Attraction and Promotion

I’m not always happy about it, but I guess you could call me a “personality” in the financial world. I won’t go as far as “celebrity.” I stand to benefit from fame—I am positively exposed to it. The more people know about me, the more of them that will subscribe to my newsletters. And as they say, there is no such thing as bad press. I even thrive off of notoriety.

But if you have followed me for some time, you know I am not much of a self-promoter. For example: one thing I will never, ever do is point out when a prediction went right. Never never never. For two reasons: one, I believe in karma, and if you’re going around tooting your horn about your good calls, the piano is going to fall on your head. And second, it’s just…gross. If I predict something and it comes to pass, people will remember, or they won’t. I don’t have to remind them.

This falls under a broader class of behavior I would call “promotion.” I don’t engage in promotion (except with books, which I will get to in a minute). I am a terrible self-promoter. I don’t seek out TV or radio or podcast appearances (except when necessary to promote books), I don’t have a huge Twitter presence, and I generally keep to myself. I believe in “attraction”—doing good work day in and day out with the belief that good things will happen over time. Sometimes the good things don’t always happen on my schedule, but in the long run, they happen.

Attraction rather than promotion. That’s my modus operandi.

Promotion seems rather inauthentic to me. Of course, adjacent to promotion is marketing, and companies do that all the time. You make a good toothpaste, you want people to know about the toothpaste. So you buy a bunch of ad time on TV and run ads about your toothpaste. Is this marketing, or is it promotion, or both? You have a good product, you believe in your product, and you want to get people to buy the product. How is toothpaste different from financial media? Advertising is used to sell all kinds of things—why not newsletters?

To the extent that I do marketing at all, I do it in more subtle ways, through podcast appearances and interviews and stuff like that. I don’t want to be in a position where I am promising people gains, or even hinting obliquely at it. I’m good, but I have cold spells, like anyone, and that will lead to disappointment down the road. So I don’t promise gains. I promise that you will enjoy it, and it will make you smarter, and maybe there will be some good trades along the way. That tends not to work on a whole class of people, the people who are seduced by the promise of triple-digit returns on stuff. I saw a commercial for the Najarian Brothers on Bloomberg TV the other day. They have some book out that they’re giving away for free to entice you to join their options trading program. And yes, there was the promise of triple-digit returns. Pretty amazing, the stuff you see on TV. Anyway, I’m not taking options trading tips from the Najarian brothers, and I’m not taking style tips from them, either. That is promotion, not attraction.

Word of mouth is a very slow way to grow a business. But not always. WhatsApp got almost a billion users in a matter of months. There are other examples of this, of stuff that went hockey stick. But I am content with it. And by the way, with word of mouth, you usually get the right customers, the good customers. Word of mouth, by the way, is usually how local businesses grow, because they don’t have the cash for advertising. Think of the restaurants in your town that are successful—all word of mouth. Attraction, rather than promotion. Hey, did you hear about this new restaurant up the road? You have to try it. And so on. There are plenty of examples of products that succeed without advertising. TV shows, especially. Everyone goes into the office and talks about some ding dong show they’re watching on Netflix. If I sat down and watched all these shows that people recommended to me, every single evening would be wasted in front of the TV. I don’t do that, and that’s why I’m living in a huge house.

So I’m clearly not a self-promoter, but as I said, I do make an exception for books. If you’re going to take a year of your life and write a book, you want people to read it. The same is true of any artistic endeavor. If you produce music, you want people to listen to it. If you make art, you want people to look at it. So I think artistic endeavors are a little different than commercial endeavors. This is how it goes for books: you release a book, you get some reviews, you go on some podcasts, maybe some TV, and you get a flurry of publicity around the launch date, and either it takes off, or it doesn’t. 99% of books don’t take off. They just don’t. No Worries sorta took off. It did have some decent word of mouth, and still does. But then you have a book like Atomic Habits which goes hockey stick, and nobody knows how the hell it happened. People who have worked 30 years in the publishing industry aren’t any better at predicting winners than you or I are. That’s why I keep throwing spaghetti against the wall, churning out books as fast as I can. One of them is bound to be a winner. So I have this short story collection, Night Moves, coming out in October. Short story collections almost never go hockey stick. But who the hell knows? Maybe it will resonate with people. There was a New York Times article recently about some young woman who self-published some weird book and plugged it on TikTok, and it sold a million copies, and then she got a five book deal from a major publisher. In the sage words of Joaquin Andujar, youneverknow. So yeah, I am going to plug the hell out of Night Moves. Including in this publication. You’re gonna love it.

But yeah, in the financial world, you see some big self-promoters. I’m not going to name any names here, and get myself in trouble, but I’m sure you can think of some people. Some people are just very good at drawing attention to themselves. You see these guys (and gals) and they’re everywhere in media, on TV, on podcasts, all over Twitter—man, I don’t have the energy for that. And I don’t really want the attention, either. I’m a writer, for God’s sake. I’m really good at writing, and less good at speaking. So I focus on my core competency. I much rather like the “Wizard of Oz” model—the man behind the curtain. Scott Galloway came out with a book recently, as you know. He was all over TV. He’s been on Bill Maher before (the one show I would like to go on), but he was also on MSNBC where he went on a very scripted rant that went viral, and then he sold a ton of copies of his book. Good for him! He’s on his path, and I’m on my path. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do the media appearances if I am invited, but I am no Scott Galloway. Stick a microphone in front of me and I suddenly become less articulate. Galloway’s book is doing well, by the way, mostly on the force of his personality and his massive email list, but it’s not going hockey stick. You can’t force it.

Attraction rather than promotion works in other areas, too—like in your personal life. If you are your authentic self, you will attract the right kinds of people. If you are pretending to be someone you aren’t, you will attract the worst kinds of people. It’s as simple as that. I have never been anything but my authentic self, at every stage of my life, from when I was in the Coast Guard, to working on Wall Street, to today. I have a lot of friends, especially for an introvert. People who want what you have will seek you out. The rest of them, you’re not particularly interested in.

I’ve written before about having impact, but I also think it’s good to have quiet impact. You may have heard the story about Kobe Bryant visiting a children’s hospital in Arizona. Apparently, Kobe Bryant did a lot of this type of philanthropy, and nobody knew about it until after he died. I reprint it here in its entirety:

So I have a story...When we lived in Phoenix, frequently my and Tom’s paths would cross in our work. A pediatric cardiologist I worked with asked me if Tom could get an autographed something from the Lakers for a 5-year-old dying patient who was named Kobe. He was from one of the reservations in Arizona where basketball is life. I called Tom at the Phoenix Suns making the request, believing that there would be virtually no way this would happen. The Lakers were coming to play the Suns later in the week.

A day later Tom called me and said, “He’ll do it!” I was thrilled and thought I’d bring the ball or whatever it was to work. Tom said, “No, he read your story and he wants to come and meet the little boy.” I was floored! So the next day, with the support of the Colangelo family, a limousine brought Kobe Bryant to my office. Under a cloak of secrecy – neither security or PR people were informed (I got in a little trouble for that but it was so worth it!), so the three of us scrambled up a back staircase to this little boy’s room in cardiac ICU. For the better part of an hour they played basketball, passing it back and forth, with little Kobe, laughing, his sweet Mama smiling and laughing.

Several autographed items were left and many photos were taken. The machines keeping him alive were dinging, whirring and alarming and his doc was just grinning from ear to ear, as Tom and I stood nervously watching this unbelievable scene unfold before us. As we got back in the limo, Kobe turned to me and said, “Kristen, what can I do to help? Is it a financial thing? Because I can take care of that.” It wasn’t. (The little boy had a heart defect and was too ill for a transplant.) I was floored. I was floored not only by his sincerity and offer of generosity, but the kindness and warmth he displayed.

Little Kobe passed away the following week. About three weeks later I got a letter from Little Kobe’s mom describing the power in those moments. She said those were the most joyful moments of his entire life. The photos were the only photos she had of him smiling. According to Kobe Bryant’s PR people he did this everywhere, but the deal was – no PR. From that day on, he has been my hero and when people would tell me they didn’t like him, I would say, “Let me tell you a story...”. May God shine eternal light upon your soul, Kobe.

No PR, no PR, no PR. Attraction rather than promotion, is where it’s at.