has it in Amber in their life. Someone that can help them with their, with their business right now, but everybody can’t have somebody. All you gotta do is take that first step, reach out to a mentor and I have found Z. If you don’t pay somebody, they’re probably not going to be super consistent about that. Ongoing mentorship we need. Mentorship is not just an event. It is an ongoing process. That’s what I’m a big fan of. Hiring people such as an [inaudible] or such as West Carter, the attorney of choice for TD Jakes and pastor Craig Rochelle and other huge names in the Christian right space. I want to pay these people. I worry about the the free Oh limit.

Speaker 6:
The other. The other move is the other move is is the intern for them and not charge them, so you’re giving them something. You’re giving them something to value. So I think that’s very powerful, Amber, that you, one of your early mentors of someone that you, you know, you saw, you realized and then you, you gathered. And that’s, that’s a challenge. And I’m a tip my hat to you and, and I hope everybody listens to that and understand that, that it just doesn’t happen. They just don’t sit back and go, gosh, I wish I win the lottery. I wish, I wish they call me out of the audience. I wish that they would just come and seek me out because, you know, I’ve got such a beautiful son. I mean, just like, you know, you, you’ve gotta be proactive and you went up and you did what you needed to do. You kept going on that and then that helped lead you into the career path that you’re in right now. I think it’s awesome.

Speaker 1:
Amber, do you remember the song? I wish by ski lo. You’re the song I wished by Skyla. Was that a big song for you? Really? How tall are you?

Amber Vilhauer:
It’s five, two and a half.

Speaker 1:
Oh wow. So you’re taller this guy. Okay. Now Charles, Charles Smith, we’ve got a literary expert on the show here. This is a woman who’s a marketing expert, has had a lot of success with authors and with business owners. Do you have any final marketing question for miss Amber?

Speaker 6:
Yes. what previous experience, like work experience kind of that you have that would probably helps you in that area of marketing or maybe internship experience.

Amber Vilhauer:
Yeah, actually. So I was working in restaurants from 13 to about 17 years old and I learned a lot about people didn’t like that environment. And then Cutco is the only other job I had. And when I was in Cutco I learned a tremendous amount about sales and management and relationships and retention and leadership. So I give all of the credit to, to Cutco.

Speaker 1:
What is co co are you at, are you seriously asking what’s co co sorry, the benefits? Cause I an as a dirty, dirty business coach guy. The dirty, I say dirty. I mean I, I had been in the trenches for a long time. I need to take a shower at some point. I’ve hung around a lot of former Cutco salespeople. Charles, I know Cutco in the way, you know, protein bars. You know what I mean? Cutco. These knives. Tell us the benefits. Cut to like a shoe.

Amber Vilhauer:
Yeah. The high end kitchen knows. Yes, I have seen Costco and everywhere else they’ve been around forever. Company TJ, they hire college students to market their knives. It’s a brilliant business model.

Speaker 1:
Is it, aren’t they like $1,000 for a set?

Amber Vilhauer:
They can be, they can go up if you want it to be and they, and they sharpen him right? When you buy them, there’s unlimited sharpening. Right? I thought they were like a haircutting thing, so I’d been so used to Oh, forever. Oh yeah. So I mean, can you like mail them in to have them cleaned up though? Amber, can you mail them in and yeah, forever guarantee they’ll sharpen them for the rest of your life. Even if you tip off the handle and break it, they’ll replace it for free. I mean, it’s like no brainer investment.

Speaker 1:
Even though you’ve kept your, even though you’ve had massive success after Cutco, did you keep your account active? I mean it can people buy from you right now?

Amber Vilhauer:
Probably. I mean within a phone call for sure. My account would be active, but no, I just send the sales over to my friends so that’s fine for me.

Speaker 1:
Okay. Let’s do this here. If you are out there and you want help with your marketing checkout Amber Ville, howard.com that’s Amber a M B E R V I L H a U E r.com and Amber, would you be willing to give our listeners a free picture of a Cutco knife for anybody who

Amber Vilhauer:
I would love that. Absolutely consider it done. Okay.

Speaker 1:
Can you have some also you have, if you have another free gift beyond just a photo of a Cutco knife, what are other free gifts you have for our listeners out there?

Amber Vilhauer:
I do and thank you for letting me do this, but I just believe so passionately about what’s happening in the state of marketing right now. I literally just finished recording this video course that goes deep and to how you can repurpose your content so that one video can be repurposed for all major online channels to make social media and blogging all this stuff easier and faster for you without sacrificing quality. Then I also talk about some advanced marketing strategies that you can do to so that can be [email protected] forward slash marketing course. And so I will give that link over to you as well. Clay,

Speaker 1:
Ms Amberville. Howard, this has been an hour of power and I’ll give you the floor, my friend. Do you have any final tip that you want to share with all of our listeners?

Amber Vilhauer:
Yes. I got this fortune cookie a ways back and it said do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain and I can tell you that that is something I remembered every single day I face my fears and things just magically unfold. Relationships, success, opportunity. So do the thing you fear and the death of you’re a certain and I want to end with that.

Speaker 1:
Z. I want to talk about this real fast. You’re dealing with, you know, the death of fear is he, I got harder, hardcore rejected here today. Hardcore. I reached out to, I won’t mention their name, but someone that I had been chasing for a long time. Yeah. And you know, I was told when they looked at the questions, by the way, I sent you a lot of the questions in advance, did I not, I mean you could preview them and look at them.

Amber Vilhauer:
Yes.

Speaker 1:
I sent these people to the questions and they were different, but they’re kind of like these questions and I was told by their handler that the questions were, were offensive. Oh my. And you know what I did? You need a hug. You look like you need a hug right now. You know, cause we interviewed a lot of musicians and so I asked them a lot of times, you know, how do you monetize your career? You know, we had the songwriter on recently for a Bon Jovi. Oh yeah. And he explained to us for every 500, 500 million downloads are voted in streams from me, 500 million streams of the song, a private a prayer. He makes $6,000. That’s the math. That’s the math. And so I had to sit, yeah, I’m doing that because I’m trying to bring attention to the fact that these artists don’t get paid hardly anything unless it’s on traditional radio.

Speaker 1:
It’s my opportunity to kind of building awareness to this idea. And so the agent was like, that is inappropriate and we don’t appreciate your intentions. And so I said, well, I, I apologize that you were offended, but I don’t apologize for the questions cause they’re not offensive. So could they be on or what? And they did not have that. So I got a little rejection, but people don’t realize they have it for every, you know, one great guest we have on the show. Like you, we, there’s a lot of rejection. There’s E there’s a lot of rejection. You know, when I’m going to, when we’re done with the show, I’m gonna give you a hug. You look like you need a hug.

Amber Vilhauer:
I wish I could give you a hug too.

Speaker 1:
And were you able to give her a favorite musician? Just to kind of wrap up? I just have to know.

Amber Vilhauer:
Favorite musician. Oh geez.

Speaker 1:
A band or something.

Amber Vilhauer:
You go old school here, Dave Matthews band.

Speaker 1:
They safe answer and safe answer. I mean, you gotta admit that I believe you, but I mean it’s, it’s really, I mean, nobody’s going to be, nobody’s going to be offended by that. I mean, if anybody’s offended by Dave Matthews being the band, I mean that’s, that’s a problem. Right? Well Amber, thank you for, for sharing that.

Amber Vilhauer:
Yeah, you have like a one hit wonder. You have a great album. 21 pilots is super hot in my list too, so I don’t know if that provides more [inaudible]

Speaker 1:
A little edge. You get a little edgier there. Nice watch out man. Well Amber, thank you so much. I hope you have a great rest of your day and we appreciate your time more than we could possibly express.

Amber Vilhauer:
Thank you. Cleans the and Charles,

Speaker 1:
You bet. Take care. Great talking with you. And now without any further ado.