Perry Marshall: How To Detox, Declutter and Dominate

Welcome back to Bacon Wrap Business. Got another exciting episizzle for you. Other podcasts, as you know, have episodes, but here we have Epicizzles because they're hot and they are actionable and you're absolutely going to love them. And I am super thrilled to have a guest today that I have been a fan of, a customer of, and aware of ever since I got involved in digital marketing back in, gosh, I think it was 2007 or 2008 when I came across his book, the Perry Marshall's ultimate guide to AdWords. I think that's the right title. And ever since then, I've followed Perry Marshall very closely. And I love the way that he approaches business both tactically and strategically and mentally. And he's one of the unique thought leaders out there who I think people have a lot to learn from. And I could sit here and talk about what I like about you for hours, Perry, but I'd rather just introduce you to the audience. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm honored to be here. And people are going to get a lot out of this. This is a very meaty discussion we're about to have.

Absolutely. Well, my, my only, the only thing I'm sad about is that we're not going to be on for, like, this isn't going to be a Joe Rogan three hour, you know, talk fest, because I could definitely talk to you for that long about all the various topics. You know, I. People who've been in the business for a while probably do know you as, you know, the AdWords guy. For the longest time, you probably, you know, that's like a brand couldn't shake. And not necessarily that you'd want to, but I know that. And I was never a big AdWords guy. I've had businesses where we did AdWords, and I've consulted clients who've done it. And I always just hire somebody to go do it because I've never personally gone deep into that area. But it wasn't really until I started reading some of your other material, 8020 sales and marketing. That book was really a game changer for I know a lot of people. It was one of the most highlighted books I've ever had, and I refer back to it quite often. And then a few years later, I discovered the Rosetta Stone seminar that you did, and that was just phenomenal, by the way. I told several people that was one of the best sales letters I'd ever read. I loved it. There was several parts in it that just really hit me in between the eyes. And I was a big fan of that. And then I took your 30 day reboot challenge, which is going to be very similar to one of the big topics we're talking about today, which, because you've got a brand new book, Detox, Declutter and Dominate. Is there a subtitle to that?

How to excel by Elimination.

That's right. And I'm really looking forward to reading that. And I think that that topic, by the way, right now is so absolutely critical for people to hear. I know myself. I mean, most of us have been, for the most part, locked up for the past nine or 10 months, and there's nothing to do but distract ourselves with a myriad of world events and technology, etc. So let's talk about. Let's go straight into the book because I want to. I want to hear about what inspired you to write this and what are some of the. What are some of the big problems you see that this book helps solve.

We have an epidemic of distractions and diverted energy in the world. You know, I think every human being, and frankly, you know, every creature on earth, you know, has this energy to spend, right? Like, nobody wants. Nobody wants to lay in bed all day, right? It's like, what are you gonna do, right? And if you're an entrepreneur, then obviously there's plenty of really challenging things that you gotta sink your teeth into. But there's an entire attention economy that thrives on grabbing you by the throat and dragging you away from whatever you're doing into something else. And, you know, that helps Google and that helps Facebook and that helps the advertisers. And nobody understands this better than a guy that wrote the book on how these advertiser platforms work, right? But when you're an entrepreneur, you have to stay focused. And like in our Facebook book, we just came out with a brand new edition of Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads. And the first chapter of the book says the first thing you need to do is delete your Facebook app off your phone. Like the consumer app. Why? Because you're a chef in the kitchen. You're not a guy shoving food in his mouth at the Red Lobster buffet, okay? And you're creating the information, you're not consuming it. And you have to protect your brain. And literally, I mean, this is kind of ironic, right? First chapter of a Facebook book is delete the Facebook app. But that's exactly it. So when you roll out of bed in the morning, you've got probably somewhere between two and a half to four hours to do your Very best quality.

Work, sometimes even good work, because the rest of it, usually after that, is just kind of crap for me.

Right.

I want to interject right there because you just hit something, a nail on the head. And this was a really flashing light realization that I had a few years back. I want to say it was two or three, maybe, maybe three years ago where I was talking to a guy about buying his business and I was like, I think I can do this. And I started to look at it like it was, it's a small web based business and I knew what to do to get it to go. And I remember thinking, well, oh, four hour workweek. I guarantee if I worked four hours a week on that, I mean, I've got another business or two over here. But I was like, can I spare four hours a week to get that to go? I could totally do it. And I was like, I have the time. I have four hours a week and that's probably all it would take. So I bought the business and I got into it and then I realized that I was using my spare four hours a week to work on it. And I was like, these are crappy hours for me. Like, I can spend four hours a week, but I don't have four hours of quality bandwidth to actually devote to it. And I sat there thinking, oh, crap, what did I do? So then I partnered up with Joe Fear and Matt Wolfe and they came in and we were all partners. And then we all had the same realization going, um, oh, crap. Yeah, we got time, but we don't have energy. I mean, there's a. And there's a big difference. I think a lot of people forget that. For me, it hit me between the eyes and I have to go, yeah, I've probably got about three or four hours a day, realistically, to do anything creative and good. So.

That's right. That's right. So days of the week are not equal. Times of the day are not equal. The minutes of your day and how you spend them are not equal. And you need to design your day to maximize the productive capacity that you have in your mind. Because if you're the kind of customer that I hope you are, whoever's listening, you think for a living. You don't click mouse buttons for a living. You don't type on keyboards for a living. You don't like punch a clock for a living. You think you apply your ingenuity to solve unique problems and that's why you get paid. And you're only going to do your best work in Those windows. And so this is all about optimizing that window.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, that also brings up one of the things I'd love for you to kind of address this. So in the book 80 20, you really talked about that a lot too. Like, what are those 20% of activities that you can do the real, like the strategic thinking, like, forget most of the other stuff and just think about that. So the 8020 rule is true, but then there's also that saying which also is true, is the devil's in the details. So I found myself oftentimes running up against a. Or hitting blocks, trying to operate in my 20%, my zone of genius, et cetera. And then realizing that other stuff's fallen apart. And one little thing causes a chain reaction of other things to kind of fall apart. And then I find myself back down in the weeds and just trying to figure this stuff out again and feeling frustrated. So I would love to hear any insights you have on that between trying to balance the. Those two, I guess axioms of.

There are always like 1% of what you do has to be 100% right. Like 80% right won't do it right. Like you have some famous song by Lady Gaga or the Rolling Stones. That song had to be 100% right because 98% right just wouldn't do. And I think the most important thing you do is you figure out what is the very, very short list of things in my life that I obsess over to perfection. And then what is the 90% of everything else that only needs to be three fourths right or half right, or even 25% right? Yeah, there's. There's a lot of things, like for me, deciding what car to drive if I'm 25% right about which car that I pick, as long as it's not breaking down transportation, it's going to get good.

And that actually makes me think of another similarly titled book or booklet that Dan Sullivan did. I think it was called the 80% rule. And it wasn't even about 80, 20. I don't know if you already read that or not, but he was like, a lot of times 80% is definitely good enough for that stuff. The other 20%, you can come back to it, you can fix it. But as an entrepreneur, get it 80% done, move on to the other big stuff. So I guess that probably is the answer is just really getting clear on what needs to be just right. And then what is good enough.

Yes. And see, for almost everybody, there's only about three things you sell that need to be perfect because you make 80 or 90% of your income from those three things, right? You can go churn out more products and do all these other things, right? But like I remember when Frank Kern read 80:20 sales and marketing, he was like, I'll be darned. I got this one product that's like I made 95% of my money on it. Why am I off doing all these other things?

I stopped selling it.

Sell this thing and do it even better next time. And see, that is what you spend your so 8 to 11, let's say probably your most productive hours. What are you going to spend your 8 to 11 time on? Now, I don't do emails before 11:30. I mean I might pull one email out of my email box because it's really important and work on it, but I am not, not, not.

You go search for it because you know you need that for something. But you're not just saying, oh, what do these people need from me?

Yeah, there's an editor I'm working with today and I spent most of the morning editing something that I'm working on that's very, very important. It's. And it's one of those things that has to be 100% right because 99% won't do okay. And so that's what I was doing before 11 o' clock this morning. And I think what most people do, I know this, most people, they don't just do this in the morning. They do it like literally when they roll out of bed, they like wake up, they reach over, they pull a device and in front of their face and they start reading emails or you know, or going through social media. And you have now made the biggest mistake of your day because you started your day by reacting to stuff instead of starting the day by proactively deciding this is what I need to do, this is why it's important, this is the stuff that is not nearly so important. Here it is and then go.

And it's very rare to start off the day with an email full of nothing but good news and people who want to give you things.

You start off with crisis and panic and oh no, clients canceling or you.

Know, like all these shoots, all your plans, the crap. You know, one of the, I've caught myself many times like because I, I'm at least very good at being self aware and I've noticed that when I get really deep into like email and stuff first thing in the morning because I'll e Flow through this and I'll catch myself doing it. I was like, you know what? I'm really looking for something to react to because I may not have really good clarity on what to do proactively. And kind of like we're all kind of sometimes sitting there going, man, this is kind of a well formed idea, but it's not really well enough and I'm not ready to go full force on it. If I go look in my email or Facebook, it gives me something to react to.

Right.

And that, that actually feels okay. Good. I feel like I'm being productive because I'm reacting to something and I look back on, I didn't get anything done except helping other people with their problems.

That's the best, that's the best way to be. It's 6:15 at night, you're exhausted and you're like, what I even do today?

Oh yeah.

You have that empty, frustrating, vacuous, like, I don't even know where the day went. I don't know what I did. I suppose I could go find out, but I would just waste more time. Yeah, right.

Yeah, exactly.

And that is the worst feeling. And so the reason you're checking your email box is because you don't know what to do next. The reason you're checking Twitter, the reason you're on Instagram, is you don't know what to do next. When you have a plan, then it's a lot easier to stick to the plan. And you said it's like, well, you know, I get this project but I'm not quite ready to commit to it. Like, well, you know, maybe you shouldn't do anything until you decide what you're going to commit to. And that's exactly the point.

I love that. And that's so the entire book, it really is about, I mean, because it's about removing the things from your life, the obstacles and the hurdles that are slowing you down. Right. And it's a lot of times as entrepreneurs, there is a lot of stuff that we have to do. We're responsible for a lot of moving parts. Even if we're not the ones doing it. It kind of, if it's our business, it falls on our shoulder. And that can get really overwhelming. And I know that my single biggest stress in life, it's not, oh, do I have enough money for the bills? Do I have. It's, I got too many things vying for my attention. And I know it's always my fault because I've let that happen. And when I have gone through stages Actually, this year was a good phase. During COVID I lost 75% of my business. It ended up bouncing back and I was okay because it was like client based business. But when it was gone, I had this amazing feeling of relief, like I wasn't the one who forced it all. I was like, wow, I actually have time to think today and I have time to kind of reassess. Luckily, I'm not living in a survival mode where I'm paycheck to paycheck, so. But I just remember thinking, wow, it felt like I just blew the snorkel out. Like, it was like, I'm snorkeling and water's getting in there and I'm choking. And it was emptied. I was like, okay, what do I really want to work on now? And how can I be intentional about it? So is that a big theme of the, of the book is being intentional and removing a lot of the obstacles?

So I'll tell you a story. A few years ago, it was a cold, snowy February day. I was on the phone and I looked through the French doors of my office, and the president of my company, who lives 500 miles away, was on the other side. Unannounced, shows up in my house. I'm like, what is Brian doing here? This doesn't seem like it's good. Okay. So I get up, get done with my phone call. Brian, what's up, Barry? We need to talk. Okay. Looks kind of undertaker ish. Our expenses are too high, our overhead is too high, we have too many people on board. We got to cut some stuff. And we spent the next eight hours arm wrestling, like from the middle of the afternoon until fairly late at night. Ok? We bounced around between a couple of different restaurants and my house and a bar. We're talking, talking, talking. And by the end of the day, I had basically arm wrestled him into. No, we don't need to cut, Brian. You don't understand how awesome I am. You don't understand how great these ideas are, you know, like, and so, like, okay, so I made a couple concessions, but not too many. And the next three months sucked. And now we had a real problem.

This was right before COVID started.

No, this is like four years ago.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha.

Okay. But we were having a slow year for reasons I still couldn't tell you why, whatever happens. But everything was off. And so Brian shows up in February and I don't listen to him. Now it's. Maybe now we have a real problem. Okay? So I finally agreed with him in May, right Well, so if you waited three months too long to make some cuts, then guess what? When you lay those people off, do you stop paying them immediately? No, they have severance packages and, you.

Know, get the production. But you got the payment to make. Yeah, right.

So I know, I got, I. We cut our staff about 40%. So I don't have these people anymore, but I still have to pay for the people. So this was a pretty miserable six months. Okay, well, so by the time I finally got in, like, really got myself committed to straightening this thing out, I was thinking about subtracting all the time. Now, if it's true that 80% of what you do comes from what you get comes from 20% of what you do, then you should be able to cut what you do by a lot and only cut the productivity a little. Right? Like, I should be able to make 75% as much money with like half the staff and effort. So how do we. And that's a true. It's all, it's like a law of physics that it's true, but you have to figure out how to make it true. And so I start. So we start subtracting, subtracting, subtracting, subtracting, cutting, trimming, laying people off, getting rid of vendors, getting rid of customers, getting rid of product lines. Okay. Like, and it is so much harder to subtract and add and multiply. Oh, yeah, okay. But I'm doing this. And we finally righted the ship and it was like, man, this thing is so easier to run now that I got rid of all this unnecessary stuff. And you know, look, just because you're a best selling author or whatever other accolades you have, or just because you're one of the most expensive business consultants, look, if you have too much staff and you have too much overhead, you're going to be in the red. It doesn't matter. Right? And like, I had to let go of all these things. Like, well, oh, you know, but I really was hoping that someday we would do. Yeah, but you're not going to do it now and you're not going to do it anytime soon, so nix it. And so at the end of this process, after I felt the wave of relief, like, I remember when the ship righted itself and I took my family on vacation and everything was fine. It was like, wow, I just learned something. Like, really, this was a big deal. Like, multiply by subtracting, Excel by eliminating. And I suddenly understood it's not what you add, it's what you subtract. It's not what you do, it's actually what you don't do that defines you. And so that's why I wrote Detox, declutter, dominate.

I love that. It's one of those like. Like they say we write the book we need to read. Because you obviously were in that situation where you just had too much, you know, falling. And you're not just a business. I mean, you've got the big cancer, you know, prize and initiative, and that's a topic for a whole nother story. But I can imagine just how crazy things got and that you needed to detox and declutter.

I felt like a hypocrite. Like, physician, heal thyself. Right? Like, you shouldn't be having these problems. But I am. Right. So what is it that I didn't learn yet that I need to know? So the response to this, because we've done some different versions of this, we did a program called 30 Day Reboot, which you went through. Loved it. And 30 Day Reboot was 30 days of subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract. Just over and over. And by the time people got to the end of that thing, they were like, oh, my word, I can't believe how lighter my load is. I can't believe how. Actually, I shouldn't talk. Why don't you talk? How did it affect you?

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mentioned offline, like, one of my favorite. The favorite rule. There was a lot of little rules of do this, do that. But I'll tell you my two favorite rules. One was mine, and then one was like, you smart mofo. But one was the social media diet of saying, it's not just. I mean, not stop social media for 30 days, it's stop consuming social media, period. Except for about 30 minutes after, like, 6:00pm so you're giving yourself a little taste. And I just remember saying, okay, I can do that. Like, if I need to make ads, I can do that. If I need to actually post content, I can post content. But I'm not just mindlessly scrolling and consuming. And I just remember I was like, you know, six o', clock, those first few days, six o' clock would come and I'm like, sweet. I get to go see what my friends are doing and I get to check on this stuff, and I get my little dopamine hit. And then after three or four days, I was like, looking forward to those few moments of getting online and looking at Facebook or Instagram. And then I kept on realizing I didn't miss anything. All Day. Like, literally nothing happened all day that I missed. I'm like, I feel so much better about this. By the way. The other thing that I thought was brilliant, it was very useful to do. I loved it. But I was like, it was also a brilliant move for you is one of the first things is your mass unsubscribe day. Like, go unsubscribe from all the newsletters that you don't really get any value from, or et cetera. Obviously, don't unsubscribe from yours. I was like, this is brilliant. He's making us unsubscribe from all his competitors. I know that's not why you did it, but it was still genius, as you know.

Look, when you massively, remorselessly unsubscribe from everything. Mm. It's like taking ten pounds out of your backpack, man. People don't realize how much stuff. Just having the stuff in the email box, it's like. It's just more distractions. It's more noise. You're not gonna read it, so why is it there?

Yeah. And then the other parts you really talk about, which I'm sure you probably talk about in the book, which I'm looking forward to reading still, is talk about that concept of Renaissance time and barnacle time and just really understanding what your Renaissance time is. And it's not necessary. It's doing things you love, and it's doing things fulfill you and that kind of like that creative spark. And, you know, sometimes it's just self care, just making sure that you're. When you are on, you're on. So I remember having, like, a list on my board printed out where it was like, these are the things you are allowed to do during Renaissance times. These are not the things, you know. And I tried to. I really actually found that I have a. I have a lack of. I don't have many hobbies. It made me really going, what shit? What would I do in Renaissance time? Like, I don't know. It actually was very eye opening, but I loved it. Like, after 30 days, I will say, like, you know, we met. I mentioned offline that the hard part about challenges for me, and I've done this in fitness challenges and things like that is at the end of it, if I'm not prepared to keep it going. Sometimes I feel like I ran through the finish line and it's like, all right, give me a beer, a pizza. So getting back to it. But I know the one thing that I've gone back to many, many times is, yeah, like, Avoiding emails and reactivity right away. I love. I love the. Read like a pre Gutenberg book, you know, read the classics, etc. That was a really big takeaway for me because I discovered some really amazing things that I probably wouldn't have, you know, discovered had I not done that. One of the things I. What's that?

Well, that is the social media and anti. Antidote. So the. Look, the problem with social media is you're blitzkriegged with things that expire in about five minutes. Look, everybody, I had sushi for lunch today. Or like, you know, whatever, you know, whatever Trump just said or like all of these things. Whereas if you read something written before Gutenberg every day, what are you really reading? You are reading stuff that survived the burning of Rome and the sacking of Alexandria and had to be good to make it right. And it got hit in clay pots and caves and, you know, survived the tumults of civilization. So. And it got. It all got copied by hand. There was no Twitter. Right. So if it survived all of that, then if it was good 3,000 years ago, it was good 1,000 years ago, it's good now, It'll probably be good a thousand years from now, which is the opposite of 98% of what's on Twitter. And see, this is very important. Here's why in business you are trying to build things that last. I don't know anybody that just wants to build little sandcastles and the tide comes in and washes them away, right? You don't do that unless it's the only way to not starve to death right now. Right. That's the lowest form of existence. Right.

It's also my biggest regret on things looking back is that, man, I spent a lot of time building sandcastles as opposed to anything substantial. And I'll look back on. And I did a lot. I remember doing a lot of work like five, ten years ago at et cetera. And besides the experience, I don't always, I mean, and some cash in the bank, but I don't necessarily have anything lasting from then. Granted, I sold a couple businesses, but I look back thinking, yeah, I don't have anything lasting and substantial to show for it. And it's funny that you say that because that was like one of those little subconscious regrets, but you kind of brought it up going, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Well, if you are reading things that last 3,000 years, you're a lot more likely to build things that last like 30 years instead of three months, which.

Is forever in These.

And I am completely serious about this. Show me a person who's just constantly on social media, and I will show you a person who's doing things that come undone on an hourly basis.

Right, Absolutely. You know, you mentioned something about Trump and social media, et cetera. One of the best things to come out of this. You know, we're just. I mean, you can't even say we're out of the election cycle. We kind of still mired in it. But, you know, with all the hate and vitriol, I just went on a mass unfollow. Not even unfriend, just mass unfollow thing. It's like you, you got. If I saw more than two or more than one election post that was not intelligent. Unfollow, I don't care if you're a close friend. And I unfollowed probably about 150 friends over the course of two days. And then I look back at my Facebook feed and I go, this is really boring. Sweet. This is exactly, like, I like it boring. Because I'm less likely to go to it now because I'm not going to get triggered by something, et cetera. So, yeah, like, unfollow all your friends if you can.

Well, you can't imagine what happens when you take all of that energy away because people have this notion that they're supposed to keep up with all this stuff, that some. They're uninformed. Like, you're not uninformed. You're just not pouring garbage in your head. There isn't any reason to know most of this stuff. And I don't seek it out. And you know what I found? I found if I need to know it, somebody will always call me and tell me about it.

If it's that big, you'll. You'll hear about it. Yeah. You'll walk by a newspaper stand and it'll be.

I don't believe I have ever been completely blindsided by any piece of news that I just really should have known. I'm not sure it's ever happened. And like, I am. I do not watch cnn. I do not watch the news. I'm hardly ever on Facebook. I'm hardly. It's just people arguing with each other. And so when you focus that energy, especially that quality three hours a day, not only are you not feeding out of the trough. Okay. But you're not just reacting people. And that quality, three hours a day is doing something productive. You'd be amazed at what happens now. Here we are in the middle of A pandemic. And what I've seen is the pandemic has completely separated the men from the boys.

Oh, yeah.

So I have seen so many people. They're drinking more, they're watching more tv, they're not exercising, they're not seeing their friends, they're depressed, et cetera, et cetera, yada, yada, yada, yada. Okay? And you know what else I've seen? I've seen tons of people. They're out on their bike, they're out running, they're exercising, they're keeping up with a few of their friends. They are working on their businesses. They. When, like the very best clients I have, when the pandemic hit, they immediately did layoffs, and then they hired the people back when they figured out they could. I had a client, he had a. He had a whole bunch of salespeople working all over the place, and he had this whole mess of. Some are on this contract and some are on that contract. It was this big, giant, inconsistent mess. And he's like, all right, everybody, boom. We are straightening all this stuff out, and everybody's on the same plan from now on. And, like. And it was the perfect excuse to just execute a bunch of stuff that he was afraid to do. He got rid of. He laid off his own sister. Maybe he hired her back. I don't know. I know he hired a bunch of people back.

Well, like they say, never let a crisis go to waste, Right? And have you read the book Shock Doctrine by any chance? Or heard of it? So Shock Doctrine was made by. Or was written. I can't remember her name really. You probably love the book, but it really talks about. She talks a lot about Milton Friedman and his impact on 20th century capitalism with really a shock doctrine understanding that if you ever really want to make massive changes in culture, civilization, et cetera, it oftentimes requires a shock. Sometimes that's just responding to shock, sometimes that's actually creating them and instigating the shocks, whether it's a third World coup or whether it's something like this. And I mean, I think some of us remember, like, I think it was Rahm Emanuel who quoted after. Like, I forget what it was. But, you know, never let a crisis go to waste. And, you know, 9, 11, whenever bad things happen, that's when you can do. You can reset things either for the good, for the better, and sometimes for the worse. It depends on which side you're on. But it is one of those things where I looked at it like, all right, this is a shock to the system you have now. Now, it's not a question of should I recalibrate what I'm doing? It's I got to do it anyway, as may I. May as well do it. Intention. So it sounds like that's yeah.