How To Be A Better Marketer And Entrepreneur - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #174

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and the Joe Polish.

The original.

The one, the Joe Polish, you know, that's my Twitter handle, the Dean Jackson.

Yeah. If it was the Joe Polish, you'd have more followers. We discussed this on the last episode briefly, that you don't care about all the people that follow you on Twitter.

Are people still on Twitter?

Yeah, I think the same people that were on MySpace are on Twitter now.

Yeah, exactly. That's what happened. I wondered about that.

You think 20 years from now that Facebook will still exist? I don't know.

I think it will because they've got traction now. I think it's like that's the one. I can't see anything taken over, but it's a great question. And that's part of the thing, like when you think about it, you know, 2006, that's only seven years ago. Eight years ago now. So for eight years, going from nothing to this, you know, I don't know, it's, it's, it's mind boggling. Well, it is. A great question is what do you think? Like that's kind of. I've really been on a thought tangent. Not a tangent, but a thought process of thinking. 25 years, you know, since Dan's been talking about that, Dan Sullivan, we've been talking about at Strategic Coach, this idea of a 25 year plan. And I'm just seeing how that changes the way you think about things. You know, when you're thinking about 25 years and you start to think, well, what's going to be here in 25 years? Right. Like if you go back 25 years, there's no way to even imagine something like Facebook or Google or a podcast with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world listening in for free every week. It's impossible to think about those things, you know?

Yeah, you know, you know the impact that it makes though. And by the way, let me create some context for this episode. We can kind of do a little bit more catch up on what both of us have been doing. And then I think we should talk about book marketing because there's been a lot of. And even if someone has no great stories too.

Yeah, good.

The whole thing. Yeah, I remember, you know, remember that crazy frickin twisted TV show, Nip Tuck? Do you ever watch that?

Yeah, I never watched it, but I know about it.

Yes, it sort of reminded me of your life. But basically I remember, I don't know Why I remember this. But there was. There was. They used to do these episodes and then they would promote the heck out of nip tuck on MySpace. And it was on the. It's on the DVDs, it's on, you know, I mean, they. They literally embedded it as part of the.

Of the show.

And they would drive people to MySpace versus their own website. And you look back today of back then, that was when MySpace was the thing, and now it's not. It's really interesting, the longevity of stuff and how things could rise like rockets to such heights and then come all the way down. And we live in that sort of world right now where things are very big deal and some things are timely and other things are timeless. And what is certainly timeless is directly response marketing principles. I mean, I just, you know, we did our Genius Network annual event, which personally I felt was the greatest event that we've ever done. And certainly I had a whole bunch of people that said that's the best event they'd ever been to of any event, period. And it was really powerful. And then from there, you know, I went just a crazy week. I went to a strategic coach group on the unique ability. Like a few days after the day after the Genius Network event, I spent an entire day with Arianna Huffington videotaping her about the subject of her book Thrive, which obviously I headed up a lot of the marketing with that. And we had Brendan Bouchard in the room, Mary Morrissey, Jeff Madoff, who does all the Victoria's Secrets commercials. We had Dean Graziosi, Brendan, Darren Hardy. Who else was there? Denise Costnel. I'm forgetting some people. But we did that whole day. And we're going to actually put out the videos on Thrive to people. And then we did a couple hours just on how she sold Huffington post for over $300 million. How do they monetize it? Can anyone create that sort of stuff? So all this sort of perspective. But a lot of the main mission of creating those videos was to create a movement on redefining the subject of success. And just like on our John Paul dejoria interview where he talked about marketing at the very end, because we asked him about, what do you think of marketing? He talked about a book and storytelling that people will have to listen to that episode if they haven't to understand that. But a book becomes a storytelling vehicle to spread your message. And that's the essence of what marketing is. So we took what started with a book, and we're creating knowledge, products and curriculum and education built around it. And then I did something really bizarre. And I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of this. But Jordan Belfort, the real Wolf of Wall street, who is just hysterical and funny and a total character. You know, I've known him for several years. I met him before the movie came out, and I've interviewed him, and we put an episode with him on ilovemarketing.com if you haven't listened to it, no matter what your opinion is of Jordan, I think you would really enjoy that interview. And he's like, come stay at my house. And he has a house on Hermosa beach, right on the Strand. And so I went out there for three days, invited Eunice and Rochelle to come out, and he didn't even get back till the last night because he was out of the country. So we're staying at his beach house, and then he comes back into town. Town. And I set up a lunch with Stuart Johnson, who owns Success magazine, and Jay Abraham, because the night before, I went over Jay Abraham's house for dinner. Jay's a real dear friend of mine. And so I get, like, all three of them together. Jordan, the owner of Success magazine, and Jay Abraham. And it was just this hysterical lunch. Eunice and Rochelle were there with me. And so basically, we decide that night to watch the Wolf of Wall street together, sit down with Jordan late at night. And so I'm sitting there in the movie's three hours long, and we watch the entire movie, but every few minutes, we stop it. And I ask him, did this really happen? Is this accurate? What's the real story here? And I shoot over an hour and a half of video footage with Jordan giving commentary about the movie that was made about his life. And it's absolutely fascinating, this video footage. I don't know what the hell I'm even going to do with it yet, but it's like, that's fantastic. It's w. We did that. And then I come back into town and do a live cast with Dean Graziosi, which was extremely successful. So a lot of people have seen the live cast that we did at Dean's office. And Dean, of course, promoted the living daylights out of my event, and that was really awesome of him. And then what did I do? Then I go in. I'm the keynote speaker at the largest cleaning convention in the US because one company called Legend Brands, that supplies 90% of all cleaning restoration companies with their chemicals and their equipment, they came to my. The CEO came to my Newport event and was Just absolutely blown away. And they asked to endorse and partner with me to help all of their cleaning and restoration companies with all of the marketing that I've spent over 20 years creating. And so I've kind of gone back into the cleaning niche in a different sort of way than I ever have because, you know, we've got this great company that wants to, you know, endorse my stuff. So I did that, and then I can't remember what I did after that. But then I went to Newport beach and we went to Brian Kurtz's event. Titans of Direct Response. Brian Kurtz runs Boardroom Inc. I want to mention this because there were several people there that are I Love Marketing listeners that went to that event because they found out about the late Marty Edelston and Brian Kurtz from listening to I Love Marketing. And There was about 350 people there. And I'm not kidding you, Dean. At least half of the people there, I would believe, are either active listeners of I Love Marketing or they have listened to a few episodes.

I mean, I'm constantly amazed by that, too. I mean, eben had about 400 people in Chicago, and we did, you know, when Epin brought me up, how many people listen to I Love Marketing? Same thing. It's like, it's so. Yeah. So so out there. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's great.

It was really good.

And the reason I bring this up is throughout I Love Marketing. I'll share some of the things from that event. We'll probably bring Brian and some of the other guests on Funny Thing. He had Dan Kennedy there. Gary Benzavinga, who never speaks at events, has only done one event his entire life. He's one of the top marketing gurus in the world. Copywriters in the world. Paris Landropoulos, author Jones, Greg Ranker from Guthy Ranker, dear friend, Joe Sugarman, Jay Abraham, David Deutch. I mean, there were just some really, really great marketers there. And it was three days of hearing. There will never be another gathering like that ever. I mean, bringing those types of copywriters there together. We had a great dinner. I drove up with Dan Kennedy, Gary Benzavinga, and Brian Kurtz, and we had these crazy conversations in the car, which I thought was awes. And I came back from that event. Well, they did two days of the event, and then they did hot seats. And I went over some different strategies with people during the hot seats because Brian and David, who were doing the hot seats, kept asking on me for my advice. I was sitting There next to Ken McCarthy. And we were dispensing hot seat advice. And it's so funny how like long copy still outperforms short copy. And there are test after test after test, proven and validating that. Whereas, you know, people are like, people are distracted now, they're not going to read anything. All that old stuff doesn't work. And you know, and here you have, you know, Richard Viggory. Even, you know, we did that amazing episode with Richard Viggory. He was there and there's all this validation. So I come.

Wait a second, say 25k member Richard Viggory. Oh yeah.

Richard Viggory became a 25k member. This is the guy that invented, I mean, invented conservative direct mail. I mean, we've got so many awesome genius network members. I'm totally stoked about that. So I come back into town and I'll share this with you. I get invited to a meeting from a friend. There's like all these high level CEOs and entrepreneurs and the guy speaking is the author of the book, book no Easy Day. Mark Owens, who was One of the 24 Navy SEALs who was on the bin Laden mission to basically find and capture or kill bin Laden. And he walked through the entire, like, how they went into the home, the compound, what it's like to be a Navy seal, all of the training they have to do. Just the craziest stuff I've ever heard. And the guy's got a new book coming out and maybe we'll do an interview with him, but he's very private. No pictures, no videotaping, no recording. It was interesting as heck. So I immediately come back and see that. And then that night I go to Google Zeitgeist, and I basically have dinner with Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google. And I sit right next to him and spend 45 minutes talking to him. And at that table is Martine and Bina Rothblatt, who is basically the creator of satellite radio, Sirius Radio. And, and then right next to Martine is Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome. And then right next to me is another guy named Michael, who was incarcerated for 25 years for murdering his wife. But he was innocent. And they found out through DNA who actually really did it. And the person's now in prison. But this guy was in prison for like 25 years for a murder he didn't commit of his wife. And I'm just sitting there going, wow, this has been such an interesting day. And then the next day there's the meetings in the morning and Martine speaks, which is awesome. If you type in Google Zeitgeist, you can watch the videos Google Zeitgeist 2014, which are fascinating. I had met Larry Page again, second time, and I had a very brief lunch with Chris Anderson, who owns Ted Ted.com and asked Bill Clinton, who was one of the speakers, the closing question of Google Zeitgeist. I'm just hoping they put the video up with Bill Clinton so I can see myself asking him this question on how he handles criticism. But I came back from that and the reason I bring all of that up is, you know, if you really pursue interesting, unique stuff and you make it a priority, you will figure out how to do it. One of the things that Mark said, the Navy SEAL guy, is that, you know, if you really the training is 70% mental and 30% physical. And it's crazy, crazy training. But he also said that, you know, you can accomplish, you know, what it is that, you know, that you want to do if you actually put your mind to it. And he also has a thing about how he had to compartmentalize things, that if he couldn't affect it, he doesn't worry about it. And that was one of the biggest trainings he ever had. And more than anything, without getting into the political reasoning behind what, you know, what happened and what it is that they do, just when I'm in a place where I'm thinking like my life is difficult for some reason, things like that put it into perspective. I'm pulling out my little journal here. You know, he was a 14 year career as a Navy Seal. He's got two kids. He said the divorce rate of the average Navy Seal is 95% because they're deployed for, you know, sometimes 200, 300 days a year. They have to go through this thing called beds, this training. And he said that if you put your mind to something, you can accomplish anything if you really put your mind to it. I'm not sure about that, but he's like, you have to learn how to endure torture. And they had a saying that the only easy day was yesterday. There's one thing they do where they tie their hands and their feet and they throw them in a pool and it's called drown proofing. And they have to figure out how to do that. And sometimes they'll be in the water for. And he said the BUDS training is during that time they have to, they total it up. They basically have to run 16, 27 miles. This is in a six month period, swim 134 miles 42 dives. So they spend 61 hours underwater, hike 150 miles with an average of 70 pounds on your back. And basically he says it's the equivalent of swimming from Cuba to Florida and then running from Florida to New York City. And you have to just think of that as eating an elephant, taking one bite at a time. And I walked out of there and it's, I'm like going, okay, how does this apply to my life? And he talked about adapt and evolve. If you're still doing the same things you're doing 10 years ago, what the hell do you think? Why are you going to succeed anywhere? And there's a lot of lessons that can be learned from that. And it was. And he said, don't believe everything you see on tv. And he said that, you know, he talked about the Mike Tyson quote, you know, everyone's got a plan until you get punched in the face. And that's, you know, that was, that was important. And more than anything, he reinforced that. You know, he said that after they met President Obama, President Obama asked him, you know, who shot bin Laden? And he's like, with all due respect, sir, we all did. And they didn't tell him the answer of who actually did it because he says it's always teamwork.

Anyway.

Take that for whatever it is. He just said anything half ass that you do, shame on you. If you're going to do something, be 100% in. He's like, that's the only way you ever basically would ever make something like the Navy Seals. I believe he said 183 people started. I think only like 23 actually made it through the training. And then they had another nine month training after that. And out of the 23, only 50% of those people make it. But man, talk about a tough, tough life. And very interesting, especially transitioning back. So the thing is, what I think has helped me to be a better marketer is I constantly seek out learning things from areas where it doesn't seem like it would have anything to do with marketing. But what it does do is it gives me different perspective applying it to different things. And as it relates to book marketing, he's got a new book coming out. And then after I had my lunch with Chris Anderson and wrapping up the Google Zeitgeist conference, I then do a 90 minute phone call with Tony Robbins a couple hours later helping Tony with his new book. So that's sort of the setup for me rambling about all of the stuff I was doing. I don't know if Any of that was valuable, or if you have any insight on that, Dean. But we can edit it out of here if we want to, or, you know, if it made sense, then we can just talk about some book marketing. But I just wanted to kind of share, like, an immersion that I had.

That was kind of a trip, you know, that's just one little slice of the last 30 or 40 days of your life here. And, you know, I think part of the stuff is like, seeing and understanding where it all comes from. I think that variety, like exposing yourself to different things and exposing yourself to new environments and different people really is. It's all part of the mix that goes into making you the marketer that you are. You know, me, too. I mean, just being traveling internationally especially, you see things differently. You know, you get exposed to different things. You meet different people, you see different things that they're doing, and it's fascinating. I love hearing about all the adventures.

Yeah. No, well, so the one thing he said where someone asked him, oh, and by the way, when I was describing Brian Kurtz's event, I think I said Arthur Jones instead of Arthur Johnson. So apologize for that. Come back to that. But someone asked him in the audience, like, you know, how has this affected you in civilian life, you know, now, and. And how difficult. And he says, it's been really hard to transition. And I asked him a question about how there's more suicides from soldiers than people that are actually dying in service, dying in battle, which is horrible. That's how much it affects many of these soldiers in a negative way, which is just terrible. Whatever army, in whatever part of the world, that's what war actually does for a lot of people, how it affects them. And he says he has this thing called. He's like, I have Tom's Disease. And. And he's like, do you know what that is? And everyone's like, well, what is he talking about? He's, like, terrified of missing shit. And I thought that was a great insight where it's like, wow, how many entrepreneurs do we know that just every opportunity you got to do it? How much of that do I have myself, where, I wonder. Opportunity. Yeah. Like, overcoming.

Like, I had to pull the plug. That was something that, you know, because I was going to go to Titans myself and, you know, got to the end there. I was having some trouble with my leg, and I was here just getting to the the end, and I really didn't want to miss Titans. But then it's always. There's always something, you know, So I Had to just kind of, you know, come back here. But, you know, just as an aside, you know, Joe Stump is the oldest civilian to ever complete the Navy SEALS Kokoro training.

Really?

Yeah. We wrote a whole book about it called the Willing Warrior. And it's just such a transformational experience, you know, like, I mean, what you have to become in order to. I guess the whole thing is. And that's really Joe's lesson from having done it, is that if you can do that, you literally can do anything, you know, and that's what the whole thing is, to really get yourself in that situation. But part of the things that, you know, Joe has shared about it are just the having to, you know, you can only just get used to and bring this moment suffering, just suffer silently right now and know that it's just about getting through this moment and. And focusing on one moment at a time. Don't think about the accumulation of it.

Yeah, well, and also during this time, like right before the Newport event, my dear friend Sean Stephenson had a dog, a service dog in training, and he was out on his wheelchair. And people that don't know Sean Stephenson. S E A N Stevenson. S T E P H E N S O N Sean Stevenson. He wrote a book called get off your. He's 3 foot tall, 45 pounds in a wheelchair his whole life because he has a brittle bone condition. And he had broken over 200 bones in his body by the time he was 18 years old. I mean, endured enormous amounts of pain and suffering, and in spite of that, became a PhD hypnotherapist. Tony Robbins wrote the forward to his book. Just a really sharp, witty guy. He's out with his dog in his wheelchair, and the dog's collar was, you know, connected to the wheelchair leash. I'm sorry, connected to the wheelchair. And got spooked by another dog and ran and literally pulled Shawn's wheelchair over, and Shawn fell down. First time in years. He broke his leg, his right leg, the kneecap, the ankle, and the femur, and fractured the back of his skull. And so I find out about this. Luckily, I'm in town, so I go to the hospital, like, literally right after it happened. And Sean is freaking out because, you know, he had bleeding on his brain, and he was, like, worried that he was going to die. And this is a guy who has done so much to help other people, and it was crazy just seeing the transition and, like, the pain that he was in. And you can't set his bones because the brittle bone condition, you literally have to Let it sit there and calcify. And this guy was in such pain for that week and you know, it was just totally insane. And it's things like that that just put stuff in perspective and it makes me realize that, you know, that is just like, I mean everyone's life experience are different things. But it makes me think about times where my life is awesome and I'm doing well, like right now, you know, things are really great and there's other times where I've just been a complete frickin puddle of, you know, just a train wreck. And it's, you know, it's, it's in those moments and times where I lean on knowledge. I, you know, I listen to a lot of. It's one of the reasons I think I just pursue, you know, a lot of personal development, a lot of personal growth, a lot of relationships. Just, you know, there are going to be times where, you know, you just, you know, you're just. Life ain't going to be working well and it's during those things that kind of, kind of keep you going. So anyway, that's sort of the ramble. Let's talk about some book marketing.

Absolutely. So you're on a bit of a there. I mean starting with Peter Diamandis, with Abundance and then Ariana and now with Tony. So what's, what have you learned? What can, what I have learned is.

That writing a good book or a great book or a world class book is not the key to having a lot of people read it, a lot of people buy it. It is marketing. Just like what I've learned with people that have done successful crowdfunding campaigns like Brendan Burchard. He spoke at the Genius Network annual event and he was the marketing advisor behind Coolest, the Coolest Cooler, which on Kickstarter, which now has become the largest Kickstarter campaign in history. What did like close to 14 million or something and it was at $8.9 million when I introduced him up on stage in mid August at my Genius Network annual event that it was the number two Kickstarter campaign in history. And now it had become, it closed being the top Kickstarter campaign beat Pebble Watch. And of course they tried to launch that campaign and it failed. So they needed to get the marketing right. They needed to get it right. I'm going to help Peter on his next book which is coming out called Bold. There's actually quite a few people that have books coming out. The funny thing is I've never written a mainstream book. People constantly ask me, me and you have written the I love marketing books. I've written the little book of Ass Kickers I've created. I mean we create on. I love marketing the equivalent of a new book every month. But we don't publish it as a book. But the thing is people seek us out in order to help them with the marketing and the messaging, including Ariana. Some of the things that I talked about before. First off, what's the outcome you want for the book? Do you want to sell? You want to be on New York Times? Do you want to use it as a way to credentialize yourself? Do you want to use it as a back end business? There's certainly an authority effect that comes with being an authority. People tend to perceive you, not tend to people do perceive you differently as an author versus a non author. So there's many different reasons to write a book. But certainly I think of a book as telling a story, giving advice. There's what books that tell you what to do and then there's how books that tell you how to do it. For instance, I'm a guy that practices Transcendental meditation and there's a great book called Transcendence. It's a what book, not a how book. You're not going to learn how to do TM by reading that book. What you'll learn is all of the research and the science and who does it, why to do it, that sort of thing. But they can't teach you transcendental meditation out of a book. But what they can do is give you a perspective on it. But I read that book before I went through the TM training and people can get TM training@tm.org but. So there's many different perspectives. But the takeaway is that it still is all marketing. You have to. There is no strategy to writing a world class book, but not having a marketing plan in place. Like J.J. virgin, for instance. She's going to, at the time we're doing this recording, I would venture to say in two or three months from now, her book on sugar will probably be the top, you know, fitness, health, nutrition book in the country. How long will that last? I don't know. But JJ is hustling and I was having lunch with her after the Newport event. I drove to LA and I was coming back like a week later and listening to podcasts and everything on my drive. I literally drove by myself and it gives me some time to think and listen and I actually love that because I learn so much and, and podcasting is so freaking cool. So I meet up with her in Palm Desert and we have a real famous author who has a new book coming out and he's never done some of the book campaigns. And it's become more increasingly difficult if you try to use strategies of the past in today's environment with electronic books and that sort of stuff. Just how much messaging is out there in the marketplace and said, I want to have so and so help me run my campaign. How does that work? What would they charge here? Me and you have worked on campaigns like right now with Tony. I'm just giving Tony advice. I helped Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt from Google with their book the New Digital Age. We have the magnificent mystery man jr, who we've interviewed a couple of times on I love marketing, who I recruited to help me with a lot of these campaigns to do stuff. And I said to jj, you know, if someone wanted to hire you to help them launch their book, what would you charge them? I mean, any idea? And I shot a video with her, and maybe we'll put the video up. I'll have to talk with her because it's just like me and her in a restaurant. And it was done for this famous author that wanted to get help. And she's like, honestly, I don't even think I could charge someone a million dollars to do it. She goes, it wouldn't even be worth my time. There's so many things to do. She's like, I've got a team of 30 people that are working on this launch that I'm getting ready to do. You just can't delegate that. I mean, you have to learn certain things yourself. You just can't write a book and then, oh, let me give it to someone and let them just make it a best seller or let them sell tons of copies. It doesn't work that way. It just doesn't. And, you know, I mean, even with.

Arianna, with the quality of the book, for sure.

Right, right. And so you have to have the sales letter. Yeah. You know, so for Tony, we're putting together a Draw Shop video that'll be out in the next couple of weeks. It'll be an animated video that thedrawshop.com is doing on his book. He wants to feed 100 million homeless people. He wants to teach people about money. It's a huge book, too. It's like a 700 page book.

It's awesome.

I'm not even completely done reading the thing, but it's awesome. And I've spent several hours talking to Tony about it. So I get it. I understand the whole point behind it. And he's Tony Robbins. I mean, you're talking one of the top self help guys in the world with millions of people that are followers. But he still has to get that messaging down. And his goal is not just sell a bunch of books. His goal is to feed, you know, millions of Americans and set it up so it happens on a continual basis. And then you take things like Dean Graziosi. Like, me and Dean are going to go meet with the people that run the Make a Wish foundation tomorrow. Because Dean took this Ice Bucket Challenge, which I've had dozens of people that have called me out on the Ice Bucket Challenge. And so I've got like a strategy that I'm not going to announce yet on how I'm going to fulfill all of these requests other than making a donation, which I will. He did this one going, I want to raise money, I'm going to donate, but I also want to help fund the Make a Wish Foundation. So he's got this video now that I think has over 6 million views where he said, I will donate for every like on Facebook, for every share, for every like. I'll give you a dollar for every share. I'll donate $2 up to $100,000. So of course, Dean is going to cut a check for 100 grand to the Make a Wish Foundation. And if you look at that campaign, the Ice Bucket Challenge, it literally is direct response. It's like call out three of your friends, right?

Yeah.

And they've got 24 hours to make $100 donation or dump a bucket of ice on them. Ice water. Have you done it yet?

Or preferably both. I haven't done it yet. Like you, I've been called out, but I've been on the road this whole time.

And of course, I mean, who wants to dump a bucket of ice on them? But look how many people have. But the point is, so you look at all of these elements that are happening and one of my unique strategies that I'm going to employ and before I can explain it right now, but I would prefer testing it first and.

Seeing if it works, about what happened.

Yeah, but I'm going to try something in the world of book marketing with Tony and with a couple of other people, including myself. And it's a form of crowd sourcing people to help carry a message and incentivizing them to do so. And by doing so, I think it will engage a lot of people and some parts of it will fail. But the way that I'm treating stuff now is I'm going to just like marketing. Many things don't work and you have to test things out and, and you have to have marketing stamina. But in terms of specific strategies, have a trailer, have a core message, understand who your audience is, come up with a series of bullets and headlines to promote it. Have a lot of conversations that reach a lot of people. Be willing to do interviews, be willing to do webinars, be willing to do livecasts, be willing to give away a lot of stuff for free in order to engage people, educate people on what it is and what it's about. Don't just write a book to write a book. Figure out what is the outcome that you want the book to be. And by all means understand that the more writing to teach versus writing to sell are two completely different things. If you spend all of your time just teaching people, but you never ask them to buy, you never create a call to action. You don't create something that encourages other people to tell other people about it. It's going to be hard going and really go back to breakthrough DNA that's on ilovemarketing.com and read. Select a single target market and go all the way through the eight profit activators. What's the before unit? What's the during unit? What's the after unit? And this may be the most important thing. If you think you will never write a book or you don't have a book in you, the question to ask yourself is why? Like what do you know that if you were able to document it, if you were able to speak to it, if you don't like to. If you don't think you could write a book, listen to the episode that we did on the 90 minute book. It doesn't have to be a huge book. It doesn't have to be. Tony Robbins is like, I wrote a 700 page book. In times where people don't even read books like that anymore. I'm like, well, one of the things I talked with him about a couple days ago was, well, it's really. You're kind of giving people anywhere from four to seven books in one book for the price of one book. I go, that's a pretty fre. And it really is. I mean it's broken up into. I mean it's an insane level of work that he has put into this book. And he interviewed some of the wealthiest people in the world about things that have never been told to the public about how to make money. And it's like crazy, like the amount of work that. And you know, if, you know, Tony, Tony's a really, really driven guy. But he's also.

In a couple of weeks going down with Frank.

So those are my thoughts. I mean, you have plenty of perspectives on this too, so I'd love to hear you speak to it.

Well, I think that, you know, you hit it on the head that everybody has a book. I'm seeing now, like we've been doing the 90 minute book process all this year. We launched in December. And the books and the stories and the things that people are sharing about being how everything changes when they have a book. I mean, some and things that you would never imagine that you could write a book about. We got a guy in Toronto, Doug Cran, he's got a company that does workplace safety compliance training and helping companies, you know, comply with the workplace safety laws. Commodity, Commodity, everybody. It's like you say about carpet cleaning, something that nobody wants to do, you know, trying to make that sexy. And so we had a conversation and talked about this idea of how can you make something like that seem, how can you elevate it above what everybody else is doing? And so we came up with the phrase return on safety. And so did a 90 minute book called Return on Turning Workplace Safety into a Competitive Advantage and Bottom Line Profits and explained this whole process just to get that message out there. And he just emailed us in, sharing about the results from this, that he's getting in to talk to companies that he has never been able to break into. He's getting people calling him, he spoke, you know, now you've got a book, now you're invited to speak at things you're invited to, you know, come on podcasts, all these things. And he's got, you know, enough work lined up for five years. He says now from changing just the messaging of what you're saying and getting a message and a conversation started and that, you know, you said something when you're talking about this whole process, that the most valuable thing about the book is starting the conversations. What's the end objective of the book? Because it's not about the book itself. It's not about, you know, poor, you know, pouring yourself into creating this huge tome that's, you know, the most immaculately written book that you can imagine. It's about starting the conversation and getting the message spread. And so that what I've really learned in observing this is that it really does not. The thing that starts it is the message itself. You know, so Having a, having the concept that title return on safety and those words going to the right person, they want to be in that conversation. It doesn't matter whether the book is 50 pages or 250 pages. You know, it's the fact that it's a book and the fact that it has a title that when the right audience reads it, their immediate response is want that book. I want that preferably you title the book something that's a benefit, you know, and so I've seen it now again and again, like just with, even with our own, you know, the 90 minute book. The book about the 90 minute book process is exactly, you know, made from that process and that's created a, you know, a business service that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars. You know, it's just a 50 page book, but it provides something that is a really valuable service. So we're seeing it across the board just how all the different things that people are using the books for, you know, but having a title and having that thought process that it's not about that the book is the end, the book is the beginning, the book is the conversation. And so whether you've got a product or a service or a message that you want to get out, it's, you know, starting that, starting that conversation. That can happen quickly. You know, not, not everybody needs to be a New York Times bestseller. We've had some Amazon bestsellers going through, through this process with their 90 minute books. But it's for most people, for all our listeners who don't have an aspiration to be a New York Times bestseller or don't have the platform for that or don't have the, the need for that, if they're running a local business. It's not, you know, it doesn't matter whether they are a New York Times bestseller. The thing that's going to change for them is using a book to start conversations with the right target audience and lead that conversation into your products and services that cost thousands of dollars or hundreds of dollars more than putting everything you have into a $20 book.

Right, right. You know, one thing I want to share. Have you ever read First Hundred Million by E. Hatterman Juliet?

Right, exactly. Yes, yes, yes. Those little blue books, right?

Yeah. Let me tell this story because someone reprinted the book on Amazon. You can get it first 100 million. And this is a guy back like over 100 years ago in the early 1900s, they were selling like 20 books for a dollar. So there's like about 5 cents a book and he sold over 100 million little blue books. And the description they wrote of this is, every publisher dreams of selling 100 million books. E. Hadleman Julius made it happen. Year after year, publishers go under before they even see a fraction of that number. The reason is simple. Few publishers truly know what the American public wants to read. Fewer still know what the keywords in a title can trigger. A buying friend frenzy. Be different and gain control of your publishing success by applying the results. V. Hadelman Julius, amazing scientific experiment. He published thousands of books, all with the same cover design, size and price. The only thing that set them apart was the title. He discovered that a change of a single word literally could mean thousands more in sales. Gain an insight into the American public's buying habits without breaking the bank. Apply keywords that trigger your buyer's insatiable appetites and be the next publishing success. Don't hesitate, because your competitor sure won. Now, certainly that was someone that just took the book. It was probably public domain and I don't even know. But the point is, he gives all of these examples of the same exact book, same content. All he changed was the title. And he would literally, he tracked how many copies were sold with this title, how many copies were sold with this title. And if anyone is thinking about writing a book or selling anything, that book is such an incredible proof that the title and what you call it has everything to do with how many people buy it. There are people that will spend literally years and thousands of dollars and thousands of hours writing a book, but they will put no emphasis on figuring out what the hell to call it. When I interview Ted Nicholas, gosh, It was probably 14 years ago now, I don't even know how long ago he had sold over $200 million worth of information products. And he had many courses that were 1001-502002-50300 page courses. And he made this comment that he would spend more time writing the single page ad to sell the 300 page course than he spent writing the 300 pages. And that always struck me as like going, that's the reason he sold $200 million worth of stuff is because he understood that the creating of the stuff was different than the selling of the stuff. And that's why I always love the word glop. What you have is your product or your service or your book or whatever. Although we're talking about books, this really applies to anything that you're selling. It's all glop. You may have the best glop in the world, but if you can't convey that your glop is the best glop, or it's a really good glop, or people should buy your glop, then it's just glop. So how do you make it something other than just another book on health, just another book on service, just another book on management, just another book on teaching your parrot how to talk. Parrot the bird, in case anyone's confused. That's just a really great insight. Those are little things that most people would never hear about because they're like, well, what am I going to learn from a book that was written 100 years ago? I want to read a book on social media. I want to read a book on new open source management. Well, it's like, well, that's why no matter what your thing is you're working on, that's timeless information. That's not timely information. And what was really crazy is how much sex sold even back then, because it always will. He had all these titles about marriage, about relationships, and inserting the word sex produced completely different results. So if anyone was to ever pick up that book and go through it, he lists out all the titles and the results. But my point here is that just like what you call a movie, just like what you call your company, just what you call your thing, it has a lot to do with the success of it. And that's why you have to test these things.

And having the message though, that's gonna compel people to get it. I mean, we've got. So right now in Success magazine, we've got the email mastery ad that we did last year, remember? And that book was our email series on, on. I love marketing. It was the transcripts of the email marketing series that we did. And so it's really. I just talked with Dan today. So the first couple of weeks here, it's at, you know, 65 or 70% opt in rate because of the way that it is introduced. Right. It's not. They don't have any idea whether that book is 250 pages or 50 pages or whatever it is. What they're interested in is the information we tapped into the conversation that people want to have, you know? Yeah.

So the point is, read the ad in Success magazine and take a look at how people are compelled to follow up. And there you go. Yeah, now you're right. You're totally right. So what else, Dean, what else? What do you think?

Well, those whole, I mean, you know, it's really about what you do after they've, after they start the Conversation. You know, you start the conversation by offering the book and then now what you've got is you've turned an invisible prospect into a visible prospect. And it's all about starting and continuing that, that conversation with them.

Yeah.

You know, so we, it's, it's so, it's so amazing just these times that we're in now that we can, you know, have all the technology to create something like an imit book that some we can get on the phone and record and transcribe a conversation, turn that into a book and have something, you know, from start to finish that takes entrepreneur 90 minutes, you know. Yes, it's something. Yeah.

Well, I want to even mention things too. One of the first things that I did, and you've done a lot of this too in the real estate industry, and I did it in the cleaning industry. And I actually launched a new podcast for cleaners called rich cleaner. So richcleaner.com where we're gonna, you know, I'm doing episodes specifically for professional cleaners and restorers. So those of you that listen to our podcast that are in that industry, I just launched a specific podcast just for that industry. And some of the episodes that we do here that are applicable there, I will probably put them as episodes on Rich Cleaner just because there's a lot of stuff that applies to everyone for that. But one of the first things that I created for myself was a consumer guide to carpet cleaning. Although it wasn't a book, it was a report, it was a guide and I was the author and that was my first introduction into making myself an author of educational material. And then I would literally license and sell the template to other professional cleaning companies so that they could customize their own education based communication system in print. Because there was no Internet when I first started. And all of a sudden I taught professional cleaners and restorers all over the country how to actually put their name on it. So I took them from selling advertising, or not selling advertising, but paying for advertising that just talked about their company, to actually being someone that advised the public on how to choose a carpet cleaner, obviously slanted towards them their advantages, why people should do business with them and give them marketplace positioning. And I'll tell you, it took a lot of people that had all kinds of knowledge, but they never knew what do I do with it, how do I communicate it to the consumer? You got all this training, you do great work, and you are sitting there running an ad that says your logo, the list of services and your phone number. I mean, how Useless is that to do? That's my biggest gripe with brand building. If you are a really educated craftsperson and you've got training and you provide all these benefits and you are running an ad with a jingle, or you're putting a picture of a dog or a picture of a carpet cleaner and you're running a. I mean, what kind of nonsense is that? I mean, like, literally educate the public on what it is you do. And you can still put in your company name, you can still put up your website if you want to, you know, but my whole thing is like, make the words the thing that compel people not, you know, and if you want to use, you know, imagery, you know, a lot of people are like, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, you know, a mental picture is worth 10,000 words. And so with copy, you're able to create a mental picture, you're able to create a craving. And where a lot of people get confused with it is they've even done this with MRIs, you can show sexual imagery and the brain will light up. I mean, they've even done tests on monkeys where if they put a picture of a monkey's butt in front of a monkey and he watches a screen, the monkey will literally freaking go across. I mean, we'll literally like, not eat. We'll do things just, we'll give up juice. They use juices like the commerce. It's the same thing in order to keep seeing imagery, which is why pornography is like, so addictive. So you'll see a lot of imagery used in that way. But people confuse that with, oh, let's put a picture there. I mean, you've got to understand what's going on in the mental mechanisms of the human brain. And really, if you're going to use pictures, if you're going to use logos, if you're going to use animation, don't use it either. Or use it in conjunction with powerful titles, powerful headlines, powerful copy education. Stepping people through. Selling is rarely an event. It's a process. Once in a while, in the world of cleaning and restoration, if all of a sudden my house is flooded, I immediately need somebody because timing is tough. But hiring a carpet cleaner is a different sort of process than having a flood and needing an emergency service that's going to come over at three in the morning. You know, those are two entirely different things. But it's important to understand the difference between both and how you. How you communicate and how you present and how you package, all of that.

So anyway.

So before we wrap up. What final words of advice do you have for our listeners to do related to books or any other recommendations with things that we've recorded in the past that you'd like to speak to or any other stuff you think would be valuable?

Well, I think they should write one. I mean, for sure, use a book as a lead generator. It's the very best profit activator number two thing that, you know, we've seen. I mean it's the thing that gets the highest response, gets the highest operates, has the most perceived value. I think it's. I just can't punch any holes in it. So I would recommend it for everybody to do a book. And you know, when you think about if you could turn something like workplace safety into a, into something interesting and valuable, I mean, anything you could possibly imagine you could do. No, I'm not going to tell you about it yet because I want to get the test done. Sorry. I had something that could be a really cool future episode here.

We could do a whole episode on.

This, this case study. Cool, cool. Same thing with you. Yeah.

And what I would like to do in a future episode is talk about some of the specific strategies I've learned from all these darn events that I've been to and also some of the amazing content that we created at the Genius Network annual event. And I'll plug the next year's annual event. So we now know that next year it's going to be October 26th and 27th in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is a beautiful time of the year in Arizona. That's my event that will for early birds. It'll be 10 grand a person. I may raise the rate to 25,000 a person. Just attend the event. It is the highest level marketing event in the world, bar none. The one that I did in August was the highest level marketing event that's ever been done in the history of the world. For direct response marketers. The level of the people, the 10 minute talks, I mean it was awesome. And this year I'll have Tony Robbins coming. You're coming. Dan Sullivan, Peter DIAMANDIS, John Paul DeGioia. The billionaire just confirmed that he will be there. Harvey McKay, Frank Kern, like a whole slew of awesome people. And so you can get on the list at geniusnetworkevents with an s.com and once we have all the final details, we will notify you. But the this is for players. It's pretty awesome. But we'll share some of that and then I'm going to test out some different models I was talking about and the things that work, we'll talk about those and share those with all of our listeners so you can benefit, profit from it.

That's the fun thing about doing this podcast. We were just putting together all the finishing stuff for the yearbook for 101 to 150 episodes now and stocking with some of the people on my team here and they're like, boy, you guys never run out of stuff to talk about. And it's like, you know, because we're constantly doing new stuff and like we're living this adventure of marketing that it's something that talk about a 25 year plan. I mean, we've been having these kind of conversations for 17 or 18 years now. You can't maybe, I think next year will be 20 years for you and I. But you know, you can imagine that we're still going to be doing these kind of having these conversations 20 years from now. It's amazing to. Yeah.

You mean me knowing each other for 20 years or starting the company 20 years ago?

No, you and I. You and I knowing each other for 20 years now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly. Coming up.

It's painful. All that time that we've had to spend together.

Oh my God. Oh, my God.

So we're just sharing the misery on ilovemarketing.com just to you know.

That's so funny.

So we would love to have you give your comments on ilovemarketing.com what you thought about this episode, what ideas that you have, and please share it with all your friends and neighbors and loved ones and even people you don't like because we'll still get more people to listen to our stuff. Share, share these episodes with other entrepreneurs. Share the love. And that's all I got to say. I just wish everyone the very best and thanks for listening to us. And we will talk to you on the next episode of I love Marketing.