The One Where Dean And Joe Share Their Tips On Staying Focused - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #115

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

Yo.

Okay, where has your whirlwind tour taking you? Here.

What's that?

I said, where has your whirlwind tour been taking you?

Just got back from eight days in Costa Rica. It was a trip.

Was.

Was a trip out in the middle of the jungle, you know, with some cool people getting bit by bugs riding ATVs riding horses.

You know, we need like the Heavy D song. Bugs. They bugs, they love me. That's what you.

Well, look, you had a birthday, you were doing an event with Frank Kern. I mean, you.

All kinds of nonsense and I did.

I mean, my life was probably way more exciting than your week, but. No, I'm kidding.

You actually went to the week. Let's just compare weeks.

No, no, no, I know you did some cool stuff. I mean, you probably did more.

I did.

So, yeah.

So here we go. So we probably had equally cool weeks while you, I bet whatever you did.

Wasn'T as cool as the one hour helicopter ride though, that we took back and forth, which cost a bloody fortune to get to this property. But basically, look, we stayed at Mel Gibson's estate. Mel was not there with us, but he owns this gigantic estate that's a piece of property that he's selling for $35 million right now. And it was, I mean, it was a trip, but basically we were pretty secluded. I was there with Abby moneyhunt. He's a 25k member. My girlfriend Renee, Abby's son, a guy named Jimmy Petulla, who's a filmmaker in la. Awesome guy. And, you know, we had a whole staff of people, you know, basically that were making the most amazing food, really nice people. And yeah, it was, it was. Look, Mel Gibson clearly has an interesting reputation in the media from, you know, going off on.

Clearly.

Yeah. Now that being said, what I didn't realize is how much stuff this guy does for charity and for, for kids. I actually met. We got in this trip through a foundation called Mending Kids that basically does, you know, life saving emergencies, surgeries on children in many cases. And you know, Mel's actually contributed a lot of time and money to this organization and it's kind of interesting. So I think he's. As much as the media shows the bad sides of things, he's actually a lot of stuff I learned about him. But you know, that being said, that had nothing to do with the reason we went to Costa Rica. It just happened to be with. We ended up going as a result of going to this foundation a few months ago called Mending Kids. And Jimmy ended up buying this as an auction item.

Like an auction?

Costa Rica.

Mel Gibson's place. Yeah.

And that's how we ended up there. And that was when we ended up playing poker with Mel Gibson and Jody Foster and Gene Simmons, Robert Downey Jr. And Sean Penn and all these celebrities that were out there. So.

So are you gonna buy the place?

No, no, I'm gonna wait for.

No, not that one.

Honestly, the amount of maintenance on this place, I mean, it's got like just. I, I. It's for sale for 35 million bucks if anyone wants to buy it. So, you know.

Yeah, cool.

But. All right, so talk about your week.

I did, yeah. Well, I did. Friday was my birthday. Did a event with Frank Kern. We did a breakthrough blueprint event at his Evil Scheme hatchery in La Jolla. So we had a lot of fun on that. But Tuesday before the event, we went down to be in the audience at the Voice and that was a really fun experience. We took a limo up from La Jolla and then traffic was so bad, we literally got there exactly on time. Like just barely on time. Literally 13 seconds after we got to our seats, Rod Stewart came on the stage. So it was just talk about just getting there and what a great. It was fun. It was a really cool experience to see all kind of behind the scenes of that. Steve Sims from the Bluefish set that whole thing up. I got four tickets and a signed guitar from Maroon 5. And so it was a really cool experience. Steve's such a cool guy. The way you can basically set up anything you want.

Steve Sims at the Bluefish? Yeah, well, yeah, people can actually get signed up at the Bluefish. I think it's like 5,000 a year. It's the Blue. It's a very high level concierge service or. And I'm the only group that he does this with because he's a 25k member. If anyone's in 25k, they get a membership in the Bluefish.

That's great.

And they can you. Yeah, they do. They do some cool stuff from just normal everyday travel to unique experiences, backstage passes, trips to the Titanic, you race cars, you know, all kinds of weird stuff.

Anything you can imagine, including things you.

Never could even think you could imagine he can do. I mean, he had One of our 25K members, Dan Fitzpatrick, sing with Journey. He wanted to, you know. That's on YouTube.

Yeah.

You know, all kinds of cool stuff.

I love it.

Well, what'd you learn? What'd you learn from your week?

So you know what I'm excited about? So here's the thing. We've been, you and I, it's just like, you know, we travel so much and we're constantly on the go. And then our little buddy Ebenezer Eben Pagan has put out a new PDF called the Art of Entrepreneurial Productivity. And I was just taking a look at that and I thought, you know what, this is pretty cool. I think that's a good topic because there's something different about entrepreneurial productivity than bureaucratic kind of productivity. And a lot of those things that a lot of the productivity trainings and things are really about how to manage things within your bureaucratic environment. When you get to your desk at 9 and you've got to get stuff done before your lunch at noon and then back to the office till five, it's not at all like that in, in our world, in any entrepreneur's world, really. There's never. When was the last time that you were in Phoenix for three weeks in a row, let's say?

Huh? That's a good question.

It really is, isn't it? I mean, when you start thinking about, like, most of the stuff is on the go, right. And you've got to be able to get into action mode very quickly and deploy stuff maybe not in the optimal environments, but you've got to be able to do stuff.

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, oh boy. People can get very unsettled by some of the things that occur in the entrepreneurial life because a lot of it is sometimes very unstructured, in most cases, very unstructured time. So you have to figure out how to be productive, how to get things done, how to be resourceful, you know, and it's traveling as an example. I mean, and I'm not endorsing this because I do think it takes. There's a trade off, physically, mentally, emotionally, to not be in a certain place with a certain routine. And it could really throw people off. It's kind of like riding a bucking horse sometimes, you know. But, you know, you do what you need to do. I mean, part of it is I've always liked the sane just to convince myself of maybe the reasons to do some of the things that I do. We as entrepreneurs do. The 5% of people that have success in business are the ones that are willing to do the things that the 95% are not willing to do. And A lot of people are not willing to make the extra efforts, be resourceful, learn skills, work long hours when need be, deal with public criticism, much of it that's not deserved or misunderstood, and all the things that many thousands of different variations of things that entrepreneurs deal with. A lot of people aren't willing to go to school after formal, if you want to call it formal, or whatever people want to refer to as normal education, you know, high school, college, if you even go to college, you have to create your own school. Once you get into the business world, you realize that much of the quote unquote, institutional education is for the most part worthless and silly when it comes to running a business and what you need to know and what you need to learn and who you need to associate with and what you need to do in order to make it work. I mean, I love, you know, I love what I teach about having an elf business, you know, an easy lucrative fund versus a half business, hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And I'm one of the first people to tell everyone that things aren't elf right out of the gate unless you're really lucky. I mean, you could spend years working really hard learning things before you have an elf situation. And most people aren't willing to go through the pain in order to get to where they want to go. Just like in any area, sports, entertainment, physical fitness. There's a lot to be said about the, the 10,000 hours to get the skill right.

I agree with that. I mean, the thing I've really been as, you know, working a lot on my productivity and on getting stuff done and really building strategies around as workarounds to my add, and working with Ned Hallowell on developing the best strategies. For me, one of the things that I've really found, and it's funny because what spurred it for me is Eben in his new PDF, the number one thing that he has is know what you want to achieve with your business, right? Like, you got to have clarity on what it is that you really want. And I, you know, I find that as we're traveling or as we're not necessarily in our ideal environment all the time and not in a standard structured kind of schedule, you've got to be able to deploy your focus quickly and to know what it is that you're actually working on so you can pick up in the middle of something. I mean, I used to find, and I still do to some degree find that I would get a little block of time and then I would kind of squander that Block of time because I wasn't crystal clear on what I needed to do. There were so many things that were kind of in play and I was feeling behind on a lot of them and didn't really have it all prioritized, you know, so being able to set up one place to get all of these, all the projects and all the action steps that I need to do into, you know, an easy to find place that I can pick up right where I left off without knowing, you know, without saying, like, it's never a situation where I have two uninterrupted weeks that are completely all standardized that we can work in our optimal environment for stuff. There's always stuff going on. That's been one of the biggest, most helpful things for me is having this living thing that I can go to and see what the next thing is so that I can get stuff done in 50 minute focus finders, you know, because I, I know I really started thinking about you can. It sound, it's going to sound kind of crazy, but I, you know, I started identifying like, what are my most. What are the, what are the, you know, I call them my power positions kind of thing. You know, what are my work environments. I narrowed it down to, you know, my power position number one for me is sitting in a comfy chair with my notebook, my Moleskine journal and a pen and 50 minutes. That's one position for a 50 minute focus finder. And I can get a lot of the stuff that I do down, like a lot of the thinking and brainstorming and writing outlines and thinking things through and start writing, testing, you know, email dialogues, wordsmithing, just the right words for something. I do a lot of that longhand sitting in my, you know, when I'm in my environment, I have these. The Manhattan club chair from Pottery Barn. And you've seen them, Joe, all over everywhere. When I'm in my house, both of my houses or either of my offices, I'm never more than, you know, 10 paces away from a Manhattan club chair. They're just so comfy, these leather chairs. I've got like 12 of them. And that's like, I tell people, I'm long on these Pottery Barn Manhattan club chairs with the ottomans because I think to me, it's the most comfortable club chair there is and not the cheapest club chair there is, but that's very comfy. And so I've got them in, I've got four in my house in Florida, I've got two in my house in Toronto, two in my Office two in my office in Toronto. So it's like everywhere I go I can sit down in this chair with my 50 minute focus finder. Oh, and by the way, you and I talked with will hansel@focuswill.com and I've been using that tool for my 50 minute focus finders. What an accelerator for your, for your ability to focus. I'm just loving it. Have you been trying it? Yeah, I do a little bit.

You know Will, he's the guy that actually ran the 80s band London beat and I met him at Singularity University and then he came to 25k and gave a presentation and then I kind connected you guys and explain it. I mean I haven't even.

Well this is fantastic.

Fill me in. Since my vacation.

Yeah, so you and I talked to him that day that we had a little conference call with him and then I talked to him. I've talked to him a couple of times since then and I've been using it since you turned me onto it. And so basically it's a website called focusatwill.com and what it is is a music site that I don't want to even call it a music site, but that's the main thing that it is. It's got a timer and a play button where you can go here, set the timer for however long you're going to focus and press play. And there's different channels that you can choose from. A classical channel, Focus Spa music, alpha chill music, acoustical, cinematic, ambient and up tempo. And I've used all of the channels for different purposes, but there's quite an amazing science behind it where it really addresses the way that your brain gets used to environments. Basically, when we're sitting down, our limbic brain is constantly on the lookout for all these things that are going on in the environment. And it can be distracting to our conscious ability to focus. And so what this music is programmed to do, it's all on the harmonic with the waves that your brain works at. And it shortens the amount of time that it takes for your brain to calm down and get focused. And it extends by three to five times the length of time that your brain can actually remain focused. And Will is just the brightest guy. I mean he's really like really smart about how all of this works. And it's. We had some great conversations about it. He kind of likened it to movie score where, you know, a movie score can really enhance the motion of a movie and enhance what you feel. But if it's doing its job it's invisible. You don't really like notice it, it doesn't call out to you. And that's the same thing with this music that you're listening to at Focus at Will. It's kind of in the background and it goes with your body's, your brain's waves to as soon as it's proven, after a certain amount of time, your brain gets habituated, you get used to it, and then it starts to get distracted. So it, at those intervals will introduce something new and stop that process in its tracks. So you're able to stay focused the entire time. And it's so relaxing. It's great because it's way better than just listening to the radio or listening to the same CD over and over and over again because you get used to that music and you start noticing that, you'll start predicting what track is next. And you know, you get used to that whole thing. But I have found it to be a fantastic thing. So I'm a big fan of it because, you know, the whole thing is about 50 minute focus finders for me. And that's something that we've been advocating for a long time. And this is really, I find I'm getting more out of the 50 minute focus finders with this, with this tool. It's a real enhancement for me.

Well, let's talk about tools because, I mean, you brought this up with Eben doing his launch. And full disclosure here, I've not had a chance to even look at what Eben is doing right now, although he wants me to. But I don't really like giving him any sort of leeway because you know how much of a controlling human being he tries to be. No, but like, speaking of tools, you know, Will, and by the way, people that are listening obviously go check, check out Focus at Will. If you just type in Focus Will into Google, you'll find it. It'll come up.

There's all kinds of stuff about the science behind it, but it's fantastic.

Yeah, we should have him as a guest also.

And I was gonna say that exact same thing to you because he's, he's much more familiar with the science of how it works. And he's really interesting cat.

Yeah. Very, very cool dude. I mean, he's been the like burning man like 20 times. He's like 20 years. I mean, it's crazy stuff. But you know, the thing is there's a lot of different tools and I've even said, I've talked about it a little bit here, but you know, I Wanted to give it a few months before I start singing from the rooftops about how great something is. But I've been doing transcendental meditation probably about a month and a half now. Consistently 20 minutes twice a day. Since I went through the training in Fairfield, Iowa, in the middle of nowhere. I went to the Maharishi University with Brendan. Yeah, with me and Brendan and Charles Polquin and Phil Towne and Patrick Giantempo and my girlfriend Renee. And, you know, it was Mike Klein, you know, from tech, guys who get marketing and aitica. You know, I mean, we had a really cool group. And me and Brendan spoke to the university and went to see Fred Travis and John Haglin, who runs tm. And now I'm going to go meet David lynch, the filmmaker, who's a big, you know, TM advocate and has the David lynch foundation where they're doing, you know, TM for people in prison, for soldiers, you know, schools. I mean, all kinds of cool stuff. And, man, talk about improving my ability to focus. And I've become, over the years, an extremely restless human being. You know, I mean, in spite of the fact that I get a lot of stuff done, a lot of my progress, if you want to call it that, has just been on sheer, you know, movement and force. And that's, you know, that's not the most enjoyable way to get stuff done. And so. And also I've learned that just because something works for you doesn't mean it's going to work for other people. But I also have learned that if something works for you, there's a good chance it'll work for other people. Many people. I mean, that's the basis of so much of what we talk about at I love marketing, is sharing what works for us and what works for other people. Mostly in the area of marketing, but in the area of just work, being more productive at work. And so I used to rattle off Gary Halbert's statement of you'll accomplish more through movement than you will through meditation. And when I went and spoke to the Maharishi University, I was like, at my third day of doing tm, and I said to this audience of people at the university, people that live in the community, you know, that I've said, you know, for years, I've said, you can accomplish more through movement than you can through meditation. And I don't remember exactly how I said it. Maybe I'll get the video of the presentation and we'll post it or something. But I said, now I'm starting to question that. I'M still of the belief that sitting around meditating and doing nothing is not going to get you anywhere. So I'm still a very big believer in taking action. And if you don't know what the hell to do, do something. Don't just sit there all day contemplating what you should do. Sometimes you just got to decide and move. However, I've realized that most people that I have met that do Transcendental meditation are very successful people. And of course I tend to hang out with people that are entrepreneurs and doing something. So I think that's a different segment. But that being said, many people that I have spoken to, they don't consider it like having to carve out time in order to take 20 minutes twice a day. I mean, most of the perspective is this 40 minutes that I'm taking a day doing meditation is giving me a couple of more productive hours that I never would have had because of how I approach my work, how I think about things. And that's, that's the counterintuitiveness about all of these tools. Some tools. There's the ramp up stage where it takes time to learn it, put it into place, ritualize it. But when you do that, it's like exercise. Exercise doesn't take time. Exercise makes time. Eating healthy on some levels. People think it may cost more, which it could. In many cases it does. If you're going to eat healthier foods, it's going to cost more for blueberries than a Big Mac. But one's going to produce a different sort of function in your body than the other.

Costs more for blueberries than gummy bears.

There's a big difference.

There's a big difference.

But the point is though, what you decide to put in your body, put into your mind, your activities is going to produce the results. I'd like to mention a couple of books that I read while I was away. One is so good they can't ignore you by. What's his last name? California Newport, I think. Really good book. Yeah, Cal Newport. C A L Newport. So good they can't ignore you. Why? Skills trump passion in the quest for work you love. And the whole book is kind of like the whole pursuit of find your passion is not only bad advice, but in many cases dangerous. Because it's like trying to find your passion is making your work revolve around value for you. Whereas skills is about value that you can add to the world instead of what value can the world bring to you. And it talks about finding developing skills that are rare and valuable in developing what he calls career capital and getting people to pay you for it. And he makes a really valuable case, based on lots of study and research, that this is not just his opinion, but people that are very successful and really love what they do. It wasn't about finding their passion and then doing it. It's really. That's not how the most successful people become successful. And it's about developing skills that are rare and valuable and creating career capital and literally taking the time, not just the 10,000 hours, but developing these skills and applying them in certain ways and being remarkable. And I would highly, highly recommend this book. And what I identified, which I never gave myself credit for, is I learned marketing early on and I applied it because it's one thing to learn something, but to not apply it and not to get instant feedback. I mean, even in this book, it made me become even more accepting of the difficulty of the task and being okay with asking people to give you feedback. Are you screwing up? Are you doing a good job getting instant feedback so you can improve and perform and. And talking about productivity, a lot of people, they don't want to hear criticism. They don't want to screw up. They just want things to work. And anyone that we know that is really kicking ass, not just for short terms, because there's always flash in the pans, there's people that get lucky. I can't tell you how many marketing people wrote a great sales letter, had a great pitch, did a cool seminar, but that's like all they ever did. They did it once or twice, or they did it for a year or two, but show me people that have maintained good reputations, have maintained clientele for five, 10, 20, 30 years. There's a big difference in how these people are living and applying themselves and the rituals that they're doing in this book so good they can't ignore you. It's going to be one of the main things that I'm going to recommend for new startups, for people that are new learning marketing. Someone even sent me a message on Facebook that's listened to every single episode of I love marketing, loves it, has gotten a lot of value out of it, and is still in the startup stages and wanted a recommendation. And I said, read this book, Read this book. And so I think it'll dramatically help people with productivity and how they think about work. And, you know, it's not tricks. I mean, you can learn marketing skills, but these are not gimmicks. It's not about just getting the words. It's not just about Selecting a single target market. It's about a whole series of things. So as we outline in the eight profit activators, there's a process to all of this, including there's a process to being productive.

You're right on. That's so funny because what I've been thinking is that there are probably eight focus activators. That's where I was going with this whole idea of the stuff that I've been working on with Ned and with myself, realizing that that one of the things is definitely knowing what you're working on and what's next and getting everything to what David Allen would call getting it to in. If you talk about the getting things done idea is getting all the projects all lined up on the Runway, all the things that you want to do. And so what I started talking about was these power positions for me. So I talked about this. The most common position I'm in when I'm focusing is sitting in the Manhattan club chair with my Moleskine journal. Now the good news is that that position, I can do that. It doesn't have to be in that chair. I could be in a Starbucks. I could be in a hotel lobby, I can be in a car, I can be anywhere, really, on a plane. I can be somewhere sitting with my Moleskine notebook in my hand. And that's kind of my power position number one. Then I look at my other positions. If I look at the things that I actually do and my other position is laying on my back in bed or on my daybed or somewhere with my laptop on my chest and doing whatever I need to do online. You've seen me in that position. And you know, in my office, I've got the whole daybed situation. They've got this nine foot bed daybed with all these pillows and stuff so I can lay down and put my laptop on my chest. And that's where I do email, I look online, I do any blog posts or whatever, anything that I'm doing that need to be online. That's the position I'm typically in for that. Then on the phone is another power position where I'm looking for things that I can do for a 50 minute block or more. I might talk to somebody on the phone for an hour. I might record a podcast like this with you while I have to, while we're doing these podcasts, be both on the phone and sitting right in front of my computer so that we can record. But that's my fourth power position is being in front of my computer recording audio and then my fifth power position is being in my conference room or in a conference room with people, small group of people talking about and, you know, consulting or solving marketing challenges or coming up with great ideas and then being in a conference room with 12 or 20 people doing a small event like the Breakthrough Blueprint. And those kind of things, knowing what those are. It's kind of a. It's been an eye opener for me because I can batch things, these tasks that I need to do by the power position that they match with. So when I'm processing email or sending anything to one of my team members or outlining projects on. And I've been experimenting with a lot of different tools too. And there's an app for my Mac for my MacBook, not for your iPhone or iPad, but that Mac app in the app store@apple.com called tree. And it's an outlining app that is sort of like a mind map, sort of like a to do list in that you can make lists like linearly from vertical, but you can also then tree things out to the side horizontally, which just for my mind, it works magically. I love that kind of thing. That's where now I create this master document of all of the projects with the things that need to be done. And you can create the checkbox list. So that is the one that's the place where everything is. I used to do those kind of lists and do those kind of things in my journal or on legal pads where I do the 50 minute focus finder and list all of the things, all of the projects and stuff that I have going on. I love that for getting those out. But now what I do is I take those lists and I transfer or even create them within this app so that it's a living thing, that I can continually kind of add things to it and you're not having to recreate it again. When you sit down to do another 50 minute focus finder, you've got this master list of all of the projects that you have. That was a great insight from, from Ned Hallowell to have a visual thing of all of the things that you have going on. This way I look at that list and now I can assign a position, a power position to those tasks so that I know if this is something that needs to be done is I'm saying what it is that needs to be done and where I'm going to do it. So I'm in the power position of sitting in my comfy chair with my Moleskine notebook. What's the next set of things that I need to work on in that position, prioritized. And then when I'm online or on the computer, what things am I doing that need to be in that position? Or what are the things I need to do when I'm in that position? And who do I need to talk to on the phone? Who do I need to schedule that time with or what do I need to record? And so I've been working on being able and this is that concept that I was thinking about. These, these activators of how to activate focus wherever I am. Almost like a, you know, with military kind of precision. You know, that you can be in the middle of a battle field and you've got a 50 minute window. How quickly can you go from recognizing that you have that window to actually taking advantage of that 50 minutes and doing the most productive thing that you can at that time? And so when I'm just. When focusill, either this week or next week will have the app version that you can get it on your iPhone, that will just make anywhere that I've got those 50 minutes to be able to sit down and focus at will. I love that name, by the way. Be able to focus at will. Like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, let me ask you a question though, about something that I had a conversation with Tim Ferriss. I don't know if you know this, but like probably like 2 years ago I was with Paul Abdul and we were in San Francisco. We spent like a whole day in a hotel room with Tim Ferriss just talking about productivity. And one of the things that he brought up, Tim, of course, has spent a boatload of time studying, analyzing productivity and the 80:20 rule and Parkinson's law and all this stuff. And he said that when it comes to productivity, every tool that you add adds a layer of complexity. So he tries to figure out how to get stuff done, done with the least amount of electronic apps. Buckets, as someone like David Crenshaw would talk about. How many different buckets? So you wouldn't have Eventote and then 300 other different apps. How do you make the decision whether you take. You just talked about a tool. So some people immediately might be, oh, the way that I'm going to be productive now is I'm going to go get that tree app that Dean was talking about. But they also may have, you know, a GTD app. They may, you know, I mean, there might be all kinds of different stuff that they're using. So how do you decide when to add a Tool, be it electronic or a physical tool or whatever into your productivity mix versus when do you find that? You know, I've downloaded all these different things and I have lists and you know, 14 different places on my iPhone, plus I have Word documents. I've, you know, you know what I'm saying?

Right. Well, I've been resistant to that myself. Like that I agree with you. But now when I look at, you know, if I say that I haven't named any of these yet, but let's just say that focus activator number one is know your outcome. And you know, I think that that and in talking to Ned, that what really has to happen and where I find myself the biggest distraction is in not knowing exactly what needs to be done next. Right. Like, I totally see the wisdom in having one place where everything that you have going on is there in one place. And I've been experimenting with different things like mind mapping, like with Mind jet and with iMindmap, that Tony Buzan, that software that he has, he's the guy that invented mind mapping. But there's always been something, I like the mind mapping thing and I've used mind mapping visually myself, writing with hands and stuff. But I haven't really been able to embrace it as an online tool. And I was actually very resistant to an online tool because as you know, I'm a big journaler and I love, I always have a journal. I go through five or six Moleskine journals a year just sequentially. You know, you've seen in my house in Florida that I've got three, three rows of a bookshelf with sequential journals. Since April of 1996 was journal number one. And they're all numbered and sequential for now. How many years is that since 1996? So that's 10 years, 14, 15, 17 years worth of journals on paper. Now I love that process and actually think better like that on paper. But what I found, the limitations is that you don't have a centralized sense of everything being able to be dispatched from there. You know, I'm able to get clarity and get it all out on paper because I really think, well, like that. But I see the wisdom of having a living thing where you can pick up where you left off rather than having to recreate stuff. I was spending a lot of time, kind of spending time doing 50 minute, doing a 15 minute focus finder to get clear on all the stuff that I needed to do. And there was a lot of redundancy in it. And so what I'm really experimenting with and what I think this tree app is going to do for me is allow me to have projects like all of the things, like I look at all the different things going on. You and I both have like so many things. So I have an I love marketing context that underneath it there's so many things that go on with that. Just if I look at what we've got going on right now, there's the actual podcasts that we do. We're just finishing up the the Yearbook Volume 2, that project is going on. I've got all these create space books that we'll be talking about coming up very shortly. The iPad magazine, all these things that are different projects that you're not going to be able to pick one and go all the way through, but you can do as far as that needs to advance, but you need to be able to then quickly switch over to money making websites. For instance, my company that does the websites for realtors or any of the other real estate things that I have going on, then all the products that we have within that, our getting listings program, finding buyers and the world's most interesting postcard, all those things and all the projects within those. Having one place where everything can be set up kind of in the dispatch center is to be able to then attach things to it so it's all in one place. I just love that idea and I'm still just now in the early stages of being able to wrap my mind around how to do that. But I'm just sharing with you the tool that I have found the most useful so far is that tree app.

No, no, I like it. I was sitting there looking at the list of the profit activators with the first one being narrow your focus. Focus and select one target market at a time project. Yeah, I'm sitting there. Know your focus and select, you know, one, say one project, one tool. Use direct response offers to compel prospects to call you. I'm sitting there thinking, you know, use a specific ritual to compel you to get shit done. Patiently and systematically educate and motivate yourself so you're skilled, you know, present your unique method in a way that makes it easy to maintain. You know, I'm sitting there thinking about how to translate.

I mean that's the thing. So it's like, so there's my thoughts. I mean so far is like this is a work in progress. But you know that focus activator number one is know your outcome. Focus activator number two is kind of know your power positions, you know, so I'VE got the sitting in the chair with my notebook, laying on the bed with my laptop on the phone with my headset, or sitting in front of the computer with my microphone, or being in my conference room with people, or being in a seminar room with a bunch of people. I mean, those would be like. Those environments are probably. I can't really think of other most powerful environments. When it really comes right down to it, everything I do fits really into one of those six things. And for everybody else, there may be other environments or other kind of power positions.

Well, you said something, I think really important that I want to touch on. And we've talked about this before, but so it's really about environments that work for you because you could have the greatest tools. You can have a lot of stuff, but if you're in a bad environment. I remember a conversation I had with Bill Phillips years ago about most people have gone to church. Not everyone, but most people. Most people have drank beer. Not everyone, but most people. But most people don't drink beer in church. It's just not like the environment. And he wrote about it in the book Transformation. But anyway, the environment of where you do something is incredibly important. And if you are not finding yourself getting anything done, like, you know, really, I think the biggest issue is not that we teach useful marketing strategies or we don't. It's people's ability to actually use them, test them out, think them through that sort of stuff. And a lot of times people will blame the strategy or blame the idea when what they really need to do is look at how they're going about trying to execute it and where, you know, and I'm a huge believer in, you know, you have your evil scheme hatchery. I love going to the library, you know, I mean, it's just. I can get more productive work done in that environment than I ever could in my office all day. You know, I mean, it just doesn't work as well for me. But, you know, at the end of the day, there's a lot to be said that, you know, even the most skilled people that are teaching people their skills to the best of their ability, you know, Dan Sullivan talks about there's like 20 of what we do that's just magic. I mean, call it whatever you want, but he calls it magic where you just have a unique ability that you can't really teach that part, but a good portion of it you can teach, A good portion of it you can share with people. A huge one is definitely picking the right environment of where you're going to be productive. You talked a lot about the way that I think about some of the. The things you talked about on this episode was your cockpit. I mean, it's like if you're going to fly a plane, you've got everything in front of you in a way that allows you to fly the plane. And if you're crashing the plane, if you're not getting the plane off the ground either you don't have enough fuel in the plane, you're not on the right Runway, you don't know what the hell you're doing. But it's like you need to set things up so that it works for you. And you need to have an environment that is conducive. I mean, if you want to be in healthy shape. I mean, don't be hanging out in bars with people smoking and eating crappy food and drinking all the time. I mean, you have to go to a different environment. There's environments for health, there's environments for spiritual connection. There's environments for focus and productivity. And so you need to have those environments. I mean, I can't do transcendental meditation in the middle of a rock concert. I mean, it's just not going to work.

Right. But I look at just what you were saying that you and Tim and Paula were talking about. Tim's idea of the fewer tools. That's really what I'm getting to with this. It's almost like carrying our breakthrough DNA is focused DNA as getting it down to these essence of the things. The thing that I really try and focus in on is that I can recreate that position. Number one, in the chair with my notebook anywhere. Like literally. There's nowhere that you could be that you can't find a chair to sit in that's comfy with that notebook. That's kind of. And I can deploy that anywhere. Same thing with being as long as I have my MacBook and a bed, then I'm able to lay down and work the way I like to work on my computer and a telephone. Being anywhere. But what really makes those work is knowing what you're going to do with those things to be able to maximize the time that you're able to spend in those positions, you know?

Right.

Does that make sense or is that just like literally from. What would you say for you? Have you thought about it like that?

Like I'm.

My fear is that the things I'm talking about are so micro specific to me that. But I imagine like any entrepreneur, there's going to be things where they need to sit and think and write things out or whatever. That probably be a valuable position for most entrepreneurs. And whether they lay down or sit down or do whatever it is, being, you know, at their computer is another power position. Certainly, you know, being on the phone. What would you say? Like, for you.

Well, okay, well, let me. Instead of maybe for me, let me just talk about my perspective. Perspective of what you shared. And I'm going to bring it back to this book I've been ranting about. So good they can't ignore you. Which actually, that term came from Steve Martin, from an interview that he had with Charlie Rose, I think, back in 2007, which you can watch online, where he was asking about how to be successful and Steve Martin said, be so good they can't ignore you. It's. Which is not the answer. Many people want to hear the thing with you sitting down on a chair and deploying things. Well, someone can't just sit down with a notebook and sit in a chair or wherever and deploy stuff if they've got nothing to deploy, if they don't know how to put something together. So your ability to do that. What people don't hear about before you say I can make money anywhere with a laptop, I can, you know, sit in my underwear and make money. I mean, well, yeah, if you know what the hell you're doing to do.

What you're in your underwear with your laptop.

I mean, so what. What, you know, a lot of people don't want to hear is all the books that you read, all of the real estate you tried to sell, all of the mistakes you made, all of the shit you had to go through before you could now in this stage in your life, sit down and deploy something. And so going back to that book, one of the things he talks about in the book was lifestyle design. And Tim Ferriss coined the term lifestyle design. And it set off this whole industry of young people that don't want to work for the man and don't want to work 9 to 5. And he talks about in the book how one guy that started a blog, he didn't have anything that was rare and valuable and had no career capital built up. All he had was his disgruntledness with working 9 to 5. And he had a statement and he was writing a blog post about it, but he didn't have anything that anyone was going to give him money for other than just an opinion of how he should live and writing about this lifestyle that he wants to live. But you know, Tim, who actually has Built up a lot of career capital, can actually do something. But it really, you know, to answer your question, I don't know if I'm going to answer the question the way you wrote it. What I would say is that the most important thing that needs to be done before anyone that I know can actually make money with marketing, selling products, services, advice, whatever, is you gotta identify something that people want. You have to select a target market that has something, and you need to have the ability to fulfill on it. Marketing is a critical element of that because you can have the greatest product or service in the world as you know, and be totally broke. And if you don't have the way to communicate that to people. And so you can sit and. I mean, I've met some people that could spreadsheet and track every minute of their day, and they just had every tool at their fingertips, but they didn't have anything that anyone wanted to buy. And you got to get that. Someone really needs to understand that. You need to understand the mindset of the person that you are selling to, who your prospect is. Because, I mean, I've seen so many people over the years that will spend seriously months setting up an office, setting up their letterhead, setting up their website before they've actually gone out and asked the marketplace to buy anything from them. And I think a lot of the productivity can actually be a trap for avoiding selling something.

I think that's true. Yeah. And getting kind of running in circles and not really actually creating any result in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So let me mention a thing too, and I'll talk about this more during a future episode, but another book that I'm not fully done with is Jim Lohrer. L O. How do you spell lohre?

L O, H E, R O, E.

H, R. Yeah, yeah. One of his newest books is the Only Way to Win. And it was recommended to me by my good friend Brian Kay, who I've known for many years. And Brian's also the one that told me to read so good they can't ignore you. And so Brian reads like a new book every week. Basically. He's done this for years. So he's a very prolific guy and has a very successful business, happy marriage, happy family, the whole works. And the interesting thing about the book, the Only Way to Win is, is I'm right in the area where he's talking about, you know, there's performance character and moral character. And that performance character is how many people actually evaluate themselves. You know, do they have confidence? Do they have self Esteem, are they resourceful? You know, and all these things that have to do with performance. And then moral characteristics could be things like honesty, integrity, generosity, compassion, and that the way to win is to be cultivating the moral characteristics, the ethical sides. And it's really made me think a lot about people I know that are extremely well off financially, that rate very high with performance characteristics, but don't have a lot of integrity, aren't honest, you know, they kind of bend a lot of those characteristics. And I even think about myself, you know, about where have I really, you know, where have I placed performance, you know, much higher than these other characteristics? And how much does the business world admire it? And the thing that I actually am finding fascinating about this book is not just about making money, but simply being a happy person and then taking your work and the work that you're doing, so almost like you're getting double value for your work, is that if you can have these really valuable performances characteristics like productivity as an example, there's some extremely productive people that have scammed people like Bernie Madoff, you know, as an example.

I mean, that guy efficiently and productively.

Right, right. But his moral characteristics, I mean, completely screw people. And so the interesting thing that I'm getting out of that book is like going, wow, you could actually use your work in and the rituals that you just went through while you're simultaneously building this other side of your life that really will allow you in the long run, to win. Because at the end of your life, what do you want to be known for? That you really were productive and really had your shit together and really had a great landing page and high conversions. I mean, of course you want. I mean, you want to make money. You want all that stuff to work. You want it to fuel something that actually ultimately makes you feel like an awesome human being and that other people can point to you and say, yeah, this person. Who do you have to be to be a hero? We talk about Dan Sullivan's thing of who do you want to be a hero to? Well, it's one thing to select a market that you want to be a hero to. It's another thing to truly be a hero to those people and have people admire you. Not because you're just really smart, but because you really impacted them, you encouraged them, you cared about them, that sort of stuff. And so I only bring that up because I just want people to really think about the pursuits because I think you'll put a lot more effort and energy into figuring out this marketing shit that we're teaching on I love marketing. If at the end of the day it's not just helping you make more money and sell more stuff, but it's actually allowing you to develop yourself as a human being that really is doing something rare and valuable and making it a giant contribution because you know, if you're not contributing, it's very short lived. I mean I've seen a lot of people sell shit in a box and make millions of dollars and you know, they're happy for a while, you know, because it's, it's not intrinsic, it's extrinsic, you know, but after a while, you know, you know, unless they're truly, you know, completely disconnected human beings, if you're not contributing to people, I mean you're just, it's not going to be long term, you're going to feel like fraud because in many cases you probably are. So that's my little soap opera.

I mean it feels like we got a good little conversation going here. It sounds like a couple episodes that we could talk about some entrepreneurial productivity.

Well here, let's do this then because you know, because I want to leave this.

It's already the hour. I know. Can you believe it's gone so fast?

Yes. So, so the things that would be helpful, I mean as we know, Eben produces awesome stuff. So yeah, he does whatever the hell.

I'll put a link up to this, like this, this PDF and video that he's just done right now. The art of entrepreneurial productivity is. It's fantastic. So let's put a link up so people can go and download that and then we'll talk more about it as we continue on here.

Yeah, so just to summarize, put up the link for that. We'll talk about it. If you've not listened to the last episodes with jr, the mysterious jr, listen to them. Those episodes, the previous couple were fantastic. Focus at will. Check that out. Read the book. So good they can't ignore you. I'd love to hear everybody, everyone's comments on that and any tools that anyone wants to share, any insights you have about productivity, anything that this episode has brought up in your mind, post it@ilovemarketing.com that's great.

If we can get people to come to ilovemarketing.com Leave comments on Focus activator number one. Know your outcome. You know the a tool for organizing all of the projects in one place. I would love to hear what other people do too without having to cobble together all these tools and apps. Is there one thing that people use because I've experimented with basecamp and workflowy and all kinds of different things, but I'd love to hear what people have as a recommendation.

Yep, Absolutely. It'd be awesome. Cool. All right, everyone, till next time, go out and market something.

Keep on keeping on, as they say. All right, thanks, Dean. Bye.