The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress: How Innovators of the Roaring 20s Created the Consumer Revolution by Jason Voiovich

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress: How Innovators of the Roaring 20s Created the Consumer Revolution by Jason Voiovich https://amzn.to/45Ljpui Epic stories from the decade that taught Americans how to vote with their wallets. "The more you read, the less you feel like a sheep in the thrall of Madison Avenue, and more like a tiny, private tycoon bending the market to your whims." What did Al Capone, Babe Ruth, and Coco Chanel all have in common? Al Capone understood that working men just wanted to enjoy a beer after a long day at work…and that working women wanted exactly the same thing. Babe Ruth understood that people wanted a show, not just a game…even if they would never see him play. Coco Chanel understood that women wanted freedom from tight corsets, flowing gowns, and complex updos…even if (especially if) that meant showing some skin. Each one understood what their customer wanted and found a way to give it to them. We’ve heard amazing stories like these so often over the past 100 years that they’ve become…well, normal. But that’s only because no one alive today remembers what life was like before the so-called “Roaring 20s” – the most misunderstood decade in American history. Capone, Ruth, and Chanel were indeed unique, but they were not alone. Dozens of innovators used the same approach to systematically change every aspect of our daily lives in a 10-year orgy of societal transformation unknown before or since. The 1920s ushered in nothing short of a Consumer Revolution – one just as transformative as the Industrial Revolution that preceded it or the Information Revolution that followed. Consumer culture not only changed what we buy and how we buy it, but more important than that, it changed how we see ourselves and our role in society. We’re more than healthcare patients, college students, social advocates, and citizens. We’re consumers…and we demand to be treated as such. Our world – for good and for ill – would never be the same. What you can expect in this book: Fun, fast-paced, and fascinating stories about colorful characters of the 1920s. Learn the origins of everything from frozen food to diaphragms. Empower yourself to make better consumer choices...starting today. This book will help you rediscover your power to change the world! What others are saying... He’s done it again. Fresh and unique insights often grow out of the intersection of two interesting topics. As with Marketer in Chief, Jason Voiovich demonstrates his mastery of U.S. History and marketing with the deeply researched but fun-to-read Booze, Babe & the Little Black Dress. Voiovich captures, with imagination and great story-telling, the impact of how the “Choice Era,” born in the Roaring Twenties, revolutionized American culture. — Steve Wehrenberg, retired advertising executive and professor of strategic communication Jason brings 1920s marketing back to life through stories told so compellingly that you want to marinate on each one. History has so much to teach us, and this book nails such a core period - while also being such a fun one to read. — Todd Caponi, Author of The Transparency Sale and The Transparent Sales Leader In “Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress,” Jason Voiovich glibly reveals the bones and origins of consumer culture. The colorful characters and funny anecdotes he uses to explain the tectonic plates of modern America isn’t merely fascinating—it’s also strangely empowering. The more you read, the less you feel like a sheep in the thrall of Madison Avenue, and more like a tiny, private tycoon bending the market to your whims. – Andrew Heaton, comedian and podcaster "He's like if Will Rogers and Mr. Spock had a baby." About the Author In a career that spans more than 25 years, Jason Voiovich has launched hundreds of new products – everything from medical devices, to virtual healthcare systems, to non-dairy consumer cheese,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. It's another Chris Voss show. You know, what was it, like seven days ago, we just broke into our 15th year. 15 years we've been doing this. And gosh darn it, I'm tired. If it wasn't for the powerful Devil's Mountain coffee that I have that has like, what is it, it like 1450 milligrams of caffeine in it that's a lot folks that's like 14 cups of coffee basically it wasn't for that i don't know what i do and maybe i don't know what i'll do anyway i'd just be on a gurney laying here inside some sort of

hospital they'd have to bring the mics in and i'd just be like doing the show with some sort of i don't know one of those iron lungs on and you just hear me breathe through the thing. And then of course, I don't know, maybe that might be a good show. I'd have nurses as co-hosts and, you know, I'd have our nurse ratchet come in and she could be like a co-host. She could do the sidekick and I'd play the, I'd play the straight man and she could do the jokes or something. I don't know.

Was, was a nurseatched ever hot in the original, what was it, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Maybe we could be in the same hospital bed and we can have Jack Nicholson come in because he's kind of at that same age too and do it. I don't know why we decided to improv the ramble, talking about

hospitals and shit, but here we are. There you go. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing gentleman, multi-book author on the show. We're going to be talking about some really cool, fun stuff. He's got a really interesting book. Well, two interesting books that are filled with stories that are going to entertain you, make you think, and of course, make you want to buy them and give them away for Christmas. It's Christmas coming up. So this is important time to listen to all the shows, the two to three a day, the 10 to 15 a week, so that you can figure out what gifts to give away

for Christmas. You got to start thinking about this stuff because what the smart people do. I always keep an extra pile of books laying around or gifts laying around, you know, whatever I got from the Goodwill for those people who end up giving me something that i didn't really care about and wasn't didn't get a gift but they always show up on christmas day and go hey i got you something you're like damn it and uh so then i'm always like hey i got you something i thought exactly of you and i'm gonna pretend like i like you for a day because you gave me something and then i go get some books i'm like here take two copies of this like why'd you get me two copies like i don't know it's the backup stuff um it beats regifting folks because people know when you regift don't regift that's

just bad business and especially if you don't wrap it and take the take the uh the you know you give them a book where the the authors uh said uh to x they're like, hey, why does this have a different name in it? Don't do that. I've seen that movie. Anyway, guys, we're going to get to him in a second. But as always, this is the queue up for the guilt and shaming. Refer the show to your family, friends and relatives, because then you can spend the

holidays with them and you can talk about the show instead of talking about politics or, I don't know, viral videos or whatever the sort of kerfuffle that's going on on TikTok these days. Tell them to go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrissfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrissfoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrissfoss, and TikTok at chrissfoss1. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show, and he's the author of the newest book that's come out. Jason Vojovic is on the show with us today his uh latest book is called booze babe and the little black dress sounds like fridays around my house let's recut that so we get the title right because otherwise people will google that on amazon it's called booze babe and the little black dress how innovators of the roaring 20s

created the consumer revolution we'll also tease out his prior book that was really popular uh called marketer in chief how each president sold the american idea and we'll find out if uh if if it ever came to fruition maybe we're just still chasing it uh, he is joining us on the show where we talking about both books, some of his thoughts on marketing, et cetera, et cetera. And, uh,

uh, one of the things I have is, uh, we've got to pull up his, uh, bio here so that we have it and we can give you the lowdown on his thing. He has a career that spans more than 25 years. He's launched hundreds of new products,

everything from medical devices to virtual healthcare systems to non-dairy consumer cheese. What does he have against dairy? To the next generation alternatives to the dreaded cone of shame for pets. Wait, he invented that? We'll have to find out. To sex aids for cows.

Really? Wow. That's a whole show right there. He's a graduate of both the University wisconsin and the university of minnesota and he has completed postgraduate studies at mit sloan school of magic we have a lot of people from mit on uh his formal training has been invaluable and he credits his true success to growing up in a family of artists immigrants and entrepreneurs they taught him how to carefully observe the world see patterns before others notice them and uses insights to create new innovation welcome to the show jason how are you i'm doing great

chris how are you there you go i am doing awesome give us your dot coms where can people find you on the internet sir yeah best place to find me is my personal website jason t voyager.com you'll find information about all my books the audiobooks where to buy them as well as other projects i'm working on right now you can also search for me on linkedin or amazon it's one of the very very very few benefits of having a unique name like jason i'm pretty easy to find if you found me i'm the same one. There you go. And there'll be a link on the Chris Voss show as well to you and your books.

Now we've, we've, we've crossed the thing that we have to flesh out just a little bit. At one point you helped market or launch sex aids for cows. Yeah, that's right. It's, it's, it's not half as odd as you might think. If you're from farm country, you kind of already know this, but you might notice out in the fields, if you're driving through, you're kind of in your car and you're driving around, and all of a sudden you see two cows that you might believe are engaged in amorous activity. And you've seen this.

It's called mounting. And anyone from kind of farm country knows what i'm talking about but you city folks might need a little lesson there'll be two female cows that will mount each other i know i know i know hear me out hear me out what happens during the kind of cow breeding cycles when the cow goes into heat they call it an estrus hey other cows sense that even female cows male cows if there's a male cow there you kind of know what happens but even a female cow cow will mount another female cow so here's the deal that's the way that you know like okay that cow is in heat

and usually most dairy these days is artificially inseminated. So the artificial inseminator guy will come by with his tools. We'll just leave it at that. He will inseminate the cow. Well, he's got to be able to have a way to know how many times that cow has been mounted. Because the number of times a cow has been mounted equals about how ready that cow is to get pregnant so uh what i helped launch was essentially uh like imagine a scratch off lotto ticket you kind of have this picture in your mind right imagine putting a sticker on the back of it so it's highly adhesive you slap that bad boy on the back of the cow and then when the other cow mounts it,

they're kind of rubbing off the scratch off. And when the scratch off is ready, bingo, you won the lottery. Go in there with the artificial inseminator and you know exactly when to inseminate that cow. There you go. It's a scratch off.

Lotto ticket is, is a sex aid. Do not try this at home. Kids. You, Scratch-off lotto ticket is a sex aid. Do not try this at home, kids. It is unlikely that your spouse will appreciate that, putting a sticker on. People that are tuning in right now are like, is this an OnlyFans channel? This could get weird. This could get really weird.

You know, there are some people that, God bless them, have trouble. They're human beings that have trouble getting pregnant and stuff getting pregnant and stuff like that maybe this is something you can do you know just know when you're in your cycle or whatever yeah boy boy that's uh yeah don't try it kids don't try it at home cow mounting it's fridays at my house uh anyway guys uh so oh give us an idea of this new book that you have out called booze babe and little uh black dress what motivated you want to write this book and you're like people damn it need to know these stories yeah i i was one of those kids and you this might be you listening i was one of those kids that like to take things apart to just figure out how they worked uh sometimes i was able to put

them back together again but different different story, different day. I've been in product development my entire career, about 25 years. And it's kind of natural for me to try to figure out, oh, what was the first time we started driving cars? When was the first time that we all started living in suburbs? When was the first time we bought certain products in grocery stores? Really important in my line of work to understand why things work the way they work. What made a new product successful? Because most products, 99.9% of all products ever introduced ever are no longer on the market.

So it's really important to understand what the winners were and why they won. So in my line of work, I research these things, I look at them, and I noticed that product after product after product that I came at it, like electric razors, toasters, radios, all kinds of things were all introduced, mass marketed in the 1920s. And I thought, huh, that's interesting i didn't

know that i wonder there must be someone must have written a book on this i must be able to go to amazon it's got 300 and some thousand books somebody has gone and collected all this information a nice packet maybe there's some chat gpt thing i can get and i can just it'll spit it out at me and i can be done and i can learn all the things i need to learn uh it didn't work that way there was no book on this and i figured if i didn't write it it wouldn't get written and the stories are really cool and they deserve to be told so i noticed it i didn't notice anyone no one else had done it so i thought why not me so me? So there you go. There you go. So are these

great sort of lessons from the 1920s of product development or marketing or both? You know, there are a lot of both. I think the title kind of gives it away a little bit. You know, Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress. Booze is obviously about Prohibition.

Babe is kind of about Babe Ruth. The little black dress is Coco Chanel. And kind of the little black dress. It's kind of hints at the structure of the book. It's made into three parts. Booze and prohibition is all about the new products that got launched during that time. You know, automobiles, you know, all the things that came along, unintended consequences of prohibition, frozen food,

all of those sorts of things were just at that time. Babe, Babe Ruth, is all about entertainment and information. So it's not like new products, but it was the first time baseball became popular, the first time road trips became popular, all of those sorts of things. And then the little black dress is really not a lot about products at all. It's about how we chose kind of our identities, because fashion is really all about how we want consumers uh it was about credit unions it's about birth control all of those sort of things are really born of the 1920s so yeah it's about products and it's about marketing and how they came in but really it's about who we became as americans in the 1920s you know before then we are kind of mostly what citizens or we were you know that

in 1920s we became consumers we became choice makers and that was a huge transition in our psychology so yeah it's about products and stuff and the stories are really cool but what underlines all of it is the big change in our collective psychology there you go that maybe everyone was sober or maybe they weren't wait when they were not i can promise you that they were not sober it was when does the when did the prohibition kick in prohibition was essentially throughout the entire 1920s basically january 1921 through the early 1930s and prohibition is funny because you think about it in terms of consumer choice right that the government there was no like it was a constitutional amendment there was no ambiguity there you couldn't drink that with with exceptions and americans and consumers said nah we're we're gonna do we're gonna risk jail to go get hammered yeah so i think

of it as a time of and sometimes my libertarian friends are just get excited about this that this is the first time when the government understood uh its limits and what it could do and what it could not do it could not stop not stop you from grabbing that fifth of scotch. It could not stop you from grabbing a beer. And that's all those unintended consequences, right? The mob and all kinds of crazy stuff happened because of prohibition. And that's obviously a chapter that kind of features prominently in there. That's booze in there. Oh, it's a oh it's a ton of fun there you go so was it you know up until the

roaring 20s you know they called them and people were just having uh good fun uh dancing and you know all sorts of stuff before that we were kind of kind of in survival mode maybe uh you know we were just trying to everyone's just trying to get by and you know not die of you know subbing your toe and dying of uh you know some sort of affection just simple stuff like that you're like oh shit i gotta cut i'm gonna die next week damn it you know that sort of thing you know they started inventing you know drugs where you're gonna live you know i don't know um so is that kind of where that was kind of the peak of that in the 1920s and why you wrote about it and why this kind of turns that page?

We kind of started getting to a place in America's society where we're like, hey, we've got a couple extra bucks in our pocket. There's that Wall Street, and we can kind of have some fun and some extra spending money maybe. Yeah, that was a big part of it for sure uh that you had a lot more products uh out there that you could buy before then there just wasn't as much stuff that you could buy you know you had a lot more people moving into the cities you had people like henry ford who figured out mass production like how to not only just make a lot more stuff,

but before Henry Ford, people don't quite understand how important Henry Ford really was like, oh, he kind of mass produced the Model T. That's not exactly what he did, because people have been mass producing things for 30 to 40 years before then. What Henry Ford figured out is that if you saved money on making a lot more things more efficiently that you should pass along those savings to people who are going to buy them i know crazy crazy thoughts crazy that you should think about doing that and then even crazier get this he said you know what i want to pay my workers more so that they can afford to buy my car that I've made cheaper. Model T, by the way, got cheaper every year it was produced.

Most people don't know that. It got cheaper each year it came out. The price was lower than it was before. Think about that. So he figured out, and everybody copied him. So anyone who wanted to release a product kind of had to copy the good model so you had a lot more things in the 1920s that got cheaper and got more available that was number one number two you already alluded to it there's just a lot more

money around before the 1920s you didn't have financial infrastructure in the united states people thought well we've got banks but banks were a mess uh this is the first time where you got companies like the general motors acceptance corporation gmac which some of your listeners might have had a loan through they were founded in the 1920s basically to do installment loans for things like cars so now okay you had all kinds of stuff you could afford the stuff and you had to know about the stuff right if you didn't know about it doesn't matter if there's a lot of stuff and you can afford it doesn't matter if you don't know about it it's all mass marketing and all advertising kind of came into its own in the 1920s because during world war one president

wilson created this Committee on Public Information. Its whole job was to sell war bonds and figured out how to use mass marketing to do that. Trained up a whole bunch of guys. And once they left the War Department and the war was over, they didn't have nothing to do. And all of those companies like Henry Ford, General Motors, General Electric, all of them said, we need those guys to work for us. And they hired them all. And the advertising agencies hired them all. And it created this kind of perfect storm.

You had a lot more stuff. You could afford the stuff. And you knew about the stuff. It was almost like it couldn't not happen. But all those things happened right in the 1920s there you go it's like when you first discover you there's a weed dealer i don't know what that means uh you have this stuff you mean at 14 oh wait that is not it's legal now in minnesota i heard it's cool now yeah i've heard about it i don't know what it means uh but there you go

so for people that are listening um why why is this important how do we transpose this today what lessons can we learn and and how does this history uh really you know we we one of the sayings i have on the show for my quotes is the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history and thereby we go around and around um so how do we how do we apply what you've taught us here in the book we'll get into some stories here in a second but uh why is this important how can we utilize it for today's marketplace and business etc etc i it's what i usually tell people is you may not be that interested in the history of the 1920s but the

history of the 1920s is interested in you and here's the thing we talked about you know the mass production mass finance mass marketing we talked about all those things and we think about all those things as happening to us as consumers but flip the language we're getting tripped up on the word consumer we think about mass consumption that we're taking that those things are happening to us but what we really figured out how to do in the 1920s is become choice makers that's the important decision people get all hung up on consumerism and capitalism and all that stuff that's all fine you can have that discussion if you want but what the 1920s taught americans how to be is choice makers how to to make choices, not just with our products, but what, you know, what podcasts they listen to, what sports they participate in, the family they decide to have, all of those things.

You know, before the 1920s, how did you decide what family you wanted to have? Like, well, you went to church and the priest told you what kind of family you were going to have and that's what you did in the 1920s you know you once you kind of opened the pandora's box of choices and choice making people said oh you can buy this car that car that car and people said huh well that means that i can read this newspaper this newspaper this newspaper now like oh yeah we didn't we hoped you would just read all of them but okay we get guess you get to that means that I can read this newspaper, this newspaper, this newspaper. And they're like, Ooh, yeah, we didn't, we hoped you would just read all of them, but okay,

we get, guess you get to make choices there. And they said, well, wait a second. So I get to choose if I want to have kids or not. And they're like, Oh man,

damn it. Damn it. And so when we think about being a choice maker, I think the biggest thing I can tell people about when you finish reading this book, you'll understand that it's a lot more than just what products you could buy. It's learning how to think about all the choices you make in your life as what if it had a price tag on it? What if you watched a video on YouTube about some new fitness thing and you thought, okay, do I want to do that or not? Okay. What if I wasn't just kind of learning about that from, you know, like, Hey, does this, should I take this supplement or not? What if I thought about that in terms of, okay, it's got a price, not just the price tag for the supplement, but what do I have to do in

my life? How much is that going to cost me in times of time of time you know time with my family behaviors i'm gonna have to do or not how many times am i gonna have to go to the gym if you start thinking about making a consumer choice versus you know reading a story in the new york times you're like why do they want me to believe that what if i had to buy that story if i had to buy it what else do i need to buy uh you turn on your consumer instincts because most people i know are very very very good at comparing products and figuring out what's right for them but they don't take that same mindset into media they don't take it into what they listen to what they buy all of that stuff and i'm saying after you finish this book you will you'll learn how to do it it's really cool and that's really

important you know there's an old line from the band rush uh neil pierre wrote i believe uh that said uh we will pay the price but we will not count the cost and i remember that stuck in my head in the 90s and i was like yeah people really don't consider the cost of stuff. You know, I'll sit down with my friends who got divorced and we'll sit down with their alimony and child support. And I'd be like, okay, so, uh, how much fun times did you have over 10 years? And then, uh, what was the cost of it? I'm like, wow, you could have, you could have just been partying in, uh, in Vegas the whole time, every weekend for what you paid. But there you go. You've got alimony and child support for the next 20 years.

Have fun with that. And I think, who's the Yellowstone star? He's going through that right now. Kevin Costner? Oh, Costner. I thought you were going to say Harrison Ford, but that's 1923, isn't it? That's true. There's a couple spin spinoffs now, isn't there?

Yeah, I lose track. So can you give us a couple of tease-outs from the book? There's a lot of great brands that were built back then. I was going to say Anheimer, Sir Bush. We had one of their people on recently talking about how the family was built. Coca-Cola. There's a lot of great brands that were built during this time or probably finally hit pay dirt during this time.

Can you tease out a couple stories or something that we can do? Yeah, I think there are a couple that really jump out. I mean, obviously, this is the Babe Ruth era and kind of Wrigley Field. There's the little black dress became popular. So if you look at women wearing clothes today

and you just kind of go to a cocktail party, they could have been at that same cocktail party a hundred years ago and they would have fit in. Because it's basically the same dresses, the same jewelry, the same fragrances, the same, all of that same stuff. But a couple of things

that really strike close to home for most people uh most people don't know that frozen foods were invented in the 1920s commercially available frozen foods and it's uh the inventor was clarence birdseye you know so birdseye frozen vegetables uh they became more popular in the 30s but the the story is really cool. It's kind of the short version of the story is that he was just, he's a crazy, curious guy. And he ended up, through circumstance, up in Labrador, Canada with his wife. And he'd go out fishing with the Inuit anglers up there. They'd drill a hole in the ice. They'd auger it out.

They'd take the fish out. And they'd throw it onto the ice they'd auger it out they'd take the fish out and they'd throw it onto the ice and the fish because it was about negative 40 degrees the flip the fish would freeze in like three seconds bam frozen you know frozen hard like hard frozen not like your freezer at home frozen this is canada winter frozen so and here's the thing have you ever frozen something from the fridge into the freezer and you heat it up the next day and it tastes like mush yeah it just tastes terrible well what birds eye was one of the first people to figure out is the inuits when they reheated their fish it's like oh well this is really good why is it that frozen fish that was flash frozen like that tastes good and the stuff i freeze in

my freezer tastes like garbage he was the first had microwaves did i get it right well the uh what he kind of figured out is that you need to freeze food and vegetables really really fast because the water inside the cell walls will freeze and when water freezes it expands when it expands it bursts them and that's what makes food taste like mush when you freeze it fast it doesn't give the water a lot of time to expand that's the science lesson you probably learned in 10th grade but here's the the practical application is he figured out how to freeze it not up in labrador canada using chemicals in a factory so basically mass producing frozen fish like henry ford mass produced cars and was able to get all of that to market and people could have frozen fish if they lived in minnesota they could have corn if

they lived in florida they could have berries if they lived in arizona all of that stuff that was all possible and that was just not possible before the 1920s it was that guy's singular invention and kind of bringing that to market that made it all happen. It was the first time we could choose to have food. We could choose what we wanted to eat. And eat it year-round, where it wasn't seasoned. Eat it year-round. Most people have no concept of what that's like. Like, hey, if strawberries are out of season, you are SOL.

Yeah. But he was the first person who said, nah, I can fix that. There you go. I mean, first first kind of lay a foundation for globalization because now we get vegetables year-round from all over the world you know that whole idea it's like if you think about the long tail of impact there that like we can get i i live in uh minneapolis minnesota and we don't we don't got no lobsters here i can promise you that no matter how deep the lakes are uh't got no lobsters here, I can promise you that, no matter how deep the lakes are. There are no lobsters outside of the tank, outside

of those restaurants that we don't want to give their trademark on the show, but you know you've been to one and you can pick the one you want dead up in the front. You say, kill that one for me. It's like an executioner. I know, it's a little weird. I'm never going to be able to go into one now. Oh, you will now

Because you would kill me that one Yeah that's probably something sadistic That I have going on there But I can get Lobster here I can get fresh fish Fresh ocean fish From anywhere

And when I was down in Key West They had corn They had corn starch You can't was down in Key West, they had corn. They had cornstarch. You can't grow corn in Key West. You can't grow much of anything in Key West. There isn't that much space there. Just hurricanes. Hurricanes, sugarcane, rum.

There's a lot of rum in Key West. And limes, evidently. Yeah, key lime, key lime pie. Do have that if you're there. Do they grow the limes in key lime pie in Kiwa? They're little teeny ones. They do grow some there, but most of them are grown in South America now. Oh, okay.

Dirty little secret. There you go. So these are great stories in helping people kind of realize how these things rose. And do you find that who's going to be targeted most of the book marketers people who build brands and and want lessons on how they go yeah here's the thing i there are a lot of those people that read my book uh you know who will know me or have heard of me uh and that's great i i i love writing for them. But I try to write for people who would not ordinarily pick up a history book. You know, most of I know there are a lot of people who the thought of reading a history book just gives them hives.

And they're like, you know what, I'm I just want to read a mystery. I want to read a romance novel, whatever. I actually read and listen to a lot of mystery science fiction and romance novels because not only are they well written uh but they're they're they're engaging in a way that most history is not and it's just i don't know what it is about kind of this there is a version of historian that wants to kind of make sure that it's, you know, every I is dotted, every T is crossed. And I love them. I couldn't do what I do without them.

But it's very difficult for the lay person to kind of pick that up and get interested in it. You've got to be able to tell those stories that are interesting and fun in a way that a person who's used to reading romance novels would pick this up. So I market my books to people who don't read history. And so they're a really hard audience. I think that people who are historians and marketing folks, they have their own, they either like some parts, they don't like others, whatever. But my hardest audience are the people who said yeah i read nora roberts or i read you know uh james patterson or i read stephen king why would i pick up your book i gotta make my book something

that they would pick it up and say i want to i want to read that i'll give you a shot so does anybody say they read Fifty Shades of Grey and read your books? I will tell you there are a couple of chapters in the book that do get a little naughty. We do talk about birth control in Booze Babe and the

Little Black Dress and it is E for explicit, folks. I will tell you that. It's just E for explicit. You are well-worn. Sounds like Saturdays when I go to Vegas and hit Sparrow Reno. So, you know, you have the nice sexy title,

The Booze Babe in a Little Back Dress. People go, that's interesting. And then you got the How Innovators of the Roaring Twenties Created the Consumer Revolution. So you got like the business and the sexiness there going on. Let's get a plug in for your other book that's really interesting, the business and the sexiness that are going on let's uh let's get a plug in for your other book uh that's really interesting the one about the presidents and uh i had that one up now i gotta flip to it here uh marketer in chief how each president sold the american idea uh tell us a little bit about this book because I think it's very interesting as well.

Yeah, I'm a big history buff, as you can guess. Most marketing... We're starting to figure that out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got that. You got that part. We're starting to get that, yeah. Yeah, there aren't a lot of historians in kind of my chosen field. We tend to kind of look forward. We're always trying to create the new thing, right? I i mean that's our job is to create a new thing we don't get a lot of points for creating old things so there aren't a lot of people out there like me so i the one that's good in that i don't get a lot of competition but it's bad that i don't have a lot of competition i don't have other people i can look to

when i wrote marketer in chief uh i wanted to get a sense where i just wanted to explore how each president not just like hey it's just lincoln and roosevelt and barack obama and george washington like no i had to challenge myself to look at each president because each president was kind of the chief marketing officer of the united states and here's why i say that when you think about the united states let's compare that to china for instance what makes you a chinese person well like okay you live inside the border of china where you were born there or something uh and you are ethnically han chinese with a few other ethnicities kind of mixed in there. But if you are from China, you are Chinese.

If you're American, what is that? America is not really a geography. You know, yeah, there's a United States area, but America is an idea. It was the very first country that was really founded on a set of ideas and ideals, more than just a geography that a people could defend. The whole thought

is, okay, it wasn't about protecting the borders and kicking people out like European history, African history, Asian history,rican history asian history you know south american history it was more like how do you convince people that this is the place they wanted to be because they didn't most people weren't born into it up front everyone had to immigrate here you know my my parents my parents immigrated here they had to choose it so i felt like i wanted to rethink the role

of the president not as like commander in chief but as the person who is out there saying america is really cool and you want to be a part of it it's so cool you want to immigrate here it's so good you don't want to be part of france anymore you want to come here to do this even though the food isn't going to be as good yeah plus we don't surrender either so this is that and we did bail them out of a couple big ones yeah france french joke there yeah they have that white flag as as their flag thing though i'm just kidding france get over it um but yeah the american idea and how it's being sold and and presidents i guess have sold this throughout

all the different years and you go through all 45 of them that's right all from you know i even had to hit zachary taylor you got to hit franklin pierce yeah yeah right yeah like everybody like oh yes of course it's a tough one to crack, I'm sure. you know uh you know uh even abraham lincoln those folks you know if you kind of pick a story in there and you you kind of talk about it there's not a you don't get people emotional about it well i also had to get a little closer to home and you get to carter reagan bush bush you know clinton is there another There was. There was almost another Bush. It seems like that. There was like 50. There's always another Bush. There's always another Bush. There's always another Bush. There's always another Roosevelt's and I think five or six Jackson's, Johnson's. It seems like there was everything.

There was only one Nixon, fortunately. There was only one Nixon. Yeah, there's more ways than one. There's only one. It's a good thing. Did he have kids? He did, didn't he? Yeah, there's more ways than one. There's only one. It's a good thing. Did he have kids? He did, didn't he? Yeah, he did. Yeah, it's funny. What do you do if... There was an SNL skit I watched a while ago. It was like

the change of name office. Your listeners can Google it. It is a good skit. I think Pete Davidson wrote the skit. It was all about kind of funny names. and there was a guy like who's whose great uncle was adolf hitler and you think like how do you how do you how do you what do you do there i just uh i i don't know how you how you live with that but especially if you have that same mustache thing going on yeah that he ruined that must

hitler ruined that mustache for that was the charlie chaplin mustache yeah yeah that's right wasn't it yeah yeah in the 20s you saw a lot of guys like i looked at a lot of pictures of people in the 1920s because duh i had to write that book uh and there are a lot of people who had the hitler you have no idea how popular that was no idea like lots of people had it so you know when people saw you know hitler on german tv it wasn't like oh that's the hitler mustache they're like oh why is that weirdo looking like charlie chaplin yeah which is ironic because then charlie chaplin did that whole great movie on him where he it was kind of based on him uh and uh a great bit um so uh so how hard was it to go through and and try and dig all this up i mean obviously with recent presidents you

know there's a lot of uh there's a lot of recorded data and press on him uh you know was it hard to get it from some of the more obscure presidents oh yeah there's no question i think uh if i recall there might have only been on on some of the presidents there might only be one or two biographies at all you know there's uh the whitehouse.gov you know the you know they've got little histories and biographical sketches and a few references you can find uh entire books on abraham lincoln's wife's recipes like there are whole books on that but you look at the dude before him andrew johnson who was a piece of work you look at that guy and there might be 10 books total written about him uh so there's definitely a uh you know a sense for you know american history where we tend to pay attention to the winners and the ones that you know washington jefferson

lincoln roosevelt roosevelt you know uh maybe we remember roosevelt there's another roosevelt but if you ask people to like hey can you name five presidents no problem can you name 10 okay yeah most people can't name 20 most people can't name 20 and part of that is because presidents generally before fdr really before lincoln for sure before fdr absolutely the president wasn't that big of a deal uh it was congress that was the big deal and that was on purpose uh most people haven't read this part of the constitution i know a lot of like real constitution rah rah guys who have never actually read it when you read the constitution and it lays out the three branches of government right they'll say you think oh well president congress and the courts it's not how it is the first is

congress is like 3 000 words describing what they do there's like a thousand words describing what the president does and there's like a footnote describing what the courts are supposed to do so when you think about like hey it's yeah well he could have written some more about that and why hasn't they could have maybe some rules and ethics regulations but we're finding out now uh and that's really interesting so congress was supposed to be almost maybe more important than the president maybe the president was supposed to be more of a figurehead well if you gotta put yourself in the shoes of the people who were there at the time you know they fought a war to not have a king so that was kind of what was on their mind at the time so they wanted more of a parliament kind of congressional branch the legislative branch is supposed to be primary

and under that like okay we do know we do understand the need for a figurehead a you know someone who is kind of head cheerleader and administrator and then yeah you know we need courts courts are important but they'll figure that out for themselves they spent most of their time on congress so the big deals were who was who were in charge of the congressional committees when you read history of that era and you think oh i'm going to read a biography of you know andrew jackson well congress features really prominently uh during that uh you know just very much co-equal if not much more important than the president there you go um well clarence thomas definitely evidently figured out really well how to run scotus uh and uh and uh put it up for sale to any billionaire willing to buy um you know this is interesting is it kind of based around the framework of, you know,

in our Constitution it says that we're, I'm missing one of the words, but we're basically on a path to try and form a perfect union. And it's not claiming that we're perfect or that we might never achieve it, but we're working towards that at all times. And that seems to be a theme through all of our history and maybe always will be a theme. I remember when President Obama said, you know, this is what we do.

We're not a perfect union. We zig, we zag, we go back and forth and somewhere over all this zigzagging over almost 250 years, we just try and get it right or try and get it better. Righter, as it were. And sometimes we don't always do the right thing and

we can look back on history and go, yeah, maybe we made some mistakes there or maybe a lot of mistakes actually when you look at the history of this country. But maybe we're better. But yeah, you're right. Every president tries to sell what the American dream ideal should be. You know, we've had that great Statue of Liberty standing out there in the ocean

that seemed to convey a lot of that imagery or that that idealism uh was that kind of some was that something that a lot of people picked up on and ran with for you know ever since that thing came over for france yeah there's always been a sense of you know you know kind of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness there you know that uh it's really the key word in all that's pursuit people think it's like well it's life it's liberty it's happiness like no it's the pursuit it's the journey and you know that's really what the framers figured out and what the genius really was wasn't any of the specifics that were in there it was that we have to have something

that can change over time you know it's the right balance you change too quickly and things fall apart you change too slowly and things kind of calcify you know so it's kind of getting the right balance and you never get it perfect but over time uh over time if you leave flexibility that you know you've got a kind of a pursuit of something a more perfect union yes and the realization that you'll never get there uh that part is important for people to understand as frustrating as they get as things can get that you know what it's been frustrating before it's looked bad before you know and just i think that's the big reason that chris i think that people should take in more history is that it'll actually make

them a lot more hopeful for the future because if you read history of what it was like not in 1929 when the stock market crashed but around 1933 when people finally kind of got the memo that this is gonna suck and it's gonna suck for a long time and you think about someone who is escaping the oklahoma or the kansas plains because all the topsoil blew off the old dust bowl the dust bowl and you had to take you had to basically walk to california it makes sometimes kind of the problems we have today seem a little bit more manageable it definitely does you know you give me epiphany when you're talking about how um the uh uh you know the the ideals there um one thing that's interesting is that's been our biggest sell as a democracy is that forming that perfect union and trying to always strive towards it.

And I think the key word is probably freedom in there, having the freedom to be able to do that because that's what we've always sold. That's been the brand that we've sold. And that's why people around the world have always wanted to do that because that's what we've always sold that's been the brand that we've sold and that's why people around the world have always wanted to come to this country they're you know it it people really bash immigration but um especially on fox news um but when you really think about it and the people are willing to give their lives to come here you really think about the people that when

you and i grew probably grew up or at least when i grew up there was the wall at the ussr oh you're bad i was there yeah yeah people gave their lives to to try to get to freedom that freedom was so important and that potential or the or the uh chance of the potential and and the need you know i i when i when i grew up looking at the ussr and communism and i look at i look at america um it really was not just uh two different political ideals it was human ideal it was the ideal of the human spirit the human drive the human vision the human um ability to be limitless or have the potential to be limitless where, you know, the other one was kind of the destruction or the killing or the

regulation of the human spirit, you know, and I guarantee of, uh, well, you know, you'll get fed today and you're guaranteed jobs and stuff like that. But, uh, but yeah, you, you better sit down and shut up and not cause any problems um and and you just see the difference of it you know uh and and really that's as you mentioned what people need to learn to love and appreciate about this country as an entrepreneur that's what i've always loved about this country the ability for just about anybody you know you you see people that can come here and they can be an immigrant even today, and they can come out the latest, hottest thing, the greatest thing. They can be poor and become rich.

You know, we seem to be more rugged individualism than anything. And certainly, you know, some of the economic things we've had that have put stress on the middle America, and it seems to be a little bit harder to achieve the american dream these days but still the the potential is there and uh and that's the beauty of it that's why people from all over the world want to come here that and we have big macs so there's that oh yeah mcdonald's that's uh uh you know people like kfc is the big thing people love outside of here. It's a weird thing. I just look at it this way, you know, as a as someone who's into product development, you know, you know, you think about people lined up outside the app, you know, an Apple store when a new iPhone comes out. You know, an iPhone, the first one or the first first couple they're just lines out the door like the nintendo products or you know whatever the case may be that's how that's a way to kind of think

about the united states like you can there are a lot of things to criticize about the united states and in the book marketer in chief there's plenty of that to go around but what you'd always come away with though is hey even though that iphone's not perfect, that Nintendo's not perfect, that Taylor Swift concert might not be the best concert ever, but there's people lined up down the block to get in. That tells you something. As a marketing person, as someone in product development, people are voting with their feet. feet and if you ever doubt that you're like well immigration this and that like okay stop for a second just you know every four years every two really uh you've got an olympic games look at all the olympics like okay you you see the chinese national team who's on the chinese national team chinese people you know you go to the japanese team who Who's on the Japanese team? Japanese people. You go to most countries in the world, all of the people are kind of ethnically similar.

What's the only exception to that? You go to the United States, and you've got people from all over the world who have chosen to be part of the United States. Sometimes we steal people from other people's Olympic teams. Sometimes, yeah. We get them to we get them to defect that happened a lot more when we were kids than it does now yeah that's true yeah and and that just speaks to the beauty of american dream and and what more people need to recognize is that's one of our beauties the melting pot i mean we've got so many ceos now i

mean the ceo of google and different countries, Steve jobs, uh, parents were immigrants. Um, immigration is one of the greatest things for us. Uh, especially now as we're starting to compete with larger marketplaces of consumers that far outnumber us and,

and we're starting to see the damage of dwindling populations. You know, India looks like it's probably going to rise as, as China falters because of its one child policy as an economy. It was, You know, India looks like it's probably going to rise as China falters because of its one child policy as an economy. It was destined to be the largest economy by 2025 over the last 10 or 15 years. That's

been rummaging around, if not 20 years. And that looks like it's faltering, partially because they're going to go through what Japan's going through with this de-gentrification. Is that the right word? And we're kind of in the same boat where we're starting to slow down,

where India is, you know, they're just warming up over there, baby. And they may be the largest market ever. I mean, people don't realize how much us having the power of the dollar and most of the goods in the world are processed through the dollar is kind of our lasting grace. It used to be mortgages, too, but we blew that one. So give us your final thoughts as we go out, final pitch on your books and all that good stuff. I think the biggest thing that will give people, because there's a lot of anxiety right now, Chris,

you know, people are worried about climate. They're worried about the economy. They're worried about politics. And I talked with a lot of people about that. And I say, you know what? The more history you read, the more hopeful you are. So if you want to kind of give yourself a little emotional boost read marketer in chief read booze babe in the little black dress read other great history

books that people will recommend to you because when you see how people in the past faced circumstances much tougher than the ones we're facing now and they overcame them you'll get that inspiration that kind of feeling that says i can do this we can do this this will be okay this it yeah there are problems absolutely but we figured out a way to get through them before we're all still here that's cool it makes you feel not like, hey, that you're ignoring all this stuff. No, it makes you want to face the problems and get over them. And rather than being fatalistic, I read, Chris, that I can't remember what the percentage of Gen Z felt like that the world would end within 50 years from climate annihilation. That within 50 years, every human in the world would end within 50 years from kind of climate annihilation, that within 50 years, every human in the world would be dead.

It was a shockingly large number of people. And I don't know if that's true or not. Maybe it is, and we all got 50 years left. I somehow doubt it, but I think when I take a look at that, and I think, okay, there's an entire generation of people who don't have that kind of hope and optimism that comes from you know we are not descended uh what was the old quote it was a brit who said this the we are not descendant from you know kind of weak-minded people we are descended from tough people we We can get through this.

Read history. Give yourself a little shot in the arm. That's the best thing I can tell you. There you go. We're Americans. Damn it. This is what we do. And,

uh, you know, maybe we need to get back to that. Realize we're all Americans. This is one of the things that I, I do when I, I go into any sort of politics or discussion that come up. I use the foundation.

I go, we're going to make a clear point here. We're all Americans. That's right. I don't give a fuck about your party. I don't give a fuck about what your politics are. We're Americans first, and we're brothers and sisters here. Now, if you want to talk about some political ideas, we can talk about that,

but I want everyone to remember we're Americans first. And that's more important than parties and everything else. And it's kind of interesting how when you frame it that way and set that foundation, the conversation changes a little bit. It gets better, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. Because when people lead with parties, like who are you? I'm a GOP. I'm a Democrat. You know, then you're already lost in the discussion because everyone's got their thing, especially now where people are so segmented.

And I think your book, what we've talked about, highlights that. We need to get back to going, we're Americans first, damn it. The Constitution is important. You know, you kind of highlighted one of my big annoyances is just used anybody who usually is running around mouthing the constitution says uh has never read it and usually can't read either actually i think it's like 50 i think i think i saw statistics someone said 54 percent of people read at a fourth grade level in this country or something. Um, you know, and then there's the, my favorite ad is George Carlin's thing. Uh, think how dumb the average person is and realize 50% of the people are.

Yeah. So God bless George Carlin. Yeah. I mean, if you, I was talking with somebody the other day and they're like, you know, 30% of this country supports some batshit stuff. And I'm like, if you study history, 30% of this country has always supported batshit stuff oh yeah that's yeah you'll yeah you'll see uh especially back in the 20s you know i i cover some of those things like sidebars you know people believed some weird stuff and like you thought oh well there was no one like insert your bugaboo here like oh man that's

that that dude's nothing compared to this guy uh yeah it's it's so hopeful to read that like oh this isn't so bad yeah we got this it gives you a perspective yeah for sure 30 30 percent of this country even after listening to nixon to Nixon with the tapes and everything, the smoking gun tapes and everything, 30% of this country were still behind him after he resigned. And they went through that whole kerfuffle. A portion of this country has always been trailer park and probably always will be. And I don't know if that's okay or not, but, you know, as long as, you know, it's kind of like if you really study to the moderates in this country, the people in like oh it's just it's extremes on either side that tend to you know to push things and yeah they have an influence there's no question that they can you know they can be loud they can be noisy but if you kind of look the you know the reality is

is 70 of all economic activity in the united states is driven by individual consumer choices. It's such a powerful fact that if the average American doesn't want to buy that, doesn't want to sign up for that, they won't. It's just as simple as that. And no matter what policy you've got, if it's not in tune with what the mainstream is and they quit buying your product, you're done. They quit buying your political ideal, it stops getting clicks on YouTube or product, you're done. You quit buying your political ideal, it stops getting clicks on YouTube or Twitter, you're done. And that's a wonderful corrective mechanism

that people can make their own choices. And that's what I deeply believe in. People make their own choices, and they will make the right ones eventually. Not all the time, but it's okay. Eventually, they will make the right ones eventually. Not all the time, but it's okay. Eventually, they will make the right calls given enough time.

The great thing about our democracy is we have the ability to readjust and reset and go, those four years probably weren't the best idea. We were probably a little drunk with something or power or whatever. I don't know what was going on there But we're off the juice

And we're going to try something else Or maybe we're going to try to go back to normal And then hopefully we don't zigzag some more It's been wonderful you having the show Jason Thank you Very thoughtful and exciting to read both your books Because I love history The one thing man can learn from his history

Is that man never learns from his history is that man never learns from his history and thereby we just go around and around you know uh we just repeat everything just uh just to make sure we didn't what's that old joke that sometimes i hear the chicks on tiktok say sometimes i just keep doing the thing i shouldn't do over and over again just to make sure that it was the wrong thing not to do you know just to make sure you know something like that there's something they say about i love it so jason give us your dot coms wherever people will find you on the interwebs yeah people can best find me at jason t voyevich.com that's my personal website you can also look me up on linkedin or amazon there you

go uh thank you for coming on the show we really appreciate it, man. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. There you go. And thanks, Manis, for tuning in. Order the book where our fine books are sold. It came out March 24th, 2023. Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress. How innovators of the Roaring Twenties created the consumer

revolution. Thanks, Manis, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, YouTube.com, LinkedIn.com, fortuneschrissvoss, youtube.com, fortuneschrissvoss, linkedin.com, fortuneschrissvoss, and TikTok at chrissvoss1. Thanks for being here. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you next time.