Technology, Focus, and Marketing with Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #292

In this special episode with Dean Jackson and Joe Polish, you'll learn about fascinating technology, focus marketing, and more to build and grow your business. If you would like access to the full presentation, special resources and show notes for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 292 that's ilovemarketing.com 292.

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

Joe Polish here today. Live. Well, it's live for us, but by the time it's, you know, going to be a podcast, it will be a recording of a live call. Because if we were. If it wasn't live, how else would we be able to do this, right, Dean?

It'd be like, that's true.

We have to talk to Peter Diamandis and describe what you would call that sort of thing if it was to.

Say is, do you ever think. Do you think I thought about all this stuff here? Like, we haven't done an episode in a while here. We haven't done one since. Since Abundance360. Yeah, since you. You were at Traffic and Conversion. There's. Holy cow. This is like, this is the first one we've done since before Christmas, isn't it? I don't know.

No, I mean, I've been putting podcast episodes out there. They just haven't included you. And the ratings have gone through the roof since I have had. I mean, it's bizarre because I have actually always thought that what really made. I love marketing was, you know, Dean and me. But in reality, we're finding that, like, a lot of people wanted you booted off. And so I was just trying to, you know, follow what people are requesting, say we need, you know, less of Dean and more.

More.

A lot of these episodes haven't even been me. We've been putting, like, great genius network on there and stuff like that. But, yeah, we've got, you know, it's.

There's.

There's a period where after doing for six years, you, you know, you just. Life happens and things go down and so. But here we are. So we got this one and we've got a lot of cool stuff in store and we just wanted to catch everyone up on what is. What is the latest and greatest and newest stuff going on and talk about that.

Yeah, so, you know, that was. We were talking about the. Doing this live and I really have been thinking and following this artificial intelligence and the, you know, the thought that we have so much stuff that we've recorded, like, so many, many, many, many hours. If a artificial intelligence, you know, with Machine learning could digest all of the things that we've said on all of the Isle of Marketing episodes and you know, create their own views on it. You know, synthesize from what they can gather that we have, you know, be pretty. It's pretty amazing. I agree.

I totally agree. I mean, we're good. See, people have no idea. I almost. Not that this is the best example, but back in, you know, back in the past when there would be like nude photos done, say like Madonna never realizing one day that would be in Playboy magazine or wherever it first appeared. If you can remember those young people, probably when I say young that aren't our age probably cannot remember that if they were not around or weren't born yet. But there was a lot of controversy with some of these pictures on how they affected things. Like Vanessa Williams, who was a, yeah, it's America. And those sort of photos and how much of an uproar and how weird it was for things to come from the past and be presented in the future in a different distribution system. And little did they know that that was nothing compared to once the Internet existed and those photos were everywhere. And in the same way, everything that we say, everything, every picture we take, everything that's recorded, all the videos and when there's going to be machine learning and you know, I mean all the things AI, virt, reality, augmented reality, I.

Mean.

All the different mechanisms that we don't even know what is going to happen with it. And hanging out with Peter Diamandis and I'm in a unique position because I actually, although a lot of this is so above my pea brain, I happen to have clients and friends that are at the cutting edge of it. I mean literally the top in the world in some of these areas. And I get to be privy to conversations and things that, and go to the actual, you know, businesses and companies and organizations. I've seen a lot of stuff in advance. You know, I'll be at TED again this year and you know, people that you meet and that take you to the investors meetings and you see what's going on with all of the new technologies. I mean, people have no idea what is just how weird it is going to be and how amazing and how cool in so many areas. I mean there's, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of stuff. I mean, I have an augmented reality business card for Artists for Addicts. If, you know, someone's not seen the trailer for artists for addicts.com where you point my phone at it at the business card and just starts playing the video trailer and it blows people away. I mean, and that's like the simplest form of augmented reality. And people are like, what the hell? In Joe's marketing book, I've been delaying the release of it because of all kinds of interesting things that I'm going to do with the book. And so a lot of people that are waiting like, where the hell is your book? Where's the hell? You know, So I have pre released. The only people that have gotten a copy of my Joe's marketing book are the Genius network members that were given the first pre release thing at my annual event because it's all principle based marketing strategies. And I think. You've read the whole book. I think yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, basically then I given a copy of the book to some of my close marketing colleagues. And then Vern Harnish, who started EO Everyone at his Fortune Summit, that is, which by the way, I'm actually in the current issue of Fortune magazine talking about Genius X. I have to do a plug for that. Vern Harnish wrote an article. So if you go to newsstand, you can actually see a little Blurb about my $100,000 group that I do with Dean Graziosi in the current issue of Fortune magazine. But I'm going to give a pre release copy of that and then gave it to all these artists because I'm doing a lot of stuff with the addiction platform to help people. I want to change the global conversation about how people view addiction and how we find the best forms of treatment for people struggling with addictions. And so I gave a copy to all of the artists at Celebration of Fine Arts. And two years ago, I actually gave a talk to all of them, which is actually on an episode in I Love Marketing. If someone just does a Google search and types in Joe Polish art, they can find that talk that I gave to the artist. It's on. I love marketing Marketing. It's a video. And I went and spoke to that group a few days ago, two years later, and said, here's what's happened since I gave this talk here. It actually spawned the idea for Artists for Addicts. And I showed them all these artists this augmented reality business card because I had just played the trailer for all of them and there was about 100 artists there. And I mean, really brilliant artists. So creative. I mean, these are people who make a living selling their art. And they had seen the video trailer, which they loved, and it was really cool. Is like me going and speaking to the group of artists, I opened up my talk and I said, you know, when I spoke here two years ago, six people came up to me and they had. They were telling me about how they really resonated with me, you know, telling my story about being a drug addict and the struggles I've had in my adult life with addiction. And one guy had tears in his eyes saying that art saved his life. And I said, I don't know if that man is here, but if you're here, please come up to me afterwards. And I had no idea because I couldn't remember who that person was because I was talking to so many people two years ago. And this man actually came up to me. He was there. He goes, yeah, that was me. And he was like, literally had tears in his eyes again. And then I went and did an interview with him over at his area where he was displaying his art in this big giant tent for Celebration of Fine Arts. And it was really freaking powerful. But I told the artist, I said, yep. I go, we're going to develop some marketing because we have ilove marketingart.com which is the URL that John Butcher. I didn't even register it. John Butcher, who's my partner in Artist for Addicts, registered it because he's like, yeah, I want you to do a marketing program for artists. So you don't even know this yet, Dean, but you're going to be recruited into this whole thing, of course. And so teaching artists how to actually build and grow their businesses, I said, I go, could you imagine if someone goes up to one of your paintings or one of your sculptures and they point a phone at it and it starts playing a video that either tells your story or, if you want, because some artists don't like giving meaning to their art. Others, that's what they do. They tell. Because I've told the artist, I said, look, I'm not an expert on selling art. I mean, to me, the whole world confuses the shit out of me half the time. I go, but what I do know is selling is influence, and marketing is storytelling. And if you can tell a story about your thing and you do it in a compelling, powerful way, people are more apt to do it. Now, all of that rambling, what does that have to do with AI? What does that have to do with virtual reality or augmented reality or machine learning? I mean, the more we can tie that technology into these experiential ways for people to connect. Because all in all, giving people an explanation is one thing. Giving people an Experience is a whole nother thing. And that's what you know that see people are going to be able to interact with what we have spent hundreds of hours of our time and literally both of us collectively 25 years of our life learning certain methodologies that have, you know, generated billions of dollars. I mean if you take between what me and you have done in the world, just you know, simply selling books and courses and tapes and seminars and growing our own original businesses, me starting with carpet cleaning, you starting with real estate. I mean the fact that we've put it out into the. Has generated billions of dollars in revenue for clients and for people that listen to our stuff. Now what we can do with it, when you attach a technology that can go in and make better sense of it, that could pull out and flesh out and reinterpret and redistribute is mind boggling. And I tell a lot of my Genius Network members. I mean I think some people are into Genius Network because I bring in a lot of these people that are at the cutting edge of it and they'll. If you think five or ten years from now you just doing a seminar or giving your fucking self help pitch is going to be some sort of magical insight. I mean wait till you see what's done with AI. Wait till you see it's going to be. For a lot of people it's going to be simply boring to want to sit around and read a book. Although I hope that never goes away because I think there's. Have you read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport?

I have, of course, yeah. I mean that's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you give a. Because it's a fantastic book. I mean it's literally about long extended periods of deep concentrated work with no interruptions. Give. Give your interpretation for that. Because I think the biggest like being in the world of addiction and infra. Like it's one way to do amazing stuff with technology. But I'll tell you it's one of the reasons people can't get anything fucking done. Is there? So I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you thing that's an amazing correlation is that they're showing. I think I sent you that, that New York Times article about the. The drug use among teens is apparently going down. But that's. And the reason that they're thinking that is because of smartphone usage and social networking. Being able to get that dopamine hit right whenever they want it. That it's all the same thing. Right. That dopamine Is what, what drives that, that stuff. That's what we're looking for, you know, like getting new likes on your Instagram selfie or getting some, you know, something new and novel. And we're so. If you take the way that our lives have evolved, I mean you look at even in the last 10 years since the smartphone, it's absolutely true that we are completely connected to those phones and we've gone from a. This is kind of my summary of deep work that I thought he really summarized it best when he said that we're living in a spot where we're trying to. We're living in a state of distraction constantly and our effort has been trying to carve out periods of time to focus and deep work. What he's talking about is trying to get to a state of focus and carving out times to give in to distraction. That's really what he's trying to do is turn the tables on that. And so it's really, it's fascinating. You know, this whole idea of, you know, really that's, it's kind of like what these, what the 50 minute focus finder, like doing that kind of thing where you're eliminating the, you know, proactive or the reactive activators, you know, which are people and the telephone and the Internet and email and thoughts. Thoughts is the big one that is there no matter what you can eliminate by physically removing yourself from the first four. But then your thoughts are often what you know. Then you're faced with your thoughts and you realize all these things you've been putting on unresolved, you know, they're all rambling around in there. So getting that, doing that first 50 minute focus finder to clear your mind of those makes the rest of the times that you are able to block off to focus and do deep work that much more, you know, easier to manage. How have you found. Yeah, like that's been a big shift for me, you know, is real just even the realization looking that we're. We're completely hooked up, up to that dopamine drip, you know, of the. Looking to see oh, what's the new text or did there's. What's on Facebook, who, who's posted up something new or how many people liked my movie review or how many, you know, all these things you're constantly doing that loop to get that kind of novelty, to get that newness, that distraction.

Yeah. So your question to me is how, how do, how does it affect me?

How has that. Well, how have you, what kind of things have you changed you know, because of reading Deep Work, I have a pretty profound shift. Yeah.

I mean, in a lot of ways, what I have realized more and more, although I spend so much of my time with things related to addiction and that I have changed my thinking so much, and I think I have a perspective and a paradigm about it that most people don't really share and that I hope to develop and continue this conversation. I mean, like, for instance, at this year's annual event, I've got Dr. Gabor Mate speaking. He's one of the top addiction docs in the world. And my buddy Tommy Rosen. I've got Randy Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg's sister. I'm going to be interviewing her on stage at this year's annual event. So I'm looking at these technologies as addiction devices. So when you talk about the article New York Times, that drug use is down, I don't think drug use is down at all. I think it's dramatically increased. I think more people are hooked, more people addicted, more people are dying.

They were talking specifically among teens, but.

No, no, but what I mean is. But it depends on what you call the drug, because I think smartphones and Facebook and all these things are the drug. So what I've learned, like, about. So to answer your question, you know, for one, I have discovered how fucking hard it is, I mean, psychologically difficult to shut things down, especially when you're sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Like, I literally spend most of my time in a sympathet, fight or flight state. And so now I am really working on, you know, that I've been doing a lot of yoga for the last year, but I am doing more restorative yoga. I am doing more meditation and more visualization and more putting my phone and technology away and not turning it on. And I am nowhere near the level where I want to be because I'm actually having to shift. I mean, I'm, I think, not like the normal person in terms of relationship. You know, we've talked about this a bit in past episodes. Dunbar's law of 150 people. Well, you know that I manage hundreds of relationships and actually stay in touch with a lot of them. You know, I mean, I interact with a lot of people and I am making a shift as a result of things like deep work, to not do that as much and to be more selective with the types of people that I attempt to interact with and help. Because for me, I. Even with what I do, I find myself spending a lot of time just wanting to be helpful and useful. And there's a lot of people that they don't. You know, they like, why am I doing it? And I sit and think of myself, like, what is the psychological reward that my brain is trying to get out of this sort of experience? Like, what is going on in my brain that is allowing me to not put boundaries around who I talk with and being so, so weird. Going to Traffic and conversion. Ryan and Perry, who run it, they've invited me out for a while. And I decided that the last minute I would go there, like a week before. And, you know, there were like, 4,000 people there.

And. I know, Yeah, I told you this, too.

I mean, I must have had a hundred people come up to me at some point during the four days I was out there saying, your podcast changed my life. Your pocket. You know, not. Not like I like listening to it. Like, it changed my life. It changed my, like, going, fuck. You know, and all these people. There's a tendency, oh, give me your business card. Let me, you know, whatever. And stacks a bit. It's like, I come back, it's going, what the. You know, like, am I gonna really follow up with all the. Can I now? I gave a lot of these things to, you know, to Eunice because I had seven of my team members there with me, you know, so I had a big portion of my company that came and was going to stuff. So luckily, you know, I handed things off to different people that were with me that could follow up with certain people. But there's a side of me that just wants to be this nice guy. And I realized that if you. You can be the sweetest, nicest person in the world, but if you don't shut things down and go into whatever work that you're doing, you're just not going to get anything done. Although there's a chapter in there about Jack Dorsey from Twitter. I had lunch with Jack last year. I took a group of people down there, and he just goes from meeting to meeting and bounces around. And it's the thing that Cal Newport talks about. Not everyone necessarily is gonna. Should be doing deep work. Or, you know, it's because he talks about deep work versus shallow. But, you know, the. The big takeaway is I myself am so drawn to things that give me a hit. A dopamine hit. Be it a compliment, be it a distraction. I mean, remember, we're in Florida. I don't know how many years ago this was. And I was like, hey, let's stop by the store. Let's Go there. And you said you're one of those people that you just, you know, we're driving to your place, your house, which is where staying, and you're like, you just want to try to fit in as many things as you can before we reach our destination. And I'm like, yeah, because to me, that's exciting. Whereas you're just lazy and you don't, you know, you just. So it's one of these things. But the, you know, the big takeaway is that there are projects that I want to get done and I have to recondition my system in my brain to literally go into, for lack of a better word, states of boredom where things will seem very less exciting. And I truly believe this. This is not happening at a conscious level. Meaning, you know, the analogy I use is if you're running, if you just started running right now as f as you could, and then you're supposed to stop in 20 seconds, just come to a dead stop. Well, your body wouldn't. Your body would keep hurling forward. And so your conditioning, the way that you've been doing work, the way that you've been sleeping, the rituals, the exercises, your behavior, the way you brush your teeth, the tone of your voice when you talk to people, the speed. I mean, all of these things are how you have been interacting and getting along in the world. And in order to slow it down, you have to add a ritual in. You have to eliminate a certain thing. I mean, it's just not easy to do. And so my point is, I believe addiction is a solution now. It's a problem.

It causes.

I mean, addicts lie, they cheat, they steal, they can die, they can ruin their own lives. They can ruin the lives of other people from the shrapnel. However, like when you tell an addict, just say no for one, that's like telling them say no to the only thing that makes them feel good or the only thing that gives them a connection, although an artificial connection, although a destructive connection. But if you just say put your phone down or quit drinking that alcohol or quit doing that drug, or quit watching that pornography or quit gambling online or quit checking your Facebook status or watching what's trending or looking through Instagram or being on Snapchat fucking TikTok hours a day. I mean, if you just say to someone who, that is their hit, that is their buzz, just to stop doing that, what you're really kind of saying is take away your pain reliever, you know, because the. Gabriel mate, his question is not why the addiction? But why the pain. And I sit and look at, like, how I distract myself, how I have distracted myself. What I say yes to, what I say no to, why I'm drawn to things, why I literally cannot sleep very well if I have a phone next to my bed. You know, like, if I'm in a hotel room, if I want to go to sleep, there's a magnetic draw. I'm better off putting that phone way across the room or literally plugging it in if I need to charge it in the bathroom, like, literally not have it. Now, some people, they're not like that at all. They can put their phone on airplane mode or they can turn it off and they, you know, whatever. If that fucking thing is near me, I'm, like, drawn to look at it. And it's just like, what is going on there? Well, it literally makes your brain feel good temporarily. It can keep you up all night. It could totally distract you. It could keep a million things running. But it's all biochemical. There's a lot there. So I think addiction is a solution, and I think obsessiveness and compulsivity with it is a solution. And until you find a better solution and train your brain, your body, your mind, your spirit to interact with it differently and find an alternative means you can be very unproductive and you could be distracted. And at worst stage, you could be totally addicted. And so, you know, people like, isn't everybody addicted to something? And I'm like, no, you know, I don't think so. I mean, there's Is a. There's more addiction today than there ever has been in human history in terms of, I believe, people experiencing it. There's more options.

Options for addiction, certainly. I mean, there's. Yeah, I mean, there's. We have everything readily available to us both from. I mean, there's so many more different types of, you know, of drugs, but there's also more options of other addictive behaviors. It's really interesting. I mean, you know, you look at. Online, you look at all that. That stuff. We're never the. It's 247 on. The whole world has become Las Vegas. And it's really the frequencies of that. When I was reading Deep Work, one of the things that I was thinking about, like, you and I are both old enough to remember the. A different frequency. Like thinking back to the 80s, for instance, right when we were in high school, that there's. There was. The frequency was much slower in that there was. The inputs that were faced with were.

Very.

You know, sort of less frequent. We had the, the most frequency. Get male once a day or you'd get, you know, when TV shows were on, there was, you know, limited channels and they were on at a specific time, so you had to watch at that time. It was, you know, before you can you. And I can remember before VCRs and, you know, the phone, even before phone messages, it was really a more present oriented life view. You know, you really were, you know, slower and more in the, in the moment kind of thing then.

Yeah, yeah, let me.

Everything available instantly. Like, we're so used to that now that you, you know, you want to. What if you had a favorite song? You either had to go up and buy the album or you'd wait on the rain for it to come on the radio. And now every song ever written, I can say to Alexa, play this and she'll play it instantly. You know, it's like we have every option available at any moment.

Yeah, let me, let me mention something. Yeah, Will you zip it for a minute there, Dean? Let me just say something. All right, so what exactly. You're so hurtful. What I. What you're saying. When I was. When MTV first started. Remember that?

Yes. Okay.

I mean, I remember the first week MTV started, I would just. It was fascinating. I mean, it was so exciting. Video killed the radio star, right? Yeah, totally. Totally. And still a great song.

Yeah.

And I remember like spending, you know, couple years after MTV had been out, if I wanted to hear a particular or watch a particular video, you would literally sit there for hours and wait for that video to play. And especially if it was kind of an obscure one. After, you know, in the beginning, it was the same damn videos over and over again because there were only so many musicians doing videos. And then it became like everyone doing videos. And I, you know, I remember like Headbangers Ball, they started that I was like in the heavy metal and shit. And I would just wait till they would play a particular song. And sometimes I would sit there, you know, at night and just watch MTV for two or three hours hoping that this video would come on. And if it did come on, it was such a prize. And then today you can go search any freaking video on the planet and find it instantaneously that people can't, you know, in news stations with all of the running. What do you even call that at the bottom of like, where everything's popping out everywhere?

Yeah, the bottom thirds. Yeah, the scroll bar. Right.

I mean, there was never any of that sort of shit on television. It was like you watched just what was on tv. And then if you didn't like that, you would switch the channel.

Right? Input, right. You got the news. And if it didn't happen, if you didn't find out about it by the 11 o' clock news, it was. You wait until tomorrow to find out about it when the newspaper came out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fascinating, right?

Well, and when I used to be, no, hold on, you can't go yet. When I was like, we should be right next to each other so we could give each other clues, I could hold up my finger and say, let me say something. I must talk to you.

I love it.

When I was a little kid, I remember in Alpine, Texas, which was some of the most horrible times of my life. My father had given my dog away and I was traumatized and I was like having the worst experiences of my life during that time of my childhood. And I would, you know, we lived in this area where there was like a bunch of acreage and just fields for miles. And I would literally, on a Saturday, I would just go off by myself and walk all day. I mean, literally eight hours I would be out in the fields, miles away from my house. No cell phone because they didn't exist, and no way to communicate. And I would just be out there all day. And I swear it was one of the few moments of peace because I was such a scared kid during that time of my life. My family was not doing well. I mean, my mother had died, you know, several years earlier. It was just a shitty sort of experience.

How old are you at this point?

Eight to ten years old?

Yeah.

And I literally would just go off in these fields and there'd be no communication. And I sit and think, like, how many kids in America, as an example, are places where technology exists? Not that, of course, there's always pockets everywhere where that still happens, but it ain't modern life anymore. I mean, most people. And I remember Renee and Akira, who they are dear friends of mine, basically they posted on Facebook that they went out to dinner. They left their phones in the car and had like three hours of great conversation and about how they were talking to the chef and how they wanted to take a picture of the food, but then realized they didn't have their phones, but they just had the ability to have a moment and have great conversation. And I'm sitting there going, people write about it as if they've accomplished something, like they're doing something amazing. And I'm like, how quickly life and human behavior changes in a decade.

Well, that's exactly What? That's exactly what Cal Newport is talking about. That the default is that we're in that distraction. And that was an example of carving out a little period of non distraction. Right.

Three hours.

But it felt like that was like this monumental thing.

Right.

Can you remember the last time that you went three hours without your phone? Oh, yeah.

When I went to, you know, I took free days with my girlfriend in Sedona a couple months ago. And I mean, we went out like we shit. I mean, there was. We had five days of free days and we were out for hours without, you know, on a bike ride.

Yeah.

But you know what? I guess. I guess if I have to be honest, we did take the. I had the phone on airplane mode and I wasn't texting or anything. We did have the phones in, like a little bag that we did. Amazing how our mind a picture of ourselves. We did shoot pictures and we did shoot a video. But no, we were. We, you know, we had gone for long stretches with no communication.

Isn't that amazing how whenever you start to think about that, your mind starts thinking now, but what if something happens? Or what if I. Maybe I should bring it just. You know what I mean? It starts, like, grasping for all these. Like, I can put it on airplane mode. I mean, I totally won't touch it or anything. It's almost like grasping to have it, you know?

Well, let me. Let me say. Let me say this. Like, when I go and stop my car somewhere and like. Lee, you know, I went and did yoga yesterday. And I was sitting there going, should I leave my phone in the car or should I take it in and put it in this bag? Because I have this bag that my yoga mat and my Tesla key chain. It's, you know, it's. It's. It holds the Tesla key key, which is shaped like a little Tesla. The key of a Tesla.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting there, like, taking time to think, should I leave it here? And this thought is going through my head. Oh, what if something happens and I need to call?

Like.

Like call 911 or if, like, what if someone steals my car? Because if I have my phone and someone was never steal my car. And like, literally, what are the chances of someone stealing my car?

Really?

No. And like, you can always control it with your phone. And you feel naked, like it's an extended limb. I mean, like, it's. It has. Like I notice myself. I will walk around and if you don't have your phone, you feel like you've lost a limb. Like you have become so reliant on it. And I'm sitting there going, what the hell is that doing to the human mind? I mean, this has only been going on for such a short period of time. We don't even have a clue as to ramifications. Now, obviously, Dean, I would like us to, like, translate all of this back into some marketing lessons and stuff, because there's tons of them, as you know. But, yeah, you know, the whole thing, that's just where we're at here. You start mixing in what we talked about earlier, artificial intelligence, into this. You start mixing in virtual reality, which, you know, when people start watching consumer awareness guides through a VR system as they start experiencing in movies that they can change the plot and do everything and, you know, how are they going to interact with brands and products and services and what, you know, it's like, wow. I mean, we are, you know, we are interesting creatures, the way we live and how we adapt so quickly in some positive ways, in some incredibly negative ways. But the thing is, people are hooked. And when someone is hooked and they have a hard time leaving their phone, when some. You know, if you've had an experience where you've never known any different than you've always been with technology, that's one thing. But when you're like. I mean, I remember when there were no remote controls for televisions, if you wanted to change the channel on a tv, walk up and you move a circular dial where there were rotary phones where you would literally put your finger in it and you would, like, literally turn it clockwise in order to dial a number. And then I remember my buddy Ned Hallowell, he said that he was, like, years ago, he was at a. Like a cabin, and they had a rotary phone, and it would take, like, seven seconds to make a phone call. And that seven seconds seemed like eternity. But, like, what's the lesson in it, you know?

So, yeah, it's pretty wild. I think that the, you know, to turn that around to a marketing implication for that is that it's got to be, I think, a yin and yang sort of element to it. Right? Like, you're aware of that, but that's what's going on in the world. That. That's definitely the way most people are, Right? The majority of people are living their life like that. We're becoming completely accustomed to. To getting everything we want and need whenever we want and need it right now, and pushing a button for it, right? And being able to. I think that you. If you're in your house right now, you Know, you've got definitely a. The opportunity to have everything sort of brought to you, right. There's nothing from the terms of, from any product or anything. Amazon can deliver it to your house either same day or at the very latest tomorrow, right? So you've got that ability to get everything, and that creates an opportunity. And even from meals like no matter what diet, no matter what sort of dietary program you're following, there are food delivery services that can deliver the ingredients right to your house so that you can, can cook them. So I, what I've really started seeing is that all of those opportunities, all those things that are happening to sort of digitize whatever is, can be digitized, you know, the ordering and delivery of anything to your house, the thing that is going to create the opportunity from a marketing standpoint or a business opportunity standpoint is the last hundred feet of that everything. Like, you can get things right to the door, but having it all organized inside your home or having it all done for you is really, I think, going to be a big, a big opportunity that, to take it the rest of the way to what we're really looking for. You know, I've talked about this with home, with our homes, right? Like that. You know, I joke about the, my model of considering my house, the Four Seasons Valhalla, which comes from a thought from our friend Dan Sullivan. You know, he doesn't want to do any more than that.

He does.

If he was living at the Four Seasons and you and I sat in your dining room kitchen laying out, you know, what that would look like for your house in Paradise Valley, right? Of having, if the Four Seasons came and took that over. I think those kind of things are going to be big opportunities. I had a guy come to the breakthrough blueprint last time who's looking to go down that path as a business. And I came up with the great words. Like I tried to describe to him what I want about my. How I would articulate it, right. And I said, and I thought about you because I showed him the video that you sent me of your explosion in your, your plumbing problem in your house there.

And yeah, the pipe break, it was, it was quite a, quite a spectacle.

And I said to him, I said, I want my real. The articulation of my desire is I want to live in my house. Like I'm a guest in your house. Yeah. And that's really like, that's, that's really the way to think about it, isn't it? Like, would you, wouldn't that just solve it all? You'd love to live in your house as a guest in someone else's house where if anything happened to it, you're not at all concerned about it because it's yours.

The only caveat with that is I wouldn't want to live in my house as if I was a guest in your house because I'd be fucking freezing all the time. You keep it at like 50 degrees and it's so stupid. I mean, like staying at your house is like literally sleeping at a Tony Robbins seminar. I mean, if anyone's ever been in a Tony Robbins seminar, you would. I mean, you literally have to wear a ski jacket. And I'm not kidding. You like.

It's so cool. Something is. It's very. That. That's very true and has been true. And what's helped now with that you'd actually quite enjoy what's going on here is I got a NEST home automation. You know, the automated.

I have them here at my house.

You got nests?

Yeah.

So which I think is. Is fantastic because now I know it can. I can have a cool at night, like I like and then I don't have to remember to turn it up during the day. Right. That would be often what happened is I would just forget. And so it's always freezing in the. In the house, you know, so funny.

It is. You know what, Isn't that a great name for a product though? Nest? I mean, they really nailed it with that one.

Nest. Oh yeah, absolutely. But that whole thing, you know, of looking for and you know, adding on to what's going to happen, knowing that on a macro level everybody is moving more and more towards this instant gratification, but it does. Doesn't get it to the last hundred feet. You know, there's. There's going to be those big opportunities. I think that's where all the jobs are going to go. You know, like you think about. I just saw on. I forget where I saw it. Maybe it was on Futurescope.com. have you been on there, by the way?

Yes.

Eben's new site is just.

But I think it was an article.

On there that said something like close to 50% of all jobs right now are likely to be replaced by the blanket word they use is robots, meaning either artificial intelligence or from a mechanical standpoint too. But you start to think about and you can see all of the things that those are definitely going to be able to do. One of the things that I'm doing, like embracing and getting ready for the artificial intelligence is I look at the eight profit Activators as a construct, an operating system, a theory like music theory, where there are certain rules and outputs for each of the profit activators. And I've been the last several months now recording a podcast where I take all kinds of different business, different business owners, and have a whole conversation just applying the eight profit activators to that business. And it's so building quite a collection of, like, how does the eight profit activators fit for, you know, all different types of business? I mean, everything from a antique book dealer to a private international school in Korea to a music producer. And this whole. It's been fascinating, you know, to watch how that all comes there. But all of those lessons, I kind of keep Ray Kurzweil in my mind, right. Of building a mind of how would you. If there were going to be an artificial intelligence that could diagnose somebody's business and take the things that we know about the a profit activators and prescribe or apply them to that business? That's really. Where. That's really kind of my focus right now is getting everything documented and ready. Because in order for an artificial intelligence to actually do something, you have to have a framework or an algorithm to teach everybody how to learn, you know?

Right, right. Yep, exactly. No, and you're totally onto it. I mean, that's exactly what's going to need to happen in order to structure what it is, you know, what it is you do in a way to where it can become more useful and that it can be re. It's almost like coming up with a different way to bake a dish that is far more effective and useful. With the same exact ingredients.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And to turn, you know what it's like when you think about it. And sometimes it's the same ingredients applied differently. Like, you think about every Mexican restaurant, there's really only, you know, between the beans and the chicken and the cheese and the tomatoes and the corn or flour, every. Every ingredient on every Mexican restaurant is the same. Same core ingredients, you know?

Right. Well, exactly. And if you just throw like an avocado on top of anything, it'll just make it taste better.

There you go. See, that's an innovation.

Here's what won't change, I don't think, is that if people think they can just bypass understanding the psychology of selling and influence and human emotions and engagement and that sort of stuff, they can have all of these tools and all of these systems and all of these methodologies and all these technologies at their fingertips, and they won't Have. You know, it's like that painting I have at my office that says, you know, all the resources in the world won't help you if you're not resourceful. And it's a guy trying to get over a wall that's standing on top of a bunch of ladders that are piled on top of each other, and it's still not high enough enough for him to climb the wall. Because this guy doesn't realize that if you just pick up a single ladder and place it against the wall, you can climb over. So what I have seen and experienced in my. And I could be wrong. I'm just thinking, you know, I always try to sit and think, okay, well, what's the value of education? What's the value of learning? I know a lot of people go like, why would I want to study and learn all of this stuff about copywriting and about offers and about. And about social proof and about influence and about creating funnels or database marketing or selecting a single target market or any of these things? If I could just push a button and say, hey, I'm a dry cleaner in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I need more clients, go get them for me. Well, yeah, we will have technologies that will do that. But the people that are going to have an advantage are the ones that really understand and get, you know, how to fish and where to fish and what, you know, because at the end of the day, the human still is going to decide what fishing pole they ultimately end up using. Although there will be AI and there will be systems that will recommend fishing poles and will tell you this, this, that, and the other thing. But there's going to be like. And what's going to happen is like, what always happens. I've always, you know, I've always remembered this saying that, you know, if you look at any industry, you know, 5% of the people make 95% of the money and 95% of the rest of the industry scrape around for the crumbs. And the reason is because the people that are successful, like the 5% that are the most effective, are the ones that are willing to do, learn, apply, implement, execute the things that the other 95% are not willing to do. And if all of this technology makes things easier, then all of that is going to become more readily available. So what's going to be the differentiator between the people that really kick ass and take names and really have success in business versus the ones that don't? And I will always argue that it is the ones that are willing to do the things that the others are not willing to do. And that's a deeper depth of knowledge that's getting to. I don't think you're ever going to replace mastery. I mean, I don't think you. You know, as a matter of fact, people can't concentrate anymore because they have become reliant upon machines and technology so much to a point to where it controls their lives. And they can't put their phone away without getting the jitters. Like someone going through withdrawals of addiction, because that's exactly what's happening. If you have a hard time putting your phone away for hours on end and you have this draw and this craving, you are literally having the jitters. It is like withdrawals from a drug, because it is withdrawals from a drug. I mean, it is a biochemical thing. And so. So the same thing with learning and using and implementing the technologies, for one, you're going to have a much better advantage if you start studying it and researching it and learning about it. Not just being in the dark, waiting till it happens, that's going to give you an advantage. And secondly is like, we always have that saying. In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing. And so you're. Your ability to test and try some of this and utilize it is just needed when the time comes that you can take advantage of this, you want to be in the know. Because ignorance has never gotten people very far unless they are lucky. Or if you have the intelligent application of ignorance, meaning, like the way that Dan Sullivan talks about, you know, the two things that are kind of necessary in the beginning of starting a business are ignorance and courage. Like, if you didn't realize how difficult things would be, you might not get into it. But if you just have ongoing continual, purposeful ignorance, that's just stupidity. I wouldn't even call that ignorance. Ignorance, you don't really know. Stupidity is. You're just fucking stupid. Anyway, so how would you recommend to our listeners? What would be some of your suggestions? I mean, I think even just having this conversation gives people some perspective to think about stuff. And we certainly did a great episode on Abundance360, which, if people haven't heard of that, go back and listen to it. I mean, I just did a great episode with Stephen Cox. I interviewed him. We put that on the Genius Network podcast also. And he wrote the two books, Abundance and Bold with Peter Diamandis. So his latest book, Stealing Fire, is fascinating. But, you know, I just want. What are your recommendations?

Yeah, I think, you know, part of it, if we wrapped like what we've been talking about, this idea of deep work into this is really checking that for ourselves. Like it'd be interesting to do a temperature check for everybody to see like how what would happen if they put their phone down for three hours or set it down for a day. Like, it's hard for people to imagine a 24 hour period without their, without their phone. I can't remember the last time I had a 24 hour period without my phone. So it's kind of a, you know, an interesting thing for me. And I'll share you one thing that I've been doing that I think is helping with the sense of getting the deep work done and being focused is, you know, how my. I know I'm being successful when statements, the first one is always, I know I'm being successful when I can wake up every day and say, what would I like to do today? And it's really an interesting thing. What I've been experimenting with is in addition to that, which I always like, is to see what would be the difference if I asked myself, what would I like to do tomorrow? And there's something interesting about taking that kind of an approach to preparing in advance for the things that you really want to do. The things, like I would argue that the things that are the most profitable days, the most fulfilling days, the most. The days where you get that sense of peace are days where you know exactly what's happening. Like, I think if you take the things that you have, like your like genius network days or the annual event days, those are blocked, you know, ahead of time and you know what's happening. Do you find those days different than days when you wake up with nothing synchronous and scheduled on your calendar, but this whole list of opportunities competing to jam as many as you can into the day. What's your thought about the difference between those two types of days?

Well, it's easier. It's easier to wrap my head around it when those sort of things and I also have to fight against because I don't like boundaries. I don't like setting meetings.

I don't like. Me neither.

I don't like doing phone calls, although I do a lot of them. Like, you know, it was really funny. Eben Pagan, you know, you're talking about his future scope. He was here staying at my house, I don't know what, maybe three weeks ago. And so we had spent a lot of time talking and throughout the day, you know, before we Did. We had a brainstorm session over at Dean Graziosis office. And, you know, I was just making a bunch of contacts, and at the end of the day, because he saw how much stuff that I had done that particular day, and he's like, how many people do you think you've interacted with? Like, personally?

Not.

Not like you have an email autoresponder, or you have, you know, your typical marketing that's going out to the world, or you have thousands of people that are downloading a podcast. Not that, but like, how many people have you personally talked with or communicated with today? One on one or in small groups. And so I had done a conference call earlier that day with about seven people on it with a guy that I met at Abundance360 who has a business for people that are in assisted living homes and how they can connect with someone via phone but through a technology in case of an emergency, and how we can apply that same system to people that are struggling with addictions. And there were like seven people there. But beyond that, I was, you know, doing my typical thing, recording audio, shooting videos, talking on the phone. And I literally went through and counted the. On my phone and the text messages that have come through the conference call, and then things, you know, related to people in my office, because I had talked to a few of my team members, and it was over a hundred people. And he's like. He's like, how in the fuck do you do that? I'm like, this is pretty much when I'm working. That's kind of what I do.

And it was a constant. Like, I remember getting a video from you when you're with Eben that you just. You just work it into your day. It's constantly there, right? You whip out the phone, you record a video and text it off. So I was on that list that day.

Yeah, we have this funny list called Terrible People. And it's me and you and Dean Graziosi and Brendan Burchard and those goofballs Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss, Jeff Walker, Frank Kern, and. Is there anyone else on there? Yeah, and it's like, you know, so that was. That would consist of, you know, what, eight people or whatever. But. But, you know, that would be part of that group of a hundred. But, yeah, you know, it's just. I just. That's what I do. And the thing is, that's me, though, you know, and if you take a guy like Gary Vaynerchuk, I mean, you can multiply his by, you know, God knows I Mean, it's insane. And I, you know, and I mean, people talk about like, you know, hustling, but you know, I mean, see, and here's the thing too, which people need to understand, which is, is like, you know Gary Vaynerchuk, who we've interviewed several times, and I've known Gary Vaynerchu.

This came up as a memory a couple of days ago and I posted up, I shared that memory. I caught up with, I saw him in Toronto in the fall and still, you know, he's got drock following him around, recording everything.

His whole life. And what I will say to that is a lot of people want to replicate being a hustler like that. And if you have a system, like, and this is going to sound weird, but if you have a parasympathetic system and you have ways of being that balance you out and you like that and you come at it and it's not freaking you out, that's a great way to reach a lot of people and have that sort of fast paced life. Other people, people depending on how they interpret the world and events, that shit would literally kill them. I mean, it would literally, it would cause them to be in a constant state of anxiety. Where other people, it would actually cause them to be in a constant state of flow. And I think the more that we learn about where we operate in a lot of this, a lot of this, you can, you can come up with all the technology in the world if you don't figure out how to get, get your brain into a relaxed, meditative state some of the time so you can shut it off. Like the journey I'm on right now is how do I shut the thoughts down? Like, truly, what do I need to do to condition myself? So before we did this podcast, I'm on the phone with my dear friend Ken Glickman, going through exercises on relaxation to get into a relaxation response. So that because I can go out to the world and talk to 100 people in one day, and if I'm in a good state of mind, if I've had rest or whatever, I can kick ass, I can take names. If I'm overworked, if I'm not getting good food and nutrition, if I'm not sleeping well, I will be a mental wreck by the end of that day. If I'm in a mental wreck state, what am I more likely to do? Sit and glop in front of a screen? Look at things in the past? It would be an addictive behavior. Right now I'm actually Doing quite well with things that I would consider self destructive. I've brought more awareness and more balance, but I am nowhere immune to the draw of all of these things. So I keep myself in a state of just being as aware as humanly possible and, and developing continually these rituals that keep me in a, in a higher state of consciousness and productivity. And I'm, I'm maybe on a scale.

What'S that being woke?

Have you heard that?

That's what all the. Being woke? W O K E. That's the.

Yeah, well, so I mean I'm just on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm saying I would give myself about a sixth of where I actually assume. I mean, I'm doing really well relative to, I mean, better than I probably ever have my entire life. And at the same time, you know, I, there's just so much better that I think could be done. And so I, I still, even though I love all of the, the new technologies and everything, I'm, I'm waiting for humans to lose their shit. And the reason I say lose their shit is they already are losing their shit. I mean, we have 78 people a day dying from opiate addictions. We have mass amounts of suicide. And we're talking in a country where there is help and assistance and there's food and there's things, plenty. But if you're disconnected from yourself, it's very hard to be solution oriented when you have a brain that is not cooperating with you. And so part of it is no matter how many cool things are out there, you really want to be, be fit, you want to keep yourself. So as you study all these technologies, I would also look at the technologies of meditation, of yoga, of breathing, of good nutrition, of exercise. Because one of the biggest things too is like people used to go outside a lot more than they do today. Compared to my experience of what I witnessed, you look at all of the things that have been taken out of schools in terms of physical activities and arts and things like that. And I've been hanging around a lot of artists that are very interesting. But when I spoke to the group of artists, I did a few interviews with the people and two of them said separately, I said to them, what is art? What does it do? And two of them said, art is food. And they used that term, art is food. And then they explained what they meant by that. When I heard it the second time, I was like, you know, someone else said that earlier. What do you mean by that? Describe that to me. So what is the Food. Like, if you're going to go out and be a master chef, what are you doing with all of these ingredients? What are you doing with all these recipes? What is the food like? If you think of all of the shit that you allow into your brain? People try to censor stuff, but they'll get in front of a computer screen and they'll let everything in. They'll live in gated communities to keep out the bad people on a physical level. But what they're doing to their brain, none of this is a discussion of what's good or bad. It's all how you interact with it.

Yeah.

So, well, we need to. We need to wrap up this episode. So what final words of wisdom should we leave everyone with? And then when we do the next episode, we can.

We can, you know, sure, yeah, I'll be able to report. Like, I would invite people to try that idea of, you know, because really, the more access to everything that we have, like, being able to hook into the Matrix, really, like, we are constantly, you know, be just consciously being able to unplug from it is really. That's my. That's my focus right now, being able to try and. And manage that level. And I found it very peaceful having this thought of because I'm embracing it. Like, I like you, it's been my number one thing, that freedom, Right. I wake up every day and say, what would I like to do today? So I'm completely resistant to scheduling things and to having days on the calendar and having all that stuff, but I'm really observing it, and I'm finding that when I'm doing the things that are the most, like, it's the paradox of it, right? The things that are most rewarding, that are most peaceful, that are most profitable are things that are thought of in advance, you know, and so I'm embracing that a lot more. Like, if you looked at my calendar, I know more in advance things that are going to happen. I've got all my breakthrough blueprint events lined out. I do my more Cheese less whiskers podcasts, all on a certain day, and all by thinking, what would I like to do tomorrow? Is what I really like. I like the idea. Like, I love podcasting. I love doing this. I love the talking part of it. But every other element of it requires some level of, like, coordination and organization and going forward, Right? So I like now thinking what I'd like to do tomorrow is I would love to have this, these times blocked off. And all I do is show up and talk to the Guests. And from there everything else gets taken care of.

Right?

And it's the same with the perpetual people go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com they click on the be a guest button that goes to my team and they're the ones that interact with people, evaluate and schedule at a time that I've chosen, that I've set up for when I would like to do those. And I just show up and do it. So it's the least amount of thought or effort rather I find it more, it's more taxing to try and keep my freedom of options and then have to try and like organize and coordinate these, these things, you know, Like, I look at it like you and I are in that same situation in that you and I both have very, like very busy off, you know, changing schedules. So in order to, you know, it's been difficult for us to coordinate. If you remember when you and I first started the I Love Marketing podcast, we would record every Sunday night, right. We did that for probably the first year and a half and that was like the, the anchor in the schedule, you know. And then it started getting more sporadic like that and it becomes more difficult to coordinate, especially if we were interviewing a guest. Right. To coordinate their schedule, our schedule, my schedule, coordinate all three of it together. And it was a very, is a very time, energy draining thing. So I boil it down to the essence, like what I really like this part of it. And now how can I. By asking that question, what would I like to do tomorrow? Is what I really love is just to have this lined up and not have to worry about it, you know?

Right, right.

No, that's a big shift.

Yeah. That's awesome. Well, here's what I would say to all of our listeners. You know, whatever thoughts you have, let us know. Share this with anyone you think should listen to it. We will be back with more awesome stuff, so stay tuned. And in terms of book recommendations, since me and Dean were talking about Deep Work, you probably will get a lot of value out of Deep Work by Cal Newport since he doesn't really do social media. If you think we should do an interview with him and you want to track him down and see how good of a detective you are and tell him to do an episode with me and Dean about Deep Work because we're basically pimping his book, which is great. His previous book, so Good They Can't Ignore youe is really excellent also. Yeah, but read Deep Work and then I would highly recommend the book which I've recommended to so many people is the Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

Have you read that book?

Book, Dean?

I have not.

Yeah, fantastic. Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. And of course, Stealing Fire by Steven Kotler is a mind blowing book and you can listen to my interview with him. Just do a search and find that. But yeah. Anything else cool?

No, that's it. That was fun. Nice to be back in saddle here. Awesome.

Awesome. All right, everyone, have a wonderful week and we will talk to you next time on I love Marketing.

Thanks.

Thank you.

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