Perry Marshall - Run Towards The Chaos

Obviously, business as usual has been.

Suspended for most people, Right? Or many people, at least.

But here's the thing is people still have problems, okay? In fact, people have more problems today than they had a month ago.

Mm.

So what problem can I solve? You know, maybe we're hunting rabbits instead of deer.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Float Shark podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Yo.

Hello there.

This is. This has been an interesting podcast day.

This has been a virtual, socially distanced podcast, even though we're only, like, a mile from each other. Probably yell out my deck, Matt.

Yeah, well, it's probably true that I would hear you. You know why? Because there's, like, no cars on the street and there's no people around, and it would probably make it to me because you're, like, up on a hill higher than I am. We're not quite line of sight, though.

Nah. Hilly country out here, but it is very eerie outside.

Yeah, we might have to show that someday. See if we could communicate through yelling out our doors.

Well, now's the time. I don't want another time like this, so might as well take advantage.

But, yes, this is one of our quarantined episodes where Joe and I are not in the same place, but we are actually wearing the same logo on our shirts.

We are. Happens to be evergreen profits. Go figure.

Random.

We should call this the Quarantine Series.

The Quarantine Series, yeah.

Well, we're making do. And so this is a remote episode, one of the very few that we've done, and this time with our. With our pal, Perry Marshall.

Yeah, this is another round two episode. This is his second time coming back. And we've already got a plan for round three, too, which is we do.

A totally different topic. That's the cool thing with Perry is a. I would say he's a Renaissance man. He. He is well, diverse in his studies and his. How he applies his knowledge and creates things. He was literally talking about a podcast he was on. He was talking about a cancer research scientist who's an author and totally different. I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole now, but that's a little open loop for next time. Interesting things he's doing.

Yeah. So I feel like in this episode, there was kind of like two parts to it. Right. So, like, the first half of this episode, we're talking about, you know, the sort of new economy that we live in with all the COVID 19 stuff and everybody sort of in Lockdown and online businesses sort of can they thrive right now where all the brick and mortar businesses aren't and how you should operate in this current economy and all that kind of stuff. And then the second part of this episode was turning our attention to his traffic seminar that's coming up. He hasn't done a traffic seminar in nine years, but he used to be the Google Ads guy. He's literally the guy that wrote the book on Google. Google Adwords.

Right.

Book too. Yeah.

And a Facebook. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think him and Keith Krantz wrote that together.

I can't confirm that, but maybe. Possibly, I don't know.

Pretty sure. But anyway, so the second half of this episode, we really sort of dive into like how you should be approaching traffic right now.

And we get pretty high level on how to pick what traffic sources to use and really how to make this sort of cohesive, cohesive traffic system for your business.

Yeah, no, it's, it's super cool. And what I love the power of Perry is that he is multi dimensional. I'm kind of taking his terminology, I guess now it's just coming in. But he, he sees so much. He's surrounded by the top experts in many fields, in this case traffic, where he's bringing in, you know, for his, his definitive traffic seminar. He's actually holding around summertime. I don't want to say the date specifically because it might change because of such occurrences in the world, but what's cool is that he has a kind of a macro but also a micro visibility on things and how it's strategy. You know, you're, you're, you want strategy, you don't want all tactics. And what I like about Perry is that he's combining the tactical folks, but he has this great philosophy and strategy and we cover, holy crap. So much of it. I mean, there's. The title of this episode is a big piece of it, which is Run towards the chaos. And we'll explain what that means in a second here. But you definitely don't run away because that's what the masses are doing. So everything 80, 20 or 95, 5, be that 5% and run towards the chaos because cool things happen.

Absolutely. And we took notes on this episode.

Oh, of course. Yeah, we done did, we done did take notes. We always take notes and they develop into beautiful letters that we send out monthly in both digital and physical form. But for these free notes, you should get them because they're free and they're only for a couple weeks that they're free. So you should be quick. Two weeks from the time this episode goes out. If you go to hustleandfluechart.com comp, that's comp o m p get the notes. They are free. Be quick. Hustleandflowchart.com or text.

Or you can text the word comp C o M P to 38470. That is 38470 comp.

Matt has to read that off a post it because we bought the most confusing short code number ever.

So we tried to make a word out of it and it was a really fuzzy.

Yeah, it was like fugs plus.

That's what it was.

Fugs plus. Because zero. You don't get many options with words or letters.

Yeah, or fug zero, I guess.

But, you know, it doesn't sound as cool. Fugs plus.

Anyway, go grab the notes from this episode. There's a lot of amazing stuff in here. And if you're Evergreen Profits member, you're going to be getting the notes in the mail anyway. But go grab those. And also we do have somebody who's offering a little bit of support on this podcast, helping us, helping us pay a couple of our bills.

Thank you. Ahrefs. Yes. So Ahrefs is sponsoring this episode and you've heard us likely talk about them before, but we use them every day for our traffic sorcery. I don't know. We use it in so many different ways. It's like magic. But what's really cool is that not only do they have a. It's a trial seven days for $7. Trial buck a day for seven days. You can use and get in there, figure it out. But they actually have this thing called Ahrefs Academy and they have these two kind of core things. There's marketing with Ahrefs that basically like walks you through how to actually use this big behemoth software, but apply it to your marketing specifically so you're not lost, you have actionable plans. These are free courses, by the way. Absolutely free. And they're like five hours each. It's crazy. So they actually, like put a ton out there. And then there's another one. If you're into blogging or writing content, there's Blogging for Business. So they show you how to basically grow a blog with a bunch of traffic and then turn that into money, all using Ahrefs as well to speed up the process and make it better. Yeah, yeah.

$7, 7 days. It's worth it. We use it a lot in our business. It's we used it way before they were a sponsor. So we're not just saying that because they're a sponsor. If you go back to old episodes, I promise. We were talking about Ahrefs back then, too. Got proof. So go grab it. $7, seven days. That's a h r e f s.comahrefs.com go get it. Let's go talk to Perry.

All right, Perry, you're back. Round two. How you doing?

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on your show. It's an honor.

Of course.

It was great to see in person. In Florida a month ago, we were all at Rich Shuffrin's shindig that he put together.

That.

Pretty fascinating.

It was a heck of a shindig, huh? Yeah.

What? It was so interesting how the world's changed just in this, what, four weeks since that happened.

No kidding. No kidding. Well, here we are.

Here we are.

Well, you know, I'll just tell you a story. This feels so much like 9 11. So my story with that is.

Summer of 2001.

I was working for this little company. It was about a.

$3 million, $4 million company, and we'd grown it from a $2 million company, and we had. It had been a software consulting firm, and we had transformed it into a product company. So that's like making dizzy G Force kind of thing to do that. And so this public company had offered to buy us. And when 911 happened, miraculously, it didn't tank the deal. And.

A month and a day after 9 11, I said, thanks for the job offer, but I'm going to pass. And I'm going to hang out my shingle. And that was mostly based on my wife saying, perry.

This is it. Like, this is your chance. And I would have never done that because where my head was, okay, 911 just happened. There's no purchase orders. There's no capital equipment projects. Everybody's frozen. Everybody's in a state of suspended animation. There's nothing going on. The phones aren't ringing. I mean, I was in manufacturing, for crying out loud. Sure. Which is a slow moving, like. And it all stopped. And then how long is it going to take to start up again?

And so I was going to just keep my head down. And she's like, no, this is it. And I asked around, and I got some advice. And somebody said, the time of the greatest uncertainty is the time of the best opportunity. And so I took the leap. And.

It was like jumping off of a cliff into a black void. Having no idea what you're gonna hit, which part of your body it's gonna hit you on? Like, here we go.

That's not your nature, right, Typically. Or is it?

Well, I mean, I'm not a kamikaze pipe. Normally, kids in a mortgage, in a car. And I mean, at that time, I had, what, one or two in diapers? Maybe one at that point. My oldest was probably four.

Five. Okay. And like, I'm just a guy. Okay. And now I did have stock options that were eventually gonna come, and that helped a lot. Okay. So I don't wanna leave that out. But meanwhile, how am I gonna get clients? How am I gonna feed myself? Like, where are we gonna get money? Until whenever these. And the stock options didn't work out until about two or three months later. Okay. So, like, yeah, there's still a gap in time there.

Yeah.

I borrowed some money from my brother, I borrowed some money from some of our friends, and I hung out my shingle.

And, well, December, I made more money than I'd ever made.

Now, it wasn't consistently like that, but I found a client almost immediately. And what I discovered after 911 was welcome to the world. That much prefers a 1099 to an employee.

Oh, yes, that's for sure.

And we're definitely feeling that again all over again right now.

Repeat.

Right. It's like business has still got to get done. But I don't want somebody to take six months to fire. They fire you in 30 days.

Right. And I was selling Agile. Oh, you want a press release? I can do that. Oh, you want marketing communications? I can do that. Oh, you want web pages? I can do that. You want SEO? I can do that. And here we. And that was me in 2001. You want direct marketing? Nobody in this business understands direct marketing. Perry understands direct marketing. And that's where we were. And I've got to say, in fact, this just occurred to me, literally within the last couple days, I think I could name about five or six times in the last 20 years when I have leaped off of a ledge into the black void not knowing how is this going to turn out? And that's. Some of my greatest gifts and accomplishments have been from that. Adopting two kids. Dude, if that isn't leaping off into a void, I don't know what is. Joe, we had this conversation.

We did.

A month ago.

Yeah. Me and fostering you and adoption and. Yeah. You don't know what you're getting into. And it opened up a whole new world. And as we talked about. Yeah, it's. I Would never do it any differently.

You're reaching into the box of chocolates, baby, to get.

You might. Yeah, you might. I know people that got hand grenades.

But, you know, you ain't getting out of life alive no way.

Might as well. Yeah. It's like, hey, we got this one life, this one body. When I'm done with it, it better be ragged. It better be having fun, but used to the max, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's just my approach to life. And I've. Oh, I tell you, in the last week and a half, I have had so many conversations with clients about, okay, so what are we going to do every single day? And if I was to describe a theme to all of these conversations, it is run towards the chaos, not away from it.

Do you direct them towards it, or is there a theme of how they're running towards that chaos?

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, business as usual has been.

Suspended for most people, right? Or many people, at least.

But here's the thing is people still have problems. Mm. Okay. In fact, people have more problems today than they had a month ago. So what problem can I solve? You know, maybe we're hunting rabbits instead of deer, but let's go hunt rabbits. Right?

And so.

Like. Okay, so you have a problem, which is your clients, like, aren't going to do business with you the way that they were.

Okay, but wait a minute. What problem do they have?

What problem does your client have? Okay, so, for example.

So I got this client who sells data collection for trade show leads.

Hmm. Okay.

Okay. All that happened and the equipment and everything. Okay, Go to the trade show, scan your badge. Yeah, I'm interested. They handle all of that stuff, Right. And they're hardcore direct marketing guys like you and me. And so you could kind of connect the dot. Okay, what's involved? Well, there's. When's the next trade show gonna be? Six months? Who knows?

Who knows?

So, all right, so here. I said here. So here's how I want you to think about it.

Warren Buffett says, when the tide goes out, you find out who's swimming naked. 80% of people are swimming naked.

Through maybe no negligence of their own, but more than likely, they have been negligent about some things.

We can all be sure of that. Right? And I said, okay, so you've got all these clients, and you know as well as I do that they went to the trade show, they got 1478 leads, and how many of those leads actually got to the salesperson that they should have got to? And how were they handled. They said, you call those sales managers, you call those marketing managers, and you ask them, okay, so what problems are you having in your pipeline, like, right now? And get them talking. And you know more about sales pipelines than 95% of your customers.

I don't know how you're going to get paid for helping them out, but.

They'Ll give you the answers. Yeah, yeah.

But you'll find out. Perry Marshall cannot tell you on a zoom call.

You know how that's gonna work out with your next client. But if you get down into the bottom of the swamp with them, you'll figure something out. Yeah, maybe they want. Maybe they want you to rework their sales funnels or figure out how they're doing their sales leads or do some data analytics or whatever. But understand, you're not in the trade show business. You are in the. In the sales conversion business.

And you're not selling what you think you're selling. You're helping these sales managers and vice presidents of marketing make their companies work when all of a sudden, business is down 30%.

Yeah.

So show up, be the hero.

So that'd be a pretty typical example. These are the kind of conversations that we're having.

Yeah, no, that's very similar to us. There's a lot of. I would say, the sentiment that we're doing. There's a lot of communication we're doing with our top clients, but also wide with things like a live stream we're doing on Friday. We're bringing in our friends and experts on there. But the idea is to give back as much as possible. In uncertain times, people are just trying to kind of find their way. But in doing that, we're getting so many answers and so many gaps that we were not aware of. And, you know, now more than ever, they're looking for someone. You know, they have their hand up and they're like, hey, I think right.

Now, people want community. They want to feel like I. You know, everybody. Everybody's having a little bit of struggle right now, whether it's mentally, financially, you know, whatever it is. And I think people want to feel like they're not alone right now. And if you can convey, like, look, we're a community. We're here to help. You're not alone. I think that's a really sort of powerful angle to be approaching things at right now.

Yeah, everybody's pulling together. You know what else I'm seeing is, man, people are paying attention.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

If you have something useful to say, they are. So, like, for example, I don't remember how many roundtable members I got. Maybe it's 28. It's a high level coaching group. And we had a office hours.

Zoom call on Friday afternoon.

And 22 of them showed up on a Friday afternoon. Yeah, yeah. Like when, you know, when something's optional like that, like.

You'D be lucky to get half. You typically get about a quarter of them. All right, she's it. Oh, yeah, he's here. Yep.

Three fourths of them. Okay, man. Like, how are we going to solve this stuff? And then we just start going down the road, like, okay, what problem do you have? And we start solving it. And what I also keep noticing is, I do not know, like, they'll give me the solution. I'm like.

But then we start peeling the onion, we start circling the problem, we start twisting the Rubik's Cube and little clues start falling out.

Right.

And after a while, well, you can do this. You can do this. You can do this. One of the things that I have observed is that there's almost like a red state, blue state mentality to this whole thing.

There definitely is. Yeah.

Okay. And, oh, boy, I always get them confused. Let's see, red is Republican.

Yeah. Conservative Republican. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So the red state is like, people, what's the big deal? And you go. You go to the small towns and the rural communities, and it is business as usual.

Sure.

Well, I'm in an interesting spot. I'm in Chicago, major, huge metro area.

But I'm also where I live. So, like.

If you draw a radius from downtown Chicago, which it's. And then you go out.

It'S like you go from.

Dark blue.

To bright red if you go far enough.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's pretty commonplace.

It's like a dial. Okay.

And I live.

Somewhere between the light blue and the pink.

Okay.

Okay.

Is that purple? I don't know.

It actually tilts a little more to the blue. I mean, where I live is a little more liberal. Okay. But like, I've got. I've got people strongly left and strongly right, and we're just kind of right in the middle of all of it. But like, the blue states are like. And they're watching CNN and it's all. And now this is a general true demographic pattern of densely populated areas tend to be more left and sparsely populated areas tend to be more right. They just do. And the suburbs, you get in the suburbs, you tend to be a little more in the middle ground. And most of my customers are in major metros. They tend to be in Denver and San Francisco and the east coast and Austin, Texas, and these big population centers. And so I have clients, I talked to one, and they do local contracting.

And they're just doing more marketing. And in the outlying fringy whisper wisps of the suburbs, where people aren't so paranoid and life is mostly normal and they're just kind of pulling away from the major metros and.

It'S too early to tell. They may not suffer.

That's interesting. Yeah, I even thought of it that way. Yeah. You can definitely steer your marketing in different ways. Your communication, copy angles, all that offers. Yeah, I mean, it rings true in San Diego. We're in the suburbs about 30 minutes, 20 minutes east of San Diego and downtown. And it's definitely more red here, that's for sure.

But let me just look at Southern California. You got LA Blue, Blue, blue. Right. And then as you sort of get further and further south, it gets a little more conservative, right? Yeah.

Yes. Which also. It also tells you something, because I think that political leanings have a lot more to do with your personality type and where you live than they have to do with hard facts.

Okay. I mean.

Conservatives tend to not be so creative people, and they tend to be very methodical people.

And liberals tend to be just loaded with ideas and their brains process information differently and they don't. Well, they don't understand each other, but they need each other.

Well, that's the interesting thing. It could be a blend. If you can make it work as a company, those two sides can do really well. But also, there's a lot of friction potentially there.

Liberals start companies and conservatives keep them running.

Right. It's true. No, I've read that recently somewhere, too. I'm like, that makes a lot of sense. Now, you don't see startups typically done by a lot of conservative folks. You know, Silicon Valley, for instance, a.

Lot of times the CEO that comes in and runs it is right.

Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I mean that. And this is all interesting. And then like, what. What we're noticing another trend or thing lately in the last couple weeks is just collaboration and even, you know, so collaboration within, as affiliate partners, just people that want to spread the word because you're putting something good out into the world. But we're finding even our own subscribers, our listeners, you know, we have this live stream coming up. They're all saying, how can I help? How can I help? How can I spread the word? I'll give you a testimonial. Whatever you want to do. Can I join somehow and it's like, I don't remember people really doing that a lot. I mean, obviously when you have loyal people, but now it's people we've never personally spoken with and it's really fascinating.

You know, I think, I mean, I kind of straddle a lot of worlds and I have to say, I think the entrepreneurial community.

Is one of the best kept secrets in the whole world.

I think we have some amazing, wonderful people. I think, I mean, yeah, I know there's pink Kool Aid and there's nonsense and I know, I get it, okay? But really, I think the ecosystem that you and I all inhabit, I think it is one of the best bunches of people and the best communities. There are so many people that if I have a problem that I can call. There is so much intelligence, there is so much willingness to take risk, there is so much cooperation. It's insane. I think if other professions had what we have, people would, they would think they died and went to heaven.

Sure.

And not, not that our lives are easy because they're not okay, but man, like, compared to the suffocating bureaucracies that a lot of people have to live in.

It's true. Yeah. And I think, at least for, you know, myself, yeah, I don't think of those other companies a lot of times because we are, we're blessed in this way that we have this modality that we can connect almost instantaneous. Even seemingly competitors can collaborate somehow. I mean, we're doing that right now with our funnel, you know, our back end funnel. We don't want to fulfill on this, you know, do higher ticket stuff, more or less. It's, it's where we like to be the promoters and platform builders and affiliate marketers. And we found a partner that we love in San Diego and he just molds perfectly with our brand. And there's no and we could be seen as competitors, but we could easily integrate. And we're doing a lot more integration with everything across the board with offers, content. You don't see that in a lot of other industries.

Well.

I don't want to go too far into this, but I wrote an evolution book and one of my major conclusions was evolution is not survival of the fittest, it is survival of the most cooperative and agile.

The science has been largely misrepresented by the textbooks. And actually, if you are an entrepreneur and if you've been at this for a while, you actually already understand evolution like biology.

Better than you think you do. Maybe even better than quite a few Scientists.

Because.

All of the best ideas happen when you take something from this ecosystem, something from this other ecosystem, you bring them together. Something from this industry. Something from this other industry. You go, well, let's not ask all of our people in this room how they solve it. Let's walk across. Let's go to that trade show across the street that has this totally other thing going on. And let's ask, how do they solve this?

And I think that's how you have to live your life. And I think that's how the world actually works.

Sure.

Agreed.

Fully. And there's so many light bulbs I can go off. It's almost like this alien, you know, community over here. And you're like, wait, hold on. They're doing this little slight tweak that I never. Okay, yep, let's apply that here. Or I can help them. I mean, there's. Yeah, I think innately that's us in our space, just kind of do that. I don't know if it's just the access to, you know, communication offers integrations. It kind of can just be done so instantaneous. Now with technology, it's. It's fascinating, but a lot of folks aren't. Took us a while to think that way. I think it was this year, really, we're like, ah. I mean, Perry, don't yell at us, but it was even like affiliate marketing our affiliates to promote our own stuff. Wasn't until this year, we're like, oh, wait, we have this amazing network we built up for like 10 years. They'll love us and trust us. They'll do anything pretty much for us. We should probably ask them to become affiliates.

We all have these blind spots and we all have these things like sitting right in front of us that we don't recognize. I mean, this is why. This is why you need consultants.

Yeah.

It's why you need mastermind groups. It's why.

It's just how it is. And it's okay. You don't punish yourself for your lack of. I mean, I have the hardest time solving my own problems, believe me.

I chatted with Jay Abraham the other day, and he said, I have the hardest time solving my own problems. I am so good at helping other people because he kept trying to help me. I'm like, okay, this call is to help you, Jay. He's like, ah, I know I got a problem. I'm like, stop helping me for a second.

I feel like that's so universal amongst entrepreneurs too, because I feel like I'm in my element when people are Asking me questions, and I'm giving them ideas. But for whatever reason, I mean, I'm getting better at it. I've started journaling every single day, multiple times per day. And that really helps a lot to, like, flesh out the ideas. But I don't know why. It's just so bizarre how I can have a million ideas for everybody else's company, but when my company has an issue. Yeah, I just miss it.

Yeah. Do you do. Go ahead, Matt.

I was going to sort of ship the topic, so if you. So I wanted to talk about the definitive traffic seminar that you have coming. With everything that's going on in the world right now, what, you know, how. Is. We obviously don't know how things are going to play out, but what are sort of some of the contingencies and things you're planning for. For that.

Well, I learned the hard way about eight years ago, you don't cancel a seminar.

It's like. It's like.

Those rental car parking lots where you drive out and it says, do not reverse. Severe tire damage.

Don't do it.

One time I canceled a seminar, and I won't even go into. It was awful. Okay. All right. So we're having a seminar. It might be on Zoom. If it's on Zoom, we'll still have a real one later. Maybe it's August. Maybe we will have a seminar in May 27th. I don't know. Maybe we're going to decide by April 15th. Okay.

The beautiful thing is Zoom now has breakout rooms and all these interactive things you can leverage. So it's just getting better.

In fact, we are learning, we're in training now about how you do all that stuff. Like, one thing, like, I'll just say this. If you're going to do an interactive.

Online event, it requires about three times more thought, planning, intentionality, than just getting up and giving presentations and doing PowerPoint slides. And so we're beginning to work through all of that stuff. And so that's a pivot. The worst thing that happens is people get two seminars for the price of one. They'll get the virtual seminar in May 27, and then they'll get the real one on August 27 or whenever it is. Okay. Nobody's. No. He's going to end up, like, losing out. No. I don't even know if we. That we've had any refunds. I don't. Maybe one. Okay. Like, people are sticking with us. I mean, the fact is, is people still need traffic no matter what happens. And guess what? So. So we're we're doing, we have a training series that as soon as you sign up, you actually get private trainings. And the whole thing, before you even go to the seminar, you've already paid for it because of your training. Well, one of the things that's immediately come out is the price of traffic has dropped precipitously.

Yes.

So Amazon pulled off of Google.

Really? Amazon?

Yes. I do not know that Amazon stopped advertising on Google. Well, there's a whole bunch of markets where that drops the clicks by a third.

Oh yeah, Instantly.

Facebook advertising is the cheapest it's been since 2013.

Well, you got to figure too, all of the. We were actually, we were just talking with somebody else about this, you know, not an hour ago, all of the E Com companies that were importing junk from China and drop shipping it, they can't do that right now. So all of them have just cut out their Facebook advertising.

Right, right, right. So. So now you have to be very careful. Just because it's cheap traffic doesn't mean it converts well. Okay? And you guys know that. So like you, you gotta watch all your dials and gauges like a hawk. But one thing it means is you can experiment. You can do experiments cheaper than you could ever do experiments before in years.

Okay? And there are some people that are absolutely. This is gonna be a boom town for them.

And like now's the time to go figure it out. Like if you fell off the wagon two years ago with Google Ads or Facebook ads or whatever and it got too expensive, like, well, now's probably a perfect time to go in there and figure it out and give it another whirl.

And of course, you know, we're offering the trainings on how to do all that stuff. And I want to say another thing. So.

This is another little science lesson. So in evolution, the way that you get a new species, this is done all the time, especially by botanists. With plants.

You take species A, species B, you mate them together and you sometimes get species C. You don't always get it, doesn't always work right, but sometimes you get it. Okay, so donkey plus horse equals mule, or tiger plus lion equals liger.

Okay? Now so like that's how you get a new species. You don't get a species by just sticking something somewhere for millions of years. You get it together from mashing together. Okay, now you have to ask, okay, so what causes.

Lions and tigers to get together? Because normally it's like, I want, I'm a lion, I want a lioness. I don't Want a tigeress? What makes a lion want a tiger?

Human interaction.

A catastrophe.

Ah, okay. Yeah.

Okay.

I was thinking, like, breeders force it, right?

So I'm like, subtract the humans.

Gotcha. Okay.

Okay. There's a volcano, there's an earthquake, there's a famine.

It's a reset, basically. And there's a big, giant reset.

And all of a sudden the tiger's, like, looking at that lion, like, hey, desperate times, okay? This is what is happening right now. Now, when you do hybrids, they don't work out most of the time. It's why it's not normal.

But this is when you start trying this crazy stuff. Everybody's got a pivot, okay, Pivot.

Just assume you're going to try 20 things and 19 won't work.

That's it. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at your. As you're saying this, you have this traffic map on, I think, the sales page of the definitive traffic seminar. And there are just so many things to test, and you probably don't need to test 19, but you sure as heck should start testing maybe one in each quadrant if you're looking at this map or maybe you have some other ideas around that.

Well, think of it like this. Think of it like you're going to test. If you test 20 things, 15 flat out won't work.

Four of them will to some degree, and one of them will be a grand slam.

That's actually pretty accurate. So you need to try at least five things.

I guess it goes back to even 20 again, right?

Just even. Expect to get something to work. But if you try 20 things. See, this is the thing, is when something works, especially in the 21st century, it works like gangbusters.

The difference between winners and losers just keeps increasing. And so that means you have to try more experiments in 2020 than you had to in 2000. That's just.

And we could go into why that is. I can explain if you want, but that is the truth, and you need to set your expectations accordingly. So think of it like I'm going to strike out 18 times. I'm going to hit second base on one of these, and I'm going to hit a grand slam on one.

Yeah, I want to go in. Yeah, I want to go in a little.

Why?

And if you relate it to, like, baseball, you know, amazing average is what, a third? I mean, that's even. That's. That's balling right there. That's really high. So you just take that and apply that to anything in life. You're looking Pretty good.

Well, so my book 8020 sales and marketing is all about 8020 and 8020 squared and 8020 cubed. And there's an 8020 inside every 8020 inside every 80 20. And that's like most people haven't gotten that memo yet. Okay. Most people don't realize that not only is 80% of your business come from 20% of your customers, but 50% of your business comes from 1% of your customers. And nature is designed that way. So like if half your business is coming from 1% of your customers, that's like, yeah, it's working properly. Okay, so that's like square one. Now here's a more advanced thing though. Is that.

So 8020 is just like this shorthand. It could be 70 30, it could be 90 10, it could be 95 5. Sometimes it's 64, 40, sometimes it's 99.1.

So the more advanced 8020 lesson is, okay, so when is it going to be 7030 and when is it going to be 99.1? Like what's the difference? Here's what it is. It's how many feedback loop cycles you get.

And that would be putting more things out into the world, more tests. Right? And then receiving data.

How many times can you haven't try something, test it. Tweak, test again, tweak test again. Okay, how many trips around the merry go round do you get and how fast?

Yeah.

Okay, so.

The Arctic tundra is like 60, 40 because it grows so slow.

Okay. But the Amazon Rainforest is 9010 because it has so many. Okay, so let's move this to business.

The brick and mortar world is 80 20.

For example, you ask your 6 year old, hey Joey, how many car manufacturers can you think of? Hyundai and Lamborghini and Ford. You can name a whole bunch of them. You go, joey, name six search engines.

Google.

Yeah.

Okay, okay, so brick and mortar, 80 20.

Digital 95 5.

Interesting. Okay, why?

Because how long does it take you to design and build a car? And you have to dig the ore out of the ground and smelt the ore and send it to a steel mill. It's a super high friction process and everything moves slow. So it's 80 20. Okay, Google. If Google is 10% faster than AltaVista, how long does it take people to figure out.

That Google is faster? And how long does it take them to switch from Google to AltaVista? How long does it take to change the setting on their browser to a new search engine? Oof.

Yeah, that's true.

So this Is why. Right. That is why. There's one eBay, there's one Facebook, there's one Google, there's one YouTube, there's not 17.

And in all of these, yes, there's a second, but they're far behind and there's a third and they're even further behind and there isn't even a fourth or a fifth. It doesn't exist.

Yeah.

So how does like a digital entrepreneur act on this information? Like, how do we make sure that we're the ones that. That pop up first to mind?

Okay, so there's two strategies. So one of them is you're an entrepreneur and you're solidly in the digital world. You have to be a big fish in a little pond.

Like, you have to have a USP that is so narrow that it only applies to 500 people in the whole entire world and 100 of them are your customer and you make a living.

Yeah, yeah.

So like Richard Starr principle kind of concept, right?

Yes. Yes. Okay.

Or if you can't do that, you go to a high friction business like bricklaying.

And you be better than any other bricklayer in Lawrence, Kansas.

So results in that sense.

Well, like, if you can't make it in the low friction world, because low friction requires you to be the best of the best of the best, and the best. Well.

Be a better than average bricklayer in Lawrence, Kansas with good marketing and you'll be fine.

So it's a high friction thing, but still a small pond because it's Lawrence, Kansas.

Right, right. And Lawrence, Kansas actually has room for probably more than one bricklayer to make a living. But going into the high friction business is definitely a strategy. In fact, the more problems we have with the Internet. Good grief. The Internet's probably about to crash right now from all these Zoom meetings.

Everybody's using it. Yeah.

Okay. Well, brick bricklaying isn't about to crash.

Nope.

And you can lay bricks without getting coronavirus on anybody. So you know what I'm saying? Like, it's almost like the cockroaches and the ants are going to outlast the nuclear war. So. So those are two. Two. But, but, but, boy, hear this. Online, whatever your niche is, you don't want to be number five.

No.

Ever. It's awful. You want to be number one or nothing.

One or nothing. Yeah, I guess. Super specialized. And yeah. Because it seems like that that would be the only way online is just a. Yeah. You better find that niche of that group that just resonates. Cultivate that group and guard them Like a hawk, you know?

Yeah.

And that's where you can make your living.

Yeah.

I feel like in the digital space, it's like the software, like people developing software that'd be like the high friction version of like a digital business. Right. That's. It takes a lot of upfront costs, a lot of time, a lot of development, a lot of user testing before you ever see a penny from it. You're probably just pumping money into it. Pumping money into it.

Right.

But the people who get to the end of that, they went through that high friction that most people aren't willing to do. So they'll probably have a little bit of easier time once it's time to actually market that versus somebody that's saying, I'm a funnel consultant.

Right.

Those are a dime a dozen. How do I know? So just trying to kind of translate that to sort of like the audience of this show is probably like, those are the kind of realms that they're operating in, you know?

Okay. So if you're going to be a funnel consultant, do not be just another funnel consultant.

Be.

The number one funnel consultant for the plastics industry.

There you go.

Okay. I mean, how many industries are there?

You can go all day. Yeah.

Okay. And I've got this blog post I wrote. I refer people to it all the time. It's 10 years old. It's called Memoir from a Pink Kool Aid drinker. Perrymarshall.com Pink Kool Aid. And it's got this. It's got this self evaluation.

And it's for figuring out, hypothetically, if you are a funnel consultant, what industry would you go specialize in? Well, the industry that you know, the one you're familiar with, the one you own 10 books about, the one you've had three jobs in, the one where you can finish their sentences. You don't go, hey, we could make a killing in, you know, that thing that, I don't know, CRM software. I've never done that before. No. Like, okay, if you were a bricklayer and now you're a funnel consultant, go build funnels for bricklayers and don't even try to be anything else.

Yeah.

And then. And then you're in the top of the top of the heap.

Yeah.

I mean, to translate it to Mike and Joe's own experience, before we got into digital marketing, we worked for a shutter company, like window covering shutters. I worked, I worked in that company for like 12 years. I think Joe was there for maybe four or five years, but we probably know more than 99% of the population about window coverings. Right. So if we wanted to take our skill set in digital marketing and apply it to the window. Window coverings industry, we'd probably be the only people out there doing it.

Oh, my gosh. Yes.

Yes. So you do, like, look, if you're another me too copywriter, a me too web designer or whatever, go find some group that you have an affinity and a knowledge of, and you can read a page of their diary and do it in your sleep. And go figure, okay, what are the very, very specific aches and pains? Because they all think they're unique. Like, okay, I know that a funnel is a funnel is a funnel, but they don't know that. Right. And you can describe it in their language and you can carve out a nice little niche for yourself.

And, like.

That'S how you compete in the 21st century with all these low friction, like, anybody can come and steal your cheese.

I mean, and there's no better time now than to do this. Get back to basics while everyone else is kind of watching the news or freaking out.

Yeah, the volcano went off and there's all these dead bodies all over the place. So go find. Hey, lion. Go find yourself a tiger.

There you go. Yeah, they're available.

I know there's no lions, but we got tigers, baby. You have all you want. Promiscuous.

Sure.

You can keep doing what you're doing right now, and there's a good chance you're going to fail in the current economy, or you can go test new stuff and there's still a chance you're going to fail at it. But wouldn't you rather fail going in a different direction?

You know, run towards the chaos, not away from it.

I love that quote. Jacob, if you're listening, make that the quote, please. This is how we communicate with our team Perry Slack and phone calls.

And I know.

I kind of want to. I want to highlight the traffic seminar a little bit more just because I think this is fascinating because you're bringing in, I think, the best traffic folks on the planet. That, and there's so many names that, you know, we've had on the podcast, haven't had on the podcast. Doesn't really matter either way.

You're.

You're cultivating experts in their specific field. So tell us a little bit more about that. And I think the. Those live trainings like you talked about are absolutely. I haven't seen anybody do that paired up with a live event, you know, leading up to it. I think it's just really Cool. Well, so probably a lot of work too.

Well, so, you know, the, the kind of naked confession here is I'm not really a traffic expert anymore. I just play one on tv. Okay. So yes, at one time I was definitely the Google AdWords expert, like 10 years ago. And well, as my customers evolved, well, I figured out.

Marketing is not the holy grail. Marketing is part of the equation.

And so I started getting more and more interest, strategic stuff. And then I looked back, it's like, Perry, do you realize you haven't done a traffic seminar in nine years?

Wow.

I'm like, okay. But I know these amazingly smart people. Okay? I know Mike Rhodes, he's the co author of our AdWords book. And I know Bob Rigneris who's the co author of our Facebook book. And I know all of these incredible people. And then I started reaching out to the ones I know and I go, so who's the best? You know, and then I start asking even more questions and reaching out further. So I think we're up to 16 or 18 speakers and we're going to have breakouts because not everybody wants to know about LinkedIn or wants to know about Reddit or wants to know about YouTube. And some people really want to go deep and in those things. And I thought, well, what would happen if we got all of these best people in a roof under a, you know, in a room under one roof?

It's like, well, I can do that. Let's do that. And I hate pitch fest. So we're not going to do that either. This is going to be like a serious, hard hitting, full on content seminar. These speakers can show off how smart they are. If they show off how smart they are, clients are going to hire them. So it's good for everybody. So it's even good for the brand new person or the person who's just spending a thousand bucks a month. It's pretty green, no problem.

So that's what we're doing. And.

You can go to perrymarshall.com ads and you can see the signup page. But I'm just really excited. We got these really smart people. We have a whole Facebook department. It's not even just like one person.

That's true.

I said, Bob Ragneris, you're the chair of the Facebook department. You just like, you run this thing however you want. It's like, okay, done.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's what we're doing.

Yeah. No, I think it's very powerful. I know on the page there, I mean, you'll Learn a lot just by. I think you'll kind of get these ahas of, I mean, you make it very clear. One is the worst number in business and probably life in general for many things. Maybe not wives, like no promiscuous wife stuff, but, but you know, one wife. Yeah, one wife is good.

I had to preface that. So. But it's just fascinating because, I mean, we're seeing it now.

That's a subject line. I'm just, oh, oh, there you go, use it.

But it's, you know, and that's something we've touted many times in our traffic course on this podcast is, you know, have different perspectives. People are living in multiple modalities online. Obviously there's restrictions in multiple platforms. They could slap. You do the whole Google slap and tomorrow your traffic's gone. So you never know.

So I'm curious from, from your perspective. So you have this, this amazing chart that's on the sales page and it's kind of split into like four quadrants and on one line there's live and recorded, on the other line there's text and av. But the point of this graph is that it really shows you that there's like a limitless amount of ways to drive traffic, right? Like there's, there's so many social media platforms, there's offline marketing, there's, there's just an abundance of ways to drive traffic. How, from your perspective, how do you inform people on like what they should be focused on? Right, because different businesses are probably going to want to leverage different traffic sources. How do you kind of narrow in on like which one should I start with?

Well, so the story of this little graph.

It goes back about five years ago. One of my roundtable members was a guy named Ben Gurelic and he ran a mountain guide training school. So think about who is interested in that. Like, well, 22 year olds who are trying to find themselves are interested in that, right? So he goes, Perry, you know, we got the sales funnel that you've taught us, Google Ad signup page, benevolent Chinese water torture with autoresponders and stuff. Then you're going to close them somehow or another. He goes, I got a bunch of like 22 year olds that aren't particularly fond of email and they're on all over social media and all of the video. He goes, so how do I do a sales funnel for them? And I was like.

Let me check with my sales manager and get back to you.

Well, one night, late at night, I was working on a hobby project and I was kind of lost in my happy little world. And all of a sudden it clicked in place. It was like, traffic is not linear anymore. It's an orbit. Okay. And it's like, okay, you're a planet and here comes an asteroid. Can the asteroid catch in the gravitational field and orbit the planet? And then can we eventually get the asteroid to land? Like, the sperm and the egg meet and, you know.

Right.

I'm going to see how many metaphors I can jam.

Interesting metaphors.

Okay. And it's like, oh, okay. So, yeah, there's a lot of things that were. And retargeting, remarketing and retargeting is clearly a big part of this. So I suddenly realized, oh, well.

So we got to 80, 20 this thing. And if we're going to, like, make a list of 50 different media, which I did, it was like, okay, from Wikipedia, Amazon, New York Times, faxing, local newspaper pagering, you know, YouTube.

Satellite radio, like, so we come up with a whole list.

How do we 80, 20 these? And it kind of struck me. So let's put these on.

A grid, and one axis is going to be text versus audio visual.

And then the other one, let's make it live versus recorded.

And then what does it look like if I put all these media in their quadrants? And then on top, the cherry on the Sunday is let's also conceive it like, in the center is a planet. And where are you in the orbit? Okay, so like, Wikipedia is way out on the edge of the orbit. If Wikipedia is going to help you sell anything, it's way out there. You're not closing the sale on Wikipedia, that's for sure.

You might get some name recognition out of it.

But yeah, yeah, it's just going to inform the process a little bit at the outer edges. Right, okay. But then there's things that are really close to the inner sanctum. Like, can I send you a text message in your pocket? And you're going to pull like, you're going to react to it in 10 seconds. That's really close to the inner sanctum. Or if I'm sitting in your living room, that's like, really close. And so I graphed all these out and I was like, hey, wait a minute, you know what?

So I've got live audio visual, which is I'm either live on a zoom call or I'm in person. Okay. I have recorded audio visual. That would be like this. Yeah, right. I have live text, which is like a text message. And then I have recorded text, which is Like Google Facebook webpage. So if I appear in at least one of these four quadrants.

Over and over.

Just one. Right. So you got 50 different media. We're going to pick four. One in this one, one in this one, one in this One, one in this one. I will seem like I'm everywhere, and I only have to be good enough at four media. Okay. You could be good enough at Facebook. Retargeting Google, retargeting YouTube, retargeting and talking to people on Zoom.

Yeah, that's it.

You can do four things. Right. So talking to people on Zoom is a skill set. And learning retargeting on three platforms, like, you could figure that out in a few days.

Sure.

Okay. So now anytime somebody hits my website, I'm going to seem like I'm everywhere.

And now when I roll up my sleeves and I buy some cold traffic, which is expensive, I'm going to hit them four different ways.

After the first hit. So at least I get a second bite at the apple. Maybe a third or a fourth or a fifth bite at the apple before they're gone forever. Before the meteor, you know, zooms off into outer space and they're gone.

Yeah, yeah.

And so that. That is. That is what I call the. The social media marketing maze is. Is like there isn't a company in the world that can be really great at 50 media. Mm. Right? Yeah. Like, not even Sony or. Or Warner Brothers Entertainment or anybody could be good at 50 media.

Right.

But. But. But what you can do, you can be really good at one, and you could be good enough at four.

And it seems like it's part of a customer journey as well, that spiral action. You know, of course, the closer is part of the. So it's. It's figuring out where is your avatar and kind of. You can map this out for your business individually, lay out the quadrants, lay out how far from, you know, personal touch are you?

It gets really powerful because we actually did this for ourselves when we first were introduced to this. I think it was the Rosetta Stone seminar. When we first saw it, we're like, ha, ha. Makes a lot of sense now.

Big traffic thing that we've been doing is now a cohesive thing that plays together nicely.

Right. And so you actually have a lot of choices.

And.

Usually one of the big platforms is going to be a really big part of that, and that's fine. But you can mix in direct mail, or you can mix in Twitter, or you could mix in.

Newspaper advertising or whatever is appropriate to whatever you do. And it all ties together. And so that is kind of the context in which we're doing the traffic seminar, which is. Okay, so not only are there all these traffic sources, but there is a relationship that they should all have to each other. And you're not just slinging mud against the wall.

Here's kind of an advanced little tip. And then we can wrap.

The way that you think about the orbit is like, how. So you got to figure out how far out do I want my gravitational field to go? Because more gravitational field costs money.

That makes sense.

Okay.

Okay.

Getting meteors really far away is an expensive proposition, but if they're zinging right over my house, maybe I could just grab it. Right?

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

Okay. So the way that you make that decision is recency, frequency, money, which is the classic direct marketing formula for who's gonna buy. So you advertise, like with remarketing and retargeting. You advertise to the most recent visitors to your website, you advertise to the most frequent visitors to your website, and you advertise to the people who spend money.

So you're dialing your retargeting windows 1 day, 3 days, 5 days, 10 days, whatever, based on recency, frequency of visits. Okay. And if you do that, you can almost. It's almost impossible to go bankrupt and lose your shirt.

That's. I like that a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recency. I mean, that. That's where I guess if you hit all the marks there, look at the map and identify where you want to live. I mean, you're setting yourself up much better than. I'm sure that's a 95. 5. You're in the 5 percenter now.

Yeah.

It's almost like the. The levels of awareness, too, I think. Was it Eugene Shorts who talked about the various levels of marketing awareness, but basically the most aware people of your product are the easiest to get in front of. Right. With the retargeting. And then you just sort of expand out further and further and further. But start with the lowest hanging fruit, the people who already know who you are, and then just expand that advertising out over time.

That's right. And so that's how you let out the clutch first gear and then go third gear.

And you stay safe. So we want all the people that come to our seminar to be cautious, conservative with your money. Don't blow it in one wad. Do experiments. Use the maze concept to dial in what you're doing with very high quality traffic and people that are likely to buy and then you can move out from there and go into deeper waters. And that's how you expand a marketing campaign without losing your shirt.

I like it. Well, cool, Perry. It's going to be a great event. And we'll link it below Definitive Traffic Seminar.

It's beautiful that you wanted to get in on the doing this.

Yeah, of course. And we're happy to contribute as well and be a part of it. So it's fascinating. It's going to be a good time. And so check it out. I know right now that I won't even say dates, because who knows what dates will be? So just go check out the link and then sign up. And I like the virtual traffic mini seminars. They feel like so tons of value. And where else? I mean, is there anything else you want to point people to other than that? Anything interesting going on?

Well.

I would just say there's hardly any skill in business that isn't more valuable than 80 20.

If you know 8020 inside out, backwards and forwards, I would recommend pick up my book 8020 sales and marketing. It will change the way you see the whole entire world. You got a little taste of it here. It will consistently, consistently lead you to better and better and better decisions.

Yeah, definitely agree with that. It's on our shelf. We've referenced it often, so you put out some amazing work. And maybe next time we'll talk about evolutions, but not now.

Love to do that.

I'm warning you. You get me started.

Really forward to it.

Hey, if you're getting started on it, I think that's the best topic they live in. So you're doing great work. Thank you, Perry.

Appreciate you.

Good to see you.

Hey, hey, hey. Thank you for listening to that episode. This is Joe Fear. I'm sure you probably already knew that, and Matt is not here right now, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed the episode just as much as you and I did, because, you know, he went into the production of kind of making that thing right along with me. So thank you very much. And I want to give a quick shout out to our buddies over at Easy Webinar. These guys have been supporting us for a while, a long time, and Casey Zieman is just a super good guy all around. He's actually been on the show before. He's the founder of Easy Webinars. So if you look up Casey Zman on any podcast platform you're listening to, go check him out. Go check out his backstory, what he's all about. You can learn a lot about webinars. As well. And right now, EZ Webinar, these guys are actually hooking you up with a great trial. It's a completely free trial to test out their software, soup to nuts. Check it all out and see if it's a good fit for you. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle that's H U S T L E. If you didn't know how to spell hustle, there you go. So if you go to EasyWebinar.com hustle you can go grab a free trial. And EZ webinar literally lives up to its name. It's super simple. I mean, super easy. And it does all the stuff that you're looking for in any kind of thing with webinars. I mean, they literally cover every single type of webinar you possibly can do. So from live to automated to scheduled at specific times, and all these crazy features in between, can't even list them all out. I'll be here way too long. They give you a ton of advanced analytics. What's working, what's not during your webinar. Based off all these actions, you'll see who attended, how long they stayed, if they clicked the offer or if they didn't. Basically, you're going to make more money and you're going to work less with this thing and you're going to create more better relationships with the folks that are listening because it's a good experience. You want to give that good experience along with some great content, of course, and a killer offer if that's what you got for them. So go try it out yourself. Go check out easywebinar.com hustle that's easywebinar.com hustole Alrighty. Righty. So that is the end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, enjoying it. Hopefully you did. I'm pretty sure you did. If you last of this long and go check out Easy Webinar when you get the chance and we will talk to you next time. Bye bye.

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