Helping the Bootstrap Start-Up: I Love Marketing LIVE Featuring Russ Hanush, Joe Polish, and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #455

I think one of the most important things is that you got to apply stuff so you can sit here and learn everything you want. You can take all the notes. If you don't apply anything, then you're always wondering, well, what would happen if I did this? So applying this stuff is, I would say, one of the most important things.

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Russ the professor the Professor Hanish Inspired by witnessing a mother struggling to help her child with homework, Russ has dedicated his life to improving education. After a successful research career and inventing the periodic table of dimensions, he started Physics for Fun Tutoring, which has since evolved into Acclaim Tutoring. His company has helped hundreds of students excel in various fields, from science and engineering to professional sports and entertainment. Acclaim Tutoring offers one on one tutoring, college and career counseling, and standardized test preparation with a focus on helping students become happier, more confident and more successful. Russ is the author of Harnessing your seven Senses, which explores his unique approach to learning. Part of that unique learning includes, and this is what's pretty wild, Russ. Having listened to every single I love marketing episode, I want to make confirm that's absolutely true. And the first 150 episodes twice. Russ is joining us today to share what he's learned listening to over 400150 I love marketing episodes and how to create an elf business, which is easy, lucrative and fun. So please welcome the professor, Russ Hanish.

All right, well, well, I'll just start with the episode. So I, I, I listened to the first 450 episodes one at a time. Obviously just taking BJ Fogg's advice of baby steps, tiny habits. So all I did was every morning I'd wake up, I'm making breakfast, I'd play one episode. Nice. It took almost three years to make it all the way through, including the first 150 twice. Wow. And I'm a huge fan of Origin Story. So for my favorites, I have to go all the way back to the very beginning. Those first 150 episodes are just incredible. They're so good, Joe. You guys should probably put them together in a book and do something crazy like launch them into space.

You did that, didn't you?

What was your first introduction to I love? What made you start down the path in the first place? How did you find it?

Well, I'm gonna have to go way back here to 2018. In 2018, I was 55 years old had my business established, and I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Oh, no.

And it took two surgeries and almost a year of medical issues before I got that cleared up. And it wiped me out financially. If I had had any debt, I would have had to go bankrupt. So after all that happened, I had to make up time, and so I needed to learn about marketing really fast. So what I did was I went to. I got in touch with Magnetic Marketing, Dan Kennedy's group, and made a couple contacts there. And part of Shaw of Elaunchers referred me over to the Genius Network, and I talked with Kevin in your office, and he. He referred me to the podcast. And so I started listening to random versions, episodes of the podcast, and you guys were around 300 at that time, and I decided, you know, I've got to hear this thing all the way from the beginning. And so I went back and I just started listening to them, taking notes, applying this stuff. Timothy Paulson got ahold of me and told me about ELF coaching, and it was just such a perfect match that I had to go for that.

Wow.

Wow.

So some of my favorite episodes, though, I got to say, my number one episode is number 29, the Magic Rapport.

Building.

You know, it's just so important to building your networks, and networks are just what it's all about.

If that's the very beginning of. I mean, you could argue that's the foundational stuff of. Of what's in it for them. I mean, that's really the. The beginning of formulating what.

Because I've observed.

I mean, I've known Joe for, you know, 25, seven years now, something like that. So I've seen it all unfold, and I've seen this in action. But that was the first time that he'd really kind of gone through, you know, the process of sort of codifying exactly what he. What he did. And now to see it come into what's in it for them. Fantastic.

On that note, Russ, I just decided to put up a QR code just in case anyone is now compelled to get a copy of my book. What's in it for them? Or if you've already bought 17 copies, now is an opportunity to buy your 18th copy.

But.

No, well, you know what? That's. I'm happy you said that, because it. It also goes back to when me and Dean first were discussing starting. I love marketing. We said, how could we have conversations that people could listen in on a hundred years from now, even though technology will change and things will happen if they're just listening back to like the origins of where some of this marketing started from. And of course many people here know that Dean invented the squeeze page back in 1997 to enter your name and email to go to the next page, which has influenced, you know, hundreds of millions of opt in pages now today. And there's a lot of stuff that we've learned but you know, technology changes, delivery systems changes ways that people, you know, now there's machine learning and AI and everything that is we're right in the middle of right now. However, the psychology of marketing, I believe will always stay the same. It's just different ways that you connect with people. So in the magic rapport formula, there's a lot of much better, smarter marketers than me that are very, they're transaction minded versus transformational minded. And my whole thing is always give more than you than you ask. And then you not only will build rapport with people that way, but you'll, I think you'll have a lot more personal friends, not just maybe a better business. So what if you could share what did, what did you get from that that you were able to utilize in a particular way?

What I got from what's it for them is.

It was like a manual for how to apply the magic report building formula. And then what I really liked was you took a lot of, you put a lot of time and effort into helping people understand how to protect themselves from people who would take advantage of them as well.

Yeah.

Now I, I went out after I read the book, I went out and instantly that night I made a new friend, sat down at a bar right next to somebody, turned out they were another math tutor. They had just moved into town, made this great connection with them. A lot of people, they meet new competition in town, they may have tried to beat that person down and discourage them. And instead I came up with a way that we could collaborate together because of the influence of what's in it for them. They invited me down to a jazz concert later that evening and I went down there, ended up talking with the vocalist from the jazz trio and she invited me to sit in on a jazz session with them playing bass, even though I'm a blues bass player. So it was just incredible. And that was just one night right after reading the book. Wow.

Wow, that, that's awesome. You know, and it let me mention this too. I mean I, I kind of speak to this a little bit and of course listening to all the episodes of I love marketing you, you probably have a sense of how Both Dean and I think about a lot of things. And so much of being in, in addiction recovery for over 20 years now, and now spending half my time in the areas of recovery. So much of what I learned in that world, going to countless 12 step meetings, is being an addict requires you to be very consumed with your own compulsive desires and marketing and addiction and personal development. And all of these things are kind of this blend of humans that just want things and they find different ways to try to acquire them and get them. Some through force, some through manipulation, some through generosity and collaboration and.

Gratitude. Right. So there's many ways to get what we want in life. And when you walk into a 12 step room as an addict, and those of you that have ever done this probably know what I'm talking about, and those of you that have not, I'm sure you can interpret what I'm saying here is you're going into a place where oftentimes you feel hopeless and you're surrounded by complete strangers. And for some reason that environment creates a sense of less judgment or no judgment from some people. And I use the word judgment in a, in a contextual way because I think everybody judges all day long. It's just, you judge. You know, we wouldn't drive cars red light, green light if we weren't able to judge. It's just how that is is applied. And, and you have people that oftentimes believe in you more than you believe in yourself and can give you that sort of encouragement. And I think that really helped forge my understanding and learning of persuasion in what I would like to think is the most ethical value, creating ways, because I know what it feels like when your life is completely out of control and you are desperately hoping that someone will just not only be present, listen, be helpful, offer an encouragement. And I learned along the way that, you know, isn't that just a really good way to conduct yourself in business too? I mean, isn't that a great way to build rapport? Like not coming at it for let me figure out how to take, take, take, but to give, give, give. And now the flip side of that. You'll, you're going to meet takers, and takers have a very good sense of identifying who are givers. And you almost have to develop your spidey senses along the way as you develop your connection abilities and your marketing abilities, because you're going to come across clients that are unreasonable prospects that are just using you for information, people that have no ability to have empathy, that will completely take advantage and when you have the skill and you've developed the muscle of aligning yourself with the right people and being able to decide this person is an elf, this person, you know, easy, lucrative and fun, this person is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating, that understanding completely changes the trajectory of how you run your business. And so from listening to all of the episodes at what. How long did it take you to start? I mean, it seemed with that episode you went and met someone right away, you immediately did it. Did you also find yourself cutting off any particular type of relationships or having a different framing of how you approach things with, with the give, giver versus taker sort of mentality?

You know, I wouldn't say I really went that direction. I, I think mainly what I was looking for was the, the collaboration aspect, the generosity. What really attracted me to this, to your whole world, was this generosity and collaboration, this emphasis on that, your emphasis on ethics and, and providing more upfront so that people are, they, they feel appreciated and that's why they want to do business with you.

Right, right.

Yeah. So that was really what attracted me to that. I would say I probably have filtered some relationships because of some of the other, you know, because they were people trying to take advantage of me, but not really consciously.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's great though. You know, any Nathaniel Brandon who was, he passed away, you know, a few years ago and he was just a brilliant doctor. He was a protege of Ayn Rand.

He wrote many books on self esteem, you know, the art of living, consciously taking responsibility, the six pillars of self. And he had this sentence stem exercise that we would do where he would say, if you were 5% more blank, let's say outgoing or everyone here listening. You left this I love marketing, you know, live meetup, and you said, I'm going to be 5% more, you know, fearless or open to go and meet someone new. Not like double it, not do anything drastic, just a tiny little 5% increase in, in, in, in. In something. What would happen in. You would have. And then he would have you fill out these sentence stems. Well, I'd maybe meet new friends. I'd probably close more deals. I'd probably, you know, would become more courageous, you know, what, whatever it would be, I might meet the love of my life, you know, all these things. And what happens when you just give someone an idea, a domino, as I like to call it, and they do something with it, then that starts the trajectory. I had spent yesterday on the phone for about an hour with BJ Fogg, and BJ Fogg is the, you know, the professor that wrote Tiny Habits, and he's a Genius Network member, and he's going to be here at the end of next month. And I'm doing a live interview with him at the same time with Chris Voss, the former top international FBI hostage negotiator, and also Robert Cialdini, all at the same time. And so, no, the top influence guy in the world, the top behavior professor who, you know, one of his students used his method and created Instagram, and then the top negotiation guy in the world, all at the same time.

And the.

The thing, you know, this is great to have smart people, but what I need to pull out of people and what we try to do in. In. I love marketing and with everything we do, Genius Network, is to give people usable things that they can do something with because ultimately, it's great to listen, it's great to learn. What we want people to do is have a change in their life. And if they could do that, then the ripple effect that comes from this. It almost seems to me, what, you know, what skills do you have now as a result of this investment of, you know, I talk about in chapter two, time. You know, Tammy, time, Attention, money, effort and energy. You have put hours of your time and your attention. I don't know how much money, you know, being in ELF coaching and stuff is a different thing, but effort and energy and then, you know, going out and applying it and coming from, you know, losing nearly everything and having the brain tumor that you talked about, which is incredible. So if you had to.

Say to anyone that's here, what, how should they interact with knowledge? How should they interact with our podcast? How should they interact with marketing? Because I think you're more than qualified to speak to all those areas, because I think everyone here listening wants to build and grow their business. They want to make more money. They want to have more of an ELF business. They want better clients. They don't want to, you know, sucked into things that are, you know, hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. And I think you're. You'd be a great advisor, which is why you're a guest here today.

I think one of the most important things is that you got to apply stuff so you can sit here and learn everything you want. You can take all the notes. If you don't apply anything, then you're always wondering, well, what would happen if I did this? So applying this stuff is, I would say, one of the most important things.

Things that I've learned that have really helped me out. Joe, Learning about This universe, learning about marketing, learning how to grow my business, and being successful at that, it's brought me some incredible peace in my life. I, I too am an addict. I, I have a, a history of addiction and, and I have some physical abuse that's been in my background. And recovering from those things really was a very difficult process. I used to have dreams where every dream I had, I was always searching for something. And when I started learning and applying this stuff, I could just feel this change come over me in I, I. A confidence that, hey, I know what I'm doing now. I can, I can be successful. I can grow this. And that just brought a great piece to my life. My, my dreams actually change and I have dreams that are just more narratives now. And I'm not hunting around sear everything just like I found home.

Wow. No, that, that's great. No, finding home, I think is, that's what, what a, what a great way to, to share kind of where you're at. I, I would, I often talk about in my past. I always was in a hurry to get somewhere. And as soon as I got to where I was in a hurry to get to, I was always in a hurry to get somewhere else. Like, I, I always felt like there was a, a dart cloud following me that was always raining on me and I was trying to outrun it. And you know, Gary Howard, who I learned marketing from, he had this line which I still think is very valuable in many contexts, but it's, it's also could be dangerous too, depending on how your, your brain, what it does with it. And he said, you know, you accomplish more through movement than you will through meditation. And for probably a couple decades of my life, you know, Starting in my 20s.

I was just completely neurotic. Still am. I mean, I'm definitely neurotic and weird. I was just not ever able to feel a sense of okayness or a sense of peace. And being 55 years old now and having put myself through the wringer in many different ways and, you know, really being grateful for the skills that I've developed and a lot of the successes I've had and also realizing that the, you know, for me, I can only speak for me. So this is sort of like entertainment. I'd say treat everything like a 12 step group, take what you like and leave the rest. It's, you know, now where I am able to really appreciate all of the work and effort and all of the craziness because I used to claw myself into every sort of success and opportunity and drive and stuff. But then I would create all these messes and I would get in these traps and I'd have to claw my way out of the messes that my.

You know, my, my drive got me into. And so now I step back and I look at, you know, what was I trying to figure out, what was I chasing, what was I pursuing and the marketing aspect of it. I know a lot of therapists, I mean, 20% of people that are genius network members are in the health field, from functional medicine docs to regular docs to naturopaths to psychologists to psychiatrists to different people in the health field. And I've got some pretty smart people that I know as friends, as colleagues, as clients. And I know a lot of batshit crazy people that are in the business of teaching people how to get their life together. And if people knew how insane they were, I don't know if they'd want to be taking advice from some of these people. And this is a sort of a weird thing to say about marketing because I have a love hate relationship with many marketers because there are some of the most incredible, awesome value creating people that really understand marketing and use it to get good products and services and value out in the world. And there's others that are just the biggest scumbag, manipulative people on the planet. And they're, you know, they understand marketing. So I make the distinction between capabilities and character. You know, as we build our capabilities, we also want to really look at our character, not just our own perception of ourselves, because it's easy to think you're right even when you're wrong, just how other people experience you and the end result of your, of your clients. And I learned more about human behavior by the study of marketing than I ever learned through just reading, you know, books on therapy or books on psychology, because marketing is applied psychology. And I think when you're able to learn the ability to persuade someone in a direction that's good for them and that they want to go in a way that's helping them and making their lives better, that is a really awesome use of the skill of influence and the skill of marketing. So I say think of selling as influence, think of marketing as storytelling. And you can tell a bullshit story or you can tell a really inspiring story, you can influence somebody in a really great place that's going to benefit their life, or you can really mess them up. And so it's, it's a sword, it's all how you use it. And so when you come from Struggle. The people that I really admire are people that have been through hell and back and they still haven't. You know, they're not out there hurting people. They're out there saying, wow. And I got a. A message sent to me. I won't say from where or who. It's just say it's from. It's someone in another country. And they sent a message because of all the stuff we do with addiction recovery. And they're like, I really need help. And this person described how they have a compulsivity to go into stores and steal. They feel so guilty about it and so bad, and they're praying to have this stop. And this person has. I mean, this is literally just this morning, have this compulsivity to go and steal and is like asking people to go into stores with them so that they can protect that. And I'm like, you know, you never know what the hell somebody's going through in their life or where these sort of things come from. And the more you understand that we all have pain and there's all this pain in the world. And you can learn the skill of packaging, the skill of rapport building, the skill of being a pain detective, knowing that all of the progress and the money that most of us are going to make are transforming other people's bad news into good news. And you can really see yourself doing that for yourself and others. I think there's a sense of happiness that comes over it because I know a lot of people that they sort of had an ethical bypass operation along the way, but they were really good marketing skills, and they make a ton of money or they do these big launches, they do these big live streams and they sell tons of stuff, and they're up there just lying for a living, you know, and. And they go home to their nice houses and their. Their big money. But they. There's. There's sort of an emptiness to it. And anyway, I'm just riffing here because I think in a lot of ways, though, Joe.

There's a lot of. Joe Stump and I used to talk about that all the time. That there was, you know, you can see we would call it the difference between sharks and mammals, that there are, you know, there are some people that are just reptilian and are, you know, not. They're only thinking about themselves in conquest and manipulation and doing all those things, winning and getting the outcome that they want. And then there are. You mentioned it, too. There's a lot of really great people in marketing that are more mammalian, that are more interested in other people. And you can generally tell those people when you're around them for any length of time. You can tell whether somebody is a mammal or, or a reptile, you know.

Yeah, no, no, totally, totally. So anyway, the reason I say all this though is I, and we, we've, we've done our best along the way to. I always bring up the ethics because I, I always want people to utilize it. Man. If you use you once you learn marketing and if someone listens to the first 10 episodes starting from the very beginning and I love marketing, they're probably going to know more about marketing than 99% of every business owner on the planet. Just from that. If they read the magic, I mean the magic of performers, they read my book. If they read the breakthrough DNA, the eight profit activators that we go through, they can utilize a couple of strategies which I'm going to ask you about some of the things that you're doing and how you've done because I want, I want this, I want this call here and I'd love to have you, Russ, be a domino for many people that are listening. You know, I want people to take the time to start really learning this skill. There's no five minute way to teach marketing. I mean I personally spent over $2 million on my own marketing education. I don't know what Dean has done but you know, the hours of it and you, you know, I love marketing is not the only thing you've consumed with marketing. You've probably consumed a ton of stuff. So I'd love, I'd love to have you, you know, share what you've done, what's made the biggest difference. And I say all this stuff too because the number one thing that I think that people have the biggest obstacle for people benefiting in utilizing marketing. And I, you know, I'm not saying this is the right thing. It's just my perspective is, is people undervalue how important it is. Like we can teach marketing strategies all day long. You can listen to I love marketing episodes on all kinds of particular different areas. People just oftentimes don't get and understand. Out of all of the skills you can learn in a business to make it successful, you can waste a lot of time learning a bunch of stuff that will have nothing to do with get making you money clients that, you know, I even having a great mental attitude and a good attitude towards life doesn't make you money if you don't know how to sell what the hell it is you're selling. If you don't know how to connect with clients and prospects, if you don't know how to differentiate yourself between all the other people that are either selling the same thing, something similar or perceive the same thing. So the skill of marketing is really undervalued. And, and because of all this, the scumbags that use it in unethical ways, people often are afraid of it or have a bad perspective of it in the same way that like, oh, I want to avoid a salesperson. Because most people wake up every day hoping that they never run into a salesperson or a marketer trying to sell them anything. So, you know, so with that being said, you know, let's talk about the nine word email because I know you've utilized that and I'd like to ask you, you know how you've, you know, how has it influenced your interactions with your clients and colleagues? And that's a, a process that Dean Jackson came up with and it's so damn simple and it is so effective and people will take courses on copywriting and stuff to try to figure out how to create effective emails or they can just do this and oftentimes it works ten times better.

Yeah, it's pretty healthy.

I, I love it. You know, my typical nine word email is, are you interested in tutoring? It's so simple.

Yeah.

And tutoring is really cyclic. So I, I can very much predict when people are going to be ramping up and getting ready to look for some help. The first test of a semester, the fine, the season for, for finals at the end of a semester, you got a couple of those a year. And so when we're coming around to those, I will take all the leads who I haven' and I will Send out the 9 word emails and I get great response. I, I get a 90% response. Now, not all of them are positive. Some are, no, I don't need help. But they're still communicating with me, which is really important. I, I'm keeping that rapport going. Other, other ones that they're looking for a tutor and in general when they call, I can convert about 80%. But when they're calling on the word emails, I, I'm, I'm down to converting about 40 to 50%. And there was a meetup where I, I was, I got the chance to talk with you, Dean, and I was mentioning that to you and you brought up that fishing video where the guys in the boat with the spotlight shining it around on the water and the fish just start jumping into the boat.

Right.

And what you out. To me that made the big difference was you gotta stock your pond with the right kind of fish. That's right. And so that I've been, that I've been calling. They just aren't the right kind of fish. And so that was, that was very informative and motivational for me.

Yeah, well the other thing too, I love that line. The, you know, only the hungriest fish are going to snap at the crappiest bait. So you know, if you could have. So for instance, Dean, we can no longer call it the nine word email. It has to be the five word email because his is rich. You interested in tutoring? And in order for this to sound like a really sophisticated marketing method, I think we really need to add another four words to this or people are going to be like, you know, I, I paid all this money to listen to. I love my. Oh wait, no, I forgot this, this. We're not charging for this. So basically here it is.

Hi Joe, are you still interested in physics tutoring?

Best deed there, you got the die word.

You can add one more word. Yep.

Yeah. Well, so, so Dean, why don't we do this for everyone that's listening. I mean I know there's a lot of people here that totally get and utilize nine word emails. They totally get it. But there's some people that have not. And, and I will say you'll need to go super deep in it if someone wants to really learn this. We've got full blown episodes at I. If you go to I lovemarketing.com and just, or just even Google and type in you know, I love marketing nine word email, you're going to come up with a bunch of different stuff. What, what I would like to preface it with, with saying though is I have Genius Network members that have some that have been in genius network for three or four years. They've invested 75,000 to a hundred thousand and they finally, three or four years in, finally do a nine word email. Yeah. And they'll be like I made all my money back just right. Exactly.

That's the funny.

Yeah. And I also have people that are like oh my God, I did your nine word. I mean we have people that have become millionaires just by listening to I love marketing and utilizing this stuff. And so could you kind of describe it as a reminder for people that maybe aren't using it as much as they could or someone that's not done it. What the hell is nine word email? And then what I will suggest to people is go and listen to deeper episodes on this, but give them the flyover.

Yeah.

Part of the thing is that it's all taps into the, the big concepts you have to understand is that not everybody who opts in is ready to buy right now and it's okay. If they're ready to buy later, that's fine. But what often happens is as Internet marketing as you know, the, the whole culture has been sort of introduced to this idea of a gauntlet series and the first 10 days of like getting an opt in and then hammering them to buy right now. And when you understand that there's going to be five times more people who buy more than 90 days from now than there are people who buy in the first 90 days. Right. So that's just as an aside. Now I look at it and break it down that there's only two time frames that I'm even interested in and that's now and not now. If it's not now, it's okay. Whether it's tomorrow or a week or a month or a year, it doesn't matter. It's still not now. And I define now as actively looking to do whatever it is that you do in the next 30, 60, 90 days, that's now. Now the best way to presence that for someone is to 90 days from now or six months from now, send an email to someone that says, hey Joe, are you still interested in tutoring?

That's a really a great way to do that. And there you don't even have to use the word still at that point we've got people who use that nine word email every 30 days, every 60 days at our 90 minute book company. Every month on the beginning of the month, everybody on the list gets an email that says, hey Joe, would you like to get started on your book this month? Right. Every single month that goes out and every single month it jumpstarts people who say yes. Now I would like to get started with my book right now. You can use it for so many different ways. It's just a yes or no question that gets the people who are, you know, we're only speaking to the five star prospects in this. Right. That's all I'm interested in is it's just meant to draw out the people who are now. I just had a client call me a couple of weeks ago and said that last year they did all their stuff, they were doing all their taxes. They figured out last year 42% of their business came from nine word emails. When I first started working with them, they were doing, they had a 10 day process. They had very high conversions or selling very expensive things and they would just generate new leads and push people through the 10 day thing. And then we started sending a nine word email to the people who didn't buy in the first 10 days, 60 days later, and that every 60 days getting out that message to people resulted in 42% of their business. And this, that's a, it's a $15 million company. So do you look at the impact of just sending and you can do it at whatever cadence.

Regularly is the best way to think about it.

It's the sequence that you do. My girlfriend Luba every month sends to people, hey Joe, would you like to schedule your eyebrows this month? So anytime you can do that to your, to your existing unconverted prospects, it's a win. It's an annuity really. You know, it's like just free money every single time. I, I think that, that if I just look at that of what the.

You know, the most reliable.

Magic trick that we have, that's certainly one that if you can go into any business, I bet every single person in here right now could send just the simplest nine word email.

So talking about books, what insights, Russ, did you gain from the top three books that referenced on? You know, I love marketing that you found most valuable to your business and because you're a big obviously consumer of learning and education, I mean you put in the time, you put in the effort and I think it's valuable to hear, for everyone to hear kind of what, what, what, what have you read? What have you gotten the most value out of?

Well, I couldn't whittle it down to three books, Joe. The best I could do is get it down to six for you.

Okay, good.

So the number one book where you need to start is Dan Sullivan's four Cs. Yeah, yeah. Commitment, courage, capability, confidence. It's great book. It teaches you persistence. I love Dan's little story about the hand grenade and his definition of courage. Courage is not what you. Not whether or not you wet your pants, but what you do with wet pants.

Right.

That's very powerful.

Totally.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that analogy. Yeah, yeah.

The second book would be what's in it for them? Because that's how I'm building my network. You got to start there. People, people are one of the most important things. Without people, you're not going to do anything. You're not going to have clients, you're not going to have a team, you're not going to have support. You're not going to have mentors. People are very important. So what's in it for them? Building your network right up there at the top.

Thank you.

Then getting more practical, I would recommend choose by Ryan Levesque. That was one of the earlier episodes, I believe. And that is just. It's an incredible. He's got some incredible tools and some incredible advice in there in doing marketing research and developing an evergreen product. So I highly recommend that for beginning entrepreneurs. Next would be the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And that helps you. That teaches you how to put a business together that will be scalable. And that was one of my big issues is one on one tutoring is as a service is not scalable. And so I've had. Because I've read these books, I've been reorganizing my entire approach to doing business and working on producing evergreen products. Instead of one on one service.

Another one, who not how. Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. That's for team building. One of the biggest, biggest things I got was from who, not how. And that's the freedom to hire a team. I had always. I'd always put it off. Oh, it's so difficult. Oh, I got to deal with taxes. I found this incredible payroll service. They do it all for me. It's pay as you go. My workers comp for 10 employees is like 25amonth. It's just some incredible resources. And then finally, because you gotta have strategies and tactics for your marketing. Piranha Marketing.

Thank you.

It is, it is just incredible. And the tools in there, I, I'm listening to that right now for like the fifth time. And I just, I don't. I've collected every single tool in there yet. So it's just, it's an incredible production that.

Well, you know that in reverse order.

Didn't you mean to say that going the number one.

Yes.

You know what's, you know what's interesting about that is so me and Tim Paulson did that program in 2004. We recorded that and you can get, you can buy the audio version on. On Audible. And you know, this is before social media. This is before so many things. No one was doing Zoom. No, you know, and we, we had a tool called the Teles Seminar Script Developer which many people have used for all the like webinars and for, you know, different things today. And, and yeah, there, there was the. The cool thing was that became the number one selling marketing program of all time for Nightingale Conant. And my favorite audio program that I've ever. You know, listened to is lead the field by Earl Nightingale and, and over the last three Genius Network meetings, thanks to Joel Weldon, one of our Genius Network members, Diana Nightingale, Earl Nightingale's wife, has come to the meetings. And so we're now going to be taking never released Earl Nightingale content that no one's ever heard. And we're putting it out into the world. And so I've become really dear friends with Diana. She's 83 years old, and just, you know, we, we have some interviews with her that we're going to be putting out and just the, the backstory of all of the original sources of all of this stuff. So. Thank you, Russ. That, that's really great. Can you share some of the success stories from applying that, you know, the tips and strategies that you learned from the, the I love marketing podcasts with maybe your, your students or, you know, anyone that's an entrepreneur here or, you know, even with your career counseling clients, you know, stuff like that?

Yeah, sure. So I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey. I like to begin with the end in mind. So I tend to, when I'm coaching with my students, I tend to work backwards from their passion. I ask, you know, what is it you like the best? And once we've narrowed that down and kind of figured out what their awesome sauce is, then I help try and take them through a track of do you go to a university? Do you go down the entrepreneurial track? Do you go down the vocational track? And I, I picked all this up just from the ILM podcast and listening to your interviews with Dan Sullivan. It's just.

His. His what? What was it? It's when he, he breaks down.

He'S got his, his stuff. You don't like stuff, that's okay. I'm willing to do it. And then the stuff that you really want to focus on. And so.

Yeah, yeah, the unique ability.

Thank you. Unique ability. There you go. And so that concept kind of led me to this process. And then I. From all the lists, all the podcasts I've listened to, the other resources I've come up, I provide tons of resources, books, podcasts, coaching. I do some coaching myself. I also have lists of coaches for people who aren't appropriate for my coaching.

And when I apply that, my students are just. I get some of the happiest, most confident students from applying these concepts with them. As a science and math tutor, I have a lot of STEM students. Science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Stem.

And one of the women in STEM that I tutored went on to get her master's in neuropsychology, she helped invent a probe where they can put fiber optics into mouse and monkey brains and the monkeys and mice can run around, do their thing, and they can monitor dopamine levels in the brain. While the experiments are going on is just some incredible stuff. Another one of my students, her mother actually works in a lab at Stanford and uses Savannah's material.

Wow. You know what you need? Yeah, you need. We need to. You'll need to get me some information on that because Dr. Anna Lemke, who's a. A doctor of, you know, addiction medicine and at Stanford, she wrote an incredible book called Dopamine Nation. And I'm helping her. Yeah, I'm helping her with the Dopamine Nation workbook right now. She'll actually be here on Sunday. And then I'm. She's. I'm. She'll be at our annual event in December at the Genius Network annual event. But we're doing a whole. Just deep dive into dopamine and stuff. So when you said that, I was like, that's fascinating. So I'd like to learn more on that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's an incredible tool. Yeah. And then, and then I've had a lot of other students who went on to do things that weren't stem as well. I've got other two students who went on to become professional baseball pitchers. Spencer Howard started with the police in the year of COVID 2020.

I've got Mari Stewart, who is an international professional women's basketball player. She's played in Croatia, Latvia, Australia. She's in England now, going to King's University.

Big star Josh Oliver, who just got. Who just got traded to the Minnesota Vikings. Tight end. And Max Styler, who was one of my greatest entrepreneurial students. This kid, his teacher, for her chemistry final, allowed them to make a three by five card and they could put as much information as they could fit on that. And I convinced Max that the way to get good at this stuff is to make the card, and if it's not perfect, make the card again and you just put the other one aside. He did that like 10, 15 times. Then he went to school and the kids sold all those extra cards to his classmates. So they had cards for their test too. Wonderful, wonderful entrepreneurial spirit. He was also a musician. He likes to do dance music. He was discovered by Steve Aoki and now spins in Coachella, Toronto, Madrid, Rio, Vegas. He lives next door to Steve Aoki in Vegas. This kid just. He just Skyrocketed. And then right now, I also have one current student who was running a babysitting business, and she wanted to show me her books and ask me a little bit about that. And I'm looking at her books and her name's Ever. And I'm going, ever, you are doing exactly what I'm doing, only you're doing it by hand. Let me show you how to make that happen. And so she's my most current student right now. I've got really, really high hopes for her.

Love it. So let me ask you a couple of other things. So I wrote down this. You have the imitate before you improvise. So how have you applied the imitate before you improvise? Advice to your teaching methods or in other aspects of the business.

Yeah, so. So I like the way Picasso said that best. So learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. And I. I've applied that just in my own mathematics. And I. To me, math is like a language. And as I've gotten better and better at it and been able to think in terms of it, I can see this benefit of, okay, once you know the rules, then you know exactly what you can do to break them. And I. And I've just shown my students just all kinds of shortcuts because of that.

And in teaching, there is this concept called I do. We do. You do. And that's been developed because it's so important when somebody's learning something, one of the steps that really gets skipped a lot is allowing somebody to see how it is done. So a lot of times the teachers are up there, they'll be demonstrating something on a whiteboard, and the students are copying it as if that's the way it should be done on their paper. But what's really happening is the student, the teacher, is up on the whiteboard demonstrating something. She's using tools on the whiteboard to help the students understand and see what she is teaching and communicating better. That's not necessarily the way something needs to be done when you're doing it yourself. So the I do step is really important there to show students how something needs to be done. And then I do it with them so I can help guide them through. They have a crutch they can lean on as I work them through the problem. And then I let them them loose, I turn them loose and I let them do it themselves. So we start out with trying to have them imitate me and then finally working to the point where they can do it. Themselves and grow to that point where they can improvise.

I love it. You know what's really great about that too, I always think the, the skill of good teaching, being a good teacher, being a good coach is when you're able to transfer the knowledge to, to your, you know, clients, to your, to your students, to the person that is, you know, hiring you, your company, and they're able to go and do something with it and generate a result. Because ultimately that's what people want. I mean, everyone here wants a result. And in order to get results, you need capabilities. And so how can you transfer the capabilities to people in a way where they can do something? And you're doing a great job with that. So this quote I wrote down, which is one of, you know, the, your favorites. How was the quote you become what you think about most by Earl Nightingale influenced your mindset and actions in your entrepreneurial journey?

I, I love that quote. I've got a whiteboard here in my office and I, I've got that written up on the whiteboard and I, I look at it every day and the main thing it gives me, it gives me focus. It, it reminds me to focus on my dream and when I'm focused on that dream, that I'm working on the right things. Napoleon Hill and think and grow rich. Some of the, some of the characteristics that he pointed out that people really need are persistence, focus, clarity of purpose and, and that quote just makes me think about that constantly and it keeps me focused on what I need to do.

Yep. And if you think about being a cheesecake all day long, you, perhaps that could be a bad thing. So.

Well, I guess you may not become a cheesecake. Yes, I've had argument before, but no.

Well, look, there's a lot to, to, to be said about what, Whatever, whatever you hold in your space of your mind has a lot to do with, you know, like, look, everyone here, whatever you, whatever you're going to think about today is going to totally play out what happens the rest of the day, tomorrow, this week, et cetera. So in what ways has your involvement in all of this, in elf coaching, in I love marketing in the meetups, contributed to your, you know, business growth and personal development that you've not shared that you think would be helpful for people here to, to, to hear and take away from. Because I really wanted this to be you as a catalyst, to be inspiring and encouraging for everyone here to take what, you know, we've talked about and just go get some more impact and results in their business. And in their lives.

Well, I really owe you, Dean and Timothy Paulson all just a huge thank you. Thank you. In my first year in elf, I doubled my revenue. That was easy. Didn't even, didn't even take effort. And that was who not how was the main contributor to that. In the last year, I've cut my hours back by 33%. And instead of focusing on revenue, I'm focusing on developing more free time for myself and getting the business to be more automated, more health. In ELF, I gave the first 10 minute talk. And giving these 10 minute talks has really helped me feel much more comfortable doing public speaking. It actually helped me give the eulogy at my dad's funeral. And it turned into a great eulogy. Very, very light and fun. Got a lot of recognition for that. I also gave the first, second 10 minute talk in elf coaching because I was so, so enamored with the public speaking and enjoyed doing it so much.

And then I've also developed a great genius network of friends and mentors, including you, Dean, Brian Kurtz, Timothy Paulson, you guys have all just been incredible mentors to me. And I thank you all.

No, thank you. And look, I mean, I just, I really honor the fact that you've given so much of your time and attention, your Tammy, you know, to, to what the work we do in it. And it feels really good. I like when people benefit from what we put out into the world. I mean, this is something that me and Dean, when we first came up with, I love marketing. I first registered, which I've done nothing with it. Even though this was in 2009, I had got the domain name I hate marketing. Com. And I was like, you know, because there's so many people that hate marketing because they don't know how to use it and they think marketing sucks. And I was like, oh, you know these marketers. And I'm like, yeah. And some of that's well deserved because there are some, you know, marketers out there, a lot of them. And you know, I also thought like, well, I learned marketing selling carpet and upholstery cleaning. And I never thought I would teach it to anybody. And I had to figure out how to successfully actually sell something nobody wants to buy because no one wakes up every day and says, I really hope the cat pisses in the corner so I can call a carpet cleaner. It's like, it's one of these things where I like, if you have to figure out how to sell something nobody wants to buy, it really gets you to understand psychology. And When I was able to apply education based marketing and consumer guides and all of this stuff. And again, there was no Internet. It was all direct mail. It was advertising. It was, you know, just using pretty much the written word and even using videos. Back then we were sending VHS tapes to people and stuff, you know, and I, I saw how, just changing words and making offers and utilizing Socratic selling, which is really what the nine word email is applied to. Email, it's Socratic selling. You could apply it to social media, you could apply it to, you know what, it's, it's asking a question, right? And when I saw that changing the words.

Doubled, tripled my income and I didn't learn anything more about how to clean carpets better. It wasn't the skill of knowing how to do the thing, you know, I also learned the painful reality that there's no relationship between being good at what you do and getting paid. There's only a relationship with being good, being a good marketer and then getting people to, to buy it from you. And so when we first started doing I love marketing me and I said to Dean, I go, let's do something crazy. Let's not try to, we're not going to get any. We're not going to do sponsorships. We're going. And to this day, we've never done sponsorships. Looking back, it was probably a stupid idea because we probably left God knows how much money on the table. But you know, we, we said let's not even sell anything until people start complaining. Why are you guys not selling anything? You're doing a podcast on marketing and you're not asking us to buy anything. And you know, we'll name drop books and stuff like that, but we never pitched anything and, and mentioned it until we finally have people saying, will you guys please try to sell us something? And if you go back and look at the original, like, you know, reviews that I don't even know if they're still there anymore. Dean. The ones on itunes.

They are on. On itunes.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Back, back in the day before Apple changed everything, you know, people like, I don't get it. You guys are giving away more stuff for free than like other people are charging for. And part of our thing was like, you know, how do we just make it? So we built a really great brand and we had like massive downloads and we've had millions of downloads of our podcasts and stuff, but we never made it a main thing. We never, like, it was always something we kind of did along with our other businesses. And we talked a lot of people into starting podcasts, including Tim Ferriss. You know, we, we, we, we remember him arguing that a podcast was a really bad idea when we were suggesting to him early on, you should do a podcast.

I wish we had that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, no, we, we do have it somewhere. We've just never been able to find the freaking edited. But, but one day I will, I hope.

But the thing is, is like, you know, if you love marketing, you'll hate marketing if you don't learn how to get results from it. And the moment you apply a technique or a methodology and it makes you money and you realize, oh, my God, I could double, triple, quadruple my income without having to work harder. And in many cases work less than the I Love marketing switch flips on and you're like, I love marketing. And then you go deeper into it. So, Russ, what did I not ask you? What did we not ask you that we should have. If there's anything else you'd like to share because you've been awesome today.

You know, honestly, I, I think we covered pretty much everything I prepared to cover here.

Well, we didn't cover a few of my favorite episodes of I Love Marketing. Without getting into too much detail, though, I would like to suggest people go and listen to number 31, the eight profit activators. Yep. And number 24, more cheese and less whiskers, which is the theme for Dean's podcast as well.

Great. Yep. Awesome. Dean, anything you want to say? What are your thoughts on Russ?

I'm impressed that we've got, you know, I have so many people. I haven't heard anybody that's gone all 450 and that, that's impressive on its own.

But I.

There's been a number of people up to, you know, 200 or even 300 that were in the, the 300 Club, we were calling it, that it listened to all. But I would encourage people, this is evergreen content. It's evergreen. There are principle based things that are just as relevant today as they were in 2010 or 11 when we started. And I would encourage you, if you want to go through this, to pick an episode, listen actively with your pen, write out some of the, the notes, the action items that you get from this, and then apply something and then come back and listen to another one. But if you go through it, you know, if you do, you don't even have to go the first 150 episodes. Certainly if you listen to the first 10 episodes and apply any of the things that we talk in there. You're going to be such on a great foundation there and you'll be hooked and want to come back for the rest of them. So I say, you know, 450 down. Let's go. 1450. On our way.

Yeah. No, you know what, Russ, I'll probably ask you at a future date to be on again and stuff too because there's so many things we could, we could ask you to speak to and is there anything that, anything about your business you'd like to share with anyone about how they could follow you or do anything with you?

Yeah. Well, my 90 minute book that I did with Dean's team, harnessing your seven Senses is available on Amazon and Kindle. Right. So they find that my consumer guide is also available on Amazon. So I actually published that as a book. And if anybody was interested in getting in touch with me for either entrepreneurial coaching or tutoring for their kids, you can google me@claimtutoring.com don't miss another episode.

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