The Art Of Entrepreneurship and The Wisdom Bookshelf - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson #196

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And where are we, Dean?

Here we are. Phoenix, Arizona.

Why are you.

It's all very exciting.

We're sitting right in front of each other.

It's a whirlwind, too. Yeah, this is very rare. It's delightful. We get to gaze in each other's eyes.

Well, I'm not gonna look at you that much.

He tries not averting. He's trying to hide from my love.

Well, welcome to Boy, we're getting a lot of episodes. I love marketing.

This is good.

We should just stop now. And people that have only been listening to the recent one should really go back and listen to all the stuff we' done, because we should just close.

It off at 200.

We could.

200.

We're very close, you know. You know, one thing we're going to do, too, I just want to let everyone know, is that I've got, you know, there's some interviews I've done in the past. I spoke to a group of artists, and we actually videotaped the presentation that I gave. I have a friend I went to high school with named Joe Woodford. JosephWoodford.com I think is his website, but he's a ceramic artist. And I took three years of advanced ceramics and I loved it. It was awesome. And it was one of the few things that allowed my mind to escape, and I have not done it for years. And so on my birthday, my girlfriend bought me basically eight weeks of art classes at this place in Phoenix. And so I threw my first ceramic pot on a potter's wheel, I don't know, maybe about a month ago now. And it's. I still have to get used to it because it's been so many years since I've done this, but it was really amazing. And while I was there at the art class, I actually was talking to this one lady named Jossy, who is an artist, and she was displaying art in this. Basically, it's called Celebration of Fine Arts. They do it once a year in Phoenix. The lady that owns it, Susan Joseph Woodford, who I went to high school with, she's telling me, oh, yeah, Joe's in this thing with me. And so I had not seen this guy in years. And so I went up there and he, you know, we still run into each other here and there. We have a long history, basically, you know, so he said, oh, you got to meet the lady that runs this. And so I did and got talking to her, and she knew who I was because she reads Success magazine. She didn't see me in Success magazine. And so she asked if I would be interested in coming and speaking to their Friday meeting. And usually, you know, I mean, like, I charge 50 grand to do speeches right now. And because I'm interested with the artist, I was like, you know, yeah, I'll do it. It's local. Why not? And it totally went over really well. The artists just loved it. And so we videotaped this presentation. We'll actually put that up as an episode of I Love Marketing. But prior to that, I watched the interview that I did with the artist Wylan, who's a friend of mine. And Wylan is one of the highest paid living artists. This guy does 350 to 400 unique pieces of art every year. I mean, very prolific artists. And I did that as the first interview he had ever done with anyone, really, about the business of art. You know, he's been on Larry King. He's done the wailing walls that are all over the world. The one he did for the Beijing Olympics, you can see it from space. I mean, he recruited 10,000 people to help him paint this mural. And, you know, I watched this interview I did with him many years ago, and I was like, man, that would be so good on. I love marketing. So there's a lot of stuff that we've done.

Did you and I just have a conversation with somebody about art, about art marketing, or how did I think me and you did?

Because, you know, I was watching. You're talking about Damien Hurst. Who? The twelve million dollar stuff shark.

Yeah. Why did we get talking about that?

Probably because of my presentation.

Okay. But it wasn't an online. It wasn't an episode. That was just you and I talking. Right.

I think it was just me and you talking. It might have been an episode. And if it is an episode, no.

I don't think it was. I think it was you and I talking because you were about to be talk.

Right, right, right, right. And then Evan Pagan, who's been studying the marketing of art, sent me a few.

Did he get back to you, by the way?

Yeah, yeah, he did. And he wanted to talk this. He wanted to talk Thursday and Friday this week so we can go over stuff. But we're doing Genius Network, which is one of the reasons why you're here. That's why I'm having to look at you right now.

You're loving this pottery. You're throwing this pottery.

Well, I'm getting into this toy right here.

One of your. One of your pieces?

No. You know what I'm going to do? I think I'm going to give up on this little marketing gig and I'm going to start selling pottery. But here's the cool thing. Joe Woodford. When we videotaped this, I had my video guy, Rakim and Chelsea. I have two video people that work for me, and they went around the entire show and they videotaped different art and me talking to different artists, because, frankly, I mean, I want to highlight some of these people because there's some real talent there and entrepreneurs are artists. It's just a different type of art. Anyone in the creative field, where you have to make it up and make it real, as Dan Sullivan says, that's what artists do. They have to envision what it is they do. And it's a weird world. I mean, I even told them, I said, I gotta be honest with you, this is a totally new thing for me. And I even said at one point during my presentation that that's probably the worst thing to say to a group of artists. But I look at some art and I just think a lot of it's just pollution. I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. And there's other. That's incredibly talented, but from an investment standpoint, people aren't buying art, they're buying artists. And as I learned the stories. Yeah, well, not only that, but the people that make shit in the auction houses. What I've learned from my friend John Butcher, who's the founder of Lifebook and chairman of Precious Moments, the figurine company. You know, he's like just this brilliant art collector. He's read every.

You told me that. Every catalog.

Every catalog for the last 23 years of all the three top auction houses, Christie's, Sotheby's, and whatever the other one is. But every single one, he's read for 23 years cover to cover. And so he knows a lot of art. And, you know, once you're in the auction houses, then the auction houses can give art a value. But when you look at a piece of art, you know, who's to say, why is that $5,000? Why is that $50,000? Why is that 100? Why is that 20 bucks? You know, I mean, what's the difference? And so even one of these documentaries on Damien Hirst, who's a very interesting dude, there was like a story about how, I don't know, some other artist wanted one of the auction Houses to sell a painting or a drawing of Stalin. And they're like, no, we don't do any Hitler or Stalin. And so therefore, he said, well, what if it was a Damien Hirst? And they're like, absolutely. So Damien Hirst painted with red on the nose, like, smudged the nose or something. I mean, anyone can Google this and probably find the accurate version, not the one I'm telling you here. And then he signed it, and they ended up selling it for a ton of money. And so it's. What were they buying there? Were they really buying the art or were they buying the artist?

Well, that's what, you know, Dan Kennedy always says that at a certain point, you cross the line and you're getting paid for who you are as opposed to what you do.

Oh, of course.

Really?

What? That is the art world to a large degree, you know. And so to me, though, it's just a very interesting world because there's so much of it is. You have to tell a story. And when I was there, and I don't know how much of this we can edit into the. We got so much footage that we might do, like, an interview where that's edited some of the pieces. You know, my video guy's awesome, so he'll take my presentation, he'll throw in some parts of those of you that if you're listening to it, when we put it out on. I love marketing. You'll hear the audio version if you're on itunes, but if you actually want to watch the video, we'll put that on YouTube. We'll also put it on ilovemarketing.com and the thing that I told these guys is selling is influence, and marketing is storytelling. If you tell a better story, you're going to create a different meaning built around your art. And so we actually. I interviewed this one guy who just went through his whole painting, explaining why he painted everything he painted. And the value of that painting, in my mind, immediately went up, because part of it is, like, when you're selling something like art or photographs, you can go on Amazon and you can buy pretty amazing posters and pretty amazing photos framed things that look pretty cool. You can download pictures and you can blow them up. You can go to Costco and to their photo department and have pretty amazing things made with photos for like, 20, 30, 40 bucks.

It's just about the visual function. I mean, that little monkey shower curtain I'm looking at right here is pretty sexy.

Well, I think my whole office is kind of an art show, but the whole Thing is, so I said to the artist, I said a lot of it really, about perceived value, because someone can say, well, that's not worth anything. But if someone thinks it's worth something, then it is. Now you separate that from the world of investments where they're going to do at auction houses. If an auction house that is credentialized said, oh, this Warhol is worth this many millions of dollars, then that has that value. But most artists don't live in that world. They're not famous, they're not well known. The whole thing about starving artists was, well, you know, if you're a better marketer, as much as I hate to admit it, you know, it, all of it is marketing. I mean, it's all marketing.

It really is. And it's all the story. Like you think about the name brand famous artists that you can name right now. Like, you think about Damien Hurst and one of the things that he's most famous for are all his dot paintings, right?

Which he didn't even paint thousand of.

The dot paintings and they sell for a million dollars or more. And the art is the idea of these exactly the same size dots that are equally distanced apart and no two color within each other. I mean, it's just. That's the art. And then they were fabricated a thousand.

Times and he doesn't even paint most of them. I mean, he has a whole team. And what's funny, funny is like. And I did a lot of research on him because prior to me speaking, I mean, when I say a lot of research, three days before this event, I probably watched three or four hours of stuff related to Damien Hirst, read a bunch of articles online because I was just going, this is. And that was after I actually watched my Wyland interview again. And then I talked to Steven Creech, who runs Weiland's business. And so I had a phone call with him the day before I was going to go speak to all these artists because I was literally, I wanted to give them something really valuable. And I said, what do you guys do in terms of how you run the company? He goes, well, meaning, like, it's one thing about Wylan creating the art and E marketing, but how do you think about how you run the business? And he said, well, what we do is what Wylan does is he's always trying to surprise himself, like, let me come up with something and see what I can do because he's done some pretty innovative stuff. And he said, we carry that same thing onto business. What we tried to do when we run the business is we think of how can we surprise ourselves, how can we apply that same process that we would apply to art, to applying it to our business so we can come up with really amazing things. And then he walked me through some of the different things that they have done.

Like what?

Well, some of them I need to keep.

Oh, you're going to keep the whole talk here?

Yeah, no, I got it, I got it. Yeah. Some of it was confidential, so. Yeah, I mean, he was. And he told me about some things that were failures and some things that were not. But what he thought at first was like, why, Lynn? Are you kidding? You would really do that? But boom, it actually became one of their greatest business strategies. So, anyway, there's lots of things we could talk about. I want to switch gears and talk about this book that both of us have read and we're applying and I've been recommending it to a lot of people. The time that we're actually recording this episode, infusionsoft, which I'm their second customer and we put an episode up at. I love marketing with the founders of infusionsoft. They're doing their annual event called Icon. And I went and spoke yesterday at a sixth division event, which is Brad Martineau, who's also a new Genius Network member. He's one of the founders brothers. They do the training for infusionsoft. He probably knows more about all the inner workings of how to make Infusion work than anyone. They have a whole company called 6th Division spelled out with S I, X, T H. I think it's sixthdivision.com and if you type in 6th Division and Infusionsoft, you'll find it. If you are an Infusionsoft user and want training in templates and all kinds of stuff. So I gave a talk about building a Genius network right after that. Goofball Ryan Deiss was there. And then we had dinner with a group of people and stuff. One of the things I said to everyone, I said, after you go to InfusionCon, your brains are going to be full. Now, me and you are going to go there in the morning to see Sally Hogshead do a keynote because she's attending her first Genius Network meeting this week. Basically, it's called the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I said to everyone, I go, this book is not going to seem to have anything to do with marketing.

I know.

And it's. But I go, after you're done with this event and your brain is totally full, I want you to see because these people I was speaking to weren't just attending this special seminar, this special event on how to use infusionsoft. They're also going to InfusionCon right afterwards. They're all week just consuming all this.

All in.

Basically I said if you read this afterwards, this is going to totally help you think through what to drop out of your life. It's a book on organization and cleaning up clothes and books and clutter and that sort of stuff. But I said the mindset that she teaches is incredible and I think this is like one of the best books that you could read to help you feel less overwhelmed and really give a pretty simple but profound strategy to it. So I would like to both of us to talk about this book. It's the life changing magic of tidying Japanese Art of decluttering and Organizing. And the author's name is Marie Kondo. M A R I E Kondo. K O N D O. We should start putting books. We recommend links with affiliate links on. I love marketing. Like people like Tim Ferriss does Sam Harris.

Yeah, the bookstore or whatever.

Well, it's one of the things that helps fund their podcast.

Yeah, yeah.

It's not a total ton of affiliate money, but we should actually start doing that. We should start giving that money to help addiction recovery or something, which is one of my big things that I'm working on. A platform to help people with addictions. But this book is great. There's so much I could speak to, but I'd like you to talk about it, what it's done for you, why people that are listening to a podcast on marketing, why they should even give a shit.

I'll tell you, there are so many. This book is loaded with life metaphors and there's so much applicable to every part of your life. I mean, you know, your mind is another part that needs tidying too when you start to see this.

Right.

So I read the book cover to cover in literally like in over straight, but started that night, then slept and finished it off in the, in the morning. And then I went ahead and went through the, the process of starting the, the tidying, the discarding. And this was really interesting because she, you know, her whole thing is. Well, you've got, it's right here on the page. Start by discarding all at once, intensely and completely. And so it's really interesting because everybody's had an experience of tidying. But tidying, it's kind of a word you never use, right? You never say the word tidying.

Well, by the way, let me mention that she does not speak English. This book has been translated. I listened to the audio, sent me a video. Yes, she sold over 2 million copies. This is currently the definitive guide on organizing. And the closest person with the same sort of philosophy, who's a dear friend of mine, is Barbara Hemphill. And we actually have a video with her on ilove marketing.com. and then I have another organization video with Tracy Campbell and stuff where she talks about psychological Claire. But even Google has flown Marie out to speak to Google with a translated video. And people can find that online if they do a search for it.

So. So the difference about this, what I noticed right away is just philosophically, there are some things that make the biggest difference and why I believe this is such an effective book that the idea that it's a once in a lifetime kind of event, it's a once. That's a big thing when you're tidying. Not that you're doing it every day.

Yeah, you don't do it every day. Doesn't drag on. And she talks about how her clients do not rebound when they follow us. If people are like, well, I get organized and then I get messy. She's like, if you follow the system, you will not rebound if you do it the way that I do. She said, in some cases, it may take six months of your life to thoroughly do it, but it's six months that you'll never have to do again. Then once you get it done, everything's done. Now, like, I mean, I have started with clothes, which you kind of says, I'm gonna take this through my whole office. I'm gonna take this to the electron.

Have you done it with your clothes?

I've done it with my. I've done. I own a lot of clothes and I have, you know, three houses. Yeah, well, really two.

But upstairs, I sort of have.

I don't. I don't sleep here, but I have clothes and sort of stuff. So at my home, went through all these socks, went through all the underwear, went through most of the T shirts. I still have suits and stuff that I need to do. Went through the shoes and, you know, so I just. But the whole premise is, does this spark Joy?

I really took her advice to heart and I did it. Exactly. Yeah.

You put a big paw.

Toxic. Because I don't. So it was interesting because, you know, until, you know, just recently, I'd had a home in Toronto, home in Florida. So having things in two different places spread out and then, you know, a few things at My office. But I gathered everything, put it all in one room, one place, which is what she recommends is getting it all out of where you keep it. So just getting everything, gathering it all in one place, and then literally going through that process of touching each piece and only keeping the things that spark joy. And it was really interesting because that's a pretty, you know, what brings you joy. Joy is one of those words that's a pretty good standard for something like this, because typically when you go in through and tidying your closet or organizing things, you go in and what she says, and it's absolutely true, is that most of the time we spend trying to decide what to throw out.

But.

We go through, and we don't have a crystal clear parameter for what's going on. Because you might look at something and say, oh, that's still good. I'll probably use that. Or, oh, I could. I might need that.

Yeah. You see the application.

Yeah. You see that it's useful, or your.

Parents gave it to you and you don't want to throw it away, but it doesn't spark joy.

Yeah. To go through and to have that as your parameter. The amazing thing is the freedom that you feel when you get rid of all of that stuff. And I really couldn't have understood it until I went through it. I'm done with the clothes portion I went through.

And you got to understand, though, you don't wear anything but black.

I know, but you'd be surprised. And that's what's. So. It was so funny. I posted up on my Facebook that I was going through this process, and I was kind of taking pictures as we go. And somebody posted in the comments, as I posted that question, they said, oh, I would have thought the question at your house was, is this a black T shirt? Not does this spark joy?

Right.

But anyway, you would have been surprised at how much stuff I had, you know, And I mean, I've been wearing the uniform now for 10 years and still had all of this other stuff, you know, and so going through and getting rid of it. Some of it were, you know, golf clothes and things that. Because I don't always wear exactly the same thing when I'm playing golf, but some of the things still had tags on them and things that, you know, golf shirts that I'd gotten at a golf tournament or something, or golf shirts that were a little small. But, you know, it was interesting that freeing myself of the standard of maybe at some point I'll fit back into that shirt, or. But letting go of trying to get back to something I was, was completely freeing to now think and just focus on being free to become who I am, who I'm going to be. And that's an interesting thing because one of the things she talks about in the book is this idea that sometimes things have served the purpose that they were meant to serve in your life.

Right. And you thank them, and you thank.

Them and sense them.

What's funny, if people read the reviews on Amazon, it's really interesting. I always read negative reviews first before I buy something. And by the way, I actually listened to the entire book on audio first.

Oh, did you?

So I have the book. I bought a copy of the book for everyone, and I've started listening to it twice. I actually, this is one of the few. Well, there's a couple things I've listened on Audible lately that are so good, they're worth listening twice or reading twice if you're a reader. One is that and then the book Waking up by Sam Harris. I think the subtitle Spirituality Without Religion. And what's interesting about that book is how much he delved into religion to actually like Buddhism and stuff in order to come up with, you know, his whole methodology. Fascinating book about waking up. But anyway, so what else have I been? 10% happier by Dan Harris is a book that I'm reading right now, listening to on audio. I'm talking about books I'm listening to on audio. I keep saying reading, but I actually have been reading this book too, because it's so good and it's so simple. But the negative reviews are. Well, this whole book could be summed up in, you know, whatever you find joy in. That's it. But what she says in the very beginning of the book is that you have to get the mindset. And no one's going to get the mindset of this book without reading the book. They just aren't. I don't care how much they actually think it's that simple. So what surprises me about critics is how in the hell does someone read an entire book like this and it's a really good book and says, oh, there's nothing to this book. But those always come from people that haven't followed them. The method and the people that attack, like, you know, there's just a lot of people that don't like how to stuff. They just don't want anyone telling me what to do. They're just like, don't tell me what to do. And so someone writes a book telling you kind of what to do or Whatever. But this. What's great about her is that you can tell this is a very, like, kind of OCD person growing up. And she just was totally into it from an early age. And so this is someone that. Who lives, eats and breathes organization, page 80.

Storing socks. Treat your socks and stockings with respect. Have you ever had the experience where you thought what you were doing was a good thing, but later learned that it had hurt someone? At the time, you were totally unconcerned, oblivious to the other person's feelings. This is somewhat similar to the way many of us treat our socks.

Yeah, that's the one chapter that people. That's the one piece where people will be like, you know, she takes it a little farther. So the fact that you're reading that is going to take the book out of context.

It's so funny, though, you know, I mean, you know, I say that because this is a woman who has a life dedicated to this. You know, it's not just she went to a seminar and got some good storage ideas and decided to read a book about tidying up. This has been her life work, really. You know what she reminds me of? It's like Jiro Dreams of Sushi for tidying.

I mean, that's really. That's a great movie. We've recommended that before. But if you've not heard that episode or you, like, haven't watched the movie. Hero, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Phenomenal documentary now.

So that's interesting. So getting back to her, the order that she recommends of these things, like, first of all, getting every. Doing it all at once. I did it all in one day, all of the clothes. Rather than, you know, doing it by section kind of thing. She says do it by category. So get all the clothes together, do it all at once, and I'll tell you, it was free. And Courtney took out 13 bags of stuff to Goodwill or into a homeless shelter and some other stuff. But I mean, 13 bags stuffed with stuff, you know, all good stuff.

We could in this office alone, probably take out 13 tons.

Oh, man. I mean, you think about it every time I come here. It's getting. It's getting. It's on the cusp of, like an episode, a nicely organized episode of Hoarders in some of these rooms.

But look, this office is badass. You gotta.

It is. I mean, there's no doubt.

You gotta understand, too. Which is the first time you saw it. You didn't see the float tank back there.

No, that's true.

We've built an entire new wing of the building. So we had to relocate stuff.

Yes.

So you gotta be fair here.

I gotcha.

I mean that back room is pretty. I mean we have a. We have an actual float tank with a full blown shower for true rest.

Yeah.

That actually now has a showroom here. They do the. They manufacture the top float pods for people that float for relaxation.

Love it. But the wisdom of her saying doing it by categories of clothes first, then books, then papers, then stuff, then mementos. Things that like your personal things. And I think the real advantage of that is that you get. You're not. So there's no. It's probably easiest for people to let go of clothes. That's probably wise to have that kind of an experience in the beginning. That you have an experience of understanding what sparks joy and then going to books. It's really interesting because you and I have a ton of books. And I look through. I just started. I haven't done the book thing yet, but I look through it and I started looking through. I've got like several bookshelves all through the house and in my office. And I started looking through and with that same kind of question of does this spark joy?

I'm gonna give your address up so people can start sending you stuff because I get sent all the mail.

That's fine. And 300 Martinique, Winter Haven, Florida. 33884. New information. There you go.

That's your address.

Yeah, that's our office. Send me whatever you want. Large unmarked bills and brown paper bags preferably. But anything else? Birthday presents. My birthday's coming up May 10th. If people wanted to get me something, that would be good thing to do. But if they just want some unsolicited money, they can do that too. That's awesome. But you know, I really. It was interesting that the reality is that very few of these books, like I look, we've got duplicate bookshelves.

Really.

I mean, we're all the same because we're in the same world.

See all those positive words down there? You know what those are? Those are books. No, no, these are duplicate books. Oh.

I was just going to say. I was going to point out that a lot of these books on this pile right here are on this shelf right here.

Those are all duplicates. So what I do with those, whenever I have someone that I think that I want to give a book to, I'll come in there and I'll pull it out of that pile.

Interesting. Okay. There you go. That's smart. I've got a lot of that too. Duplicate Stuff because I had the. Join the libraries.

I just send people more stuff because I'm, you know, you come across with this nice demeanor, but I actually like drop shit in the mail to people because I care. You on the other hand, just try to act all sweet and stuff.

I gotcha.

Actions speak louder than words. All right, so what are you saying?

So I'm thinking that what I'm really going to do. I realize that there are certain books that I have had a deeper relationship with. And there are some books like, you know, Jerry Ballinger. This was a guy that I knew years ago. Did you ever meet him or you talked to him on the phone. Okay.

But a brilliant guy.

He was a mentor that Eben Pagan and I got to spend a lot of time with. And he had this idea, he had a wisdom bookshelf. And that, that always stuck with me. This idea that there's books that are information and then there are books that are wisdom. Yeah. That are just. I've often made the distinction between books that are book reports that people have just put together a bunch of ideas or researched the topic and then made their combination of all of the current information. Then there are field reports which are books that are written by people who have actually had experience in the field and are seminal thinkers, people who are originating thoughts. And so I look at books that have consistently been drawn on by me that I look at things that I can point to a thought that was like a transformation of vector changing way that I think about things. And on that shelf I would put a book like how to Argue and Win Every Time by Jerry Spence. And I would put my life in advertising and scientific advertising. And I would put influence, Robert Cialdini's and all of these things. Like that's what I'm looking for. I'm making it my goal when I go through this book process that I'm gonna basically have my top 100 books. And then you get rid of and I'm gonna. I think that I haven't really done the estimating yet, but I think there are books like, you know, I look at books that you read at the time, like just reading off your shelf here. You know, a lot of these books are. That were kind of interesting, you know, and you got the information and you generally can, you know, remember what it, what it was, what it was about. But the odds are it wasn't life changing. I'm never gonna read Knock Em Dead Again. You know, that's not the, that's not the thing. You know, it's Not a wisdom, you know, not. Not sticking out in my mind like that, you know.

Right.

And so I can. I got the idea from that, and it served the purpose. And to me, it's like a. If I reframe them as, like, conversations or things, you know, I'm not going to go back and revisit every conversation I've had with. With every person I met. Even though some of those conversations you can gain a valuable understanding of something, and that's what the purpose of that conversation was.

Well, in this room, as an example, we're in my conference room. Anyone here in my office can come and check out a book. It's like a library. We have all of these stored with delicious libraries. So all these books you can scan, you can scan them. They immediately go into this online database and we can find books organized by Topics. So there's 2200 books in here. We got a replacement value of all of these books and a lot of them. We're just going to send and give away some specific ones we can give to certain individuals, but others, they're just not useful. But many of them are not useful to me anymore. But they may be useful for my staff. They may be useful for people like that. When you're at home, I think it's a whole different story. I mean, I think if you can repurpose knowledge and share it with other.

People, by all means.

But something sitting there giving you notice that's exactly. It is pointless. One thing too far to forget, my friend Barbara Hemphill. I literally have this on my wall at my house, which is have nothing in your home that you don't know to be useful, things to be beautiful or love. It wasn't until I read Marie's book where that really made that statement even stand out that much more. Because there's a lot of stuff that I have that used to be useful at a different time, but it's no longer useful now because you don't use it right. If you're not using it, it's not useful. And there's a lot of things that aren't beautiful and that I don't love, but they just somehow find their way into their space. The reason I wanted to bring this up first for I love marketing, the reason I want to bring this back is that your ability to implement and execute stuff has everything to do with space. Your ability to take advantage of the ideas that we talk about has to do with how much space do you have in your mind, how much attention do you have available? How Much bandwidth. What is your capacity? And we just did the episode with Jamie Smart about capacity. Clarity is capacity minus contamination. And stuff contaminates your space. And if that contaminates your space, that contaminates your mind. And so I think a lot of these things all tie in to all of this. But I do love the idea of a wisdom bookshelf. And I think anything as it relates to knowledge, I think all entrepreneurs would be really well served to have a swipe file of knowledge available at their fingertips. That helps them learn things, it helps them do stuff, but also gives them perspective. Because a lot of times we're just in a bad place and we need a new insight, we need a new perspective, and people will seek out things like, oh, let me go online, let me do this, let me do that. But if you actually can think of the things that you have read or the people that have seen said stuff, and you can just draw on those quotes, those stories, those words, in times where you need inspiration or times where you need direction, you can set that up so it's all at your fingertips. But you'll never have it all at your fingertips if you just have shit.

All over the place, right? Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's really. You look at a room like this with all of these books, I mean, you know, it's amazing. And there was all valuable stuff. I think that, you know, when a book comes into your world, you have the opportunity for that book to make the impact that it's gonna make, you know?

Right, right. Well. And I mean, look, if you think about how many books we've recommended over the years and how many authors that we've interviewed, I mean, books are. You know, books are powerful. I mean, I think it's. I think it's one of the most effective ways to learn how to do something. And someone that's never read Scientific Advertising or Ogilvy on Advertising.

Right? Yeah, yeah. Breakthrough Advertising. I'm looking over. There's Ogilvy, there's Breakthrough, there's.

Those are some. That shelf is some of my favorite books. We've got Triggers by Joe Sugarman. We got Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer. You know, we got.

So a book like Winning Through Intimidation. You read that?

I've read it several times.

Yeah, exactly. Me too.

I haven't had an email back and forth with Robert. Is that something about a month ago.

Is that. Would you. Would you save that book if you were going through that?

I would save it because it brings me joy. It reminds me of what it what it did for me, certainly it's highlighted a lot. That's not the only copy I have. Also, it becomes a trigger point to remind me. I look at books as, like, cue cards. See, I have a ton of books.

I do, too. Kindles, Absolutely.

I have a bunch of electronic books. I have books in the Apple app for ibooks and stuff. I just don't interact with those in the same way that I interact with paper. I still like physical books better now. When I listen to audios, if I really like the audio version, I will get the physical book just so I could highlight it, just so I can remember it if I'm done with it. A lot of times there are people here that work for me that they want to read the books that I've highlighted because they want to see what stood out. Joe. But I tell them, highlight all over it. Write whatever you want. I don't really care.

I mean.

I mean, treat this book like it's your own and go from there. So let's talk about some. Anything else you want to wrap up on this subject? Because I just really like this book. I think anyone that reads it will. I think it will give you a skill set that you can use the rest of your life. And if you don't think this will help you in the area of business or marketing, I would encourage you to. To read the book and think about how do I apply this to business, how do I take this method of thinking, and how do I identify, apply.

It across all levels. That was what, you know, what struck me.

It's all about discarding. Yeah.

Well, you know, what struck me is I found it very like. I think when you get through that process, you get to the stage where, you know, Dan Sullivan talks about the immigrants that you are. You know, why immigrants. Immigrants who are successful will come to this country, and then they'll very quickly be successful because they've left everything behind. They let everything go, and they come and show up here with just their. Whatever money they can get out, whatever is in their brain and whatever's in their suitcase, you know, I mean, but they leave all of the other things. Like, I think when you start looking at tidying up, the rituals, the patterns, the habits, the people that you hang around with, the things that you do. There's a lot of clutter in all of that.

Well, one of our earlier episodes is the interview I did with Blake Mykowski, who's the founder of Tom Shoes. And Blake wrote a book called Start Something that Matters. And he tells the story in that book about how he moved to a houseboat and he started decluttering things because he realized it not only took your time, but the most sacred resource is your attention. And when you own a bunch of stuff, he had already been in the mode of getting rid of stuff, but then when he had to move into a 200 square foot houseboat running this, he literally had to get rid of everything. And so it's like he talks about how much that just freed him up and allowed him to function better. And so I agree. I want to read a couple more things out of here. I'm going to switch gears, but there's a couple things that we're saying. One, she says effective tidying involves only two essential actions. Discarding and deciding where to start store things. Of the two, discarding must come first. Now then, she says, until you've completed the once in a lifetime event of putting your house in order, any attempt to tidy on a daily basis is doomed to failure. Conversely, once you put your house in order, tidying will be reduced to the very simple task of putting things back to where they belong. And she says, using this approach, people who can't stay tidy can be categorized into just three types. The kids, they can't throw it away type, they can't put it back type, and the first two combined type. Looking at my clients, I further realized that 90% fall into the third category. They can't throw it away and they can't put it back type. While the remaining 10% fall into the can't put it back tight. And she says tidying up by location is a fatal mistake. When people are like, I'm going to tidy up my drawer, I'm going to tidy up my room, I'm going to tidy up.

You and I just had that conversation yet when we were back in one of the rooms upstairs, that somebody, you know, tidying up their office. I'm going to tidy up my office. Making their environment clean and then taking out the thing that was cluttering up their office. Getting it out of that space and just relocating it to another room in the building is not solving the problem, it's solving the problem for their little space within the building. But it's all the clutter is now just relocated somewhere else.

Right, right. And I actually, it was so funny because we said this today, prior to us even recording this episode, I was infuriated when I saw. Yeah, I mean, without even having read this book, I'm like, who in the hell, like, cleaned out that and just left it in the middle of the office upstairs. Because I own it, you know, I own this big ass building. And it's like, what the is. I was just so pissed about that. But you're right, what I told Eunice, I go, we're going to have a real serious team meeting with my team about this. I'm sharing some of my backstage irritations of running a company here is like, it's fricking irresponsible and just totally inconsiderate to just leave shit like that in the middle of. There's literally a bookshelf laying on the floor. She says a booby trap lies within the term storage. Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved. She's actually anti storage because what happens when people store things? They take a bunch of stuff that they don't love. It doesn't spark joy. They're not even getting. Could you imagine living without having to have anything in storage except things that are absolutely essential? And most things that people have in storage, storage, you know, from old cables to old whatever, they never even use. I mean, they just never even use this stuff. And it's. Yeah. So the thing is, now how would you apply this to the electronic world? Because too many emails, so many documents over communication. I mean, how does this apply?

She said something in here that was. I treat a lot of that electronic stuff as like documents. And one of the things that she said, her general policy about documents is to throw it all away.

Well, yeah, she's talking physical documents, but.

I'm thinking I'm carrying that over to electronic documents too. Right. That one of the things she said what causes stress often is not having a document. It's not knowing whether you have it or not and searching for it, thinking that you have it, you know, and so it's often a freedom in letting go of that, you know. Yeah. And I'm, you know, but on that same token, you know, like I have a Gmail account that all of my email has gone through, you know, since they started in 2006 or whatever. And I don't even. I never delete anything. Right. Because it's stored forever.

It is.

Or it could be. Exactly. It's not a physical. It's like I look at the inbox pane. If I look on my.

You got to talk closer to the recorder here.

Sorry, I'm just going to look on my phone right now and see.

Yeah, he's moving further away from the recorder. I think we both have.

I have 100, 1,000, 167 unread messages that show on my iPhone right here. Right. And I know I don't feel anxiety about that. I don't. Like some people. I never understand.

You don't care. You're just a careless, careless person.

Oh, man, you cracked me up.

And you don't respond. You know that people actually message me to try to be like, I've sent this message to Dean. Can you get it to him? Like, I'm your freaking personal assistant or something? Because you're not responding to certain people.

Well, that's interesting.

So you shouldn't have to worry about it because I certainly am worried about your shit for you.

That's my sister.

I don't care. It doesn't bother me at all, you know, I mean, Joe's gonna handle it anyway.

Oh, that's so funny.

No. Okay. But in all seriousness, there's partial truth of that statement.

So part of the thing that I've had to recently do is really let go of my email. And, you know, I have a. No, no, here's the thing. So I people, you know, I have a system for it, and I feel good about it now that I finally have come to this as my solution, that I have a email address that you have that, you know, handful of other people have that goes directly to me unfiltered, and I get those emails. And then every other email that comes into my world is filtered through the. You know, the first line is. Would be Lillian or Elizabeth. That those are. Everything is kind of filtered, can be addressed or. So that is just for that reason that you're saying that. Because I get a lot of email. You do, too. We all do. And so having it where somebody is, you know, manning it or whatever is going through and is seeing the email and then just drawing my attention to the ones that are meant for me that really only I can handle. And that's been a. You know, it's been a really. It was. You know, there's some angst in terms of letting go of it. And when I say letting go, like I've had that kind of system in place, but there's always been some ambiguity about it in that I was always seeing, looking at the email, but they were doing the filtering. But now we've shut off the tap kind of thing, right. For me, for the distraction of it, so I don't even see it. And it took me a little bit of time to get used to that, you know, to get used to that whole idea and in my OCD of doing things, you Know, especially so a little, you know, like back office stuff. So, you know, we're. I've got a breakthrough Blueprint event coming up at the end of April. And so a lot of that, you know, we'll send out emails or we'll mention it on a podcast like this and we'll say, you know, send me an email to Dean at Dean Jackson and ask, you know, I'll get you the details about the breakthrough blueprint. And so to know that I can say that and that the emails coming in and being addressed and we're sending out the. The information is a, you know, this, this event coming up is really the first one that I haven't had any involvement in the. In the process of, you know, like, getting to the point where what brings me joy about those breakthrough blueprint events is showing up and spending the three days just 100% with people, you know, giving 100% and being completely ready to create breakthroughs for people. And all the other. The logistics of it, of making sure that people are responded to or that the people get the information or all the logistics of the hotel stuff, all that stuff that it's really now completely freed up. And I'll tell you, it's an amazing freedom that comes from being able to let go of stuff like that, clear your mind of that clutter. And not even, you know, just even being able to. Not even being able to see it. That really just soothes it because it's created a discipline, you know, it creates a circumstance that it's not that I have to discipline myself to not go in here and look and check all the emails and look at the stuff on my iPhone all the time. It's that I can't. So it doesn't. It's not an issue. Right. I mean, it's like, yeah, that's the whole thing about using, creating, setting up a discipline noun. So I don't have to use the discipline verb. I don't have to discipline myself to not do it, you know?

Right, right. Not for. Makes sense. Makes sense. So here's what I wanted to do with just the time we have remaining. If you're relatively new to I Love marketing or you've been listening for quite a while, I actually met. I think her name is Nona. I just met her last night at this dinner and she does the I Love Marketing meetup group in Tucson. And so I want to do a shout out to the people in Tucson, let them. Them know that I will actually come down there at some point in time and just Go to one of the groups because Tucson, Arizona is very close to where I'm at. And if you do an I Love Marketing meetup group anywhere in the world, thank you for doing that. If anyone wants to start an I Love Marketing meetup group, she's been doing it for a couple years and so really, really sweet woman. And she has listened to every episode, which is awesome. I mean, I really appreciate our listeners that have consumed that much information. They actually know a hell of a lot more about us than we probably know about ourselves. We forget this. But the thing, if you want to start a meetup group, we do have a How to start an I Love Marketing Meetup group on the site. If you check out meetup, there's I Love Marketing Meetup groups in many different parts of the world, many different countries and, and so attend them. It's always a smart way to get together with like minded people that really want to talk about the before, during and after units and the eight profit activators. And we have a whole template for you to follow on how to basically run a meeting. We don't charge for that. You know, maybe one day we will, but right now it's just, you know, put it together and all we ask is, you know, respect the, respect the intellectual capital here. I mean, you know, don't take the stuff and pretend it's your own. Just talk about it and utilize it as best you can because it's some really valuable content. Many people have built great businesses as a result of what we have on I Love Marketing. Check out past episodes. Lisa Sasevich is attending her first Genius network meeting this week because when we did the episode with her. If you've not heard the episode we did with Lisa Sasevich on how to create an irresistible offer, it's a really good episode. She really. I think it was your most profitable.

Episode out of all. 193 that we've done.

Well, the most recent one, I think we've had other ones that are, you know, equally, you know, that have, that have led to people joining and that's immediately. Oh yeah, with her right on the spot saying, yeah, you know, I'm gonna.

She.

Well, she makes a statement where she says, you know, I want to be the client that I'm wanting to attract and it's a great thing. People are like, well, I want to have a business like you, Joe. Have you ever given me any money for anything? No. Okay, great. Maybe you might want to start with that. Or even if you don't want to give me Money. You want people to join a high level coaching group? Are you part of one? I want to have a business like Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach. Are you a member of Strategic Coach? No. Well, I mean I tried it. I was that sort of thing. We're going to put up some episodes that we have, some past things that I think that would be really useful to people like the Weilin interview and things like that. So I'm going to look through some of the stuff that I have and I'm going to put some great content out there as bonus episodes and you're welcome to do the same. And if you've not watched Dean's 50 Minute Focus Finder in quite a while, it's one of our very first episodes we put. Which wasn't even done for I love marketing speech that you gave. But type in Focus Finder on I love marketing. That'll help you. People always ask me, how do you meet people? Episode number 29, the Magic Rapport formula, that's one of our very early on episodes is really valuable. Just, you know, check out the archives. I mean we have some really, really great marketing stuff. I know we didn't talk a lot about marketing on this episode, but we.

I would love to hear what everything is marketing.

Well, yeah. And this book, I mean she sold 2 million copies of this book. Some smart person here or many in the US is going to realize that they can build a freaking business with what she says in this book here in America. And you'd be well served to reach out to Maria. I bet she's hard to. She's like book three months in advance. She said in this book. Now that this book is sold, it's been a number one New York Times bestseller. It's freaking. This book's a big deal.

It's something.

Oh, and a couple of other things. Me and you are going to be speaking at Ari Meisel's Les Doing seminar at the end of April. So I don't know when we're posting this episode.

I think next week. Right. I think we're at that point now.

And so, you know, if you want to meet me and Dean in person, go to Ari Meisel's event. I think it's less doing events. Right. Or less doing events.

Less doing events. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to be speaking at Super Conference in Minneapolis right before that at Dan Kennedy's.

Okay, great, great. And so we got that. And what else do we need to notify people of of upcoming things? We got my Genius Network annual event in October if you want to really hang out, if you want to be at the highest level marketing event in the world. In the world. This will be the definitive. This will be. Is that the right word? Definitive.

Definitive.

This will be the event. See, people say epic making shit up.

But it really is. This is. They're comparing it. I mean it's really.

So that's geniusnetworkevents.com and we'll come October. Yeah. And October 26th and 27th in Scottsdale, Arizona, where it's beautiful that time of the year. And so check, check that out if you want to see how we do all the marketing for geniusnetworkevents.com but it is. It's. It's a ten thousand dollar person event. It ain't cheap and it's. But it's an investment and it is. If you like regular seminars, go to regular seminars if you want the best shit in the world.

Let's make a note that the next episode. Let's start talking about this idea of return on genius. Return on genius plan. That we should get those ideas out into the world here. Yeah.

And that's a good thing for people to learn about anyway. And what else, what else can we share with anyone that's. We got any good movies? Cinderella was actually really good. People should go see Cinderella. Wow. Not the cartoon version. No.

Oh, Cinderella is. There's a real like real life version of it.

Exactly.

I didn't know that.

It's fantastic. Okay, go see Cinderella.

Oh, perfect. See, I'm wasting. I just saw get hard.

Be courageous and kind. It's always good advice. Be courageous and kind.

And let's leave it on that.

Okay, so everyone be courageous and kind. Give us your comments. If you read the book, post your comments about what you thought about it and how you're applying it. We'd love to hear that. Here's me and Dean giving you housekeeping tips. There we go. @I lovemarketing.com so you can subscribe on itunes if you have not already. You can follow me on Twitter at Joe Polish O Polish. And Dean never updates his Twitter.

The Dean Jackson. That's right. If you want to see what a unmanned Twitter account looks like with 16,000.

Of your closest friends, that is comedy. All right, everyone, have a great day and talk to you later. Sam.