The One Where Dean And Joe Look Back On 2013 - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #140

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast, Everybody. It's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish together again.

Yeah. And you know, Dean, what the heck are we going to talk about?

You sounded so excited about it right there.

You know, I'm all right. I've had a rough week.

Yeah, you, haven't you? What a way to end your year.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're now into the, you know, we're now into the new year, of course, and the time we're recording this. Yeah. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to everybody. And we hope 2014 is going to be awesome for you. And if you listen to I Love Marketing on a regular basis and make it as important of a ritual as brushing your teeth and showering and paying your bills and eating healthy and exercising and telling people you love them and all that. If you make it more important than what I'm doing. Did you mention that? Flossing. Flossing too, of course. Putting the toilet paper on the roll with the paper out, not under, facing down. Right, right from the top, so it rolls down. Doing it the other way just means you have more psychological problems than you're probably aware of. And yeah, there's all kinds of issues going on. But if you listen to I Love Marketing, your chances of at least enhancing your business life and your sales career are going to definitely be greatly enhanced. You're going to have a lot of elf strategies, you're going to be introduced to some of the greatest thinkers in the world. And if you're new to I Love Marketing, you know, hey, welcome. And if you've been with us ever since the very beginning, thanks for all your support. Thank you for listening. And you wouldn't continue to be listening to this stuff if you didn't find it valuable or slightly entertaining. Although if entertainment is your main objective, there's certainly more entertaining individuals that do podcasts than me and Dean. But in terms of marketing savvy and just strategies that work and giving away the farm, I mean, we kind of do that stuff. So we're going to teach how to be better farmers and have a self milking cow and all kinds of stuff. So what do you want to talk about, Dean?

Well, you know, sometimes life moves pretty fast and if you don't slow down and take a look once in a while, you might miss it.

Yeah.

Have you said that? Ferris Bueller. Okay, do you remember?

I do now. I mean, he's like, when you. Who said that? I'm like, well, it sounds like many People have said similar things. But Ferris Bueller.

But Ferris Bueller specifically.

Okay.

But, you know, I thought it'd be a good idea for you and I to kind of just look back and think about what were some of the concepts and the discoveries and the learning and new ideas and lessons that you learned over the last year.

Yep.

And paying attention to everything that are going to carry with us into 2014 and make it even more powerful.

Yeah. Well, I can share a few. We can go back and forth. You know, I.

Let's go back and forth.

Yeah, I learned. I learned quite a few things. Continuing with my heavy involvement in Strategic Coach and my relationship with Dan Sullivan and starting my. Well, I shouldn't even say starting. Continuing with the 10X Talk podcast with Dan Sullivan, which recently hit the 100,000 download mark, which is cool. Just the importance of planning. People can plan to. And a lot of people confuse activity or planning with, like, actually getting something done. And planning is designed to help whatever you're going to do, so you do it better or you not do it at all. So there's ways to use planning functionally and not very functionally. There's a lot of people that are totally wrapped up in paralysis by analysis. I started doing TM Transcendental Meditation last year. I got certified in Fairfield, Iowa, where they have the Maharishi University. And me and Brendan Bouchard went down there and got awards from the city of Fairfield and got tours everywhere and went to listen to the brain scientists explain how TM actually does affect the brain. It's not just a practice that a lot of people confuse as just a spiritual practice. I mean, there's atheists that do tm. And so it opened up my mind to a lot of things. And I used to very much believe in the Gary Halbert saying, which I still do, which is, you'll accomplish more through movement than you will through meditation. But after really getting certified and trained in doing tm, I realize you actually can accomplish a lot through meditation and choosing what. Not even to get involved with. Which leads to another thing I heard Gary say early on in my relationship with him years ago was some games in life, the only way you win is you don't play. And so it's learning what games to play and what not to. So with Dan, Dan Sullivan is such a great thinker. He's in my 25k group. I spend a lot of time with him, as do you. I mean, we're both friends with Dan at a very high level. And, you know, he does an Impact Filter, one of his tools before any serious speech or article or project or anything that we do that he does. And you know, just sitting down and doing the thinking. You know, kind of like your 50 minute focus finder, which is always a great way that we have recommended in the past for people to start the new year. You know, go back and watch, you know, your 50 minute presentation on focus, which is one of the very first things we put up at. I love marketing. You can just type in Focus Finder into the search box@ilovemarketing.com and listen to that. But you know, one of the greatest things I got is just the reinforcement of if, you know, plan to fail, if you don't fail the plan sort of thing that that became evident.

How do you, do you have time set aside for tm? Do you have a ritual or a routine or how does that, how do you.

Well, you know, I did an interview with Tony Horton who, you know, created, you know, the P90X program. You know, it's a beachbody.com product. It's an exercise program, P90X which is, you know, one of the biggest fitness programs of all time. And you know, I, we put that interview up as an episode, a bonus episode on. I love marketing, if anyone wants to hear that one. But you know, one of the things that I ask him, you know, when do you work out? And you know, is there a better time? He's like, you know, whenever you can fit it in. You know, sometimes it's in the morning, sometimes the afternoon. If you're traveling, sometimes it's at night. You know, the key is not when do you do it, it's that you do it. And so there are some people that are absolutely, you know, right after I got the training, I mean, I was pretty good at almost the same time every morning. But I'm a guy that travels a lot and I do events. So I don't ever have the same schedule, same day, same routine. I'm incredibly add. TM helps quite a bit with that. So usually in the morning before you eat anything. If I'm in a rush though, I'll do it a little bit later in the afternoon on a semi good day, you do it once. On a horrible day, you don't do it at all. Maybe you get too caught up. So there are times I've fallen off the wagon, so to speak, a few times with life episodes and stuff. But for the most part I've been more consistent with it than probably anything. And I never in a million years could Think I could sit down for two sessions, 20 minutes of time straight and be able to feel free. And it's, it's made a huge difference and I highly recommend it. You can.

That's what I was wondering is what, what do you feel the big difference is? So you do it. And I know it's interesting how you say that because a lot of times people think, you know, you said you've fallen off the wagon or whatever, that you're, that there's some scorecard that you're being judged on, you know, that you weren't perfect in doing it every day kind of thing. But don't you kind of look at it as a tool?

Yeah, it is a tool. And you know, you don't need to use it.

Belt that you know, when it's, when you have the time and you, and you especially even when you, when you need it, that you've got that to.

Well, there's a great guy I know who's a TM instructor named Bob Markowitz in Fairfield. He actually lives in Fairfield. If anyone ever goes there and wants to literally go through TM training, great place to do it. And you know, I talk to him on a regular basis. And earlier today I was doing a check in with him and we were like, literally just talking about it and then, you know, meditated. And he made this comment to me, he goes, you know, because his wife Carol, he's like, it's like taking a shower, you know, whenever, you know, doing TM is like taking a shower whenever you feel you just need to kind of clean things up, you know, you just do it so you don't beat yourself up. You can do it as often or not as you so choose. However, like exercise, consistency makes all the difference in the world. So if you really want to get the true benefits out of it, you know, you do it twice a day. Dan Sullivan, he meditates. Him and Babs, they meditate once a day. They used to do it twice a day. And they meditate in the morning for 20 minutes. And you have a mantra and you kind of just think it in your mind, but you don't try to force anything and you just don't listen to music. You just, you know, concentrate on effortlessly on a mantra. And I'll tell you, with as insanely active as my life and my brain has been, it is getting better and it is something that I am committed, you know, as I am right now, to continue to do. Because I think every month, every year that goes by that I stay consistent with it, it's just going to help me completely change the pace of how I respond to things in life versus react. So has it helped? Absolutely. Highly recommend it to anyone. There's a book called Transcendence that is a really good book. It's not a how book, it's a what book. It doesn't teach you how to do it, it just teaches you what it is and why to do it and all of the studies about it. And you know, it's a pretty good pitch for tm, but it's a book that, you know, is written by, you know, very renowned, you know, psychologist and psychiatrist and you know, people want to check that out. They can do that or check out tm.org, and John Haglin, who's been in what the bleep do we know and runs the David lynch foundation and tm. David lynch is a big proponent of tm. There's a lot of videos online. A lot of, you know, famous celebrities do it from, you know, Jerry Seinfeld to Oprah every day at Harpo, you know, I think it's 10 in the morning and something like 3:30 in the day. If all the employees of Harpo, Oprah's company can choose to do tm, I mean, that's how much of an important thing that Oprah has placed on the practice. Ellen DeGeneres, you know, Russell Simmons, Russell Brand, who, you know, we went and met backstage.

Yeah, I know Russell Simmons.

Yeah. And they've really packaged celebrities well too. I'll give them credit for that. The people@tm.org, i mean, they have a lot of famous people that, you know, have used it as a tool to, you know, being in the crazy world of entertainment to, you know, keep their sanity. So it's pretty powerful. That was good. You know, that wasn't a marketing strategy or business strategy per se that most people would think about. But you know, there's even, oh man, I can't remember the guy's name. He's a huge billion dollar financial guy who cred, you know, TM is being the most important thing he's done to make money. So. Yep.

Yep. Wow. Well, that's interesting. You know, I mean, you mentioned the Dan and that really was a big impact for me this year. You know, a lot of the things that Dan has been working on, a lot of my, my involvement with my strategic coach group and being with Dan and, and getting to spend time with him, I've really gotten a deeper understanding of the simplicity of the concepts that he's teaching, but the depth of them too. So like he this year he came out with his newest book, which is the 80% approach, which was really phenomenal. I mean that, that idea of the 80% approach of getting the first 80% done of something is really profound. And you know, I often talk about looking for breakthroughs, you know, where doing things, if you're not doing something in any one of the profit activators and then all of a sudden you do something, it's so much more of a breakthrough to go from zero to any kind of a result, that's an exponential improvement. But you know, as opposed to continually doing the same things that you are doing and looking for incremental improvements over it. And so when it, when the way Dan explained it and the way I really got it on a deep level this time is that the first 80% is where all the value is. I mean that's where the, the exponential gain is. Because you've gone from 0% to 80% of something done and out there. And even if you improve it by another 80%, you've really only improved from 80% to 96%. You've only improved it by 20%. Every other 80% effort only yields a 20% improvement. Does that make sense?

Right? Totally. I did a whole episode with Dan at 10x talk on the 80% approach and you're absolutely right. I mean it's a huge game changer in terms of how you approach and how you think about things and how you get stuff done. And if people can adopt that, that mindset and that is a skill, I mean, talk about all of the things that they've been reluctant to start or take on because they don't have a way of thinking about it.

So that coupled with, and it all builds on it, that Dan's whole focus now of 10 times going 10 times thinking of what your business would look like, growing it 10 times from now often can be kind of a scary thing. But when you temper that, when you balance it with his concept of the self managing company that you're now, it gives you this comfort. You know, you're thinking 10 times growth sounds scary, it sounds complicated, it sounds like hard work. But then you, you balance that with the counter effect of setting up a self managing company. And the bridge to doing all of that is thinking about your thinking. And so I've really recently gotten that on a deep, deep level. I mean that really is, it just all clicked for me that trilogy, you know, that perfect triangle there of thinking 10 times but thinking about it in a way that is going to be self managing and that the, the bridge that gets you there is thinking about your thinking. And that's kind of, that was a game changer for me for, for 2013. That's just some different type of thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, boy, I mean, it's really good.

I was just gonna say it's really. So it's culminated in a lot of the things that I've done recently when I look at this whole concept of the, the self milking cow being that of the idea that entrepreneurs that are frustrated are often frustrated because they're trying to be a self milking cow, they're trying to do all of the work themselves, they're trying to come up with the ideas, they're trying to package the ideas, get everything out there and realizing that in order to really get the most out of what you've got, the most out of your unique ability is to surround yourself with farmers that can help take the milk, can process the milk, can package the milk and get it out to market. All the things that, that somebody that can be done by other people, really free it up so that you can, so that you can focus on growing 10 times. You've got the ideas, you've got the, the, the intellectual capital, you know, that's really as entrepreneurs. So we have the ideas and the, the know how of what it is that we want to do and setting it up so that you can surround yourself with farmers who are working in their unique abilities to take your ideas and get them out into the world.

Yes, totally. Totally.

So my favorite thing of applying this whole the 80% approach to, to this was the 90 minute book that's been, that may be the big breakthrough for me this year in terms of understanding that how valuable books are as a way to start conversations and how it really is the first 80% that makes all the difference. You know, getting to the point where, you know, we've talked about it, that the most important thing if you're going to use a book as a, as a lead generator, as a conversation starter is that you really only need three things. You've got to have a book meaning you know, you got to have enough that you could actually call it a book. You've got to have a title that upon reading it, the person that you want to be in conversation with says I want that book. And then you've got to have a way to get it in front of it. I mean those things, that's what really drives it. It doesn't matter that whether the book is 50 pages or 250 pages. I love the elegance that 50 pages is exactly 20% of a 250 page. That doesn't have to be the whole thing. Nobody knows whether the book is 50 pages or 250 pages. All they know is that they want that title. You know, they want that book and there it is and they're raising their hand. So it's almost like the, you know that, that 80% is getting the title and the, and the fact that you've got the, the book out into the world and as fast as you can. And that's why we've set it up so that there's really only. As a cow, the only, the only part that is the milk of making a book is getting the outline right, getting the content, the title, those kind of things, what it's going to be about and the actual content itself done in an interview format. You know, everybody's really more comfortable talking about things than writing about things. Just the velocity that you can do that, it kind of keeps it on track. So I'm excited to be creating a lot of these 90 minute books.

Yeah. So those are going to be getting cranked out like crazy, probably from both of us and from us collectively. And there's a whole process up on. I love marketing. If you're not familiar with what Dean just said, I mean we've recorded episodes on it. Dean has put up a whole episode and recording about it. You can get a copy of the book. I mean it's all there@ilovemarketing.com if you've not seen that. So check that out. All right, so what else did I do this year? Just because it's most recent. Let me talk about this. I took about two weeks off at the end of December and during a week period, really it was almost about 13 days total. I went to a thing called the Hoffman process. Now I did it during free days. And so looking back, it wasn't like free days.

Like let's clarify that. You're saying during a week period. W E E K. Although you could.

Say week period too, because that's always a good reason to go to Hoffman. But it's called.

I didn't know what you were saying. Exactly.

Yeah, no. So a week, A week long. And now I told all my friends I'm going on free days because I literally no phone, no email, no text, no Internet, nothing. No communications with my office, you know, nothing.

Or me.

No friends. Or you. Yeah, or anyone. Anyone for that Matter. And so I go to. Now I ended up there because a friend of mine who we both know, I'm not going to mention his name but he is a very successful person who just highly recommended it. And this is a guy who's been through so much, you know, personal development and growth and you name it. He's in my 25k group. I mean, just a really bright individual. And he just said this is one of the greatest things in personal development he had ever done. And so that piqued my interest and so I checked it out and I was like, you know what? I got a bunch of shit from my childhood that I have never really ever been able to come to grips with. And it sounds like this will give me a lot of peace and serenity and help me be more effective and deal with how I have sabotaged my own life in different ways. And I've also struggled with addictions in my, in my life and you know, just a bunch of stuff. And you know, it all stems, I mean it really does all stem from your childhood and your upbringing and patterns that you learn from your parents. And you know, my mother died when I was, you know, really young at 4 years old and my father never remarried. You know, we had a very kind of a very rocky, you know, upbringing and I just wanted to. It just seemed like the right time. So I went to this process and it is unbelievable. I mean I cannot recommend it highly enough. I mean you don't have to have a screwed up childhood or anything to get immense value out of going to the Hoffman process. But they have a scholarship fund for people that can't afford it. It's absolutely worth the money. There's a couple different locations. They actually do it all over the world. But it's the Hoffman Institute and I should probably. Dean, while you're talking I'll pull up the website. Unless you can find it for me. Yeah, I mean you're pretty quick. And I have to pull my. I have to pull my head away from the mic and make clicking sounds which will show up. Yeah, it's hoffmaninstitute.org and yeah, you know, I mean it's just, it's pretty awesome. And so, you know, one of the downsides though is I actually re injured my knee which I had been rehabbing for a couple of going on almost two years. I have a torn meniscus and I kind of retweaked my knee towards the end of the year and a slight hairline fracture at the top of my tibia. So that kind of made it a little challenging towards the end of this year. And so now at the time we're actually recording this, I'm dealing with the proper way to get this fixed because I've done everything to try to avoid surgery and I, I'm still contemplating that. I'm, you know, there's still that side of me that's like, I can overcome like, you know, bodily injuries and I've had a couple MRIs on it so that, you know, so I've had a, I've had a very good and a very challenging, well I should say great, fantastic, amazing year in some areas and other shit that has just been. Ugh. And so, you know, Hoffman was really good and now I just have a lot of, a lot of new tools that I never had before. And you know, one thing that I never give myself enough credit for is I'm a guy that's always wanting to get better and always get an edge and wanting to let go of unnecessary shit that I used to think was important and valuable. And so, you know, I do a lot of, you know, I've been doing a lot of personal work on my life and myself and you know, that sort of thing. So. But I can, you know, I don't know if I've talked about much business stuff. You know, I mean, we could always talk about video sales letters and the application of that.

And what was the best, what's the best business lesson that you learned this year?

Oh boy. Aligning yourself with people that are aligned with you when it comes to making money. I mean, I don't know if I learned that this year, but I really focused on that this year. I mean, my 25k group, you know, we've got at the time we're, you know, doing this episode, I've got 143 members that are amazing entrepreneurs. I did my annual event, the last one we did had 206 people at it and we had a waiting list of 60 people that literally we turned away people. I've never been in a situation like that, ran a whole bunch of full page ads and stuff. But just aligning yourself with people that are aligned with you, I really get a psychological reward that is more important to me than even the financial reward. I mean, if you 10 times my income and I had to deal with pain in the ass people or doing activities that weren't really a fit for me. Money's not worth it. Money is everything. If you don't have it, once you have the ability to make it, you Know how discerning you are with who you do business with. You know, Marie Folio gave a great presentation in New York at our, you know, my annual event where she's talking about how, you know, firing clients and getting rid of some and not trying to get people to retain, you know, to, you know, not trying to retain everybody because, you know, how you pick and choose your clients has everything to do with the success of your business, your income, your happiness and, you know, plus. So in terms of things that were techniques, you know, video sales letters, of course. I mean, I'm still a huge proponent of replicating things through video, upping the quality of, you know, the video and stuff that I put out there. We've been doing a lot of short animated videos that we use. The Draw Shop, the drawshop.com Eric Kerr E R I K Kerr K E R R and Summer Felix both have this company called the Draw Shop where they'll animate videos. Right now it's approximately about $1,000aminute. They'll write the copy, they'll draw it. I mean, it's absolutely worth it. They're fantastic. And so, you know, we've been doing like even Christmas, you know, the 12 days of Christmas.

Those have been great to see.

Yeah, yeah, we did these little clips we've done. Maybe we'll put. We got one with you. I mean, we should put that stuff up at. I love marketing for people to. Just. Because these don't have to do with the holidays. They're just really good short pieces of business advice. You know what's funny, Dean? We're sitting here recording this and most people don't know when we actually record these, but this particular one happens to be on a Sunday that we're recording it and I'm at my office. No one's here. I wanted to do it and I own an 11,000 square foot building in Arizona and the cleaners are now here, so I can hear them in another side of the office with vacuum cleaners. I might have to interrupt our podcast at some point and say, do not come in here. So if you start hearing some vacuuming in the background, it's just. Yeah. And I have this big ass room where we do the 25k groups and I happen to be doing it here. So I'm going to put you on mute for a minute and you just start sharing some good stuff while I actually go and tell the people not to come in here.

Okay, okay, I'll share another one. All right, go ahead.

And then you have to fill me in when I come back. Okay.

I fill you in on what it actually means.

Yeah. Why did you tell everybody during the podcast?

Okay, that is so funny. Okay, here's. I think I'm going to talk about this concept of going, of really the distinction between Profit Activator two and Profit Activator three. That's been even more solidified in my mind right now that the, the most important thing that we can do is focus all of our attention on making sure that our number one job is compelling people to, to raise their hand, compelling them to, to identify themselves. Turning invisible prospects into visible prospects. That's the, the real purpose of, of profit activator 2 and then starting the convincing in profit activator 3. And the big thing that I see now, it's almost like having these 3D glasses. The big thing that I see when ads are underperforming or lead generation stuff is underperforming is that it's gone into trying to convince somebody to do something in the actual ad itself. And so I've just really honed my ability to identify when something is compelling and when it's trying to be convincing.

And I'm back. Dean, by the way, just wanted to interrupt in the middle of that. All right.

Yeah. The convincing is best left after you've already compelled them to identify themselves. And that really, that coincides with this whole idea of more cheese, less whiskers. I mean, it's about just amplifying the cheese, the benefits, something that somebody selflessly, selfishly wants. And it's really one of the things that I've been talking about at the, the, the Breakthrough Blueprint events that I've been doing is this third perspective on things. Normally what people often do is they'll run ads that shine the spotlight on themselves on. So it's, look at me, I'm great. I can help you. Look at our brand. Look at our stuff. Here's us, us, us. We're in the spotlight of this ad. That's one perspective. Then often people turn that around and they shine the spotlight on their prospect. And almost to the point of it being an interrogation of their prospect or singling their prospect out or trying to resonate with them overtly. It's going to be, I'm going to explain this because it's such a powerful, a powerful thing is sometimes people go through these things and they hear the conversation going on in somebody's head. We talk about that a lot. Robert Collier made that statement that the best thing is to join the conversation that's already going on in your prospect's head. And when we're focusing on identifying our target audience, we spend profit activator number one, you know, narrowing our focus and really getting inside the mind of our prospect. And then in preparing for deploying profit activator number two, the idea is to join the conversation that's going on in their head, Understanding what is that conversation, what's the questions that they have, what are they saying to themselves? What's keeping them up at night? What are they hoping for? What are their fears and their aspirations? And so the second perspective of joining that conversation but doing it sort of overtly, doing it clunkily, doing it in a way that kind of shines the spotlight on them. So if I use it as a real estate example, because it's easy to use this, everybody can relate to it. So the first perspective that a realtor can take is shining the spotlight on themselves and saying, dean Jackson, the number one realtor in Winter Haven, you know, call Dean and start packing. Dean's a household name. All those things, all the personal promotion things. Then the second perspective is, you know, joining that conversation but trying to then single out people in a way that is trying to convince them to do something right. So we're saying, thinking of selling your house, call Dean or find out how much your house is worth for free over the phone, where the keyword is your. And if you're going to be selling your house, all those kind of things where we're shining the light on our kind of discovery of their intention in an overt way. And that is more effective than shining the spotlight on yourself. But there's a third and a better perspective, and this is the one that has really made the big strides for me this year is turning around, going over behind your prospect and shining the spotlight over their shoulder on the information that they're compelled to already seek, the thing that they're looking for. So when you take this from the real estate perspective, you know, the conversation going on in somebody's head, if we've narrowed our focus to lakefront homeowners in Winter Haven, the conversation going on in their head that's going to lead to them selling their house is I wonder how much my house is worth. So the second perspective of shining the spotlight on them would be find out how much your house is worth for free over the phone, right? Let me tell you how much your house is worth. That's the second perspective. But the third and the most elegant way is to help them discover what it is they're looking for without any sort of commercial intent built into it. So we offer people the free January 2014 report on winter Haven lakefront house prices. It sounds like you're getting exactly the information that you want without it being attached to a realtor, a cat who's going to come and. And pounce on me the moment that I raise my hand. It almost. It's like, gets bypassed. It doesn't trigger their whisker detectors.

Right.

You know, and so we've been able to use that in so many different ways now. Understanding what that. Understanding the way that. That psychology works and being able to be what people want. You know.

I hear you. You hear me. So, you know, I hear you. Do I agree with you? Absolutely. Yes, I do.

Oh, that is such great. That was drama there.

No, no. Yeah. You know, one thing also I learned, too, which might be a good lesson for all of our listeners when it comes to starting things or doing. Doing things, or if you want to get all Seth Godinish. That's a word. Seth Godinish is, you know, when you're creating your art. I think it's kind of funny because, like, I think it expands his buyer base if he calls entrepreneurship art, you know, refers to everything. That's creation. As an artist, Seth is very big on just getting things done. And he calls it, you know, ship it and that sort of stuff.

Shipping.

Yeah, shipping your stuff, Putting it out there. Is that if you listen to me in many states of my confusion and babbling, I mean, you really don't have to have your shit completely together in order to create a global brand or make a lot of money or influence a lot of people. You just simply got to start, as Dave Kekich says, attack life. I mean, you really just kind of got to. So when you're saying that was really dramatic. I just really didn't know what the hell I was going to say. So I'm having to sit here and kind of do this off the cuff.

It's like improv theater.

All the time. All the time. And so you covered a lot of really great stuff there. And I missed, of course, the first part of it because I had to go warn my wonderful building cleaners.

Well, the essence of it was separating the compelling from the convincing. Making a hard distinction between profit activator number two and profit activator number three. And, you know, try, instead of trying to educate and motivate people from the ad, let's do the first job, which is to, if we can only pick one thing, if we're running an ad or you're sending postcards or you're trying to identify people who might be thinking of selling their house or whatever it is that you do. There's, you know, the understanding is that not everybody is going to be interested.

Right.

Like, if you look at the lakefront homes in Winter haven have a 4% turnover rate. Okay. Which means that out of the 2,000 homes, there's going to be 80 of them that will sell. But that's going to yield a lot of money because they're, they're expensive homes and the commissions are, are higher than anything else in town. So it's okay. But you don't want to beat your head against the wall trying to convince the 96% of the people who have no interest in your message that you're the best realtor to help them sell their house. You want to only speak to the ones who are most likely to sell their house. And the ones who are most likely are the ones who are having the conversation, I wonder what my house is worth. And they're going to want that report on the lakefront house place.

Right?

Now, once you've done that, now you've got the opportunity to educate and motivate them and you can spend so much more time and effort on engaging in a dialogue with them.

Yep, yep. You know, there was this bonus episode that we did with Brian Kurtz and we're going to do another follow up also about direct mail and a lot of ways to make money that a lot of people, you know, think are obsolete and, you know, that sort of stuff. And what's cool about what we're doing at I Love Marketing is we bring every perspective. You know, we got the interview with, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, who's one of the top social media experts on the planet. Me and you are interviewing all kinds of people that are just on the cutting edge of the latest technology. Then we also interview people that have been in the trenches, direct mail, direct marketing guys who for years before the Internet ever existed. And it always comes back to how the eight profit activators are principle based. They're not timely, they're timeless. I mean, they're still going to apply 100 years from now. And it's really about the psychology. And there's a guy who was named Joel Weldon. Joel Weldon. And I'm going to interview him. We're actually going to interview him for I love marketing. At some point. And he was a. Early on in 1971, he was the top sales distributor for Nightingale Conant. And he was the guy that I've heard different people explain different variations of his story of focusing, selling. How was he so successful selling and picking the right people that are already successful in that sort of stuff. And he had told me about, like, how frequently he and people that he knew were given the advice of, you know, mailing out personalized letters and cards. And he said that George Bush Sr. The reason he had so many friends and so many relationships is even as president. And this has nothing to do with your political beliefs, who you like or who you don't like. That every, like, literally his entire, you know, his entire life, he has been known to be mailing people, you know, personal thank yous and cards. And even as president, he would send 10 a day, handwritten. And I never knew that about George, you know, George Bush Sr. I heard about that, about Ronald Reagan. I heard about that from a lot of different people. And I can't even remember who the first person is or where I first heard it, where, like, like every day send 10 postcards, 10 cards that you can just hand write something. Thank you. It was great meeting you. And we have talked about that on a few episodes here and there. But for the holidays, we sent a really fantastic package to all my 25k members. We really do use a lot of direct mail and a lot of shock and awe. And I've gotten so many comments from our 25K members, like, wow, thank you. And people that have dropped out of 25k because they're either really stupid or they just couldn't do it anymore. Do you like the really stupid part, Dean? Did you kind of pick up on that? So I still sent past 25k members, like a really freaking awesome package. And I've gotten like text messages and voicemails because those are the people that I know really well on a personal level level. Just blew people away. And it just. And we sent, you know, to my carpet cleaning clients and, you know, many of our past clients, we sent them physical things. And I just, I'm telling you, man, like the. And a lot of these things weren't even like, we're trying to sell anything. It's just saying thank you for being a client. You know, we really appreciate it. And, you know, here's some. Something valuable. It's as you. I just have never seen anyone get that level of type of response just doing it electronically. I mean, you know, I can get more response out of a database of a few hundred people with something physical than I know some people that have you know, several hundred thousand views on YouTube. You know, I mean, you can get I don't know how many times.

Yeah, that's the thing is personal. There's a personal connection, a personal contact.

Yeah. And I mean, me and you, really, I think a lot of people, they don't want to apply some of these ideas because they think, oh, how do we make it go viral? One of the episodes that me and you just recorded was with people are going to have on I love marketing is Ryan Holiday, the director of marketing for American Apparel. And, and he has a funny thing in his book Growth Hacker Marketing where people are like, how do you make something go viral? And it's like, well, you can't make shit go viral. It's got to be good. And so many people, they just, oh, we got to have a huge audience.

Well, for what?

I mean, are you selling anything? Are you really connecting with them? I mean, how do you define success? How many views you got on your fricking stupid video? Or what sort of transformation are you making in your clients lives? What are you actually accomplishing? What are you actually selling and how are you doing it? So just not overlooking things that have been proven to work over and over and over and over again in exchange of giving your attention to the latest fad. And I have to really. One of the keys of becoming and having wisdom is knowing the difference between something sounding like really amazing versus evidence that this thing will, you know, is amazing. And so a lot of my biggest breakthroughs are just rediscovering things that have always worked, but people kind of forget about. I mean, I think it's a global thing. You can go back and read certain books that are always going to be great books, even if certain parts of the books are outdated or sort of incomplete or whatever. I mean, anyone that's going to go and read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from the late Stephen Covey, you're going to get a shitload out of that book. It's just a great book and there's a lot of great marketing strategies. I mean, in, in your whole.

That was something I learned from Jerry Ballinger.

Go ahead.

That there was, you know, he, he was the guy who had his wisdom bookshelf. And that was something that I learned from him is there's, you know, there's idea bookshelves and there's tactic bookshelves and. But the, the wisdom bookshelf is the one that combines timeless things that when you get them, will be ever useful.

You know, I'm sitting here writing that down because I never actually heard Jerry, you know, and Jerry is no longer with us, but, you know, I never heard that before. That is.

Well, he was so Eben Pagan and I really, we got to spend a lot of time with Jerry and, and that was, you know, we were young and he was, he really kind of took us under his wing in a lot of ways and was, you know, really had. He was a genius, a tormented genius, but a genius. And that was one of the biggest things that he taught us was that idea of really being able to discern the things that are wisdom that are timeless, that are going to have multiple long term use and apply to other things as well.

Yeah, yeah, totally. For some reason, Martin Howey is the one that introduced me to Joel Weldon. And Martin is a dear friend. He has been going through stage four cancer. I mean, the guys have multiple operations, he's in his late 60s, he has 26 grandchildren, bunch of kids and just has been through hell. I mean, my perspective of what I would consider, you know, a living hell, just numerous operations, you know, colon cancer, rectal cancer, having, you know, metastasized all over his body. And I had a lunch with him, literally. When was it? The. Yeah, the day after Christmas. And this guy is now, prior to that, you know, I'm reading some text messages here and I asked him, you know, how you doing? He's like doing okay, still in radiation, having a complete shoulder replacement in two weeks, but attitude is great. And I wrote, wow. Well, I have to tell you that you have one of the best attitudes of anyone I know. I hope to keep and develop an attitude that is even as fraction as amazing, as inspiring as yours. Now, I interviewed Martin when he was told he only had a few months to live. And he's now that was over two years ago. And so he wrote back this. Thank you. What other options are there? Depression. Why is that happening to me? Life sucks. Someone had to get it, so it might as well be me. Or hey, it's just another test or challenge to see how I will handle it. It can either make me stronger or break me. And how can I use this and turn it into an advantage that will help someone else? I just turned 69, still young, still have a lot to do, have six kids and 28 grandchildren that need an example of how to handle the challenges that life throws at you. If I didn't go through these things myself, how could I possibly teach my kids with effectiveness? And you know, I mean, I still, I read that and of course he's like that, that's just how he is. And you know, I, I have, you know, I have great admiration.

He's an incredible guy.

I mean it's, it's just. And so I'm really, as I go through, you know, challenges and stuff and certainly everybody, I mean everybody has them, everyone listening to us. And there is a, there is a talk, a TEDx talk. It's not even a TED in its. Oh gosh, let me Ash, it is a lesbian who is giving a TED Talk about things being hard. And I think we should just put it up on ilovemarketing.com it is one of the most phenomenal talks and I'm going to see if I can pull it up. And she talks about coming out of your closet and not really in a gay thing. It's Ash Beckham. B E C K H a m@tedxboulder. If you just type in coming out of your closet, it is such a phenomenal talk. And I was talking with Martin about and he says like, you know, it's not, there's not different layers of hard. There's just hard and everybody has their closet and it's hard. You know, how do you tell someone you're gay? How do you tell someone that you've cheated on them? How do you, how do you address things? I think as we try to develop ourselves as better business owners and better human beings. And by the way, I don't want this to say, take this like a 12 step group, take what you like and leave the rest. This is stuff for me that helps me when I talk to individuals like that, not only keep things in perspective, not fall into, oh, you know, things are difficult. I mean, I simply function a lot better and feel a lot better when I, you know, associate and spend time with, you know, positive, uplifting people that are in the arena. You know, one thing I really like about Brene Brown, who I, you know, had the pleasure of meeting earlier this year at, you know, Conscious Capitalism in Austin, Texas. You know, she's got a million views on her TED Talk and she's, you know, did an endorsement with Oprah and you know, she's the vulnerability lady is, you know, her whole thing about, you know, being in the arena dealing with people that, you know, she doesn't want to hang out with people that have, you know, opinions about doing stuff. She really wants people that are actually, she doesn't want to take advice or criticism from someone telling her what she could or could not do if she's not, you know, in the arena. And of course, course, she, you know, she uses. She uses that as a metaphor. And I'll find the Roosevelt thing and I'll read that if you don't know what I'm talking about.

So that's, you know, that's a sub in the arena.

Yeah, yeah, man in the arena. I'm going to find it here. Yeah. And I think I read this on one. So. Yeah, let me read this. So it's like the man in the arena, it's not the critic who, and this is by, you know, Theodore Roosevelt. It's not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there's no effort without error and short shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. And, you know, it's a great way to think about who you take advice from and who you listen to. And a lot of people are going to tell you, you know, how to, you know, how to live your life, how to play your game, how to do this, how to do that. And I just, you know, I simply want to spend time with people that are in the arena. I mean, I don't get excited by, you know, people that will sit on, you know, sit on a couch and scream at a television set or be in a sports bar bitching at how a player's doing this or doing that when they don't even play the fucking game. I mean, give me a break. And that's different from team spirit and wanting to see someone crush the team that you despise. Okay? So everyone needs to take this in context. I get all of that. It's just like, oh, you know, these damn losers. It's like, well, who the hell are you? Like, really? Or, I didn't like your book. Have you written book? A book, you know, do you. Have you put any opinions out into the world? You know, if you haven't, you know, fuck off. I mean, give me a break. So, yeah, it's funny.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of stuff.

You ramble too much on that podcast.

Yeah, yeah, you ramble too much on the podcast. Well, at least we got a podcast. At least we're doing something.

But.

You know, we've only got a few hundred thousand people that listen to it on a weekly basis. I guess someone likes this shit. So it's. But the whole thing is you don't need to worry about the people that don't resonate with you. Resonate what you're into. You just need to find enough people that are into it. And if they're into it, you can probably make a good living at it. You can maybe get rich. If you get neither rich nor make a living, if you've got something that helps a lot of people and that's your goal, that's your objective, that's your definition of winning the game. Do it. But the point is be in the fricking game and pick the right game. I don't know if it was Ballinger or Terry Hunterfield or what. I mean, you've probably read that book the Right Mountain, about the guy that climbed Everest.

Well, yeah, I brought that. I found that guy. And so, yeah, I gave that to Joe Stump and to Terry Hunterfeld and to Ballinger and Eben. But that was, that was a wisdom book.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's written years ago, but it's called the Right Mountain. And it's not even about making it to the top. It's about knowing that when you can't make it to the top and what your, what your capabilities are and how far you can go and how in the attempt of trying to go someplace where you're not fully prepared to go, you know, it's. There's no, you know, a lot of times there's no reward in reaching the top. I mean, a lot of people get very. That's why I'm so surprised by the whole world of Hollywood. And fortunately, in the positions we're in, we meet famous people, rich people, influential people, world known people all the time. And that does not always equate to, you know, personal happiness, personal achievement. And no one really knows what the hell's going on in anyone else's shoes unless they live in those shoes. And so whatever shoes you occupy, do it with be the best you can be. Not trying to keep up with the Joneses or any of the cliches. I mean, just be the best you can be. And that's what's so great about Dan Sullivan. And better. Your best and all that sort of stuff. So as we wrap this episode up, Dean, what I want to remind people is that there is a smorgasbord of great capabilities on ilovemarketing.com if you've been with us for the longest time. Thank you. I hope you continue to utilize this podcast and these tools and these strategies to help you build and grow a business and create a tremendous amount of value in the world. And if you're. Someone has been doing a meetup group and I love marketing meetup group. We really appreciate and honor you for doing that. All the people that take this seriously enough to say, you know, I want to start a discussion group around it and find other like minded people and get together actively and help build and grow businesses. There's been thousands of people that attend and have attended meetup groups around the world and that start them and sometimes they start and they go away and other people are really strong and they keep them going and they keep building them and they make, you know, they just build these great businesses and great communities around it. And we hope to see more of that. All of that is available as a resource for you@ilovemarketing.com you want to start a meetup group, go up there and do it. I mean, sometimes we'll go months without updating the episodes and stuff. But it's really the format that's important, not the episodes. You can scroll through all of the episodes. You can start at any point in time. You know, some people always ask me, which episode should I listen to first. I'm like, God, pick one. You know, it doesn't matter. I mean, just start, start listening to one. If there's any specific thing on fitness, you know, go and start with the fitness guys. If there's something about, you know, email marketing, start with the Internet marketing guys. If you just.

There's so much juice going.

But here's what I will say to wrap up. If you've, if you've done it before, do it again. And if you've never done it, go to ilovemarketing.com, type in focus finder and watch this speech that Dean gave. How many years ago was that at this point?

Boy, I think that was 2008.

Okay. And it's just Dean in a small room given this impromptu talk. I don't know if it was impromptu, but it was just a short talk about how Dean has this whole process of focusing and when people are like, man, how do I start off the new year? I've gotten into it and I'm not keeping, you know, with what I wanted to do. You know, what, what do I do? And every time we've recommended that, people are like, thank you. So go and watch it.

There you go.

And that's it.

Well, happy New Year, Joe Pollard.

Happy New Year, Dean Jackson. And to all our listeners, Happy New Year. Have a great 2014. And let us know. Let us know about your progress all the time. And right now, you need to send out a link to this episode to ten of your friends. Are what? They're going to get attacked by porcupines. There's going to be some sort of cosmic force that's going to flatten tires. Yeah. Weird shit's going to happen if you don't do it. So do it now. All right, talk to you later. Bye.