Boost Your Productivity While Staying Sane: The Fifth ILM Zoom Meetup featuring Eelco de Boer - I Love Marketing Episode #379

So the number one thing to drive it all is to get better at your ability to deliver the result that people are buying from you. And ultimately to get so good at delivering the result that you would be able to say even in your mind, what would I do if I only got paid if my client gets a result? That's the best driving question the that you can have. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Freedom. It's why most entrepreneurs do what they do. Learn how to have more time for the things you love, be peacefully productive and grow your business sustainably. In today's episode of the I Love Marketing Podcast, in this episode, Ilko DeBoer, Dean Jackson and Joe Polish break down the problems plaguing entrepreneurs when it comes to their offer and how they choose to deliver it. Ilko will share his surprising strategy for staying productive and distraction free. And you'll get the best marketing tactics and tweaks that are working today. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to geniusnetwork.com Elko DeBoer.

He's from Amsterdam. He's a serial Internet entrepreneur, investor, author and speaker. He runs seven companies all based in Holland and all the companies are targeted to the Dutch market. Companies like payment processor called PayPro, which is like ClickBank, the email marketing service, Normal like Aweber, an e commerce system. He has a hosting company, a coaching company and more. Elka loves to travel and he helps entrepreneurs adapt their businesses towards their lifestyle, not the other way around so that they can claim back their freedom. He created a thing for all of our Genius Network members last year called Genius Focus. He does things on Internet fasting. He's got a lot of really great perspectives, really good at distilling wisdom. Just a good human. So what would you like to say about elk Odin and then you. All of that. All of that.

And he's got a beautiful singing voice.

Good, good. I can't wait to hear that. So you want to do the first question or you want me to hit him with the first one?

You go ahead. I don't have the list of questions.

Well, I always see I'm better prepared than you are.

I don't need to be prepared.

We can have a conversation with them, but I'll follow along on your questions.

I just have jumping off points even though I know, I know exactly so, Elko, how has the pandemic changed the way you do business, if at all?

First of all, thank you, guys. Appreciate being here. I think I've been in Genius Network now for, like, six years. And, yes, we met on Necker in 2013 and 2014. It was funny when you were talking about Richard Branson and note taking. I remember a conversation I had with Richard where he was talking about him, you know, when the great house burned down that he lost, I think, 45 years of all of his notes.

Yeah.

And I asked him, like, what's up? And he said, I was so angry that I lost all those notes that I decided to quit writing notes. So he didn't write notes for, like, three months. And then he said the following. He said, our business really suffered from me not taking notes during those three months. So, yes, I'm a big believer in journaling, in making notes. Not just at, you know, meetings like this, but every time. Like, whenever you feel like it just writes down your ideas, your inspiration, your frustration, your goals, your plans. I think I said this to Devang today. I had a call with Devang today as well. And, like, really invest in nice journals. Like, I'm. I'm not saying that this is, per definition, a nice journal, but it's something that I took time and effort into, really find someone, some. A journal that I really like. So instead of just having, like, this random book or whatever, just really, like, take. Take the time and invest, like, 20 or 30 bucks to. To. To have a great Corona or. Sorry, Covid or Pandemic or whatever you want to call it.

The shit storm that has overtaken many parts of the world in different ways.

In the beginning, when it hit us, I was like, man, this is going to change everything. And then after a couple of weeks, I realized, like, wow. And not to brag, but I really realized, like, we have been running the business in a way that everybody wants to run it right now. Like, our whole team was already virtual. We already sell everything online. So we sell online products and software and all that stuff. And I just really realized that. Really, like, this whole Internet thing, what Dean is talking about back in 1998, like, what we're going to do about it, it's just the biggest blessing if you really own it in the right way. And so a lot of people, they have been sleeping on this Internet thing, and most of the people woke up during this pandemic. Like, man, maybe if I'm an owner, I really have to use this Internet thing because they have to, right? Now, and that was a big awakening for me as well, that we've been betting on the Internet for, like, 20 years now. People are waking up right now, and it's still a big opportunity for the next 10, 20 years. Yes, people are waking up, but there's still so much opportunity. And most of the people, in my opinion, are still really sleeping when they really look at the opportunity of, as Dean would say, Cloudlandia.

What's working for you online right now? What's not, what's keeping clients and bringing them in and all that.

So I think the most important thing when you want to become successful online is really know how to create a great offer. Like, if you have the best offer in the game, you can outspend all of your competitors. Your ads don't need to be perfect. Like, a lot of things don't need to be perfect. But if you really have a great offer that out converts anything or anybody, that's when you're winning. So a lot of people look at tools like, which tool do I need to use? Or what techniques do I need to use? But if you really know how to craft an amazing offer where people be looking at it and they'd be like, wow, I need that. That's when you're winning. And the cool thing is, and I learned this from Dean, and I think Dean learned this from Jeff Bezos. Don't ask what's going to change, Ask what's not going to change. And really being able to create an amazing offer that people can't resist, that's something that will never change. That works now, but it also works in five years or 10 years or 20 years or 50 years. So, yeah, being able to create amazing offers, that's the game, the whole thing.

The precursor, of course, to making a great offer is being able to deliver a great result for people to be able to deliver a great experience. So the number one thing to drive it all is to get better at your ability to deliver the result that people are buying from you. And ultimately to get so good at delivering the result that you would be able to say, even in your mind, what would I do if I only got paid if my client gets a result? That's the best driving question that you can have. What would be the thing that you're so confident in that you know that there's no way that they're going to fail at that that allows you to make a better offer? You know, sometimes making a better offer that you can't back up is a problem. That's why People are reluctant to making a lot of guarantee offers that they realize people are going to get and then they're not going to have the great experience so they can't back up their ability to make the great offer. If your abilities exceed to the point where you are guaranteed that you can get the result from someone, then the offers you're going to be able to make are infinitely better and the money you're going to be able to charge is better.

What if you are in a situation where you just don't really understand direct response? You don't even understand what make an offer means. I'm trying to take myself into the mindset of people. You know, there's a lot of individuals that just cannot wrap their head around marketing. Like Gary Halbert used to say, three things you need in order to sell something, you need a product or service. Everyone here has that thing if they run their own company, if they're starting something, if they work for someone, whatever the product or service experience that you sell, you need a sales pitch or a marketing message where the offers within there and then you need a delivery system. And what we see notoriously is people looking for delivery systems in order to make up for not having a good sales pitch. Right?

Yeah.

So social media, like I would always use the analogy, back in the day it was yellow pages, direct mail, before Internet existed, tv, radio, magazines, direct mail. And then today there's all these different delivery systems, but it's that thing in the middle. And so marketing is what you say and who you say it to. So there's plenty of places to deliver messages to, but only the hungriest fish snap of the crappiest bait. And something I first heard from Alex Mendozian, which is the only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder, right? And so there's a lot of people that sing the wrong note really loud and then they get frustrated that no one's buying their stuff. And their stuff could be really good. They could be really good people. And that's even more frustrating when you're ethical, hardworking, really care, but no one buys your shit, right? No one's responding. And so that's where the offer comes in. So that's the psychology that I'd love to get you guys. When I say you guys, I mean Dean and Elko to frame because I think that's always a really valuable conversation and it would be life changing for some people that are watching right now.

Well, to look at your question about what would you, what does somebody do if they don't know about that stuff, that goes to the reason why we started I Love Marketing in the first place. When we started it 10 years ago, we were both at 20 years of experience in marketing, running our own businesses, half of it before the Internet and the other half after the Internet. And if you look at the first 50 episodes of I Love Marketing, it's us recounting basically all of the lessons and all of the things, the evolution that we went through to find what an offer is and to do that would put up those 50, the first year of I Love Marketing against any marketing education that you're going to get anywhere. And it took a while to get to that point to be able to say that, because often you can't see what's on the label when you're inside the jar kind of thing. But now that I've seen enough evidence and enough people who have taken that foundation and built amazing things with it and credit us or thank us or share with others about what they've been able to do, that's the place to start. And now there's so many podcasts now, even with niche podcasts, in whatever business you're in, I would take that marketing education and then go deep and also finding the people who've done what you want to do in your industry and learn from their mistakes or their journeys.

You know, it's funny, we've launched so many. I love Blank podcast because of starting out and where I Love Marketing first came from. Some of you that don't know the history I originally had registered. I hate marketing.com because I was like, there's a lot of people that don't understand marketing, and because they can't make it work, they hate it. And I'm going to use this as a. There's a. There's a backstory. I'm not going to go into the backstory about how I ended up coming up with it, but I, you know, I just registered. You remember that story about the.

It's on episode one. Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah. If you want to hear the longer version, go listen to episode number one. Basically, after registering I Hate Marketing, I was talking to Dean, and Dean was doing Marketing Mondays, and we had done our. By the way, I got to say this, the very first podcast that we ever did ever in the world was because of Alex Mendozian, who's here right now. And that was in 2005 or 2006. Alex, when we did our first podcast, I think 2005. 2005. Yeah. We were going to launch a $10,000 a person podcast and we just never did. I wish we would have the store. Even if only one person would've signed up, it would have been a great story to tell now. But anyway, so then I was talking to Dean and we were having this great conversation where we were just sharing ideas with each other. And I, you know, we were talking and saying, you know, how valuable it would be if other people could hear what we just talked about. And then we decided we would start I Love Marketing. And so I registered I Love marketing. I paid $3,000 for the site. Someone actually owned it, but I bought the site for three. And that's how I Love Marketing started, but originally was I Hate marketing. So anyway, I still own I Hate Marketing Dot com. I've not done anything with it.

But Joe, can I say one thing about journaling and offers if that's okay?

Absolutely.

What Elko said and what Dean and you have said. So we've talked about journaling before lockdown. I would be outside the US And I do five day events. I do five of them per year. And so I've been in front of a lot of people. And so as an irresistible offer, usually the thing that makes an offer irresistible, besides the core offer, are your bonuses. And the best bonus I've ever offered that gets people to run to the back of the room or click on the button to order, is the journal of journals. So, like Dean, I've journaled a long time. I've spent half a million dollars on masterminds in 25 years. But I have this one journal at home that is like Yelko's. You know, it's like, cost me 120 bucks just to buy it. Looks like an antique. And I put all the best of the best pages inside that journal. And I would tease it for the five days or tease it for the five hours of the webinar. Yes, five hour webinar. And then I would tell them as a bonus, and I would put a limit on it. I would tell them that if you want to see what's in here, we've generated over $17 million from what's in here. But there's probably another 45 million. And I won't charge you a royalty if you get it, but it's yours. I've scanned it, it's yours. And I put a limit on it. It's genuine. And then we cut it off and that's a bonus. And I've never found in the last 10 years because I've offered it again and again. You just have to build it. They're reading your journal, and it's almost as if they're reading your diary and they get to know you better. And it's the single best stick strategy I've ever done. As a bonus, because they know you at such an intimate level, the way you take notes and you've already done all the work. You don't have to create anything. And it's like you opening your kimono and saying, okay, this is what it is. And, you know, I have journal review day. So, you know, buffer day, free day, and focus day. I have one day a month that's journal review day. So I go to my old journals and like Dean, I'm not the same person I was when I first wrote that stuff, so it has more meaning, even if it was 10 years ago. So that's how powerful a journal can be. You can actually monetize it. And it's done so much for me as an irresistible portion of an offer. And all you're doing is repurposing what you've done just for yourself. So I wanted to just mention that before we ended.

Thank you.

That was okay.

I do my best.

No, that was good. That was good. Thank you. I'm looking through people here. We got Kenny Arnoff. Kenny, just say something so people can see what you look like right now. Kenny's one of the top drummers in the world.

I'm here. I'm here. I'm glad you shouted out to me, because I'm about to go to my recording studio.

How many gold, silver, bronze, whatever the hell all those records are in the back. How many of those things do you have?

I have 1300 of them. But they're not all up. There's only two places I'll put them up, and that's in my office here and in my studio. The rest are all boxed up. You know, because I'm not one of those guys when you walk in the house that the ceilings and the floors and the walls are, you know, all filled with my gold records. Gold, platinum, diamond is 10 million records sold. So I was on three albums. Check this out. From a business standpoint, I'm on three albums that sold over 40 million, which was two Celine Dion records and Meatloaf Bat out of Hell 2, which had I'll do anything for love, but I won't do. So the record labels were making 82 cents or 85 cents on the dollar. Think about that. So that's the way they could Build bands. Like, my first big break was with Mellencamp. I mean, when Mellencamp came out with a record, it wasn't, you know, it didn't sell a lot, but it sold enough. So they go, okay, yeah, we'll invest more money into making a record. You got to pay to get on the radio. You got to pay to get on the road. You got to pay to promote. You got to pay, pay, pay. But in the end, he started, you know, selling 2 million records every time he released an album. And so it paid off. Of course, all that's gone now. Records are free. So. And so the pandemic really messed everything up, because everybody went down the rabbit hole of, oh, we can make our money on tour, sell merchandise, sell the CDs at the venues. And now the pandemic just crushed. I mean, it's really hard to build, you know, a business. I mean, everybody talks about. Yeah, but, you know, you can get your stuff out on the Internet, but good luck. I mean, everybody's jumping on that rabbit hole. How do you get people's attention, you know? Yeah, you guys talk about that all the time.

That's the prize, Jewel, right there. Attention.

I mean, you know. You know, it's like if you're chocolate, there's a lot of people out there that like chocolate. But when you put me on the phone with. What was that. That guy's name? Joe? The kid. The young kid.

Oh, Cooper. Cooper.

Yeah, Cooper. Did you see? His plan is brilliant. Basically, it's some sort of algorithm that somebody makes some music, and they figure out who these people are. Let's say this band resembles the taste of chocolate. Well, somehow they find out in the world who out there likes chocolate. I don't know how they're doing it, but that's brilliant. I mean, we need to do a.

Special I love marketing thing, Dean, with all of the different musicians and stuff that we know, because it leads into boys bands. Elko's in tight. Probably, like, gangsta rap. What are your five albums that you have listened to the most that you think are amazing? If you could just rattle those off real quick? Kenny.

Well, anything Led Zeppelin, anything Beatles, anything who. Anything Jimi Hendrix. I'll just throw on something different. Stevie Wonder. It's not one record. You know what I mean? You put. It's a body of work. People don't do that. Can't do that anymore. You try to do that. You try to put a body of work. Every Led Zeppelin album. And I talk about this, when I speak is like one of the Things you have to always be trying to get better. Always be trying to get better. Let me. Let me just say this. Beatles, Rubber Soul, you remember, that was a huge departure from anything they'd ever done. Very influenced by Bob Dylan. Got very introspective. Then they did Revolver, which was like. They were starting to take drugs now. So they would get out there and then they did sergeant Pepper's, and then they were like. They were doing so much. They would take. Took over the studio and were working 24 hours a day trying to create. Then they did Magical Mystery Tour. Now they're definitely doing drugs to dress like walruses on the thing. Now, let me say this, dude. 48 songs on all those four albums all got played on the radio, which is insane. They did that in one year and 11 months, dude. Four different products. Four different products, same band. Somehow they brought their audience to the next level. And they did it one year, 11 months. When I was in the Mellon Camp band, we do one album every two years. You'd spend half a year writing, arranging, recording. Then you market it with videos and stuff. Then you go on tour for a year, take a month off and start again. But these guys somehow did that. That's extraordinary. That's all I'm gonna say. I gotta go to my studio, but.

Awesome.

Thanks for the shout out.

Thank you, man.

Cool, guys. I'll see you. Thanks for inviting me. I love it.

Absolutely. Thank you for being here. Yeah, you guys gotta listen to the podcast we did with Kenny Arnoff a few years ago with my buddy John Butcher.

It's.

It's pretty, pretty, pretty awesome. He's.

All right, let's reel it back to Ilco here.

He's probably listening. Elko, what's your favorite music?

Well, I was thinking about the albums and I was like, well, anything jay Z, anything Dr. Dre, anything. Too short, back in the days. Wu Tang, anything Nipsey Hussle. So, yeah, but this was inspiring.

What's your favorite Too Short song? Other than Don't Fight the Feeling? Because I know you listen to that all the time.

Cocktails, Getting it, Can't Stay away. Why are you blushing, Joe?

Because it's just hysterical. Like.

Yeah.

I mean, those of you that haven't listened to that fine, uncensored music, you don't know what you're missing.

Right? So it's. So last week when. When we had 100k meeting. During the hundred k meeting, it started at 6pm Amsterdam time. And we were just starting the meeting in a couple of minutes, like lights Turned out. And so I had an electricity problem. So I went to the other, other room, and I saw that, like, my whole ceiling was collapsing because we had a flood from, like, there was so much water. So my whole man cave here was getting destroyed. But the worst thing was it was destroying my record collection. And my first business was an online record store, online hip hop record store. And I sold that in 2007, but I kept 50 records because, like, the whole too short collection and everything, and it got completely destroyed during the. During the flood last weeks. That was interesting.

You really did. It got destroyed.

Yeah, well, my record collection got destroyed. I mean, the rest is fine. I mean, that's just material, but this is material as well. So I was talking to a friend, and he was like, well, that's messed up that you lost your record collection. And when I created that record collection, like, I was really traveling to find those gems. But now I think Dan Sullivan always says, if you have enough money to solve a problem, you don't have a problem. So I can just go to ebay now and just order it. But it's. It's just. So it's not a problem. A thousand bucks and I'm good.

It's good to make money. So let's talk about making money. So how do you make money? Elko? You know, you've got some really cool LinkedIn strategies. So here's things I want to talk. There's the topics I want to discuss today. You have a unique way of dealing with technology, and I'd like you to describe that. You have a really cool LinkedIn strategy. I'd love to have you do that. And then, you know, you have all kinds of ways that entrepreneurs can increase their rejuvenation while also being more productive. So those are the topics. Topics I'd like to cover. Which one do you want to pick first?

Whatever you want to talk about.

Let's talk about how you deal with technology. You're one of the top Internet marketers in the entire country you live in, but you have a very interesting way of how you use technology versus being used by it. Many people are used by technology. They don't utilize it.

I think the Internet is the biggest blessing ever. I mean, it's the reason that we're talking right now. It's the reason that I met you in 2013. Like, it's the reason that I'm great friends with Dean. Like, it created an amazing lifestyle for me. It has so many amazing advantages, but it also has so many disadvantages, and especially when it comes to your time, your presence, the feelings that you have. So, for example, you have certain feelings, certain vibes whenever you're, for example, on Facebook or Instagram or whatever. It differs for everybody. Like, one person doesn't really care about, like, whatever he or she feels when they're browsing the socials. The other person is comparing him or herself to somebody else. The other person is, like, scrolling away their life for multiple hours a day, feeling guilty about not being productive. Like, there could be so many different things. So, yes, the Internet is amazing, but it also has a lot of disadvantages when it comes to focus and presence and peace of mind. It's a big destroyer of all of those things. So what I've been doing since I discovered this in 2008, and this is pre. I mean, YouTube was out like maybe for a year. There was no Facebook, no Instagram, no WhatsApp, no iPhone, I think. And I really figured at that time already, like, man, I'm consistently checking my email and consistently checking the stats of the business. I'm consistently in this OCD loop and consistently doing the same thing all over and over again and not really going anywhere. And then in 2008, I was stressed out, like, business wasn't going. And I decided to switch off the Internet for the first time in like eight years when I got home. So I made it a commitment to myself, like, okay, after 7:00pm, I'm going to switch off this Internet thing. I got home, 7pm on that day, and I was like, okay, what am I going to do now? It was the first time in years that I was actually bored. And a lot of us, we don't know how to be bored anymore. So I was bored. I was like, what am I going to do? So I was like, you know, let me call my mother. So I just called my mother and we spoke for like 45 minutes and we had a great conversation. And then it was 7:45. It's like, okay, what am I going to do now? So I called a friend of mine, her mom, and we talked for another 45 minutes. And it was amazing, great conversation. And then around 10, I was like, yeah, let me get to sleep. And I had the best night's sleep since a long time, simply because I wasn't that distracted and I wasn't that high on energy and all those impulses. And that really gave me a huge insight because this Internet thing, it's amazing, but you really got to manage it. And it shouldn't be managing you. You should use the Internet. But it shouldn't have the Internet use you. And now 2020, it's so much harder now with the smartphones. I mean, all the great apps like Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook and everything, everything is designed so that you are addicted to that whole thing. So it's really hard. I mean, you need a lot of discipline to not be on those things. So what I've been doing since 2008, off and on is I call this Internet fasting. Most of us know about intermittent fasting, and intermittent fasting is when it comes to food, you have an eating window. So when you have an eating window, for example, you eat for. You have an eating window for like 8 hours and a fasting window for 16 hours. So for example, you start eating at 10 in the morning and you stop eating at 6 in the evening. That's 8 hours. And then after that you're 16 hours of fasting. And this has a lot of advantages. And I don't do it myself, but I know that this has a lot of advantages. So for example, in the 16 hours that you don't eat, you don't have to think about the food, like what do I, am I going to eat? Or how much I'm going to eat? No, you don't even have to think about the food. It also has a lot of benefits that you are fasting. So it has a lot of physical benefits and a lot of mental benefits. I apply the same thing when it comes to Internet, so I call it Internet fasting. So you have an online window every day and then you have an offline window every day. So for example, you could have a, let's just say an 8 hour or 16 hour as well. So an 8 hour online window and a 16 hour offline window, which would mean that, for example, I mean you can decide on whatever you want to do, but you go online at 10 in the morning. So you wake up at, for example, 7 o' clock. And then the first three hours you have peace of mind, you have freedom, you can just chill, maybe work on projects, but not being on the Internet. So you have your WI fi off on your MacBook and you don't have your Internet on on your phone for the first three hours you're productive. You're not responding or reactive. No, you're productive or whatever you want to do. And at 10 you switch it on. And for example, at 6 you switch it off. So you have 8 hours of Internet time and you have 16 hours of fasting time, Internet fasting time. Basically living your Lifetime living in the real life time. And that's been a total game changer for me. Like the whole Internet fasting principle, it changed my life. And every time, I mean, when I'm doing it, it's amazing. When I'm not doing, I feel horrible and I'm not productive and I don't feel good about myself. So it's, it's a simple practice. It's not easy to do, but once you do it for a longer period of time, heaven opens up. It's amazing.

Very good advice. Awesome. Well, let's go to the next one, which is so, I mean, you kind of mixed a little bit of, I think the. What entrepreneurs can do to rejuvenate their energy and be more productive. I mean, that's one way to do it. What else do you do?

That's a big one. Internet fasting is a big one. Spend a lot of time with people that you give you joy. Even more important, don't spend time with people that cost you energy. Spending a lot of time alone. I like being, I mean, I have three children. I love them, they're two, four and seven. But I also really love to spend time with myself. So I now, I physically feel right now, it's been a busy week that I want to take two days off tomorrow and the day after tomorrow just be with myself. I really like solitude, so I don't like to be in the middle. I don't like to be busy and doing a little bit of everything or I don't like to be distracted and be with people that I love. I really want to have quality time and leftover time and with the quality and I think I heard this from you, Joe, but quality time on the things that are most important for you and then the leftover time for the things that are not that important for you. So that's important for me.

Let me say this more so just so Dean doesn't have a chance to ask a question. So Ted was like, how do we do this in an on. Okay, so, Joe, how do students do this in an online education world? And what I want to mention is that part of so much of what you do is online education. I mean, you're in that world, we both are. And there's also a point where you can be absolutely consumed by it. And I've said this, and I'm not going to go on a big tangent on it. I mean, half my time is spent helping people that struggle with addiction. I have my world of business and entrepreneurs, the two groups I want to be a hero to are entrepreneurs and people that struggle with addiction. So I have Genius Network. I have, I love marketing. We have Piranha marketing. We have 10x talk. We have all this different stuff that we do for entrepreneurs. I, you know, I'm partners, advisors, equity in 21 different companies. I have a lot of stuff going on that I'm got my, my crazy little fingers in, and I'm getting ready to take a year off, you know, and have to coordinate all of that. And I have an online business. And you, you have an online business. You do a lot of online education. And so there needs to be this understanding of unless you're living in a situation where you're controlled by others, how you set up the game is how you set up the game. And so how would you respond to that? Elko and even Dean, how do students do this in an online education world? Because you're doing it.

Yeah, I think it's a great question and it's an obvious question. So two things. One is I work with entrepreneurs only, and I love working with entrepreneurs. And I love entrepreneurs. And if I would ask any entrepreneur, if I would ask a question right now to everybody who's online, like, what's the number one reason that you started as an entrepreneur? What was the number one reason? And the answer is almost always sort of the same. And it's freedom. We started our business for freedom. So that's one thing. And then if you look at the business and you can't not be online for a couple of hours, otherwise the business would be collapsing. If you're really honest with your yourself, how much freedom do you have? So what I say, and I'm writing the book right now about Internet fasting, and one of the things that I write in the book is Internet fasting is an amazing exposure of how free you actually are from the business. So if you can't be offline for a couple of hours or maybe a day or even a week, how free are you for real? And so that's one thing. It's a great exposure. So you could start, maybe start with one hour offline per day or two hours if the business would collapse. If you can be online for offline for one or two hours, like you really have a problem. So that's one thing. Second thing is, if you are in online education, and we talked about this like 30 minutes ago, what's the most important thing when you want to sell a lot of your products, Assuming what Dean said, you have an amazing product, what's the Most important thing? Well, it's create an offer. So what is an offer? An offer is something. It could be a sales letter, it could be a webinar, it could be a sales video, could be an email sequence, could be all of those things. Those are the things that you really need to think and brainstorm, and you need to create those things. But you don't need to create those things on the interwebs. You can do that. And you have to do that in, for example, Apple Notes or Google Docs or a Word document or whatever. You have to type it in something. So when I'm talking about Internet fasting, I'm not saying that you should shut down the Internet and you shut down the laptop. You can't do anything. A lot of the time that I'm fasting. So I'm not on the Internet. I'm actually spending on my MacBook. I'm creating. I'm a creator. Whenever you sell online products, you are a creator. You create your products, you create your content, you create your ideas, your marketing, your webinars, your presentations, your emails, all that stuff that's creating. But you don't need to be on the Internet. You can switch off the Internet. It's like whenever you're in a plane and you have a fully charged MacBook with you, like, that's the most amazing time to create something amazing. Well, you can emulate that in the normal life, just switching off the WI fi from your MacBook or your computer and just work offline so you can do the deep work instead of the superficial work. Because it's so important. If you really want to create an amazing offer, really want to create an amazing product, you need to do the deep work and you need to do the critical thinking, and you need to be extremely prolific. And the only way or the best way to do that is to go all in the creative process. And the best way to do that is to be undistracted.

And let me mention. Dean, I want. Have you talked. I just want to mention that Elko said it could be a problem.

Again, I work with addicts all day long. I've been in recovery for 20 years. I'm an addict.

I understand.

Workaholism is a respectable addiction. Anything that has compulsivity attached to it is extraordinarily difficult. If you're truly addicted to something, then there's a lot of technology addiction. Hardly anyone admits it. Many of the entrepreneurs that are the most famous social media people, if you literally took them away from that, they would have withdrawals like a heroin addict. I mean they would lose their shit. So it's highly, highly addictive for some people. And you're not going to just make a choice and say I decide I'm not going to be on the Internet. I mean a lot of this, the.

Compulsivity is so deep.

And in that particular case there are ways to get help for that. I mean I always encourage people do online Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Those are available online. Meetings are available online. If you go to geniusrecovery.org, we've listed all the different types of addictions where you can find in person meetings when they are available. And virtual meetings, not just 12 steps, but all kinds of different addictive sort of things. I don't want to just have people thinking it's just as easy for some people. Just I'm just going to not go on the Internet for some people. They literally go into massive anxiety. And it's not an intellectual thing. It's, I mean it's beyond that.

And I went through that anxiety because for me I really feel that this is so important because I am not this person that is really easy with this. Like it's been really tough for me because I was so and still are so addicted to like the Internet and social media. It really grabs me, it's a trigger for me. So I really come from a place of compassion. I really understand what that this is really hard for a lot of people. It's not easy. But on the other hand, like if you're willing to do some things that are uneasy, life becomes a lot easier. And for you as well, Joe, I think what you're doing now with your sabbatical, like I say Internet fasting is a great exposure. You being offline, like off the grid for a year, it's a great exposure for you as well. Like how free are you from the business? And this is great because now you can make adjustments, now you can make long term adjustments. Like ok, what is it that I'm going to do so that I can actually do this long term without it being too hard for me?

Exactly, exactly. Thank you, Dean.

Well, Ilka and I've talked about this, you and I talked to Joe. This idea of having an awareness of the three dials that I talk about, of having daily joy and abundant time and financial peace. Those are the three dials that I'm looking to optimize and that often we get into a situation where if you don't have financial peace, if you're stressed about money Then you're having to put in time trying to do things that you wouldn't normally do because you need the money. And then you get into a situation where they get money and a lot of people just get to a point where they get enough money, but then they try and just live the joy without striving for the financial peace that's going to give them the freedom to do all of that all along. Naval Ravikant has a great concept about this, that really what we're really looking for at the base is all humans, what we want to be.

Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a minute, Dean. I'm going to give people an example of what I do. I'm going to say it again. Start with, you're going to talk about Naval, and I'm going to send him a text with what you're about to say here with Dean Jackson. Go ahead, Dean. What were you going to say?

A big thing that, you know, Naval talks about this idea of that as humans, we're all striving for three things. We want to be healthy, and we want to be happy, and we want to be rich. That's the essence of the things. And what I loved about what he discovered is that money rich is one of the ones that you can actually with. Like, you can get to a point where you're rich and you reach the finish line of that. You don't need to continue striving for that. And you can turn all of your attention to being happy, to pursuing happiness and health. And so you're going to work on all three. They're all important, and it makes sense. Let's focus on getting you rich first and then have that as a platform to pursue the other things. So it's really harmonized with the dials that I was talking about of the daily joy and abundant time and financial peace.

See, that's a little genius networking tip there. You hear someone say something, you just send them a message they love it, feels good, and then, of course, the world goes on. What else would you say to this subject, Elko, related to either rejuvenation, productivity before, or we go on to your LinkedIn strategy, which is pretty badass.

Yeah, well, one more thing about, for example, this whole Internet thing is what you could do is have somebody from your team or maybe your spouse or mother, father, whatever. If you really don't want to spend much more time on social, for example, Facebook or Instagram, have them change your password so you can't access Facebook. And when you want to get on Facebook or On Instagram or whatever. Just ask them, like, hey, can I. Can I. Can I get on the Internet? Sorry, can I get on Facebook or Instagram or. So it's. I mean, this way, you don't need to. You don't need discipline to not be on the socials, because you just simply can't access it. So that's. That's one more hack. I have a lot of those hacks, but those are some things that work really well.

You shared your strategy with genius network members, 100k group. It's got a lot of people utilizing it in Genius Network. You're pretty badass at it. So share kind of what it is and how others here can actually utilize it with LinkedIn. Yep.

One of the things that we. You're asking a big thing here, Joe.

Here's what I would say, because I know there's a lot of depth to it. So the stuff that you can share, obviously, because I don't want you to, you know, I don't want you to put yourself in a position where, you know, you're feeling like, all right, Joe, I'm forced. What's. What's going on here?

So, you know, well, I'm forced anyway now. So. So, okay, so one of the things that we do on LinkedIn, it's a strategy. I call it the leads on LinkedIn strategy. Basically, what you do, it's really simple. People will be like, huh? But you're talking about Internet fasting, not being Internet. Don't be on social. I love social media. I love the fact that we can reach out to people and we can help people and you can grow your business and grow your network. So I love Instagram, I love Facebook, I love podcasting, I love LinkedIn, all that stuff. So we're really productive on those platforms. We're creating a lot of content. We grow our business on social media, but I'm just not on the social media myself. You can create content and have other people put it on social. So that's one thing with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is like, Facebook 2012, 13, 14. Like, when you created something on Facebook in 2013, people would actually comment and, like, and all that stuff. If you had, like, had like, 2,000 likes on your page, 50% of the people would actually see it, and you would get, like, 100 responses. Like, it was really, really engaging. Now with Facebook, you can have 50,000 likes and you post something, you get, like, 12 likes and three comments. So the engagement Facebook is, like, horrible. And Instagram is getting worse as well. LinkedIn it has amazing engagement if you know how to work the system. So for example, if you do a webinar, you have a webinar, you want to fill the webinar on LinkedIn. I mean, you can put it on Facebook, you can put an Instagram, you get like seven signups. If you want to fill a webinar, you want to grow your list or whatever. What a lot of people do is they put a post on LinkedIn, for example, and at the end of the post they would say like, hey, click the link to sign up for the webinar or click the link to sign up to get my free ebook. LinkedIn then sees this page, they index it, they see like, are disposed and they see, oh, there's a link to an external page and we're not going to rank this thing. So a lot of your connections won't see it. It's a really simple hack that we use that works amazingly well. Instead of, I mean, you can have the same post where you, for example, promote your webinar. And instead of at the end of the post, you say like, click here. You say in the post, if you're interested in this webinar, on this free ebook, let me know in the comments. And then because you say let me know in the comments, there's no link. So LinkedIn actually appreciates it. And then people are responding in the comments. And because they are responding in the comments, LinkedIn sees that you get more engagement. The more engagement it has, the more it will be shown to your second connection. So it will show to the people that follow you, but it will also show show to the people that follow them. So then that way you have organic reach and those people will see it. Then they will respond like, yeah, let me send me the ebook or give me the link to the webinar or whatever. And just be. By doing this simple thing, you get a lot of engagement. Like, literally, this is the difference between having seven people on a webinar or having 100 people on the webinar. Or this is the difference between having three comments or having like, like 58 or 200 comments. We've had multiple times that we had hundreds of people requesting. We had one day a thousand people that are asking to connect. We had webinars where we did like €40,50,000 only on LinkedIn. And the value is because you get this organic reach and you fuel the fire of the organic reach because people are commenting and then the second, second connection see it, and that's how it grows. So instead of of putting the link in the post. Tell them like, hey, send me a DM or comment underneath, and I'll send you a DM with the link. And that's the whole game. It's a super simple strategy. And we've been really growing the business. We started doing this in past January. It's been a total game changer for the reach on LinkedIn and also to really grow the business.

Robin. Farming. Farming. You want to ask a question?

So what happens to links in the comments?

Whether the Author of the LinkedIn post.

Puts it in a comment or somebody else puts it in or comment?

Yeah. So you. You have a post where you, for example, say, like, hey, if you want to have access to this ebook, let me know in the comments. Then you get like 50 people who respond in the comments. And then you have you yourself, or maybe your PA goes to them and sends them a dm like, hey, thank you for your comments. Here's the link. And then they click and let us sign up. So it's. It's. You have somebody else follow up or maybe yourself follow up on all the comments.

Awesome. Thank you. And so linka are there. You can either ask it or I can read your question. Are there times that are best to post on LinkedIn? I mean, during the day?

I don't know. Probably, but it depends. Like, there's so much variables. I'm not an expert at that. And also, Alinka asks. So no links in the comments? Nope, no links in the comments. You go to dm, so they respond on the comments, and then you slide into the dm.

You're used to that, aren't you, Dean?

Dean.

Thank you, Elko.

Thank you.

Celia Black. What's up, Celia? Hi, Joe.

Hi, everybody.

Hey. Celia's a smart woman. You want to say what's going on with you? So you have a question for Elko that you think would be better than anything I could ask? I mean, you certainly do. What would that be? I'm just joining. So I just caught that.

That last part with the LinkedIn strategy.

But I think that was absolutely brilliant.

Okay, cool. Well, you know, you actually missed the best parts because you showed up late, but. I'm kidding. No, it was great to have you here.

So this strategy would work amazing on Facebook and Instagram, but don't do it because they can ban you for this because Facebook doesn't allow this, and Instagram doesn't allow this either. For LinkedIn, it's no problem.

What sort of strategies can we discuss that would cause some people here to get banned from social media. That would perhaps be a sort of way to save their life from being so sucked into social media. But it would sound like a marketing tactic.

I don't know. Ask Dean.

Yeah, Dean. Dean, you would know this. Like, what's a sinister marketing technique that you've somehow figured out how to use to do good in the world?

Well, I think kind of what Ilko's talking about, of having baristas do stuff, that is the stuff that you would do if you could count on you to do it. And that's really the secret there, you know, that you can send out or you can post up things like that and then go drop a link in somebody's direct message. Because it takes a real person to do that. And if you do the things that are tedious and take a real person, they're really getting to the point where it's like you're sending one message at a time, which is the closer you can drive things down to that and use people as technology. That's really a great thing. That's why if you're sending nine word emails. If you send nine word emails and then respond individually to the messages, that's a big win. Most people aren't expecting it.

I want to mention something that really, I think both of you could speak to that is important and very hard, I think, for a lot of people to do, depending on their comfort zones, which is. You said barista, right? Get a barista. And my friend Darina, who's. I think she's on, she was talking about how out of all the things that I've asked Richard Branson about over the years, Richard doesn't really explain. It's hard for him to explain what he does and how he built it because he's like an intuitive entrepreneur. And one of the most valuable things. I was in his kitchen on Necker, the one house by the Elders meeting area, Elko, which you've been at a million times. And I said to Richard, I wrote about it in my book Life Gives to the Giver, which you can get for free@joe's freebook.com by the way. Go there immediately. Joe's freebook.com, read it. It will not put you into an upsell funnel. You can download it if you want, the physical version, pay for shipping and handling, and we'll send it to you. And we won't, like, tell you that you have to buy other shit in order to get the good stuff. It's actually a really good book. So one of the Things I said to Richard, I said, when's the last time you were in a grocery store? And he kind of looks up thinking. He's like, I've never been in a grocery store. And I said, what do you mean you've never been in a grocery store? I go, what about when you're a kid? He's like, no. I go, what about when you're buying beer for Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten because he signed the Sex Pistols? And he's like, I've never been in a grocery store. Which I still find to this day. Are you kidding? I just. I can't fathom that's possible. Nope, never been a grocery store. And I said, when's the last time you did laundry? And he's like. Kind of looks up like he's sincerely thinking. He's like, I've never done laundry. I'm like, what do you mean, you never done laundry? He's like. I go, what about when you're a kid? He goes, my mom did my laundry.

My mom.

And then he says this. He's like, joe. He goes, you get other people to do that stuff. He said, one good hire can save you thousands of hours in your life. And because it was Richard Branson, who has had literally, you know, probably hundreds of thousands employees over his career, it just sort of rang differently than someone that has never run. You know, I always love people that try to give me advice on how to run a business that have never built a business as big as mine, but they always got all these opinions on how to do it. So when you hear someone that's actually either done something greater than what you have, it tends to land with me differently. So you said barista, and certainly Elko, you have teams, so people here hear these ideas. But the ability to leverage yourself. The two ways that I know of to really leverage yourself in business is you either do it through marketing, because marketing is one of the ultimate forms of leverage. And the other is you do it by hiring people. And so you're talking about these email baristas, and it sounds good, but a lot of people are going to leave. They're going to be in a position where they're, you know, as Dan Sullivan says, the ceiling of complexity, because they're limited by how much of their personal time they can do these things. All of us, including myself, I get stuck in doing stuff that I, you know, the rugged, individualist part of me that tries to do it. So how could you share with people the importance of how to get other people and any Tips and suggestions on leveraging themselves through the baristas. You talk about anything with you, Alko.

You know, it's funny because you and I've had these conversations. I would say stuff like this, but you just think I'm lazy. And that's a different.

You are lazy, though. Let's.

And so is he, which is great, but it's one of the greatest characteristics you can have.

Lazy and ambitious.

That's it. Lazy with a. With a cleverness to figure out how to get out. I'm more like Tom Sawyer. Try figuring out how to get other people to do that stuff and make it seem like fun. And for a lot of people, it is fun. I think that one of the greatest things is to look at how your joy meter is. Look at everything that you're doing and just give it a rating on 1 to 10 of your joy meter. Does this activity bring me joy? Do I love to do this, this, and then couple that with. Is there anybody else in the world that could do this? Is this something that really I have to do? Is this. Am I the only one who can do this? And so much around this rugged individualism or around this thought of, I'm going to do it myself because I can do it myself. A lot of us are ingrained with that, that you don't hire someone to do your. Your lawn, or you don't hire someone to do your laundry or to do your grocery shopping or to do all that stuff. And literally that was almost the first person that I hired when I really started taking this seriously. Because time is time. Time doesn't care whether what you're doing is business or personal, but what it really is, is it advancing your main objectives, which is to be happy, to be healthy, or to be rich. And is this what you're doing, advancing a way that only you can do it? And if it's not, then looking for, how can I not do this and get that stuff done? One thing that all of this is hinged on is that we're living in a fixed time world, that there's only 24 hours in a day and we're awake for 16 of them or so. And everything happens in that period of time, right in now, real time, chronologically, since the beginning of time. That's the way time has worked. So sometimes our ambitions, our appetites, our desires, our vision to see something bigger is overcome because there's so much that we see that we could do that we feel like we're never going to get. Get finished. And that was one of the things where, you know, I did with Thomas Leonard when we were working on the program. A perfect life is to define ahead of time. How will I know when I'm being successful, not when I'm pursuing it? It's like Dan Sullivan calls it the gap. You're constantly. If you're constantly chasing the horizon, you'll never get there. And so having this awareness of. Of what's the life that you want, what brings you joy, what's that balance? And then how much money does it take to accomplish that? And if you get to that. That level of financial peace that we talk about, that beyond a certain amount of money, there's. The additional money isn't really adding any value to your life in some way. And that's a really kind of true thing if you really think about it for yourself.

You know, Elko, clearly you can say something much better than that.

Yeah, that's. That's not so hard. So. No, no, I second everything that he says. But one more thing is that if you. So, for example, if you would translate the word employer to Dutch, it would be werkhever. And if you would translate the word employee to Dutch, it would be werknemer. And if I would translate that back to English, AKA employer means work giver, and vergnamer, AKA employee, means work taker. And as an entrepreneur, you are a work giver, and as an employee, you're a work taker. So who do you want to be? Do you want to be the work giver, or do you want to be the work taker? Yeah, well, again, like, we started our business for one reason, and that's freedom. And I think you get more freedom the more work you can give instead of the more work you will take.

Sake.

It's a good distinction. Work giver and work taker. Life gives. Takes from the taker.

Yeah.

Yeah, you could. You could. You could take. What is that, Pat Benatar? Is that what that was?

That's right.

Yeah. God. The fact that we even know that just so dates us, like, you know what's weird? Like, I hit my head. I was pulling a bowl out of my kitchen cupboard, like, a couple days ago and just hit the corner.

When you're.

When you shave your head, you literally have no protection of hair. So when you just hit the slightest little things and just, like, lacerates the side of your head, I mean, it's just nuts. I've got this, like, I went up here and scratched my head and realized how much it hurts from that bump on the Side of my head. All right, I'm sure you all wanted to hear exactly that.

I'm curious as what you find. What's the value? What's your criteria of value that keeps you engaged when you're on the Internet? Because I get sidetracked so much and I learn so much and I am able to contribute so much, but I really, I don't have criteria right now. I thought I did, but I don't. I'm unsubscribing and I'm unfollowing, but I'm just curious how you use your time on the Internet and what you value the most.

Yeah, that's a good question. So what I do when I'm on the Internet is I send emails. I reply to emails, I send WhatsApp messages, I reply to WhatsApp messages. I check some of my stats, I reach out to some people. I try not to go on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or all that stuff. I do some finances, like I might pay some invoices, but that's basically about it. I don't do that much. I try not to do that much online. So it's, I do a lot of work offline. So I, I, I create my products and my marketing material and a lot of meetings I do nowadays just on like this, this, this phone, like this dumb phone. So I call a lot. I like to nowadays call more than I do emails and stuff, but that's about it. I do emails, text messages.

Do you have a dashboard? Ilko that saved so much time is having had someone build me a dashboard so I can save a whole OCD loop with one glance that I've got.

So this is a good question. I have a dashboard, but I also have one of my team members send me a snapshot of the dashboard every day by WhatsApp. Yeah, so, because I don't, I'm not, I'm not numbers driven. I mean, I care, but like not really. Yeah, so, so I have one of my team members who's actually my admin guy, he sends me a snapshot of my dashboard every day with the number of sales and opt ins and webinar signups and all that stuff. So I received that every day. So Terry, you, behind your above your head that says super simple. And I really like having a business that's just super simple or create a business that you can run in a super simple way and everything that is advanced and complex and try to remove it or try to outsource it. And then Dean, I remember a couple of Years ago, every year, Dean and I, we do a three day mastermind here in Amsterdam. Dean said something like, yeah, I want to run my business just from Gmail. I think that was it. Right? Yeah. Just sending emails. That's it.

That's the highest tech thing that I use, is just sending an email to my team.

Yeah, this was sent to me even on private messages. I have no idea what you evoke about this, but there's a question about, do you have a spiritual practice, Elka, do you want to speak to that? Maybe talk about baby Jesus or something? I'm not sure.

I do have a spiritual practice, and the spiritual practice is journaling, meditating. But also I have a great friend, Dolly. She was in Genius Network as well. And we talk almost every day, but every week we have multiple hours where we really go deep. So that's one of my spiritual practices that really made me a better man in the last couple of years. Having somebody that you trust 100% and you can be 100% open and vulnerable with is one of the biggest blessings you can have. So that's a big spiritual practice for me.

Some people have asked if we're doing the Genius Network annual event because of what's going on with the pandemic. And so, yes, we are doing it. It's November 6th, 7th and 8th. That will be virtual. You can find information@gieniusnetwork.com Elko and Dean will be there working for the whole time, just dispensing the world's greatest wisdom ever. And it's going to be really built around discussions, not per se, around speakers. So I'm going to do something very unique that I don't think anyone's ever done before. And how we're going to do Genius Network, and that's also how we're going to lead into it with next year. Because for me, my favorite way to learn something is discussions with smart people around topics that I like that are valuable and things that are that are super energizing. So, Elko, for one, I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us, staying up late to do this. Is there anything you didn't say or didn't talk about that you'd like to share and anything you want to recommend how people can follow you, if anything of yours that you think they would benefit from, Feel free to share anything.

I just really appreciate you and Dean, obviously you made a tremendous impact on my life. I joined Genius Network in 2014 and met you in 2013 on NEKR. I think I met Dean in 2000. Yes. I met Dean in 2014 as well. And it's just the impact that you guys have on my life and had on my life is just amazing. So I just want to thank you guys and thank everybody who was watching today. Hope there was some value and some nuggets. That's it.

How do people follow you since you're not online anymore?

Well, I'm everywhere but my web. Yeah. My website just. I would say Instagram, like just my name, Ilko, Deborah. Or go to my website which is EEL Co. I have two things that are valuable on the website. One is my Necronose, the things that I learned on Necker Islands. We in the beginning of this talk today, we talked a lot about journaling. I all the notes that I took on Necker Islands are for free to download on EEL C. And I also have a document which is called 123 Lessons for a Life Filled with Life. So those are my sort of 123 rules of life and you can download those for free as well on EEL Co and just Instagram hit me on a DM and slide in the DM and so yeah, that's about it.

Really, really appreciate it. Thank you. And to all of you, hope you are able to apply this and a book recommendation Breath by James Nestor. Go read the book Breath by James Nestor. One of the most important books I've read in a couple of decades. Fascinating. And listen to. I love marketing. There's a lot of good stuff there in almost every topic. We even had Elko on I love marketing before. So if you do a search, you can listen to other stuff we have with Elko and I think it'll just enhance everything you heard today day. And on behalf of myself and everyone on my team, thank you. Be safe. Have a wonderful day. Peace out.

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