The One Where Dean and Joe Discuss Joe’s Trip To Necker Island - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #112

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey, everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joseph Polish. Joseph Polish, that's good. It's always a new named after St.

Joseph, by the way. What's that?

Joseph Polish.

Yeah. You think I'm making that up? I'm not.

That's so funny.

I went to Catholic school growing up Polish.

Now that you've been freshly back from hanging around with Sir Richard Branson, does that rub off you get served yourself?

No, no, no. You know, I mean, we're in Necker Island. I didn't get bit by mosquitoes as much as I viciously get bit every year. What's that?

What was your secret remedy this time?

Being more prepared than any human being ever should be when going on an island that has mosquitoes and sand flies and other various critters. There's lemurs there, which are these amazingly cool. I don't even know how to explain it. They're like a combination of a monkeysquirrel koala bear. Sort of look like a skunk, but they don't smell like skunks. Cute little animals, really sweet. When they're sitting down, they look like they're meditating and doing yoga. It's the most bizarre thing. I shot a bunch of videos and none of them are prepared yet to throw up on I Love Market or anything. But we'll probably post them all over the Internet and people can do a search for my name and Richard Branson on YouTube and they'll probably find a bunch of videos, that sort of stuff. But at the time of us recording this, you know, we've got tons of footage. Just got back from Necker Island a couple days ago. But, you know, some of the highlights where I really hit it off with Kevin Harrington, who's, you know, on Shark Tank and also direct response info marketer. He's now one of the speakers at our New York event in August. And what's that?

Canadian.

Yeah, yeah, smart dude. He'll be at the xprize Visionary meeting that I'm going to this weekend, which will be cool. So, you know, I'm going to be. He wants to do a lot of stuff together, so we're going to have him as a guest on I Love Marketing at some point. He's super sharp, so that. That was. That was cool having him there. And the guy is in incredibly good shape. He's 56 years old. You would never know it. I mean, the guy looks like he's 40 and just, you know, I mean, he's really good. What's that?

Is he in Kevin Donahue shape? That's what we really wanted.

Absolutely. And for people that don't know Kevin Donahue, Mr. March, you don't need to. You don't need to know Kevin, but Kevin. Actually, we've posted videos with Kevin and everything for I Love Marketing meetup groups here in Arizona. And so that was cool. And then my girlfriend invited Patricia Arquette, who came to Necker. She spent the whole week with us. She is really cool. What I like about her is she admits she's not a business person. She's an actress. She does a lot of stuff in Haiti. And many celebrities that show up for events and red carpet things and take pictures in front of the backdrops, that shows foundations, and they get a lot of PR out of it, and it ends up on TV and People magazine and all that, a lot of them just show up for the PR aspects of it because it's part of the branding their careers and things. I guess there's obviously some usefulness and strategy behind that. She, though, on the other hand, what I discovered about her has been to Haiti. I think, like 16 times goes there and literally is just thrust into the most insane conditions of helping people, from building tents to finding supplies, to trying to coordinate and organize chaos and trying to help situations where it's so complex. And, I mean, I was really impressed with her and I thought she was just really cool. And she. If she can make it, she's filming the new TV show. What's that show called? Boardwalk. Whatever.

The Boardwalk Empire.

Yeah. Yeah. So she's gonna be on that show. And so now I guess I gotta watch it. She's gonna speak in New York if she actually can coordinate it around the filming of the show, because she's not sure she can make the date. So that was cool. And what else, you know, Janek and all these crazy Maverick people were there. Yeah. I mean, it was Ben Richter, John ratliff, who's a 25K member, Abby Moneyhun, Bernadette Doyle. Let's see who else is memorable? Yeah, I mean, it's been such a crazy week that I cannot even remember everyone. We had a whole bunch of people there. Oh, you know what's really funny? I got to tell you this. We've interviewed Mark Thompson on I Love Marketing in the past around his book Admired. Mark is doing a lot of stuff with Virgin Unite. And while we were doing one of the brainstorms, this helicopter comes into the island. It's the Only helicopter that landed throughout the whole week. And it's very distracting when you're doing a brainstorm session and a big open. You know, the Temple house on Necker and the Great house, you know, the original one that burnt down, that's going to be completed, the new one in a few months and it's going to be pretty freaking stunning. I mean, you should see what they're doing with this thing. I snuck up there in the middle of construction and shot a whole bunch of videos. So I've got all kinds of crazy footage, but basically this helicopter lands and unbeknownst to me, until the helicopter took off, it was Mark Thompson. He flew in for just a short period of time to, you know, I don't know why, but because I haven't even talked to him yet. He left me a voicemail while I was there, but I didn't check my phone, you know, didn't get cell reception. I didn't turn my. My phone was in pretty much airplane mode you know, the entire week. So I didn't make a single phone call for a week. And, you know, I had a little bit of Internet access here and there, but I didn't check, you know, email too much. And he had left me a voicemail and sent me a text saying, hey, I'm here on the island. You know, can you come down? But I didn't get it. And, you know, and of course I sent him a text back when I finally got back in the United States and I was like, you know, dude, like, why didn't you track me down? He go, you know, I mean, I rented the whole island. It's not like there's that many people on the island, but that was really funny. So, Mark, can you believe the guy lives in New York, flies to Necker Island? I'm there, we're friends and we don't see each other. I mean, it's really hysterical. So, you know, in terms of takeaway lessons, we got some footage. I did a really interesting interview with John Ratliff, who sold his company about creating, you know, he has a program called Dream on and about creating a culture in your company with your employees and the importance of doing that and how it was really difficult for so. For many years, the culture in his company, you know, admittedly he said, you know, just sucked. And I don't know, you know, it was kind of like already instilled in a lot of ways. But, you know, he totally shifted it. And we did this video on what you need to do. So, you know, we'll put that up at some point in time. And, you know, just. We just had a lot of discussions about, you know, marketing and about how important things are in your life. And one thing that I led a discussion on was there's a really good book on how to deliver a TED Talk. It's a really short book that people can buy on Amazon, and there's some questions about. What's created the most misery in your life, what's created the most joy in your life. And I had people really just think about so that they can tell their story to people. It really is about everybody's life has something incredibly exciting or incredibly painful. And a lot of people think they, oh, I've never done anything super amazing. Things are kind of boring. And it's actually not true. I mean, if you really think about your own experiences, every human being has plenty of stuff that they can write about, talk about, do presentations on. I'm going to try to pull it up. While we're sitting here talking, we'll see if I can pull up the exact questions, because my mind truly is.

This was part of what you did at the brainstorm.

Yeah, yeah. There's this cool little book on how to deliver a TED Talk, and I'll see if I can find the questions. I'm literally looking at this through a Kindle, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to. I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull it off, but we'll see. But what'd you do all week? I mean, you interviewed J.R. what did you think of that?

What did you think of that? That was kind of interesting.

It was like, a testament to how great I am. No, look, I mean, first off, this.

Is the most valuable episode we've ever done. In your opinion, huh? Yeah, that was pretty good. I really. I liked that. That was. It was fun. And then when we put.

No, here's the thing, though. We're gonna have to get Jerry picture for Facebook. You know, we're gonna have to get JR to do an actual episode on him and his knowledge of marketing. Because one of the things that Jared. Now, what did I think of the interview? I thought is great. I mean, he talked about everyone I know and all these linkings and genius networking. So from my standpoint, it's pretty awesome. The thing, though, is Jarrah knows so damn much about every aspect of marketing that there's so many things that if we were to do an episode and just ask him, you know, what does marketing mean and what are the most important things to know. And what about, you know, salesmanship and all that sort of stuff? I mean, he, you know, there's so many things that he would be able to, you know, speak to. So I think, you know, I think doing an episode with him just simply about, you know, his knowledge of marketing would be incredibly useful.

Yes, I agree.

Yep. So, and I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here trying to find this Dean. So why don't you, why don't you buy us some time here while I'm on this search?

Well, buy you some time. I'll tell you.

It was. I highlighted this and I'm not finding it. This is weird.

Well, there you go. Let me talk about something while you're looking because I had my golf buddies down for our 14th annual golf extravaganza. I've known these guys since second grade. And so every spring we get together and have five or six days where we just play golf non stop. And that was just this past Wednesday to Sunday. And one of the things that I noticed, I took a picture of it and put it on my Facebook. There was a sign. We played at Celebration and there's a sign on one of the holes in the back where it's tree lined, so there's woods on the left. And my friend Mike hit his ball into the woods. And when we went up to where it was and we start looking in, there's a sign that says if you're reading this sign, you need to come and see us. And it was the Golf Academy, which is like where they have all the golf lessons there at Celebration. And I thought, you know, talk about selecting your target audience. Right? Somebody who's firing balls into the woods. And so I've been noticing situational opportunities like that, signs where the next day we were at Diamondback and there was a sign on the ninth tee that said hungry call ahead and we'll have your food ready by the time you get to the clubhouse thinking there's an opportunity. It's all during unit experience stuff where you're thinking through where your target audience is and what's going to be valuable to them. And I started noticing all the different opportunities like that with signs. And it kind of reminded me of when Snapple launched their mango flavor of Snapple. They contracted with the Mango Growers association to put stickers on 10 million mangoes that said 10 now available in Snapple. And talk about getting right to your target audience. I realized how important and significant those kind of sign and getting in front of people Messages are. And I'm kind of building this little collection of them now, both good and bad, where you're kind of intersecting experience. And I thought, that's kind of a cool opportunity. One of the golf courses we had, we were playing on Friday or Saturday, and it looked like it was going to rain. And they had a sign by the cash register that said, no rain checks today. And I said to the guy at the counter, I said, so you only offer rain checks on sunny days? He said, yeah, pretty much. If it says rain's in the forecast, we don't offer rain checks. I said, well, do you really need to put today in these signs? I mean, essentially, they don't offer rain checks. It was just kind of funny how you get. Some signs are kind of customer attractive and some are customer repellent. It's hedging their bet. No rain checks today. Like on a day where it might rain. We're not going to offer any rain checks today.

So what did you tell that guy?

We just laughed. He realized how silly it was to say today. It's like, so if you don't offer them on rainy days, then you don't really offer rain checks. Because if it's a sunny day, nobody's going to need a rain check. So they don't put the sign up. They only put the sign up on days that it looks like it's going to rain. Just seems ridiculous, you know?

Yes. I like it, though. I think it just. I think it's good for their brand.

It really is good for their brand.

Oh, here, hold on. Let me interrupt this announcement.

I found questions.

Okay, so one of the. Here. And I ran this discussion with this. And so I had people write down, what is the greatest lesson I ever learned? What is the greatest joy I ever experienced? What is the greatest misery I ever experienced, and what is my life's mission and how can I enlist others to join my crusade? And I recommended people answer those questions and take that and use that as the basis for thinking about their life, their company, what they want to communicate. And everyone really found that incredibly valuable. But the value in something like that, which, you know, there's a lot of books that you read that have really good questions and a lot of books that will say, now sit down and fill out these questions. You know, and I think the more that people read things electronically, it's not like they're sitting down and writing out the questions or typing it up or whatever. They just read the questions. They don't do the questions. They don't really answer the questions. They may quickly think about it in their head, but that's different than stopping people for a few minutes and having everybody write. And by doing that, it makes all the difference in the world. Those are four pretty powerful questions, especially if you ever want to give a powerful talk. You know, if you think about TED talks, that's kind of what people are talking about. And they're setting it up to, you know, persuade others to embrace their thought, their idea, their cause, their mission, that sort of thing. So anyway, that's it. So let's go back to your. You posted a sign on I love a bench on I love marketing talk about that.

Well, the bench was there was a sign and you've probably seen these where the sign said you just proved sign advertising works.

Right. And that's on ilovemarketing.com that's the message.

That is kind of pretty funny actually. It's almost like, what's your definition that it worked? I mean, I posted that on my Facebook and people get the discussion of that. Is that really? That's like how people measure success of their website by hits. But does that prove it works, that somebody saw that message and it's. When you look at the definition.

Yeah, it's kind of like bragging about how getting a girl's phone number somehow equates to your getting married.

That's right.

I got her number. Well, have you even called it? It's probably the wrong number. I was just going to say, is.

That really her number?

No, but you see those little type of Valpak type coupon mailers that they'll do direct mail and it's like, see, advertising does work. You're reading this right now. You've probably seen that one.

Yes, exactly. That's the whole thing.

Then there's that little frog one that's on the clear mailers, that's like a postcard. Eye popping advertising works. And then there's a frog with big red eyes and it's eye popping, whatever that means.

Yeah, exactly.

So people do notice things, but that doesn't mean that they buy things. I had an interesting discussion with Richard Branson about brands and you know, about the Virgin brand, which truly Virgin does have a brand. I said, what do you think is the most. The biggest brand in the world? He's like, well, he goes, probably the most respected is Apple. The most well known is probably Coca Cola. And he's like, what do you think? I said, well, I mean, things like McDonald's and you know, can't say that's the best in terms of, you know, the quality of the service, but in terms of the amount of people that know it, you know. And there was a lot of ones I was thinking of, like, you know, recent companies. And when I say recent over the last, you know, 20 years or whatever, Starbucks, you know, things like that. But, you know, it was really interesting. And he said, you know, there's a lot of. He's like, virgin has a great brand for even companies that are way bigger than Virgin, but just the sheer volume of the brand. And it was kind of interesting talking with him because I said, you know, when you were climbing out of balloons and Steve Jobs put you in the Apple commercial way Back when, the 1984 one, were you doing that strategically because you knew it was going to get you pr, or are you just fricking crazy and jumping out of fricking balloons and everything? And he's like, just doing my thing. I didn't really know if it was going to lead to anything. It's hard to say how much he actually intuitively knew that because I described him as an intuitive entrepreneur. And I said, when I was in the brainstorm, I was talking about him, but I didn't say, richard, do you agree with my analysis of you? But later at dinner when we were having. We were just sitting down talking, I said, you are an intuitive entrepreneur, in my opinion. You've not read a lot of books. I go, do you agree with that? And he's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. You just kind of pick things up without thinking about it too much. I don't think most people are like that.

I don't think so. It's interesting that this whole branding idea. I went over a had lunch with Nick Nanton a couple of weeks ago, and we're going to have him on actually talk about this idea of branding because he's actually got the clearest kind of definition of branding that that I've heard. And he really talks about branding as your story and getting your story out there, getting it told in a way that you want it to be told. That can happen kind of on an individual basis. He's got a lot of really great concepts around that. So I think it'd be good to revisit this concept of branding and have some perspective from a guy who understands the value of branding, but also understands direct marketing, realizing how they work together, you know.

Well, you know, the thing with him is, you know, his whole thing is about celebrity branding and, you know, helping people that, you know, really. And then I'll Tell you, there's a lot of people that just want to be recognized. Right? I mean. I mean, I make jokes with all of my, you know, all of my clients that are book authors and speakers and doing seminars and, you know, all that sort of stuff is that, you know, there's this side. A person that does that stuff has an ego that, you know, they want to be admired, they want to be heard. I mean, you know, even me and you, I mean, we're sitting here doing this podcast and everything. I mean, on one level, you know, we like people to listen to us and to take our advice and hopefully think nice things about me. Maybe not so much about you, but, you know, think highly of us. And so this whole process of celebrity branding, whatever business you're in, if you can cater to someone's need and desire to be recognized and to be loved and to be, you know, edified.

But it's interesting. Can you. Most brands. I've been thinking about this, too, that most of the biggest brands are also personified by a founder that goes along with it hand in hand. Like Virgin being a great example of that. The Virgin and Richard Branson, United and Starbucks and Howard Schultz and Apple and Steve Jobs and Zappos and Tony Hsieh and Amazon and Jeff Bezos and Facebook and Marks.

Well, Coca Cola, who knows? In the beginning of the days of Coca Cola, there's a whole story behind that, which I unfortunately don't know. I watched a documentary on Coca Cola, but I forgot most of it. Yeah, but you take, like, McDonald's. I mean, if they didn't have the, you know, Ray Kroc, but, you know, they created Ronald McDonald. A lot of people have their mascots and their personalities.

The Jolly Windy Giant.

There's not Wendy's from, you know, daytime.

There's not a lot of that now, is there? Like, in modern branding, you know, like in the 60s, there was this period where you were linking a brand to, you know, like the Jolly Green Giant and the Michelin man and Mr. Clean and all kinds of Personas like that that were not really people. Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima. And you think of all of those that are really kind of linked to sort of.

Yeah, yeah.

Colonel Sanders. Can you separate a really big brand from the founder from the person? Can you think of examples of a company that a modern company that's not linked with its owner or Harley Davidson? I don't know. Is there a Harley or a Davidson?

Yeah, I don't know where it originated from, but. Well, you know, you Got Gillette, but that was by King Gillette.

King Gillette. And that's in the 1800s.

I mean. Yeah. You know what? I imagine if we even just put it out there, here's what I think would happen. I don't think there's a yes or no answer. I think there's so many different brands that you can show evidence that, yeah, in this particular case it is, and this one it isn't. The funny thing is, at what point does it actually take off? One of the things I remember for years, Dan Kennedy would do his presentation on unique selling proposition. He would use the example of, you know, at one point in time when he asked people, you know, what's the battery company with a little pink bunny in the drum? And he'd ask people to raise their hands, you know, and he said, okay, raise your hand if you wrote. Tell people to write it down. Write down the name of the battery company. Little pink bunny in the drum. And, you know, he's like, you know, and how many of you wrote down Duracell? And he's like, at one point, you know, 30% of the people would write down Durasone. He's like, well, every ready Energizer spent a billion dollars to get people to remember a pink bunny in the drum. But still, 30% of the people went to the store and bought the wrong battery. And he would use that as an example of the waste involved in brand building, marketing and advertising. But then later, many years later, I actually met. And that's a great example. I mean, it really is a good example of unique selling proposition. And what is your message to market match and all that sort of stuff and how do you convey it? But I actually met an executive from Energizer Everready. Basically, he was telling me about how much they focus on point of purchase displays in stores. And there, I mean, and this guy was extremely knowledgeable about every form of display and product placement and eye level and where it sits in the grocery store and in, you know, Walgreens and, you know, various, you know, stores that. Which is almost every store that would, you know, major department store that would carry those batteries and how much of their sales had to do with just knowledge of, you know, in store distribution. So the question becomes, well, what's driving the sales? Is it the TV commercials and the message there is it in store distribution? And so there's. There's so many layers of how things are actually sold with big companies and with distribution in different ways, you know, because if you, if you get your product into a highly trafficked. You know, you can have the shittiest food on the planet, but. But if it's the only food being served in a completely packed football stadium, people are still going to buy it. It has nothing to do with quality. It has to do with supply and demand. Right. So where it becomes confusing, though, to small businesses especially, like many of the people listening to I love marketing because I'm sure the vast majority of people listening to I love marketing are not executives at big brands. They probably wouldn't like what we have to say. You know, there's small business owners just like me and you were when we were first starting out, and you see all of these pieces of marketing that are on commercials and are on the Internet and that are in stores and you actually think that gives you a big picture of how stuff is sold and it only gives you one piece of a big puzzle. And so a lot of times people just waste so much time and energy thinking that this is what's causing this to work when it's not causing that to work at all. Am I making sense?

Well, you are. They're attributing the fact that maybe it was something else that they had going for them that really was the catalyst. It wasn't so much their skill as branders or anything like that. It reminds me you're talking about the bad food and stuff. My friend Neil and I owned a hot dog cart years ago when we were in college. And over one summer we partnered or got the rights to be outside of this nightclub where they didn't serve food inside. And we would go on Friday and Saturday nights and we'd make 11 or $1,200 in. In those one night selling hot dogs and sausages and chips and soft drinks to starving drunk people who'd been coming out after dancing and there's nothing to eat in sight. But it wasn't anything to do with our skill as marketers. It was about our ability to pick the right place. And I often talk about it wouldn't be. We could push that hot dog cart up and down every street in town all day long and not sell as many hot dogs as we did in those four hours. Being there from 9 o' clock to 1 o' clock at night in front of a starving audience.

Right, Right. So what was your marketing lesson from that? How would that.

I think so much of it is a starving audience. That's exactly what Gary Halbert talked about. The one advantage is having a starving crowd. And if you're going to Start a hot dog stand or a restaurant. It's really about having an audience that really wants what you. Wants what you have, you know, and being. It's like the difference between setting up a motel or a restaurant right on the interstate as opposed to setting it, you know, way back on a deserted side road. You know, you've got the traffic. There was a book that one of the guys that wrote Positioning wrote called Al Rise.

Jack Trout.

Yeah, Horse sense.

Yeah, Horse sense is great.

It's picking the right horse. You know, it's picking the right horse, partnering, or being in the right location. I think about you sort of picked.

The right horse when you hooked up with me for. I love marketing.

Pretty much right back at you. The.

Hopefully people pick up on that slight gig. No, no. Well, explain the premise of horse sense, and then it'll make more sense with.

The way you're talking. It's like picking, being in the right place for your situation, like riding. It's almost like creating a situation where you've got a symbiotic relationship where you're fortuitously placed in the right position. I'll give you an example. I have a client, Churchill Mortgage. They're the only mortgage company that advertises on the Dave Ramsey Show. It started out that Mike Hardwick, the owner of Churchill Mortgage, was friends with Dave Ramsey and was the only sponsor of the Dave Ramsey Show. When Dave started out on the radio in Nashville on a little AM station, one station that wasn't even really able to be heard in all of Nashville, and, you know, Mike started out as the only sponsor, and he was a frequent guest on the show. And as Dave Ramsey grew and became more and more more popular and took over a national audience, Mike continued to be the only sponsor, the only mortgage sponsor. As Dave grew, their mortgage company grew. Now they're in several states, and they do millions of dollars in revenue every year based on picking and aligning with a good horse. You know, picking the right horse.

Right. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is that a lot of people don't realize there are some incredibly smart people, good products, that just their time has not come. It was the, you know, they didn't pick the right horse. And a lot of people that are very successful, part of their success had just choosing the right horse to ride and, you know, getting on the right trend and, you know, going to the starving crowd sort of thing. I'd like to ask you a couple things. You know, like Gene Schwartz would talk about, you know, there's no such thing as a Boring product. There's you know, just how it's explained, how it's written about. I want to ask you for one. Do you. Well I see that first. Do you agree with that?

I do, yeah.

So how does that. Because I'm trying to sit and think, you know, to the person listening to this right now, taking the most value out of our, you know, kind of free form conversation here, just talking about random stuff. You know, if you're having trouble selling what it is you're selling is it you haven't conveyed it and explained it well enough, you aren't in the right place with it. You know, for instance, let's take a brand like Louis Vuitton. You know, so you've got someone that a brand new startup, you know, purse company, whatever, you know, although they make luggage and wallets and you know, accessory and all kinds of stuff but you know, very expensive, very high end and you know they run pretty much what many fashion, high end fashion accessories from you know, watches and stuff, image ads conveying the brand, conveying status. But you know, very little, you know, they're not doing. Calls to action. Go get a free report on the seven reasons why this Louis Vuitton purse is better than whatever. They're not doing that stuff but they're maintaining a very big business selling very well positioned, high price status purchases that everyone that would, you know, will not realize in their emotional brain is what is, you know, triggering the desire for that. Although they'll you, oh yeah, it's very high quality. Well yeah, take, take that, take the Louis Vuitton brand off that. I guarantee you it'll be a different perspective if you know, there would still be the die hards that will still buy it because you know, of what it represents, represents in their mind. But you know, one thing and the reason I bring this up is you know, a new startup of purses that would look at what Louis Vuitton is doing for their advertising and just tried to copy their ad would be like, would sell nothing and they would be like what the hell? How do they make this work? Well maybe it's because they have you know, stores and high end malls. Maybe you know, because you know you go to the Four Seasons in LA and there's going to be a store in there. I mean, I mean all these things feed into it.

A lot of that is being in front of the right people, right?

Yeah. And the advertising isn't what is driving it. So you know, part of a startup.

Like that, like you know, one of the best things that could happen to a company like, that would be and has been for a lot of companies to be one of Oprah's favorite things, for instance, where they would otherwise be unknown. And Oprah comes out as, this is my favorite new purse or my favorite new slippers. And all of a sudden, that can be a brand builder. It can automatically catapult somebody into. Into the right situation.

Yeah. What is the Spice Girl's name that's married to the soccer player?

Posh Spice. Yes. No, no, no, no. What is her name? Victoria Beckham.

Oh, that's right. Posh. Here we go. Oh, Scary Spice. Baby Spice. It could be any of them. Whatever. No, but I think it was Victoria Beckham. Yeah. Who was. See, again, my brain is not working all that well today. The soccer player, you know, the dude that plays soccer, one of the most famous athletes on the planet. So I think she. There was a picture taken of her in a bookstore years ago. I think I got this, you know, holding up a. Like, just holding the book Skinny Bitch. Remember the book Skinny Bitch, Right. Yeah. And, like, that one photo. And God knows if she ever even read the book. Right. Just holding the damn thing. But it just led to tons of sales of Skinny Bitch.

Yes.

Which is a, you know, a book that is, you know, for vegans very much. I mean, filled with profanity. Actually quite an amusing book. I think it was very funny. But, you know, this. But that book just. That was one of the things that just helped make that book take off. And so some of these things are accidental, but some of these can be strategized. You know, at the time that we're doing this recording, the dove commercial on YouTube is, like, getting millions and millions of views, and many people have seen it. And, you know, as I've had great conversations with JR about which I should interview JR we should interview JR Just on this topic of that, like, dove commercial as an example. Have you seen the one?

I know the one you're talking about. The police will explain it so that everybody knows.

Well, it's like a guy who's a forensic. What would you call it? You know, he'd, like, draw.

What do they call him? A sketch artist? A police sketch.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, you know, they have women come in, and the whole premise of the video is that, you know, women are much harsher on how they view themselves than what other people, because they had other people that. That they met that would describe to this artist who never saw the person what they look like, and the person would sketch them. And then the person would describe themselves to the artist without the artist seeing them. And the way that they describe themselves versus when the. That same person was described by someone else, they came out more beautiful. And the whole thing is, you know, love yourself. You're. There's so much beauty, you know, that sort of thing.

Now you're more beautiful than a lot.

Of people that are listening to me, which could be like vicious YouTube comments, could be like, what the hell? That's not what I see, Joe. That's not my interpretation of it. Whatever. The point is, it hits an emotional nerve. And that video, Dove putting that together, I mean, this isn't. Now, the public has seen this beautiful video with this great meaning behind it, instilling and evoking great emotions. But, you know, they are manufacturing this stuff. I mean, there is very smart marketing going behind what is the emotion we want to elicit with this video that's going to lead to people associating this with our brand? And that's the part that nobody wants to hear. And certainly the executives behind it are not going to admit to the fact that we're trying to toy with people's emotions by getting them to feel a certain thing. And no matter if it's real or not, if you watch a movie and it makes you cry, like old Yellow or something, I don't know if anyone can remember that movie, but if it makes you cry, where you literally can escape the association that someone's making this movie because they're trying to make money with the movie, or they're watching this video and it's being sponsored by Dove, it kind of ruins the experience if you sit and think about the commercialization association with it, because it's got a really cool meaning behind it. But you know, what. What the hell do you think they're doing that for? You know, so. But it all. It all goes down to, you know, so you can sell a product without even talking about what the thing actually does. If you get the right association, or like, you going back to what you said with Oprah, if you just get it to, oh, like Oprah's favorite thing. Well, you know, I have. I know like, and trust Oprah. If she says this, then I go with this. So if you don't have all of those benefits, the best thing that me and Dean know how to do is the thing that you should be doing even if you don't have all those benefits, which is going back to the 8 profit activator, selecting a single target market and going through all of the eight procivators. Now here's the thing. Thing. If Louis Vuitton did that, if Virgin did that, now a lot of them do that. So when I say, I'm not saying they don't do that, but I'm saying if you take a lot of ridiculous image and brand building advertising and add the elements of the before, during and after nait profit activators, you're just going to take an existing distribution system, an existing brand, you're just simply going to make it stronger, you're going to make the advertising more, more effective, you're going to make it work. And if you don't have all the advantages of an existing brand, tons of in store distribution, years of dumping money and work and effort into trying to get the public to know about something, providing great products or services. And great, of course is in the mind of the buyer. There's a lot of people that think McDonald's is great because it tastes good to them. There's other people like myself that yes, I can admit that eating McDonald's french fries tastes good. Although some people are like, I hate their french fries, whatever, but I don't eat that stuff. And I haven't ate that stuff in a decade because it's not from my vantage point that's not good food to put into my body. It's not even food. But that being said, good is in the mind of the person purchasing it, whatever. But like if you don't have all the advantages of like a lot of brands have, then you, you have to do, you know, if you want to survive, if you want to have a successful business.

You know, you have to often see though is they don't often see the path that a big brand took to get to be that big brand. And they put up the big brands as examples of what they're trying to do. Well, look at Virgin. They've got 400 different companies and they're all a big global brand. But what they don't see is if you trace the tree of that all the way back, it started out as a student magazine that they turned into a mail order record operation that was profitable, that they turned into record stores, that they turned into a recording studio, that they signed Mike Oldfield, that did Tubular Bells and the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones and Janet Jackson and all these artists and made all this money and then started the, you know, Virgin Airlines. They don't see that it started out as a single business in a small location, you know, a student magazine for in London. It's A different thing. People look at Oprah and if they're personal development people or they have an empowerment type of Persona that they're trying to build their brand, they don't realize that Oprah started out as a local Chicago talk show. And only because she dominated the Chicago market did she get to syndicate to other audiences and become a national phenomenon. Every big successful brand started out as a local thing that they dominated their market. Market. I've had this conversation with a lot of people lately who have big aspirations and big opportunities and want to be global brands. But the most valuable thing that they could do initially is to artificially constrain what they do to a very specific target market and dominate that market and then roll that out, you know?

Yeah, well, I was talking to Richard about like, growing Virgin, starting with Virgin Records and stuff, and he made this very interesting comment, you know, and he said, you know, a lot of it, he's like, I was just lucky. I mean, I think he really meant it where he was just like, at the right place at the right time. Now it's more than luck because there's a lot of stuff he was orchestrating. But orchestrating a lot of stuff at the right time in the right place is a good thing to do. And, you know, it's a lot easier to spin off Virgin Airlines that you sell for a billion dollars. I mean, that you sell the record company Virgin Records for a billion dollars and then invest that money into an airlines carrying the same name because you've got this brand association with it. But that shit is not. You can't replicate that.

That's what I'm saying. That's exactly.

I mean, so what happens, you know, if there's any takeaway from our conversation here today, is it's cool to study and look at things and historical stuff. And there's. There's neat lessons and there's cool things to learn and, you know, there's things to aspire to. But, man, I mean, you know, don't try to replicate something that can't be replicated without knowing the whole story. You know, it's kind of like, have you seen the movie Life of PI?

I have not.

Okay, well, there's a scene where he's on this floating island and, you know, it's beautiful, but at night the island becomes this carnivorous island and it will eat, you know, anything that's on it. So he needs to get the hell off this island. Right? But it's like if you just saw the beauty of it, but you didn't know it was going to eat you at night.

Well, there's that, yeah.

But a lot of it is people start going down a path where they think they see it, but it's a trap. And there are many people that are listening to this podcast that can attest to, oh, I started following this advice because I saw it working for this other person. I was told to do this by this person that sold me advertising. Or I went to college and got a business degree and we did a case study on branding and we tried to do. Almost every person can attest to advice that they followed without having the complete picture that sent them down a path that either hurt them financially, some cases bankrupted them, wasted many hours. And so part of it is just be careful thinking you've got the whole picture. Because some things are worth questioning, including anything that we would say too. I mean, I think people are just smart to not take anything as complete and 100% truth in all cases, in all contexts, without knowing what's up. And see the beauty of direct response, to take this back to direct response is that at least as you're testing, you're getting feedback. And I don't mean feedback like opinion feedback. I mean, they are voting with their credit cards, they are voting with their opt ins, they are voting with their response. Do they like you? Do they not like you? If you're truly using direct response, you are being in as smart and as safe and as intelligent of a position of building and growing and communicating a product service company experience as, you know, as intelligently as I think can be done. And there are elements that you have to learn. You know, you need to study persuasion, you need to understand, you know, the mindset of the person that you're selling to, the benefits of what it is you're selling, the pain of not having it. And, you know, there's a lot to it. But it's so worth learning those things because most people don't make it. And the reason they don't make it is because their knowledge, their willingness, their application of these principles, these strategies, these methods.

And it's interesting how all of those things are scalable. I talked about this idea of starting as because most of the times people who are starting out don't have big budgets and they don't have the ability to really take on a national or global audience at once. But they could take on Chicago or they could take on Dallas or Atlanta or wherever they are, artificially constraining the geography just to. I often say that to real estate agents. They would be so much better off if their real estate license limited them to only sell real estate within the city limits of where they live. They're notorious for wanting to take these big territories that go over three counties and spread themselves thin. I think the same thing applies to brand building. You know, if you're going to become a phenomenal brand, you might as well start and build big buzz in a local, you know, in a local market too, right? Because that's all, you know, you got to get good at getting good first.

You know, Dan Sullivan, he always mentions this thing when he sees people talking like, oh, I want to save the world, I want to change the world. I want to, you know, I want to teach kids education differently. I, you know, I mean, when people mention these grandiose things and he's like, you know, we want it. We want to sell to, you know, large groups of people or we want to change large groups of people, he'll always bring it back to, why don't you start with one, right? You know, why don't you get off this bullshit of, you know, you're going to change the world? Like, if you can't change one person, how in the hell are you going to change the world? And he says, in a lot of ways, it's a cop out. People actually pretend like they've got such big grandiose ideas because, you know, it's big. I mean, I can affect the globe. This can change the lives of a billion people. He's like, well, you haven't changed the lives of three people yet, so what the hell are you talking about?

There was a thing on 60 Minutes about this teacher, this guy in New York who's like, his goal is he's not going to change the world, he's going to change the three blocks in Harlem where his school is.

Right. Which is really cool. And I have to say this. And then we're going to wrap up here in a few minutes. You know, we've talked about this before. Gary Halbert used to sell pitney bows like postage machines before he became like, you know, a world leading direct, you know, mail expert. And they used to sell, you know, door to door to businesses. And I think this was in Ohio. And he told me the story about how everyone that worked in the company, like, when he went there, maybe there was like five people or something that were salespeople. I mean, there's more people in the company, but there's like five main salespeople that covered certain territories. And when they would bring on a new Person, they would have up on the wall the zip code, streets, territories of, you know, where, you know, George sold this area, Gary sold this area, Bob sold this area. And so if they hired a new guy named, you know, Dean as an example, they would go in and take that existing territory map and they would shrink everyone's territory so that they would open up a territory location for Dean, you know, the new guy or whoever. And basically he said every time, you know, during the time he worked there, they hired several salespeople and they would come in and they would shrink everyone's territory. And it would initially piss off every person because their, you know, their amount of size of areas where they could go and sell to was getting smaller, and it would piss them all off. And he said, what happened? Every time the person's territory was shrunk, they would end up making more money because they had less stuff to deal with. They didn't have to drive as far. They had to go deeper with the existing, you know, and so it's like the acres of diamonds sort of thing where, you know, the money is right there in your backyard, but you're, you know, climbing up a mountain, you know, 100 miles away, trying to find diamonds because you're just all that travel sort of thing. There's a million different ways to spin this analogy, but the point is, that is why profit activator number one. And by the way, I should probably mention this more frequently if you're a brand new listener to I love marketing and you just happen to listen to this episode first. We have covered so much in previous episodes. Go and listen to them at Ilove Market. Scroll through there. There's topics on every part of the before, during and after. We have a free report that, you know, is not pitching you on buying a set of DVDs. We have stuff that we offer, but it's very soft sell. I mean, you know, people, I think, have to go through obstacle courses to give us money. I think it's kind of funny. But, you know, go to ilovemarketing.com and download the free report Breakthrough DNA and read it. And if you haven't read it in a while, if you're a longtime listener to I love marketing, read it again. It's always a good reminder. Select a single target. Market kind of goes to the same thing. Gary. Just shrink your territory. And I even say this, for me, one of my biggest dilemmas with being me is I have so many opportunities thrown at me. And I'm a guy that is, like, wired to say yes, that I have to train myself. No, no, no, no, no. You know, focus on what I got here, you know, and, you know, add bright, shiny objects. All those sort of stuff is appealing to me. And, you know, so selecting a single target market is just, you know, one thing. Like Mary Ellen Trippy says, you know, one thing done equals money. Five things undone equals no money. You know, one thing with fracture, you know, five things, five areas with fractured focus is, is not going to do you anywhere near as powerful as one thing done. Well, and I think there's this real belief that you should not have all your eggs in one basket and you should diversify. And I would say sometimes one of the best things you could do is put all your eggs in one basket and just get that basket working. Because having your eggs spread out everywhere, nothing's going to hatch. I mean, it won't, you know, if you're one chicken and there's 4,000 eggs, I mean, guess what? You know, it's not gonna, you know, you got to sit on one of them and heat that bad boy up. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna do that algae because they're getting really stupid at this point, but yeah, I just pictured you deed in a big chicken.

Suit with like an egg eating that bad boy up.

Catch that little ticket. All right, so look, we got to wrap up here. I think we should do a future episode with Junior.

Yeah, let's.

Because JR's brilliant. He really is. Which he does a lot now. And granted, I really appreciated the last episode he did. He said really incredibly nice things about me. JR is a great guy. He's done tremendous amounts of stuff for, for me and for the Make a Wish Foundation. And his impact is far reaching because he's like one of these behind the scenes guys that helps shift paradigms and helps strategize them. He's done incredible amounts of work to help Jared Cohen and Eric Schmidt with their new book the New Digital Age. Peter Diamandis with his Abundance program and workbook and everything. And I mean, and so JR is awesome and I think we should do an episode with him, but where we actually have him reveal a lot of the techniques and strategies and things that he knows because he's read like every single thing that J. Abraham's ever written and all that sort of stuff.

I love that.

So you take this, you set this ship off to sail. You have the last words. Now it's in your court. Take it. Take us away.

It's kind of been a grab bag episode, hasn't it? We talked about a lot of stuff, but all really kind of valuable things. And I think having JR on would be a great, maybe even one of the next couple of episodes. It'd be good to do that sooner than later.

And if you haven't heard that episode with Dean and Jer while I was on Necker island, go and listen to it. Because if nothing else, if you have any opinion of me whatsoever, I can't imagine that episode would do anything but make it better.

You did a good job edifying old Joe there, little buddy. I think that's great. So here's the focus from this episode as I see it is we kind of revisited this idea of branding and thinking globally. People focused on what they can do to emulate what the big brands that they see are doing without really understanding the whole story behind them. I think both of us would agree that our advice on that would be to start with something that manageable, start with a smaller market that you can dominate and expand out from there. I'm looking forward to continuing this whole brand building awareness that we've been talking about. I think it'd be good to have Nick Nim's perspective too, to add to that collection of Brandon and I always love to hear it. Always one of those topics that creates a lot of conversation. So I'd love to hear what people have to say in the comments too about the brand building ideas that we talk about.

Yep, ain't no more thing. So that's it. So yeah, everyone have a wonderful evening. We will talk day or morning or wherever it is and we'll talk with you next time.

Bye bye bye bye.