Genius Marketing: Secrets for Becoming a More Effective Marketer and a Better Entrepreneur Featuring Jason Fladlien, Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #418

The reason that people come to an event like Genius Network in the annual event is to be exposed to new ideas and to make new connections. There's a fork in the road and you can go down this path of, well, how do I do that? Which requires that you now have to invest time in figuring out how to do something. Then you have to invest even more time doing what you just learned how to do. What the highest level entrepreneurs think is not how do I do this? They think, who can do this? Because if you just spend your time thinking about who can set this up and do this for me, you're done.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com this week we are revisiting a previous episode. Here are some of the best highlights.

So, Jason, who are you? What do you do?

I am Jason Fladlin and I do webinars. So a lot of people say I'm the best in the world at it. And I don't like to argue with a popular opinion like that.

And you shouldn't. And really, I think you are.

I joined Genius Network and then I joined 100k because I'm a firm believer in buying your way right into the top. You know, it's like you could spend time or you can spend money. So I got to know Joe over the years, and then Joe's introduced me to so many wonderful people. And I'm just kind of in that mode of just like what this podcast is about. Like, let's spread the gospel of good marketing to replace not so good marketing and make the world a better place in the process.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

That's good.

Let me ask you, Jason, you have studied everything from Milton Erickson to psychology to all the greatest copywriters to you're an expert in conversion, you've mastered webinars, you're an expert on selling on Amazon. I mean, there's so many different, different places that you've pulled information from. I mean, you blew away Robert Cialdini because when he came to a 100k meeting, I remember him commenting that I've never seen a better application of influence ever in his 30 plus years of teaching. Influence. You're talking the world's, you know, highest level, the most cited social psychologist alive. How would you even define marketing? Like, what's marketing to you? What is it? Why do you like it so much? Because we're, you know, here we are. And I love marketing.

So Marketing is one of the most honest ways that you can see what somebody will do. Anybody will say, I'll do this, or I stand for this, or I believe in this, or, you know, if you know, this is who I am and this is the kind of character I am, but then ask them to spend their money to prove it. And it's funny on what they say and what they do, how different those two things are. So psychology is my most fascinating subject that I like to study. But psychology can be very deceptive in terms of the conclusions that it can reach. But by our psychology is very clear and simple. Did they buy or did they not buy? And that's where it all is rooted for. Because it's my fundamental belief is that in order to improve somebody's life, a behavioral change has to occur. If I learn something but don't apply it, I don't believe I've actually learned anything. And I think one of the best ways to create behavioral transformation is to get them to invest both time and money to make that transformation occur. And so think about the perspective of that, though, if I believe that about marketing, and these are all definitions that each of us have that form our own model of reality. But if that's what got me, you can understand how I'm compelled then to go out there and market because of my definition that I've created around that. So that's a really good question, Joe. I feel like it's one of the almost only honest things you can do, because we can argue about whether somebody's going to do or do something, but put a buy button in front of them and then you'll find out, do they really want to get better at this? Are they really willing to make a decision to show. Put their money where their mouth is?

What are your thoughts about the perspectives that a lot of the world has about marketing and about marketers that are misconceptions that are.

I don't think they are misconceptions. First of all, I think the reality is most marketing is done very poorly. Most marketing is disingenuous. Most marketing is purely manipulative from a negative perspective, where they want to get something from you that's unequal to what they give in return in their favor. I think it's absolutely appropriate for people to give marketing the rep that it certainly earned. But at the same time, it's also the thing that makes businesses work or don't work. And so therefore, just because most people do it badly doesn't mean it's a bad thing. The Real beauty about marketing is it's the only way that you're going to get a message out there. And so you might as well be deliberate about it. Now, if you can influence it and you have the ability to choose to do it with more intention, more purpose, and in a more value add environment, then it becomes a good thing. But, you know, it's in the hand of the person doing the marketing. And ultimately there's three options. You either can do the crappy marketing that most people do, you can not do marketing and then lose, or you can do effective marketing, win more than the guys doing the crappy marketing, and actually create everything that you want to get out of your business too at the same time. So, yeah, I don't know. I just ducked the whole thing. It's like labels are labels. You can call it good, you could call it bad, but do you want to achieve a certain objective? Okay, what's needed to achieve that objective? Well, we got to reach people. Well, not only do we got to reach people, we got to compel them to give us a piece of their attention span and then have them follow and listen to us. You call that marketing? You can call it whatever the hell you want to call that, but that needs to be done. And so let's do it in the most effective and ethical and compelling way possible. Here's what I know. If you're actually out there right now trying to learn and trying to improve yourself, you're probably ahead of 95% of your competitors, most industries, because their approach is let's do the bare minimum possible and hope for the best result. So I would say that you're probably farther along. Your audience likes it more than you think they will. But there's still a part of you who's scared to be aggressively putting it out there, because God forbid, what if it isn't as good as you think it is? So I think a lot of alignment of stronger marketing is going to have to come because you have to be aligned with what you're putting out there as your product. The beautiful thing about being a business owner, if I'm like a salesperson on somebody else's staff, I'm limited to what they allow me to sell. But as a business owner, if I don't like what I sell today, I can create something tomorrow that's better. Some of my favorite marketing is, hey, we're trying this new thing. I don't know if it's gonna work. You know, I have a good idea. It's gonna work. But here's the deal. I'll let you get in at far below what I should charge for this thing simply to see. As long as you're willing to be my guinea pig, I'm gonna hook you up with a deal, and then you can tell me if it's worth it at the end. And nine times out of 10, what you're gonna find is it's far more worth it than you even anticipated psychologically, that you should roll it out there and put it out there. A lot of people have a lack of self confidence in their ability to adequately deliver a solution. And so all the advice in the world isn't going to fix that if we don't address that. And that's one big part of it right there. The other part is that I say it's not survival of the fit, it's the survival of the familiar. Because anytime you do something different than what you've habituated, there is pain and there is stress and there is scariness to it. And many people would rather die than change a behavior. And I mean, look at all the people who still smoke. Something like 18% of people in the United States still smoke cigarettes. And I used to smoke cigarettes. I mean, I'm so good at it. I quit like six times. Right? And it's like, I would rather die at a point in my life 10 years early than quit smoking. And there's no arguing that that thing is killing me. Right? But why? Because of the fear of not having something to replace it, or the fear of the agony. And so new marketing is a completely different experience. And the scariness of having to confront that. I'm going to be out of my element while I pull this off. That's weird. And, you know, part of it is what happens if I fail, but a bigger part of it is what happens if I succeed. Because if you have more customers, you now have more responsibility. If you have more customers, you now have more of an obligation, you now have more commitment. And that is very scary. And many people would rather be poor and not have those responsibilities than be rich and have those responsibilities. So it's always at the end of the day, alignment of behavior, of what you want and what you're thinking in your head.

The reason that people come to an event like Genius Network in the annual event is to be exposed to new ideas and to make new connections. And ideas come in the form of what you can do. You're presented with a new thought. Well, what you could do is you could take everything else off your homepage and just Put a squeeze page so that people leave their name and email. That's a what now? The initial, the next thought that most people have, there's a fork in the road and you can go down this path of well, how do I do that? Which requires that you now have to invest time in figuring out how to do something. Then you have to invest even more time doing what you just learned how to do. Usually poorly, because it's the first time you're doing it. And then you get to done what the highest level entrepreneurs think is not how do I do this? They think who can do this? Because if you just spend your time thinking about who can set this up and do this for me, you're done. There's zero friction, no more time units required to get you from the what to the done. Right now the distinction that I had this morning was that how and do are linear activities. They have to be done in real time and they pay for them with time, which is the ultimate constraint. It's like what Dan Sullivan talks about. It's being part of the time and effort economy where you're using your time and effort to create a result. The distinction that I had this morning is that what and who are exponentials because they are fueled with imagination and money, which are in infinite supply.

Interesting.

They're multipliers, imagination and money. When you've attached to a who can. Because once you find a who, you can find many who's. That's how something scales. People think this idea of scaling, when you look at even analog business like Starbucks in its grand scale, when you look at thousands of people, tens of thousands of people are probably employed by Starbucks. Maybe 100,000, I don't even know. But a lot that when you look at it, they think that there's all these people, but there's probably six levels of job description in the Starbucks. From barista to assistant manager to general manager to regional manager to VP to C suite, there's probably six layers to get to there. And what that is is really creating the scale ready algorithm that defines what those six layers do. And then it's multiplying that with money, more money to find who's who do that role.

I believe there is a lot to be said about the entrepreneur is a person who is just willing to do things that could evolve. Humiliation, losing everything, rejection. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of consequences of fucking up, but there's all kinds of consequences of success. And so I just want to have you speak to that because to me you're talking about the mindset and the methodology. And I'm really kind of saying, okay, what's the stopper? What stops this? And how can we. To whichever listener here it will get through to. How do we get them on this new path of. The current path they're on is just not the one.

Well, I think that's it. That this is. Especially this group.

Right.

These are all people that have used their time and their effort and gotten to a point where through personal development and building, getting a business to a million dollars.

You mean Genius Network.

I'm talking about the people because that's who we're having this conversation about, this particular conversation about the people in that room that they've all done something extraordinary. They've all built a business from zero to a million dollars or more. Yeah. And when you look at that, that the thing that is the most limiting thing at that level is almost like what Dan talks about with the skills that got you out of Egypt aren't the skills that'll get you to the promised land. And the skills that got you to a million dollars are personal development and developing your skills and developing your abilities, whether it's a salesperson or your marketing skills or your speaking skills or your. Your content product knowledge, your product development. All of those things that are about you.

Yeah. Your ability to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Exactly.

Right. Your work ethic. All those things are. Those are the skills that get you to a million dollars. But the multiplier now, and I'm preaching to myself as I'm hearing this, this is the big distinction for me is that the multipliers, once you have this clarity that the only logical choice is to get on that side of what and who to maximize your imagination and your, you know, using money to multiply things. Right. Using who's. Using other people's time and effort. And that's exactly what people are in that room for, not to learn how to do something because we're not going to teach them how to do anything at this event. There's clues we've been seeing all along. I mean, Richard Brandt, listen to the I Love marketing episode with Richard Branson. And when Jannik asked him, how do you manage 300 plus companies? And Richard's first thing thought for a moment and said, well, you can't actually do anything. And that was profound. When you look at it now with this kind of thinking, right. That he's saying you can't actually do anything. You can set the vision, imagination, and you find great People who. And you trust them to execute, to do the stuff. Right. It's like been there all along. And that's really at this investor level, you know?

Right, yeah.

So it's something that's been a big shift, you know, and I think that that's going to have profound impact on my own, the way I think and the way that I'm moving forward right now. Because I really believe when you get that thought on a deep level, it changes because now I truly get it deeper than I ever have.

Any advice on how to cheer yourself.

Up.

When a certain level of mental, maybe physical, emotional stamina is required for the task at hand? When things are not going well, it's even more critical to be able to get yourself into that state or not even get yourself into that state, live in a way that actually you're there most of the time.

I think when people get into that state, what I find is that it's mostly because they're at a level of magnitude that they're trying to be one or two levels ahead of where they're actually at. They're trying to sell something to hundreds of people when they haven't figured out fully how to get one person the result that they're looking for and to back to build that solid foundation. That's really the thing that if they're trying to get a bunch of people to buy something and then figure out how to make it work, that's what's frustrating. But when they figure out how to make something work with one person, how to make it bulletproof and then test it so they can get the result with 10 people, then 100 people and 1,000 people become the effortless scale. Yeah, you've built it with that intention. I think people try and sell it and then figure it out.

Well, the thing about enthusiasm, unless you're a complete sociopathic, insane individual, we've all experienced enthusiasm at some point in our life, so physiologically we know how to experience it. And so then the reality, though is most people are looking for a reason to experience it. And I'll give you a reason, because you're alive. That's the only reason you need. And so I believe happiness is a state that you decide to be in. And if you truly believe you don't need a reason to be happy, and a lot of people think they have to have permission to feel incited and enthusiasm about. About something. Let me give you permission. It's okay to just do it, be happy for no reason at all. That's your reason. Because you want to. That's it. The beautiful thing is it's a conscious decision. But here's the reality is most people. What would you. I was actually thinking about this last night. Most people don't wake up in the middle of the night. What are you doing, Joe?

I'm looking up the definition of enthusiasm just because it's always interesting to me to see how these things are done.

Okay, because I saw like a triple X on that URL or something.

It says enthusiasm.

I'm teasing you.

Absorbing or controlling possession of the mind by any interest or pursuit. Kind of like what I'm doing right now with you.

Oh, interesting. The beautiful thing about this though is nobody wakes up in the middle of the night saying, oh my God, that thing went so damn well. I can't sleep because I'm feeling so great. That happens maybe once a millennia for somebody. If it happens to you five times in your life, that's pretty good. But most people will spend every fucking night awake stressing out about something. And the problem is it's really easy to fill negative powerfully, like charged emotions that hurt you, but it's really hard to fill those things by automation that make you enthusiastic. So I always just said to myself, if I practice enthusiasm, it'll be much more easy to habituate it. And if it's easier to habituate it, it's easier to draw upon it when I need it. And so most of you just need to come up with a list of five times I'm going to be happy tomorrow. And then you do that. Enough. Here's the secret. I don't care what you sell. People prefer to do business with those that make them feel really good. And so as a benefit, no matter what I sell, if I interact with my customers in a way that, you know, I call it rainy day theory. It's if I'm the only ray of light in their otherwise rainy day, just because I make them feel better about themselves, they will come up with excuses to give me money because they pay therapists hundreds of dollars an hour to feel bad for a whole hour and talk about all the screwed up shit in their life, right? So they'll pay me $20 for my ebook if the only thing is the email made them smile, right? So that's how I feel. And so I believe enthusiasm is the catalyst and really is the excuse to sell hard. Because hey, even if I screw something up, at least I did it with a smile on my face. And maybe somebody else enjoyed it too. I don't know, right? But for me, enthusiasm is something I decided I wanted to be and I practiced it, and now it's easy to get into that state. And you could tell Joe, like hanging out with me, right? Because it's very rare that I'm not in a very good state of mind. Marketing is a good way to instead of complain about how things are, decide that you want to be the change in which you see. Or you can just accept the way things are.

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