The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to Get a Yes From Anyone (and Change Your Life) | Ep. #170

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

 I sat down with Stu Heinecke, the bestselling author of How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, and we talked all about creative outreach that actually works. Stu shared some insane stories, like how he gets 100% response rates by mailing personalized cartoons, and how someone landed a $2 million Walmart order from a $28 Facebook ad. I shared my own story of turning a $1,500 order and a few cold emails into a multi-million dollar business. We discussed everything from sending swords to CEOs, to using Venmo to get attention, to sponsoring Little League teams as a way to stand out. This episode is full of ideas that could seriously change your life if you actually use them. You can check out Stu’s book at stuheinecke.com or connect with him on LinkedIn. Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Creative Outreach Strategies for Business Success03:04 The Power of Personalization in Marketing05:56 Unique Campaigns with High ROI09:13 The Art of Follow-Up in Contact Marketing12:08 Using Humor and Cartoons to Stand Out14:56 The Role of AI in Modern Marketing17:52 Auditioning for Relationships in Business21:13 Innovative Approaches to Getting Meetings24:05 The Importance of Human Connection in Marketing

He spent half hour of its time, $10 in materials to hand deliver that to me for $9,000. Really smart. It's a no-brainer. So many lives could be changed by just thinking about something a little more creatively. One little unlock. If you go through usual channels, that is not the way you stand out. I only needed to reach out to about two dozen people. 100% of them responded.

100% of them agreed to meet. All of them became clients. Paid $28 for it. That led to $2 million order. $69,000,000,000, R-O-I. Well, that's interesting. Who else can I reach? I started reaching presidents and prime ministers and really basically almost just about anyone.

And when you do that, man, magic happens. Okay, you're going to love today's episode, whether you own a business or you want to start a business or you never want to start a business. If you'd ever have a need to get an important meeting with an important person, this is the episode for you. If you check out episode 144 entitled How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life, that was my episode with Jordan Mix about permissionless marketing, doing really cool things to get the attention of cool people.

This one is kind of similar. This guy literally wrote the book called How to Get a Meeting with Anyone. He literally wrote the book and it was a bestseller. And he knows all the tricks, all the stories. He's talked to dozens or hundreds of people that have done really unique creative things to get meetings with important people to make a lot of money, to find a big partnership, whatever. You could also call it a white whale, but it's told in a different way and it's very, very tactical. For instance, a guy that makes $1,000 custom swords or buys them and sends them to companies that are in trouble

so he can turn them around and make millions of dollars. He has a 100% response rate. There's several stories about people that have a 100% not just response rate, but close rate because their outreach methods are so unique and personalized. And in the age of AI, this is more accessible than ever. So please enjoy. Please share with a friend, anyone you know

that would love to get a meeting with anyone on the planet. They could use this episode. It's really hard to grow a podcast. And so sharing it is one of the only ways I can spread the good word far and wide. So please do if you be so kind. Please enjoy. A big feature of contact marketing is it's not mass marketing at all. It's finding the people like, you know, at the most, 100 people, but I'm always talking about a top 100 list, but the people who can change the scale of everything. So who are they? Are they could be clients or they could be mentors. They could be potential partners. But whoever they are, you need to connect with them. In a unique way, or you're not going to stand out. Nothing's going to happen if you can't connect with them. So because of all that, I thought, well,

That campaign hit the 100% response rates across the board. Well, that's interesting. Who else can I reach? I started reaching presidents and prime ministers and really basically almost just about anyone. And then I got really curious. Sorry. Were you using cartoons for all of this outreach? All of that, yeah.

Okay. And then I got curious about what everyone else was doing and discovered there's just the craziest. There was a shadow form of marketing out there. And I had to call it something. So called the contact campaign in how to get a meeting with anyone. and people have been doing these amazing things to get meetings. So it's just rife with all these really entertaining stories of things people have done. It's just so much fun to see what, just kind of how creativity across the race just forms and expresses itself.

And just the things that it led people to do and then the results that they got have all been just stunning. I feel like so many of us become enamored with big numbers and we'll spend five hours like trying to, like trying to set up a cold email campaign to reach 10,000 people, whereas what happened if we took five hours trying to reach like the 20 most influential people that could completely transform our business? We would certainly have a higher percentage response rate, but we could even have a better raw number response rate.

Yeah. When I went into direct marketing, the pundits of the genre were saying a lot of things that were interesting. It turned out to be interesting. One of them was, is it possible to get 100% response rate? And so, you know, my first contact campaign did that. And so I didn't talk about it to anyone. I just thought, you know, it would be like saying I've been abducted by aliens and you're

a liar. So the metrics that I've seen in contact marketing, they easily hit 100% response rates. It doesn't happen all the time. It's not common, but it does happen. And it's actually common enough that it's a feature of contact marketing. the highest response rate that I'm aware of and ROI that I'm aware of are, let's see, for response rate, it's somewhere north of 300%. So what that means is you produced a campaign, or maybe I should explain what the campaign

was, but you produced a campaign. And the thing that you used to make contact was so compelling that the recipients shared it. And then, so it basically went viral and other people responded to it. I suppose it's the best way to put it. But so that's interesting to get beyond 100% responsive to what that means. So this one marketer's case, he ended up reaching somewhere between three and four times his audience because they spread it. The other one, the ROI figure came from a dental startup.

A dentist had invented a new tongue scraper. And so he started a company, hired some young guys to do videos for him on YouTube, and they were selling the tongue scrapers pretty effectively on YouTube. And then about a year into that, they just decided they were trying to get into Walmart. They wanted to have it rolled out throughout their 6,500 stores. So they went through the usual channels. I think this is kind of a feature of contact marketing as well, that if you go through usual channels and you do the usual things,

that is not the way you stand out. So certainly that wasn't why they were going to stand out. So at some point, the young guys decided, You know what? We're tired of waiting for Walmart to respond. So they put together a little, just a little tiny Facebook ad, a static Facebook ad, paid $28 for it. They targeted the Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters, and, you know, the right demographics and so forth. They were targeting Walmart headquarters. And their spokesperson, the sort of tongue-in-cheek or, you have many things, the scraper-in-cheek.

Tongue-scriper-in-cheek. Yeah. Their character was sort of a dentist, live-action dentist. with a giant tongue scraper. So that was what was on the ad. And then it said Walmart employees have bad breath. But if they contact us and feature our product or something like that, I can't remember what it was.

I think that's a key distinction because it's not enough to just target Walmart employees. It still has to stand out and cause someone to say, what? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, you have to have people. Oh, my God. You know, what is the, well, in this case. So here's how this works.

I make you free videos. I actually know what I'm talking about. I have no greasy sales pitch at the end. And if you implement what I talk about, you'll make a lot more money and have a better life. And all I ask for in return is that you hit the subscribe button and maybe even the notification bell just like that. Thank you. They heard from Walmart's legal department first.

About 48 hours after the ad went up and they said, are you the ones behind this ad? Oh, yeah. Would you take it down? Of course. Sure. Of course we'll be happy to do it. Oh, my God. They're still trying to figure out if they're containing damage.

So they said, was this run nationally? And they said, no, we targeted your headquarters. How did you do that? This was a while ago. So this was still news to them. So how did you do that? Well, we selected this way and that way. And they said, wow, you're actually pretty astute digital marketers.

And they said, yeah, anyway, that led to, I'm going to introduce you to our dental products buyer. They did. And they exited that conversation with it to one, oh, was it? No, $2 million order. So, geez. So that's cool. I interviewed the CEO. about this. So when I asked them, I said, well, okay, you went into that conversation in one form.

You were a startup. You'd been in business for a year. And you left it with a product that's now about to be rolled out in Welfort. What did that do to the valuation? And he said, well, I think it 10xed us. And he figured that their value was $2 million at that point. Certainly you'd be going before going into that conversation and then 10x to $20 million. So if we take all of that into account, it's a 69,500,000% ROI. From a $28,000 Facebook ad. From a $28,000 Facebook ad, yeah. I mean, Stu, I don't know if you know my story, but I have a similar story.

Do you know the company Buckees, the gas station company? Yeah, I think so. They have about 50 massive gas stations across mostly the southeast. Anyway, my audience has heard this, so I won't go into it. But they didn't sell online. They don't sell online. have this huge billion-dollar brand. And so I bought one of everything from their stores. It cost $1,500. And I launched a business. And I called email 20 reporters. It went viral. The legal

department reached out to me, much like in your story. And I've since learned that's usually a good sign. You have the attention of the higher-ups. And it's been five years since that business. And we do millions of dollars a year. And we sell all of Bucky's products online. Un Officially, they're not an official partner of ours, but we are the industry leader by far. And it all started from a $2,500 order and a few cold emails. Oh, my God. Well, since your audience already knows the story, sometime we'll have to get together off. Yeah. I want to hear the whole thing. Yeah. But I just think it's so interesting that so many problems could be solved or lives could be changed by just thinking about something a little more creatively, one little unlock. And I think back to the time, I was

like 23, 24. I owned an iPhone repair shop. And I just opened a new location in Huntsville, Alabama. And I was sitting in there and it was a small business. So I was still manning the store. We had four locations at this time. A commercial realtor walked in. And he had seen in the tax records or somewhere that I had just signed a lease on this store. And because of the fact that I had opened a location, the local news like the Huntsville Times or whatever, wrote an article about me. that was like buried somewhere in the business section, a few paragraphs. And he had taken that paper and laminated it and like framed it. And it was a picture of me fixing a phone.

And then he put a note in there. And it's like next time you open a store, talk to me and I'll find you your next location. And you know what I did? I took a picture of it. I texted it to my wife. I texted it to my friend. And that, you know, 100% response rate became a 400% response rate because I shared it. Because it was so meaningful.

Now to him, the value of me as a conversion. is, let's say, $3,000 a month on a five-year lease, that's $36,000, that's $180,000. He's going to get about $5% of that. So $9,000. He spent half hour of his time, $10 in materials to hand deliver that to me for $9,000 in my next lease. Really smart. It's a no-brainer.

Yeah, really smart. So look at the ROI on that. It's a pretty good ROI. Dan Walshman is a turnaround specialist, and he is a, also a big blogger, sales blogger. He writes a blog called EGY Conversations. He's an extreme athlete, runs 100-mile races and wins. You should have him on your show, actually. But he's amazing. But he has this really interesting process for reaching out to CEOs of companies that are in trouble. And I would say that earlier, AI probably now picks that up. But before that, there was no way to

buy a list of companies that were in trouble. And so the way that he went about, first, while finding them and then contacting the CEOs. He scanned the business news every morning, looking for stories of Mr. earnings estimates, kind of like your realtor, not the same triggers, but he was doing the same thing. And then he has this sword made up, this beautiful sword made by the prop maker for the movie Gladiator.

So these are beautiful swords. And fortunately, they're not sharpened. That's a good idea. Yeah. Do you know what they cost to make? About $1,000. Wow. Okay.

Well, I'm waiting to here. hear the cost of his conversion or the value of his conversion. Well, you'll hear it a second because I was going to say that it has that sword made up. It's inscribed with the CEO's name and one of Dan's favorite descriptions. If you're not all in, you're not in at all. And that goes into this beautiful wooden box felt line. So that's part of the $1,000. But it all goes into a box with a handwritten note. And handwritten notes show up all the time, an element of some of the best performing versions of these campaigns. So anyway, the handwritten note says, dear Chris, business is worn. I noticed you lost the battle recently. I just wanted to let you know if you ever need a few

extra hands in battle, we've got your back. He said, the battle with you, side my side, with you, we'll swing a sword with you, will help you win this battle. He gets 100% response rate to this campaign so far. Not every one of them engages him, so that's not 100%. But still, when he does engage, the engagements are worth a million and up. And I don't know, actually, so what I don't know is, I need to ask him this now that I'm thinking about it and we're talking about it, but what is he then generated from the swords he sent out? I'll bet it's just enormous. Does he charge like a flat fee, a million dollars to come in and fix the company? Or does he like buy equity stakes? I think it's a stake in what he's able to produce as results. Okay. I don't know.

Wow. Actually, I don't know. Does he do any follow up? Like if he gets 50% response rate the first week, does he then reach out again and say, hey, did you get my sword? Or is there no follow up? He only sends the sword and then waits. Well, I don't. I don't think he waits. I think he reaches out. But he's just saying that he gets, and I don't know how many times he may have to call. So I would imagine you don't just reach out and they're ready to go. But yeah, he's getting through to literally all of them. I think the follow-up is such an important distinction because people might go and try this and they're like, I only got a 30% response rate, which is probably 100 times higher than a cold email campaign. But if you call them

and email them and it's not a normal call or an email, you got to reference the thing that you did. I'm remembering a story that happened just recently, and this gentleman might be listening right now. I don't want to offend him, but I've talked about sending people Venmo transactions or PayPal transactions of $10 just to get their attention with a note attached. And so someone used my medicine on me and they sent me $50 on Venmo. They've just found me randomly. And then in the Venmo comments, because you can only leave so many characters in the transaction, in the comments, in the name of the transaction, he said,

the comments, which no one reads Venmo comments unless you point to it. And in the comments, it's like, hey, my name is so and so. I love what you're doing. I want to come help you film content. I live nearby. I want to film a video with you. I can hold the camera, whatever you need. And super cool. Thanks for the $50. But like, I don't need that right now. I'm not looking for someone to hold a camera. I will eventually. It's relevant to me. It just wasn't an immediate need. And so he followed up by sending a dollar with more comments. And I still did. And I still didn't respond just because I was busy. He never followed up again. This was about a month ago. And then just yesterday, he came to mind. Yeah, I just thought of him. And I'm like, you know what? I need someone to go

into my Instagram reels and look at like my swipe away rates and find the reels that have the best swipe away rates and then watch the reel and see what the hook is. Like, how can I replicate that? I need someone to just kind of be a data analyst that knows how to read the trends, like someone who has a mind for it, which he was. He had a lot of experience with content. And, and and someone who can make recommendations. Hey, just so you know, this video didn't do very well, but the swipe array rate was your best ever. So I think if you made X, Y, and Z changes,

the retention boost would make this go massively viral. And it would only take you three minutes to refilm it. So I was looking for him to do that. So I reached out to him and I'm like, hey, thank you for the $51. It's been a month. I'm sorry for not getting back. I don't need anyone to hold the camera, but I need this. And I'd explain to him.

No response. And then a day goes by. And he says, okay, well, like, what is your long-term plan for me? And I'm like, dude, I don't know. Like, I just, I have a need filled. You seem like you were really motivated. Like, you gave me money. And so, like, I don't know. Are you going to be a long-term employee, equity holder business? I have no idea, but you got to buy a guy a drink first. Like, let's do this for 30 days. I'll pay you above market for 30 days. Like, let's do 30 videos or something. And then let's just see how it goes. And he never responded.

Oh, my gosh. And so, wow. I think that's another important distinction of like, the response might not be what you're expecting. But like if you liked that person or that opportunity enough to send them a $1,000 sort or $51, then you got to be flexible, right? Yeah, I would say he really blew it on the back end. He did fine on the front end. That's interesting.

I've never heard of anyone. That's cool, too. I've never heard of anyone using a Venmo account and sending a payment. And that is a great way to someone's attention. It is. You know, and also I was going to say, I think that when we reach out to people, hopefully there's a good reason to do it. So if there's a compelling reason to do it, great. That helps. But then we have to realize he's auditioning to you.

The first part of his audition was stellar, sending the 50 bucks. You got your attention. And he got top of mind awareness as well so that when you had something else, you reached out to him. So that's amazing. But it's not just that we're selling something. We're auditioning for a relationship and for doing. doing business together. Just what will it be, or if it's business or maybe it's job related, but what would it be like to work with this person? He made it. It seems like, I don't know,

maybe someone else told him the idea. I don't know. Maybe it's not his idea. But he made it interesting in the very beginning. And he had a great start going there. They really missed it afterward. That's terrible. I don't. Maybe I'll hear this and have a change of heart. But I'm curious about the cartoons that you originally spoke about. What was different about them? personalized? And what was the follow-up sequence on that like? So first of all, my entry to cartooning was interesting. I wanted to use cartoons in those mailings. That's where it started. But, okay, I don't want to just offer my cartoons to my clients. I want to get my heroes of cartooning. So from Playboy and the New Yorker, I wanted to get

some of the greatest cartoonists out there in my group. And I did. I got them in my group. It became this amazing mentorship opportunity. It was amazing. So first of all, it's the style, the look of it. I would say cartoons are not popular today as they were before. But anyway, so these styles, the art styles were highly recognizable, maybe even the signatures are what they look like. I don't know if you can read some of them, but part of it was top-notch cartooning that was happening. It wasn't just somebody that from the background that draws goofy picture. And then, yes, mine were always imbued with personalization. So the cartoon is always going to be about the recipient. And because of what cartoons

do in magazines and newspapers anyway. We talked about that a little earlier, that they're the best read and remembered parts of the publications. It made the mailing stand out. We used to get a lot more mail than we do now. So it made it stand out in the stack of mail that people would get. And they'd engage with them. They'd open it.

So it was a combination of recognizable styles and of cartoons and or sort of cartoons. And then personalization. And that all kind of super simplifies something that's not very simple to do. because you've got to come up with something that's funny. If the recipient is, so let's say, disparaged because of the humor, don't send that out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

A big waste of time on a giant scale. It's always people talking about them. I mean, in the cartoon, it's always someone talking about the recipient of the mailing or whatever it is, but it's of the cartoon. Yeah. So the recipient's out of frame always. Otherwise, people are going to look at it and say, well, that's not the color of my hair. I'm male. I'm cheap.

whatever it is, everything will be wrong for most of the audience. And so you don't want that. So always out of frame. And then they just have to come out on top in the humor. Whatever it is that's happening in the humor has to be something that pays them a compliment. I like that. That's what's worked best for us. I mean, you would know better than anyone.

I think, lost the test history behind it, for sure. Yeah. I think on one hand, you could say, you know, how relevant are cartoons today because newspapers aren't as relevant. But then, like, I love looking at the first principles, like the base reasons for things, right? And if I were to think about the first principles about what makes cartoons memorable, I would think, and you kind of said this, it stands out in the mail. It's like a pattern disruption. It's just something different. It stands out from the other ads of like, drink this refreshing Coca-Cola. Like, okay, we've seen that. Also, there's like, there's a nostalgia factor

because we're thinking back to our childhood days. Maybe we looked at Marvel comic books. Like, we just kind of feel affinity to it. And also it's like it's kind of like the same protection that standup comedians have. Like you can go up on stage with a mic and say things that might normally be offensive. But because of your role in the room at the moment of being a standup comedian, you're not canceled, right? Like to an extent, like you can you have more freedom and flexibility in what you say because you have that safety buffer of being a comedian.

I think that cartoons are similar in that like you can be a little more. They are. more leeway. They definitely are. So what are you showing us here? You got a FedEx envelope with like a window cut out of it? This is the Heinek window. Patent pending is designed, but really it's a method for using cartoons to get people to pay attention, whatever it is that you send it, whether it's a mail piece or a FedEx envelope, for example. We know that this much is going to get their attention. It's cartoons, but it's only part of the cartoon. And for you to get the full payoff, you have to get inside the piece, though, and then you get the whole cartoon, you get the final,

the full payoff. But that's great because that gets their attention, just like it had been, in earlier generations. But now you have to get inside the piece. And so it carries it a little bit further. Well, it's like first principles of any good copywriting or video, anything. You got to have a hook. You got to have a payoff.

The hook is the window. You can see part of a cartoon. The payoff is pulling out and seeing the whole thing, right? And then it continues on. it's a cartoon about you. There's all kinds of things that are happening there. That is cool. That's the Heinek window.

So video is cool, but you know what's better? Longform audio via podcast and my newsletter. TKOPod.com. Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week, stuff like this. You're going to love it. All free.

No sleazy sales bitch. TKO pod.com. Just quote a couple of examples. So there's one of my cartoons. There are two women having coffee in a coffee shop. And one of them is telling her friend, well, let's see, I'm going to personalize it because it won't make sense without it. It's written so that it's personalized. So in this case, I sent one of these to Mark Cuban. So the woman is telling her friend, Mark Cuban says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their mav's tickets. I tend to agree. She's got a reaction from her friend. And like, what are you talking? I guess what are you talking about? So I sent that to Mark Cuban on a big, well, I call it a big board. It's a big foam core board. How big are we talking? I'll show you. It's 18 by 24 inches. Here it is.

Wow. Okay. And message on the back. So that's framed that's up on his wall in his office. Oh, wow. And the quote is, you can tell a lot about a person by their ticket? Just by looking at their behalf tickets. You think with the age of AI, I could really see cartoons or stuff like this, personalized marketing making a comeback.

Because with one prompt, I could say, what are some really insightful things that Mark Cuban has said that might be off the radar. And then if you were to make some sort of thing out of that quote that he remembers, but no one else would, you could really stand out. Also with the cartoon generation, I'm going to share my screen for those watching. I did something interesting here. Let's see. I gave it a prompt and I said, make a cartoon image that's funny about a sales pitch offering unique marketing outreach methods to the Rolling Stone. And in 30 seconds, I had this image. For those listening, it's a pitcher of a stone sitting and there's a guy pitching him in like an old school setting. We can do unique outreach marketing.

Like it's not very funny, but with one more prompt, we could make it funny. We could make it ironic. And it's a lot faster than handmaking a cartoon, right? Here's the interesting thing. And I should mention I wrote the book, how to get a meaning with anyone, right? Yeah, literally wrote the book. So that came out of 2016, did really well. Last year was named the number one sales book ever written on prospecting by sales.

daily. So it's done really well. And now for those who can see, here it is, it's coming out June 3rd. And so here's what prompted, because what you just showed me is exactly what part of what prompted the new edition. I mean, obviously things have changed since 2016. That's a long run for the book. We're either meeting virtually or in person. People are either working in the office or not, or they might be returning to the office. There's all kinds of trends back and forth there. the real driver was AI. I just want to say, just my own personal view on it is that AI is miraculous. It's just amazing what it's allowing us to do.

And I see people either reacting to it with fear or with great excitement. I think the ones with great excitement, and particularly the ones that say, I'm excited, now I want to get behind it. And I want to start something in it, really taking the right approach. But I do think that when we're reaching out to create, you know, human-to-human connection with people, as AI just becomes more and more pervasive in our lives, I think there's going to be an equal and opposite reaction.

I think that people are going to be saying the things that I think are amazing. I don't know if they're even going to say it consciously, but I think there will be a clamoring for things that are uniquely human. I think that particularly if we're trying to make contact with other humans. So what you just showed me was a great example of how AI does it versus what it looks like when a human does. Let's say when a talented human with a very practiced human does it, it's totally different. And I've watched this, particularly with cartoons, to see, well, how does AI do? If you ask it to produce a cartoon, it comes up with something that's sort of like, you know,

and it looks like, I mean, you wouldn't look at it and say, oh, gosh, that's done by my favorite cartoonist. Yeah, yeah. There's none of that. So I think cartoons and cartooning might be one of those things that stands out in the age of AI as something uniquely human. pool of those things is shrinking. AI will write music for you and perform it, you know. Yeah. Yeah. They'll even do it with your voice and perfectly tune it and so on.

So those things then become more artificial and not so special. I agree. I think that AI is going to make in-person interaction that much more relevant and effective. I think in-person sales is going to boom. It's going to have a heyday because there are so many AI agents out there doing emailing, agents, like cold calling agents that's all AI. None of it, it's all just going to be noise and fluff. Response rates will go from the 1% that they're currently at to 0.1%, right?

Which still, at a large number, it could still work, but showing up in person is going to be more effective than it's ever been. Imagine, I don't know if you're married or not, but I am. Yeah. Finding your significant other using AI and using AI to pitch them and get the first date. How silly would that be? There are certain things that are just going to remain human. Yeah, agree.

Anyway, I know the cartoons so far have really withstood that challenge quite well. When you showed me that drawing, that image, here's one of mine. It's one of my favorites of mine, but describe what you're showing. There's a little child at the kitchen table facing the viewer facing us, and he's filled his cereal bowl and his milk glass, and he's just rolling his arms back and forth, making a big mess on the table. And behind him is his mom, who is a little, you know, harried, let's say.

She's going on. No, not this, no. And so she's turning around, and she's scolding little Roland. And she's saying, Roland, you're acting like, and then I can fill in almost anything. And some of the things that he gets, he's been called or told he's acting like her pretty crazy.

I mean, when the first did this, the caption was not personalized. but she was telling him, Roland, you're acting like a Democrat or rolling you're acting like a Republican. Yeah, yeah. Insert anything, yeah.

Anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good example of how the same cartoon could be customized to a larger audience, right? You know, millions all at once. Yeah. That is one thing that AI could do very well

is you hand-make a cartoon, but you have AI plug in thousands or hundreds or dozens of different variables that make get custom to each person you're sending it to. You could. I mean, this sounds silly because it's like one great grain of sand on the beach that you describe it. But one of the uses that would be interesting is to just have dossiers produced on

people really quickly find some handle, something that they love to do that they're always talking about, something like that they're just posting about now. That would be very cool. One thing that you can do with deep research is you can go take someone's, let's say their Twitter handle. Let's say it's Mark Cuban, but and his, let's pretend that his Twitter handle is at basket weaving 42. And it's like, basket weaving 42. Interesting.

And then you go to deep research or just Google, but for a more surface level approach. You just search in quotations basketweaver 42. And then you can see, oh, he had a Tumblr account from 2008 where he wrote a thousand words a day about his love of basket weaving, the other. But like he's never talked about it in decades. But, you know, that's not him now. You could use that angle to approach him in a way that you can guarantee no one else is using because surely he's getting hit up by all kinds of people. Now, you find things like someone is coaching, this is actually a real story,

but someone spouse, so the target person's spouse was coaching their little league team. And so the person that was to reach out decided to become a sponsor of the little league team. And so those are things that you couldn't do. Yeah. I just wouldn't know about what's going on. on to say, okay, that's something we could, we can sink our teeth into and do something. Actually, it's kind of a nice thing to do. The sponsor of a Little League team anyway, it's great. It's a great purpose. Yeah. I mean, what if you had a physical product like the tongue brusher

and you found out that one of the buyers in the dental category in Bentonville who had a son on Little League and you paid $300 for, like you, that guy's relationship might be worth $3 million. You pay $300 for a logo for the tongue that you will never sell any through that ad alone. And he may, that guy might not even ever know that you sponsored it. He might not ever even notice the sign on the outfield. But if you reach out to him and you reference it, that's the key. And then he can reference it. He can fact check you, like, whoa, this guy's committed.

Holy cow. Okay, I'll take your call. I'll take your call, right? I think, you know, when people see that, that goes back to that auditioning again, when people see that kind of, well, let's say audacity, but also just, I don't know, just gumption. Function, yeah. Bias for action.

They are very proactive. They get things done. I mean, just how they get things done. People want to act. They want to work with people like that. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it can be as simple. I did this with the late John McAfee.

I cold emailed him to pitch him something, which is a very generic, low effort way of pitching someone. But how I differentiated was by saying, I want to pitch this in person. I will be at your house. You name the date in time. And he said, okay. And I showed up his house.

spent all day there, right? And I meant to them. I had no plane ticket to, yeah, I had no ticket to Lexington, Tennessee, but I bought one after he said, come to my house. So, well, Coombe. You can also like, great stuff. Thank you. Yeah, you can find hybrid approaches. You can use, like, the generic low effort methods to, you know, to lead into the higher effort methods. It's whole notion of getting meetings that change your life. I was just a mastermind earlier today. And someone had asked, well, you know, I work with people who, who are in the middle of job searches. And they're kind of worried about they don't want to look like they're silly or, I don't know what it is.

They don't want to be embarrassed, I suppose, because then maybe they wouldn't get the job. And I'm thinking, well, what you're describing is someone who's saying, I don't want to stand out so that I stand out for the job. How is that supposed to make sense? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like the principle of like bringing donuts with your resume to the office, right? Instead of just emailing it in. Yes.

They don't want to look dumb. And we actually talked about the donut part. Well, two donut boxes. So one was the donuts full of, in the box full of donuts, with a resume tape to it, perhaps. But then another is one that Dale Dupree does that is an empty box. So it still has a stain. There are donuts were in it.

So you can see that. There are all stains and so on and little sprinkles and so on. And then there's a note inside that said, you know, I bought the box for us to celebrate, let's say, our new deal together. But I was waiting. I was waiting for so long. I ended up eating all the donuts. Oh my gosh.

That is so genius. You know, experience. Oh, that is so genius because here's the thing. Like a box of donuts at an office is ubiquitous. It's not special, right? It's not really going to get around that there are donuts. Still, still. No, no.

No, hear me out. I'm saying like a box of actual donuts is like, okay, cool. He's unique, but we've seen it before. A box with no donuts is like, hold up, wait, there's a guy that brought, are you sure that someone, like people just start talking? And that's the whole idea, right? Oh, yeah. Absolutely, it is.

Yeah. I like that a lot. Absolutely. Oh, they're golden. And I could share with these. There's so many cool stories. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci was the earliest example. I hit the brother.

He was involved with something that was the earliest example I've heard. And I'm sure it goes much further back than that, but that was pretty cool. Again, we're auditioning. And that's how you show up to people. That's amazing. Like, wow, who is this? I have to, instead of going, because we're interrupting, if we're doing this, If we're asking someone for a meeting,

you're asking, basically, I mean, what we're doing is we're interrupting their day. So if we're doing that, we want it to go from, I guess there are questions, their impression to go from, who's this to, oh my God,

who is this? And when you do that, man, magic happens. That's amazing. Oh, Stu, this has been amazing. There's a lot of gold in this.

I'm excited to share it. So tell us the name of your book again, so we can go out and buy it. It is called How to Get a Meeting with anyone. And I'll hold it up if you're watching. There it is. How to get a meeting with anyone by Stu Heinek.

June 3rd. It comes out June 3rd. And it's already out. It's been out for a long time. But the new edition comes out June 3rd. Thank you for joining us, Stu. This was amazing. Where can we get in touch with you?

Well, I would say you'd go to my author site. That's Stu Heinek.com. And then the other way to do it is to just connect with me on LinkedIn and mention that you're listening in on our conversation. All right. What do you think? Should I have Stu on again? tell more stories, more examples, let me know in the comments. See you next time on the Kerner office.