Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com. It is, of course, home of the ambitious upstart. And you know, usually what I do here is I interview founders of tech companies, people who have created software, people who created websites. People who did that often got funding almost–not almost always–but as much as possible, sold their companies. But today I’ve got someone different.
Joining me today is a guy who, at 25 years old, says he only kissed two girls. Then he read the book “The Game” about the whole pickup artist world, realized that there was another option for him, started using some of the things that he’d learned, created his own process, started teaching that, built up a company that is called PUATraining.com. PUA stands for pickup artist, PUATraining.com. I invited him here to talk about how he built his business.
His name is Richard La Ruina. In addition to running that site, which is a training company that helps men learn how to attract more women, he’s also the author of “The Natural: How to Effortlessly Attract the Woman You Want.”
This interview is sponsored by two companies that didn’t expect that they would be sponsoring a pickup artist interview, Toptal, which is a place where you can find developers for your startup, and HostGator, where, as I’ll tell you about later on, if you need to host a website, you’ve got to check out HostGator.com.
First I’ve got to meet Richard. Richard, good to have you on here.
Richard: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
Andrew: Richard, I’m picturing in my mind’s eye the person who’s listening to us who’s saying, “Oh no, Andrew has gone to the pickup artist world. These guys are sleazy,” as The Guardian called you sleazy in like the first word of an article on you. What do you think? I see in your face some recognition.
Richard: Yeah. It’s a sleazy industry. It’s got sleazy connotations. I think that it’s always been a challenge for me to communicate the message, which is teaching men how to be better with women in a way that doesn’t sound sleazy. I think that dating advice for women is fine. That’s everywhere and it’s very accepted. But yeah, the general impression of dating advice for men is very negative. I accept that. Even within the industry, there are some unsavory characters.
The only thing that really saves the day is that the customers that come to our business are the shy good guys, they’re not the cocky bad boys, guys that break women’s hearts and hurt them. They’re actually good guys that are just shy and need a confidence boost. So, that kind of saves the day. Any time we’ve had a journalist or someone who’s been skeptical or negative and they meet the customers, that’s when they come around.
Andrew: One of the journalists who met you was a Guardian writer named Gareth Rubin, who came out to one of your trainings and looked around and saw, like you said, a lot of these guys just have male anxiety, as the headline of his article in The Guardian said.
But he also said it was apparent as he watched these guys that they paid £700 for the weekend and many of them were going to come out of it with little to show but a dent in their bank balances. The pickup artist scene is a house of self-myth. I’ve got a cold, so it’s a little hard for me to pronounce things apparently. Is it true that this is a self-myth that we are selling customers?
Richard: No. When guys actually came to our weekend events, they got very good results, statistically. We would take them out and send them to speak to women in the daytime and in the nighttime and they would transform from guys that couldn’t have conversations to guys that were relaxed and comfortable with women they were attracted to and were getting numbers and setting up debts.
The article, that one, I think, said some positive things as well, probably, but it was, at the time of this controversy where there was a pickup artist who had gotten banned from a few countries because of some videos online that–
Andrew: Julien Blanc. He got banned because he was being especially aggressive.
Richard: Exactly. Yes. It was at that time. So, there was no way they were going to write something totally negative. Again, a lot of the time when we’ve had something positive in the works, it’s gotten squashed at the editor level or somewhere within–whether it’s a TV show or an article for a respected newspaper, it’s gotten slopped.
Andrew: I want to get into how you built your business, not into the reputation of the industry as a whole. But you’ve got like really cool look to you. You’ve got that British accent working for you. You’ve got a nice design to your site. A lot of these pickup artists have really horrible designs, though they’ve been improving over the years.
But I feel like you do yourself a disservice with a post that says, “Here are the absolute best cam sites,” where you do a video explaining how you’ve used a spreadsheet to rate the women on all these cam sites, which is where women are getting naked for men on command. You tell the guys how to make sure they really alive and are going to do what they say. And then you pick the ones that are best. What’s the point of that?
Richard: We’ve got a website with I don’t know how many pages. I was going to say 700. It might be more. I don’t write that stuff. That particular article is really cool for me because it makes money each month on SEO. That’s why it’s there and that’s why I like it.
Andrew: You’re saying it’s just an SEO play. It doesn’t matter if it hurts the brand because it’s just one page out of a lot of pages on the site.
Richard: Yeah. Our brand is good. I think we get quite good traffic to the site, SEO traffic. They normally come straight in searching for a particular term. A lot of the stuff is stuff we don’t actually have products for. So, we send them off to affiliates.
Andrew: I see.
Richard: Our core customers probably have never seen that.
Andrew: I see. According to SimilarWeb, the traffic site I use to tell me where people are getting traffic and how much they’re getting–actually, I don’t know why I can’t pull it up right now, but you’re doing a couple of thousand a month in hits, right?
Richard: More. Yeah. Maybe 600,000 uniques.
Andrew: 600,000 uniques?
Richard: Yeah, on that domain, PUATraining. And then we’ve got a forum. Then we’ve got our sales pages on different domains.
Andrew: What kind of revenue are you bringing from this?
Richard: This year is down. But it’s still…
Andrew: Let’s talk 2015.
Richard: 2015 was a few hundred thousand a month, maybe $500,000 or $600,000.
Andrew: Really? So, by the end of the year you did about $5 million to $6 million.
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: Wow. And this whole thing got started like I said at the top of the interview when you were just uncomfortable with women. Tell me about that. Why only two women by the time you were 25?
Richard: I was very shy. I was shy not just with women, but with any kind of social situation, with standing up in front of the class, speaking on the telephone even. Lots of things terrified me in the social way.
Andrew: Do you have an example of one time that kind of burned itself into your mind of like, “I can’t believe I’m that kind of a putz?”
Richard: Yeah, many times. In university, I was already old enough that there was a day where we had to do a presentation and I was just shaking and went to pieces. I almost went into some kind of trance and just had tunnel vision and was mumbling and then sat down and people were asking if I was okay. That was the social aspect. Then at university, there were lots of situations with girls, where I blew it and then people started saying that I was a virgin and telling everyone, “He’s a virgin.”
Andrew: Is it true? Were you?
Richard: Yeah, I was. Yeah and I hadn’t kissed a girl as well.
Andrew: Why do you think it was so much harder for you than it was for other people?
Richard: I didn’t have my dad around when I was growing up. I think I was naturally an introvert. I think that I remember being very small and someone would come and knock on the door and I’d had behind the couch in the room and kind of peek around. I think it was something that I had form very early.
Andrew: What do you mean? I had my dad around and I still was a loser with girls. I kind of feel like having my dad around might have hurt me. It’s not like he’s sitting around going, “Here’s what you say…”
Richard: I guess I missed that kind of dad.
Andrew: Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe I had the wrong dad and you didn’t have the right dad either. It sounds actually, on a serious note, it seems like that really did affect you. Why did not having your dad affect your ability to meet women?
Richard: I don’t know what the exact reason was. I can point at that. I think there were some times when I needed some manly advice or whatever. But really, it was that I was never forced out to lose my shy shell. I avoided when there was a school play or something, I got the day off sick. I just avoided all this.
Andrew: There was nobody to say, “Hey, you’re punking out of this little thing.” And you started to punk out of those small things like those small school plays and then you’d punk out of the bigger ones.
Richard: Yes. And then I just hid from everything. Then my one or two friends I had, they would invite me to things and I’d say no. So, I never really met new people or put myself in those social situations. If you can’t even talk to the guys or a group of friends, then you’re not going to be able to go on a date with a girl that you’re attracted to.
Andrew: I haven’t had many books in my life transform me or open my eyes to a new world. For the most part, they give you a little bit of understanding. You’re not sure how you’re going to use it at one point and frankly often you don’t ever get to use it. But some books did have that transformative power over me. It seems like the game did for you. What did it open your eyes up to?
Richard: The only thing it showed me is that it’s possible for a man to change who is, to go from unlikable to likeable, to go from someone who women find very unattractive and would call a loser to someone who is cool and they want to spend time with. So, it wasn’t actually the information in the book, the techniques or whatever. It was the story of Neil Strauss, who was unattractive and a loser and whatever else and he turned his life around. So, it was more the inspiration that if he could do it then I could do it.
Andrew: I had Neil Strauss on here, the author of “The Game” to talk about how the ideas in “The Game,” the pickup artist techniques that he learned can be applied to business. It was a great interview. I think people should listen to it. But then one of our producers here was listening live and said, “Andrew, he totally used some of the techniques on you.”
He totally made you want information by making it not available to you at first so then you’d push and then really feel like you were rewarded by being given it. Was there anything specific that you actually did use from that book, from “The Game?”
Richard: Yeah. I actually as well as reading the book, I went through all the material that was around at the time, all of the videos and eBooks. I would make a list of all of the things that I needed to try. He has a few things like the cube and the five-question game and all of this stuff and I got a book on palm reading and a book on handwriting analysis and I actually tried everything.
Andrew: So, you went into a bar and you started talking to one of the women and said, “I know handwriting analysis.” And you’d pull out a pencil and you’d ask her to write something down so you could analyze her handwriting?
Richard: No, that would normally be someone that I knew a little bit better. Then I could use that. Obviously palm reading you could do in that moment or anything that doesn’t require too many props.
Andrew: I see. He did in the book talk about how he carried a bunch of props with him and he listed them.
Richard: Yeah, a prop bag or something. But very quickly I found that it felt too artificial and stupid and that I would actually not want to be with a woman that would fall for that stuff or to not start a relationship with such a big lie and especially one that wasn’t even my own invention. I never really felt comfortable with that stuff, that it was what gave me the confidence. If a guy doesn’t have anything to say, he can’t even go talk to anyone, right?
Andrew: I see. So, it’s better to have something that’s bad and kind of goofy than to have nothing at all.
Richard: I see. And then after I got some more confidence, then I lost all that stuff. So, really it was just a month where I was doing all this silly stuff.
Andrew: There’s a lot of, when you’re learning, a lot of imitation until you discover your own version. It feels like you’re wearing somebody else’s clothes, but you’ve got to use it because you need clothes until you figure out what your own style is until your own clothes, your own language, your own approach. Do you remember one of the first things that you learned that became part of your approach, the Richard approach, “The Natural?”
Richard: Yeah. I think that it was that I wasn’t this kind of brash, loud Hollywood personality and I was a quiet, introverted guy. So, I was very good at having deep conversations. So, I think that I quickly realized that was my strength, connecting one on one with someone, not doing magic tricks for a bunch of people or being really bold and the center of attention, but being very laid back and chilled and then having a very nice connected conversation.
Andrew: Like a deep, longer conversation with one person.
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: That you initiate?
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: And you learned how to do it. What was your first way to initiate when you were in that struggling to stand on your own two feet phase?
Richard: I think I went from using these lines to then using things in the environment to start the conversation. So, something situational just going on, something is there and you talk about it or she’s dressed in a certain way or she’s got a certain expression on her face and using that to start the conversation. And then the deep conversation really came from being genuinely curious and interested. I’m attracted to her and I want to know more than that. That’s not enough for me. I want to know if she’s a good person and what she likes to do and what she cares about.
Andrew: I see. So, you’d open up the conversation with something that was a little planned, which was a comment on something extraordinary about her, but you’d continue it by expressing real curiosity and that became your thing.
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: And then you did something that led you on a path that allowed you to build this business that we’re here to talk about. You registered a website. What year did you launch your site?
Richard: I think it was 2006, early 2006.
Andrew: Okay. Let me pause here for a second. As I asked that question, I saw a smile come on your face, like you’re picking up on something here in my questioning and in the direction. Tell me what you see as someone who studies conversation. What are you noticing?
Richard: A lot of the things I notice are more unconscious.
Andrew: Yeah. And you’re not even aware of what it is. Really? Okay. I feel like you notice something that would give me insight into our conversation, into my way of asking question, into something. All right. If it comes up, I’m hoping that you’ll bring it up because I’m curious on what your thoughts are on the way that we’re having a conversation as someone who’s had tons of conversations.
Richard: All right. Let me pay attention.
Andrew: Cool. I’m always looking all over. I’m trying to figure out where I can get as much information as possible. So, one of the other things that I was doing is I want to know what your feedback is on the way that I’m asking questions. I also asked some of the people in the industry what they thought of you. I just got a text message back as a second ago as we were talking from someone. I’m looking at Internet Archive to see what your site looked like.
Why don’t I go back to the questions instead of the meta-analysis of the questions? What got you to start your website?
Richard: Actually, I had some coaching from one guy. They charged me $1,000 for maybe four hours or something like that plus expenses. I didn’t get much from the training. I think one of the things I try to do is find the positive if there is one there. My positive in that moment was if he could charge $1,000 for a few hours and not be that good, I should be able to charge like $40 or something and at least I’ll try my best and do everything I can and I should be able to give people value at some price.
Andrew: So, it wasn’t just, “If he could charge for something bad, then I could do something better and charge the same price.” It’s, “I can do something better and reduce the price.”
Richard: I didn’t even have the tiniest idea that I would be able to charge that much money. My first price was under $20 an hour. That was spending money on AdWords and whatever else. To get the sale, I had to maybe call the guy or email him. It was actually under minimum wage by the time I met the guy and was training him.
Andrew: Wow. Okay. I get that. And that’s before you launched the website or after?
Richard: That was right after. So, the website was maybe four different pages in the beginning. The way I hooked people was I offered free advice and then I targeted all the industry keywords and registered PUA Training because I know people would be searching for PUA after reading “The Game” and the “The Game” was selling well. That strategy kind of paid off. And then it’s only a problem now ten years later where it’s like your company has got this name PUA, pick up artist and I would rather it was called something more family-friendly. But in the beginning, it really helped us.
Andrew: Yeah. I kind of feel like for company names, it’s better to have something that allows you to have a lot of flexibility or insanely specific, like Cooking.com or like Mixergy, which could turn out to be anything. It could be a site about cooking or it could be a site about pickup artists or whatever.
Richard: Sure.
Andrew: That’s a good lesson to take from that. I see the website here on Internet Archive. Like you said, it’s so basic.
Richard: I did it myself. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, just a picture at the top, a signup page for training and a link over to PayPal, which no longer works but it does take me over to an old version of PayPal, at least on Internet Archive. And on the very bottom–
Richard: The key was, I think, the copy and I think I wrote something about something inspirational, about changing their life and getting it handled and there’s nothing to lose.
Andrew: Do you want me to read it? Maybe not. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I don’t think there’s anything–here, I’ll read it. Are you okay with me reading I t?
Richard: Yeah, sure.
Andrew: I don’t want to ask you and then undo what you just said. “How would you like to be able to confidently approach women that you consider out of your league? How would you like to make these women attracted to you? How would you like to be able to do this every time you want to go out? Do you think that getting 20 numbers a day is difficult? We’ll show you how to do it. Do you think that kissing five girls in a night is difficult? We’ll show you how to do it.” There’s a lot of “we,” by the way, on the page. It was just you at the time, right?
Richard: You might have not the very first version. You might have a later one. I don’t know.
Andrew: I see. This is roughly 2006 when you started, right? Yeah. I think you’re right. I think Archive might have just a couple of versions in, maybe not the very first one. But I’ve got a sense of what you were doing. Let me take a quick sponsorship break and then come back and talk to you about how you built this up.
The sponsor is a company called HostGator. One of the cool things about you, by the way, Richard, if you don’t mind me including you in my ad–
Richard: We used HostGator? I think we might have.
Andrew: Did you use HostGator? I don’t think you used HostGator. That’s okay.
Richard: For something. I’ve definitely seen them on my Amex bill or something.
Andrew: Let me see. A lot of people who I’ve interviewed have had HostGator accounts at some point or another. I’ll check out to see if you’re using them. But the cool thing is you had an idea and said, “You know what? I’m going to go launch a website.” There’s not that much involved here. You didn’t have to hire a team of coders. You didn’t have to figure out everything there is to know about how to build a website.
You just install a website. It wasn’t even using WordPress, just really simple HTML. Actually, it was a little more clever than simple. There was some effort put into it, for sure. I looked at the source code. It just worked. You had a simple PayPal button and you got people to come over to your site and buy.
Anyone out there who’s listening to me who has an idea who hasn’t tried doing something like this, who hasn’t tried just building a website, shame on you. Frankly, just go build a freaking website. It doesn’t take long. I’m never a condemning person here. But I’ve got to say if you have an idea and you haven’t even launched something, even as simple as a website, shame on you. It’s absolutely right.
With HostGator, it hardly costs you anything. For just a few bucks a month, you could end up with great hosting. Great meaning if the site goes down, they’re going to be there for you by phone. Great meaning you don’t have to know how to install WordPress. They will do it for you. Great meaning that they will even support you with ad credit to get you your first traffic.
All you have to do is go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. When you attach that /Mixergy at the end, frankly, I get credit for having sent you over, but also you get a big discount, 30% off from HostGator. Go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. You know what? HostGator.com/Mixergy–before I finish this ad, let me ask you something, Richard. If you had nothing but a HostGator account and you had to start over, a brand new business today, what would you build? People love that question.
Richard: I wouldn’t build something in pickup, definitely not. I think I would choose something in the realms of either sales training or something higher ticket.
Andrew: Ah, makes sense.
Richard: Yeah. It’s quite a small industry. Our industry is limited. There are limits on where you can advertise. There are limits on the size. Something more mainstream, maybe targeting businesses.
Andrew: Train people in sales. How would you learn it so that you could sell it?
Richard: I was good at selling when I sold expensive courses.
Andrew: I see.
Richard: I would figure it out.
Andrew: Do you have a process–
Richard: And I would start cheap.
Andrew: Under-pricing people and then keep raising the prices?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: How did you know what to do when people came over to you for training? How did you know how to give them enough value that they didn’t go and rag on you on message boards and didn’t say that you cheated them out of money?
Richard: I had a little presentation and that was all of the knowledge that I had gathered. So, giving that in a condensed form, I thought, was of some value. Then I promised that I would demonstrate at some point until I had done something successful, going out into the street, talking to some women, they liked me and get their number or something like that I’d need to demonstrate. And then the guy had me one on one and had my full attention.
So, you know if you go to a personal trainer and they just count to ten and tell you to do some things, exercises you know already, you still get value. I think a lot of the guys got value just from taking action with me, but I was able to give more and more value as my experience grew. I did about 35 of these 12-hour days in the first few months and then I had definitely pretty good experience to see what they’re doing wrong. It was usually the same things over and over.
Andrew: Was there ever a time when you went out to pick up girls with one of these clients and you couldn’t do it?
Richard: Not that I remember. I used to be quite geeky with it. So I would have 40 minutes or so of meditative, lying down on the floor, my fingers like that, my eyes closed listening to some meditation track and then ten minutes before I had to go and meet them, I’d pump myself with music and saying affirmations and whatever I was doing at the time. I had some Tony Robbins power move. I was using all of that stuff.
Andrew: And it worked?
Richard: It did at the time, yeah. That went out the window soon after. But that helped me be in a very good state when I was meeting them. Actually, women are not that evil. They’re not going to be unfriendly. You might get one or two that are having a bad day and you have to accept that and people have a right to strangers that come bothering them, so that’s fine. But no, it would always be possible to demonstrate to the customer, “Look, it’s not that bad. You can do it.”
Andrew: So, at the very least, you would get a phone number, if not much more than that.
Richard: Well, this was always in the daytime. We’d start the day kind of noon and run to midnight. My demonstrations first would be in the daytime and then in the nighttime, it was really about their stuff.
Andrew: Okay. And then you told our producer that one of the big milestones for you was making more money at this than you could working at a good office job. What got you to that level? How did you go from just having an idea and a simple website to suddenly being able to make that kind of money?
Richard: I was doing these one-on-one trainings and I was putting the price up on those. Then it got to the point where it was maybe four or five a week and it was just too much. So, I moved to the seminar model. Then I had more of them in the room and just one of me.
So, it was a point where we could scale and then I brought in more trainers so that I was doing less of the training and I guess the point where the business kicked off was when we brought out the eBook and the first products and then we had this very nice high-margin edition to the business that didn’t have much cost associated. I guess there was that point.
Andrew: The eBook is something you were selling?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: I can’t see where it was, but I read this old blog post about you. There it is. It’s on AttractionChronicles.blogspot.com, where you said, “I’m working on this book.” So, this is before that book came out. You also said that before you wrote the book, you went out to talk to as many of these pickup artists as you could. You traveled out to see them. You studied their stuff. How did that go for you?
Richard: Mostly I was disappointed. I think that I had the idea that they were all super-human, but in most cases, they were very normal.
Andrew: Give me an example. Who’s one person who just seemed surprisingly super normal and not that impressive.
Richard: I think any other characters in the game, but I don’t want to–
Andrew: Without mentioning them, you’d read about them in the game. You’d pay to go see them in person and then what were they like in person, wearing sweatpants and eating pizza?
Richard: We’d say in England like a wet blanket or something. I’d be waiting for the magic. It was just a sense of, “Okay, they’re going to do something. They’re going to do something. There’s a girl walking towards us. What’s he going to do?” And then he just looks the other way and she walks passed or he talks to her and he’s like, “Call me later, babe.” And she looks like, “Yeah, right.” I guess I was socially attuned enough to see that she’s not interested. It was just seeing that he’s got no magic lines to say. He’s fallible and there was nothing that special.
Andrew: I see. They were all for the most part like that?
Richard: Yes. Although, the guys that I saw that were actually very good were the ones that were the most normal, the ones that dressed the most normally, spoke the most normally and they interacted with people just in a very sociable way. Everyone, men, women–they were good with women, but it was just a byproduct of having good social skills. The guys that seemed like they were plotting and scheming and lurking around and using the terminology and stuff, they were generally bad.
Andrew: Are you saying that largely because you’re a very competitive person and by putting that system down, it makes for a better message about your system, the more natural process?
Richard: Not really. Everyone kind of changed and they all called the system natural. I think the difference between… I know some guys that are not so good but have fantastic products that really help people. But it’s kind of strange that someone that maybe isn’t great with girls can still make a very good product that helps guys. There’s a difference between teachers and people that are very good at it.
On the other hand, I know some guys that are fantastic and they just can’t teach. They got into the business and they are very, very good, but they just have no clue what makes them good or how to give someone else that goodness. So, they’re not as good as the guys. They’re bad, but they can kind of teach something.
Andrew: You’re saying they’re so comfortable with it, but they’re not even aware of what they’re doing, so they can’t teach it and make money from it and people maybe not even know about them.
Richard: Or they even think the thing that’s important about what they’re doing is something else.
Andrew: I see. They’ve got the wrong system. I see. So, I’m looking again at this article. It’s from January, 2007, about nine years ago at this point. You said at that point that you already had gotten some other pickup artists into your business. How did you get those guys in who would do the trainings with you and for you?
Richard: I guess it was a big PR scheme. So, I was going around London rounding up all of the big names. I remember I met one guy who had quite a following and I offered him like a signing bonus and a Rolex and stuff.
Andrew: Really?
Richard: Yeah. He didn’t take it, I think, in the end. But he took quite a sweet deal. That was a mistake. One of the things I was doing in the early days that was a mistake was offering percents to people, whether percents of event receipts or percent of a product just to the guy who filmed it. So, really dumb moves where I was offering percents to people. But luckily, it never really–I haven’t got any outstanding contracts today that hurt me. But it could have happened easily because I was making the wrong moves.
But I was just schmoozing people and talking big about the possibilities of the business, finding out what they really wanted, trying to offer them–they mostly wanted security and a regular income to work for a company that has a lot of customers. So, it was quite easy. In the early days, there were a couple of competitors and they actually fell off and we were the lone survivor from the London pickup scene from 2006.
Andrew: What was your process for getting customers for all these guys? How did you get it?
Richard: In the beginning, we had AdWords and that was working. One of the funny things I did, I actually saw that our AdWords clicks were like $0.25 each or something on average. So, I went to seduction websites and any website that was related and I got in touch with them and I pitched them a pay per click deal. So, I would pay them for each click. They only had a limited number of affiliate offers in those days. So, it was hard for them to make money from advertising.
A lot of the affiliate programs then were quite easy to get scammed by or they weren’t getting paid out. So, I said, “I will pay you each month based on the clicks. So, that was a revolutionary deal. We were paying out quite quickly a few thousand dollars a month worth of clicks and then we were getting the mailing list signups. Back in those days, they were worth quite a lot of money.
Andrew: Mailing list signups are still worth a lot of money. How many people are on your mailing list today?
Richard: 800,000, but they’re worth less than when we had 100,000 back in the day.
Andrew: Oh, really?
Richard: Yeah. I think it’s gotten a lot harder to make money from our list. It’s not the goldmine that it used to be.
Andrew: Where are you guys making money now then? What’s replaced the list?
Richard: We’ve got some affiliates and we buy traffic. So, it’s all coming from that. It’s generally the initial customer value and sale versus the list, these days.
Andrew: It seems like you were also on other people’s website. Is that right? Did you do some of that outreach where you would get to write on their websites or have them write about you?
Richard: Back in the day, I was everywhere. I was trying to do everything everywhere. I had very good connections with everyone in the industry.
Andrew: Look at this. You got into The Scotsman. I’m looking at a bunch of seduction websites. You got into The Scotsman. How do you feel about the headline they gave you?
Richard: What was it, “Pickup Schmuck?”
Andrew: Yeah.
Richard: That was about the guy.
Andrew: Oh, okay. I’m reading this right now. So, that’s not even about you. It’s about him.
Richard: That’s a nice article, yeah. Generally our media is quite positive.
Andrew: Okay. I can’t read this fast enough in here. But how did you get onto all those websites. You would sit and email them or do you have a process for being more systemized for getting on those sites?
Richard: If it was something in our industry, then I would just reach out to them, meet them to face to face if possible, talk to them on Skype, whatever it would be and just be very nice to them, see if there was anything I could do for them. Having those connections really helped. We bought this forum back in the day for a very cheap price just because I was kind of the trusted guy and connected to the guy that owned it. So, he ended up contacting us to sell it. When it comes to media stuff, that’s a bit harder. We had someone working in house PR for us.
Andrew: Even that early in the 2008-2009 period?
Richard: From 2007. When my book came out in the UK, it was, I think, November, 2007 and I worked with a PR lady at the book publisher and I asked if I could borrow her for a couple of days a week. So, instead of paying thousands of dollars a month for a PR agency that was super expensive, she was doing it for pocket change.
Andrew: Oh wow, just as a freelancer. Cool. All right. The second sponsor is Toptal.com. They’re a company that helps you hire developers. They’re a network of developers, actually. You just go to them, tell them what you’re looking for and they will find you the right developer. They match you up.
If you’re not happy, you don’t have to work with them. Many people, most people are happy, work right away and hire the first person that they send you and you can start working with them within days. We were able to find someone form Toptal and hire him to start working, I think, 48 hours later he started working with us.
Richard, let me ask you this. Is there some project you guys have right now that if you suddenly got a Toptal developer would grow your business but because you don’t have the right developer you can’t do it?
Richard: We’ve had problems with IT since the very beginning. It’s been a disaster for us.
Andrew: Really?
Richard: Yeah. So, we’ve recently just simplified, cut down everything. We outsource development and it’s quite expensive.
Andrew: Is there a side project, like an app or a part of your business that you’d want to start if you didn’t have to mess with hiring a team of developers?
Richard: Not one particular big project. No.
Andrew: All right. For us at Mixergy, it was search. We have over 1,000 interviews, over 100 courses. Search just absolutely sucked on the site. We hired someone from Toptal. I think it only cost us like $2,500 considering how fast the guy was. He was working by the hour, but that was it. He created this whole new process where people could search on the site, get results fast.
As a result of that, we took that process and we grew it and now you can search for people based on the kind of industry they’re in. Maybe you want someone who’s just selling to businesses. You can find that person. Maybe you can find someone who’s just selling to consumers. You can find that too or ecommerce, whatever. All that started because we hired a developer that pushed us to think differently about the way that we were doing search.
That’s one of the things I like about Toptal. They’re not just hired hands. They’re hired hands who have an incredible brain that can help you think about your business in a way that only someone who’s been around code could. If you’re asking them to code, they’ve been around it and if they’re smart enough, they can tell you what they’ve seen and give you some direction that’s better than you could give them if you’ve never been around code.
Anyway, if you want to hire a developer, go to Toptal.com/Mixergy. Again, you add the /Mixergy at the end and I will get credit, which is nice for me but you don’t care about me. What you care about is yourself. So, what you get in return for going to Toptal.com/Mixergy, what you get is 80 free Toptal developer hours when you pay for 80. That’s in addition to a no-risk trial period of up to two weeks. If after two weeks, you are not 100% satisfied, you will not be billed, but Toptal will still pay the developer. Go check them out–Toptal.com/Mixergy.
What are these tech issues that you’ve had, Richard? What’s the nightmare?
Richard: I guess there was that point where you want to scale up your system. So, we had like the $15 a month AWeber account back in the day and it was one shopping cart and whatever. We had these very basic systems. We had this dream of being able to bring everything together and tag customers and put them in a different list and upsell them this and put them on that email sequence and even just very cool ideas. And then we invested in a few different things that just didn’t work at all. I couldn’t use it because it was too technical.
Andrew: You’re talking about off the shelf software like Infusionsoft?
Richard: Exactly.
Andrew: Infusionsoft specifically?
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: It is a bit of a nightmare.
Richard: Years ago. So, maybe they got a lot better after that, but that was our first failure. Then we actually got Salesforce.
Andrew: Whoa.
Richard: Yeah, because we had a sales team making sales calls, but also just to manage our database. We had fulfillment as well because we had DVDs going out. This did everything, but we built all these custom modules. It was just nightmarish. To get anything done just took so much time. That was difficult. I think we tried Marketo for email and they’re just really super enterprise. That was very expensive and tough as well. So, we had a bunch of huge migrations. We even had a membership platform in Salesforce.
Andrew: In Salesforce?
Richard: Yeah. So, we weren’t using all these WordPress ones and stuff.
Andrew: So, what are you using now for email?
Richard: Email was GetResponse and now it’s Maropost.
Andrew: Maropost? What do you like about Maropost?
Richard: I don’t know. We’ve only sent one email from it so far. So, I can’t tell you if they’re any good yet. But we were having deliverability issues and no one in Hotmail was getting our emails and stuff. So, we needed to do something. I can’t say whether it’s working yet.
Andrew: I do still see Salesforce on your site. According to BuiltWith you guys are still using them for something.
Richard: We don’t pay them.
Andrew: You don’t? So, maybe somebody just left some code up on your site. What do you use for contact management?
Richard: Nothing because we don’t really have any sales going on anymore. We stopped live events completely.
Andrew: I see. You’re saying you don’t have any personal sales where someone is talking to a sales person.
Richard: No. We have a call center. We have Desk.com for customer support.
Andrew: That’s the Salesforce software.
Richard: Which is Salesforce, yeah.
Andrew: Which is so bad. I used to love Desk.com. They were pioneers. They sold to Salesforce. Their software absolutely blows. But if you’re in there, you can’t move. It’s hard.
Richard: I don’t know.
Andrew: You’re not even managing this stuff. So, one of the things that you told our producer–you’ve actually said this a lot online–is you like to just be lazy.
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: Meaning what? That goes into why you don’t know the software.
Richard: Yes. I don’t know anything. I assume it’s working, but… To know what we’ve got, I’m just thinking of the bills because each month I look at the accounts and look through to see if there are any expenses we don’t need. Lazy for me means eliminating everything that I didn’t like doing for my life.
Andrew: For example?
Richard: Having people that have my number that call me asking stupid questions or even knowing when the website is down. Why do I need to know? I’m never going to fix it. So, just call someone. Fix it. Get it done. Tell me in the weekly report that it went down for four hours but you fixed it. So, removing myself from all of that stuff, I don’t need to make any decisions or be on any meetings unless I want to. The things I really didn’t enjoy could be anything, but mainly just when you look at your schedule and you’ve just got things all day and the next day and the next day…
Andrew: So, do you tend not to keep a calendar now?
Richard: I don’t keep one. Yeah.
Andrew: You don’t. Was it a bitch that you and I scheduled this?
Richard: I get all these emails from you reminding me, so that was cool. I’ve also got someone who works for me who keeps an eye on things. But my calendar is just like my gym appointment and whatever. When I get messages, “Let’s schedule a Skype call,” I say, “No, just try and catch me.” I never book a time because I might want to do something at that time. I would hate to be stuck and need to be on Skype.
Andrew: And you and I meanwhile had to do that. There’s a great Marc Andreessen post about it where he said that his schedule was no schedule at all and if you want to talk to him, just call him up or text him to see if he’s free for a call. But by not scheduling, it allows him to get lost in projects and allows him to just pick the projects that he’s most excited about. But as an entrepreneur, you still need to structure your company in a way that allows you to do that. How did you structure the business so that you wouldn’t have to be called in if the site was down?
Richard: I guess there are two important people in the business. One is taking care of the legal and the financial stuff. So, he’s got all the bank codes and does the money transfers to pay people and whatever else. He’s an old family friend who knew my mother for 40 years or something, so he’s 100% trustworthy.
And then on the marketing sales side, I’ve got someone who’s incentivized who get a percent of revenue. So, they’re incentivized. Also, the guy who does the finance looks after me and makes sure that the profit is good. It kind of works without me doing anything.
Andrew: Sorry. I’m clicking on your site. That’s what that audio was. It just came up.
Richard: And then everyone else, I guess, just gets paid whatever they get paid. But the key people are incentivized and trustworthy.
Andrew: You had a point there where you told our producer you weren’t making money, that you started losing money. You started losing money because of what?
Richard: We were losing money because I wasn’t very–I’m good personally with my own money, but I wasn’t good with the company money and I was just looking at the revenue coming in as money to spend and I was focused on growth of all kinds of silly metrics from YouTube subscribers to Facebook fans to the mailing lists to the web traffic. I was focused on all these things aside from profit.
So, I was spending on all kinds of stuff. On one of our first products, we actually spent close to $100,000 to film it. Our continuity product is four hours of very high-quality video each month. So, it’s seminars shot with three cameras and a hotel room and whatever else. So, we didn’t need to do that.
So, I was just spending money I didn’t have. That got us into trouble. I think that I also wasn’t ready for swings in the business cycle. So, we have a good month and I assume that revenue will be the same the next month, but there was a dip. And then you’re short and you need to borrow money or whatever.
Finally, we went very deep into debt when we were trying to get the offer working, so buying lots of traffic at a loss and slowly trying to get that to break even. When I said break even, it’s like break even after 30 days or 35 days not on day one. So, we were $400,000 down at the point where it finally flipped over into profit.
Andrew: And it flipped over because of one affiliate?
Richard: It flipped over because we got the offer working. I got an affiliate to mail. The offer was really well tested by then because we had so much money testing it and getting it working to cold traffic and they were amazed at how much money they made from it, so they mailed their whole list and it was just huge. They had a super powerful list.
Andrew: What did you change about the offer that made it so effective?
Richard: It was my marketing guy staying up, taking Adderall and writing new iterations of the sales video. It would have been a brand new one with a different lead and a different hook or whatever. The one he thought would work bombed, then he was in a panic and he stayed up. He went to a hotel, booked a hotel room and just spent two days getting this new one done and then that one worked. So, it was just a lot of pressure.
Andrew: I see. So, it was just him constantly–was he really on Adderall?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: He was. I’ve never taken that. Have you?
Richard: No.
Andrew: Do you take any drugs?
Richard: Oh, yeah. I’ve taken lots of drugs, not all of them, but lots of drugs.
Andrew: Which ones do you like?
Richard: I like hallucinogens. I like magic shrooms. I liked LSD, but it’s quite hardcore.
Andrew: What was LSD like?
Richard: It’s similar to mushrooms, but when I took magic mushrooms, it was beautiful because it’s all very experiential and you’re not thinking too much, you’re just enjoying sensations and music and food and touch and everything is wonderful. But LSD has that element, but it’s also very introspective. So, if you’ve got some stress or something that you’re trying to escape from, you won’t be able to if you’re on LSD.
And of course, any of those drugs if they’re in a stupid environment like a nightclub with a bunch of strangers, it would be terrifying. It was in a nice house in the Hollywood hills for mushrooms with friends and in Brazil with LSD. So, not many times in my life, but the only thing I didn’t want to do was cocaine because I’ve seen it mess up a lot of people.
Andrew: Like personally saw it mess up people?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: It’s got the promise of making you better.
Richard: Cocaine doesn’t seem to do anything good. I just saw all these people doing cocaine and they say it’s great but they can’t say what’s great about it and they don’t seem to be smiling or having a better time. They just seem to be running around looking for more cocaine.
Andrew: You know what? I tried it a couple of times and I’m so anal that I tried it by going into a coffee shop and journaling what I was experiencing to see if I felt anything. Nothing. I said, “Maybe good ideas are going to come out of me with this. Maybe I’m going to be more energized.” Nothing. Then I went out with my brother and I thought, “Maybe this is going to make going out so much more fun.” It didn’t really do anything.
I think it’s maybe it has a placebo effect or something on some people. Frankly, for me, alcohol would even have a placebo effect. I go out, feel a little nervous. So, I get a drink. Am I any wittier with the drink? No. It just kind of reminds me that I can be stupid. So, that takes the pressure off of trying to say the right thing.
Richard: When I’m talking to women, I like to have a few drinks. It just makes me stop second-guessing myself and just go with one of the first things that comes to mind and that’s usually good.
Andrew: You even do it now?
Richard: I’ve got a girlfriend now and it’s quite serious.
Andrew: I see. But if you needed to go out right now and meet a woman, would you still drink in order to start the conversation?
Richard: Not necessarily, but I would expect to be more relaxed and to be able to stay up later and enjoy being in some noisy club a lot more if I’d had three drinks. But I was very good with alcohol. I would never get stupid drunk. I would have a few drinks and then switch to water. I was always in control of it. That was fine.
Andrew: I tend to be in control of it too, which is probably not the great thing for me because I should lose control a little bit more. Here’s something that stood out for me about your story? You use offshore something or other to protect your money from taxes. What are we doing offshore and how is it protecting your money from taxes?
Richard: I’m a resident of Mauritius.
Andrew: Mauritius? That’s a country?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: Am I a boob for not knowing it?
Richard: Yeah. It’s a beautiful island. It’s near Seychelles and Maldives, Indian Ocean.
Andrew: Okay.
Richard: So, it’s quite far from the states, but it’s a beautiful place.
Andrew: In East Africa?
Richard: Kind of east of Africa. It’s in the middle of the ocean, really.
Andrew: Okay. You’re a citizen of this island. It’s right off of Madagascar, right?
Richard: Yes. That’s the closest.
Andrew: So, you’re a citizen there. How often do you need to be there in order to be a citizen?
Richard: I just needed to go there a few times and opened a company. But I didn’t really do anything. Someone just did it all for me. I don’t even know what the rules are.
Andrew: So, someone set you up as a citizen of the country?
Richard: Resident.
Andrew: As a resident of the country. Okay.
Richard: This gives me–the company is registered there and the intellectual property. We shut down. We basically are very legitimately Mauritian because I don’t spend any time in England, so I don’t have to pay personal tax and we don’t pay corporation tax.
Andrew: I see, unlike the US where even if you were living outside the US, you’d still have to pay US taxes.
Richard: Unless you give back your passport.
Andrew: Unless you give back your passport. So, you didn’t have to give back your passport. Your money is there. Can you move money to wherever you are?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: Really?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: What’s the maximum amount of time that you can be in the UK?
Richard: 90 days, but I’m fine with not being in the UK. So, it’s no problem.
Andrew: Where are you now?
Richard: In Russia. I’ve got an apartment here and in Barcelona and I’ve spent some time in Barcelona. For tax purposes, I only need to pay–I don’t need to pay tax anywhere. I can pay tax here but it’s almost voluntary because you declare what your income is. So, I do pay some just because I’m happy to.
Andrew: I’ve got to tell you, hearing you be with all those women didn’t make me jealous, hearing about the business, no. Hearing about how you don’t have to pay taxes because you’ve got some offshore like Mauritius thing–I’m going to be so pissed that I can’t do that.
Richard: That’s why we stopped live events as well. That was one of the other reasons. If we had some live events in the UK and we had an office and an apartment and stuff, all of that is tied to the UK. So, I don’t have any property there. I don’t have a telephone contract. I don’t have anything there that can tie me. My dad is Italian. That’s another benefit.
So, it was a huge amount of work. I think the main crux of it is not having any physical production or fulfillment in the UK of service or product and then personally not being there very much at all or having a wife, children, car, house, whatever in that country. If you don’t do all that stuff, then you’re quite safe from taxes.
Andrew: I see this video that you uploaded of the island. Now I’m seeing it. I don’t see how this video has only 165 views. This is stunning.
Richard: That’s on my private YouTube account. You must have got it through Google+ or something.
Andrew: Am I not supposed to see it? I see you here with your shirt off, swimming around, smiling big, of course.
Richard: Yeah, that’s Mauritius, beautiful.
Andrew: Unreal. Here’s a thing that came in. I don’t know how comfortable I feel about even asking you about this because I feel like we’ve got some rapport now in the interview. But the person who I texted before, I said, “You know this industry better than I do. What am I missing here? What do I know?” He goes, “I don’t really know much, but there’s a rumor…” just a rumor that you got into porn or something.
Richard: No.
Andrew: You didn’t sell any porn?
Richard: No.
Andrew: No live cams, nothing.
Richard: No, because my mom is very connected to the business. She’s kind of retirement age and she does some stuff with the company. We’ve got another woman working for us in her 50s. So, we’re very legit and we don’t do anything morally questionable. It needs to be okay with my mom and with my girlfriend and with my girlfriend’s parents. Pickup artist is bad enough, don’t need to add porn on it.
Andrew: How did you explain that to them?
Richard: My mom obviously knows me pretty well. So, she knew I was okay. So, it was easy with her. But it’s always tough with the girlfriends, especially their parents.
Andrew: So, what did you do to explain it?
Richard: I just make sure they know me pretty well before the Google me. Then I say that’s what it is. The story is true. It makes sense, right?
Andrew: So, what’s your process–I’m looking at you now. I’ve gotten to meet people who are in your stage in life, where business is just kind of flowing well. They get to live the ideal life. They’re kind of thinking–not even thinking one day I’m going to create this big venture-funded IPO company. You’re not thinking that, right?
Richard: No.
Andrew: No. Just think they have a really good life, really good business, it keeps cranking out cash, they get to be anywhere in the world, if I hadn’t met them in person, my cynicism or skepticism would just naturally say they never exist, but I can see enough that they exist. They pop into my life from time to time and then they pop out to someplace beautiful. My question, since you and I are talking now, what’s the process that allows you to keep generating money like this so that you could live like that? What’s the machine look like for your business? Where does money come in? What happens to it? How is the business run?
Richard: I think that the first thing I did was I didn’t adjust my spending up as my income came up. So, my spending always stayed a percentage of my income. Right now, it is split between SEO income, which is pretty consistent every month and that’s just where we get traffic from Google and offload that to different affiliates and then the company pays me dividends to Mauritius, obviously. That’s just whenever there’s spare cash in the account that sweeps to my account. Then I got various other things, like I get some book royalties and other bits and pieces.
Andrew: First of all, that’s fascinating. But what I mean is your traffic, where does it come from? It seems like it affiliates to me and it’s SEO, am I right?
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. And then large number of it goes out to affiliate programs? What’s the one that does the best for you?
Richard: If you look at our blog, it has the top post there and a lot of them turned out to be sex posts that got picked up. So, they’re the most popular for whatever reason. Google ranks us highly for those and they’re highly trafficked and then we send them off to guys that teach courses about how to be better in bed or whatever. So, send that traffic there.
Andrew: But you’re also sending to some porn affiliate revenue?
Richard: No porn sites, no.
Andrew: Like the live cam, IAmLive.com according to SimilarWeb.
Richard: Oh yeah, this one. Does that count as porn? I don’t know.
Andrew: I don’t know if it does or doesn’t.
Richard: It’s kind of dirty, yeah. But you’re not supposed to see that stuff. I don’t know what you’re using.
Andrew: SimilarWeb. I’m telling you, SimilarWeb is the greatest thing. People don’t know how much stuff is available about their company, especially the pro version. I’ve had people after the interview is over go, “Who did you talk to at my company to get this data?” “No, let me do screen sharing with you and show you.” “What the hell are you doing?” Like TwoGirlsTeachSex.com is one of your affiliates, OrgasmArts.com.
Richard: Yeah, cool. We make money from them. Yeah.
Andrew: Okay. So, SEO and you’re doing some things that are like the live cams.
Richard: We’re number one for sexting. My guy wrote an article on sexting.
Andrew: Hang on. I clicked on something here and a picture of vagina with an explanation of what to do with it. I’m going to send you a link. So, that’s a part of the business.
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: The bigger part seems to be you selling your own products, right?
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: Okay. So, SEO and affiliates are what do it. How do you figure out what other products to create, what the next one it?
Richard: I think in the beginning, it was kind of logical progression. So, how to meet women in nightclubs, how to be more confident, so we’ve got Inner Game Installed. We’ve got day game products, where it’s like how to meet women in the day time. Then we’ve got something on lifestyle. Then something on texting and something on online dating.
We just looked at the different areas. We thought the texting one would be good but it wasn’t so good. It was good to our list but it wasn’t good for affiliates. Then we’ve got one that’s good for affiliates and less good for our guys and different products are good for different sources.
Andrew: Okay. The Inner Game Installed, that’s the inner game one. All right. I’ve got a lot that I can ask you. But why don’t I just leave it there. Oh, how about this–who’s the woman in the video where you talk about–it doesn’t matter. Do you hire actresses to do these videos?
Richard: No, they’re girls that I know.
Andrew: She’s really good. She’s not looking awkwardly on camera. She doesn’t look like she’s just a buddy of yours who you roped into a camera.
Richard: She probably was.
Andrew: Impressive.
Richard: Depending on the video.
Andrew: Just some friend, you get her on camera and that’s it.
Richard: I just noticed when there’s a beautiful girl in the video, more guys watch.
Andrew: I get it. Here’s the part that’s–
Richard: I don’t care.
Andrew: She doesn’t seem awkward.
Richard: Some guys said it was awkward but then more guys watched. So, I kind of ignored the guys that said it was awkward. It got more likes and more guys watched.
Andrew: I was watching your videos. Here’s what I see. Your style is so casual like you are here on this call. I’ve asked you really tough questions up front. You seemed unrattled. I’ve asked you questions about how great life is. You gave a smile but not like, “Woohoo.”
Richard: I’m scared of people that are too, “Woohoo,” because I imagine that another time they’re, “Boohoo,” crying. Anyone that’s super, super positive, I wonder what goes on when that switches off. So, I’m very content and I try not to count on any one thing for my happiness to have any–I try and be happy each day, not to wait for the big plan or the big project to work.
I’m not bothered when we have things go wrong in the business or business setbacks. It doesn’t really affect my mood much. Recently, there was a stock trade that I had on. Sometimes I do some stock trading. I got stopped out for pennies and then it would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars hours later. Just because I put the stop there–
Andrew: You put the stop, which means that you sold and if you hadn’t it would have made you more money. Is that what you’re saying?
Richard: I shorted, the other way around. It would have been huge. Then I was thinking, “What would I do with that?” Let’s say I made $1 million. What would I do? I’d buy a villa in Mauritius, but how much happier would that make me, the fact that I had a villa? It didn’t really matter.
Andrew: That’s the other thing that drives me nuts. For me, everything matters. It wouldn’t change my life at all. Maybe I need to do some LSD. It will chill me out.
Richard: It was something about ego. I really analyzed why I was annoyed about not making money on the stock market and it was my ego. It was that I consider that I’m good at stocks and good at business and good at different things, so if I fail it’s my ego that hurts. It doesn’t affect my lifestyle too much or my happiness, my day to day activities.
Andrew: I’m kind of happy having an ego. Why do you want to not feed the ego?
Richard: I think all other things like comparing to other people or striving to hard, being too aspirational is negative after a certain point. It doesn’t actually bring happiness. I think we need to learn to appreciate the things we already have to focus on relationships with people and deleting the things that cause us stress and being healthy and happy.
So, ego can get in the way of that and wanting to crush people or beat the competition and having that as a reason to carry on is not so good once you reach a certain level of success. Maybe it was great for me in the beginning to have an ego, but now it wouldn’t really serve me well.
Andrew: That’s impressive. You want to close it out by just showing me the room you’re in? This is your place?
Richard: This is the… Yeah.
Andrew: You’re not in a hotel, right?
Richard: No. It’s nighttime, so not much to show. There’s a bed there. There’s a fireplace. There are some pictures. There’s a TV.
Andrew: All right. This is your bedroom that you’re recording from?
Richard: No, this is kind of the spare room because it’s already late here. Girl’s in bed.
Andrew: Ah, okay. Thanks for doing this, this late.
Richard: No problem.
Andrew: All right. Cool. And you’ve got a new book coming out. We’ll find out about it. Do you know the name of the book?
Richard: No. I’m still working on the title and it’s going to be at least a year. So, people would have forgotten.
Andrew: But it’s going to be about regular relationships, like how you and I could have a relationship.
Richard: it’s really cool. It’s about how to communicate effectively with anyone. It’s for men. It’s for women. It’s for business.
Andrew: I’ll be able to pick up that book and just talk to my receptionist over here like a human being.
Richard: Yes.
Andrew: All right. I would like that. Richard, thank you so much for doing this interview. Thanks for being so open, especially with the questions. People don’t know this. I start off by firing off really rapid fire tough questions. I let you know, I said, “Richard, how do you want to do this? Do you want to do this like calm or are you okay with me asking some of the tough questions right from the start?” You go, “Do what you want.” That’s what you said. How did it feel for you?
Richard: Good. I liked it. I like something a little bit different. I was only scared by your level of research going on there where you had all the secrets of the business.
Andrew: As stuff was coming in during the interview.
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: You know what? We actually were going to redesign the way that I do these interviews and I think I might in the future, but one of the challenges was there was this beautiful shot that showed my office fully, so you wouldn’t just see me with a white wall behind me, you’d get some context to where I’m sitting. We looked at it and I said the problem with that is people are going to see my typing and researching everything they say and that’s very distracting they’re going to constantly worry about what else am I finding out.
Richard: Yeah.
Andrew: All right. This tells me maybe I should really watch out for that. Either way, I’m really glad to have you on here. Thank you so much for doing this interview. Your website is PUATraining.com for anyone that wants to check it out.
My two sponsors for this interview are if you want a hosting company, frankly even if you already have on and you want a better one, level up by going to HostGator.com/Mixergy. They’ll even help you migrate to them. If you need to hire developers, there’s no better place than Toptal.com. I’m grateful to both of them for sponsoring.
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Thank you, Richard. Thank you all for being a part of Mixergy. Bye, everyone.
