Safe Ideas For Scary Times - Entrepreneurship Amidst Chaos with Jay Abraham, Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #362

You're either a value creator or you're a diminisher. It's the concept of grow or die. It's physics. You expand or you contract. You're either continually creating value, you're a multiplier, or a diminisher.

I'm Dean Jackson. He's Joe Polish. And this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

How do you keep your balance as an entrepreneur and keep growing your business amidst worldwide fear, chaos, and uncertainty? Listen to insights from three of the greats in today's episode of I Love Marketing. In this episode, Jay Abraham, Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish will dive into the importance of results when leveraging ethical opportunities. No matter what's going on in the world, they'll reveal the strategies that have kept them above the chaos and specific ways to adapt quickly so your business and clients continue to thrive. You'll learn the value of responding instead of reacting, unlearning and creating measurable results that sell themselves.

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

And welcome to I Love Marketing. This is going to be a very interesting and special episode. You know how to do at world events. And we've got someone who can speak to this subject of what do you do when there is chaos going on in the world? Fear, crisis, recessions, social uproar, paranoia, fear. All these elements, and we can add different language into it. But we've got our dear friend in one of the most brilliant marketing minds, business minds on the planet, Mr. Jay Abraham, joining us. So, Jay, how are you?

I'm copacetic. You know what copacethetic is?

Well, I would prefer you explain it. I mean, I have an idea of it, but it certainly. I don't want to begin.

You don't hear much, but it means you're mellow and you're good and you're balanced and all is great. Life is good.

You survived the gauntlet of your travel.

We've been through some interesting experiences from a perspective standpoint.

So we're recording this. I think it's almost important to put the timeline. This is March 11, 2020. Lots of interesting things going on in world affairs today. You know, with coronavirus, Harvey Weinstein got 23 years in prison, I believe it was today. Lots of interesting things that are going on. A lot of conferences getting canceled. And I have friends all over the world, including a friend in Milan, Italy, who gives me updates based on what she sees happening there versus what the news is showing us over here and reporting. And we were having a conversation, three of us, the other day, that it would be probably really valuable to do a episode on how to think about your business and entrepreneurship in the midst of scary situations, dangerous situations, that sort of stuff. And so that's the conversation I'd like to have. And I've got some questions I was going to lead with with both of you. And we can take this in different directions, but I have prepared for it and so have you, Jay. I think the one that prepared the least for this was probably Dean.

I've been preparing for 32 years for that. My whole life is preparation.

That's right. I've been working the whole life for this.

The old story.

Yeah, that's right. Jay, you said something to me the other day that. And there's this line from our friend Richard who said, wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. And I certainly don't want to say this in a way to where, oh, people are going to make money. Now, here's figuring out how to be exploitive, because there are certainly, you see that right now, I mean, a lot of exploitation of people's fears and their paranoia. And that so goes against my value system. I mean, it's like, okay, how do you help people? How do you help your own business? How do you look after your own company in the midst of this? And some people are in a shit storm right now. Other people are just figuring out what do we do next? And waiting in the wings for what's going to happen. And I have no idea how this is going to play out over the next few weeks. But I think what we can talk about, even if it's not coronavirus, even if it's a recession, there's all kinds of things about how to think about business. And I really think, Jay, that you're one of the best in the world at this after having first started listening to tapes that you were doing back in the early 90s. I've heard you speak to this subject over the past few decades. And same with Dean. We all have. We've all been through. We've all been running companies for many years. This is my 30th year of owning my own business. So we've seen lots of stuff happen. So is there anything you guys like to say before we jump into it?

As I say, you're right on track with corona virus is the thing right now that's at the epicenter of what's going on. And that could be a placeholder for anything that is acute onset and causing discomfort and uncertainty and speculation. All of these things that are going on in the market we've seen over the, Joe, you and I, 30 years and Jay, longer than that, numerous things where this has come into play. And this just happens to be what the epicenter of it is right now. So the things we're going to talk about are not necessarily coronavirus specific, but I think things that we've observed and things that can kind of ease that uncertainty and give us a direction with some stability here.

And again, I'm not a person that's going to put my head under the sand at all. I mean, I've been talking to my friends that are medical doctors. I was late last night on the phone with a friend of mine who's an emergency room physician, sees so much stuff and just talking to different people around things. And I also am a person that knows this is a perfect situation for the news media to startle people. When we did the interview with Ryan Holiday, one of his first books was Trust Me, Confessions of a Media Manipulator. In the book, I can't remember the guy's name, but the person that owned most of the newspapers in the United States over 100 years ago made a statement that the purpose of the news is not designed to inform, it's designed to startle. And this is a, you know, there's a lot of that will be happening no matter how severe it is, depending on where you're at. So we know that when people are in a fearful, scared, immobilized state, especially if they're the ones running the company and looking to be in a leadership position, they're probably not going to be in the best state of being responding, but to reacting. And so, yeah, I mean, so let me start. Jay, I have this interesting question I wanted to ask you. What is the most financially dangerous situation you or maybe one of your clients has ever been in and how did you. You or they get out of it?

I've been involved in so many industries, but when gold was first legalized, I had the largest gold brokerage in the sector, and we were devastated. Gold dropped in one period, not unlike the stock market. It went from 800 to 300. And my client was exposed terribly. The market froze. He was my only client at the time. I just bought a new house. I put every dime I had in it. I was making $200,000 a month from him. And this is 40 years ago. And it was very, very tenuous. But after we freaked out for a couple of hours, we realized that reactive, impulsive type response wasn't going to really solve it. Pragmatic strategic, and what I will call innovative response. And there's a concept I was going to offer, but I was listening to YouTube much more respectfully and interestingly. But I think there's a concept you have to adopt, and it's not immoral. It's very moral. I call it ethical opportunism. There's always going to be opportunity inherent in adversity. And I mean, I'm very blessed in a bizarre way, because I've done a thousand industries, so I have a context of reference and have seen lots of possibilities and lots of scenarios. But you have to know that in any situation, there's always a solution. The solution may mean you have to take your business in a different direction. What we did just in the gold business is we, instead of selling, we started buying. There's always a market for something, and we started offering different investments that were instantly in vogue. And we made partnerships because we had 500,000 buyers that all of a sudden didn't want to buy hard assets. They wanted to buy something else, but they didn't have brokers. So we went the other way with it. And we didn't leave our posture that we believed in gold at the time. We acknowledged that gold was in a funk. Big funk, of course, in a big funk. It was in crisis and chaos. But we basically said, if you're going to hedge yourself, let us get you the best price selling and then let us partner with the best. We took an ombudsman approach and we turned it around and we made millions of dollars helping people do what they were going to do.

Anyhow, Joe was telling Jay yesterday. We had a quick conversation. I don't know if I've ever said this to you, but I learned back when I was playing tennis that there was a concept that really was amazing to me, was that every shot makes somebody happy. And if you're playing tennis, if you're. Every shot, no matter what, if I'm playing you, Joe and I hit the ball out, that's going to make you happy, but it makes me unhappy. And if you hit the ball out, that's going to make me happy, but it makes you unhappy. And the position to be in is to think like the umpire who sees it as neither good nor bad, just what it is, and looks for, as Jay said, the ethical opportunity in it. And that really is a. A fundamental thing. And one of the things I wanted to bring into this as kind of the foundation for the conversation, that is one of them, but the other is that what's causing the uncertainty and what we have right now with coronavirus is we have an acute onset unrelated situation that's causing a ripple effect of outcomes in things that are not directly related to the actual thing. It's not a fundamental underlying cause for the decline in most things. And to recognize that if you get a little altitude on it and you look at what is the likely that this is going to play itself out, probably from what I'm reading and hearing over the next three to six months, but who knows what's happening in the marketplace right now that's unrelated to it, but caused by the panic and uncertainty that not knowing what to do is causing. How do you ease people's minds in that? I think you keep people focused on the things that are not affected by this and look for those opportunities. We saw in 2008 when the market crashed and then the real estate market subsequently fell apart. There were a lot of homes then going into foreclosure. And so we created a program called Bank Owned Weekly where we started advertising and generating leads for people looking for bank owned homes. And because there's always no matter what in any kind of situation, there are people who look at it as an opportunity that when in 2006, seven, when the house prices were going unchecked, crazy appreciation, the market got a little bit out of hand. And when it came back down on the way down, there's opportunities for people to get deals on properties. And of course we've seen it play out now over the 12 years since then, have been the most prosperous 12 years maybe in modern history.

And Joe and Dean, if I can give you a spin on that, which might be inspiring to people. So you've been through three, I've been through four sequences. And in the 208 era, we were very successful with a very interesting strategy that was both ethically opportunistic but also wonderfully humanistic. And here's what we did. I was able to help just a huge spectrum of people in a wide spectrum of industries. But what we did is we recognized that most of their contemporaries were not proactive strategic thinkers. They were flailing, they were continuing to do the same, or they were stopping altogether. Everything and any of those three strategies were suicidal. And they didn't know what to do. And they were losing money or breaking even and freaking out. And we would go to people who were appropriate and we would do it repetitively because the first time they would recoil. But we would basically offer to take over their assets and service them because we could consolidate and pay them a share and help them unwind their overhead and pay them, they would make more for doing nothing. And our preference was always look, if you continue doing what you're doing, you're going to lose everything you've invested in, everything you've worked for your whole life. If we take it over and consolidate and help you extricate yourself from your fixed overhead, figure out how to repurpose people, consolidate functions, sell off the equipment, even if it's at distressed prices, get you capital, but also give you 25 or 35% of the profit from the consolidation. You'll make more from doing nothing forever. Then you're going to make trying to stave off in a reactive mode. And we did that over and over again. Our clients, my clients prospered, but we were also benefactors to the people that would have lost everything, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think what you just said about stave off being in a reactive mode, I mean, I think that's if there's anything that I want to convey during this, because here we are. I love marketing. I often think about it when you hear marketing in a context like this, if you don't really understand what marketing is. Even though me and Dean have, I don't know how many hundreds of episodes we've now done, I love marketing and me personally, I've done over 900 interviews with people over the many years that I've been doing this. So I've had lots of conversations and heard a lot of different definitions of marketing. I'm going to ask both of you to give your in a moment what your definition of marketing is right now. What does that even mean to what Jay said though? Saving off or being a reactive mode? I mean, I've told my story many times of when I was going through a grief situation. A few years ago, I had a private yoga instructor who I still do yoga with, just did yoga with night before last. Her name's Giselle. She had said to me this saying that I've heard before. If you do yoga three times a week, it'll change your body. If you do it every day, it'll change your life. And so I made a commitment that I would do yoga every day for like a month. And I did. And then over a 90 day period, I did like 82 or 83 sessions of yoga. You know, not like 20 minutes on a YouTube video, but either a class or private instructions, even when I traveled. And I'm a busy guy. And what I found is that it just increased my level of responding to life versus reacting to life. And when I was in total grief, it was really hard to just not react. You know, I was more angry, I was more sad, I was more annoyed, I was more frustrated. I mean, all the different myriad of feelings and emotions in situations like this, being able to respond, I think is so damn important. I mean, we can talk about strategies, we can talk about tactics, we can talk about mindset. I mean, there's all kinds of things. It's just being in that space of being able to respond most intelligently. Because when you just describe that example. Jay. Yeah, I mean, they have a choice. How do you decide what to do when the world around you doesn't know how to decide or is freaking the hell out? That being said, we're talking about marketing and I'd like to get your guys definition of marketing right now when we're saying here's how to think about marketing in your business. Even though everything we're talking about right now is not just marketing. I understand that. I'd love to have you guys give some context to how you think what marketing means in a situation like this.

Let's go with you, Jay, because I'm going to. We've talked about this idea of marketing and I want to maybe talk about something I'm thinking about with branding, which would be a really nice corollary to what we're talking about with marketing. So I'll let you start with that. Jay, start with your definition of marketing.

And I don't do it often, so I'll be doing it for the first time in a long time as far as expressing it. But I think it's probably first of all, identification and articulation and affirmation of problem or an opportunity and an outcome somebody wants that they may or may not have even fully recognized. And the education to them of the implication of that problem or opportunity now and what the resolution of that can be worth in the future and the fact that you understand and have the ability to resolve it for them in a way that will produce that? I don't know if that makes sense or not.

No, it does. That would be actually the perfect setup. I've been thinking a lot about branding because people always say, well, what's the difference? Marketing and branding? And everybody of course always leans on the visual elements of branding or the slogan or the USP or whatever that is. And I've never really heard a definition of brand that I've been sort of, you know, could get behind. And I'm a big acronym guy. So I Started thinking about the. That what we're trying to establish when we're talking about a brand is we're trying to establish a buying reflex affecting now decisions. And that what Coca Cola has done, if you put up Coca Cola as the ultimate, most valuable brand, the reason that is true is that they've established in the minds of the largest number of people a buying reflex that says when somebody asks them, what would you like to drink? They say, I'll have a Coke. And the number one thing that we're trying to do in anything that we're doing is just like you said, Jay, articulate the problem, articulate our solution in a way that lets them realize that we've got it and then the memory of that. So that at the time that they need that, that they reach a now decision, meaning now's the time that we need to buy this, that their buying reflex is, I need this. I need Jay Abraham, I need Joe, I need whatever your business.

Yeah, that's a great point. And, Dean, may I just really quickly add that I think what I believe you want, and I think you will, hopefully you acknowledge. I think you want to be preemptive.

Yes.

And I don't think most people understand that preemptive and preeminent and prominent. They're all different dimensions.

Define all those. J. I mean, we've had. We've done other podcasts on this subject that with you, that people can go and listen to on. I love marketing. If they just want to do a search, however. Yeah, define. Define it.

I'm going to stop talking because every time I talk, I have to come up with an explanatory definition.

Well, if you're going to use big.

Words, you're going to have to explain them. So. Okay, so, you know, I mean, my.

Friends are really sophisticated and intelligent, but Dean, for some reason has people that just don't.

I think he's sitting there with his. With his Roget thesaurus right now.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, no, actually, I say that for myself more than anyone. I don't understand.

I have a very bad habit of liking precision and communication. It's not always the easiest to understand, but I like delineating. So I think preemptive means that you are able to positively. I mean, you could do it negatively, but you were able to block, you know, the mind's eye of the target audience from thinking there's any other viable, you know, viable solution. You're the only one. They see you and they don't see anything else even coming close. You blocked it either. And you could block in many ways. It gets a lot of. It gets into, excuse me, lots of methodology. You can be, you know, more beneficial, more better, you know, better risk reversal, more bonuses. I mean, there's all kinds of ways, but you want to be so definitively preemptive that there's, you know, you've elevated your offer, your business, your perception ahead of the maddening crowd. Preeminence is being seen in the mind of the target audience and I've done lots of work on that, as you know, as the only viable solution. The most trusted advisor who has their best interests solely and predominantly at heart, not their own for life, who is giving them the most well reasoned, objective perspective on the good, the bad, the ugly, who won't let them buy less than they should, less quantity, quality, frequency, not because you want the profit, but you want them to benefit to the ultimate. And that you're going to tell them what they should do, including not buy. And that's sort of preeminent. I'm giving it to you distilled. Prominent is just being significantly known in your sector or market. But prominent, I think is probably the lesser of all these three.

This made me think of something and I don't want to take it off the subject of the branding. So just tie it into this to whatever degree to you to. You satiated your point on that one. I'm very kind of. Maybe it's just a place I'm at in my life right now where I am very suspect of people that are exploitive of other people. And when humans can be desperate, they can literally cross integrity or moral bounds. They could also be exploited if they're in a very desperate sort of situation. And there's a lot of times where, oh, there's an opportunity and there are certain opportunities that you just don't take them, even though you could. I'm becoming disenchanted with much of the how to world of gurus that are out there. You know, many that I know personally that are out there teaching people how to, quote, unquote, be successful. And the level of horseshit that comes out of their mouths in order to try to sell something is just nauseating to me at times.

I'm thrilled to hear you say that because I agree with you. It's been a detriment, I think, to the betterment of the whole. I mean, I think society has gotten seduced and really, I think it's really hurt people because they have, you know, people who could be viable, successful entrepreneurs have Blown their. Not their financial wad, although that. But they've also blown their trust wad. It's sort of a gross analogy, but they've lost their belief in others and themselves. And I think that these rapscallions, and whatever you want to call them have really done an irreparable disservice to the potentiality of entrepreneurship.

Exactly. Exactly. So, I mean, without sounding so overly emphasizing this point, I just think it's really critical right now where, if you're going to serve your business and serve others and do it in a way that. Where you can go to bed at night and not be exploitive, you know, like right now, more than anything is to. I want to up people's. Not necessarily. Here's how to sell the most in no matter what means necessary, but how to be of most service to your own company, to your team, to your family, to your clients, to, you know, to your community, to whatever degree your business and entrepreneurial, you know, enterprise wherever it reaches and whatever it does. And so I just want to. I guess my question or elaboration on that is, you know, Dean, we've had numerous conversations about if there was some sort of law enacted where starting on Monday, you could no longer charge for your products or services. And the only way that you can get paid is if you had to produce a result. And if someone was really put in that position. And a lot of what you sell, and a lot of what I sold in the past was like, people don't pay until they actually get a result. Right, Right. So, like right now, more than anything, you need to not be a thought leader. I always say any asshole could come up with a thought. You need to be. You need to be a result leader. Right, Right. And if you're able to produce a result, now's the time to really. Marketing, to me is storytelling. You know, how do you tell that story? What do you say? How do you say it? Who do you say it to? And you know, the only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder.

I love that.

Yeah. And you know, and a lot of people will be singing the wrong note, knowing they're singing the wrong note. And they'll be saying it just because people are desperate and they're following it and they will buy from them. But that's not the way to treat humans. And that's not the way to create a result for someone. And that's, you know, and it may be short term, there's financial gain, but long term, what are you really doing? So I mean, you know, again, my purpose behind this conversation is to really not give someone a band aid, but to give them a way to think about, you know, what do we do if we're going to be in a crisis?

May I?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, please.

So you're reminding me of two things, and you're into my sweet spot. So I've been very blessed by having mentors throughout my life that are much. They're much higher intellectually in pay grade, and they taught me very well. And one of them was masterful at understanding value creation. And he had a phrase that most people ask the wrong question. They say, oh, what can I. What trick can I use? You know what, you know what, Tripwire or what this or what that. And it's not that. It's how much more value can you create that is recognized, prized, and desired from the other side? And in a way that they see you as understanding them, appreciating them, and having their best future interests. So they want to avail themselves. And I'm being more probably protracted, but I think. And we did one time, six or seven hours on value creation. Because there's a disconnect between what people think value is that they're selling and what most people, in their mind's eye, define as value that they want to buy. And value usually is denominated, as we both are, all three of us know, in a benefit. It's not really features. And I watch a lot of the stuff you and I were just lamenting about, Joe. And I want to. I don't want to puke, but I do want to have a reflex action which is one gradient below that, that I see just bullets, bullets, bullets. Bonus, bonus, bonus. And I think. I mean, you don't understand this. I was taught the first thing you have to do, and it's why we were able to be so successful right off the bat, is you have to be able to examine, evaluate, understand, appreciate, acknowledge, and respect how the other side is seeing life. Not just the superficiality of the veneer of what. The buzzwords that you're trying to use and what you think they want. But where are they at in their life? What's their life like? What do they really value? And unless you can appreciate and empathically understand it, you really can't be great. And you certainly can't be great in an adverse environment like this. I don't believe.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Being great, you know, I mean, that's a really good point. So, Dean, what sort of profoundness are you going to then bring to this so that our listeners can really have. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm still talking as I. Yeah, I want. I want.

I love this. Great.

No, no. And by the way, I wasn't saying. I'm still talking. Dean, like, shut up and don't say anything. I mean, I want to set this up right for you. I'm not trying to. I mean, I clearly, he really is.

Dean saying that to sound.

I banter with Dean purposely to, like, diss on him. And, you know, we have this lovely relationship.

Let's make Dean look bad.

Dean just has a really great way of simplifying concepts and then leading people with like an action on what to do. That's really where I want you to take this deed.

So. Well, I'll tell you what. So I sit out here. You've been to my house, Joe. And I sit out on the back porch sometimes and just think. And I look through and I imagine these interactions that we're having with people in terms of who we're trying to get new clients and to, you know, all the focus seems to be, how can I get more clients, how can I convince more people to do business with me, how can I make more sales, do more marketing, all that kind of stuff? What I realized is that it all comes down to being able to deliver a result to people. That's what we've talked about, right? What would you do if you only got paid if you get the result? That is an instant clarifier to determine, do you have the ability to deliver a result to somebody and are they going to be better off for having done business with you? And do you have the confidence in your ability to deliver that result that you would put your compensation on the other end of getting that result? Because that's what we're asking our clients or our prospective clients to do, is we're trying to get them to put their money on the other end of the face in our ability to deliver the result. And the challenge is that we're often, if you imagine all of the collective universe of people that are trying to do business with that potential client, they're all gathered around the doors to the purchasing department at that company waiting to get a purchase order to deliver this result to them, Right? Trying to convince them, here's where you should allocate your money, give me some of that money, and here's what we'll do for you. But where nobody almost ever approaches a company is from the receiving doc. Because at the receiving doc, you're Met with open arms. There's no resistance. There's nothing stopping you from bringing money into business. Everybody is 100% congenial to bringing money into the business. And if you can approach a company like that and you know that you've got the ability to deliver that result, you're completely on your way to transforming your business. Because there's zero friction that way. You know, I mean, one of my.

Questions, which I'm going to. I'll say the original variation of it, then something like a slight variation based on what you just said. So the question was, I was going to ask both of you this. What typically causes entrepreneurs to get into trouble during bad times? So that's the original question. So my spin on that is, what would cause an entrepreneur to not be able to take that sort of action or get to that level in the way that you're describing Creating a result not for what they think is a result, but for the result for the. The client, the buyer, the person that needs it. In this particular case, that result could be value creation. That result would be ease to suffering, right?

Yes. What you're doing is, in a situation like that, they're mistaking the client's resistance to buying right now as a lesser desire for the actual result. But when you look at their capacity or their appetite or their need for the result that your interaction is going to create for them, especially if the interaction that you're going to engage in them with is going to bring in more business for them, like if you're. If what you're doing is helping people get more business, then it's a, you know, it's a win that you are able to get them focused and you too focused on the future money that's coming in, as opposed to the present money that you're trying to take some of the present money that they have in order to get it. And so that's where that whole line of thinking led me to discovering Cyrus McCormick, the guy that invented the reaper. And he invented the reaper in the 1800s, and he had a real legitimate breakthrough that allowed one farmer to do the work of 14 men. But the machine was expensive and the farmers couldn't afford it. But his brilliance was, well, let me give you the machine to use for the season, and then you pay me at the harvest. Because he knew that the machine was the thing that unlocked that future money. And his approach was, better that I wait for my money than you wait for the machine that's going to improve your prospects. And that was how he spread the reaper all over the country and paved the way for America to move out of the fields and into the factories. And so that was what I created a thing called project Cyrus, where I did a pilot program with our real estate agents where I said, I'm gonna build your website. I'm gonna take you through a training program, I'm gonna show you exactly how it all works, and then you pay me when we do your first transaction. And it was just the instant rocket fuel because there was zero resistance. It was exactly the same situation. I knew that they needed this tool to grow their business. I knew that I had the proven way for them to do it. I was 100% confident in my ability to deliver it for them. But our websites were five times as expensive as traditional real estate websites, right? So I was able to, by saying, let me build your website and do it. I knew and found out that it was less expensive. And often it is. It's less expensive sometimes to get somebody a result than it is to convince them to give you money to get the results.

And you all know that I got started strictly on performance. Our whole motto was, don't pay for marketing, pay for results. And everything we've ever done for clients has always been based on not only hoping that they would get results, but making certain that was the denominator of everything. But most people don't realize, and we used to do. We did a quarter billion dollars of seminars one cycle of my life. And our whole premise was we would make sure that they got a financial breakthrough from either the promotional material or things we would share before in physical, not online, digital, before they ever had to commit. And we wouldn't even deposit their check or their credit card process until after they'd experienced most of the. We didn't care about it. But I think I have a question for both of you, and it's just a clarification because we're talking in this discussion a lot about service type people, it sounds like, who are providing some kind of expertise to target audience, businesses or otherwise, that are measurable. Is that the majority of the people that we are talking to?

Can you think about a business that isn't providing that sort of result that's measurable?

I wonder how I can. But I think that that's not the right question. The question is, when they have them, can they create in the mind's eye of a target audience some kind of a criteria that that buyer can measure against intangibles, you know, can be measured on fulfillment, happiness, energy, vitality, sex, Life, love, life, focus. Yeah, I mean everything can be converted. I mean, I'm not trying to argue with you, Dean. I'm trying to build on what.

I wonder that. Yeah, I'm wondering that same thing. That's why I'm curious what we always.

I'm sitting there wondering like how compelling it would be to have Dean Jackson and J. Abraham arguing podcast where if I could just initiate like sort of like a little animosity between the both of you.

Just let you make you do it in an octagon.

Exactly.

We think too much alike.

I mean ultimately we're folks going to. Yeah, we're coming from exactly the same.

I'm just enhancing what you said. I'm not arguing. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. But I'm saying there are. And what I think I'm really saying between the lines, Dean Joe, is that most people who don't sell something that is okay. Most people that sell something measurable are afraid to ask the recipient to measure it. Most people selling something that seems, whatever the word is, unmeasurable don't understand that you can create a criteria in their mind that can give them a basis for basically measuring it and determining, geez, I got an enormous payoff. Benefit saving, enhancement, protection, enrichment, enjoyment. And you could give them the basis. But most people don't see that that can be done in either of those scenarios.

I mean, I guess the way that I'm hearing this and what I'm listening for is in a lot of ways some people either can enhance their business model, which could include their offerings, how they package it, how they deliver it, at what point they get payment. There's all that. The other side of this is in some situations when shit hits the fan, you need an entirely. I mean, you just got to play a different game.

Yeah.

This goes to strategy, Joe.

Yeah.

Most people are not strategic and people that never lived through any historic previous type of a crisis, they aren't. And tragically, I don't mean to dominate. I'll go quiet a minute. But most people that you and I were talking about, the, you know, the non acknowledged masses of interlopers who are trying to sell superficiality, they're just selling a tactic. They're not selling you on a business. Years and years ago I made a point that far too many not, I mean people would think they're an entrepreneur, first of all, they're a proprietor. And we can get into that some other time. It's a long discussion, but the point is they're elongated promotions waiting to implode. Because they're just tactics, tacticians trying to purvey one tactic or a couple for as long as it'll extend. And I think that's another discussion. But you can play with it or you can go somewhere else.

I would love for us to do another episode, literally, on strategy and tactics and business models and how to think about business and if you are an entrepreneur, if you're not an entrepreneur, because in a lot of ways, and I think, Dean, we've even kind of spoken to this before in previous episodes about people fetishize innovation. They fetishize entrepreneurship where it's like, oh, we got to innovate. I mean, I literally was in a team meeting yesterday, and I have some amazing new team members. Like, I've added some new team members to my company. And what I had to reiterate is that just because we can come up with a really good idea and it sounds awesome doesn't mean that we should. And there's people that have already figured out recipes. We don't need another recipe on things. People get so excited about innovation, and they talk about it and they write books about it, and it's just like, you know, you only need a few tools in your toolbox in order to make certain things work. You don't need a whole. It's already been created. And then if it hasn't been created and you innovate, that's where it has its place and its time.

And that's awesome.

But in many cases, you just have a bunch of people running around, hiding underneath creativity as if that's something to celebrate. And sometimes you want to celebrate. You don't need to be creative. You need to just figure out what the hell to do. Yeah, it just needs to work. Right?

May I? And because you're onto something that's very close to my heart.

Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

So I learned many years ago, again, from a bunch of brighter people, that if you break a business growth, or in our case, sustenance, if that's the issue we're talking about for this environment, you break it into a dyad, into two parts. If everyone wants to go into innovation, the first thing to do is optimization, but it's really maximizing. And the problem I think today, which is really interesting, there's some really impressive and outrageously brilliant technology for optimizing certain performance elements, but there's so many others that no one ever looks at. And it's so much easier to make what you're already doing, who you're already doing it with, who's doing it for and with you more high yielding for less time, effort and money. And that's a big area that most people don't even focus on. They do that, you know, the online optimization. And I'm not diminishing it. It's very brilliant. You couldn't do that when I started out without spending a million dollars in years and years. But now those are the things people think about. There's infinitely additional elements that you can maximize before what I call multiplying. Multiplying is innovating. But yet innovation and optimization are polar opposites. One is trying to break and eliminate the old. The other is totally. I mean, it's a really interesting integration of two different schools of thinking.

Right, right. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, like Nick Sonnenberg, who has his company getleverage.com one of the things we constantly have discussions about is if you have a way of doing something, a system, and you're trying to expand it and hire people, but you have not already optimized and you've not already started on a low level just to make sure it works, you're just replicating more chaos and more dysfunctional systems. And I think that goes into the realm of marketing in great levels where it's like you already have a wheel that doesn't roll very well. Well, let's get more wheels versus let's get this one just to be round and let's get it working. And I think in a lot of ways, just so we can leave the people on this particular episode with some clarity on where to actually go, how to. I mean, I think this discussion has been really enormously valuable to me because it's just made me kind of pause and think about things more and more. And, you know, when things are chaotic, I have a tendency to want to, you know, act with urgency. And there are certain times you must, I mean, you either get off your ass and do something or you're going to be in a, you know, you're going to be a world of hurt. Right now I'm in a fortunate situation where even being able to do this podcast and stuff where I'm just kind of reflecting and looking and just, I want to be very, you know, I want to measure twice or measured five times and cut once so that I do it in the right way. And I think that's sort of what I am hoping for. The people that are able to operate that way, we're able to give them time to kind of like look and reflect on their business. The Marketplace, you know, what's really going on? What's the greatest value that they could add? What is going to get their time and attention? Because more than anything, I mean, I have friends that are spending all day watching the news and listening to the news. And I'll tell you, like, a lot of them are just flipping out and.

They'Re like, what's that panic? Exactly.

Yeah. And it's kind of like, you know, I would really like people to be, to go back to what you said earlier. I want them to be able to respond to this no matter if it gets worse. How do they do that? If it gets better, there's going to be opportunity here. You know, I want our listeners that are the ones at least that resonate with us to say, okay, how can we be the very best version of who we are, not only for our own companies, but for other people out there? Because that's what, you know, in shit storms like this, there's going to be a lot of people, they're going to really take advantage in not very nice ways. And there's other people that are going to be the saviors that are going to show up and just do the very best that they can do. And that's, you know, so if we're talking to those people, what else do they need to know that we could share with them, you know, because we can go for a few more minutes. But like, what, what would be the advice that you guys would want to be at your one or two best mindset strategies, whatever. I mean, I'm not going to tell you guys what to say. I would just like to, out of all the stuff that you could share, I'd love to talk about what you think is the most important thing they would need to know.

I think that the thing if I want people to take action right now is to realize what is the thing really get down to simply what is the result that you are absolutely best at helping people to create. Right. And could that be how can you help the right people, the people that are already in your sphere right now get that result in a way that kind of pushes aside whatever the acute onset thing that's happening right now. Like I look at. So I've got my breakthrough blueprint event coming up in a couple of weeks here, and we're going to have had a couple of people who have chosen to defer to come to a later event because of travel, because people are. Everybody's on lockdown or fear about traveling right now. And so my thought is that doesn't impair people's desire for the result or the outcome that they're going to get by coming to a breakthrough blueprint. But the mechanism of getting on a plane and flying to a very popular international tourism place like Orlando right now, going through the airport, being in hotels and things like that, is what people are maybe fearful about. And so I had the idea of I'm going to do a bring your own boardroom coronavirus free breakthrough blueprint event where we'll do it on Zoom Boardroom. So we'll do the same kind of thing, but have it so that you can sit in your own HAZMAT environment and still get all the benefit of the ideas. But we'll do it in a way that is adaptable and that's an innovation. I've never done one like that, but I think that that's going to be something that will be a unique kind of response to an acute onset problem that's happening right now. Just think things like that, sending people offers for things, the ways that you can deliver the result for them in a way that's going to ease their minds.

Yep, absolutely. Well, something Gary Halbert used to share with me, which I thought was interesting on how to think about it, which is, is talk about fear. And he's like, somebody wants what you're selling and they're not buying it. He's like, if you remove the fear, they will buy, assuming they want it. Now, the fear could be money. It could be do I have the time? It could be, do I? You know, I mean, it could be a hundred different things that could all you could throw under the umbrella of fear. But it's like if you remove it, you know, doesn't always guarantee they're going to buy it, but in many cases you dramatically increased your chances of it. And so. And there's a lot of fear selling too. There's definitely a lot of fear selling. I mean, you can see that with toilet paper right now because that's an essential. You know what I mean? And so the thing is, because we are dealing with other people's fears and we're dealing with our own. So anyway, Jay, go ahead. You want to go?

Yeah, I'll give you an integration. I'll try to be very fast. First thing is that I talked a little bit about being preeminent. And the key to it is it's leadership. You're a leader to the market, you serve. You're a leader to the team that is on the mission and the crusade with you. If you don't have a certainty and a confidence about the future, a future and you can't convey to your audience, your market that you are their leader. No matter what you're doing, then you're already losing the battle. Number one, with leadership goes this concept of risk reversal. And not risk reversal just in the terms of making it easier to buy, but assurance and certainty and confidence. You convey that you understand the issues that are the deterrence or the concerns, constraints in their mind. It can be many things. The other things I would say is we have a concept called access denied and it's understanding why if you're not getting results, people are doing it. And there's lots of reasons, but I think you want to identify what else are people buying before, during, after instead because there's enormous qualitative ethical opportunity in all of those areas. One can be additive revenue, one can be pre emptive access to markets before they would buy what you buy. One would be monetizing people that don't buy a partnering galore. And I think the other is if you establish you want to, basically you want to fortify the relevancy and the trust that you can get from the people that you already are dealing with. And the thing I was going to say, that's something I believe very big. And you see it, Joe, in your group of people, there's a lot of soft skills that produce leverage, trust building. Sally Hogg said how you're seen, people like Roger, love how you're heard and all those have been data based, proven to increase results up to 300%. If there's five or six soft skills you can master incorporate into how you communicate, whether it's online, offline, in person, however it is up and down the food chain, meaning to your market and to your team, you're going to get greater yield from whatever you're doing right away. And my analogy has always been if you were flying somewhere and it's like it's marketing mistakes, when you stop them, you automatically improve. But the point is there's lots of things you don't know that you can do right now that will multiply results. And if the market is dropping, but you can get everything you're doing two or three times more effective, you are going to be at least at par. And I'm, I don't want to, I mean I can go crazy on this stuff.

No, I actually, I actually like that. That's, that's, you know, it's interesting. I mean you said a couple of things. Access denied, which is people not Granting you the business. Right. Then fortify relevancy. I'm sitting there thinking about the soft skills, for one. One thing that I'm doing sort of an exploration on because we just started a thing called an Elf Challenge. Easy, lucrative and fun. Yeah. For my Genius Network members. Right. And they're just really simple things that if they do them will, you know, for five or six days, their lives will probably dramatically improve. And I'm witnessing, out of all the people that were here at the meeting that we kind of launch it just with this group of 60 people in Genius Network. We've got more than that in the group, obviously, but we had one meeting where we have 60 people at a time in my office. And this is just recently. And I'm just witnessing who said that they would do it? Who actually then when we said, okay, we're going to start it today, and it was started earlier this week, who's actually doing it? And I'm curious to see who completes it. And then I've got my friend BJ Fogg, who's one of the top behavioral scientists and researchers in the world, who's a professor at Stanford. One of his students was the founder of Instagram. And then students of his that have written books like Nir Eyal, who I've had on the podcast, and Genius Network, who wrote the book Hooked, and then James Clear with Atomic Habits and all this sort of stuff. And I'm sitting there just simply looking at habits formation, you know, what, what creates, you know, habits. And BJ has his FOG model of behavior, which is, you know, map, motivation, ability, and prompts. And no matter what you want to do as a behavior, for one, you got to have motivation. Second is the ability, and the third is prompts. And that pretty much describes all behavior. And it could be behaviors that you want to do, like I want to lose weight, I want to start working out, or things that you don't want to do. I want to quit looking at the Internet late at night, scrol on an iPhone or smartphone while in bed, and I just can't stop. And the thing with technology, most of the self help world in personal development is always like motivation, motivation. Get off your ass, do this, do that. Motivation is great. However, it's the least reliable in terms of getting someone to behave. What we need is we need the ability and we need prompts. If you think about highly addictive things like watching the news or online, anything online, social media, online, porn, online, gambling online, everything online, they just build in prompts continuously to control people and they're called notifications and they're called reminders. And so in your own life, for one, no one would be listening to us right now if they weren't motivated in this particular area, if they weren't motivated to learn marketing, they wouldn't be following any of us. Three, so the motivation is already there. The question is the ability, and the other is the prompts. And so as you leave this, you know, listening to us here, you're going to go out and do your business. You're going to go out and do your life. And how you do it and how you interact with it has a lot to do with, you know, just how what you. What you decide, what behaviors you have. And so I think those soft skills that you were just talking about, Jay, are really important. I'd be curious before we wrap up, like, what. What have you. Like both of you, what is this doing for you? What is your focus that didn't exist until just recently. If anything that you can think of. I mean, maybe you may not be able to easily answer that question.

No, it's great. The great thing about. And you have it in your business, Joe, you get multiple perspectives. There's not a right or wrong. I think that basically when you can get. I've always called it funnel vision rather than tunnel vision. And I think that, you know, the concept of. I have a problem with best practices normally, because best practices is vertical. It's usually best practices from an industry. I think you both introduced to me some concrete. I mean, I tend to have such a sweeping perspective, and you're bringing it down to some pretty cool foundations. I'm listening to you thinking of one thing that's coming through, which I think is very important, is that everything you do, you have to be doing it at the highest strata of integrity. And you have to. I mean, integrity is a subjective word, obviously, but you have to be looking for. You're either value creator or you're a diminisher. You really are. It's still the only concept of grow or die. It's physics. You expand or you contract. You're either continually creating value, your multiplier, or a diminisher. And I think that you're making it and everything you shared. And I'm not saying, Dean, it's implicit. But you. Joe, it's more explicit that everything you're saying is always. That I've heard is predicated on a foundational, really a sort of a fortress of. This has to be honorable, ethical. It has to be contributing the greatest value to the other side. And I think people have to look within themselves. I'm going to do more of it and see if I've deviated from my own values. Because when you are not focused on the other side and when you're not just listening and hearing, but when you're seeing and seeing is. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting there. These are intangible things. So I may not be saying what you want to hear, but I think it's very profound. And Dean is making some very. I really liked our little discussion about will it produce a profit? And making it to intangible. I think that's a profound self evaluation. Yeah. You guys have given me some great stimulus.

My favorite thing, which is why I started Genius Network, which first started out as a mastermind group and is now just a really incredible discussion group, is what I have learned. You know, having been in Strategic Coach for, you know, since 1997. I love discussions. I love discussions. Smart people. That's best way for me to learn, discover, feel excited, take action. Is if I can have discussions, I can read books, I can watch online courses, I can go to seminars, I can do all that stuff. I just tend to like discussions more than anything, which is, I think, why we perfectly set up to do podcasts and stuff. We're just having the discussion. What I'm always looking for is perspective. I'm trying to learn things I need to learn, and I'm looking at things I need to unlearn because I think unlearning is more important than learning, especially.

That's a great point.

Yeah. At this stage in my life, like our friend Keith Cunningham. J. Dean, I don't know you've gotten to meet Keith, but I don't know if you've become buddies with him.

No, not. I met him. Yeah. Yeah.

Here's what's really funny. Like, when I was reintroduced to Keith, that was through Jay. Jay actually reached out to. Told him that I really loved his book. And Jay, you're going to crack up on this. But several years prior to that, I didn't even remember this. Me and Keith had done. We had literally done an interview.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. That's wild. And I totally had forgotten about it. Yeah. We'd done this. It's one of those things where it's like you've done so many interviews, you forget. And so out of everything we've talked about everything. And I'm going to now direct this to the listener. Everything that you've heard here from Dean and Jay, Keith Cunningham Has a wonderful book called the Road Less Stupid. I think it's an amazing book. And I've done interviews with him. You can. You can watch the video with me and Keith online if you want. He has a process in the book called Thinking Time, where you literally just sit down with a blank sheet of paper and you just ask yourself the question and you think. And I think more than anything right now, anything that we've talked about that has struck you as interesting or like, how to create and produce a result and all the things that both you guys have shared, I think if people were to lock themselves necessarily, you don't need to lock yourself in the room, unless that's the only way you can keep yourself away from distractions. And that's actually true for many people now, is you want to put yourself into an environment for 45 minutes to an hour, notepad or a journal, no electronics, and just ask yourself a question. How can I create a result? What's the best thing that I can do for my clients? What's the best thing I can do for my business? Where are the opportunities that are existing right now? How do I manage this fear? You just write and you think about it. You can tell people this and it sounds like a good idea. And most people, they just won't do it. They just won't do it. But people that have started doing Thinking Time, and we have a lot of members now, because I've just been beating this thing even to myself, I know how valuable it is for me to do. One of the reasons I'm in a deep dive with BJ Fogg's work right now on Tiny Habits, which is his new book, is literally, I want more prompts for me to do this sort of stuff, because right now we need people that are going to think intelligently and proactively and ethically more than ever. And if you do that, you will give yourself an advantage that many people are absolutely going to miss as a result of the fear and paranoia that real or created by the media, it can totally derail you. And more than anything, to go back to what you said earlier, it is about leadership. And the way to be the best leader is to be the best version of you that you can be. That's why sleep, you know, that's why exercise and food and being connected.

The 9pm club.

Exactly. Me and Dean were talking about this. It was yesterday, right?

Yeah.

Like all these books. I interviewed Robin Sharma years ago about the 5am Club and it eventually became a book. He wrote a book called the 5am Club. And I wrote a book with Anna David and Hal Elrod, the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery. And there's a lot of people that are wake up early, wake up early and yeah, that's great waking up early as long as you're not sacrificing sleep. And so Dean, why don't you carry on with what I said to Joe?

I had dinner with Robin in Toronto this summer and I said to him, I think a lot of times people would be, feels like it'd be better for people to join the nine hour club and get nine hours of sleep than 5am and Joe, Joe and I were joking last night that we should really be. The 9pm club is get people to go to bed at 9pm rather than getting up at 5am and you're probably.

I mean you're probably on the money. I mean there's, there's so many. And Joe knows this probably in both of you because of the organization you're so active in. But I think there's so many intangible distinctions.

Yeah.

That are, that, that are. They just hold so much performance, life impact, leverage that we deny ourselves. It's pretty sad.

Yeah, totally, totally. And so the thing is, I think you said it, I'm not sure exactly how you said it earlier, Jay, in the very beginning, but I think you said in any situation there's always a solution. And I believe there's an elegant solution to everything if you look for it. When I say this too, without sounding, you know, overly optimistic during shitstorms, sometimes the solution when the house is on fire is to walk away, you know, because it's going to burn down. Right. It's just past the point of no return. And you know, there's like our friend Dan Sullivan says, there's two types of suffering in the world. There's long term and there's short term. You just decide which kind you're going to pick because there are some situations, no matter what, you're going to suffer, you just, just want to minimize the long term dragging it out and if you're really able to get away from it. Which is why like even I think the best thing that comes out of a conversation like this, if nothing else, is it just gives people something to really ponder and think about and make, make a decision to act. I mean it.

I've got an easy way, Joe, for people to transition into thinking Time is a lot of times as entrepreneurs, you know, know people watch Shark Tank all the time. Like on cnbc, you can watch Shark Tank Every night. It's on three or four times a night. Every night. And I say people that they, you know, they watch Shark Tank just even if they've seen the episodes, just think like those guys think. And I said, you know, why don't you try taking trading an episode of Shark Tank and sit in a chair and have a think tank and pitch yourself on the best opportunities for growing your business.

Exactly.

Think about that.

And Joe just. And I want to make a point because I think it's very important. You may remember the first time I ever you extended to me privilege of speaking at your event. I think it was New York, for instance. And I was very traumatized because I tend to be protracted long. But I tried to talk about the topic was on thinking differently. And I think that that's probably a denominator for really owning positive outcomes from negative events.

Right, right.

You got to learn to think differently about what you're doing, who you're doing it, how you're doing it, why you're doing it, where you're doing it. And if you start doing that, you will get, if not breakthroughs, at least you'll get. Get clarity.

Totally. And I really hope that this has served that for everyone. What I would say, because there's a lot of topics that just to give everyone an idea of the thought that kind of went into this, Jay had sent over some different things and I'm just going to rattle off some of the things that everyone could think about and do thinking time on. And I'd like to do a future episode on this and I'd love to see the feedback and just kind of see where things go over the next few weeks. And I think it would probably be smart. And again, we're all doing this just to be helpful. We're putting this out for free. We're doing it to be helpful to entrepreneurs and we hope it is valuable. I'll ask both Jay and Dean in a moment. If people want to learn more about them and what they're doing, where you can go. But some of the things that Jay wrote out are mindset, value creation. The market won't totally die. Extending lifetime value exponential zone versus incremental zone. Highest and best use. How do people buy before, during and after instead? Optimization. Strategy versus tactics. Three ways to grow a business. Three advanced ways. And that's only about a third of what he wrote down. I'm not going to read all of them, but the point is it goes on and on and on. And so I think we have years of Helping small business owners with what we've done and how we've done it and if we can benefit others and they can benefit from what we're talking about. And that makes us happy. So Jay, how do people follow you? Get more Jay Abraham. Learn some of the latest stuff that you're up to that would be helpful to them. Where do they go other than probably abraham.com.

Yeah, that's probably. We've tried to be a great benefactor to people that. I mean, you know that I'm pretty expensive and a lot of people can't afford for me. So we decided if you can't help me, I'll help you. So we give a lot of the quality things away. And I would say if they want to learn a lot, we have books there, we have full length keynotes, we have all kinds of segments. Eight hours on preeminence. So anybody can go there right now. And it's totally. In the future we'll have other things. But that's great and thank you.

Yeah. And by the way, what are you charging these days? Because you are expensive. You're like probably the most expensive marketing consultant in the world. World.

You really want me to answer it?

Yes.

Our rack rate is like 120 a day.

Okay, 120.

I like longer term. You know, it's usually less because it's only. I'm more of a masterful thinking partner long term for people. But it's expense like cash.

This is gonna be a stupid ass question, but I think it's funny. So someone's paying me 120 grand a day.

I usually just do one days at that. It's not long term. So there are immersive.

Who pays for lunch?

The good news is we give them a very broad spectrum and if they want. If they want to have something to drink at the end of the day, I pop for a good bottle of whatever.

Okay.

That'S funny. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. Deed. You got your break blueprints coming up. You got all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. But you know, we have probably one of the greatest resources on the Internet for people. It's over 350 episodes of I Love Marketing right here at I Love marketing dot com.

Yeah, totally. We do. And that. And that's what we're here for. So you know, if you're agreeable to this Jay and of course Dean, you know, what's he going to say? No, I mean, come on, he's getting to talk with J. Abraham. I'm sure you would you be up for doing a follow up episode.

Basically, this is a trip.

Truly.

The thing that I wanted to say is everyone needs someone to think with.

You need to.

I mean, you talked about discussion, but you need provocative and evocative discussion. Provocative is getting you to think. Evocative is getting you to act. Yeah, I love it.

Totally. This is wonderful.

Thank you both. Yeah.

Thank you. All right, everyone, well, stay tuned. We wish everyone the very best and just literally go out and do some good stuff for yourself and the community and we'll talk you on the next episode of I Love Marketing. And have yourself a wonderful, wonderful week. Take care.

If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to geniusnetwork.com don't miss another episode of I Love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilovemarketing.com subscribe if you'd like to access the video show notes or the exercise to help you take action on what was discussed, please visit ilovemarketing.com forward/362.