The Freedom of Failure with Joe Sugarman - I Love Marketing Episode #239

Welcome to I Love Marketing where Joe Polish and Dean Jackson talk about new marketing ideas, direct mail ideas, lead generation, lead conversion, getting referrals, stick strategies, email marketing, psychology, books, people, and even productivity. This episode is a special segment from an industry leader who is a friend of Joe Polish and Dean Jackson that we felt would be great benefit for you here on I Love Marketing. Also, Joe and Dean have put together a free report called Breakthrough DNA 8 Profit Activators you can trigger in your business right now. Visit ilibmarketing.com DNA to get instant access to that report and put the eight profit activators to place in your business today. Now let's get to this week's episode. Enjoy.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast. Are you ready? Are you ready for the next amazing speaker? Now, I don't know how in the hell we're going to get this guy to talk for just 10 minutes. And I feel real bad about shutting the mic off on him, but, you know, you got to do what you got to do. This guy could talk for a week because he is literally a direct marketing legend, one of the most brilliant marketers and advertisers alive, a great innovator, a great copywriter, a great businessman. His name is Mr. Joe Sugarman. Okay? And Joe, I've known Joe for many, many years, dear friend of mine. We've hung out a lot. He's been gracious to have me stay at his beautiful homes in Hawaii, right on the beach. Just an awesome dude, you know, always willing to help and teach people and, you know, wrote books about what he does teaching, you know, not because he needed the money for the books, because he just wanted to get the knowledge out and help entrepreneurs. He's done all kinds of amazing things, including working for the CIA and all kinds of stuff. But I'll just read his little bio here. Once called the mail order maverick by the New York Times, is the father of so many innovations in marketing and sales that he's become a legend in the world of direct response. From introducing toll free numbers to take orders. He was the first person in the world to use an 800 number to take an order. How many of you have ever done that in your businesses? There you go. All right. And to selling over 20 million pairs of blue blockers sunglasses, which you might have seen them in the hangover too. You know, the dude with the beard wearing blue blockers and hangover. That's funny. He's built many large businesses all through the creative power of the pen, the written word, great teacher, visionary marketer, willing to share. He's got 10 minutes to talk about whatever the hell he wants to talk about. Give it up for my good friend, Joe Sugarman.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you. You know, thank you. It's funny. Anything Joe would ask me to do, I do. I mean, this guy is just a really dear friend, and we've had a wonderful relationship. Adriana Huffington, she started out her talk by the fact, by mentioning how many failures she's had or how important failure has been in her life. And I have to relate to that because I'm probably the biggest failure you could ever imagine. I have failed more times than you can possibly count. But I've always believed that every time, no matter what happens to you, it's always for the best. So if you fail, I used to. And I had this very strong belief. My cousin was a psychiatrist, and he was hired by the San Diego Chargers to determine how to make a superstar. How do you recognize a superstar? And what he found was that they fell into two. Deeply religious. A Tim Tebow type. Right. Or a huge ego. And when you think about it, when you think about it, it's all in belief. These people believed. One believed in themselves. One believed in a higher power. So I grew up believing I was gonna be a big success. And every failure that I went through didn't matter because I knew eventually I would be this success. By the way, this is America, and we have, of course, a freedom of speech and all these freedoms. But there's one freedom that I don't think you really realize, and that is the freedom to fail. There are some countries, when you fail, you commit suicide because you're in a disgrace. Japan, or there might be some country where if you fail, that's it for the rest of your life In a particular country. Here in America, we can fail. We got chapter 13, chapter 11, and we got all kinds of different legal ways of failing so that we can go on with our lives. Another thing, a motto for. For all the entrepreneurs, and that is Ready, fire, aim. Think about it. Ready, fire, Aim. I learned a lot of lessons, again, through failure. But let me share one story with you. Actually, it was in high school. I was a junior in high school. We had a chemistry class. And at that chemistry class, once a week, we'd get into a lab, and we'd start mixing chemicals to see the various reactions that we had learned the days before. And I was sitting or standing next to a guy that every time we had this lab, he'd spill something on me or on my side. And finally one day I got really upset and I said, you jerk. He says, don't you call me a jerk. I says, well, you're a jerk. Look at you. Spilled all the stuff all over me. He says, why, you want to fight now? This guy was 100 pounds. He was a short kind of guy. I says, okay, yeah, let's fight. Where do you want to fight? Where do you want to meet? He says, well, how about Greenfield Park? I said, that's fine, because that's right across from my home. That's fine. I says, what time? He says, four o'. Clock. I says, I'll meet you out there at 4:00'. Clock. Well, I called all my friends and I says, you got to come out to the park and see this. I went home and I put on all white clothes. I had white shoes, white slacks. Why? Because if I wore dark clothes, you wouldn't see his blood. I wanted that contrast. Well, we meet at the park, and I see all my friends, and I wanted to acknowledge them, but I turned around and I acknowledged my friends. And as I turned around, this guy punches me right in the nose. I am bleeding all over. I can't stop the blood. My white clothes are totally soaked in blood. Fight over, I race home. My mom almost died when she saw me. She took me to the hospital. A few stitches, I was fine. Now, the funny part about this story is two years later, this jerk, this idiot, married my sister. True story. You know, when you think about it, when you think about it, I finally got even with him. It took two years, but I finally got even with him. You know, it's a funny thing. It's really a funny thing, because he went on. He went to college, became a lawyer, and then one of his first jobs was he was the assistant prosecutor in the Chicago 7 trial. They have. My sister and him have been married for 54 years. So you never know, do you? And the lesson, of course, I learned from that is never be overconfident. Don't be overconfident. You know, a lot of people are asking, hey, Joe, what are you doing now? What's up? A lot of people here have read the books that I've written, and I think I've influenced quite a few people here, as a matter of fact, because you've been coming up to me and thanking me, and I appreciate that. And that was the purpose of the book, because I think my purpose in life has always been to help others. Always to help others. And anytime you do that, you will succeed. Eventually you'll succeed. For example, even blue blocker sunglasses. When we came out with those sunglasses, people didn't know about ultraviolet light being bad for your eyes or blue light causing certain diseases or any of that stuff. And what we did is we educated the market. As a consequence, we were very successful. And I think throughout life you provide value. And if you, in this particular case, it was education, then you're going to be rewarded, things are going to come your way. So people are asking, now, what are you doing? What are you doing now? Well, I had blue blocker sunglasses, and I have my beautiful home in Hawaii, and I've got my businesses in Las Vegas. And I was really focused on blue blockers. And it's been 26 years, ladies and gentlemen, 26 years since I introduced that product. 20 million pair. I saw that slide of Back to the future two, the DeLorean. Yeah, we were in that movie. We supplied the sunglasses to Pizza Hut, and Pizza Hut purchased 10 million pair. So we've had quite a successful run with that product. But anyway, so I'm doing really well. I'm having a lot of fun promoting blue blocker through all these years. And then somebody came to me with some product, this mad scientist. And I looked at these products, and I'm not an expert. They were anti aging, stem cell research, all this kind of stuff. And so I turned it over to a good friend of mine, David Kekich. David is very knowledgeable about what, you know, the new technology. So he looked it over, he says, joe, this is incredible. This can save lives, the concept of these products. And from what I'm sensing is that within the next 10 to 15 years, especially after listening to the speeches this morning, within the next 10 or 15 years, we will have figured out a way to live to 120. And so I started testing some of these products that the scientists had developed. And I do 28 chin ups. I am 74 years old. Number one, I use the skin cream to avoid the wrinkles. I use an energy drink, a special drink that actually improves your dramatically, improves your strength. We also have a hair product that grows hair. And I see all kinds of potential right in this room. I'll be happy to help anybody out that wants to regrow their hair. We got a couple of people here actually in the audience who are doing that right now and are very happy. I don't want to embarrass them and call on them, but they are users of that product now. The skincare lie. Just let me give you a little insight into that. We submitted our skin care formula to a lab. Now, this lab does the work for L', Oreal, for example, and L' Oreal will create 40 compounds and submit it to this lab for testing. And the lab will maybe if they come up with one of those compounds that changes maybe a gene in your body, they will build a whole cosmetic line around it. We submitted it to that same lab. We submitted not 40 compounds. We only had seven. The lab looked it over and got back to us and says, no, we got to retest because the results are kind of strange. Send it back. Anyway, this went through a process of three times, and they finally came back to us and said, you know, of the 150 genes that affect your skin, your skin care line affected half of Those, or almost 75. That is unbelievable. And those are the kind of statistics that we were getting from all of our products, including the hair growth product. There's nothing that grows hair like this product. So anyway, being of service to as many people as I possibly can to help you live a long, healthy, wonderful life, that's what it's all about. Again, I'm 74. I do not take any medications. I don't take any of any of that stuff. I'm just excited to see the new technology that's coming, and I'm looking for people to work with. And so please feel free to come up to me, and I'm happy to share whatever information I can. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you. And thank you for the. For the blue blockers sunglasses, everyone. Did everyone get their blue blockers?

J All right, we hope you've enjoyed this episode from Joe Polish and Dean Jackson on I love marketing. Most of the episodes are based on Joe and Dean's eight profit activators. To grow your business, Joe and Dean have put together a free report called Breakthrough DNA 8 Profit Activators you can trigger in your business right now. Visit ilovemarketing.com DNA to get instant access to that report and put the eight profit activators to place in your business today. Again, that Web address is www.ilovemarketing.comdn.