Mike Cernovich

Personal branding and image is big these days. If you talk to anyone in marketing or PR, they’ll tell you to create a personal brand and then ensure your conduct is congruent with that brand.

If you’re a fitness guy, never let anyone see you without abs. If you’re a mindset trainer, don’t let people see you get angry! Always look your best.

That’s one way of approaching personal branding, but it’s always felt too constraining to me. Sometimes, as Dave Chapelle portrayed in his genius works of comedy, keeping it real can go wrong.

Even so, I like to keep it real.

Hypocrisy is the only morality.

One reason marketers, PR flaks, and brand advisers tell you to remain “on brand” all of the time is because we live in an era of moral relativism.

“The only modern sin,” Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton observed, is “hypocrisy.”

In the U.S. especially, we are morally stunted. There is no absolute morality. We don’t feel guilt for doing something morally wrong, because morality doesn’t exist.

We are a narcissistic, shame-based society. Our greatest fear is contradicting ourselves and being publicly exposed as a hypocrite. (Read more: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.)

Living up to an artificial reality, while perhaps giving you mainstream appeal, leaves you feeling sick and empty inside.

It is dishonest.

Wouldn’t you rather sing a Song of Yourself?

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

You are flawed and contain multitudes, which is why people love you.

When you create a personal brand, you become a slave to it. You no longer exist as a human being. You are a persona.

The real you takes shits, picks his nose, probably has a little unwanted urine leakage from time to time, and masturbates to porn. (Please do not share that level of realness with the world, but keep some perspective. You are a human being, not a persona or cardboard cut-out.)

The real you wonders if anyone truly loves you, if you are a fraud who isn’t as good as people think, and often can’t see what the point of it all is when life is decay followed by death.

Will you share your message when that necessarily means exposing your vulnerabilities and hypocrisies?

I live my life and share my story.

I am compassionate, thoughtful, emphatic, kind, cold, callus, sex-crazed, vengeful, and a bit of an asshole who thinks highly of himself while being full of self-doubt.

Sometimes I rant about SJWs and other times I teach about mindfulness and the quest for inner peace.

Some would say I’m a hypocrite! Shouldn’t I be meditating in a cave?

Others would say my contradictions give meaning to my words, as my life shows I am working to improve myself in the very way I encourage others to.

I can’t imagine having any other personal brand than this, “I live my life and share my story.”

For business and marketing types (I have never taken a course in Business or Marketing), this is my mission statement: Live your life, share your story.

No one can expose me. No one can shame me. I am me.

In fact, the media went crazy when they talked about me on TV, wrote about me, and sent tens of thousands of people to tell me to kill myself….

And I laughed at them.

My site’s growth and the growth of my profile proves YOU can be who you want to be.

Be authentic, but not delusional.

If you keep it real, you’ll hit a ceiling.

I would never be allowed on TV. Some of my more controversial articles and Tweets (yes, thousands of people have formed into hate mobs based on my 140-character vignettes) would incite the masses to form online lynch mobs.

Advertisers would pull out and mid-level marketing and PR managers would cause internal corporate drama due to the feelings women have about me. Women are madly attracted to me while wanting to hate me.

Ultimately women control media and advertising, so be careful before you offend them.

Or not.

Live your life, share your story.

Yes, you can be true to yourself while having millions of readers.

In fact, that might be the only way.

This article will be sort of meta-marketing. I am going to market my books to you while also explaining how to market YOUR books.

I have a juicing ebook for sale. As I started my juicing website as a hobby, I outsourced the sales page rather than do it myself.

I don’t like the sales page. It feels spammy. You can read it here. You can also sign up to be an affiliate and earn a 50% commission for each book you sell.

I re-wrote the sales copy consistent with my own writing style and core values.

In short, I don’t market for or to dummies.

You can read my long-form sales letter below.

Juicing is not magic and will not cure all that ails you.

If you’re on this page for a quick fat loss or health fix, please click away. Life seldom has simple solutions and you will be sorely disappointed with a product that helps you become healthy for the long haul.

I don’t even believe in get-rich-quick OR get-healthy-quick schemes.

I got into juicing because I was physically fit but not healthy.

I ate a lot of protein and watched my carb intake. I tracked my macronutrients (protein, carbs, and fat). I lifted hard and performed cardio.

But I completely ignored phytonutrients and plant chemicals that have health-promoting, often drug-like effects.

A rare medical condition brought me to my knees, forcing me to re-examine my outlook on health.

I struggled with eczema as a child and occasionally as an adult, but my eczema was more of a nuisance than anything. I’d put on the creams my doctors gave me, the eczema would go away, and life would go on.

Then something bad happened.

I started getting full-body spreading eczema. My eyes would swell shut. I’d itch until my skin bled and would wake up with blood all over the pillowcases

Prednisone, a powerful hormone, didn’t help. Nothing helped. I was forced to examine all of my assumptions about health and fitness.

Plants and vegetables do have drug-like effects.

Vegetables, leafy greens, and fruit contain phytochemicals, which are chemical compounds that boost health and improve athletic performance.

Here are but a few scientifically-proven benefits of beet juice.

Lower blood pressure.

Beet juice “opens up your blood vessels,” to put it into layman’s terms.

• Inorganic nitrate and beetroot juice supplementation reduces blood pressure in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. (“Inorganic nitrate and beetroot juice supplementation was associated with a significant reduction in systolic BP.”)

Get stronger.

Beet juice can make athletes more explosive, by improving the performance of fast-twitch muscle fibers.

• Impact of dietary nitrate supplementation via beetroot juice on exercising muscle vascular control in rats. (“These data support the hypothesis that NO(3)(-) supplementation improves vascular control and elevates skeletal muscle O(2) delivery during exercise predominantly in fast-twitch type II muscles.”)

Have more endurance.

Cyclists have used beet juice for years, as a legal performance aid.

• A single dose of beetroot juice enhances cycling performance in simulated altitude. (“A single dose of BR lowered V˙O2 during submaximal exercise and enhanced TT performance of trained cyclists in normobaric hypoxia. Consequently, ingestion of BR may be a practical and effective ergogenic aid for endurance exercise at altitude.”)

Those are only a few of the benefits beets alone.

In Juice Power, I discuss dozens of other health-giving benefits of vegetables and fruit.

“Just eat your vegetables and fruit!”

Yes, that’s a great idea.

You can also make green smoothies, and I even share some smoothie recipes in Juice Power.

But are you eating 8-9 servings of vegetables each and every day?

Here is what 8 servings of vegetables and fruit look like. How long would that take you to eat?

I eat vegetables, drink green smoothies, and juice. Drinking green juice does not mean you shouldn’t eat vegetables and vice versa.

“Is there any science behind juicing?”

Yes, Juice Power contains dozens of citations to scientific studies on juicing.

After all, juicing is simply consuming plant nutrients and phytochemcials in liquid rather than solid form.

You could spend hundreds-of-hours on PubMed (a database compiling scientific studies) examining the health benefits of juice.

Here are but a few of many studies:

• A Review: Phytochemicals Targeting JAK/STAT Signaling and IDO Expression in Cancer. (“It is now evident that phytochemicals play key roles in inhibition of tumor proliferation and development and provide novel means for therapeutic targeting of cancer.”)
• High consumption of vegetable and fruit colour groups is inversely associated with the risk of colorectal cancer: a case-control study. (“The results of the present study, therefore, suggest that a greater intake of orange/yellow, red/purple and white vegetables and fruit is inversely associated with the risk of colorectal cancer.”)
• Squeezing Fact from Fiction about 100% Fruit Juice. (“The preponderance of evidence supports the position that 100% fruit juice delivers essential nutrients and phytonutrients, provides year-round access to a variety of fruits, and is a cost-effective way to help people meet fruit recommendations.”)

Those are but a few of countless studies on the drug-like benefits of plant foods, which you can get by juicing.

“Green juice is disgusting!”

My audience is made up of successful and intelligent people who will do what it takes to get healthy.

That said, green juices are delicious. My recipes were all created with taste in mind.

This vegetable juice has converted all green juice “taste skeptics” into juice lovers.

 

“Won’t fructose make me fat?”

Reality check: Whenever some makes a bold claim, like fruit will make you fat, ask them to see their evidence.

The myth about fructose arouse after studies of extremely obese people who were consuming high-fructose corn syrup had “fatty livers.” Homemade green juices do not contain high-fructose corn syrup or any syrup, so those studies have zero value.

There is no evidence that consuming fruit in its natural form (by eating it or juicing it yourself) will make you fat.

In fact, the evidence suggests that rather than make you fat, fructose makes you fit.

Where are the millions of fat people who drink green juice?

In fact, some scientists tried to determine if juicing made people fat. They couldn’t find all of these fat people!

• Consumption of 100% fruit juice and risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome: findings from the national health and nutrition examination survey 1999-2004. (“Compared with nonconsumers, those who consumed 100% fruit juice were leaner, were more insulin sensitive, and had lower odds of obesity and metabolic syndrome.”)

If you’re worried about fructose, you can make your juices essentially sugar free with the recipes in Juice Power.

“I’ve heard juicing will spike my blood sugar and give me diabetes. Is this true?”

Again, this issue has been studied. That is a myth. Drinking juice does not give anyone diabetes.

The science is clear. Juicing does not cause or contribute to diabetes:

• Soft drink, 100% fruit juice, and vegetable juice intakes and risk of diabetes mellitus. (“Soft drink but not pure juices consumption was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes in Japanese women.”)
• Substituting homemade fruit juice for sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with lower odds of metabolic syndrome among Hispanic adults. (“In conclusion, reducing the consumption of SSB and substituting them with homemade fruit juices in moderation may be a culturally appropriate approach to lower MetS among Hispanic adults.”)
• Relationship between 100% juice consumption and nutrient intake and weight of adolescents. (“In conclusion, when compared with non-juice consumers, adolescents consuming 100% juice did not show mean increased weight measures. Juice provided valuable nutrients, and consumption was associated with lower intakes of total fat, saturated fatty acids, discretionary fat, and added sugars and with higher intakes of whole fruit; however, consumption was not associated with decreased intake of milk, meat, or grains.”)

By the way, a woman I helped with a juice fast (which I do not recommend unless under a doctor’s care) was able to go off of her diabetes medication.

“Will juicing cure cancer/eczema diabetes/whatever else I’m suffering from?”

No. Juicing is not magical.

Juicing will boost your immune system by giving your body the nutrients it needs to repair and detox itself.

Juicing did not cure my eczema. It helped it immensely, and some people report having their skin conditions resolve.

But I don’t believe in making promises I can’t keep. Juicing may help your body rebuild itself, curing skin conditions and boost your immune system.

I can promise that juicing will improve your overall health.

“What will I learn in your Juice Power ebooks?”

For $14.99 you will receive three separate ebooks – Juice Power, Juicing for Men, and Juicing for Athletes. The books contain:

• Over 70 juice recipes.
• An explanation of the difference between juicing and blending.
• Healthy, non-juice recipes like how to make grape sorbet.
• A guide to buying the best juicer.
• A simple way to figure out how many calories your homemade juices contain.
• A clickable table of contents.

And much more.

Juicing will add value to your life.

Here are some of the benefits of juicing with a scientific reference for each claim!

Make you better looking. 

• Fruit over sunbed: carotenoid skin colouration is found more attractive than melanin colouration. (“Taken together, our findings provide further support for a carotenoid-linked health-signalling system that is highly important in mate choice.”)

Help you sprint faster.

• Dietary acid-base balance in adolescent sprint athletes: a follow-up study. (“Lowering the PRAL can be obtained by increasing the consumption of potatoes, fruits, vegetables and vegetable soup.”)

Boost your immune system.

• Exogenous stimuli maintain intraepithelial lymphocytes via aryl hydrocarbon receptor activation. (“AhR activity can be regulated by dietary components, such as those present in cruciferous vegetables, providing a mechanistic link between dietary compounds, the intestinal immune system, and the microbiota.”)

Aid digestion, and in some cases help improve ulcers.

• Rapid Healing of Peptic Ulcers in Patients Receiving Fresh Cabbage Juice. (“The rapid healing of peptic ulcers observed radiologically and gastroscopically in 13 patients treated with fresh cabbage juice indicates that the anti-peptic ulcer dietary factor may play an important role in the genesis of peptic ulcer in man.”)

Improve your performance in the gym.

• Impact of dietary nitrate supplementation via beetroot juice on exercising muscle vascular control in rats. (“These data support the hypothesis that NO(3)(-) supplementation improves vascular control and elevates skeletal muscle O(2) delivery during exercise predominantly in fast-twitch type II muscles.”)

Make you feel great.

• Mike Cernovich’s Book of Real Life. (“Some people even find green juice to be a substitute for drinking coffee.”)

You can take that step by placing an order here.

Click on the image below to learn everything you need to know about juicing but were afraid to ask.

 

After you buy my books, I won’t start sending you emails pitching you consulting services, affiliate offers, or other “upsells.”

We all know how this ends, right?

You buy my books. Rather than be happy to have another satisfied customer, I dig my hands deep into your pockets.

Then I upsell you on coaching, or affiliate offers for other ebooks.

As I said, I am not an Internet marketer.

Fit Juice started off as a hobby for me.

There is no sales pitch.

Buy my books, start juicing to improve your health, and never get spammed by me.

“I can’t afford/don’t want to buy your ebooks.?

Great, you can read Fit Juice for free.

Most of the content in Juice Power is already available on Fit Juice, in the form of articles and blog posts.

“Why would I buy a book if the content is already available for free?”

For the same reason I paid someone to create the books for me.

Time is money.

It will take you several hours to organize and make sense of everything on Fit Juice, since I built the site from scratch and wrote it like a blog rather than a book.

Personally, my time is worth more than that. I’m not the kind of person who spends hours trying to get something for free when I could be spending that time improving my life.

“What if I don’t like your books?”

There’s a 60-day money-back guarantee. No questions asked.

Send me an email if you don’t like the books and I’ll personally refund your money.

$14.99 gets you all the information in a nice, clean, easy to read package.

There are no upsells or pitches. For $14.99 you get what you paid for without the promotional nonsense we’v all come to dislike.

Click on the image below, make your payment, and the books are yours.

Even though we’ve never met or communicated, Dave Tate has been a major influence on my life. He currently owns and runs EliteFTS, a powerlifting equipment company. (I bought my Econo Prowler from there.) Because I admire Dave, I’m going to tell him something.

Your EliteFTS blog design sucks.

Whoa! Am I trolling Dave? No. I am using Dave’s terminology from an article he wrote years ago:

Getting from shit to suck is a snap, and most committed lifters can get up to Good within five years or so. It’s an okay place to be—you may be the best bencher in your big box gym and get tons of high fives—but in the grand scheme you’re nothing special.

Getting from good to great, however, puts you in very elite company. Few guys can ever do it, mainly because it requires getting through the dead zone, that period when absolutely nothing “works” and injuries (and frustration) start to mount.

Dave’s blogs are in the suck category. He can get from suck to good by making a few changes. (I do not offer consulting services, so this is not a pitch.)

How can Dave make his EliteFTS blogs good?

1. Take advantage of the “Wikipedia effect” by embedding links to old articles.

Have you ever been reading a specific article on Wikipedia when, three hours later, you’re on some unrelated Wikipedia page. “How did I get there?”

You went from a specific page to multiple other pages because every Wikipedia entry links to other entries. Click, click, click.

Every post at Danger & Play, my main site, links to other related articles. These links are natural and organic rather than forced.

This article you’re reading at Cernovich.com includes natural, organic links to Danger & Play. See how I put them in there? How many tabs will you have open by the time you’re done reading this article?

Many people have said, “I open an article on Danger & Play and suddenly have 10 different tabs open.” (Pro tip: Make sure you set your links to open in a new tab.)

@PlayDangerously Good shit man, you’ve earned it. I love reading your blog, got 3 tabs open now. If I find an excuse to link over I will.

— IllimitableMan (@IllimitableMan) September 1, 2014

@PlayDangerously Now you know what it’s like to read D&P from the outside. Tabs, tabs, tabs. — Late Bloomer (@LateBloomer80) July 9, 2014

2. Why does Skip Hill have a testosterone level of 200?

I like Skip Hill’s Facebook page and saw he posted a new article on EliteFTS. Skip mentioned how he gained muscle while having a testosterone level of 200.

What the heck, Skip?!

I tried finding out the backstory, but since Skip hadn’t linked to his other articles, I closed the page.

I still have no idea what happened to Skip.

This is bad, because I’m already a “fan” of Skip!

I enjoyed reading Skip’s old forum, I know what “Skiploading is,” I’ve and read all of Dante Trudel’s articles and posts.

But they can’t even convert me into a regular reader of Skip’s blog.

If someone like me who gives a shit can’t find the information and closes the tab, what will happen when a random person stumbles upon an EliteFTS blog post?

3. I want to read your emails.

How can I get an email update when you publish a new article? Not EliteFTS the company, but individual authors.

People hate email marketing, but if you do it right, it’s great. The old school way is to use paid traffic to get guys to your squeeze page before running them through your sales funnel.

You email them non-stop trying to sell them.

That’s not how I use my email list. In fact, I think the only time I’ve sold my list something was to let them know about the Juice Power series of books.

My email list is at 6,500 while having a 44% open rate and 13% click through rate.

I only started building my list last year after my good friend Victor Pride recommended I do so. I average 25 new subs a day. Imagine how massive my list will be in 5 years.

These are 100% organic opt-ins, too.

You can read all of my old newsletters here.

There’s nothing magical about what I do.

If you write quality content, people will want to read it and they’ll be happy to open your emails.

Guys have even written in to tell me they are excited to see a new email from me.

You can increase your newsletter subscriptions by giving people a way to subscribe right in the middle of the post.

Let’s get meta. Enter your email below and hit subscribe to join to my mailing list.

4. Turn your Facebook updates into a post.

Facebook is a great place to have a conversation, but once the discussion is over, it’s over. You need to start scaling your social media.

I turn my Tweets into blog posts. One of my best posts came about after a Facebook discussion.

Don’t be afraid to post something like “10 Random Thoughts About X.” Is that high art? No, but if you’re starting off and learning how to write, your material is going to suck anyway.

Danger & Play sucked three years ago. It started off as chicken scratch and is now approaching great novel status.

If I had been afraid of sucking for all the world to see, Danger & Play would not exist as it does today.

Dave, thanks for what you’ve done.

This article might piss you off, and I don’t really care if it does. I don’t adjust my message for a person’s feelings.

I believe, as you do, that we should, “live, learn, and pass on.”

I’ve learned from you, and in my own life have learned a few things.

Now I’m passing it on to you.

Read next: How to Write a Long Form Sales Letter that Isn’t Spammy and Actually Works.

If you define marketing as getting your message out, which is how I view marketing, then you can learn a lot from DJs.

A smart DJ is posting his sets on SoundCloud, is on Twitter or other social media engaging with people who link to him, is making loose online networks, and is otherwise promoting himself in a mostly unobtrusive way.

DJs also have multiple platforms to promote themselves. They are on YouTube, Twitter, SoundCloud, and Facebook getting their message out.

Often they play on XM Radio, a new listener likes their work, Googles them, and finds one of those pages.

DJs are masters are converting random listeners to dedicated super fans.

I first hear of Rony Seikaly on XM Radio. I had no idea who he was. When I searched him name to found more, I found his SoundCloud page.

If Seikaly had no web presence, I’d have forgotten about him. It’s a busy world and you hear a cool song and move on. There has to be an easy way for people to find you.

Be found or be forgotten.

One reason the Mike Cernovich Podcast took off was because I copied DJs. I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t have a marketing team or consultant. I just realized that my favorite DJs were all on SoundCloud, so I put my podcast on SoundCloud.

Now it’s on iTunes (over 313 ratings in the U.S. alone). Anyone who finds the podcast on iTunes can search my name and find my other websites.

One year and over 500,000 downloads later, here we are.

When your content is good, self-promotion doesn’t annoy people.

Those we call “shameless self-promoters” simply tend to not have much of a message worth promoting.

Their message is I, me, me. LOOK AT ME!

It’s tiresome hearing a grown man or woman begging for attention.

If your message is good, people will spread and share if. If you’re the only person hyping your work, go back to the drawing board.

A DJ is an artist and a performer.

If no one enjoys a DJs art, then the DJ will falter. It’s not enough to create good art. You have to understand and empathize with your audience.

Here are some of my favorite DJs along with some of their best sets.

I’m also going to note how I heard about them, so that we can all learn their marketing tactics.

Rony Seikaly.

I was cruising along Pacific Coast Highway when Sugar Free Radio started playing on XM Radio. I Googled him, found his SoundCloud page, and have been a big fan since. I have linked to him and a lot of my Danger and Play guys are new fans.

Marketing is a long tail. A bunch of people find a person, promote that person, and suddenly that person is huge.

I’ve seen Seikaly play in Los Angeles, and that guy is living the life.

This is probably my favorite episode of Sugar Free Radio.

• Find Rony Seikaly on SoundCloud and Twitter.

DJ Alex H (Alex Humberstone).

I heard about him from my friend Nic Gabriel, a BJJ black belt and house music fan. (Nic and I did a joint podcast at Danger & Play.)

His Sunset Melodies is something that you have to listen to for yourself. It’s divine, especially with good head phones. (I prefer the Sennheiser HD280.)

• Find DJ Alex H on SoundCloud and Twitter.

Owen Royal.

I found him on YouTube while looking for deep house music sets. Own does a lot of interesting work and each set has a different feel to it. Check out his SoundCloud page and find your favorite.

This is the last set I heard:

https://soundcloud.com/owenroyal/deep-house-mix-march-2015

• Find DJ Owen Royal on SoundCloud and Twitter.

DJ Main Event.

I met DJ Main Event through my main website, Danger & Play. I tried Googling DJ Main Event, and couldn’t find his page.

“Main Event” is a generic marketing term. It gets thrown around too much to be distinct or noticeable. My advice would be for him to rebrand.

Main Event’s music is feel, good, happy party music. This is a fun set to listen to before going out.

https://soundcloud.com/djmainevent/superconf

• Find DJ Main Event on SoundCloud and Twitter.

Did I slyly promote myself?

You bet.

DJs are smart and are Googling themselves to see what people are saying about them online.

I will also @ Tweet their usernames in Twitter, to ensure they see this post.

Maybe they’ll retweet this article, since it’s saying nice things about them.

Maybe I’ll convert Rony Seikaly, Alex H, or Owen Royal to podcast subscribers.

Or maybe not.

Either way, you now have a bunch of great music to listen to.

See what I just did there?

I put YOU first. You have great music to listen to, so now my marketing doesn’t annoy you.

Everyone wins when you deliver value up front by putting the reader and listener first.