Model Attacked by Tiger! Disrupting The Photography Industry | Mark Daughn | Marketing Misfits #06

Model Attacked By Tiger! Disrupting The Photography Industry | Mark Daughn | #006 Speaker 1: One of the questions everybody gets is, well, I got to be a really good photographer. I got to have really great equipment to make it in the business. I say, no, you don't. No, you don't. You can be, you have to be good. You have to be a decent photographer. So, but really it's just who makes the most noise. And by noise, I mean, who's the best marketer. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Kevin King: What's up, Norm? Good to see you again. Sorry I'm running late. Norm Farrar: Podcast technicalities should not be this difficult. Kevin King: You know, I was just coming back to my studio here and I had a dentist appointment and I live in downtown Austin. The way to get in, there's all this construction going on on my street, so two of the three ways are blocked. And on the third way, there's a semi-truck unloading, taking up half the street. And there's one of those Waymo driverless cars just sitting in the middle of the street. So I'm laying on my horn like, Come on, move, dude. There's a path you can move. You could just squeeze over a little bit and squeeze through and it wouldn't move. So finally, I get out of my car. I go up and look in the car. There's nobody in it. No passenger. There's no driver. There's nobody. It's just sitting there and it's totally confused, but it's got like a line of like 40 cars backing up on either side of it. And so someone got out and was trying to push the thing out of the way. So I was like, man, I can see one of the people in San Francisco are burning these things, you know, it was crazy. Norm Farrar: It's the sign of things to come, you know, just driving your car is too easy. You know, you have to get these, or these, uh, these driverless things. Now I could just imagine what could happen. Imagine if there's a defect, what could happen? Kevin King: Well, I saw a statistic. They say that even with the problems these driverless cars have, they're still way safer than humans. And when you get in a situation like this today, it's confused and doesn't realize that it has enough clearance to inch by to squeeze through a small gap. But as a human might try that, or a guy gets out of the car and kind of like waving them on, you know, come on, come on, come on, no, no, no, no, no. But it doesn't know how to do that like a human. But I saw a statistic that despite all their issues, they're still safer than human driven cars on a mile per mile driven basis. Norm Farrar: You know, I know on this podcast, we're not politically driven, right? We're not talking religion. We're not talking a lot of politics. But you want to see a really great form of marketing. And I want because I want to talk to you about your experience is Electric cars. I don't care if you have an electric car or not, right? An EV. But they've made it so great and they have such a great marketing outlook or marketing firms and consultants that make it look so great. But yet, it took you how long to get from Austin to Dallas? Kevin King: Yeah, I've got a Ford Mach-E 100% electric car and I have another car and that car was in the shop and last August I went to visit my dad for his birthday and it's about 200 miles from Austin where I live to my parents house in Dallas and this car says it has a range of 254 miles or something like that when it's fully charged. So I fully charged it up And, and headed out to go up there. And I didn't make it halfway. The thing lies. It's not 254. You know, I'm watching it. I'm going like, as I as I finished the first 10 miles, it was down 20 already. Norm Farrar: You can't hit that gas pedal. Kevin King: Yeah, what's that? The freaking air conditioners like turn the radio off? What I do, you know, save. So I ended up having to stop about halfway in Waco, Waco, Texas, I call it Waco. And Waco at this Walmart, because it's one of the only ones that has fast chargers. And the Ford, the chargers don't always fit. There's Tesla chargers everywhere, but they don't fit Ford cars. Now, the government has passed a law where that's changing to where there's adapters and stuff. And a fast charger would still, to charge this thing up, would take like 45 minutes. And so I had to sit in front of this Walmart. I went to Walmart, you know, got some Coke Zero, of course, and a few other things and puttered around. Then came back out and it wouldn't charge it all the way. It would only charge it 75%. Because it's some sort of cut off and then it starts going really slow. I guess not to embarrass, like dead gum it. So I drive the rest of the way to Dallas and it's starting to go down again. So I had to stop a second time before I get to my parents house. Because I don't know where the next charging fast charger is going to be. And it was like it was a disaster. And I was like, I never take a electric car on a road trip ever, ever, ever again. Maybe if you have a Tesla, it's a little bit different experience because there's more chargers and there's more fast chargers. We have one here at my complex where I live and you leave it sitting overnight. It's a slow charger. It takes all night to do it or some people plug it into their garage or whatever. But yeah, these EVs are not all they're cracked up to be. I mean, it's nice. They're quiet. They have a good acceleration. But the people that are all about the environment, you're actually spending more sometimes. Yesterday, or Saturday, I had to actually go and charge it because most spots at my house were full, so I had to take it down the street. And I went to a fast charger, and I was there like 20 minutes, and it cost me $8 in electricity. It's not cheaper than gas. And actually, to get the lithium for these batteries actually does more harm to the environment than what you save driving an electric vehicle. Norm Farrar: It's all marketing. Kevin King: It's all marketing. It's all people pass over that. And you look, people are starting to realize this, come to their senses on it. Now hybrid, I have a hybrid. My other car is a hybrid. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually kind of cool where it'll go like 30 miles on a full, if I want to put it fully electric, then switches to gas, but they'll use the electric stuff. for starting and idling and running the radio and all that. So that's cool. It does help. And I like that aspect. So a hybrid, I have no problem with, but I'll never buy another electric car ever until they fix this battery issue or they solve the problem. And you look at what's happened with Tesla, 10% laid off, they're having trouble. It's great for puttering around the town if you're just going to go around town and come home, but beyond that, they're useless. Norm Farrar: We always like getting together. Can you imagine, just imagine for a second, driving your car, okay, driving the Mustang or the GT up to Canada? How many extra days would it take you? Just to Montreal. So we're five, six hours away from Montreal. That would be hours sitting around. Kevin King: Austin to New York, I've done that drive, is like 22, 24 hours, something like that, with just periodic stops. That's not staying in a hotel, that's stopping to get gas and go to the bathroom or something. I can only imagine that's going to turn into a three-day trip. And then you got to map it out. Where are the charging stations? And it's not like if you run out on the side of the road, well, you can just go get a gas can. Mama, ride to the nearest gas station. It's like, you're screwed. You gotta tow it. It's a mess. So yeah, great concepts, good marketing, but there's problems. Norm Farrar: Hey, VHS and beta, you know, beta lost out. It was the big loser because VHS marketing was so much better. It's the same thing here. Same thing here. I'm gonna probably tell my grandkids, remember the day I'm going to tell you, my phone's going off just a sec. I'll tell you the day, little grandkid, when it only took five minutes to go in and get gas for your car, and it would only take you five minutes, not sitting there for frigging 45 minutes on a fast charge. Kevin King: Yeah, it's crazy. Unknown Speaker: It's crazy. Kevin King: Hey, we've got an awesome guest today. I think you might know this guy. Norm Farrar: I know this guy. Kevin King: Yeah, I've known this guy, a guest today, since I was a little boy, basically. I think I met him in 19… Man, what was it, 91 maybe? Or 1992? You were a squire, not a king. I was still a squire. Yeah, I was still, I don't even know if I was that. I was just a little peon. And I was actually doing, I had this business, I think we might have talked about it one time where I did care packages for college students. And I was doing these little care package and I get the mailing list from the universities around Central Texas, University of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, so on. And I would send out a flyer to the parents around finals time and say, hey, I've got a care package. Take care of little Johnny or little Susie during the finals. I have one that's all healthy stuff and one that's all junk food. And we'll put a little note in there. It says good luck on finals or whatever, and we'll deliver it if you pay for it. And all we did was go down to Sam's and just buy a bunch of stuff and stand outside a public storage unit on some folding tables and make these up in little boxes and then go deliver them. But I needed pictures of it to make it look good. So I went into the Yellow Pages and I was like, I need a photographer. I don't know how to take these pictures. And I picked this Daybreak Photography. I don't know what stood out for whatever reason. And for those of you that are listening that don't know what Yellow Pages were, that's Google before Google. That's where you actually went to find a phone number to find something. There's little categories and indexes. And so you'd flip to the P's and find photography. And there'd be little, you'd scroll down, not scroll down, you'd with your fingers scroll down and And find an ad or find someone you want to use and I called this guy and he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I can do that for you. So I go into a studio. And he starts taking the pictures and stuff. It turns out this guy is like this big time fashion photographer. And I don't know why he took this little $300 gig, something I think he's just bored. He's this big time fashion photographer and shooting all this kind of stuff and shooting models all over the place. And he's got photos on the wall, pretty girls. I'm like, that looks cool. I like pretty girls too. And you know, in fact, I'm doing something around that. I'm putting together a business right now. I'm starting a little magazine around that. And so one thing led to another, I ended up hiring him to do some photo shoots. We got into some issue with the mafia, which maybe we'll talk about, and then we ended up becoming partners. And we've been partners on some businesses ever since then. So, this is a really good guy. He's one of my best friends out there. Someone that's molded and shaped me quite a bit. So, I'm really honored to have him. He doesn't do a lot of podcasts, but he's always got good stories to tell. Norm Farrar: Always good stories. Kevin King: All right. Bring him in. Norm Farrar: Okay, here we go. There he is. Kevin King: Mr. Mark Daughn. How are you doing? Speaker 1: I'm doing all right. What draw you in on that was great marketing. I've had a great display ad in the Yellow Pages. Kevin King: I can't remember what it was. Did you have a display ad or was it like a little... Speaker 1: I mean, you remember the yellow pages were columns. It was three columns. I had a one column by about three inch tall ad and the name of my company, my last name is Dawn, play on that was Daybreak. And so, yeah, it was just a picture of a sun, a graphic of a sun and Daybreak Photography. It didn't say what kind of photography I did. And why I took the job, you're right. I was bored. I was literally sitting in the studio that day, had nothing going on. And when you called, my first question was, do you have any money? And you said, yeah, I got some money. I said, cash or check? And you said cash. I said, bring it on down. I got nothing else to do for a couple of hours. Kevin King: Well, I remember after, before we got into business together, we did that shoot and I paid him. And then we did something else. Was it, I think we went to Houston and shot in one of the clubs or shot something there. I can't remember what it was, but I couldn't. I couldn't pay Mark. He was giving me a decent rate. Back then, I think his rate was like $800 a day. So, we did some other job after that and I couldn't pay him. I was cashed on, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I remember one day, I lived on the third floor of this little one-bedroom apartment. Mark shows up in a suit. Knock on the door. Unexpected. I'm here to collect. I'm like, what? He has this face. You know, if you know Mark, he has this like scary face sometimes. He has this face. I'm here to get my check. You owe me. I think I gave him a check and said, hold it for a couple of days. And then I don't know what I did. I went scrambled around and I sold some stuff at the half price books or I don't remember what I did to actually raise the money. Took something to the pawn shop and to cover the check so that it would clear a couple of days later when he put it in. You remember that, Mark? Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I remember. I don't remember the suit part because I don't remember wearing a suit. Norm Farrar: I couldn't imagine Mark in a suit. Kevin King: I know, it was weird. Norm Farrar: You had hair back then too, right? Kevin King: Yeah, yeah, long hair back then. Yeah. So Mark, I mean, how did you actually get, tell them how you actually got into photography. That's an interesting, it's a marketing story because you were like in college in Virginia and where was it? Speaker 1: I was in high school. Kevin King: I mean, yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. I went to a whole bunch of high schools. My father was a director of marketing for resorts, but just so happened I was in high school my senior year in Highland Park in Texas. Well, Highland Park is right down the street from the Dallas Apparel Mart. where they have all the fashion from all over the world comes in to sell their clothes. Well, they always bring in models to the apparel mart. And the law in Texas at that time for sure, if the child was under 18 years old, they had to be enrolled in school if they lived in the state of Texas for more than 30 days. So when they would bring in these models, oftentimes 16, 17, 18 year old models from around the world, they would be there at the apparel mart working for 60 days usually, and they would have to put them in school. So this Highland Park High School is a kind of ritzy area of town. So they put them in this really nice high school and installed them in a model apartment down the street. So when I went started this high school, I was like shocked. This was some of the most beautiful women I had seen in my life, you know, just walking around the halls of school. I was like, oh, this is interesting. So I I found this little French girl that was really beautiful. She was in my study hall. So I tried to approach her to, you know, ask her out on a date. You know, I opened with, Hey, what'd you do this weekend? And I'm about to say, I went to a really cool, you know, quarry up north of Dallas. And we went, everyone skinny dipping, you know, thinking I was gonna be really cool. And she goes in her little French accent, which I won't attempt to do. was, she's, well, I just got in from Milan. I spent the Saturday in Milan, then flew to Paris, did a show there, and then came back. And so now I'm back in school on Tuesday. And I was like, oh, what do you say? You know, great, cool. I'll talk to you later. So I got thinking about it. What can I do to relate to her or to other ones of these models? And so, well, they all have photography in there. They do something with photography. So, I went to my dad and said, hey, you got a really nice Nikon system. Can I borrow it? And he's like, what for? I told him, he laughed and said, sure, you don't even know how to use it. I said, you got a manual? I mean, a physical manual. I was like, yep. So, I sat down, I studied it for a week, learned how to expose film. This was back in the day of film. I was living in Dallas, called, got a Yellow Pages for Houston, looked up every modeling agency in Houston, called them and said, I'm an aspiring photographer, I'll come down to town next weekend, I'll shoot any model you got for free and provide them prints. Two or three of them said, okay, come on down. We got some models for you. So I did, went down, shot it. It was a disaster. Pictures were horrible, but I didn't care. I just needed pictures. Came back. Back then you printed contact sheets, which was an eight by 10 sheet of paper with 35 millimeter sized images on it. Printed up like 25 contact sheets, stuck them in my backpack. Went to study hall, left my backpack open, sat down next to her at the table, knocked them off on the floor. Contact sheets go spilling across the floor. She's a polite young lady. She gets down, starts helping me pick up the contact sheets. And she's looking at them and she's like, oh, oh, are you a photographer? I said, well, I'm an aspiring photographer. She said, don't, but don't look, those are not very good. And she says, no, no, no. I don't know if you were aware, but I'm a model and I'll be glad to give you some advice and, you know, help you out. And I'm like. Unknown Speaker: Yes. Speaker 1: I ended up dating her. And then as a result of dating her, I was in the apparel mart watching a shoot go on. And the photographer there that was shooting was a real germ. It was a big shoot, like 50, 60 people involved, people running all over the place. But he's screaming at his crew, to make a long story short, a guy makes a mistake and blows up a power pack of lighting, lighting power pack. And it happened to be over near me and this photographer comes over with a bullhorn, yelling at this guy, like, can't beat away with a bullhorn. Fires the guy on the spot, and the guy goes stomping off. Photographer turns around and starts to walk away. And I thought in my head, I was saying, what an asshole. But I said it out loud. And the guy stops and spins around and looks at me and said, what'd you say? I said, what do I got to lose? I said, you're an asshole. If you hadn't been yelling at him, he wouldn't have made that mistake. Guy looks at me and says, well, you think you know better? I said, well, I know better than to make that mistake. He said, fine, what are you doing? I said, nothing. He said, well, now you're working for me for the rest of the day. I'm like, oh, okay. So, we walk over and he says, the guy I fired is my first assistant, who's the guy that's in charge of all the other assistants. He said, let's see how much you really know. So, he introduces me to the crew, walks off. And so, I managed to get through the day. We got through the day. I got screamed at a lot and whatever. And at the end of the day, the guy goes, well, you don't know shit, but you managed to bluff your way through it. So, be here tomorrow. So I came back the next day. I ultimately end up working for him as a first assistant and a year and a half later, I bought his business. And that's how I became a photographer. Kevin King: And you were shooting some big names, right? I mean, what are some of the big names that people might recognize, especially if they're older school guys? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean back in the day, I was lucky to come up through photography when the supermodels were first getting started and celebrities were becoming influential in the fashion world. So probably one of the most favorite people I ever shot in my life was Jacqueline Smith, one of the original Charlie's Angels. Amazing human being. She was just an amazing human being. But I shot Sybil Shepard, shot a bunch of the supermodels. But when I shot them, they were just getting started. And I don't know if anybody remembers the movie Gia. I met and knew her. It's a very, very sad story. The fashion industry back then was not a pretty business. It was not a nice business. It was, it would eat people up and spit them out. So it was, it was a tough business. Kevin King: Well, Jacqueline did something one time, something with a limo or something. Can you tell that story? Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, she, she called me and um, He said, I got something I want you to see, what do you want to do? And I was like in the middle of shoot, shooting for Neiman's that day, catalog stuff. He said, well, you got a lunch, right? And I said, yeah, we got lunch. He said, I'll come pick you up. We won't be gone long. So lunch comes around, I go out and I'm standing outside the studio and I see this Rolls Silver Ghost coming around the corner. Like who the hell is in my studio area parking lot in a Rolls? And she pulls up, this rose pulls up in front of me. I look in the backseat and there's nobody in the backseat. I look in the front seat and it's her driving. And I'm like, what are you doing? Get in, get in. So we get in. And we drove down the street and I said, what are we doing? She said, we're gonna go to lunch. I was like, okay, why the rolls? Because I wanted to do something. I was like, what? So we pull into a McDonald's parking lot, a McDonald's drive-thru and a Rolls. And pull up to the window and proceeded with straight faces, ordered lunch in the rolls. And of course, she's a recognizable person. So the person in the window figured out, realized who she was. Next thing we know, we have all, everybody in the McDonald's is crammed up to the drive up window. Got lunch, got her Big Macs and went around the corner and ate lunch in the rolls and then went back. And I was like, why'd you do that? She said, I just thought it would be funny. I walked into the, I said, were you buying this thing? She said, hell no, I'm not buying it. I just wanted to test drive it. Drive-thru at McDonald's, drive-thru with it. She was just that kind of fun person. I mean, you know, great, great person. So, yeah. Had some interesting times back in the day. Norm Farrar: You know, even talking about the yellow pages, I remember the yellow page, that was the form of marketing, like for, especially for local businesses, right? It was freaking expensive. Do you remember how expensive those ads were? Speaker 1: I don't remember what the actual dollar value was, but I know it was strong. And weirdly enough, because I had no business advertising, because I had opened a studio out of sheer boredom in Austin, because most of my work was travel. And so I had this studio, I had this thought that I was going to, I don't know, shoot local stuff, which was just not me and not what I was doing. But I spent all the money for that. But ultimately, I got introduced to Kevin. Norm Farrar: And that's what counts, right? Speaker 1: Yeah. Marketing back then, I think it's interesting. I often tell people, I taught photography, taught at teak workshops. And one of the questions everybody gets is, well, I've got to be a really good photographer. I've got to have really great equipment to make it in the business. I say, no, you don't. You have to be good. You have to be a decent photographer. But really, it's just who makes the most noise. And by noise, I mean, who's the best marketer? Because I had a lot of photographers back in the day that kicked my ass because they were great marketers and they really weren't anywhere near as good a photographer as I was. And so I think part of the tricks that we had to do back then was find ways to really stand out in our marketing and do things different. I mean, a yellow page ad is sort of mandatory, but you still have to come up with other ways to reach clients and stuff. Kevin King: You did some pretty interesting things like little custom books and like you would send stuff to potential clients and you did some like you would just like take this off the shelf like little portfolio. You would like customize them like with some kind of paper or like box or something to stand out. Speaker 1: One of the most successful things I did from a marketing point of view back then, and weirdly enough, you and I have talked about this many times, nothing's new. So everything, all the crazy crap I did back in the day, you could adapt it and do it today. And with some of my other clients now, we still do. But one of the best and most effective ones I did is my studio was within sight of the apparel mark. And I had 24 employees and we had a week where we had no business. So I called everybody together and said, we got to come up with a plan. We got to do something to get some business. So we're all standing around brainstorming and I'm standing with the bay doors open looking at the apparel mark. I said, this is just ridiculous. That building is close enough. I could throw a rock and hit it. And there's thousands of jobs in that building. And I stopped and said, throw a rock and hit it. Everybody go out in the parking lot. I want rocks. Give me rocks about the size of a baseball. And everybody's like, what? Just do it. So everybody went out. I ran down the street. Norm Farrar: Did you do it with a bullhorn? Speaker 1: No, I didn't do it with a bullhorn. That wasn't quite that bad. I ran down the street and got some twine. And I don't know if you remember back in the day, the old mailing label, like Manila label with a grommet in it that you would tie to a package and send, bought that. So we took the rocks, wrapped them up with twine, put a label on it, said, at that time it was Mark Daughn Productions. Just a stone's throw away. Here's our phone number. And then I had them hand-delivered by courier to every designer in the apparel mart. It was like 300 of them. Just a rock. That's all I did, plot. And every agency, ad agency that was within a nearby distance of the apparel mart, the phone started going crazy because these designers And these agency people, they're always looking for somebody that's creative. And I sent them a rock. They're like, who is this guy? What? It was work. It was amazing. We were busy as hell for the next year out of that one thing. Just had to think of different things. But what you were referring to, Kevin, was back in the day, it was just a portfolio. It wasn't online. And everybody else would have a book, sometimes 11 by 14, just in a book and their images of their work. My approach was I wanted the client, whoever was looking at my portfolio, to feel it, see it, and smell it. And so I built custom boxes that were 11 by 14 or 16 by 20, only put 10 images in it, 10 prints. Each print was laminated and on the back of each print, I put a very high grade leather suede laminated, you know, right to the print. And then I sprayed the back of it with a very subtle but Smellable cologne on each one, packaged them up, had them delivered, when I would have them delivered to somebody who wanted to see the portfolio, they had to lift the cover off the box, set it out, pick up these individual plates that they could feel the leather on the back, the smell hit them. It was a whole sensory, as close as I could get to a sensory experience at the time. And probably 85% of the time, if somebody looked at my book, I got the job, because it was just completely different. And appeal to them on multiple levels. Kevin King: When we started working together, we did something called Imagine Magazine. This was like a Victoria's Secret type of deal. And in order to recruit models for, we wanted the best of the best in the modeling space, in the glamour marketing space. And, you know, some of these were Playboy Playmates or Playmates of the Year, these high level, you know, back then that meant a lot more than it does now because the Internet's kind of desensitized a lot of that stuff. But back then, that was a big deal and highly recognized people. And so we wanted these people. So one of the things that we did was when we would, Mark is like, Kevin, all we need is one. We just need one. We need to get the first one. And so we got to do whatever we got to do to get this first one in the door so I can shoot her. And then we're gonna do something called the magic machine to them. I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, we're gonna do this magic machine thing. And you just watch what happens. We're not gonna have to recruit anymore. It was true. Once we started doing this magic machine. On these models, we never had to recruit again, because they started self-recruiting for us. We ran an above-board studio, you know, there's no hanky-panky, no casting couches or none of that kind of stuff that you hear from the industry. And the way we treated these models when they came in, I mean, Mark taught me how to actually properly treat a woman. And it just worked. Mark, you want to talk about the magic machine, what we did, some of the stuff that we did? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, essentially, once I got them on the phone or once they would come or ask to shoot, And we would come up with an agreement basically on the phone, but then I would send them a questionnaire, which was, you know, all the logical stuff. You know, it's like, what sizes are you? Because we have custom-made wardrobe and stuff. What size? What's your weight? What's your favorite food? What's your favorite snack? What's your favorite top 10 music, songs? All these questions. It was about a three-page questionnaire. And this is typically three to six weeks, sometimes a month and a half before we would actually shoot them because I would have to have wardrobe and stuff made. So out of that, we would create, like, let's just say somebody said, well, I really want green M&Ms on the set, or my favorite snack is green M&Ms, or my favorite lunch is, you know, salmon, or, and my favorite songs are this. Well, this was back when iPods had just come out. So we would literally get, download all the music that they said, create a playlist, So when they would get there, we would hand them a robe for them to be in the makeup room and that had a Mystique logo on it, but it also had their name on it. So it was embroidered with their custom to their name. We'd give them slippers. We'd have their favorite drink waiting for them, their favorite snack there. And then we would play their music to them. And, you know, we'd be standing around talking and they'd be like, it's amazing. You and I have the exact same taste in music. The music that you're playing is the exact same taste. It's like, yeah, it is. I'm surprised you like it so much. She told me what her music was, but nobody remembers those kind of little details six, eight weeks later. They just know how they feel. They felt good. They're treated well. Just basically came down to treating them how I would want to be treated and above. Just really, really, you know, if they were staying the night with us and shooting the second day, when they got to their hotel, they'd have their favorite snacks on their bed. And, you know, just anything I could do or anything that we could do to do that and make them feel that way. And we treated them like family is the bottom line. And what happened? Kevin King: Yeah, Norm knows that feeling of having your favorite snack on the bed. Norm Farrar: I do, I do. You know, somebody took this magic, what did you call it? Kevin King: Magic machine. Norm Farrar: The magic machine. And even when I stay over, you know, I'll find my favorite snacks on the bed. Kevin King: Norm stayed with me one time in my house in Austin. And one night he goes in, he's like, hey, after we smoked some cigars, called it a night. Like, I'm going to bed. Goes in, gets in the bed, puts his hand under the pillow and he's like, what is this little crinkly sound? What's going on here? And he pulls it out and Norm loves to end the night and just chill, watch a little TV or whatever with some gummies. So I had a little bag of like some of his favorite gummies just hidden under the pillow. Norm Farrar: It wasn't one bag. Yeah, several bags. It was awesome. But, you know, doing what you're doing or back then, it's exactly what marketers want to do right now. And that's to build up that profile, to understand their audience. And what you did is you took that to the next level 20 plus years ago. And we're still talking about that nowadays. How do you get the information? How do you segment a list? Because we want to these days target a specific person with all that information. And Kevin, you talk about that. You've been talking about that for years as well. Kevin King: Yeah, I mean we did, we took it even further. We pick them up in a limo the first night a lot of times and take them to dinner and a nice dinner. You know, I used to be a McDonald's and Mark can tell you stories. I used to like You know, McDonald's, Chili's was like fine dining to me. And Mark was like, no, no, we're going to a sushi place. We're going to this restaurant. I'm like, ooh. And I remember one time we, the model wanted sushi and we went to some like, maybe it's Thai food, Thai or sushi. And I'm like, what is this weird stuff? I just ordered rice, I think, at this place. And I remember always that I couldn't wait for it to be over. I'm like, as fun as this is sitting here, you know, with these pretty girls and Mark and telling stories and whatever, I need to eat. I was a bigger guy then, so when we left, I hit McDonald's after going to this nice restaurant. I used to do that quite a bit, but now it's exactly flipped. McDonald's is the last place I want to go. Now, Mark turned me into a foodie, so now I love going to the best of the best food places. I still don't eat raw things, but I can find something on the menu usually that's appealing to me. The Magic Machine is something that I think we were doing it. Back then, if you do that now with your customers, I mean, we did it with our customers, not just like you're talking about, Norm, not just with the models, but we flipped that. One of the things that we did is we were putting out little baseball cards, so trading cards, like baseball, you know, two and a half by three and a half inch baseball cards. That's a hot thing. It's just around the time Beanie Babies came out, pretty girls on baseball cards became a thing. And we're generating millions of dollars selling baseball cards. into comic book shops, a direct-to-consumer list. And one of the things we would do with our customers is every, I think, September or October, Mark would find this Santa Claus in Austin. I remember one year it was a Santa Claus. I think we changed it up a little bit. But one year, we found this guy that's like the most famous Santa Claus in Austin. And we went to this one house and I think maybe they had decorated already, or I can't remember if we decorated it. They already had a tree up, you know, earlier one of these, like put the tree up before Thanksgiving type of people. And so they had the tree up and we went in there and we shot this girl in like lingerie with Santa Claus. And we made a baseball card out of it. And then we mounted it to like, we put like a six by nine, or I can't remember the exact measurements, piece of paper, a cardboard. And we mounted it on there, the actual baseball card in a plastic sleeve with a little sticker on the back so it didn't damage the card, and we numbered them. And we sent that out to everybody who had bought from us the previous year. As a gift and said, here you go. Here's a present. Thank you for your business in 2001 or whatever year this was. Here's a free gift. That thing right there, we knew our customer. They collected the baseball cards. They liked the pretty girls. It was a valuable, it was a rare thing. I've seen some of those. I saw one on eBay a few years ago going for like $100. One of those cards. And we, we, that's because it was Leanne Tweeden, I think, or somebody I don't care. It was maybe it's a different thing. It was, it was, it was, that's what we did. And we kept consistently being voted the number one in the space. For our customer service, for the way we treat the customers, for everything that we did. And that's an important thing when it comes to marketing, is over-deliver and surprise. And a lot of people, they just end that first order. They're just like, thanks for your business, have a nice life. But no, we're going back to them, we're treating them well, we're giving them good things. And that's some of the stuff that Mark and I have done over the years on a lot of things that we've done. Speaker 1: And we used to randomly put extra things in the packages when we went in order. We would literally print up a limited edition card, it wasn't for sale anywhere. And if they hit a certain threshold, we would always throw it in with the package and just, we didn't tell them it was coming and just open it and boom, there it was. Norm Farrar: One of the things that you guys did for years, right up to the present day, which I think is really cool, is you've been able to take a lot of this content Put it into calendars and they're quality, quality calendars and repurpose after all these years. And some of it's new, but there's a lot of repurposed material. And by marketing this properly, you've got this consistent cashflow coming in every year off of work you've done in the past. Kevin King: Content is king. I mean, when you have content, Some content gets dated. Hairstyles, maybe in some old photos from the 70s or 80s, but most of the stuff from the 2000s, it's a little dated. They don't have as many tattoos and stuff that's common now, but it still works a lot of times. So yeah, we're able to reuse. I mean, it reaches a limit. But we're able to reuse a lot of it and supplement with some new stuff. And there's so many new people coming to the marketplace that a lot of them haven't seen it before. And then we do testing. Like with our calendars, we print four per year. Mark and I do. Mark shoots them. He lays them out. And then I put in the little grids and I coordinate the whole selling and the DTC and the Amazon and all that stuff. And it's almost like a passive income. I mean, there's a little bit of work for each of us for about a week. For me, periodically throughout the season, I've got to hit it for a day or two here and there. But it's not a tremendous amount of work for either one of us, other than a short period of time, really, at the beginning. And then, they just sell. And we do testing. We print four in South Korea. Our landing cost is like $1.60 roughly, and we sell them for $20. If they buy directly from us, plus shipping. If they buy them on Amazon, they get the prime. And then we do testing every year. We call them special edition calendars, so we do print-on-demand. And so we'll take 16 calendars, 16 different titles that we're thinking about doing, and we'll test them. And we'll just print 40 of them or 60 of them to start with and just see what happens. And we put those out. We don't sell those on Amazon. We sell those direct to our list. And when we find the title, like we found one two years ago, just went gangbusters. Some of these might sell You know, 100 or 150 or something. This one sold like, I forget the number 5, 6, 700 direct to our list of this special edition count. They're expensive. They're like $25 each. So they're even more expensive. And they don't even have the little thing to hang, you know, so some guys, they're just buying them because of the title. And we'll figure out what works and then we'll take that into one of the four and then mass produce it. And so it's a whole testing process that we do. But having that content is what allows us to do that. And that's where a lot of people, when you generate content, if you're listening to this and you have content, podcast content, teaching content, there's so many ways you can repurpose that to make Either get a lot of reach, get more people into your ecosystem or make more money. Norm Farrar: You also know that you're hitting the right audience because of the retention rate. And the reason I'm saying this is you don't get a lot, well, you don't have, it's not all digital. Unknown Speaker: Let's put it that way. You want to talk about that? Kevin King: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, for a lot of you listening, the younger ones, there's a thing called a check. It's a piece of paper that your bank gives you and you write out to the order of Mark Daughn. And you sign it and you have to write out $19.95 and or you can go down to 7-Eleven or your local convenience store or the grocery store and you can pay $0.79 and get a money order. It's a little piece of paper with some barcodes on it and you send that through the mail in a physical check and this started Years ago, when I was in the direct marketing business and actually one of the first projects that Mark and I did together was I was living in Dallas, he was in Austin and I was just following money. I moved to Phoenix for, I was in Austin, I moved to Phoenix for like 10 months because I was following some money and didn't work out, came back, went to Dallas briefly and Mark's, I don't remember how I commenced, was like, hey, we need to do this, this souvenir project. I don't have any money. He's like, well, I got like three grand or something. So he drove up to Dallas. I wrote the check to the post office or pay for the printing or something, and we sent this flyer out, direct mail. And this was no internet. I don't remember if we had an 800 number on there or not, but it's like send checks and money orders to the mail. Still to this day in 2024, it keeps dwindling down. $20,000 to $40,000 in checks and money orders in the mail. Where I go out to the post office about once a week and open the box and it's like Christmas, like is the post office box this full, you know, inch tall or is it like jammed in there and they can't get any more envelopes in there? And then you see these envelopes and they're handwritten with a stamp on them and you see the name on the outside. Oh, there's John Henderson. That's good. That's a couple hundred bucks right there. I know John, he's been ordering from us for 200 years. We do a direct mail flyer where we send it out in the mail. About 17,000 people get these flyers, but most of them order online. But some of them are still old-fashioned checks, or you can see where they're writing. You can barely read. Does that say 1995, or does that say 13? Because they're like 80 years old, and the scribbling and handwriting is not so good. And then we'll get other ones. When we send that flyer, it comes back in the mail. It says, deceased. And I'm like, oh man, that was Phil Agnew. That dude's been ordering since like 1994. Now he's dead, damn it. Norm Farrar: So in marketing terms, that's unsubscribe? Kevin King: Yeah, basically. Unsubscribe, it's undeliverable. Yeah, so, but that still happens. So we, you know, that's, it's not a lot of money compared to what we do digitally, hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, off that same thing digitally, but it's, it's still, it's, It's still out there. So people overlook that in their marketing. There's still people that direct mail still works, whether you want the people to send the check and money or they just want you on to see it and go to a website. Speaker 1: Yeah, but even the direct mail still drives the traffic to the website and make the digital purchase or to Amazon to make the digital purchase. Kevin King: Yeah, we tell them in the flyer. We say, if you get an Amazon Prime account, it says available on Amazon and go buy it on Amazon. You don't have to pay shipping, but some of these guys, they prefer to pay us $9.95 or $12.95 shipping. And buy it that way. And then we do another little thing on there. So another little marketing misfit trick is on the order form, we'll put a line. So you subtotal, you write in what you want, the item number, the title, and then the price. And then at the bottom of the order form, you subtotal it up. And right before that it says insurance, yes or no. And we used to have something called no dogs guarantee. And this is like, if you got a calendar and like, oh, these girls are all ugly or something, we would exchange it for you. If you didn't like the calendar for some reason, But we changed that to just insurance. And this covers if the package goes lost or missing, or... Norm Farrar: I can't believe you added, no dogs guarantee. Kevin King: No dogs guarantee. We couldn't do that today. No, we couldn't do that today. This is 25 years ago. But we have, we put, we changed it to an individual And insurance. And the insurance says yes or no, but we automatically put in the order form $4. So it's automatically filled in. So if they circle no, they scratch it out. But most people don't circle no, they circle yes, because it's already on there. So we get an extra $4 from like, probably 60% of the people actually pay an extra $4. And if we send out 2003, I don't know what to say 2000 orders, Over a course of a month or two, and we get 60% doing that, 120 people doing that, that's $4,800. We might have to replace one order. And it cost me, that cost depends on the size of the order, $50 to $100 maybe. And that's it. So that's free money by leading people. They can scratch it out, but we put it on there and it works really good. Norm Farrar: I hope you guys don't mind, but one of my favorite stories, I don't know if you want to get into this or not, but one of my favorite stories is one of the photo shoots that you did. And it happened to be with a tiger. Can you get into that? Speaker 1: Sure. Kevin King: Do you want to go, Mark, or do you want me to set the groundwork and you tell the story? Speaker 1: Either way, you can start it. Kevin King: So about 1995, I think it was, Mark had this, there's this new program that just came out called Bryce. And it would create these futuristic worlds. It's kind of cool. Bryce Canyon in the US has all, I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of Bryce Canyon National Park in the West, in Utah. It would create these futuristic worlds. So he had this idea. We were doing a lot of cool, interesting stuff. He was doing angels and fairies and all these really elaborate, different scenes. And he's like, what if we did this warrior scene with this woman? I painted head to toe like a tiger. And she was standing next to a real tiger. And she had like a sword in her hand. And she's like this warrior princess girl. And behind her were like these Roman columns. And we'll shoot it on green screen or blue screen, whichever. And we'll actually put this, you know, then create in the computer a cool background. This is back when this is a major advancement, you know, this 30 years ago, you couldn't do stuff like you can do now, you know, to render a background, you do it and you come back in the morning. On your computer, just to run our basic background. So we hired this model to come in, told her up front what it all is about, had her sign the release, said, hey, this is risky, you know, and we partnered with this photographer who was known for airbrushing women as art. So he would paint women as butterflies and they get naked, but then he'd paint them body to toe like butterflies or like lions or like Fairies or whatever. His name is Leroy Roper. He's a really good artist. So Mark hired him to actually paint this girl from head to toe like a tiger. And then he hired an agency that had tigers. And, you know, they did commercials for big commercials and stuff, and they brought in this tiger. And this tiger, when they brought it in off of this truck out of this cage, the tiger wouldn't come into the studio. As Mark had set up the studio, panned the background blue, I think it was, it wasn't green screen, it was blue screen, I think, and had everything set up and this tiger wouldn't come in. So they had to, they brought a little baby tiger. Speaker 1: It would come in the studio, but it wouldn't go on the set. Kevin King: Yeah, so they brought in a little baby tiger and I remember they threw some meat on the ground like to kind of prompt it and I'll let Mark tell the story from there. Speaker 1: So, I mean, back in the day before this, I was kind of known for shooting big cats and animals with fashion models and stuff. So, this wasn't a crazy thing to do. This was something I had done before, but I always hired the best, hired the right agencies, hired trained animals, blah, blah, blah. So in this case, and I also had a rule that I would never put a model with an animal that I wasn't willing to sit there and mess with. So the guy brings in the cat where he's in the lobby and the cat's fine in the lobby hanging out and he's playing with it with his foot and cat's grabbing his foot and kind of playing like a kitten. I mean, they're big cats and I get down on the floor and, you know, it was fine. It would grab your arm and kind of play with you and tug on you. And one thing you don't do with a big cat is if it grabs you, is you don't pull away because they're designed, their teeth and everything are designed to actually bite from being pulled away. So like this cat particularly grabbed my arm and decided to roll over. So I get 750 pounds of big old tiger rolling over on top of me. And you know, it's okay. All right, this is fun. But it was okay. I mean, it was all okay. Then the cat was skittish and it wouldn't go on the set. And we finally determined that it didn't like the sand that I had on the ground. So we cleaned off all the sand. We figured we'd digitally put that back in, major pain in the ass, but whatever, trying to make this work. Finally, to get the cat on the set, And we get the model, she's painted, head to toe, like a Bengal tiger. And so she's standing out there, got this giant sword standing next to her, or holding, you know, next to her, and the cat's curled around her foot, and I'm watching her get everything together. Kevin King: The chain and the, what we'll take out in Photoshop later with the trainers. Speaker 1: There's a chain hanging from the tiger, but he was, I mean, technically the trainers had the chain, but, you know, there was slack in the chain. And so, I get everything set, I walk back to the camera, and this is back still in the day of film, so I was going to shoot Polaroid first to make sure the lighting and everything was right. I get back to the camera, I'm about to shoot. Actually, I shot the Polaroid, that was fine. Had to adjust something, walk back to the camera, went and switched to film, and I looked up. And I can see the cat just kind of look at the girl, head to toe, looked at her foot. She's standing, you know, like her feet apart. And the cat just literally reaches out and smacks her foot. You know, just, just comes up in the air. He's playing exactly how he was playing with his trainer earlier in the day. Cat grabs the girl's foot in the air, but now she's barefoot. The trainer was wearing boots. She loses her balance, starts to fall, which is pulling away from the cat. Cat says, my toy, I'm keeping it, bites down to hold its toy. Girl screams. Cat goes, I want nothing to do with screaming girl. I'm taking my toy and leaving. The Foot. So he starts backing up across the studio, dragging the girl. Kevin King: And the trainers. Speaker 1: And the trainers. At this point, the trainers jump in. Literally, I mean, they carry a tool, which when I thought about it later, it's like, why do you carry a tool that would open a cat's mouth? So they shove this in, get the girl loose. Grab the cat, they literally grab the cat, drag it out, put it in the cage and leave. Like almost in less than probably five minutes. I scoop up the girl, carry her into the other room, look at her foot. She bit? Kevin King: Oh yeah, bit all the way through, all the way through. Speaker 1: Bit through the foot, like literally like the meat on the bottom of your foot was hanging loose. Unknown Speaker: It was a mess. Speaker 1: So my assistant, or not my assistant, my production manager was a woman. She calls 911 and she's freaking out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And 911's like, yes, what's the emergency? We have a model in a studio who's been bit by a Bengal tiger. And 911 says to her, and I guess she was hyped up and her voice sounded high, they literally said, little girl, don't call here with pranks and hung up on her. Called back 9-1-1 obviously, finally we get through, the ambulance comes, and it just was, everybody's like, why is this woman painted like a Bengal tiger? We get to the hospital, I rode with her into the hospital, and the doctors are like, bit by a tiger, painted like a tiger, what is, you know, but long story short, she ended up okay, she had to have two surgeries. Norm Farrar: How did that go for any cat shoot that you did after that? Kevin King: No more animals. Norm Farrar: No more animals. It stopped. Speaker 1: That's actually not true. Kevin King: Actually, we did it in Vegas. That's right. In Pahrump. It took its chances again. We had an issue there too. Not as bad. Speaker 1: Yeah, we had two, actually three. We were shooting with a cat and a model and the model was deliberately out of reach of the cat. This cat was chained to the ground and sitting there and we're shooting. It was a little small Asian model and This cat kept leaning in and leaning in and leaning in. And so we had to readjust her, but unbeknownst to me or her, every time she stood up and readjusted, she was sitting down a step closer to the cat. On camera, it looked like they were beside each other, but really the cat was like four feet behind her. Finally, she gets close enough. The cat lunges to the end of the chain and just reaches out and bats her, like in the shoulder. Literally, she flips head over, you know, butt, ends up six feet away from the cat going, what? She's fine. She's just dirty and, you know, kind of like shooken up a little bit. I was like, all right, all right, we're done, we're done. She said, no, no, we got to finish the shoot. So she went back over and this time she made damn sure she stayed far enough out of reach. But that day, we also were shooting with a wolf and we were told, don't put any lotions on the model, don't put anything with any scent on the model, nothing, because the wolf just will love it and go crazy, going to lick it all off. told the model that, told the model that, of course, what does she do, she thinks her skin looks dry, so unbeknownst to us, she puts on lotion, goes out there and they also said don't ever scratch his ears, just pat him on the back, whatever is fine, So this cat is very interested in this model, licking her from head to toe. We now got to take her over, wash her off, we go back. She's sitting there, we're probably five minutes into the shoot and she reaches over and again, I could see what she was about to do and I'm like, Joe! And she's like, scratches this wolf's ear and literally turns around and goes, and she sees it turning. So she pulls her hand back and it snaps at her, you know, like a dog or anything else would bite. And she got her hand back far enough that she had nails that were, you know, like yay long. And it's just barely caught the nail, punched the hole like you had a hole punch in the nail and then got back. So, we locked up. And then later that afternoon, I had a parrot, full-sized parrot sitting on a girl's shoulder doing this like Captain Morgan kind of scene. And the wind blew real hard. Parent lost his balance and started to slide off the shoulder and attempting to stay put, just dug his claws in and proceeded to get blown all the way down across her back, making nice little deep scratches all the way down. That was the last time I shot animals ever. Norm Farrar: Back in the day, my first photo shoot was because I was a photographer too. I didn't kind of stick with that, but Toronto Zoo, very well-known zoo. And they ended up, this is kind of interesting story. They had all this professional camera equipment, but they never used it. Mark, you would know this camera, Hasselblad? They had a Hasselblad there, never used. So, oh, do you want to use it? Absolutely. So they gave me the equipment. I went out there and I was shooting a birds of prey show. So they had this hawk that I was shooting. It was going out, it went out to the tree, it was supposed to come back. There was a trainer behind me and the Hasselblad is kind of a square camera. So the hawk coming down, I could see it and it didn't go for the hamster, it went for the Hasselblad. I've got the picture of it just coming as it attacked with its talons out, bounced off, took both of its talons, ripped into my back and clawed my back. My wife was asking me for a few weeks, you know, was I having an affair, but literally ripped the shirt off my back. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's a mess. Kevin King: You did shoot animals one more time, Mark. You shot dogs for me. Speaker 1: Oh, that's true. I did actually shoot an animal again. I forgot. Norm Farrar: So when am I going to see one of these law firms saying, have you been shot by an animal? Speaker 1: Well, actually, that model that got bit by a tiger, she actually did sue us. Kevin King: She sued us, the studio, everybody, and we ended up finding a technicality and getting off on it. Didn't have to pay her. Speaker 1: Yeah, the judge threw it out. Actually, it wasn't a technicality. We did it right. She had signed it. Yeah, and so the judge literally asked her, said, did you sign this? And she said, yes. It says here, this is dangerous. You are aware of what you're signing? Yes. Did you voluntarily walk onto the set with the Tiger? She said, yes, after signing that agreement. Well, I signed the agreement weeks before, but yes, because case dismissed, get out. Kevin King: That's why I like at our events, Norm, you always, the first day when you register, we make you sign a liability release. Norm Farrar: I always put a fake name down. Kevin King: Not this time, Amber will be checking. We always do that because if you slip and fall on the stairs or one of the events that we're doing, we don't want to get sued. I mean, you could still sue, but at least we have some ammunition. Speaking of the events, Mark, that's from a marketing point of view. A lot of people, they're listening to this. Some of them might be from the Amazon world, some of them aren't. A lot of them aren't, but I do events in the Amazon world called the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and I've been doing them since 2019. These are big ticket, like $5,000 per ticket per head to come, and there's tons of events out there in the e-commerce space. They're usually pretty much the same. It's like, go show up at a convention hall, listen to some lectures, go to a cocktail mixer, have some loud music, try to network. Have a few hors d'oeuvres and that's pretty much it. Maybe a group of people go out to a restaurant. We try to actually make our events a total experience, whether it be an event like we just did recently in Hawaii or Puerto Rico or some of the other events that we do like the Carnival of Dreams or the Christmas party or the one that we're doing around Halloween coming up in October. What is it From a marketing point of view, where do you get the inspiration? Why do you think that's so important to actually do that? Because it's very unique and a lot of this, I give you credit that comes from, I might give you a little bit of the direction, but a lot of the details and a lot of the creative side of it comes from you. And people are always raving about it. Why do you think that's so important? And how does that, as misfit marketing, nobody does this kind of stuff. Nobody does a Carnival of Dreams with like 36 characters and costume. People are still talking about that party a year ago. How important is that in marketing? And how do you orchestrate that? Speaker 1: Well, I think it goes back to, I mean, all the way back to my beginnings. I mean, you know, the crazy marketing, you know, stones throw away a rock. I mean, we also, I had a portfolio delivered to an agency in New York with, you know, dance, not dancing girls, but girls in like genie costumes and four bearers carrying it in, unannounced. So when we started talking about these events, we started talking about this event, it was like, Every conference I'd ever been to in my life was boring. I mean, you would go there and yeah, it was great information, great speakers, but it's like, how are we going to stand out? I mean, you know, it's a billion-dollar event. It's, you know, expensive. Let's make this an experience. Let's add to this. Let's make it so that when they walk out that they're talking about it and the FOMO leads to the next event and the next event and the next event. But again, I'm going to go all the way back to that same, create a complete full experience. Like, I mean, we do a lot of things that nobody even realizes what we do. Like when you walk into the ballroom, I have scent machines in the ballroom, subtly putting a smell in the ballroom because most ballrooms stink actually, to be cold hard truth. And we also play very subliminal music the whole time. That's the music that's designed and created to help learning experiences. That's playing. There's a very, very, very. You almost can't hear it. We go to that level. We create a decor. I hate going to a conference where everything's set up in classroom and everybody's like, okay, this is fun. No, I try to create a lounge experience, a feeling, but that's just it, it's a feeling. In a weird way, it's just a twist on the magic machine concept, again, but I'm always just trying to think of something that'll make an impact. And like these parties, like the Carnival of Dreams, The idea, it was an Amazon party, was to promote Kevin's projects and stuff initially. And I was like, well, we can throw a party, Kevin. But if we just throw a party, it's another party, people are going to come, you know. Let's throw something that people are going to talk about. Some people are going to remember. And he's like, well, go for it, whatever. I said, you got plenty of money? That's usually the first question. You got plenty of money? And he's like, well, you know, make it rational. And so I just came up with this idea. It's like, all right, let's What could I do in a single format, a single venue where people would walk in and be immersed into a world? And so we created a carnival, you know, like you would have gone to in the 1700s, 1800s. I mean, I wanted to originally call it Gypsy Carnival, but that's not a good term anymore. So we couldn't do that. But that kind of concept with characters and interaction and gambling and, you know, feats of strength and getting the crowd involved. I mean, Norm was lifting weights at that one, I think, back in the back. Norm Farrar: And cigars. Speaker 1: Yeah, and cigars. Just creating a total experience and I just, that relates back to my photography. I like to create fantasy photography or stories in my photography or images in my story that have stories to go with them. And I just, that's just spun into Creating for these events so that there's always something going on. And like at The Billion Dollar, part of that experience is we have a fun day, you know, activity day where people, we take them out, do all kinds of things. We've done everything from taking them out to the F1 racetrack here in Austin, to going out and playing laser tag out in the hill country and axe throwing. You know, trying to just create something to have some fun and some networking opportunity because Again, I'm going back to my logic of it's great to stand at a cocktail party where the music's too loud and you can't hear and you're trying to talk to somebody. But if you're standing there on your own team and you're competing against four other people throwing axes, You're talking to that person. You're actually interacting with that person. You're making a friend. And you got a healthy, friendly competition going on over here. That's great. And then you get back on the bus and everybody's happy and laughing and sweating and a bit passed out from the heat. And, you know, it creates an entire event that's totally different. And there are some people out there now that are, after the few years of doing billion dollars, I think they're trying to catch up. Good luck. Kevin King: Yeah, that's, that's something that we do the, the, not just the Axe Storm, but we do the, you know, sellers are competitive, entrepreneurs are competitive. So the last several years, we've done competitive things like based around the amazing race or based around Survivor. We're on teams of four or five people because a lot of times you go to a conference and all you see is the conference room and maybe the hotel and maybe a restaurant or bar. You don't get to actually experience the place. So we did it the first time in Austin. We did like a scavenger hunt around the city. People came back from that like, I've been to Austin 10 times. I didn't know all this stuff was here. That was so much fun. I bonded with everybody else on my team. And now we do that at every single one. And then even like in Hawaii, the event that we just did in Hawaii, Mark came to me and said, Hey, I got this idea for the first day when people walk into the room. I was like, okay, that sounds cool. I don't want them just to walk into the room and grab a seat and find their chair and plop down. That's going to be their seat for the next day. We want to completely change this. And Norm, you were there, so you saw exactly what we did. And he came to me and said, this is going to cost about $25,000 to do this. I'm like, well, I gulped a few times and I'm like, okay. But then we analyzed this, like, okay, is this going to sell a few more tickets or give me a lot of good publicity? He's like, absolutely, this will be the talk, the way we're doing this. And so, and that's exactly what happened is the experience that people have just to get into the room, it took about 20 minutes or so for everybody to get in. And, but the people were just talking, I've never been to an event like this. This is cool. And those little details in that little thing, a lot of people would not spend that money. Heck no, I'm not going to spend that money. But those little things are what sets you apart and what differentiates you. It's marketing. And it's where people go, heck yeah, I'm not missing the next one. And when we do these events, Mark and I are always trying to We compete with ourselves and we're trying to say, okay, the next one's got to be better. The next one's got to be better. What can we do different? Not just do the same old thing. And that's constantly reinventing ourselves. And that's part of marketing is keeping people on their edge, not knowing what to expect and keep them excited. And then giving them experience that they're not going to have. We used to have a video that all these models that we shot, we recorded them at the end of a shoot saying, you know, little testimonial video, basically. And that video, we put it on VHS back in the day, then DVD when DVDs came out, but it was called Experience Like No Other. And we would actually send that video out to prospective models. So they would call us up and say, I'm interested in shooting because somebody else referred them. And then we would, you know, along with that questionnaire Mark talked about earlier, we would send them this video and they pop that little three minute video in their VHS deck back in the day and go, this looks badass. I want to be there. Great photography. I'm going to be treated like a queen. It's going to be an amazing experience. I'm going to get amazing images out of this. I'm there. And that's part of the marketing that so many people these days, they cut corners. And I think it's a mistake. Norm Farrar: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I know we're past the hour, but I do have a question for Mark, and this is about trends. And I guess this is you too, Kev, but you've done so many things over the years, but there's been a lot of trends that have happened, and there's been a lot of trends in PC. How does that affect what you're doing? Right now, do you care or does that matter? Do you take all of what's happening in the world right now and you have to think about that when you're putting together these events? Kevin King: You're talking about like cancel culture and stuff like that? Norm Farrar: Yeah, absolutely. Kevin King: Mark? Speaker 1: I mean, I would love to sit here and say, no, you can just ignore all that, but you can't. I mean, the cold hard reality is if you cross certain, well, I mean, perfect example is when I first conceptualized that party, I literally was calling it, you know, a gypsy carnival. And when I started reaching out to the entertainers, they were like, you can't call it that. We can't be involved if you're putting the name gypsy on it. And I was like, what? And, you know, they explained it and I was like, oh, okay. So we had to change the name of it. And sometimes though, even though there's a trend or things are changing, you got to, or at least in my opinion, you got to take some risks. I mean, using that party as an example, One of the things that they wanted to do was they were going to put a girl on a trapeze, not a trapeze, but an aerial show. And they showed me her costume. And what they wanted to do is they wanted her to be topless, the entertainers. And I was like, Probably not, but you know, so I went back to Kevin and said, how do you feel about this? And he's like, no, we can't do that. So then I went back to them and they were like, all right, so we can't do that. So we'll put her in, you know, can we put her in a relatively sexy kind of looking thing? I was like, yeah, but I had to have a discussion with Kevin about it a couple of times because we run the risk. You don't necessarily know who's going to be in that room. Are you going to offend more people than think it's great or think it's fine? But weirdly enough on that event, what was the most talked about thing at the event, the most talked about act was that act. And I'm sure we offended somebody, probably more than once. Norm Farrar: I'm sure you did. Speaker 1: But we also created the thing that everybody talked about. So sometimes you got to take some risks in marketing, but you can't ignore the trends. I mean, you just can't. Kevin King: You can't please everybody. But you have to analyze it. How many are we going to alienate? Is it a large group? Is it two people? And that's where I think a lot of people sometimes in marketing, they have one or two people complain out of 20,000 that saw something and then like, oh my God, I got to change this. Now those one or two, not everybody complained. So you can multiply that out. There's some factor that usually more people complain than actually they don't give compliments. I think it's a seven to one ratio or something like that. It's the standard that most people go by. So even if that there was one or two that complained and there's 15 out of 10,000. Do you change everything for those 15? Or do you just, that's not your tribe and they can go somewhere else. So that's a decision you have to make. Sometimes it depends on how vocal those 15 are. If one of those is a major influencers, that could really cause some problems. But you look at what happened with Bud Light when they did the trans person on Bud Light, you know, that killed their sales. Norm Farrar: Planet Fitness. Kevin King: Yeah, and some others too. So there's a fine line there that you got to ride. But I'm someone that says, do you have to be PC and do you have to button everything up? I don't think you should. I think you need a little misfit in you, but you have to analyze and really make a decision based on how this is going to affect your total overall thing. And if it's going to negatively do it or too many of them, then you got to move away from it. Norm Farrar: All right. Well, I think that's about it, unless there's anything else for today. Kevin King: Nothing. Good. Mark, if people want to find you or learn more about you, how do they do that? Speaker 1: Right now, the best way would be, I have two websites. One of them is under construction right now, but it's either markdaughn.com or mdaughn.com. Kevin King: That's M-A-R-K-D-A-U-G-H-N, not Daughn like the dish soap, but Daughn, D-A-U-G-H-N is the spelling. Speaker 1: Yeah, like Vaughn with a D. Kevin King: Yeah. Norm Farrar: All right. Okay, everybody, that's it for today. I wish, Mark, we could continue probably for a full day talking about some of your stories. We haven't even touched on anything. But anyway, thanks for coming on today. Speaker 1: Absolutely, glad to do it. Kevin King: Appreciate it, Mark. Norm Farrar: Well, buddy. Kevin King: That was good. Yeah, we could talk with Mark. When we sit around, he's always got good stories. He doesn't smoke cigars really, but he'll have whiskey when we're smoking cigars and there's always good stuff coming out. Sometimes we're in a new group and there's so many stories that we could tell. We didn't even get into the mafia. We didn't get into Fiji. We didn't get into some of the other marketing stuff that we've done. So we'll have to have Mark back on another time. Norm Farrar: Yeah, and by the way, I just wanted to let you know, when you're doing your calendar things, this kind of gets under my skin a little bit. All of a sudden, like the last time I was down, oh, I'll just be a second. Well, you're down there for hours, taking away from my cigar time and your cigar time. So maybe you can hire somebody to do this the next time. Kevin King: Oh, yeah. Next time you're in town, I'll just tell the customers, sorry, there's a delay. Post office is a, there's a roadblock. There's a, there's a, There's a Wymo driverless vehicle blocking the way to the dock and so sorry, there's gonna be delay on your orders coming out. Norm Farrar: Exactly, make something up. Well, that's it for today. I hope everybody enjoyed the podcast. Kevin King: Yep, we'll see you again. Make sure you follow us on all your favorite social platform or go to marketingmisfits.co.co and follow us there and looking forward to seeing you again next week. Norm Farrar: And don't forget to reach out if you're a misfit.