RUSH: Daniel in Bakersfield, thank you for waiting. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hello, Rush. What a wonderful opportunity to speak to one of my mentors.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that, sir, thank you very much.
CALLER: I was calling to ask you what you would do if you were a nobody wanting to market yourself to be a somebody, you know, if you wanted to start a business, how would you market yourself?
RUSH: Well, it’s tough for me to relate to being a nobody, but let me try. Actually I was a nobody for most of my life, and the best answer I could give you is I never considered a separate marketing plan to accompany what I was doing on the radio. I tried to just let the performance, the radio show, the quality of it speak for itself and let that take care of the marketing, the word-of-mouth or what have you. The business that I’m in, radio, in local markets, it’s — you know, television and radio are much different. If you watch television, television is constantly promoting their stars or their personalities. The local news people are made out to be heroes and billboards all over town. Radio does not do that. Radio never has done it, it’s very rare. It happens on occasion. But it’s almost a managerial theory that the station itself — if anything is going to get marketed or promoted, it will be the station, but radio people rely on the product itself to sell itself. I had to be accustomed to that and subject to that in my younger days in radio. When I started this program in August of 1988, I let the performance speak for itself. We had people on the other side going out, trying to convince radio stations to tape the program, but that was not public marketing, that was not public advertising. What I did do the first two years, that’s when the Rush to Excellence Tour was born, I went out and 47 weekends a year I was traveling as we got a new station, I would go there and do a public appearance to shore up that relationship. But are you going to go into business, is that what you’re thinking of doing?
CALLER: Yes. I am trying to go into business.
RUSH: What kind of business? Vaguely, generically?
CALLER: Financial education for teenagers.
RUSH: Financial education for teenagers. That’s interesting. Can you hang on through the break here?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Yeah, because we have to take it now, outta time.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, Daniel. You’re a nobody, and you want to market your new business, which is economic education to teenagers, did you say?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: All right. Now, my analogy is not actually a great one for you because while I was a nobody, automatically being on the radio, that’s mass media. So I had a chance. I wasn’t working in a vacuum. I wasn’t working anonymously. I wasn’t working with nobody knowing it. I was on the radio. People could tune it in. If they did and liked it, it worked. So I had a built-in delivery system for what I was trying to do, which was the radio. You don’t. Hence your question.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: First off, how far along are you on this? Are you ready to launch it?
CALLER: What I did is, raising the money to launch a professional website and stuff is what I’ve done — is what I’m working on. I’ve written a book for kids and stuff and, you know, and so I’m hoping from —
RUSH: Has the book been published?
CALLER: Yes, it has.
RUSH: Okay so the book’s out there. So people — and it’s going to be a web service. That’s primary where people are going to find you?
CALLER: Yes. Yeah. Like the book is ‘The Rich Kid,’ and, like, and I have a website, TheRichKid.com that people could buy the book from.
RUSH: Well, see, you have just engaged here in the most brilliant marketing strategy you could have conceived of, and I don’t even know if you’re aware of it.
CALLER: Well, I am aware of it. (Chuckles.)
RUSH: You know what just happened here?
CALLER: Yes, I do.
RUSH: All right. So millions people have just heard about your idea, and I will endorse the idea for you here as a nice guy. The idea of teaching economics to kids is brilliant because they’re not learning it, right?
CALLER: That’s very true. I didn’t learn it when I was younger, and kids today certainly aren’t learning it.
RUSH: Well, we’re going to assume that you know it. Do you know what you’re teaching?
CALLER: Yes, I do.
RUSH: How do we know that? You can claim it, but how do we know it?
CALLER: Ooh. How do you know it?
RUSH: Well, tell me where you studied. I don’t want your whole résumé here. You’re just somebody that shops at Lowe’s and thinks that you know economics now?
CALLER: That’s right. It’s not claiming to teach people total economics, just basic financial responsibility for kids.
RUSH: You need to expand it. You need to get in a little economics in addition to financial responsibility.
CALLER: Well, yes.
RUSH: What’s the name of that website again? I didn’t write it down.
CALLER: TheRichKid.com.
RUSH: TheRichKid.com. I assume on that website they can buy your book?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I assume on that website they can determine what your course is and how they can access it for their kids or kids can find it themselves. Do you have a MySpace page?
CALLER: No, I don’t have a MySpace page.
RUSH: Do that! Do that and link to your MySpace page from your TheRichKid.com website.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: Now, your MySpace page, a lot of kids use these. ‘Here’s everything about me. Please call me.’ Don’t do that! You use your MySpace page as a way of telling people who you are, why you care about this and so forth, just give you a little double hit out there of web action.
CALLER: That’s good. I will set that up.
RUSH: All right. And then, once this hits, and once this takes off, you send me the value of the commercial here. You’ve gotten… Let’s see… You’re talking about this for four minutes now. So that’s 80 grand you owe me.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I’m just kidding.
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: (Laughing.)That’s with a little reduction on the rate card. We have volume discounts here at the EIB Network.
CALLER: True.
RUSH: But anyway, so your marketing’s been taken care of. It’s up to you now, pal, that website better be good. It better have stuff on it people want. You can do all that. Here’s the point to you. Seriously. You can do all the marketing in the world, but if it isn’t true about your product, they’re going to find out eventually and there’s no amount of marketing or PR that’s going to save you. The quality of what you do has to be predominant.
CALLER: Right. I understand that. I want to make it clear right now, all that’s on the website right now is the book, because I’m raising money to make a more professional website to market it.
RUSH: Okay, now we’re backtracking a little bit here.
CALLER: No, no, I’m not backtracking. I’m just clarifying, you know because —
RUSH: All right, clarifying.
CALLER: — you made the assumption that there was educational material.
RUSH: Oh, it’s my fault?
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: I’ll tell you something else you’re going to have to do. We have just crashed your server. It may be on fire as we speak. It may be smoking. You’re going to need additional server space. Well, if you want to handle load. It will slow down as the afternoon progresses, but we’re going to link to this on my website after we update it this afternoon. You are going to have no excuse for failure here. By midnight tonight is your window to make this work.
CALLER: Will do.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: If people are having trouble getting on the website, they can awesome get the book on Amazon.com.
RUSH: (Chuckling.) Way to go! You don’t need any marketing advice, you little snake. Call here and want marketing advice. I ask you these questions. No, you’re actually very smart. You’ve done some of the smartest marketing ever, and it cost you nothing.
CALLER: Thank you very much.
RUSH: You bet. (Don’t expect it in the future.) We’re happy to help young entrepreneurs here at the EIB Network, but eventually we get our take.