An Interview with Bill Glazer – Podcast – Outrageous Marketing
Editor:
Hello, and welcome. Joining us for this session is a man who’s been called one of the world’s most celebrated marketing strategists by his peers. Bill Glazer excels in so many areas. He’s a bestselling author of the Outrageous series of marketing books. He’s also co-written the Peak Performance series, he’s a keynote speaker, and an award-winning business growth strategist.
In this session, we’re going to cover how Bill got started in online marketing, and how a chance meeting changed his life. Bill also tells us who impresses him the most these days, and why you’re never too old to stop learning.
So, Bill Glazer, welcome.
Bill Glazer:
Well, it’s good to be with you.
Editor:
Well, let me start by asking, I suppose, the question you might get asked the most, Bill, which is how you got started in marketing?
Bill Glazer:
Oh, well listen, that’s kind of an interesting question, but I get that question a lot.
When I first got out of college, I went to work for my father, who ran a menswear business. Actually, I worked there for … I hate to tell you this, about 20 years, with my father. Then, at that time, somebody asked me … A good friend of mine who had a menswear business, he said to me … I was in Baltimore, and my friend was in Philadelphia. He said to me, “We should come over and see this huge event that they’re having there. You would probably enjoy being there.” It was a place called Peter and Lloyd’s event.
I got on the phone, and went over there. I sat there, and I was listening. It was a whole day, and it was all these presenters. At the very end, at the very end, they said, “By the way, it’s five o’clock, and if you want to go to your car, that’s fine, but we have another presenter, but you probably never heard of him before. If you go now to try to get your car, you’ll have to wait a long time before you can get your car.”
So he told everybody, “If you want to stay, we have this other presenter, he’s a marketer, and you should listen to him.” Of course, at that point, probably they start at 10,000 people there, and about 7000 of them went out to get their car. But I stayed, because I was in the menswear business, and I wanted to learn how to do marketing.
There was this guy, Dan Kennedy was this presenter. I sat there, and at the end, Dan Kennedy was nice enough to offer me a product. The product was actually Magnetic Marketing, and I bought it. Which is also interesting, when I was with my friend who also had the menswear business in Philadelphia, he said to me, “Let’s just buy one of them, and we’ll save it together.” I said to my friend, “Listen, I’m going to buy it myself, and as I’m going back, I’m going to go through everything that’s in there,” which is what I did. That’s how I got started with Dan Kennedy.
At that point, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me, because from there, in the next two years after that, the same event came to speak in Baltimore. At that point, I actually called him, and I said, “Listen, you don’t know me, my name is Bill Glazer. Two years ago, I bought your product, and now your back at Baltimore. I’d love to actually buy you dinner because you’ve been so helpful to my business.” He called me back, and he said to me, “Bill,” he said to me, “Listen, first of all, I can’t do dinner with you because right after the event’s over, I’m going to go back to where he’s at. But, if you want to have lunch, we can have lunch.” At that point, I had lunch with him.
The other thing that was funny about it was, I said to Dan Kennedy, “When I go there for lunch, I’m not going to bring over all the stuff that I’m doing now, because I don’t want to bother you, but I’m using all your stuff that I learned from you.” He said to me, and I’ll never forget this, he said to me, “Bill, if you don’t bring all your stuff with you, you’re just stupid. Bring it with you.”
We came there, we had lunch that day. He started looking at all of my stuff, which basically I was doing everything I’d learned from him. He said to me, “Bill, can I keep some of this?” This is from Dan Kennedy. He said, “Can I keep some of it, so I can show it in the newsletter?” I said, “I’ll be happy to do that. As a matter of fact, when I brought the product, you sent that letter to me, about your newsletter, and I started to buy that.” Then he said to me at the end, “Listen, I have an idea of you.” I said, “What’s that?”
He says, “Well, now that you’re in the menswear business, and you’re so good at it, you should create a business to teach other menswear businesses how to actually grow their business.” I said to him, “I’ve never heard of this thing before.” He said to me, “I have a lot of clients like that, that do it in different categories, that actually do that.” He says, “I’ll help you put it together.” Also, he says to me, “At the end of it, once you put it together, in order to keep it stronger you should join my …” At that time, it was called the Platinum Mastermind Group, which I said to him, right away, “How much does that cost?”
He was telling me how much that was, it was a lot of money for me, at that time. I said to him, “Let me just think about it.” Then, before we left for lunch, I said to him, “You know what? I’m going to do it.” So, I started to do that, and after a while … I was with his Mastermind group for about four years. I called up Dan again, I said, “Dan, listen, I know you like a lot of things with different kinds of products, and things like that. There’s one that happening in Baltimore, and I’d love it if you actually come to Baltimore, and we’ll spend some time together.” And he did.
He flew over to Baltimore. At that point, at the end of it, he said to me, “Bill, you’re doing so good, especially in my Mastermind group. I’m looking to sell my product, my own business. Would you be willing to buy my business?” I said to him, “My God! I didn’t know, coming here, I was going to buy your business.” He said to me, “Why don’t you buy it, because you’ll do really, really good at it.” At the end of that call, I’d already bought his product, and we developed that product into a company called Glazer Kennedy Insider’s Circle.
We owned that company, pretty much together for eight years. At the end of eight years, I sold that to a private equity company. Dan still stayed involved with that company. After it was called Glazer Kennedy, it became called GKIC. That business has done pretty well, for many years. Although, the private equity pretty much hurt the business a lot, but that’s another story for a different day.
Editor:
It’s amazing story, Bill. It just goes to show that, when you got started and you stayed for that final presentation, that actually was the life-changing moment. That was the thing that defined your course, from that moment onwards.
When was this? When did this all happen?
Bill Glazer:
Well, when I actually was in Philadelphia, it was in 1994. Then, he came back to Baltimore in 1996. I think the important thing about this, which would really help a lot of people understand the story I just told people is this:
Number one, I started out in the menswear business, but because of the fact that I could go to a special event to hear about Dan Kennedy, that’s the point that I learned, myself, that this is no longer about being in the menswear business, this is about me learning how to do marketing. That was really a big thing, for my business. I would say that to anybody else, that’s listening to this right now.
You don’t have to be in a regular business, or any business at all, as long as you learn marketing, and use marketing in your own business, you can really grow a very, very large business for yourself. Actually, as I owned my business, which was called Glazer Kennedy, I had my own Mastermind groups. Many of the members in my Mastermind group built huge businesses.
The article is an abridged version of the Podcast to get the full Podcast please watch the video.
