The One With Mark Thompson - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #88

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish and.

This is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. How's it going, Dean?

It's going good. Very excited about tonight.

Yes, tonight is going to be very exciting. We've got a good friend, special guest, someone you're going to learn a lot from in the next in this episode. So grab some notes if you're not driving because I think you're going to learn some stuff. His name is Mark C. Thompson and he is CEO and co founder of Virgin Unite Mentors, which is Sir Richard Branson's network for executive coaching entrepreneurial innovation. Which is really interesting because Mark is actually on Necker island right now doing this interview. He actually took a break from his trip on Necker to actually do an I Love Marketing episode. He's a leadership coach, He's a best selling author. His current book, we're going to talk a lot about this. It's called 21 Ways to Double youe Value. It's with him and Bonita Thompson and it's number one on Amazon as far as I know right now. I'll confirm that with Mark in just a moment. He's a venture capitalist, he's a Tony nominated Broadway producer. He brings real time solutions to today's leadership challenges. He's done a ton of stuff and I'll mention some of that as we go along, but he's got a huge bio anyway. Mark, can you hear us?

All right, I can and thank you so much. Life is good when you're on Necker. It has to be great. But it's such an honor to be with you guys. You're doing such great work in helping people just energize their businesses. So it's such a pleasure to be with you guys.

Absolutely. You've written some awesome books. I mean, you wrote Now Build a Great Business with our friend Brian Tracy. Success Built to Last. Creating the Life that Matters. And now your new book which is admired. And Dean, is there anything you want to say before I start rattling on? You know what I love?

Here we are.

This is great because Mark's good friends with Tony Robbins and Tony. When we had Tony on a few weeks ago, he was calling in from Namali from Fiji and here now we've got Mark from Necker and we were like, it's pretty cool.

This is life is exotic in business. That's for sure. Tony is a good friend. We're going to have him for dinner coming up at the World Business Forum. He's joining me for a big CEO hullabaloo coming up for the book Admired. He's a dear friend, and I listened to that show and my goodness, there's just nonstop content and ideas. Why we all love Tony.

Normally we have people who say that they listen to our episodes with a audio enhancer that lets them listen at double speed so they can listen faster.

Not that one had people say they had to listen to it at half.

Speed so that they could get it all in.

Exactly. Mark, I've been on Necker Island a bunch of times. And what's the highlight of your week since you've been there, other than the fact that your book has shot up to number one?

Well, as I was thinking a moment ago, here's this guy, Richard Branson. He's 62 years old and he can still have outswim you and out sail you and out pound you in tennis and all the rest. And I had one delicious moment where we were looking up both of our books and I had just eked out first place and he was in second place. And he had the great good humor to just give me a big high five on that one. And that's the great thing about Necker, that's the great thing about your friend Richard, is that he's someone who's always there to tell you you can do something that you didn't think you could to kind of push you to the next level and to just chase your vision down. And I think that's why we love him. That's why we're inspired by him. That's why he's a billionaire with 400 companies. Right?

Yeah, exactly. Jazzed up to really. And an hour and a resort to call home. Yep, exactly. There's something to be said about just entrepreneurs in general, which is cool because people at List and I love marketing really are entrepreneurs. They really are genuinely interested in value creation. Because what we teach in terms of before, during, and after, typically people that take our advice are not in the transaction business. They're in the relationship business. So it's really important for them to develop and maintain ongoing relationships. You're a total expert in this particular area. And before I actually ask you some specifics and Dean asked you some specifics, I want to just mention this because I want our listeners to know if they are not familiar with you, you've interviewed more successful and influential individuals than. Than maybe anyone that I know. I've interviewed over 400 people. Dean has interviewed a ton of people. We've got lots of brilliant People on. I love marketing, but I'm just going to rattle off some of the names here. I mean, it would take me forever to rattle off all of them. But you've interviewed Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Forbes, Branson, Jack Welch, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis, Barbara Walters, Muhammad Yunus, Bono, Desmond Tutu, Sally Field, George Soros, Eric Schmidt, Charles Schwab, Condoleezza Rice, Rudy Giuliani, Rich Gordon Moore. I don't know where to stop here. Herb Kelleher, you know, just Bill Clinton, on and on. You've also interviewed the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, the commissioner of the NBA, you know, the president of JFK University, the chairman of the World Economic Forum, the CEO of Intel. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. So one of the things I kind of want to start with is, you know, what are the three big lessons you've learned after interviewing and hanging out with all these industry Transformers is what we like to call them.

Well, you know, to me, it's been kind of an obsession to meet these folks because I started out working for Chuck Schwab and as his lieutenant building a tiny company starting way back in the 80s. What I learned from him is, and dyslexics like him is that kind of the first principle was that nobody's perfect and you shouldn't wait until you're perfect to try to make a difference in the world. And that you could probably turn whatever incapacities or weaknesses that you think you have into a pretty special weapon to serve the world. So that's kind of non intuitive. With Schwab, for example, he was so dyslexic that this is a guy who, when I was trying to help him at his first annual meeting of stockholders. Picture this. This guy, it's a hot day, he's sweating right through his shirt. Because it was the stock market crash in 1987, we didn't know if people would bring you weapons of mass destruction into the meeting because he hated brokers, you know, very much like the recent times on Wall Street. And he's dyslexic, so he can't read a script. And so the only way I could actually pass him notes was to make some letters big and some small and some in, you know, italics and some in big print. And by the time I got done, it looked like a ransom note. And I hand it to him, and he's almost trembling, and he stands up there and he talks to people about how he wants to Run a different kind of business, one that's ethical, the one that's really position to help customers and so forth. And his business ended up just taking off. And what he learned from his kind of weakness and dyslexia, the fact that he got kicked out of school a couple times and had had seven businesses fail before Schwab worked out, it all came to him in one moment when he realized that he was a master of making things simple. And if you could make your business simple enough, a complex business, simple enough so that your customers can just absorb every word, that they can understand it without reading 400 pages of documentation, if they can really embrace it to solve problems in their life without having to be having their hand held all the way. That was the magic for Chuck Schwab that he kind of turned his wounds into wisdom. He could make things simple. If he could understand it, the world could understand it. So he really had a kind of this epiphany that if you could simplify things enough to make it easy, then you were the one who would differentiate yourself and be trusted in the world. So keeping things simple for him was a huge deal. And you'll see that over and over with some of the great entrepreneurs. You look at Steve Jobs, who was a good friend of mine growing up, Here's a guy who wasn't really a technologist. He was a guy who wanted to make things beautiful in an industry that didn't want to even care for a moment about the aesthetic. I mean, think about the Apple products. They're just gorgeous, and they're beautiful. He didn't invent the smartphone. He didn't invent the laptop. He didn't invent the whole idea of being able to provide a digital music flow like itunes. In fact, I was chairman of the company that came up with that idea. It was Rio Port. What did he do? He reinvented the world. So it was simple and easy and beautiful and accessible and intuitive. And so people like Chuck and Steve and others, they've always been able to focus on how the customer wanted to receive it, rather than how the technologist or the financial wisdom that wanted to produce it. So kind of being in the customer's shoes so that you have this spectacular, easy customer experience. So that would be the first principle, and then I'd say the second principle would be something that's near and dear to your hearts, because you guys are the dream team, and no one does it better. I mean, if there was anyone to tell me that there wasn't anything, such as mass marketing anymore. You'd be the first one to tell me that. I'm sure no customer wants to feel like he is anything less than absolutely unique and special. So, you know, it's no longer about selling. It's about transactions or just product sales. It's about relationships. It's about trusted partnerships. And the job that we have as marketing people is to be ones who solve problems. We're supposed to be detectives to find out what's valuable to people and how we can make people more profitable, more successful. The metaphor that I always got growing up with Chuck Schwab, of course, was investing. And the idea was always, hey, what if you had to pull the checkbook out of your pocket right now and write a check to your customer so that you could be an equity holder, a shareholder in that company? Would you treat them differently than you do today? If the answer is yes, then you need to think differently about how to form a partnership. Because the truth is, you're already spending time, effort and energy selling to them. Why not take it all away, write that check and buy shares and be a partner with that customer? So that's really principle number two that kind of pounded me. That was, I think, nonintuitive, because I think a lot of folks really want the quick gain still, even today, and they're not really realizing that much cheaper, much more efficient, and much more profitable to partner with your customers and help them become more profitable. And then the third principle has to do with, back again to your friend Richard Branson, with whom you spend so much time here on Necker, and that is these great entrepreneurs. And whether they won a Nobel Prize or whether they invented something amazing or they became a billionaire, they all have this odd combination of audacity and humility. On the one hand, they really believe that you can change the world if you set your sights on it. And on the other hand, they have the humility to realize that there's not a damn thing that gets done in the world alone. There's nothing worthwhile you'll ever do in your life or work that you don't do through and with other people by recruiting to them that cause and infecting them with some passion to make a difference in that way. And so these people are all saying, we're going to go into space and we're going to do it with six guys, not with 6,000, like NASA. We're going to do Virgin Galactic, and we're going to have a contest to do that. And let the most successful, let the. The ones that have the audacity survive and succeed and prosper. But you have to have the humility to know that you've got to learn from others, recruit others, and rely on others to get it actually done. And that's kind of a special combination. I think that's what my friend Jim Collins calls level five leadership is when you're. You have a certain level of hubris and humility at the same time, which doesn't usually go in the same package, but if you look at a lot of the billionaires, it certainly does. So those would be three things.

Audacity, like that is. There was a book several years ago called Overachievement and Study about, you know, overachievers. And one of the key things that they discovered they had was irrational confidence.

Yes. It's kind of like a parent, isn't it? I mean, it really is. It's Greenspan's irrational exuberance, isn't it?

To say how much confidence is rational or how much.

You know, I mean, that's kind of.

What audacity really is, isn't it? It's that irrational.

It's outrageous. Yeah, yeah. It's just. And a lot of these people, as I was saying, with. With even a Steve Job or even an Edison. Edison didn't invent the electric light. It existed. There was electric light on streets in America, but it was dangerous. It wasn't packaged in a way that it could go retail into people's homes. And so these guys have the audacity to say, okay, we've gone to space already. Can we do it better, faster, cheaper, safer, more fun, more conveniently, can we rethink it? You think about Richard Branson. He's constantly watching for actually pretty well established businesses that have huge market share and have lost their connection with the customer. They've lost their sense of audacity that made them entrepreneurs in the first place, that we can make this experience fantastic for customers. So he comes descending in and reinvents the air experience, or reinvents the way your ride goes on the train, or reinvents the bank. All things that existed but used to be great until someone lost their audacity and lost their humility, too, along the way.

You just said something really interesting there. You said it used to be great till it lost its audacity. I was just with my real dear friend Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach day before yesterday, and, you know, it wasn't my normal group. I actually go to Strategic Coach. I've been doing it for many years, and basically, you know, I just Dan's is a real dear friend of mine. And I went in and spoke to the. To the masters group he had there, and he was talking about greatness. And, you know, Steve Jobs was, you know, not per se interested in money, you know, especially after he was diagnosed with cancer, he was interested in greatness.

Yep.

And I think one of the commonalities with a guy like you, your new book admired, which I'm going to ask you in a minute, what's that book all about? But like, all these people that you've interviewed, like Branson, I mean, there's this pursuit of greatness. Would you agree that their goal, I mean, in your experience, how much is money a part of it versus something much different?

Well, a lot of people don't really want to buy it, but I don't think it's about the money at all. I think it is about greatness. I think it's about being up to something. And maybe the biggest ego part would be like, Bill Gates. He wanted to be right, and they wanted to be right about something, that they had a great idea that they thought they could do better. Bill Gates thought he could say, okay, there'd be one type of software, and no matter where you are on the planet or what language you speak or what culture you're from or what kind of company that you have, whether it's large or small, you could open that document. It would be a word document. It would be a spreadsheet. It would be. And it was a breakthrough, Right? He just made it. It was an outrageous, audacious idea, and he wanted to be right about that. And it ended up being worth billions more than I think he would have ever guessed it would be. And sure, I think people like the money maybe as a way to get, you know, keep score perhaps, but it is never about that. In fact, the people who kind of pursue that usually can achieve it only to, you know, never maybe reach the status of a billionaire or having lasting businesses. Because the, as we all know on this call, everybody here is a hero of mine. I mean, everybody who's an entrepreneur, everybody who's in marketing. You guys, you rock. You're all heroes of mine. And the reason you do is because you realize the changing customer is the only thing that's constant. You know, that things that needs are going to change, competition is going to change, circumstances are going to change. And in order to be right over and over again, you have to listen and respond and create great customer experiences and reinvent them over and over again. You never kind of Arrive at this destination and then can rest on your laurels. That's what these guys have. They want to be great. But great isn't a destination. Great is a place where you're constantly testing the envelope. You're constantly pushing to make it better, faster, smarter. That's the only reason why entrepreneurs can beat big companies. Because big companies become risk averse. Right? They reached greatness and then lost their audacity. And then their job was to protect their job. Then their job ended up being. And so it shouldn't be possible that guys like us on this call could actually challenge the big guys and win. Shouldn't be. They have more money, they have distribution, they have more customers, they have more resources, they have more experienced people. But we beat them every day of the week. Why? For this exact reason. Because we are focused on the customer experience and we have the audacity and willing to take the risks to keep changing until we get it right and then keep getting it right.

You said something earlier about the idea of partnering with your clients and would you be willing to write a check to do that? And it just, it's so funny because we were in New York at Joe's 25K event with the abundance event.

We had Peter incredible event.

So we had these, we did these 10 minute talks and one of the things I give a 10 minute talk and talked about the idea of this clarifying question that I have, what would you do if you only got paid when your client gets a result?

And it just resonated with me so.

Much when you say that it's the same thing as writing a tax to invest in your client's business.

Would you put.

The money that you're going to make, would you put that after your client gets the result?

This is exactly what mindset of really?

That is audacious.

That is audacious. No, that's right on. And when you're an investor, that's what you have to do now. You're on the same side of the table. You're both taking the risk together. You're both looking at what the bottom line of that partner is. And boy, they don't become overly price sensitive or nitpicky when, when you're now on the same side of the table as you are, as they are with the work they're trying to do and try to learn how to make them more profitable. Help them with their cost structure, help them with.

It's exactly the opposite. They become magnanimous. People are far less attached to future money than they are to present money, generate that future money. They're magnanimous in sharing it.

It is. It's so true. And I think that's. That's the new paradigm. That's really the. I think the new model right now is that there's. There's a. There's a way to partner with your customers to make them more successful. And therefore, you've got this synergy. And that really is at the centerpiece of my book, admired. What I was looking at is how the most admired companies and leaders in fortune magazine, they have the most admired list of companies. And people fall over themselves to try to get on this most admired list. And with good reason. Because the people who are on the most admired list, they're not necessarily just the biggest, but they are the most profitable. They sustainably grow in good and bad times. They are valued the most, in other words, their pricing in the marketplace, their market capitalization, Their value as measured by the stock market is higher. You look at someone like Apple, everybody covets them because it's not that they necessarily sell more devices, but they sell them for three times as much. And their margins are so much bigger because they're admired, because they're respected, and because they're valued. So what we looked at in our book was, so what the hell is it that people value? What do they really respect and what do they really are willing to pay for? And that's one of the things that's perhaps most key is when you form a real investment partnership with your customer, that kind of binding yourself to the customer makes you admired, that gives you more respect, and they value you more for that kind of work.

So let's actually talk about it. You obviously wrote this really great book, and I'm going to recommend that everyone listening to I love marketing, go and buy it. Mark's books are awesome. Great writer. And you did it with Bonita. So.

Yes.

Tell us a little bit about Bonita.

Well, so what we did is what Bonita does is that she spent 25 years in corporate human resources. She's a person who's an expert in compensation. So she knows exactly how and why companies pay you what they pay you, whether you're a vendor, whether you're an employee, whether you're a consultant, whether you're just trying to go to them to build some sort of partnership. She's an expert at figuring that out because these companies have great stakes. You know, they have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on employees, on vendors, and on all the supply chain. And so she's an expert in understanding how that works. She reclassified 100,000 jobs at bank of America. She helped start a little company called Genentech back when biotech was starting. And she had to seduce these high powered biotechnologists to come to an industry that just didn't exist before and figure out how to compensate them. She came up with this idea of incentive stock options. And, and so she's been very creative in that area. And so she's been a great partner with me on all my books, doing the research. And what we did is we went and we did a Gallup like study and we asked people, what do they value in companies and brands and what do they value in individual leaders? And we found out some interesting things. Then we went on to ask them, and I'll go into those in a moment. But then we went on to ask them, so do you feel valued in the work that you do? And we got kind of an interesting answer from a broad population in the U.S. the answer we got was on maybe a scale of seven, People said, yeah, I feel valued maybe at a four, not bad, not great. Then we said, okay, so you're saying that you feel like you're not quite valued as much as you'd like to be by the most valuable people in your life and your work. The most valuable people, meaning your customers, your teammates, your boss. You feel like you're not quite valued. But let me ask you this next question, and that is, do you know what they value? Do you know what those most valuable people in your life value? And everybody gave it about a two. So let me get this straight. So you really care about making sure that you're getting valued fully for the work that you do and the contribution that you're making and you don't think it's quite good enough, but you think you should be valued more, then you have the audacity to tell me that you actually don't know what those people value. And this whole idea of understanding what your customer needs and wants and values, we all talk about it, but we just don't work hard enough in all aspects of our life and work to find out. Be the detective that all marketing people have to be to find out what your customers value, what will make them profitable, what will make them more successful, what will make your boss more successful. Do you really know how much do you really know about these people? And so we were just fascinated to see how much people needed to really refocus on if you want to be admired, valued and respected. Then you sure as heck better understand what the people who you're looking for that admiration from need in order to be successful and make it your business in life, make it your mission to make them successful. And so that was, it's interesting there hadn't been. We worked with our friends at Stanford where I created the venture design Lab many years ago, and friends at Northwestern who did the academic backing up for this. And then we did face to face interviews as you talked about. And it was fascinating to hear what it is in fact that people needed to focus on in order to really drive their business. We did simple things like create a list of the people who drive your life and business success, find out what those MVPs, those most valuable people, what is their portfolio of priorities, what is going to define their profitability and prosperity. And then find out exactly what they need and see where you overlap in terms of the skills and what you can deliver. And then make it your business as if you were an investment partner to help them become successful. And then guess what will happen. They're going to value the hell out of you. They're going to really wish that they have you at their side and want to be able to work with you directly and have a long term relationship. It builds loyalty. So it was kind of an amazing and extraordinary adventure. There's been work done on influence, there's been a lot of work done in sales and marketing. Nobody ever looked at why anyone admires you in the past. So this was a fascinating adventure.

And what's actually really interesting, and I don't want to understate or overstate this, I just think it's huge. If you actually just think about what you just talked about, being admired, not only the psychological benefits of that from an appreciation standpoint, but really setting your life up, setting yourself up to being that in tune with who you want that admiration from and delivering it, presenting it, packaging it in that way, your life will not suck.

I mean your life just exactly right, it just unleashes. You see, the thing I like about it is you think about somebody that you admire and when you think about that person, then map out what are the attributes or the traits of that person. You know, why is it that you admire them and you know what it ends up being? It's a peek in the mirror. You're looking at what you aspire to be yourself. When you're talking about someone you admire, you're saying, that's who I want to be and that's kind of who I not only am Inspired by. But I'm also even. It even gets up all sorts of fears and dreams. I mean, this is the life and the person that I want to be. And that's why I admire them. And so to be really explicit about this, I think what's great about it too is it could be extremely motivating to your team. One of the most challenging things for all of us in the who are on this call, who have got smaller businesses that are becoming mid to big businesses, is, you know, recruiting and hiring other folks. And if you can find a reason to admire the people on your team, it's more than just recognizing them. It's saying, you know, here's what makes your contribution special to the cause and to the company. And it's aspirational because it says, okay, this is what I'd like, you know, and I'd like to admire you for these other things.

I admire you for A, B and.

C and I'd like to admire you for, for D, E and F that these other things that you can achieve. It's very aspirational, it's very respectful, and it makes your life feel great. One of the things we talked about with a lot of entrepreneurs is that everybody is challenged with that recruiting and hiring. And one of the things you need to think about in your business is think in terms of if it burned down, who would you hire back? Who do you admire most on the team and what would you be doing? Could you really think about this in terms of starting over? These aren't people that you, that you admire. Then you need to think about getting people or developing people that you do and getting those people to help rock your business, because that's what these billionaires did. Getting back to the people that Joe, that you've interviewed and Dean and that we've all had the pleasure of being able to sit down with and work with and brainstorm with. They all did it by finding people who really rock, people they admire. Sitting at Necker, watching him interview people and it's. He has nothing to brag about. Richard Branson, he, you know, he doesn't end up focusing on that. He ends up saying, okay, so what is it that you do? What are you an expert in and how can you help this cause? And do you share this as a vision so that it could be yours?

It's kind of interesting that you talk about Steve Jobs and, you know, personifying that. I forget who the gentleman was that was working with Pepsi before he came on with Apple and Steve Scully.

Scully, right. John Scully. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you want to, you know, do you really want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water? You know, or do you want to make something awesome? I mean, that is right there. How could you, when faced with like that? That really was the bottom of it, wasn't it? I mean, are you really making the world a better place?

That's right. Are you making the world a better place? And, you know, being connected with a cause like that. I mean, you were asking me earlier about what some of the things you learn from these powerful people. I mean, honestly, all these folks are focused on solving a big problem that the customer has. You really have nothing going for you unless you realize that the only reason you have a business is because you're solving somebody's problem.

Yeah, I mean, I often think of business. You're solving problems for profit.

That's what you do. Exactly.

And if there's no bad news out there, you know, Dan Sullivan says other people's, you know, bad news is your good news.

Exactly.

And, you know, not that we want to wish bad news on anyone, but the fact of the matter is there's lots of bad news in the world. And if you can eliminate the bad news, if you can make their day better, if you can solve their problems, people will pay you, they will adore you. And if you can set yourself up to be admired for who you are, I mean, it just adds so much. So much value to everything you got. So I actually think that this is. Hopefully this becomes a movement in terms of people that read your book, really get this blueprint, because you haven't just written a book about being admired. You've written, really, a blueprint on how to get the things that you want in your life by helping people have what they want and getting really clear on that. That's a pretty, you know, that shifts the whole conversation about how to think about work, career, business, everything. Well, it is.

And it's interesting. You know, when you're wandering around Necker, you probably noticed Larry Page's island that he bought there that he's going to be renovating. And I saw Larry at the World Economic Forum in Davos at the beginning of this year, and he really, you know, the way he framed all of this is he said that we all have to think in terms of kind of five fundamental questions. He basically said, no pain, no gain. In other words, do you know how your customer has been abused or failed by your type of service or product in the past? I mean, do you really know? I mean, everybody's had a bad service experience. Everybody's had a bad customer experience. If you end up being the one to heal the pain or even take it an additional step, like Richard does when you go on Virgin America or Virgin Atlantic and, and actually make it feel like something between an Austin Powers and James Bond sort of experience, you know, you get that purple lighting and the vibe going on in the background. And can you feel, can you make the customer not only be healed of his pain because he doesn't want to have to make another long trip, but can you make him feel a little bit chic about it, make him feel really cool about it? That ends up being kind of the holy grail. And then secondly, why do people shop elsewhere from where you have your service provided in the first place? In other words, why do they perceive value from your competition? And don't try to comfort yourself and say that the customer's stupid, because it's not the customer that's stupid, right?

It's never the customer that's stupid.

Third, why would an ideal prospect switch to you? And do you know how to say that to describe that value in 25 words or less? If you can't make a quick statement as to why somebody switched to you in 25 words, then you need a better strategy. Fourth, what are your key assumptions about your competitors? And are you really right? I don't know about you, but when I was at Schwab, there was like way too many times I'd be in a meeting and I was running schwab.com and, you know, I'd have one of the engineers say, well, the idiot customer couldn't find the login in the upper left hand corner. And I said, you know, the customer is smart enough to know that he's going to go someplace where it's logical to him, not logical to you. As an engineer.

We used to have.

This usability lab and we watched the poor customer suffer with our products on the other side. And our product engineers would be like pounding on the window saying, you idiot, it's over there. They could finally learn what it was to try to make something intuitive and not make stupid assumptions about why people use your competitive services. Then the fifth principle was always, do you know what makes your customer profitable? And I don't know how many salespeople I've talked to who actually don't know what makes your customer profitable so as that they can continue to part with their hard earned money and give it to you to help them become more profitable. Because that's the only point of having a relationship with you and so getting kind of underneath looking under the hood of your customer, as we talked about earlier, ends up being a big part of the value equation. And when you do that, I guarantee you're admired.

They will admire, respect and value you more for sure. What do you think is the biggest takeaway? When someone actually, let's say someone reads your entire book, goes through your book, what is the big take? What will they get?

Well, I think the hardest thing to really realize is that the reason I talk about 21 ways to double your value is because that's exactly what happens. As a venture capitalist, I'm in the business of trying to find ways to unlock value in a business. So I'm an executive coach. I have skin in the game. I buy stock in a company and it's amazing to me to see how two dental practices or two marketing companies, or two technology companies, one will sell for five times profits, the other will sell for two. Why the heck is there a difference? And so what I'm looking for are all the ways in which when you provide additional value and you understand what's valued by your customer, you will increase your price earnings multiple. This is money in your pocket when you realize that you could be so well connected to the market that you're valued more. Why is it that Apple producing the same products as Samsung is valued as the most highly capitalized company in the world? I mean, it's worth a half a trillion dollars. It has a price earnings multiple second to none for a business that has real earnings.

Now there are other others out there.

That are inexplicable, that trade at high prices for short periods of time. But the real takeaway in wanting to be admired and understanding the secret sauce to being valued, respected and admired is that you will double your value, triple your value, quadruple your value in the marketplace. Because, see, a lot of us who run small and mid sized businesses will unfortunately leave our business, maybe if we're lucky, to an heir. Most of us run our businesses kind of down to zero. When we retire and leave them, we don't sell them for a profit. And so the other big takeaway from this book is that you really don't have a business until you can leave and it runs on its own. In other words, would you buy stock in a company with just one person who makes all the decisions? Would you be an investor in your business, in somebody's business where it was all reliant on one person? One of the things you realize when you have to build value in a company is that it's got to be based on people who can run this place so that you do have an exit eventually. Until you do, you have consulting practice, you don't have a business. A business comes when you have such smart, visionary, capable, experienced, loyal people who are running that business that they're going to become millionaires at it. And they'll make you a millionaire when it's purchased by a bigger company or goes public on an exchange. So I've spent my life in the public markets, and so the end game here is one where you kind of do. You do good and do well at the same time. You do a great job for customers. You build incredible valuable customer experiences. If you really know what customers want, then you're going to have the most valuable business in your category. So to me, that's the end game. That's always the end game. Yeah.

That's awesome. This word value gets used a lot. I'd love to ask you, how do you think about and define value?

Well, that's one of the weird things about value is that. And perhaps one of the bigger surprises when we did the research is not everyone values the same things for the same amount. In a sense that what somebody values. I think the better word would be like to say, this is what your customer finds valuable. In other words, something they're willing to cherish and pay for and protect and go after if they have something that's valuable to them. Because you're right, the word values ends up being kind of hijacked for all sorts of different kind of moral, ethical, and controversial reasons. And often when we have exercises in big companies, I remember at Schwab, they'd ask you, what are your values? And everybody would kind of compete with what sounded the most lofty. And it's meaningless. It's kind of useless. Yes, you want to be honest and you want to have integrity and you want to be family focused and so forth. But what does all of that mean? So for this context, I really kind of focus more on what is valuable to people. And it's surprising how different that is. It was with Jeff Bezos. He invented this whole idea of collaborative filtering. If you like this thing, you'll also like that thing. To me, that's one of the biggest breakthroughs in marketing, is to understand what he's understanding is what is it about this product that the person really finds valuable? And then I can find this whole host of other solutions and products that that fit within that same category. And it seems to me that all of us in marketing are detectives trying to understand exactly what it is that flips people's switch and what families of products work for somebody rather than what one transaction can I pull off or how can I just close the sale you're really looking for. Bezos really invented this whole collaborative filter idea and understanding what are the patterns of what different market segments want to. And so at the end of the day, I think the definition of value is kind of. It's what people are willing to make sacrifices to get and part with their heart and earn money to have.

I love it.

That's great. Well said.

It's interesting though because focusing on the differences that people have.

When you were saying that, I was.

Thinking immediately of Procter and Gamble and how most big box retailers, if they're going to get in the laundry detergent space, they put some laundry detergent in a box and label it laundry detergent.

And put it out there.

Here at Procter and Gamble, you know, they look, they understand that some people want their clothes to be as white as they can be and some people want them to smell good. And some people want to just be able to throw it all in, you know, in one load and not worry about all the colors blending and you know, so they get into all those different things that people value. And you know, while other people have one laundry detergent that may or may not sell well, they've got, you know, five billion dollar brands just in the laundry detergent category.

Listening to you talk, it reminds me of the conversation about always the, you know, defining the different between the difference between benefits and features.

Yeah.

And everybody else kind of, you know, as often as we hear that lecture, it's like Sunday service. We have to hear it over and over.

Right.

It's not about the features and that's exactly it. I was saying, Joe, I was telling Mark before you got on the call how resonant his book is with all of our profit activators, especially our, you know, profit activator number five is deliver a dream come true experience from your clients perspective.

And nice.

That's the principle behind what Procter and Gamble is doing because they're, they're committed to building the very best product from perspective.

I always love those. The story of those guys when they went out and did the market research so deep that they could outsell all the other kids with their potty training kits because they actually went out there, watched the kids learn to be potty trained and realized that the kid was trying to balance himself with one hand. And only had the other hand to do the paperwork and came up with a product that could be handled with one hand. That's amazing.

That's how you create a billion dollar.

Brand, is know exactly how the customer is suffering with the problem so that you can intervene and have an intervention that just makes total difference. The other thing that really struck me, and there was something from Warren Buffett that he was talking about. Now here's a guy who you can imagine, he gets hit on every 15 seconds for a business plan or for a job. You can just kind of imagine wherever he goes, just like Richard and the others, everybody pitching them hard. And I asked him about that. I said, so how do you kind of differentiate? I mean, what do you find? What would be some, like, quick vetting criteria that you're using? You know, what do you find value about this person? He says, it's a great question. Because he says, you know, I won't even take the meeting until you meet three criteria when it comes to value. And I said, okay, I'm there, I'm listening. He says, now everybody who usually comes to him is a high performer. They have a great resume, they have some track records. So it's basically the three P's, we call them. It's performance, which is, what have you achieved? What have you been able to deliver on? That's the thing that's probably the easiest to measure for all of us business people because you're saying, did you make the sale? What kind of growth have you shown? What kind of margins can you produce? So that's the performance piece. And he says there's usually when people come to him with something, they've pretty much nailed it there. Then the other two areas, the other two Ps, though, they struggle more with. And the first one is purpose. In other words, are these people kind of aligned with what they're doing, like it was a cause as much as a company? In other words, I love the comparison he made when the guys were trying to start a company called family.com, but it was quickly. You could look at these guys and you could see in about three minutes that it's clear that they hadn't been with their family for like five years. So they had no absolute connection with the cause or the meaning or the purpose or the power of what it was that they're doing. And I'm not saying that everything that you do has to be a moral drive. I do have to say that you got to love it because people really notice whether you think that what your solution is, is actually better than brand X or Y. It's got to be. You know, people are now so cynical that they can smell whether you are kind of purpose driven in this work. So. And you can imagine someone like Warren can sniff it out as well. You just, you know, you don't make that second sense of performance and purpose, then you have nowhere to go. And then the third area, and he says, actually the one that's the hardest but gets talked about the most is passion. Passion is this thing that, where you would secretly almost do this for free. This is something that drives you from inside out. Passion is the kind of thing that makes you get up and be resilient when you fail. And he says, mark, I can't believe these people. They come to me and they'll say, I've got the performance metrics nailed and I've got a good purpose for this business. The passion. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'll bring that in on weekends or evenings or, you know, maybe I'll do that in my next job or in the next company after I exit this one. He says, mark, you know, when I.

Cash my exit check.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, give me a break. It's kind of like your happiest day with a sailboat is the first day and the last day, right? The day you buy it and the day you sell it. He says, it's like, you know, saving. Putting off passion is kind of like saving up sex for old age. You know, it's a really bad idea. You got to really be sexed up about this right now. And he says, that's, you know, the people who are passionate about what they do will run faster, do more, earn more, make fewer mistakes, they have fewer sick days, and they even live longer. So it ends up being the X factor. If you've got people who are Olympians, you know, it's that extra passion that puts it over the top. And it was funny because, you know, Warren Buffett's this 80 year old with thick glasses and gray hairs and I didn't expect him to talk about, you know, you gotta feel the sex, dude. You gotta really feel it.

That is hysterical. You know, I also, you know, speaking of Buffet and his whole punch card theory, you know, the number one thing he looks for, you know, in investments is opportunity cost and, you know, stuff like that. You know, all these different quotes and things that he said. His whole thing about just managing his time and stuff. A guy like you, I mean, clearly you're A very busy guy. You get hit up with a lot of deals. You have more opportunities than you can shake a stick at. And you've done that because you set up your life so that people admire you and you deliver value for them. I mean, if people want to know how to do what you've done, and people like you read your book, obviously. What are some of your methodologies, philosophies for filtering? The same thing you kind of asked Warren, but more just about what gets your attention and what doesn't.

Well, I think first of all, you got to think about if you really do take a close look at passion, you need to know what really drives you. And I think for most of us who are kind of intuitive overachievers, we don't really actually understand or haven't deconstructed what it really means to understand what you're passionate about or even to see what your customer is passionate about. Because if you can find out what he or she's, what's really driving him or her, you'll build a relationship, you'll be able to deliver better, and you'll be able to understand more what turns them on and what they're going to be willing to buy and partner with you on. So actually, it turns out in our research, we found six or seven criteria for passion. And I apply them to every deal that I look at. Because passion ends up being important, because it's what makes you get back up again when you fail, because you will. And it's what makes you want to.

Be irrationally exuberant and recruit other people.

And have the audacity. Because passion is what kind of takes you over the top and makes you audacious and saying, we can do this better, faster. So a few ways, for those of us who, to me, I was kind of passion impaired to understand what it really meant. I have this kind of checklist, and one of them is, would this be, you know, would this be something I'd want to be involved with and make a contribution to the world in if I secretly had to do it for free? Now, I'm not suggesting that you do things for free, and I don't very often, but it's interesting. I did see over and over again with people who are really high achievers. This wasn't stuff they wanted to get over with. This is shit they wanted to do. This is stuff they wanted to make a difference with. This was flipping their switch. We're gonna make a lot or a little money on this, but I really care about this and so, you know, secretly doing it for free has ended up being a very powerful differentiator for me, because I don't know about you, but our good friend Chet Holmes died this year. My good friend Steve Jobs last year died last fall. These are people who have contributed so much and made such a difference, and life is short, and if there's anything that encourages you to think that way, it would be let death be your advisor, as Don Juan said. So something that you'd secretly do for free, that shortens the list up really freaking fast. You're not just doing this for the status. It's something that you'd like to have a part of your legacy, maybe stand up and be accounted for. Yeah, I was a part of that. I really wanted to make that difference. I really think that should be done a different way. This is, you know, this is something you want to be counted for. So I think that'd be a second criteria is kind of this accountability or legacy Mark.

Because when Joe and I decided to do the I Love Marketing podcast, first of all, just the name. I Love Marketing. It's something easy to get behind that. It has passion built into it. But we actually had a conversation about what would it be like right now if we had access to, you know, a hundred years ago, the best marketers, all the.

All the.

Claude Hopkins and Joseph Kennedy and all these guys. And we said, literally, can you imagine if, like, Albert Lasker and Claude Hopkins got together every week and would, you know, talk for an hour and record all the. All the best stuff that was going on, you know, at that practice at a gold mine, we would have felt like we stumbled on, you know, and.

What a legacy for them to leave for the rest of us.

Exactly. So Joe and I, that was our thing, is like, you know, imagine 100 years from now if some company stumbles on, you know, the. This volume that we did of the first. The first 50 episodes of I Love Marketing. It's kind of. That's the way we feel about it. It's just kind of that passion, and.

That'S what you're doing now. That's the service that you're providing everyone else. This is a curriculum. This is inspiration. And these are people who actually do stuff. Don't just talk about it or study it or prognosticate. It's no philosophical conversation you're having. You're talking about what they've actually done, and you're leaving that for the world. And I think that's how all the great, you know, when you go from Good to great. It is about leaving a legacy and being willing to stand up for it. And there's another dimension too, and that is that it's something that you feel that you actually get distracted by. It's one of the things that your mind runs to and you daydream about it and you think about it and you get, I guess what Mikhail, Czech Mahalo took. This sociologist did a lot of study on what people got distracted by or lost track of time. It's when you're in the flow.

That's a fantastic distinction. When you say, what do you get distracted by versus what do you get distracted from?

Yes, exactly.

Pretty good indicator, right?

It is. It's a huge indicator. Usually you say, well, that's just annoying. Well, actually that, that's actually another criteria we found for passion. Look at what irritates you and then realize the reason it irritates you is because you care about it and that you'd like. And what's valuable to you or the value that's being violated is the inverse of that. So I have a really good friend who is a madman and she's basically just. She will go into a screaming fit if she sees like a bad line of advertising copy. I mean, she just goes ape. And her husband will go, but honey, it's just advertising. No, it's a hundred million dollar campaign bad cop. I cannot stand to see badass copy. It's just. Now that's a, that's a valuable. That is passion at work. She's daydreaming about it. She's living and eating and sleeping it. And am I surprised that she's good at it? And so having that, that obsession for it. And, and I think a lot of people kind of say, well, if I'm distracted by something, you know, get back on task, well, wait a minute, you better look at what you're being distracted by. Actually, there's some power there. There's energy there. And look at what irritates you. No, I want to ignore what irritates you. Me. No, pay attention to that. That's, that's energy. That's, that's power. There's those short list of things.

No, I think what you're saying is such a important distinction that a lot of people don't pick up on. And by the way, I do want to mention this too, because I have admired right in front of me here and everything that you're talking about. If our listeners, if you want to go deep with this, like on page 41, you know, there's this question, what if I don't have passion? And then you kind of lay out, you know, this great process. And then, you know, that's chapter six called the Passion Trap. And then, you know, you just talked about the law of distraction in your new book, you know, and so I actually want you to go a little bit deeper with that. But what you. What you were just saying with, you know, be it anger, a lot of times that. That what you think is something you need to run away from is actually what you need to look at. You know, for instance, Gary Chapman wrote this book called the Five Love Languages. I actually went and saw him speak, and then I went out and talked with him. Interesting guy. He mentioned this one thing. He said, if you want to find out what your partner's love language is, listen to what they complain about, because they're just crying out for something. I thought, what an interesting way of looking at that. Because a lot of people would be like, well, you're complaining. It's like, well, but there's. There's juice in that. There's a dime in there. If you actually know how to think about it, what you just said, a lot of the stuff that is irritating you is really the raw material for developing perhaps the greatest thing ever.

When you think about it. There's just so many things that are done mediocre or inadequate or that are really kind of failures of performance all around us. But there's a short list of things that irritate you. There is a short list of things that you rant about. There is a short list of things that you avoid talking about with your spouse or your friend or your dad. And those are the things that really are the violations of their values. And you see this with your customers as well. And it goes back to a comment I meant earlier about everybody's had a bad service experience. Listen to what your customer rants about. That's what you want to become an expert at. You really want to scratch that edge, fix the problem and double your value and get paid more for it. Listen to what irritates your customer. You want to be loved by that girl? Listen to what irritates her. If you want to get more respect and value and admiration, maybe even from a parent, listen to what irritates them. And there's just huge, huge power. We're developing a game, in fact, that looks at both your high achievements and what you consider your worst setbacks and really mines those high points and low points to really understand better where your genius is. I mean, where you've really performed well in a way that you're in total, absolute alignment because there's just such huge power there. I mean, when I talk about this on stage, when I'm doing the World Business Forum, I always kind of finish the discussion of passions by saying that perhaps one of the most important things to remember is that when you're in a state of passion, you bore people at cocktail parties because you're actually willing to talk about that damn thing and their eyes are glazing over and they're trying to figure out how to get to the next person or go get a drink and they're feeling the aging process kicked in, and you are still geeking over it, you're still talking about it. It's when you hear that from a customer or from a loved one, you know, that they really value that thing because they're willing to even be politically incorrect and be boring and be. And just run on and run on about that topic. This is all the detective work that we do as marketing people to really understand all this quirkiness about people that really allows you to become deeper and more valued and admired and respected by them.

I love your analogy we use about being a detective, because that really is it. As a marketer, you are a sales detective, and you, in this particular case is you've been an extraordinary detective in going and really piecing apart and dissecting the whole concept of admiration and being admired. So let me ask you about. I got to ask you about this, and then maybe we'll come back to this. It's going to seem like a complete pattern interrupt, but you got to tell me about your Tony Awards and your work with Disney and your work with Alicia Keys. I just think our listeners would find that really kind of cool and instructional and fascinating.

Well, I think it's actually on topic with what we were just talking about in terms of passions. I don't know about you, but in my earlier work and research we did for Built to Last, one of the things that we found that made you last as a success is if you were able to cover your bucket list and participate in or somehow really flex your muscles in what I call a portfolio of passion. In other words, there isn't just one thing to do with your life. And a lot of people resist that. They say, you know, shit, that's a. That's a distraction, you know, or, well, no, look at that distraction. There's probably some power there. And one of my distractions always was musical theater. You know, I have to admit, it I love the reason I was a horn player in the pit orchestra in Holland, high school and college is because I love to look at girls on stage. And I ended up marrying one, a lyric soprano who ended up going to business school as well and going on to start Genentech. So she was a good investment, more than just a dancing girl. But music and theater has always been a passion of mine. And yet, while I could play adequately to get through school with it, I was never talented enough to do it professionally. And so I was always voyeuristic about it. It was one of those things I just love to go do. Some people like to go to the Super Bowl. To me, I like to go to Broadway. So. So I've been doing that for many, many decades.

And then I guess, why is this so surprising when I describe it to people?

But it is to me that it took me a long time to figure out, well, hey, I know a lot about how to run a business, and I know a lot about how to market a business. And I coach companies and I invest and produce things. So when Alicia Keys came to me at a dinner and she said, I haven't done a Broadway show before, but I think we could really make a statement about race in America. And could you help me with that? Because you could help me with the business side of this. I said, yeah, Broadway sucks in terms of business. We could do this better. So I found a way to contribute at something that was already a passion of mine. Happens to be. Really fits that idea that we were talking about earlier being a cause that I could really dig and a passion that I really loved. Why not use my skills for that? And so we ended up putting on her first Broadway production with a bunch of television artists. That was awesome. And we did improve the economics. It's funny how they hadn't paid attention to things that you pay attention to every day in all your work. Joe and Dean, there are so many industries who have yet to be blessed with what you have to teach them. And Broadway and Hollywood are two of them that could use a lot of help. They tend to be kind of insular. They're snobby. And the reason they haven't learned as fast as they could is because they're still kind of controlled by the few rather than the many. There's not enough competition really yet, although it's coming. And so it was with the success of that play, which was just last year, did my first Broadway show. It got a Tony nomination. Following up on that, Disney came to me after they had just lost. Well, I won't say they lost their shirt, but they had some real challenges with a couple of big plays. They have some of the best successful global performance theater around the world. And yet the last two that they did didn't work all that well. So they were willing to take on partners, which is very unusual for a big company like that. Usually they hang on to their own property. So I left at the opportunity of being involved in what they created, which was the prequel to Peter Pan, kind of like Wicked is the prequel to. To wizard of Oz. And it ended up getting the most Tony nominations for a new play in history and 15 Tonys. So I went to my first red carpet in the spring this year and then I called on my gay friends and said, dress me because I feel like an idiot. I don't know how to walk down a Runway. I don't know how to do this.

I'm a business geek.

So it was a blast. And it just. I guess it's another. It's another. The lesson there is, I think for anyone is you've got a bucket list. You've got a portfolio of passions. If you really look closely at the Bill Gates of the world and the Richard Branson's and the other, there isn't just one thing that you do. There's one thing that you do obsessively well and great. And then there are other things that really feed your energy. And it's a virtuous circle. I mean, it was an extra thing to do. It was like venture capital. It's not as sexy as the company. I'm an investor in cancer genetics which does personalized medicine. I was a pre IPO investor in Facebook. I was an investor in Schwab and I was part of the re engineering of Best Buy and Korn Ferry and other companies. And they're not quite as glamorous, but Broadway has a special place in my heart. And so find those special places in your heart and find what you can do with your skills to contribute in that area and then stand back. You'll just be rocket fuel. You take your skills plus your passion for the cause, and you can just do amazing work in a short period.

Of time, you know, and these are cliche sayings that I'm about to say, but so much of it is just true. I mean, even your statement about, you know, saving up sex for, you know, old age.

Old age, Exactly.

It's like, you know, Tony's always said, you know, the road to someday leads to the town of nowhere. And, you know, we've all heard life is not a dress rehearsal and, and people can hear that stuff, but, you know, it's like, yeah, there's like, wisdom there. And, you know, get off your ass and do something, and it's not going to. You know, I always love to say that. And I didn't come up with this. I just heard it somewhere. I no idea where. But, you know, professionals, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. And that's when, you know, that's when things are going rough and the possibility. But they're not always going rough. And a lot of times they're just right in front of you. You just need to take the step and kind of just go for it. So let me ask you before we run out of time, there is a ton of incredibly useful, valuable strategies, methodologies, lessons, wisdom. In the book admired. In chapter 11 and 12, you give some tools for developing and measuring yourself. So can you talk about these a little bit?

Because.

Because I think that alone would be worth the admission fee for people to pick up this book and put it to use.

Well, I think to think about it and just cut it to the chase. And people know the answer to this question. It's a little bit like the passion question. I mean, people will say, I'm not really sure what I'm passionate about. And what's really true is that your passion is kind of bound and gagged and put in the basement because it doesn't quite fit with your plan. And so it's there, it's lurking, but you've suppressed it because it's inconvenient, it's a distraction, it somehow doesn't fit. And to the extent that you can make it fit, you'll go from good to great. And the same is true about developing and measuring yourself. So there's probably a skill or two that if you had beefed up your ability, that could make the biggest difference in meeting your goals, what would that be? What would those skills be that really help supercharge your ability to perform? That's how you think about development. That's how people who are billionaires think about it. They say, okay, I know these areas. I don't know these areas. And not only need to get experts, but I need to be able to evaluate what those experts are telling me. I need to know enough to be a smart buyer. So I'm going to get some skills there. I'm going to learn everything I can about it. And fascinates me with people who have a broad going Back to Richard again, but I'm here at Necker. But the thing that he does is constantly go deep enough to be able to, okay, what am I going to change about the mobile phone business? He bought a company that was failing. He wanted to turn it around, he wanted to bring it into the United States. And he did that because he felt that he could have a better service offering, that he could improve the economics and he found ways to do that. He brought in better customer experiences, which ends up being the biggest thing he does. And then he learned a heck of a lot about the telecom business. And then he remembered that I was on the board of Best Buy, this is in the early in 2002. And then he called me and he says, you know, let's do a special deal where people use pre charged debit based telephones and let's bring them to the United States. Do you think that would work? And it's today still their best selling source of, of Virgin mobile phones. He went deep. He decided he'd understand a technical area that he wouldn't necessarily have learned before. But it ended up being a game changer. It's one of the most profitable businesses. So what is that for you and how could you go about kind of fitting it into your day? You've got too much to do already. But what would be a game changing kind of skill that you have? And then get a goal, buddy. And as you were saying it, it may seem like a cliche, but the research that I've done with Marshall Goldsmith, the number one coach in the world, and by the way, both Marshall and I charge a heck of a lot of money for our executive coaching. But as you pointed out earlier, we have a full money back guarantee. I mean Marshall charges $250,000 for a CEO coaching experience, does a 360 and at the end of it, if the metrics that we promised that we would change don't change, we don't get paid.

Which is fantastic.

That's why he gets the big bucks. Yeah, and, and, and I think every year, you know, we have two out of 10 that don't make it. And I'd say that one out of those two had to do with our poor selection process. They were game in the system. They just needed a reason to get rid of Sally or Dick. They weren't headed to the corner office anyway. Then the other one was just, you know, our user error. We're going to miss that. The other eight, these people got better. And when they got better, tens of thousands of other employees in those big companies got better. And so being willing to be measured and held accountable, get that skill, beef that up, number one. Number two, be willing to be measured, stand up and be counted. And then third, get a goal buddy. Get somebody who calls you. We did some research on this. We found that no matter how smart Marshall Goldsmith is, that more valuable than having a great leadership coach, even a Mark Thompson come and help you is to have somebody checking in with you tomorrow to see if you did those crunches and sit ups. Because you can only lie so many.

Times before they spook you out.

Being held accountable by somebody who's going to call you tomorrow. In fact, the fact that they follow up with you is more important even than the expertise of the person. At least 50% or 60% of the impact of getting the call tomorrow has to do with the fact that you're going to get called. And maybe the other remaining 40% has to do with maybe the content that the person and coaching that person could provide you. We've got a study going on in seven companies right now from the US Navy to Exxon, and we're finding that you do leadership training. They spend billions of dollars a year and if you don't have a goal buddy, follow up in the following weeks. It's all just money that gets spent and disappears. It all comes down to having that goal buddy. So those three things, I'd say, get a skill, you know, be, be measured for it by some, some things that matter. Not just measures that you can measure, but measures that matter. And then third, you know, have a goal buddy that is so damn simple but so hard to do. Who wants to be held that accountable? But you know, that's. You watch the guys in the Olympics and this is what they do, this is how they become great. And that makes all the difference in the world.

The point is, why wouldn't you do it? If you can, why wouldn't you do it? It's the same reason people have alarm clocks. They just don't leave it up to their own habits and rituals. I'm going to wake up at so and so.

Well, you wouldn't do it because you're passionate. You know, you don't really. I mean, if you find it impossibly difficult to do those things, you probably aren't as passionate as you thought you might be. Maybe time for you to look at some of those other distractions and do those and go after something that really matters to you. And maybe not the thing that may appear to be making the most money, but the thing that you could just be so wickedly good at. Let's figure out how to make money after you're great at it. That would be the reason you don't do it. It may be an indicator that it actually isn't your thing if you're willing to be held that accountable for it. And there's so many people that are just stuck in jobs where they still say half of people hate their jobs. That's why their life is filled with inertia and obligations that they have and paychecks and mortgages that they have to pay. And so you get into this kind of sense of inertia rather than really going for what really matters to you and therefore something that you can really become great at.

Since you're talking about Richard Branson on the COVID of your book, it's a quote from Richard that says most people want to make a meaningful impact, but get stuck along the way. In this book, Mark and Bonita reveal powerful strategies from their latest research that will help you make it happen. Read it and then go try it. Dean, what else do you have to ask Mark? Because there's a lot more I could ask him, but, you know, we can't.

Do this all day.

Exactly. I've said it. And I love just how resonant the book is with everything that we talk about, with all the profit activators. It's all taking that, you know, outward focus and really thinking about your, your MVPs, your most valuable people, who would be your clients here in this situation, what's, what's important to them, and really understanding that. Joe, as I'm listening to this, I'm already thinking we need to do another episode. You know, how we do this will be the one with Mark Thompson. And then we'll do the, we'll do the one about being admired because there's so much there that, you know, we could talk directly about the links. So I would encourage everybody who's listening to this right now to go and get the book or download it on your Kindle. And then in a few weeks we'll do another episode where we'll put talked all about applying everything from Admired to the, to the eight profit activators because that's really. It resonates like almost no other book I've seen.

And it might be good timing for this because frankly, I'm going on to the World Business Forum, which is happening soon. I'm going to be there on stage with Richard at the Forum as the closing keynote. We're also going to have Jim Collins and Jack Welch there. We're going to have the CEOs of some of the most valuable companies in the world, 2000 people at radio City Music Hall. So what I'd love to do is have you reach out to your listeners and everyone who takes this show so seriously, as I do, and send us questions, send us things that you'd like to hear from these thought leaders about. And we'll ask them at the forum and come back and bring you the benefit of that dialogue and ask them, challenge them with what you'd like to hear from Larry Page and from Richard and from Jack Welch about what they've done in their businesses that have been able to make them not just successful, but sustainably successful for decade after decade. And so I'd love to have that dialogue going forward because as I said at the beginning here, you guys are my heroes. Everybody who's listening to this program has the courage and the audacity to really want to change the world and make a difference and have an impact on a business that matters. And that takes a huge amount of courage. And you guys are what drive this economy in the world. It's not happening from the Fortune 500 companies. It's happening with everyone who listens to this call. You guys are making all the difference in your neighborhoods, your communities and in America and in the world. So rock on, guys. It's a real honor to be with you.

Thank you so much. How would someone actually. How would someone like. We can either do it on. I love marketing in the comments section, but I would love. Or do you have a website or any place where you would like people to go to.

Yes.

Well, you can certainly go to Leader Power Tools. It's just L E A D E R P O W E R T O o L S LeaderPowerTools.com we have a place to do that and we have a Facebook page called your insight, Just your Insight, which we share with American Express and with the Drucker Institute. It's a place where we. There's over 100 interviews actually there already. Everyone from the Dalai Lama to Richard is on that site. And we'd love to have your comments and ideas and questions, and we'll collect those so that we can put them in front of those cool people in the coming weeks.

That would be wonderful. So first off, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time while you're on Necker island to talk about what you know and share with Admired. Congratulations on all the success with it so far doing this Episode of I Love Marketing. It's number one on Amazon and I think it needs to stay there. So I would like all of our listeners that resonated with what we talked about to go and pick up the book. It will be one of the best investments you can ever make in your future. You will get a deep understanding of many things related to, as Dean mentioned, that are very congruent, aligned and relevant with the eight profit activators. All money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. It will really help you in the area of creating value, understanding your clients, and just simply giving you more access to all of the things you want in life. And it will create a better version of you. I really take this book seriously and his message seriously. It's called 21 Ways to Double youe Value. Mark C. Thompson and Bonita S. Thompson, go get a copy of it right now and let us know what you think about it after you read it. Please comment on ilovemarketing.com and Mark, I'd love if you could actually take a picture of Richard Branson and yourself, maybe with Bonita, whatever. Any picture of your choosing from Necker island, send it to us and we will post it up on ilovemarketing.com oh great.

Okay.

So people can see that because I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm done. So, Dean, anything else you want to share?

That's great.

Get out.

Great. Thank you so much. We'll talk all about it.

Yeah, yeah, we'll do it. And by the way, Mark, on that, we don't even require you actually having to be there, although we would love to have you on that. We will do an episode where we actually talk about the lessons from Admired after all of our listeners actually read the book.

Sounds great.

Give us some feedback and then we'll turn it into a deeper conversation because, you know, we, we want to continue to go deep with important things and this is very important. So you're doing awesome stuff again. Thank you so much.

Thank you. You guys are doing. You're making a big difference in the lives and the work and the impact of a hell of a lot of people. So thank you for inspiring all of us. Great job, guys. And I look forward to continuing the conversation. I'm going to see Richard within I guess maybe a half hour here. So we'll take a picture, send a snap and send our love and hugs to all of you.

You perfect.

Awesome.

You got it.

So thank.

Or something. And then we'll.

We'll end this episode There we go.

All right, guys, good night.

Take care. Bye. Bye.

Sam.