The One About Ideas vs. Execution - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #79

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

You got it. Well, here we are again. Like, we have to keep doing this every week over and over and over again.

It's like a job or something.

It is. You got all these people out there that listen to this now. You know, they're counting on us. Like, why did we ever start this?

Right? Can you believe? But listen, can you imagine. So here we are. This is episode 79, right now, this week that we're doing. And can you imagine that We've done this 79 weeks in a row without missing a single week?

Right. Imagine if these weren't dog years.

Exactly. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. Not missing a week.

I mean.

And are people appreciative? Do they send us money and gifts? Some of them do sometimes, but the vast majority, nope. They just take our ideas. They make themselves a bunch of money. I mean, even this week, like, we got, like, one person sent me a message. They doubled their business since they've been listening. I love marketing.

Wow.

Another person just started listening to it. Made 2,500 bucks first week.

Yeah. Isn't that great? I see those all the time.

You know, it's like. And yeah, so here we are, one more week of this silliness.

So, you know, you and I kind of talked a little bit before this episode because there's something that we've been kind of talking about, and we reference it a couple of times, but it really. A lot of people would be interested to know that, you know, in addition to getting together and talking on these calls once a week for 79 weeks in a row here, we talk quite a bit, actually, even in between this stuff. And one of the things that we always do, we talk about more than some.

More than some marriages. Probably.

I mean, it's probably true. You're right. That, you know, one of the things that we always talk about is this notion of debunking the theory that that execution is more valuable than ideas.

Right.

Because, you know, we've talked about how that's always the sort of standard answer for most people who are sort of operationally centric, that their. Their thought is. Well, you know, an idea that's not executed is useless. So execution is really the most important thing. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and that's the kind of thoughts that people have.

Yeah, that's what most people run around talking about. Well, there's also the other types too, that think ideas just in and of themselves are the most valuable things. But there's a lot of people that will come up with ideas. I mean, I've even had people that have literally asked me to sign non disclosures and NDAs. And I'm like, well, first off, I'm not going to sign that because that's not what I do. Usually if there's any sort of unique proprietary idea, I'm usually the one coming up with it, not other people. With that being said, then I'll hear some of the ideas and. Oh, wow, really? That's it? That's your big idea? But yeah, going back to what you're saying. Yep, keep going. I'm right here with you.

We're right on the same page, and I'll give you that too, that it is absolutely true that ideas without execution are in fact useless. They really are. But if you acknowledge that and you say that, well, then execution really is a powerful thing. And let's say that you can actually measure flawless execution. Let's even say that somebody is executing an idea at the very highest level. They're executing it perfectly. There's no way that they could execute this idea better. That is a knowable thing. Now the only thing that can improve flawless execution is flawless execution of a better idea.

Right.

And you know, you see it all the time. What are, you know, even if you think about movies, for instance, you know the mechanics of making a movie. I mean, you can go through and somebody can, you know, act the hell out of the script and they can, you know, the, the director can, you know, have incredible cinematography, they can have all of this. But you know, the, the truth is that you can flawlessly execute the production of a movie, but the better idea is going to be the better movie.

Right, Right.

And so it's really, I think that the, the point this is to really revere the importance of having ideas and seeking out ideas and looking to improve the ideas that you do have as a constant quest as an entrepreneur.

Yeah. Because the time that you're actually going to change course is when you, or change your mind or change your paradigm or change your religion, is when you hear a better idea, something that just makes sense, something that just is going to be a whole new. It's like putting on a new set of glasses when you have ones that really aren't correcting your vision. And an idea is like putting on a new pair of glasses or taking a pair off. Because a lot of times people are looking through just the wrong lens. And if they look through the lens of execution all the time, and they're so gung ho about execution, execution, execution, you know, it's kind of like the only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder, Right?

Exactly.

And with enthusiasm. Yeah. I mean, you could sing that wrong note in perfect pitch for that note.

But it's wrong, right? You know, like the most expensive information in the world is bad information. I mean, you could be reading at a very high speed. You could be in the perfect environment. You could be totally focused, and you could be reading the exact wrong, useless thing or mediocre stuff or doing something. That's the great thing about that, too, is that this applies to not just business. This applies to your whole life. I mean, you know, what are the things that we execute every day? We wake up. How do we wake up? Is there a better idea on how to wake up? Is there a better way on how to brush your teeth? Is there a better way to drive to work? Is there a better way to work at home? I mean, is there a better way to cook breakfast? Is there a better way to eat raw food? You know, I mean, whatever. It's like how you execute, you know, constantly finding better ideas.

It seems to me that, you know, improvements in execution are really going to be responsible for incremental gains. Like, it doesn't seem like you can exponentially better execute something, does it? I mean, this is the first time I'm saying this, so let's talk it out.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, unless, of course, you use multiplying technology or multiplying individuals, you know, I mean, for instance, I can execute a phone call and make a connection, but there are certain. The idea of who would be the best person to call, what would be the best person to ask. You know, all of those things come from the idea. They come from the brain. They come from the resourcefulness. They don't come from the activity of picking up a phone call, you know, or texting someone or emailing someone or whatever it has to do with the ideas built around it. So, you know what's funny?

Here's a perfect example of it. Today I was recording an audio for the Breakthrough Blueprint program and was talking about selecting a single target market. And one of the examples that I gave, I actually showed a worksheet in the workbook that compared to target markets. I was talking about executing a postcard campaign and comparing two different markets. We could choose to mail to lakefront homeowners, which had, if we say, 2,000 homeowners and they had 80 of them sold in the last 12 months. And they, on average, are $340,000, which means a $10,000 selling commission. That means that at the end of the year, there's an $800,000 potential yield from those 2,000 lakefront homes. Now, if I compare that to mailing to condos, which. There's twice as much turnover in the condos, but the average price is. Is $40,000 and the average commission is only $1200. So there is a, you know, a total yield on all, you know, double the transactions. The total yield is only. Was only $192,000 potential. So when you look at it, you could flawlessly execute a postcard campaign to, you know, each of those lists, and one of them has the potential to be, you know, has a four or five times greater yield. What just makes sense. Mailing to the lakefront homes is a better idea.

Yes, exactly.

Yes. And having that kind of information, you know, looking through, looking for everything, you know, putting a better offer on a postcard is an idea. Having a better strategy of. Instead of trying to convince somebody to do business with you through a postcard, it's a better idea to get them to just raise their hand and offer them something that's completely just valuable to them without any expectation or implication that you've got any commercial intent. We talked about that whole offering cheese instead of whiskers, you know.

Yeah, no, we had a whole conversation yesterday about an offer. And here's what's actually kind of funny about this, too. Just to give people sort of a look into the lives of marketers like me and you and how we actually make decisions. Now, you know, I'm running ads in Success magazine right now, and we're, you know, every bit of effectiveness from that always comes out of the ideas for, you know, picking a better headline, picking a better offer. I mean, everything. Layout, verbiage, copy conversion, you know, videos. I mean, you know, all kinds of stuff on there. And I was, you know, going over a campaign that I was, you know, running and have ran for many, many years, and I call up Dean and, you know, thinking I kind of know the best offer, and you point it out to me because you're not in my forest. You're on the outside in that particular case. And you basically said, what you're doing here, Joe, is you're not offering cheese. This is something I know inside and out, right? I kind of get the whole thing, but you gave me a better idea. And part of it is, why you never, never, never want to put yourself in a position where you think you're too cool for school or you think you got it, or you think it can't be improved or there is no better idea. See, where people, I think, get screwed up a bit is they'll take the whole concept of good enough and they'll keep it there forever. You know what I mean? Good enough is good to ship, it's good to launch, it's good to get you going. But friend Brian Kurtz at boardroom, they have a sign on the wall that says the control is the enemy. What that means is that the control piece, the marketing lingo, that's for like a direct mail letter or a video or a tele seminar or an offer. I mean, the control is the current working marketing pitch that's being delivered in a certain way that is getting the best results. You know, so like, if they're going to hire copywriters to beat a sales letter for a subscription offer, as an example, they all these copywriters are looking at the current piece. Yeah.

They're trying to beat the control.

Right. Trying to beat the control. Right. And so the control is the enemy. And so, you know, that's another way of saying, give us a better idea.

That's exactly what it is. Because ultimately, I mean, you're right. Direct mail is the perfect example for this. You know, because direct mail, you can flawlessly execute a direct mail campaign. I mean, at its essence, you're mailing four sheets of paper in an envelope with a stamp to an address. That's flawless execution. But what you put on the pieces of paper and the names that you mail it to are the idea. That's the better idea.

Yep, exactly. Exactly. So how would it best serve people listening to really? I mean, they've kind of, you know, we can beat a dead horse here, but this is not a dead horse. This is something that people forget continuously. And there's a lot of people that will fight against the value of ideas and the problem and what I mean by that is fight against it is they poo poo it or they think, you know, execution really is the of value, the most important thing. And see, we're not saying execution is not important. We're saying that if you want to really dramatically improve what you're doing and you're really, you've got your execution, just give yourself a better idea. Because if you can keep topping your behavior with better ideas, it's just the results you will produce is infinitely, you know, infinitely better. And so this is. We kind of live in a culture, I think, in a lot of ways, where people just believe that certain things are important and other things are not. The best way to create a paradigm shift is to have every one of the listeners of I Love Marketing really understanding that. It's like Gary Halbert would say, the difference between being rich and being broken could be one good sales letter. And the difference between being rich and being broke could be the right elegant idea.

Probably excellent. It really is. I mean, and, you know, we talk about it all the time. How many times have we quoted Peter Drucker that his, you know, assertion that the only things that matter in business are marketing and innovation and everything else is an expense.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's absolutely true. That execution is on the expense side of the equation.

Right?

Yeah, right.

And see, and another way I look at this in terms of ideas, just so it's clear, is that a better idea in some cases may not be doing it at all.

That's exactly right. To spend your time. A better idea may be to forget that one and allocate that extra time and money to doing something else completely.

Yeah. A lot of people will spend their entire lives playing a game that was never designed for them to win, and they don't have the skills or they're not placing a better idea is taking your strengths and putting them where it matters, not trying to improve your weaknesses. No matter how much you can execute it or learn a technique. If you're always coming in last, you're always losing most of the time.

You know what would be good? I mean, this is kind of, you know, I. We don't have a preconceived idea of where this call is going. So what I think would be good is let's maybe look at some of the experiences that we've each had where a better idea made a dramatic difference. I mean, can you think of a couple of things where you may have, you know, shared an idea with somebody that made a. That made a big difference?

I can probably think of about a million of them.

Okay, so think about one that really jumps out at you.

What I did for other people or what I did for myself?

Either one. Either for you or for other people.

Okay, I'll do a couple, and I'll keep it in the field of marketing, although I can. You can probably ask me about any area of life. But in the field of marketing. When I first started my carpet cleaning business, I didn't have any clue on how to communicate. So I got business cards printed that Said Superior Carpet Cleaning, because that was my company at the time. And then I ended up changing the name to Fiber Tech, which is a much cooler name. But the name had very little to do with it. I was putting out flyers that said, two rooms in a hall, $39.95 on one. I even put, we will beat any advertised price. Not realizing. And this was when I was very young, in my early 20s, trying to run this carpet cleaning business. And I was running it, and I did a great job of delivering a cleaning service, but, boy, did I work my ass off for nothing. I was going broke. I didn't realize that people that were advertising $5.95 a room, $6.95 a room were actually bait and switch companies that really had no intention of honoring that price unless the consumer just wouldn't budge at all. So it was a bait and switch tactic. So I'm running low price. I wasn't doing bait and switch. I was just running two rooms in the hall for $39.95, and that's what I'd actually clean for. And so a better idea was using a headline. A better idea was a free room of carpet cleaning and a carpet audit. A better idea was creating a better sense of urgency that wasn't based around price. Right. But I didn't know that at the time. So it's the thing that me and you, which was funny that we would both use the same analogy, but just in different ways, that the difference between a $1 bill and $100 bill is the message on the paper.

That was funny because I remember either you came to a main event where I, you know, because I've. I've always been doing that, or I came to one of your events and it was like one of us had ripped the other off.

No, no, no. What it was. I remember that, like, I came to a main event, and main event is the thing you were doing with Joe Stump for the real estate industry years ago. I don't know, one of your first ones. And I had always been making the analogy of that advertising is like real estate. I mean, it's like what you. You can have an acre and you can build a mansion on the acre. You can put a crummy trailer that's all rusty and falling apart. I mean, it's the same acreage, but it's what you put on top of it that has a lot to do with the value. Right. And it's not just location, it's what you put on the location. And so I always Thought of advertising as, like, real estate. I mean, what do you want to build on the website now? You know, back then it was paper and ink. You know, so paper is expensive, ink's cheap, so put the best copy you can make the best offer, that sort of thing. So I would always use the analogy of, you know, what's the difference between a $1bill and a hundred dollar bill? It's the message. Paper is the same, ink's the same. The only difference is the message. And one message is worth a hundred times more than another message. So I went to, you know, and you were basically saying the same thing, but you had a picture of you. Like, you had a $1 bill. And I think then there was a PowerPoint presentation. Then there was a picture of you with your face imposed on, I think, the $100 bill, right?

Yeah.

And you were talking about that, and I was like, oh, my God. I mean, there's like so much similarity. What's funny is, I think that was one of the first times we actually really realized just how aligned our thinking was and how we saw things the same way. But I actually asked you if I could take your presentation.

Oh, that's what it was. Because then you actually took the whole. The PowerPoints, right?

Yeah, I took the whole PowerPoint. It was just organized. Now, see, like, that's a perfect example of a better idea. I saw you delivering things that were very effectively communicated in a completely different industry. Now, a stupid idea which people would do, which we recently had to ask someone who was listening to I Love marketing and even came to an I love marketing meetup group and read the eight profit activators and then went and created a video in a specific industry. I won't say the industry, just not to embarrass the guy, because he completely apologized and I think felt like a jackass for doing this. But he went out and taught the eight profit activators, verbatim, the way that we talk about them, write about them. But he never gave any credit to I love marketing or mentioning you or mentioning me or anything, which is a dumb idea. So my idea was like, dean, hey, I really like this. This really fits what you're saying. Could I use this in my presentation? Because I want to improve my presentation. So I built a whole presentation around the way that you organize the explanation of seven Secrets, Right? Yeah.

And you even used the dollar with my picture on it. Oh, yeah.

No, I would talk about it, too. I would even use your ads. No, I mean, heck, it's like, yeah, even When I taught the presentation, I said, yeah, I got this from my good friend Dean Jackson, who's a marketing expert in this industry. And then I proceeded to deliver a far better, more clear, effective, powerful presentation than the one you were doing. So it's not only a better idea, like me to take the great format that you laid out, but it's a better idea just to do a better presentation than you could possibly do.

I got it. You took better idea, and better execution really trumped it completely.

Yeah, so that's one there. So making a better offer, a better thing would be going back to my carpet cleaning thing, just changing the ads. Going from trying to say a lot in an ad to driving people to a free recorded message. Instead of doing a singular sale, running an ad just to get someone to call you, running an ad to generate a lead, to get someone to raise their hands. And then you start what Seth Godin started calling permission marketing. You know, what's the funniest thing about that? And I think Seth is a brilliant writer. He wrote Permission Marketing. I mean, me and you. And then people that read it are like, oh, my God, there's this new type of marketing, permission marketing. It's like, we were doing this 10 years ago. What are you talking about? Some of the greatest marketers in the world were doing this in the early 1900s. Are you kidding me? Permission marketing. He just put a name to it, which, of course, is a better idea. You find what people just don't know anything about, and you articulate it in a way so they begin to understand it.

That's great.

So go ahead and you give one, and then I'll give you another one too.

Okay?

So, you know, and I think one of the most dramatic ones is, and I've talked about it a little bit, it was the one that really solidified the whole cheese and whiskers idea for me was the sending an email to a restaurant owner or, you know, whoever's getting the email at the restaurant. And instead of sending an email that's trying to convince them to spend money on a birthday promotion program to just ask a simple question. Do you do birthdays and engage people in a dialogue that way? It was just such a dramatically better idea. And the same thing, you know, these are that with the birthday. With the birthday card that got the, you know, 32% response, you know, versus a card that was. Looked like a commercial type of card, just making. I think focusing only on somebody's self interest is you can never go wrong by just giving something to somebody. That they're selfishly desiring, you know.

Totally agree.

I'll be interested to see what, what kinds of ideas, you know, are there any, like, categories to those kind of ideas, you know?

Well, you know, I think the biggest objective in stuff, a lot of what we do here at I love marketing. And why coming to our conference and doing that stuff and really going deep into this sort of thinking is not just to remember everything we're doing or per se model, you know, oh, how are we going to think about how Joe and Dean do it? But it's like just the thinking in general. I mean, just shifting the way you think about ideas and the importance of them and also identifying what are just. I always have to say, one elegant idea is worth more than a thousand semi good ideas, which I first got from Gary Halbert. One elegant idea is truly worth more than a thousand semi good ideas. And that's why fishing for elegant ideas and having the skill of being able to identify them and even think like that, I think gives you such a advantage in life. Because when shit hits the fan, if you can, you know, if you have a few great ideas sitting in your arsenal, when plan A fails to work anymore and you can switch to plan B, I mean, that's a really great thing because of, I mean, a lot of people, I mean, we saw it in the recent, you know, when Google did the big Google slap thing, how many people in the Internet marketing business literally went out of business overnight. And it's just because they just didn't, you know, they're like one trick ponies.

Amen. Yeah, that's kind of like what Jay Abraham would talk about, basing your business on a diving board versus the Parthenon. You know, having one idea, when it goes wrong, everything falls down. When you've got multiple streams, that's a more solid foundation.

Right, right. Yeah. Like one of the things. Another example is Bill Phillips. When I started doing consulting with Bill late 1996, early 1997, and he had a magazine called Muscle Media 2000 at the time. He ended up dropping the 2000 and just calling it Muscle Media. And he had recently bought EAS Experimental and Applied Sciences, the sports nutrition company, and then built it up into the largest sports nutrition company in the world in literally a span of about two years. And he had put together a. And before that happened, I think I was quite instrumental in that. This was before Body for Life was even written. And I think in a lot of ways the work that we ended up doing ended up creating the platform and the stage for him to even write Body for Life. And so basically he had created a documentary that he had spent over a million dollars, really nice video, like an inspirational video about 10 people that had entered a physique transformation contest. He was offering, you know, is a Lamborghini, and as a prize. And at the time, the number one bodybuilding prize in the world was $100,000, you know, for Mr. And Ms. Olympia. And so he ended up coming up with a prize for anyone can enter the contest that was worth twice as much than the biggest prize you could. Could you imagine, you know, starting like a football game on your own and offering a bigger prize than like the highest paid, you know, football player in the world? I mean, just imagine that. Now, obviously, bodybuilding never got the recognition of any other big sports because it is sort of kind of freaky in a lot of ways. But that being said, he came out with something which was a pretty damn good idea. That's an elegant idea in and of itself. In order to get people to enter his contest. And of course they would link to EAs and they would buy his supplements and they would read his stuff. But everything was positioned and designed to sell supplements. Even though in the movie and in the documentary there was hardly any mention of take this, Shake or do this. I mean, you saw EAS logos, you saw the company and everything. But it wasn't a pitch. I mean, it was a very well done documentary. And so he wanted as many people as he could get to watch this movie. And I had recently sent out an interview I did with Gary Halbert to my whole list. Not my whole list, I'm sorry. I'd sent out a letter about it to my list, which wasn't very big at the the time, but we did a test to 1200 people. We mailed this letter, and this letter ended up. It was simply, I want you to listen to this interview that I did with Gary Halbert. My challenge is, I'm afraid if I send it to you for free, you're not going to place any value on it. So I do want to send it to you for free. However, all I ask is that you make a donation of $20 to the Phoenix Children's Hospital. And so we ended up raising about $7,000 for the Phoenix Children's Hospital, like really quickly and right during that time, I don't know, probably two weeks after, I was in this fundraising thing where we'd raised about $7,000. At that point I had, I was doing my consulting with Bill and he was telling me about this documentary. And I said, well, you know, why don't you offer to send this documentary to people for free if they'll make a donation to a children's charity, you know, either the Denver Children's Hospital or the Make A Wish Foundation. So he had done some stuff for Make a Wish in the past and he ended up saying, yeah, that's a great idea. And so he decided he would come up with a goal to raise. I think it was 100,000, it might have been 50, but I think it was $100,000 to the make A Wish Foundation. And he basically ran an ad in Muscle Media and literally, I mean it was just a matter of days and they had raised over $100,000 for make a Wish and he sent the movie out to people for free. And he said, just simply make a donation. There was even a self enclosed envelope. I still got the whole mailing and everything. I mean, I've got all, I still have every fax, every communication, every sales letter, I mean everything that made that business work. And his business exploded. And overnight he went from this hardcore bodybuilding magazine that was filled with profanity and he saw that the real money and real readership and people entering the contest were not bodybuilders. They were everyday people that just wanted to get in shape. And I remember at the time 90% of his readership was male, but 50% of the people entering the contest were female. So he's like, wow, I'm really obviously appealing. So he completely shifted the whole magazine from kind of a hardcore bodybuilding magazine to fitness with a heavy emphasis obviously on lifting weights and strength training. But it very much.

But that's where he gets that whole body transformation idea. I mean, that's really what it is, right? People making transformations.

Yeah, exactly. I know that originally started with, on a cruise that they did with Keith Klein, who I ended up having come in and speak at one of my seminars. Real smart nutrition guy that I've not spoken with in years. But basically, yeah, it was interesting and fascinating. That's an elegant idea. The whole donate money to the Make A Wish foundation. And then Bill ended up becoming the largest, you know, the single largest single individual contributor in history for Make A Wish Foundation. And you know, over 550 wishes granted, you know, and the average wish is, you know, 6,000 to $8,000. And it's, you know, that idea has raised, I mean it's granted all those wishes and raised millions of dollars and created enormous branding for Make A Wish. It did wonders for Bill. And all of a sudden, you know, Bill was reaching people and getting letters from celebrities and I mean, all kinds of stuff. I mean, even, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, you know, a few years ago, his wife wanted to, Jerry Seinfeld's wife wanted to do something cool for Jerry Seinfeld. So, you know, contacted Bill and said, yeah, will you, you know, teach him training and stuff. So, you know, a birthday present for Jerry Seinfeld was, you know, get training from Bill Phillips. And so, you know, Jerry met up with Bill in LA and worked out, so that sort of stuff. But he ended up selling the company for $300 million in 1999. And I don't think any of that would have happened the way it did had it not been for leveraging that and some very elegant ideas. But it was all the idea. And see, there was a ton of other people competing with similar products. I mean, massively competitive marketplace of protein powders and supplements and creatine and all kinds of stuff at the time. And he just had better ideas on how to, how to sell it. And you know, it was funny because the first time, you know, the first time I had done consulting with Bill, I was charging $3,850 a day. I charge more than that an hour now. And the funny thing was, is like I gave him one idea within the first hour of consulting with him to do a sequential mailing of a very successful episode.

On one of the episodes.

Yeah, yeah, I can't remember what episode we talked about that on, but yeah, he ended up bringing in an additional $3 million from a campaign that only would have done 2 million in revenue had we not had that conversation. And I gave him an idea that didn't require him to even write a new letter. It just required him to mail the letter two more times with handwritten copy in the margin notes.

Why don't you share it real quick if somebody hasn't heard it, just give like the general idea. Okay.

Well, it's basically a three step letter. And I had asked Bill if he'd ever heard of sequential mailings. He's like, yeah. And I'm like, well, do you do them? And he's like, well, no, not really. I mean, he would do follow up mailings and he would relentlessly mail his list, which any smart person does. As long as, you know, it's like the time to quit going back to the well is when you put the bucket down in the well and you pull it up and the water comes back out. So as long as you're getting water out of the well. Keep dipping the bucket down in the well. It's like, as long as you're catching fish, keep fishing. Keep throwing out the hook. So he was already a smart. I mean, bill was very savvy when it came to marketing, and he just got it. I mean, he read ted nicholas and gary halbert, and he would hire copywriters. He became a phenomenal copywriter himself. So he was already a very smart marketer. But again, he was smart enough to say, well, I don't know it all. How else can I improve an already killer business? I mean, he was making millions. And basically, we sat down and talked, and he showed me this letter, and it was. Do you want me to explain the whole letter?

Yeah, yeah, Just to share the idea.

Okay, well, so he showed me this letter, and it was like he had these EAs that were letter DAs. And the letter basically had a picture of three semi trucks. And it said, you know, the story, as it goes, that I can remember was, you know, I have, you know, a ship, a warehouse full of myoplex, which was one of their shakes that they were selling. And unbeknownst to me and my general manager, he ordered a shipment. I ordered a shipment. Now we've got so much of it that we have it out in semi trucks from the manufacturer, and we need to sell it because we don't have any room in the warehouse. So 40% off. He had sent out this letter, and he sat down with me, said, Joe, I've got 100 people working for me, but I'm the marketing department. I don't have anyone that could write copy like this. And he shows me the letter and he's like, and I need more copy like this. And I said, well, that's when I asked him, have you ever done three step letters? He's like, no. You've heard of them? Yeah, but I'm like, well, can I write on this letter? And he's like, yeah. So the letter had already sold $2 million worth of stuff. I mean, he had a big list, but, you know, we're talking. He was moving tons of product. This was a 20 at the time. They were open 24 hours a day. It's unfortunate that he sold it because, man, if people could have experienced the way that company was run back then, it was insane. They were a machine. They had this beautiful building with a theater and a gym. And, I mean, it was crazy. And it's nice when you have tons of money coming into your company. You can spend a Lot. And so basically, isn't it funny, Dean, how it takes me like 10 minutes to explain something I should be able to say exactly?

Just rambling here. It probably would have been a better idea to have me explain it for you.

I wrote an X through one of the trucks. And I said, okay, dear friend, send this letter to you two weeks ago, three weeks ago. Still haven't heard from you. Please contact us. You'll still get this for 40% off. I said, what you do is you send this letter out a second time with just these handwritten margin notes. And what I wrote there. I said, you just rewrite this so it is set exactly the way you want it and basically do that. And then I said, after you send that, if you get orders from this, you send it to everyone on the list, minus the people that I've already ordered. So you go back to the list where you haven't got an order from and you mail it to those people. Second notice. And then after that, two weeks later, a month later, third and final notice. We've sent this letter to you twice. Haven't heard from you. Last opportunity to get 40% off. And so he mailed that letter two more times with handwritten margin notes, and it brought in an additional $3 million in sales. And had he only mailed that letter once and then said, joe, I need someone else to write copy like this. And then you try to find someone to write new copy. And then it takes longer to get the letter.

There's the idea, hey, let's just scratch this one up and mail it again.

Yeah. And I have his most successful sales letter in history. And if I was actually in the fitness or sports supplement industry or anything like that, I have got the greatest blueprint of how to actually sell stuff imaginable. In almost all of it, at least the stuff I have, I actually consulted on and thought through, how do you package this stuff? I remember giving him lots of ideas on stuff running free recorded messages with all the contest winners, the Physique transformation winners, where they would record a message explaining what supplements they took. And people that were fans of these winners could call and listen and hear the person they admired the most explaining exactly how they did it. And of course, what does this do for EAs? They're hearing all of these winners explaining, yeah, I took Betagen, I took Myoplex, all the different stuff they had. And the people call up EAs and, well, I want what this person was taking.

I want this person. Yeah, exactly. Because I think that's the magic yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, the people would say, well, I lifted weights X number of days per week, but people want the magic pill. What are the supplements they're taking? But even old issues of Muscle Media magazine. I mean, great ads. And another elegant idea. I'll give you this one, too. Bill would run image ads in competitive magazines that he proved would not work in his own magazine that they would not get any response from. So he would purposefully spend money in other magazines where the ads failed so that his competitors would see him in these big magazines, and then they would spend a fortune knocking off an ad that didn't work in his marketplace. So he would purposely confuse his competitors. That's an elegant idea.

That's perfect.

We have an inner office thing called the competition Castration action plan. When you're having to deal with people that knock you off and are complete scumbag competitors and that sort of thing. Because there's one thing about being a decent competitor and there's another thing about just flat out thievery. One of the things that people don't know about guys like me and you, when you have tons of people that listen to your stuff, buy your stuff almost weekly, you have to send out cease and desist letters and deal with people that are uploading your content on websites. It's an endless amount of. The world has no shortage of stupid, unethical people.

You want to hear a good idea?

Yes, because I'm done babbling. Yeah.

Here's the thing. This would be a good idea is. While we're talking here, I just got a text from Frank Kern. The only thing.

He called me earlier today, too. Can you believe it? He's trying.

The only thing out my says in the text is mood music, and there's an attachment. Wouldn't it be a good idea just to play this live right now and hear what kind of mood music Frank Kern is sending me?

What did it say?

Mood music.

Mood music? I thought you said nude.

No, no mood music.

All right. I hope the transcriber doesn't get this. What's the deal with the transcriptions, Dean?

Sandy's been on vacation. She's catching up. She's catching up.

We'll have them all for all of our listeners out here that like. Like reading transcripts. I apologize. The transcript thing and typos and all that. That's Dean's fault.

Here we go. I'm gonna play this. Listen to see what it is.

Frank, Karen, go ahead.

You may have to hear my half of the recording to hear it, but let's just play it and see.

Oh, baby, you you got what I need and you say he just a friend and you say he just a friend oh, baby, you. Okay.

Wait, is that him singing? I can barely.

That was him singing.

All right, hold on a minute. I'm gonna call him. Let's call Frank Kern on. Let's call him on the phone. Let me see if he answers. He probably won't answer. Let me see here. But you keep talking.

I'll keep talking. But that's kind of. He'll do that just, like, out of the blue. He'll send the craziest pictures or just funny stuff. That's a good idea.

Let's see.

So I'm gonna take it off speaker, though, because you never know what he's gonna say.

No, he.

Is this Frank.

Yeah. This is really good, Beth.

Yes, I am here. You're on speakerphone, Frank. Do not use profanity. I'm here with Dean Jackson. We're recording a live episode of I Love Marketing, and he just played over the airwaves. You singing you got what you need or whatever you say? We.

You know, he does have what I need. The fact of the matter is, Dean Jackson does have what I need, and he does say he's just a friend, and I suspect that things are different.

Yeah. So basically, the only purpose I'm calling you is we needed a little bit of fodder for our I Love Marketing episode, to put it. So can you sing it from your end live, and then I'm going to hang up with you and so we can finish this episode.

Go ahead. Why can't you just press the 2 button on the thing that can't save.

No, no, he already did that. We're trying to do, like, an encore. Can you sing anything up?

You're out of stuff to talk about on the podcast, and you're trying to trick them into thinking that they're getting some sort of value.

That's exactly what's going on here.

Well, at that point, the oldest tricks in the book is my favorite. So, yeah, I'd be happy to help you do that by saying.

D. This is classic. This is totally.

All right.

Frank, you are a prince of a guy. I love it.

That's a good singer.

Yeah, that was hot. I am literally excited here right now.

We got a live performance by Frank Kern right here on the podcast.

Last thing. Frank, what are your most influential books that you've ever read? They could be marketing. They could be anything. Just a couple of them. I know it's a stupid question. There's probably like 100 of them, but what are a couple of your favorites?

I wish there were a hundred of them. I read trash fiction, so to learn how to write conversationally, I read a lot of Harold Robbins. It was an old very sleepy novel. He wasn't sleepy, but he's one of the best non fiction novelists of all times. I read about James Patterson to get the tempo of writing down turns of business books I have not read many. Best recommendations I could give is my Life in Advertising. Scientific advertising by the old Claude Hopkins and all the Dan stuff. Really, man. The no BS welcome fracture. Look. Great bs. I meant classic. Yeah, of course. Deal. Handwriting. The fountain head.

Yes, yes.

Very.

All good. All fantastic.

Awesome, dude.

Well, hey.

Okay.

Perfect. All right.

Dean, is there anything you need to say to Frank?

Are you good?

I got what you need, baby.

He's got what you need. All right. Awesome. Thank you, Frank.

You let him know that I ain't even. No, they may.

That's exactly right.

You'll hear that we're going to send you this when you're done and you're going to send it out to your whole list. And this is perfect. All right, thanks, dude.

Everybody listening. Stay in school.

Don't smoke cigarettes. That was a better idea that just exponentially improved our execution of delivering an entertaining podcast week after week after week.

There you go.

But you know what made that idea happen? You know what made that idea really pop for us?

Execution.

Well, execution. But you know what it was is rapport. We have a connection with Frank Kern.

Right.

And you know, I mean, we. If you think about it like, I think that, you know, when we could become known here for Peter Drucker's idea of marketing and innovation, I think that if we were to really think our two biggest things would be ideas and connections. I mean, it's a shortcut, isn't it?

Totally. No, connections are always a shortcut. So we should spend the remainder of time, which we don't have a ton of time. But we should be talking about the power of that. Yeah, because that's one of the things you had mentioned that you wanted to.

Yeah, well, I think. I mean, I really. We were talking about it, you know, that that's really the. It's a big deal. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. So explain why. Why is it a big deal?

Well, it's a big deal to have on speed dial the people who can.

You know, I mean.

It'S fun to have a relationship with Frank Kern, for instance, and to have him on speed dial. And to have rapport with him and to be able to have that kind of relationship and rapport with somebody who has the ability to execute an idea that you have is priceless.

Yeah.

I mean, to be able to connect with. To connect people. I mean, you know, you think about the. And I've been with you so many times when this has happened that, you know, you will be in the car and somebody will call in and then we'll end up doing a three way call with somebody else, you know. So I think about David Bach and.

Kiyosaki.

Yeah, Kiyosaki maybe tell that story because it's a perfect example.

Yeah. So I'm driving with. Who was in the car with me? Do you remember?

I do not.

Yeah, well, I mean other David.

But David was in the car.

Yeah, yeah, no, David was in the car. And so he's in Phoenix and down there visiting and stuff. And you know, I'm like, how well do you know Kiyosaki? You know, Robert Kiyosaki? Because these are two at the time, the top financial authors of the last decade, you know, both of them.

Yeah.

And they had sold the most books and stuff. And I don't know where Susie Orman was around that time or whatever, but you know, these were like the top guys and.

And they didn't know each other.

Yeah, well, they had been like, I think on a show or something where they're both guests at different times. I can't even remember. But I was like, you know, David made this comment like, yeah, I have to talk to Robert at some point. And so I was like, why don't we do that right now? So I call up Robert Kiyosaki and he answers and says, hey, what's up? You know, because I've known Robert long before Rich dad, poor dad. And I don't remember this story at all. But Robert always brings it up to me that he had called me because he wanted help with their board game Cash Flow. And I had like completely blown him off and said, I don't have time and I'm not interested or whatever. I mean, I don't recall that conversation at all. But he swears that I just blew him off completely. But anyway, so I was like, yeah, hey, you know Robert, I'm here with David Bach and you know, why don't you guys chat? And so I hand the phone over to Dave and proceed to drive to wherever the hell we were going. I can't even remember. And him and Robert like completely have this whole long Conversation and set things up and everything. And I thought it was totally hysterical. It's like, here's the, the two number one financial advisors or financial guys that are authors and stuff, trainers. And it takes me to just make a cell phone and hand the phone to David so we can talk to each other. But there's like, I've done that probably like 5,000 times.

What do you think the most valuable connection that you've made for somebody has been?

Oh my God, it probably wouldn't be money making. I think it's probably, it's probably people that have had a family member that was, had an addiction and I connected them with, you know, people that would help get them into 12 step groups or help them with treatment. It was probably more personal situations in terms of what I would say really be helpful because I think in a lot of ways that helps save families and save lives. In terms of. Oh boy, that's an interesting one because.

When you think about it, I know, like, you think about why do people, you know, we've talked about this before, but you've got the highest level mastermind group in the world for direct response marketers in your 25k club group. Yeah. And you think about why would people at that level, people who all make more than a million dollars a year, who are all successful entrepreneurs, why would they be paying $25,000 to come, you know, meet with you and each other three times a year?

I mean, I think in a lot of ways the same reason they're successful financially in the first place is they don't look at it as paying investing. They don't. They don't. They're willing to trade a minuscule amount of money in the scheme of things because they know the participation in 25k is going to be a multiplier. And they don't say, well, I'm going to spend $25,000. They're like, you know, what's this $25,000 going to do for me? Not just for my money, but what's it going to do for my rope? You know, they're wanting. I mean, it's the difference between a treadmill entrepreneur and a ladder entrepreneur, which is something I heard Dan Sullivan say. And yes, we mentioned it. I don't know if we mentioned Dan Sullivan yet. So we got to stick to our. But you can be a treadmill entrepreneur and you can keep running and you can keep working and you may not go very far, you might get worn out, but you can be a ladder entrepreneur. The people pay 25k because they know those relationships are going to escalate them. People thought I was crazy when I paid Richard Branson's foundation $200,000 for the first presentation that he gave via satellite for me in 2007, you know, after I had dinner with him in 2006. But look at how I leveraged and parlayed that relationship, not only for myself and for many of the people I've introduced to Richard, but for his foundation, because I raised more money for his foundation than any other individual. And so basically, you know, the reason people join 25k is they want not just good connections, because most these people already have great ideas and great connections, but they're looking for elegant ideas, better ideas, multipliers, and they're looking for the greatest relationships. They are people that want to be industry transformers or already are industry transformers and want to be the best in their field. So they come to 25k, which is thank you for the plug. It's the same reason, like why, you know, because people will think, oh, well, you know, I can just listen to, I love marketing, you know, which you could. And actually that's a very smart thing to do. We highly recommend it. We aren't doing this because we don't want people to listen to it. We obviously want people to listen to it. And if you really want to accelerate the speed at which you take these ideas and more immerse yourself in it deeper, you know, come to our conference that we're doing in October. You know, if you're interested in 25k, go to, you know, the time this podcast is going out. See the event I'm doing in New york, go to 25kgroup.com ny as in New York, and see, you know, we've got Steve Forbes and Arianna Huffington and Peter Diamandis who we're doing this with. It'll be an abundance slash genius network mastermind. So I'm joining forces with Peter this year. We're really theming it around abundance, abundance, exponential thinking and great ideas. And we're having people give 10 minute talks that are each 10 minutes is worth $250,000, so that each minute is focused on being worth at least $25,000 in value. And the reason I say that is because the people are going to be sharing current best practices that they're doing or have done that have been worth at least a minimum of a quarter million dollars to their business. And they're going to explain what they're doing and how the people in attendance can do it too. And so we're charging $10,000 for that, a lot of people for two days. And people are like, well, $10,000. This ain't a seminar. Okay? This is like.

This ain't a seminar.

Yeah. I mean, and seminars are great if you go to the right ones. I go to seminars all the time. I love seminars. I just hate seminars that are shitty seminars. And so, you know, this is a very hot, you know, we got Tim Ferriss there, we got Mark Thompson, we got you, we got Dean Graziosi, we've got, you know, Mary Ellen Tribbe, Robin Robbins. Oh, and this year I also need to mention too, we've got John at our conference in October, October 3rd, 4th and 5th. And people can get information about our I Love marketing conference@ilovemarketing.com we've got John Benson, the brilliant, crazy evil genius that invented the ugly video sales letter. And we've got our dear friend Marie Folio, who is going to present.

Very exciting.

Yeah, Marie's great. And Lou Ferrigno, the Incredible Hulk. But yeah, the reason people go to 25k is they are there for the ideas. Which goes to the whole theme of what we were talking about. The smartest people in the world fish for ideas and they go to who has the best ideas. And it's a faster way for them to do really condensed discovery and learning by going and hearing a 10 minute talk by a person who's not theoretically talking about something. Because the same too Ted is brilliant. I love Ted. And Ted has ideas, ideas worth spreading. And what I'm doing at 25k with the 10 minute talks is ideas worth using. So I want people to actually use the ideas. And the only way they're going to know what is the very best ideas is asking the very best people who are the industry transformers to share their very best, you know, ideas in the context of how we're doing it. And it's been working like a charm. And you know, so there we go.

That's awesome.

And yeah, I can't wait. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be badass. So. Yes, yes. 25kgroup.com NY and you know, even if you don't qualify, even if you're not someone that makes over a million bucks a year, go, you know, look at how, look at how we do it. I mean, you know, use that as an aspiration to build and, you know, grow your company because, you know, that's the same thing I did. I still constantly, I think an elegant idea is whatever works to motivate you to get to a bigger place, a bigger future. Whatever inspires you, if it's going to certain places, if it's window shopping, if it's hanging around certain people, if it's going to inspirational talks, I mean, whatever it is that will, you know, get you inspired. Keep yourself continually in a state of inspirement. I remember one person years ago, Joe, you've read all these books, you do all this stuff. Why do you keep listening to all these things? It's simple. It keeps me inspired.

Absolutely.

I'm all about inspiration. And smart people are willing to pay for inspiration and you know, get out of the house and go meet people.

Especially get out of the house.

No, if you're like an Internet marketer, I mean like people, I mean people literally, you know, get out of the chat room.

Yeah.

Alone together. You know what I mean? Like there's so much.

See some real faces.

Yeah. We're going to do. I'm going to ask Ned Hallowell, who's also speaking in New York, he's the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. I'm going to ask him to do an I Love marketing episode. He's not per se, like a marketer, but he has.

No, but I think that's, I think that's an incredible idea because, you know, we've, we've talked about that actually, we talked about it today. Having him on that, that's the. I think it's totally appropriate because entrepreneurs, you know, have the highest propensity to be add. If you, if you heard his interview in Success magazine, it was. Yeah, yeah, it's great.

It's really great. The guy's a genius and he's really onto something and he was talking about stuff about the craziness of like, by the time someone listens to this episode, I don't know if it'll be off the, you know, magazine racks or whatever, but pick up the copy of Newsweek that has I Crazy on the COVID I Crazy where it talks about how literally Internet addiction. I mean, I've always been fascinated with the subject of addiction in general. But a couple things in just the Craziness of Crazy Busy by Ned Hallowell. Brilliant book. He was 10 years ahead of his time when he wrote that book. And that book wasn't written too long ago, but it was written probably about five years ago. Nightingale Conant sells the Crazy Busy course. I have a course called Success with Sanity that I did with Ned and Marie Folio and Dr. Nathaniel Brandon, the brilliant self esteem psychologist, things like that. But stay connected. The Point is, stay connected with the best people in the world. The reason we call it Genius Network is people can go out and network and have a bunch of friends on Facebook and know a bunch of people that are following them and every sort of social media platform. The real thing that matters, though, I mean, a handful, you know, count on one hand how many people, if you absolutely needed $25,000, no question asked, could you call right now and say, I really need it. You know, I need 25 grand. You know, for whatever reason, you wouldn't even need to give an explanation. You know, how many people most people couldn't count on one hand the amount of people in their lives that would do that. And if you don't have any, I.

Would do that for you. Joe, just so you know, if it ever comes down to it, I'm going.

To call you tomorrow. Deedee said it publicly. I need you to send me 25 grand. Now, basically, though, if you don't have those sort of relationships, like, start thinking about really elegant ideas, how do I add enough value in the world to where that exists for me? Not just with money, but with anything? That's what a Genius Network is. It's where you can really tap into it. And that's why the beauty is you can pay to actually develop these sort of things. Not even like you could. It's just, why would you even question it? I mean, I've always loved Dan Sullivan's thing. If you have enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem. If you have some area in your life that's not handled. But you can cut a check, and the cutting of a check will help get it handled, because you have a health condition or you have a relationship thing, you know, I mean, if, you know, if you're not feeling good, pay money to talk to someone, though. You can talk to you about it. You know, join a gym, go do something fun, get a massage, take a day off. You know, that sort of stuff. Get out of the house. 25K.

Yeah.

And if someone wants to send you cards or gifts, Dean, how do they send stuff to you? Because I get tons of stuff sent to me all the time. Because, you know, my address is@joepolish.com and people send me letters and nice cards and they send things that people send me stuff for you. And then it costs me extra shipping and handling because then I need to send it to you.

You see how that is. Why don't we put both of our.

Addresses.

We'Ll put up an address on I love marketing. For gifts and stuff especially.

You know, it'd be really awesome if we put up our Amazon wish list up there.

Perfect. That'd be fantastic. We should. That's great. You know, the problem is, Joe, I just had. I just had like an execution idea. How to solve an executional thing. Let's just put our addresses up on out of marketing. And then you came along with the better idea. The idea of putting our Amazon wish list right up there on the list.

Yes. Yes.

That's brilliant. Genius.

I think we're out of time now.

Okay, that's enough.

To all of our listeners at least I'll say this as a wrap up. Hopefully this just simply made you think about ideas versus execution. The reality is they're both important. You need to execute, but in the big. But one elegant idea is worth more than a thousand semi good ideas. And the best way to improve flawless execution, as Dean said, is just a better idea. And hopefully you're getting tons of these better ideas just by listening to I love marketing and being connected with it. And a really good idea would be for you, everyone listening to post this episode on your Facebook page or tweet it out or send it to your email list, we would be internally grateful. And for everyone that's running an I love Marketing meetup group, we want to also acknowledge all of you for the great work that you're doing. Because somewhere in the world, almost daily, something like a hundred people are meeting, talking about I love marketing and it's awesome. And I think a year from now, hopefully that'll be several hundred, if not a thousand people meeting and talking about I love marketing. And using this as a catalyst for people that are entrepreneurs going out there doing good stuff and being better packagers, promoters and marketers. Because the art of marketing is awesome.

Love it. Okay, well said.

Good, because I know, let's just leave it at that.

Okay, good night.

Good night, everyone.