Target Market Masterclass - The SECOND Ever ILM Zoom Meetup with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #373

We're in a world right now where it's never been easier to collaborate on a huge scale with any number of businesses. I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast.

Ready to reignite your business Sit on the Target market masterclass with Joe and Dean in today's episode of the I Love Marketing podcast. In this episode, you'll discover how to speak directly to your ideal clients so they're able to connect with your offer, see its massive value, and get the exact result they need. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to genusnetwork.com all right, Charlie.

And Dave, you guys want to say something? For those of you that didn't join us on the last I Love Marketing Virtual meetup every third Wednesday of every month in Scottsdale, Arizona, Charlie and Dave actually host the I Love Marketing Scottsdale Group. And they had said, why don't we do them virtual? I said, let's just tell everyone. Let's just notify our list. And so, Charlie, what are your thoughts on all this? It's kind of become like this crazy thing now.

Fun.

And it's fun to meet people that aren't usually at our meetups because we can get people within 25 miles or something. But how great is this that we have people from around the world?

Yeah, we got Genius Network members. We've got even Piranha members that have been clients of mine for over 20 years. We have been sent over 100 and something questions. There's no way.

I know.

Yeah, I read every one.

Yeah, we got a whole slew of them that have been summarized into categories. And I told Dean, I said, so that people can be mad at you if the question is not answered. I said, dean, I would let you pick the ones we're going to go with.

So here's the thing. When Gina sent us this list, she went through, reviewed all of them, put them into categories, and said by far the most important topic that people wanted to know about was lead generation. That was number one. The second most popular topic was profit activator. Number one, choosing your first target market. So she kind of summarized these questions here, and I can understand why those are the most common ones because of course, those are the drivers of everything. If you're going to grow your business, the thing that's going to fuel that growth is this constant way of generating new people for you to help. So whatever we're doing, whenever I do a live breakthrough blueprint eventually where we're talking about applying the eight profit activators, the first thing that we do is you cannot work on your before unit until you're crystal clear on what your during unit does. What is the thing that you can do better than anybody else? Anybody thing that your business is most suitable to delivering. And we always talk about it in terms of a result. And the best way to clarify for yourself what that is is to ask yourself the clarifying question. And you've probably heard me say it before, but the clarifying question is what would you do if you only got paid when your client gets a result? Now that does. And I get people to just. If you can embrace that and think that thought, if you can think that thought silently to yourself without it being the way that you make your offer, it's that you don't have to fully go out to the world with this yet. What I want you to do is just to think that thought, to think the reason that that question is so clarifying because it links your outcome with your ideal prospects outcome. And if we're doing the thing that if you're saying I'm only going to get paid when I get the result for somebody, it makes you feel like you are only going to do something that you know 100% that you're able to deliver for someone.

Right?

That's what it does. That's why we say that way for you. Now the greatest way to segue from that thought, once you figure out what it is that you can deliver for people, then the next thing that you get to do is you get to select the single target audience that you can deliver that result for. And so the biggest misconception that people have or the biggest thing that people make as a mistake going into the before unit profit activator, one especially, is that they put too much emphasis on positioning themselves to be selected versus proactively selecting your target audience. That's what select a single target audience is. I'm talking about you as the selector. If we're going to deliver a result that you are only going to get paid when they get the result, you get to select only the people that you know you're going to have the best outcome for right now. And it's kind of a thing where whenever you're delivering any kind of good or service in exchange for money, there's always an implication that you're going to deliver the result for people. So no matter what, even if. If you don't explicitly offer that, you're only going to get paid when they get the results, the expectation is still there and you're still obliged to deliver the result for them. But where we often get sidetracked is when we take on this role of the external blame shifting, of saying that you did your part and they have to do their part, right? Where it's easier for you to externally place the blame on someone not getting the result when you've already been paid your money for getting it. You've been paid for your service, so you're less invested in somebody getting the result. And I'm just saying that that, that's just inherent in the way it is. If you really were only going to get paid for people getting a result, you'd pick better people to work with, the ones who are more suited to what it is that you do. You'd get better at delivering the results and you would get more efficient. You'd be doing it more and more often. Right? Because as soon as you remove that friction, as soon as you remove the uncertainty that people have about going into a new situation, whenever somebody is entering into a relationship with someone, for a transactional relationship, there's the exchange. But if they give you the money first, now they're taking the chance on you, right? They're taking the chance that you're going to deliver. And you may go through and do that, but you may take money from people who you would know if you were betting on getting the result, that it might not be the right person for you.

Right?

And I guarantee you that you'll be able to charge more money for actually getting the result for the right people than you are in trying to convince people that you're able to get the result for them, you know, So I think that's a big distinction, Joe. People selecting their target audience instead of trying to leave your options open and cast as wide a net as possible.

So.

So that you have a bigger pool of people that could select you. That's the first thing that we want to focus on. What do you think about that?

I think it's very accurate. I was having a meeting earlier with a couple of my team members on Zoom. Imagine that. Zoom meeting, right? I was talking about, like today being Genius Network with all kinds of different people in different industries, and then the carpet cleaning and fire and restoration niche where I started out at. And I was, you know, Eunice was on and she said, you know, it was so much easier when we only had one target audience to focus on. And what's counterintuitive about this is the more selective you are, the better selection you have. But that doesn't seem to make sense if you haven't experienced it, because it seems more appealing to be all things to all people versus having to narrow your focus.

Well, it's the bigger pie syndrome. It's feeling like if I just go after a bigger pie, if I make the pie bigger, of all the possible people that I could work with, I just need to get a smaller sliver of that bigger pie. It seems like it raises your odds. Right. If there's more people that I can help or more different types of people that I can help, that it feels like you're going to raise your odds. But the reality is, the more that you focus, the more that you narrow your focus to a single target audience, it's so much easier.

So, Dean, going back to the. Select a target market, because there's so many different variations of this question, and me and you've been talking about this for 20 years, you know, I want to obviously be aware of the fact that this is very hard for some people to do. And there was a couple of questions I'm trying to. Let me see. There was one that had to do with what you are actually interested in. And it reminded me of Dan Sullivan's. Who do you want to be a hero to?

Yeah, that's such a great thing.

Yeah. So if you had to think of, like, of all the people in your lives that you could serve, who would you die for? You know, what, what, what is so important to you? I mean, as crazy as that sounds, you know, what is so important to you that you literally would put everything into it? So who do you want to be a hero to? Is one part. But if you want to be a hero to an audience that has no ability to give you money or to buy anything, then you can't have a business either. When it comes to making a decision on money, Selecting a single target market also requires, like Gary Halbert would say, if you have. And this was literally in 1992 in one of his newsletters, I remember this is one of the first Gary Halbert newsletters I read. And so house prices have certainly gone up since then. But he said if you had a $500,000 house, and it's the best house for half a million bucks, but you're marketing it to someone that can only afford $100,000, it doesn't matter how great your house is. So the people have to be able to afford it. So how do you select a target market that's reachable, identifiable, that you're interested in? Because all of those things are floating around in everyone's head. Because everyone here, if they knew exactly who their people were, everyone's life would be infinitely easier and more profitable. But that's why it's not.

It should be the people that you can help with the biggest and most important solution that you can deliver for people. You know, it's like if you want to get keep yourself on this path of going forward of helping solve bigger and bigger problems or more and more scope of those problems for more and more money, you know, the bigger the part of the result that you're actually able to deliver, there's a higher margin on being able to actually 100% deliver an outcome for someone. That's really the thing. A lot of times people are doing things that only get somebody part of the way there, and they're not helping them get all the way to the actual result. There's such a desire on everybody's part to. To have the things that we want. We're all starving for who's to help us understand so we don't have to learn the hows to do stuff. We want to be able to get results. We want to be able to have the certainty that when we're spending money that there's going to be an outcome for it. And the favorite things that we love to do, artists spend money after the result and will pay the most amount of money for that. You know, it's a really interesting way to look at it that I think I mentioned on a podcast that we did. Joe, this, you know, I've recently learned about the model of the Koch brothers. So Charles is the one now, David recently died. But what was really amazing about what they did and his approach to business was very profound. He said that in his approach to business and they've grown their, you know, took over the family business was worth $23 million. It's now worth. That was in 1960s. It's now worth $105 billion. So this model grew that business 5,000 fold by focusing on developing your ability to deliver results for other people, to deliver an outcome for another business or another person, and then seek out the very best people to partner with to deliver that result in a way that you get to participate in the outcome that you're creating together. And so in the early days, they were doing oil gathering, they were refiner, so they had to gather oil and the way that people would do that in that industry is they would wait for someone, an oil company, to strike oil, and then they would all descend on the oil companies and say, hey, let us build the pipeline and let us buy your oil and take it to market. And they would all compete for the business. But what Charles did was they went to oil companies who were exploring for oil, hadn't struck oil yet, and said to them, hey, I know you're exploring for oil over here. Would it be an advantage to you if we went ahead and built a pipeline now so that when you do strike oil there, we can immediately get it to market? And that was a big advantage that they would have, because once you strike oil, they've got to cap the well and then they've got to build all the infrastructure to get it out to the market. But if while this exploring is going on, Charles Koch and the company were able to build the pipeline, get everything ready without a guarantee that they're going to strike oil there, but do that at their expense so that when the result happens, they were there to now get them to market quickly. They were able to forge amazing partnerships like that and provide that service in a way that no competitors would if they'd already preempt their competitors because they'd already built the pipeline. And then when they did strike oil, everybody would descend and the companies would say, oh, no, no, we're good. And they would even say, well, we'll do it for less. And they would say, no, we're good. And they've got. They forged these relationships with the companies to, on a long term, deliver those results. So there's something to be said for really realizing what your assets are, you know, what you have to contribute to a collaboration. And we're in a world right now where it's never been easier to collaborate on a huge scale with any number of businesses. My eyes have been opened up in the last little while about this kind of stuff. I shared it in Phoenix at the Free Zone Strategic Coach conference about this combination. I'm calling it the VCR Formula. And the VCR formula stands for vision and capability and reach. And those three things make up the equation of the ultimate collaborations. This is the most fascinating one that's happened just in the last week. I recently discovered on GrubHub a place called the Ice Cream Shop. Has anybody seen on grubhub or Uber Eats the Ice Cream Shop? And I live in Winter Haven, Florida, so I know that there's not a place called the Ice Cream Shop in Winter Haven. So I knew that because I'm hip to the whole ghost restaurant idea that there's ghost restaurants that are showing up just on these delivery apps. And so it turns out this ice cream shop, what they're selling are pints of Ben and Jerry's and Breyer's ice cream delivered to your house. And I started researching it and looking into it and found out that this is a brainchild of some executive at Unilever that owns Ben and Jerry's and Breyer's ice cream. And he wanted to create a project that they called Ice Cream Now. And it all started from asking the question, a vision question, the V in your vcr, a vision question of how could we deliver ice cream to people at home, but without it melting, without all this, I didn't find the infrastructure for it. And so what it turns out that they did is they started looking for all of these people that they could collaborate in local markets, service stations, not grocery stores, but service stations, convenience stores, restaurants that have freezers capacity where they could store some ice cream as little outposts all over town. And instead of having one location in Winter Haven where you could only deliver in a small little radius before the ice cream started melting, they may have 12 different locations that they stock the ice cream in these freezers at service stations, convenience stores, whatever. And then they dispatch the Uber Eats or the grubhub driver from the closest one to your house, so it's never more than five minutes away from where they pick up the ice cream to where they're bringing it to you, so it stays frozen. And that idea of the vision and the capability of getting the outposts on board with them and the reach of Uber Eats and grubhub and the online Postmates, the food delivery services, that combination has added hundreds of millions of dollars to Unilever from that one vision of how can we do this? And it's so amazing when you start to really think about how can you partner, collaborate with other people who have complementary or other parts of the equation for you to deliver a result called ice cream within five minutes? You know?

Well, I mean, it is about creating a result, right?

Yes. So I think that the essence of what people are asking about this selecting a single target market is the fear of, I don't want to. I want people to pick me. Right. And I think that the big distinction is what I'm talking about. What we're talking about is in profit activator 1 is you selecting who you want to attract. You know, I see Kenny McCarthy right here. I'm looking at one of those things. How are you, Kenny? Kenny McCarthy lives up north of Boston, and Kenny has chosen a target audience of oceanfront home owners for who he wanted to attract. We had this whole conversation about, what are we? You know, who would you like to attract? What's the most expensive things? And it's oceanfront homes. So we started years ago. Welcome. Good. Talk to Kenny. Why not get the story from Kenny? Here we go. Kenny, how long has it been since we wrote on the back of the napkin the oceanfront plan?

The first one was probably reaching up to my bulletin board here, because I have one of them. Laminated.

A laminated napkin.

A laminated napkin from Starbucks. Okay.

I love it.

I love it.

Look at this.

I have a couple of them. I have a bag, too, that we did it on the back of. Because Dean has always said to me when we. When we sat and had coffee, so.

Kenny, what do you want?

And I'd say, I want to make. I want to make more money. He'd say, no, no, no. What do you really want? And it would finally come down to me saying, I want to make more money and help more people in less time.

Yeah, that's.

So he would say, okay, so let's look at what's working and just double it.

Yes. So that was an easy way.

That was the easy way. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it started out with creating a list, finding that target, finding the waterfront people that I wanted to market and work with. I wanted to meet these people, pick them. So I had to drive around.

This was.

Might be 15 years ago now. So it's a long time.

Wow.

12 or 14, anyways.

Yeah, yeah.

And I drove around and took hours and addresses and wrote down addresses, and some of it I pulled off of maps and just started marketing to them. We've done rather well, Dean.

Thank you. Yeah. There's the thing, right, that this is the greatest thing. When you select a target market that has got legs like oceanfront homes are always going to be the premium thing on Cape Ann doesn't get any better than the oceanfront homes. Right. They're not going anywhere. No. The oceanfront homes that are on there, and there's only a thousand of them.

Right.

It's a definite commodity.

Yeah.

It's a thousand oceanfront homes on Cape Ann and having that list and then sticking to a consistent plan of, you know, we follow exactly the. The profit activators of the before unit here. Select your target market. Oceanfront homeowners. We mail them a postcard offering them the May 2020 report on Ocean Cape and oceanfront house prices to which people respond for the report. And then every month, Kenny mails them the get top dollar newsletter and the report on all the activity of the oceanfront homes on Cape Ann. And he gets people. It sometimes takes years for people to call. This is a great patience thing because one of my favorite stories is the gentleman, Chester, I believe was his name, Chester Lawson chased you down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had been. I had been mailing to Chester Lawson for three, four, five years, every month, sending him a postcard. Excuse me, send him a postcard once. And then he responded and kept sending him the report. And I thought I would try and fix the system that Dean had coached me on. And so I decided to purge people that I hadn't heard from. Why bother? It's, you know, they're never going to call me. So I purged several people and Chester was one of them. Although I hadn't. Chester hadn't really raised his hand yet. I got a voicemail and I forwarded the voicemail to Dean and I hear, I hear. Kenny, this is Chet Lawson. You've been sending me those postcards forever.

I haven't heard from you.

I had to call somebody from ReMax and somebody from two or three other. No, I'm with Sotheby's.

Okay.

It's time to sell that goddamn beach.

House, Kenny, up there in Gloucester.

Give me a call.

It's Chester Lawson.

So I, you know, that was six, six years maybe after he got the first postcard.

Isn't that amazing?

I know. I love the. I talked to him last week. I called him last week just to say hi.

So they had two beach houses, didn't.

They, next door to each other?

Yeah, that's perfect.

By the way, Kenny, what's the deal with a ceiling fan above your head? That have any fans or whatever attached to it?

You're the second person. I did a virtual listing appointment the other day with a guy from Texas and he said, by the way, we put blades on our fans.

Ah, yeah.

Okay, I want you to take a look at that piece of equipment over there. Can you see that?

Yes.

Can you see the Bowflex elliptical?

Yeah.

Well, when I'm on that elliptical, I get an extra workout if the fan blades are turning because I'm going like this.

I just.

I took the blades off. Oh, that's so funny.

Yeah.

This is my home. Office, slash gym, Joe.

Awesome.

I love it.

I had to ask that because people are putting it in the comments. And I'm like, what am I going to do? Right?

Yeah, that's awesome.

By the way, Luba, are you just feeding Dean like cue cards or what are you doing there? What's going on?

That's right. Here's a great. This is an amazing story here. So Luba, we've been working on an eyebrow and eyelash studio here in Winter Haven called Amazing Brows and Lashes. And this will be a great lead into the next part of this, which is generating leads, right. That, you know, Luba does something at her studio called Microblading, where if you don't know, ladies, I'm sure know about this. Guys, if you don't know about that, you know those beautiful eyebrows that all the ladies have? Well, often they have to draw those on with a pencil every single day of their lives and it gets tiring. And so what Luba does is help to put permanent, semi permanent, last three years or so. Depends. That perfect shape for your eyebrows so that ladies can wake up and not have to do that every morning. It's a permanent sort of makeup solution. And it's something that ladies love to do. It's a little bit expensive and it's something that is maybe a luxury. It's not expensive. Depends how you count. You know, if you, like, save so much time. So it's literally not expensive.

The money that you spend on nails.

It'S like 10 times more than what you spend on eyebrows once a year. That's true. So if you, if you explain them right, it's not expensive. It's so inexpensive, ladies. $400. $400. Okay, so here's the thing that we had been, you know, in Winter Haven is a small town, 60,000 people, so maybe not, you know, a little bit bigger small town. And we're running Facebook ads offering a $100 gift card for getting your eyebrows microbladed. And so running within a radius, just a 10 mile radius of Luba's studio, she's built this wonderful email list of ladies only between the ages of 25 and 65 or 75, all just women in this thing. So built up this list now of 2,500 people that every single week, when Lupa sends out a message to these people, somebody is booking something to come in and make an appointment. We did a back to when everything starts opening up now. We did an email that just had in the subject line eyebrows and said, hey, Joe, it looks like we're going to be able to open up again next week. Smiley face. Would you like to get your eyebrows Done, question mark. And that's it. And sent that out and was 27 within, you know, within the rest of the evening, 27 people have booked to get their eyebrows on. All this pent up demand that people had been putting things off for all of this time. But that's the value of having the list and the distinction that we learned here. There's two things. Number one is when doing those Facebook ads, we were offering a gift card not 20% off, which is a different thing. It's the same outcome, but it's a different psychology of it. When you start thinking about the idea of what most people are trying to do with their ads is they're trying to convince people to buy something now. And that's why when they run ads, they say 20% off only until May 30th to spur people into action now. So if people are not ready to do something right now, but they know that they would like to, they're not going to respond to the ad because there's no reason for them to. But you can put a gift card in your hope chest. You can gather in, bookmark your intention for getting your eyebrows done now without having to get them done right now. And this allows you to play the long game of turning invisible prospects, meaning all of the ladies in 10 miles of the studio into visible prospects, meaning people who are leaning forward, raising their hand and saying, I'm interested in getting my eyebrows done. Maybe not right now, but I'm interested in that. And now she's got this list of 2,500 people and it's like this ATM machine. Whenever you want to do something, you.

Can send it out.

Yeah, it's like not a lot of stylists have lists.

So.

Of course, I learned this from Dean Genius. And the thing is. What was that part? A genius. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. This is the Genius Network.

Really?

That's right.

Yeah.

So the thing is, like, I have people who've been with me for three years and they only now starting getting to me and asking me to book their appointments. It's been like three years they've been reading my emails and getting all the information. It's only now they're ready to do it. And that's amazing. Right? So now we've been documenting and doing all of that stuff to mark this as a prototype for assistance, to show, to multiply, to show other stylists how to do this same thing. So now Leva's been building a Brauhena training program for styling pros who want to add another profit center to their business. And we used the same gift card idea for the training for how to do the Brauhanna architecture. So that model, if you can do, if what you're doing would work with a gift card, that's a fantastic way to get people to respond, by the way.

Also, just I want to let them know at some point I'm going to call on Scott Donnell to talk about your challenge. I'm going to ask Anna David to talk about her new book that's coming out. She's also going to be a podcast guest on an upcoming I love marketing podcasts. Also, Jeff Madoff, who's got a book coming out too.

I wanted to I see Jeff Madoff right there.

Those of you that don't know Jeff Madoff, Jeff is a producer and a director and he does a lot of big brand stuff. Almost everything you've seen on TV for Victoria's Secret over the last 20 years. He's done about 95% of all of the commercials and the live fashion shows and all that stuff. But since you called him out, Jeff, what's going on? How's New York? I mean, first off, crazy, crazy times.

There are more people walking around, mostly with face masks, not always, but respecting the social distancing. And we think we are through the worst of it. So, you know, the curve has flattened, which is good.

You got a new book coming out. What's it about? Why did you write a book and what's your what can you share with everyone tonight that would be life changingly valuable to them?

Well, the book is the perfect gift for everyone you've ever met or ever will meet. It's called Creative Making a living with your Ideas. And it's based on a class that I teach at Parsons School for Design here in New York. So it's applicable to entrepreneurs, to people who have ideas that they would like to turn into a business who are looking to pivot in their career. It's got a lot of really smart people and Joe, who was also in the book, Joe was in New York and did the class and actually did a fantastic job. As much as I hate to say it, he did a fantastic job and had a really big impact on the class. And so it's a book where you get to hear, it's like being in a meeting like this, where you get to hear from a lot of really smart people who have been through a lot, lot of the challenges and obstacles that entrepreneurs go through and really good insights into how to build your business, how to build your brand and how to move forward. And the book is launching on June 16 and anyone who is interested in it, please go to Amazon. I can post the link and if you buy it, if you find it interesting and you can read parts of the book up there, please leave a review. Unless you hate it and then keep that to yourself. But if you do love it, please leave a review because that can really help. I believe it delivers a tremendous amount of value to the reader. And I've gotten some advanced reviews which have been very gratifying. And I'll be doing a podcast with Joe and Dan Sullivan, which I'm very excited about, especially the Dan Sullivan part.

You know, it's great. Me and Jeff have known each other for like over 20 years now. And yeah, just the sh. Just never ends. Jeff and I did a really great interview that's on. I love marketing video. We actually did it at his studio in New York. You know, let's ask Anna David. Let's ask Anna because Anna is also. I think I have a copy back here. So Anna's written, I don't know, a ton of books, but she's a New York Times best selling author. She's a brilliant writer. She's a co author with me. She literally is the one that did all the work here. Even though this is the miracle morning for addiction recovery with Seaword says how Elrod says Anna David in Joe Polish, you really should say Anna David because she put the most work into writing this book. I was just literally talking and she put it into words. It's a great book. It really is an amazing book on addiction recovery because that's of course, my passion project. And Anna's first book was called Party Girl, which is New York Times best seller. Anna, you have a really cool book coming out. We're going to have you as a guest on I Love Marketing probably in a couple weeks. So tell people about it because I think what the subject matter is is really applicable to a lot of people right now because there's a lot of messes going on in people's lives.

So Anna.

Okay, thank you. The book is called make youe Mess yous Memoir. And it's a new genre that I'm coining called a bizwar. So it's 10 chapters of memoir and four chapters of business. Basically my messy Life. How I went from just being a girl who did a lot of cocaine to being the first person the Today show called when they had a story about Addiction because I wrote a book about it. That book, Party Girl and so basically my philosophy about it was, I love reading memoirs, except I don't learn enough. I love reading business books, except I get bored because there's not enough story. So I said, what if there could be a combination of both? Let's try it. So, yes, make youe Mess. Your memoir, it's coming out July 1st and Joe really is into it because I have a chapter about him. Because truly what I learned from Joe was basically I had all these books and I was kind of broke. And then I got a mentor and suddenly I was able to take this messy life, this great creative success, and make it into a business. And so that's really what the book is about.

Awesome.

And you know what? Suggestions and recommendations on writing. Because you actually teach people how to write and a lot of people get stuck and hung up on that. And so much about what me and Dean do our best to try to help people with is write. And writing doesn't always necessarily need to be sitting down and writing or typing. You could literally talk, but there's ways to assemble your words into messages. So what recommendations do you have for people that have this difficulty, this obstacle with how to write?

Well, I think it's important to know if you are a writer or if you want to write a book and what your times. It probably is going to take a non writer about 300 hours to write a book. So calculate if you want a book and your time, what that would cost, what you're worth an hour. It's probably a better idea to pay somebody else to do it and as Joe said, to talk it through. But if you in your heart really want to write, then sit down and do it. And the negative voices that tell you that you're no good, that's just part of the deal. And as Dorothy Parker said, writing is rewriting. And as Brene Brown says, you just get a shitty first draft out there and then you go back and you fix it.

So this is my book. Life gives to the Giver. And you can get this book for free@joefreebook.com and when you go to joe'sfreebook.com, you can get the physical version mailed to you. If you pay for shipping and handling, that will not put you into any sort of upsell funnel or anything. It's literally a free book. I was just putting it out for people right now and it's a really great book. And it's a compilation of my three a week emails that I write and we put out. And those emails are written with a guy named J.R. where I talk. And he will write some of them, Others I will write. And it's the same way that Dean puts out three a week emails. A lot of what we do, we talk and then we have them written in and they're edited. But there are words. I mean, it's what I say. And Anna assembled my three a week emails, put it into a book, and people love this. So the reason I'm bringing this up is everyone has riffs. They have things that you say, things you think about, stuff that you say when you're selling. And part of selling is canning and cloning yourself. So that what it is you say that people respond to, you want to put that in all kinds of different forms. And as my genius network member Jason Fladlin, who's like the top webinar trainer in the world, he has this very simple line that I always repeat a lot where he's like, if you've got something that you're offering or selling, you want to put information in front of it. And when I was a dead bro carpet cleaner, the story that almost everyone that listens to. I love marketing or anyone that's listening to my stuff, I always tell the story of the consumer awareness guide, where the very first marketing information piece that I had was a consumer's guide to carpet cleaning, where it would just teach people seven questions, ask a carpet cleaner before, invite them into your home. And all it was educational, and I would offer that as part of the lead generation. So instead of people calling me up and saying, how much do you charge? They would call and they would request that information before the Internet. And that one, that was my first piece of writing and I actually paid a copywriter to write it for me. And that consumer awareness guide was the very first thing I created when I was a Deborah carpet cleaner living off credit cards in 1992. And I knew I needed something to position me. But because I created that consumer awareness guide, it literally built a multimillion dollar business that with everything I've taught other people based on that one seed that was planted is literally generated a couple billion dollars, like with a B in revenue for people that have used it. And so there's no telling the snowball effect of finding the right target audience and the right message and matching them with it. I never would have guessed that the power of a sales letter and the power of words in writing, and that was also turned into consumer guides and then videos and everything like that. So, Scott, since I mentioned it, Scott. So challenges we've had Pedro Adal. Those of you that are on my list, you've probably seen me send out an email this week about challenges from Pedro, who's the guy that literally is the challenge guy. And so we've been, we've had discussions on our last two Genius Network meetings and also on our 100K group talking about challenges. And Scott, you're right in the middle of a challenge. I'd like to have people here that want to join and do that. And then Kenny, don't let me forget Kenny Arnoff. I'm gonna a shout out to him too, because this dude's awesome. So, Scott, talk about your challenge and what's going on and what you're doing with kids.

Yeah. Well, this, this is awesome. Pedro has really been touching on a nerve here, I think, with a lot of people. So for our, you know, for our space, we, we're going to do challenges across all my companies. But the first one is going to be for a company that we just launched called myfirstsale.com think of like Etsy for kids. If you're under 17, you can launch your own store page and we have training courses for you in the background. Pretty awesome. We've already got our first 10 kids. Dave Asprey's kid is in. It's tons of fun. So we're gonna do a kid biz launch, five day challenge and we're gonna follow Pedro to the tee and he really does lay it out from start to finish. How you create the Facebook page, how you do the marketing, how you do the Facebook ads, how you do the setup when the offer comes, what you charge. So it's taken a good 10 hours of just sitting and researching and thinking, and then I've got a team of four helping us do it. But, but it's going to be great. I mean, we're expecting Almost, we're thinking 8 to 10,000 kids at least in the first couple days, joining and opting into the challenge and then an upsell at the end. Right. To become members of the program. We think we might be able to get to the seven figure club as well with Pedro. So we're really excited about it. He's helping out. We've got you coming on for a day. Lee Richter is going to come on. Dave Asprey is going to come on because his daughter's doing the program. So that's our challenge. It's going to be a lot of fun. We think it's perfect right now for kids at home that aren't at school and their parents want them to get an advantage right now and learn something that have an opportunity didn't have when they were kids. And so, yeah, we're really excited for it. We're gonna teach them how to create a product and sell it to a real customer in five days.

You know what, after you do the challenge and it's successful, I'd like to have you, let's do a podcast episode with you kind of dissecting it and sharing with everyone what you do and how you do it. Because I think it'll be a really awesome case study and I think there's a lot of, you know, great strategy. Everyone can learn from it.

And yeah, yeah, I'd love everyone to join because so I've got seven genius network members, five coach members, and a few others just doing the challenge with their kids just so they can watch how we run it and take notes the whole time. So I want to invite anybody who can just be on the Facebook group, join the daily live. Watch how we do it. Watch how we sell it. Watch how we we build. The number one thing I learned, Joe, was this. And it kind of deals with your pre suasion talk and what Dean was talking about with your niche. You need to overcome their obstacles to buying before you can even expect them to have a chance to buy. Does that make sense? So we're not just gonna do content for our five days for these kids and their families. We're gonna focus on overcoming misbeliefs and objections that they have to not wanting to launch their own business, their actual real business from their living room. Things like they're too young, they don't have anything to give the world. How do I have the skills to do this as an 8 year old? Right. Or parents that don't think they have enough time or resources to teach their kids this. So we want to overcome those, those misguided beliefs so that they can. The next logical step is for them to move on with us. Does that make sense? That's the number one thing I've learned rather than just giving a bunch of content and a bunch of tips and a bunch of lessons and homework so that they go off and do something on their own. You want to overcome their, their unbelief or their, their, their issues, their obstacles, so that then they can move forward and actually be served.

What's the URL for people?

Well, right now they can go to myfirstsale.com and just put in their information if they want to join. We're Gonna send everyone an email when we launch it, but it's gonna be kidbizlaunch.com is going to be that challenge. You don't want to link them together. You want to have a separate challenge that's a standalone. Then they can opt in 80% of the way through the challenge to our business.

Let me see if I can do this, Kenny. Kenny Arnoff, who I've done an I Love Marketing podcast with. I met him through my good buddy John Butcher. Here's Kenny's book. Sex, Drums and Rock and Roll. So, Kenny, I mean, you're literally considered, I think, the top drummer in the world, if not one of them. But I think you're actually considered the top drummer. I mean, played for. Give everyone a quick bio of everyone you freaking played for. It's like such an endless amount of famous rock stars.

How you doing, Joe?

I'm doing great, man.

How you doing? I'm good. I mean, I actually could make this because all my tours got postponed. I'm good, though. I'm good. You know, when people go, the woe is me. Oh, God, how you doing, Kenny? I'm like, you're asking me how I'm doing. You don't know me because I'm always good. The cup isn't half full. The cup isn't half empty. It's always full. And I always go to just hard work and accomplishing stuff, and it makes me feel good. So I'm doing great. I'm actually overwhelmed with a lot of work. Not as much money coming in right now, but I'm building all, you know, this studio I'm in right now was. I saw the writing on the wall when people stopped buying CDs and I was on three that sold 40 million. Now think about the record label making 85 cents on the dollar. That was a lot of money coming in for the labels to invest in other bands. When that went away, it was all about touring. Now, the COVID 19 has knocked that off the table. But I'm now focusing on. I'm already doing tons of sessions for the last 15 years in my studio. But now I'm going to take my virtual speaking business on my speaking business into a virtual business from my studio. So that's kind of what I'm working on. But to answer your question, yeah, Rolling Stone called me top 100 drummers of all time. I'm on 300 million records sold, you know, so. And it's just from hard work. I played with everybody. I mean, the thing that makes me a Little bit different is that a lot of times you become a rock and roll or a drummer in a band, and that's great. And then you get somebody who becomes a session drummer, and that's a whole nother world. And I became big in both. But then it got crazier where you get labeled usually as, oh, he's a rock drummer, he's a country drummer. And I somehow managed to do everything from Johnny Cash, you know. Well, my first big gig was John Mellencamp. 17 years. But, you know, the Elton Johns, the Bob Dylan's, the Rod Stewarts, the Santanas. You know, I played with Sting, you know, Paul McCartney, but then I also did Johnny Cash, Willie and I, Nelson, Kris Kristoff and Waylon Jennings, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis recently. And then I broke into Tony Iommi from Sabbath, the Smashing Pumpkins tour in 98, you know, then all the girls, Avril Lavigne, Lance Morissette and Celine Dion and Melissa Etheridge, and then BB King, Ray Charles, I played with twice. So that's just very. All I can attribute it to is just having great connection, communication, collaborating skills, hard worker, always thinking about the team. It's not about me. It's about the song, the band, the artist, get the song on the radio, be number one. I didn't even know I had those skills. But when I look back and I thought, how the hell did I do this? That's, you know, I'm a team player, you know, hard worker.

Yeah. You know what? I'll ask my team if you could post the podcast we did with Kenny in the chat. It was really an episode. How to stay in great physical shape because you are a guy that's on. Well, not now, but on the road, nonstop. How do you exercise? How do you eat? You know, what about all the fricking access to drugs and everything in that life. And how old are you now?

I'm 67, but my metabolic age is 19.

Hey there.

How you doing?

The thing is, that's a good thing.

You brought that up.

Because people ask me, like, when they say, how are you dealing with this whole Covid thing? And. And I say, you know, it starts with a foundation of, you know, being healthy mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And then I have this eight steps to a healthy life, which is probably what I shared with you, these eight steps that. It's not like I'm perfect every day, but it's almost like the Ten Commandments, you know, you look at them. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'm not supposed to do that. And I'm not supposed to do that, and I'm supposed to do that. And so I have these eight steps that, you know, I won't go into it now unless you want me to. But it's just. This is things that are real obvious, but it's good to refer to them and see, check in every day with them. That's what I do.

You know, here's what I was. I would ask you this, and you can give the short version of this. Like in the midst of people being locked down and having, you know, their whole social circle limited and just the stress and anxiety. And I've mentioned this on different interviews. I won't go into it here. I mean, we are literally at the starting point of the worst mental health crisis in human history. Suicide's up, child abuse is up, spousal abuse, you know, depression, addiction. I mean, you name it. And people are really just hurting physically and mentally. What are some things that you think you have learned over years of honing this that would be good, practices that would be beneficial to people?

That's a good question, Joe, because, you know, in my line of work, you know, you're going to find genius people. But sometimes with genius comes people that aren't, like, necessarily grounded. I mean, that's how we get so much brilliance out of them. I think for me, and I think I learned it, if I look back, the pivotal moment was at 18, from fear I was gonna go to college. You know, in my family, everybody had to go to college. It was the American way, you know, back then. And so I was gonna. I decided to be a music major, but I didn't. Wasn't really adept at classical music. And that was the only schools available. My point is I was terrified and afraid that I was not at the level that all the other people were. And so what I went into, to confront, like, it'd be like a Marine doesn't naturally want to run into bullets. A fireman doesn't naturally want to run into a burning building. A person who jumps out of an airplane with a parachute doesn't naturally just want to jump out of an airplane. But what you do is those people learned how to embrace those kinds of challenges. And the way I embraced my fears was by just hard work. And the point I'm trying to get to is from hard work you get. You feel gratitude that you've accomplished something. And it became a way for me to feel good, grounded, more self validation, as opposed to looking for validation. And that without even knowing it became like kind of the go to way for me to keep myself centered where I'm not saying I was party free, but I always. Because it meant so much for me to do a great job. If I partied too much and I saw I wasn't doing a good job, the job was more important and my self worth was more important than getting fucked up all the, you know, to the level where you are not performing at the ability you should be. And I think the hard work taught me that. And as soon as this Covid thing happened, easy peasy, I'm just spending, you know, 18 hours a day working my butt off, you know, and learning about all kinds of new stuff and, you know, I'm doing maybe six podcasts a week. Interesting enough. I almost said enough already. And then I realized, well, I could reach more people doing everybody else's podcast than if I had a podcast. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Anyway, so hard work as the thing that's grounded me and kept me, you know, through my life, you know, been able to deal with obstacles and. Yeah, there's a lot of mental illness and, you know, out there, especially in my business.

No, totally. I mean, I'll tell you one thing of being in recovery with 12 steps, you learn a lot about powerlessness. And in moments like this, I think it's actually served me quite well. You know, one thing I want to say, Jeff Madoff, like looking at my screen is right next to you. Jeff, I think you should have Kenny speak whenever you can actually do classes back at the New School. He would be an amazing presenter at your and you guys would totally hit it off because both you and Jeff like work out like crazy, which is awesome.

Kenny, I was listening to you talk and I was actually thinking that, Joe. So thanks for suggesting it especially. Where are you based, Kenny?

Well, I'm in studio, basically Los Angeles. But you know, I'd love to come and do your class in New York City.

That would be cool. And if we are still doing it virtually, you know, we can.

I can do it virtually. I'm set up for it. I have a. You know, I'm actually, I'm set up now. Trust me. I did, you know, you know, Metal International, you guys know that organization. Anyway, I just did1 for 240 people around the world and got the sound is impeccable. It's weird. Zoom is a little bit weird. I don't know, it just seems like it's too granual, but I'm working on that. But I'd love to do it anytime.

Well, thank you. And my guess is we know a lot of people in common.

Probably aside from Joe.

We know a lot of people in common. So we'll get over that obstacle and then talk about the other people we know in common.

Right? Just get me out of the way, and then you can get.

Wow, you guys got some action going on between you.

We've known each other for 25 years. He is one of the kindest and most generous people I've ever met. And if I ever stopped giving him shit, he wouldn't recognize who I was, and I wouldn't recognize who he is.

Well, you know what you should do? I think if you really want to be the brother, you should shave your head like me and Joe and then the three of us.

I'm just getting there gradually, you know, I'm just getting there gradually.

That's right.

I was gonna say thank you, Dean. Let me demonstrate what I typically do. So. Okay. Kenny Arnoff, meet Jeff Madoff. You guys are looking at each other right here.

Boom.

And the T text is now sent. You have each other's text messages. So boom. There you go. Thanks, Joe. I've done that 10,000 times, and that's how I know and connect so many people. Sometimes it's just as simple as just doing that. But you gotta be selective in who you do it. I mean, you gotta actually know the people well enough before you connect them. And a lot of times, people. I think the funniest thing. Dean interviewed me on the magic Rapport formula. We did that episode one, the first year we started. I love marketing, which was. That was 10 years ago. And once I started doing all these trips to Necker island with Richard Branson, everyone and their brother, oh, I've got this important thing. Can you send this message to Richard Branson? And it was like, are you kidding me? I don't even know who the hell you are. And you're like, oh, yeah, let me just send a message to Richard. He's waiting for your message. And so part of it is I went through the whole process of how do you actually determine how to connect people, how to build rapport with people, that sort of stuff. And that's been, surprisingly, a useful episode that people have always said over the years that's been very helpful. So if you ever want to listen to that one. All right, so, Dean, give us some ninja stuff on lead generation so people are okay.

So that's a big distinction here. That a lot of the questions that I'm. You know, these things that we're talking about right now, like you look at it, there's, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 or 14 people ask some format of this question of what's the way, how do I generate consistent leads for my business? And here's the big, big thing is to realize that there's a hard line that we draw between profit activator 2 and profit activator 3. Profit activator 2 is about using direct response to compel your prospects to raise their hand. That's all we're looking to do. We're looking to turn an invisible prospect into a visible prospect. Then in Profit Activator 3, we're educating and motivating people so that when it's time, when they're ready, that we're able, in profit activator 4, to make them an offer. I think it was Scott that said, you know, you can't. You people have to be convinced of everything before they'll ever take advantage of an offer that you give to them. And you can't do that in an ad. That's the big frustration that I see people running into is how do you stop trying to convince people in your ad and just focus on turning the invisible prospects visible? So when you look at the microblade solution that I was talking about, using a gift card, when you are looking for someone who has an intention on doing something that you can't buy a list of them. And this is a key distinction if you can understand whether your prospects are visible prospects or invisible prospects. So when we Talked about Kenny McCarthy choosing Oceanfront Homes as a target audience, oceanfront homeowners are visible prospects. There's only. You can see them. There's a thousand homes on Cape Ann that are on the ocean, and you can identify who those 1,000 people are. If your target audience is chiropractors, you can get a list of chiropractors in a specific area. They're visible prospects. What you can't get a visible list of is somebody who's interested in getting their eyebrows microbladed or for a chiropractor, somebody who just twisted their back. You can't buy a list of people who are in back pain. So you have to create one, right? You have to say, I want the people in this area, so you go where they are. We know what we do know about Lupa's prospects for microplating is that they're women and they're between the ages of 25 and 65. That that's really what we're looking for, right? So we can select that audience as the target selection in Facebook ads so that you can show ads directly to those people. But now what we want to do is we want to make an offer that's so easy for people to respond that all they're doing is raising their hand and saying, I'm interested in microblading. That's where we use the gift card idea, if that's appropriate for you. By far, the best thing that I do for Lead generation is using a book. A book is the best lead generator for invisible prospects that I've ever used because there's multiple reasons for it. But number one is that we still as a society value books where it's ingrained in us genetically that we revere information that comes in a book format. Right. That that's something that is valuable. It's been our whole society is based on ever since the Gutenberg Press. You know, people have collected books. They saved them. Try and get somebody to throw away a book. It's a sin to throw away a book. We keep these books in hallowed halls that we go and gather in hushed tones just to be in their presence. Right? And so we put a lot of, like, emphasis on this, on the value of a book. Now having. There's a book right there, how to Sell youl North Shore Home, that when you title your book, something that would telegraph to you that somebody is interested in a particular topic. If you have a book called Stop youp Divorce, what do you think anybody who downloaded that book would be interested in doing? Stopping their divorce right now? If they're raising their hand saying, oh, I'd like that book about that. That they would be somebody who. Who would be a great prospect for your divorce counseling service if you have one in your during unit. If that's what you do to have people get a book, educate them and motivate them about your approach to doing it. Demonstrate all the different people that you've helped save their marriage and stop their divorce, and then make them an offer to talk to you one on one to get help with their situation. And that's a magic formula. You know, when you start looking at whatever. If you can pick a title for a book that telegraphs immediately that somebody is your ideal target audience. You've done the best thing you can do for your profit. Activator 2 for your lead Generation is your building a list of people who have expressed an interest in whatever it is ultimately that you do so that you can nurture a relationship with them over time. Now in Profit Activator 3, the thing that you've got to realize is that not everybody is ready to do something right now. And it's okay if they're not, because over the long term, there's going to be a lot of them that are going to do something. If you've got a book title that indicates that they've got a desire for something, the odds of them doing that, something in that category over the next two years are very high, like 50% high. That anybody who inquires about anything, there's about a 50% chance that they're going to do that thing over the next two years. Now, whether they do it with you or not is up to you for nurturing the relationship with them and being there when it's now, which is one of the only two time frames there are. There's only now and not now. And it doesn't matter if it's not now. It doesn't matter whether or not now is next week, next month, next year. All that matters is that when it is, now that you're there and they know what to do. This is where in profit activator 3, we establish a brand. And of course, I've developed a new acronym for brand, which is a buying reflex affecting now decisions. That's what a brand is. We want to establish in people's minds a buying reflex to choose you when it's time for them to make a decision. That's what we're really looking at. And it's been a. That's a pretty amazing reframe when you start thinking about it like that. Because no matter what, that's how Coca Cola has done it better than anybody else. There's no collective decision made that Coca Cola is the drink or the cola. It's made individually in the minds of billions of people. That's what the scope comes to. But billions of individuals have been branded in that when somebody says to them, what would you like to drink? That the answer is, I'll have a Coke. And so that's what we're looking for for you in your category. When somebody. When it's time for somebody to do whatever it is that you do, that their immediate buying reflex is, I gotta call Joe, I gotta call Kenny, I gotta call whatever you're doing, because you were the one that has demonstrated to them they're gonna get the best outcome by going with you.

So that was some smart shit, Dean.

Well, it's pretty. I mean, Joe, that's something that I really just came up with that in the last six months that that definition of brand. But the more that I really think about it and the more that I test it, it's really the exactly what's going on.

Yep. Buying reflex affecting now decisions because the.

Only time somebody's going to buy something is now.

Oh, by the way, let me mention Adriana. She's a Genius Network member. She actually had submitted a question about is there a good contact for Facebook ads and things like that. And you know what I suggested? There are a few Genius Network members that are on right now in our Genius Network Facebook group that we have for Genius Network post questions, examples of what you're doing or if you're running ads, if you want to, you'll get some great feedback. On the on the Facebook group, what I'm working on is joe polishrecommends.com where I'm gonna start updating. I'm gonna create something where all the recommended things and then Dean, I want to talk to you because we're getting so many questions where people are recommending stuff and we make want to create an I love marketing recommends.

That's a great idea.

And then we can start giving people recommendations. And like I said, there's so many questions that people have submitted that are specific. We will go through these and we will continue to do this and we'll do future episodes. I think we should just do some Q and A ones, Dean, where we just take some of these questions people submitted and we record them and just put them out as episodes because I think that'd be really helpful. I agree.

Absolutely. How do you use marketing automation to deliver more value to your customers? And by the way, hi Dean, nice to see you again.

How did he use marketing automation? Okay, I'll give you my take on it and then I'll let Dean say something more intelligent than what I'm about to say. The way to think about automation is I go back to the psychology of can and clone yourself, something that Gary Halbert said years ago as a, you know, the job of a salesperson is to sell and you want to can and clone yourself. And so automation today could be in the form of video, it could be in the form of text messaging. So if someone comes into your world, into your funnel, they enter your during unit, you get a lead and you want to respond immediately. Obviously email automation, where you have an autoresponder. I'm a big believer in sms, so we did a great podcast episode with Amanda Dobson on SMS marketing. We also have a great talk with Pete Mitchell, which I Think is on the Genius network podcast on immediate follow up. So as soon as someone comes in, will you just start communicating to them? You know, I mean there's all kinds of ways. I mean I automate happy birthdays to people so and I also personally will go in every single day. I miss a day here and there. For six years I have gone into Facebook messages myself and posted happy birthdays to people. Now I just use a video with a famous person because it's funny and it's ridiculous and people expect that sort of name dropping nonsense from me. But there's all kinds of ways that you can replicate and automate it. Even the use of free recorded messages, videos, things like that. So that's how I would think about what is someone need to hear that you can automate that will. It takes a lot more effort to create momentum than to maintain momentum. So I think of automation as what is the continual communication and dripping on someone that allows you to do it. But in terms of sophisticated ways, you know, there's people on the line that are way better at the technology than I am. But Dean, what would you say to that?

I think the way like, you know, automation is easy in terms of the technology we could use autoresponders and things like that. What's more important is to contextualize the follow up, to simplify it and make it easier. Right. Like I when you switch your mindset to rather than trying to juggle timing where you're trying to time the market, you're trying to if somebody jump on somebody right away and see if they say six months that you're going to determine that you'll follow up with them in three months. And trying to juggle everybody's timeline, trying to guess when they're going to do it. I found it's just so much simpler to realize that what we're looking for are five star prospects. People who are willing to engage in a dialogue, friendly, cooperative, know what they want, they're ready to get it and they'd like us to help them. That when we know that that's what we're looking for. It's easy. When you take yourself off the hook for trying to skillfully convert a lead. There's nothing you're doing to convert somebody into a five star prospect or create a five star prospect. The very best thing you can do is just take a mindset that you're looking to discover the five star prospects because they either are or are not a five star prospect. There's nothing that you're going to do or say, that's going to flip that around. Right. So it's best if you can make your first wave of communicating with people just to see if they're willing to engage in a dialogue and friendly and cooperative and do they know what they want. But what most people do when they're trying to convert leads is they come from the bottom and they start out with, here's what you should buy and you should buy it now because you're going to get the lowest price right now. But I'm going to take this away at midnight and if you don't buy my midnight, you're going to pay more. And you're trying to convince people to buy now, which is like an uphill thing. Yeah, it's a very top down approach. And then I just want to say you have such profound but simple ideas. And I don't mean simple as in simplistic, but they're profound. And by the way, thank you so much for sharing them on the podcast as well.

It's been really popular, so thank you.

And that really helps. Thank you. Awesome.

No, look, I'm happy to say this personally. Dean is one of the smartest, most brilliant people that I know and he's really fucking lazy. So it requires a guy like me with a lot of ambition to drag his ass into things like this, pull smart things out of him, and then hopefully we both look good. So I think we're both needed, you know, because he could all.

It's your turn next, Joe. I need to get you on next. I've been working on you for some time now.

You know what I've been doing? This is an interesting thing. I wish I could be on every freaking pod. I get between on a low end, 10 to 50 requests a week to be interviewed or be on podcasts and stuff. And I have a hard time saying no to stuff, which gets me into all the traps that my life consists of. I talked about this at my annual event last year. Everything that I've had in my life, I've clawed my way into every opportunity and I've had to claw my way out of every mess that I've gotten myself into by over committing myself and stuff. And one of the things that I've been doing for people that have been requesting episodes and stuff, and this has been working actually quite well. I said, look, if you'll give a donation or if you'll raise money for Genius Recovery foundation, then I'm kind of putting those to the top of the list. And then of course, my Genius Network members. Is Mike Aguilera on here? Yeah, this fricking dude. He just had me on his thing, and we raised several thousand doll for Genius Recovery foundation just because, you know, Mike is giving donations and stuff. And by the way, Mike, we have a great podcast episode. Everyone's got to listen to it because he's the guy. I credit him all the time, where I asked him, what do you do when you have so many books, so many seminars, so many things that you can pay attention to? How do you manage it all? Because everyone here has more podcasts, more books, more courses than you physically have time by a factor of 1000 to ever go through in a lifetime. And I asked Mike, you know, how do you. How do you manage it on? He says, well, I just ask myself, what needs solved? You know, what do I need solved in my life right now? And that's where I actually, you know, that's how I decide what I'm going to listen to, what I'm going to read. And I've been using that ever since. But, Mike, you want to say anything smart before we end our podcast, or you want to give more money to Genius Recovery just because I called you out?

Actually, I do want to give. I've been telling everybody about Genius Recovery for more than just because you're passionate about.

Joe.

I think the COVID thing is a terrible thing, but I think the unspoken things that we're not speaking about are more terrible mental illness. And a lot of these things I think people have to pay attention to. That's the real consequence. Joe, I got a question for you and Dean, and I don't know if it's okay to ask. It's what I chatted you a little bit before. Can I talk about that a minute?

Sure.

So I think what everybody needs to think about in marketing and business and sales and operation is we've been waiting so much for the world to go back. My question is, what if it goes back and then we end up in reverse again? I've been sharing with people, and they might think I'm crazy, but I'm calling it Covid 2.0. And I think it's like that thing, if you don't improve something, you know, you should improve. Shame on you or whatever. But, like, I don't know, it's like, gonna be really shame on you as business owners and entrepreneurs on here. You really gotta be prepared for a couple things. And one of them is, you know, if we end up in September, we're gonna end up in the Octagon. Everybody. I just feel it coming. And I sold a $32 million business a couple years ago and I own a really big business now. And you guys just gotta be to be prepared for this. And that's why when you guys ask like, who has a question? I'm like, you know, there's always a question. Even if Dean, the question is, what question should I be asking you two? Never waste the time of really, really smart people. So my question for you two tonight is if you were to guide anybody, if there was a Covid 2.0, what would be the first three things both of you would think about to be ready for it?

You actually got me thinking that I'm going to do an impact filter on that exact question. So an impact filter is a tool that Dan Sullivan created. And if you want to me and Dean, I think we've done an episode on I Love Marketing about an impact filter and also did an episode on 10xtalk.com with Dan. And I filled out an impact filter with my team to kind of prepare us when this started on March 13th. And it was really helpful. And that episode has helped people prepare their companies for the start of this pandemic. And I'm going to do an impact filter just so I can really thoroughly think about it. To use Keith Cunningham's example of thinking time, because I don't know the exact thing to do other than what I've been doing now, and people have responded to it pretty well. Is not being tone deaf shifting how we're. It's one thing to put content out there. It's another to have like what Dean said earlier to ash about context. Content is important, but context is more important. Communication is important, but comprehension is more important. And people have to be able to comprehend things. So I mean, I am being very careful on how I spend money. There's these KPIs that Keith Cunningham has written out and sent to me that I've put and made publicly available on geniusnetworkinsights.com it's what to do with your money, your team, your company. In order to prepare for what's going on right now. I'm going to go and read it myself again and just I've been doing everything I can just to be very careful with my money, nurturing as best we can our existing clients and not just really protecting the asset. And also so the number one asset that everyone has to protect is yourself. Where I've noticed myself, I mean, I've had some crazy, like I had oral surgery a Week ago. And Mike, you know this because I sent you the video, and it's quite horrible. I mean, if you guys want to be just. It's a good way to end this episode tonight, I could just play that and everyone will just get the hell off the computer. But, you know, just taking care of yourself physically, mentally getting sleep, rest, and some things that I've actually had a hard time with, even though I preach this and talk about it, I mean, the stress level and all the people that I'm talking with that are struggling with addiction. So staying connected. I mean, first and foremost, it's one thing about your business, but the second is just you as a human, you know, staying healthy. So I would. My thing is. I think I would say that. But in terms of business, Dean, what would be your response to that?

Absolutely. That's a great question. Like that part of the thing is just observe what just happened. I mean, you know, you've got everybody. You've got a response opportunity whenever something's happening. But once you realize that it's happening, you've got to be decisive and not wallow in wishing that things were different or hoping that they're going to be different, but to deal with what's absolutely the reality of the situation. I remember March 13. I was sitting here in my home and I had. This is the spring. I usually do my world tour, where I do my breakthrough blueprint events, where I'm going from Orlando, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, and then ending the summer in Australia, right? So five live events between March and in July 4th. And I knew immediately, as soon as Donald Trump put a block on international travel coming this way, that we were going to be in for something very different, that this was not just like something in China that they need to block off and blow over. So I knew live events off the table. I've got to find a way to adapt to this. I really started thinking about what's the essence of this? What can we do, Right? What. I know. Don't worry about what we can't do. I can't go live. I can't travel to London, can't go to Amsterdam, can't have people from Europe or Canada come to me. And so I immediately, literally 15 minutes after Donald Trump announced on the TV that it was shut off, I had this whole. This room where I am in motion immediately created this Zoom studio. I made the decision that I was going to do virtual events because I had experienced Zoom and knew that we could do this. The events that I do have 10 to 12 people and the real essence of it is the communication that we're having. And I knew that we could do that virtually. So I immediately switched the events to virtual. And I've done now four of the virtual events, including one I did with Mike Aguilera for his CEO Warriors. We had an amazing experience and even so much on the while the event was going on, people were sending out nine word emails and reporting back the tally of the money that they were booking in service jobs while we're still in the event. So focusing on taking an inventory in the results that you're still able to deliver, right. What can you do? And be able to pivot, focus 100% on that and realize that even though in times of concern like this, and Joe alluded to it, you know, seeing he's being very careful with the money that he spends, that what most businesses do is they immediately turn off the faucets. That's it. They're not spending any money. Gather all the money here, everybody in the boardroom, let's figure out how are we going to get money in. That's what everybody's focused on. The first job, stop spending money, then focus on bringing money in. But our business model, the traditional sales business model is really about approaching companies through the purchasing department. We're trying to go to the purchasing department and get a purchase order to deliver some good or service or benefit or result for them in the future based on them paying us to do it. And remember, we started out this podcast, this zoom meeting, by focusing on what would you do if you only got paid if they get the result first. Now, the thing is, if you can and you have the ability to approach those same companies not through the purchasing department, but if you can go around back to the receiving doc, the receiving doc is wide open and anxious for people to bring them business, bring them money into their business. So if you can reframe whatever it is that you're doing to offer a solution that's going to end up with money coming into their receiving doc, you're going to be met with open arms. That's really what's going to happen. So I would focus on it.

I had a couple thoughts about this over the last couple weeks, because I'm sure, like a lot of smart people here, one of the biggest things you could do is reflect on your own actions. And I was thinking like, like something that Joe does, like Genius Network. If you look at that as when you're around smart people, if you treated it as almost an insurance policy, because that's really what you have, like, no one ran out during this and canceled their car insurance because if something goes wrong, you want to tap into the solution that can help you. And I was thinking into the future. I said, you know, what if I could rewind time? The thing I would have did was I would have ran a simulation through a scenario like this. And shame on me for not. I should have known better. Who knew it was a pandemic? Everyone else seemed to know in 2019, government ran all their scenarios, but we didn't run a business scenario. Lesson learned. Now what I'm going to do over the next couple of weeks, once I get through some events, is reach out to a lot of smart people I know and say, you know what? We better go into a think tank now and say, what if it comes back with a vengeance in September? October shuts everything down. Everything down shuts down. The Walmart shuts down, even the big protected places.

What if that all happened?

What would we do then? What would you have to change now? So if the whole world had closed up, you would just sit here and go, oh, I'm protected financially, mentally, relationship wise, health wise. And I think that, I don't know, Joe, if that would be something you'd be interested or you and Dean getting on. I was talking to Jay Abraham this morning about it a little bit about my thoughts, about, like, is everybody going to go to the beach and be delusional that we're through it? And guess what? If we're wrong, we're all going to be so much more prepared. And if we're right, we're also going to be prepared. So there's some of my. Just my thoughts, and I think the impact filter is a smart thing to run it through.

Yeah. Andre Norman, if you guys don't know Andre, he does a lot of work with me in Genius Recovery. He's the one that got Stedman Graham. He's good friends with Stedman, who's Oprah's partner. We put that actually out as a. We haven't even promoted it really, other than to our list. You can watch the interview on YouTube. Andre spent 14 years in maximum security prison and two years in solitary confinement. He got out 20 years ago, went to Harvard, became part of the social justice program. Now he speaks at schools, runs a prison in North Carolina. An amazing guy, doing wonderful stuff in the world. And he gave some really good suggestions because he's like, I spent two years in solitary confinement. I had to figure out how to make friends with a cockroach. There was no iPad, no books, nothing. And it was very interesting hearing his perspective on how to deal with. With stress and isolation. And so it's on geniusnetworkinsights.com if you have any friends or business owners that are struggling, we cover all kinds of stuff that I've just put up there for free. And so we're going to continue to do this. Did everyone enjoy this tonight?

I did.

Cool. Awesome. The thing I learned from Dan Sullivan, there's five ways you get paid in life. The first is money. You get rewarded financially. Second is people appreciate you. Third, they utilize you. So we like it when people utilize our ideas. The fourth is they refer you. So we're all for referrals. And the fifth way you get paid is it enhances you as a person. So one of the reasons that, you know, money to me is, no, I am a capitalist money. I want to make money. If I'm going to run a business, you have to. You couldn't employ people or do stuff without money. But my number one criteria is, does it enhance me? First, do people utilize me? Second, appreciate me? Third, refer me. Fourth. And reward me financially. Fifth. And that's the way you get paid. So there's all kinds of benefits of doing this. So to you and your loved ones, we wish you all a wonderful evening. Stay safe, take good care of yourself. And that's it for now.

Yo, Joe.

Dean.

Oh, Andre. Shit, I didn't know. Okay, Andre, you're melting away.

What's going on?

Yo, Dean, what are we gonna do about my weight?

Yeah, what are we going to do about your weight? I hardly recognize you.

All right, so, Andre, before we go, you literally spent two years in solitary confinement. When people are stressed out or freaked out, what should or could they do? Because you've had to endure stuff that I could not even fathom. So what do you recommend for everyone?

I literally spent two and a half years, 24 hours a day, locked in a basement with no lights. And that was the greatest two and a half years of my life. Once I stopped running for myself and I was able to keep the space and all the noise out and make a plan, I've always been, since I was born.

Go, go, go, go, go.

Whether it was trauma with the family, drama in the streets, drama in the courts, and I never had a moment to actually sit still. You go all day. Dean goes all day. Everybody here goes all day. This is actually for me, like, the second time. But when I was in solitary confinement, it was the first time I had no worries, no Concerns? No, nothing. I sat still. I was able to make a plan on where I wanted to go and what I wanted to be. I went from maximum security prison in a basement to the White House to Harvard, to London business school to genius network. So this all came from that solitude of being by myself, not running and finding distractions and actually focusing on me and being true to myself. I was homeless. I was uneducated. I was a criminal. I wasn't. I can tell you, I got a chance to just tell myself the truth about everything. And the stuff I had was just stuff. I told myself the truth about everything, came clean to myself. Then I started building from who I was, not who I projected to be. There's a lot of people who've made themselves successful, call themselves great, say they're the best, whatever they might even be. But I went back to the baseline of telling myself the truth, which I had never done, then sitting down and devising a plan and then finding a way to go forward.

Well, you know what? I'm trying to see if I got a copy of Andre's book. Talk about your book real quick. You got it right there.

There's my book. Two years ago at the annual event, Cameron Herrera and John Rulin had reached out to Tucker Max. Cause they both know me. They know Tucker. We're at the annual event in Scottsdale, and Cameron went up to Tucker, said, you got to tell his story. I try to hire, like tons of people to tell my story. My life is complicated. I'm complicated. And it just wasn't happening. And Tucker said, okay, agree to do my story and describe method book in a box. Method is a beast. And I came to Tucker with like a 400 page manuscript that I wrote in prison. And he said, andre, how many books have you written? I said, none. He said, let me do this. Take that thing that you have that you don't know anything about and put it to the side and let me do what I do. And he wrote a book that is awesome. When I read it the first time, I cried. And it's my book.

So fantastic.

So fantastic. Tucker, John and Cameron. I'm definitely pushed over the top, but it was, again, that's hanging out with you. I got a chance to hang out with Cam. I got a chance to meet Tucker. I definitely got to hang out with Dean last year in Amsterdam with Elko.

I was looking at, you know, what's exciting to me is I remember the meal where we came up with the subtitle for your book, you and me.

That's it.

Listen.

Oh, very excited.

Oh, Dean. I got this right here. It says, breakthrough blueprint with Dean Jackson and Elko Amsterdam, July 4th through 6th, 2019.

That's great. This is the book.

It's literally sitting here on my desk.

You see that? There you go.

All the notes and everything you and Elko told me, they're right here in this book.

I love it. I love it.

So when I'm in my solitary moment of being isolated and locked away, I pull out my Dean and Elko, I pull out the rest of the troops, and I get a plan.

That's awesome.

I get a plan.

You know what? This has been a great meeting.

It has been.

That was a great way to wrap this up. So awesome. Thanks, Andre. And yeah, again, to all of you, be well, be safe, and we'll be in touch and talk to you next.

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Sam.