The One With More Cheese and Less Whiskers - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #24

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. And Joe about to cough up a lung Polish.

I'm actually eating cherries right now. I'm eating. Well, first off, everyone, welcome to I Love Marketing. This is going to be a very special episode because we're going to start off with me talking about how I'm eating organic cherries while we're doing this call and what, you know what really kind of. Let me just talk about what irks me about sort of food in general. First off, I'm extraordinarily grateful that we live in a wonderful country where you can actually go into grocery stores and there's tons of food and you have all these options. And now the flip side, so I can complain about something, is I think it's absolutely ridiculous that you can go and buy like a Big Mac for a fraction of the price of like, you know, organic blueberries or, you know, broccoli or like, I mean, I'm eating these organic cherries right now, which probably cost more than gold actually at this point. But the point is though, you want to eat as healthy as you can. You don't want to eat crappy fast food and a lot of people do. I think statistically, 10% of all meals in the United States are actually consumed in a car.

Only 10%?

Yeah, it might even be more, but I think the stats are 10%. I don't know if anyone knows the accurate stats and can do a Google search and post it on. I love marketing. Just to make me look like an idiot. That's completely fine by me. But the point is, while you're listening to I love marketing and getting the very best marketing advice, suggestion, tips, banter, whatever you want to call this, you should also be eating healthy food. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, cherries are alright. You don't want to overdo it on fruit. But for the most part, cherries and lots of green leafy vegetables. Everybody should buy like a Vitamix and, you know, they should make green smoothies and eat good stuff. So having said that, what are we going to talk about today, Dean?

Well, here's a nice segue. Let's talk about cheese.

Yeah, yeah, that is a nice segue. Cheese, which is not a food that I would recommend anyone eat, however. But the point is, this is not about talking about cheese for consumption by you. It's talking about an analogy of understanding marketing and positioning and all kinds of neat Things that I'm going to let Dean describe. This is going to be real valuable if you kind of get what Dean is going to share with you. This could make a gigantic difference in the way you do everything from how much money you make to, to the way you interact with your clients. And this will stay with you the rest of your entire business and marketing career if you take it to heart. So I consider this to be a very important episode of I love marketing. So we want your full and undivided.

Attention now that you've got your snack food and you're ready to pay attention for an hour.

This is going to work.

Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of like at the movies with cherries instead of popcorn. Right?

That'll probably be better for you.

Much better.

You got to plan ahead though.

Of course.

All right, so enough of the silliness. Let's talk about cheese and how it relates to marketing. Because, you know, when recently I was out in Phoenix with you at your 25k group and one of the things that we talked about is I shared concept that I've really been developing over the last few years now, and it's really become crystal clear to me, especially over the last year, that the dynamics involved in you trying to start a relationship with somebody who doesn't yet know you, like you, and trust you, which is essentially anybody in your before unit, anybody who is new to you, new to your business, new to your service, new to your product, whatever it is. There's always this uncertainty when people are getting started. And so I've been really thinking about how that dynamic comes into play when, especially when you're trying to get somebody to start something for the first time. And I've read a lot of articles about psychology and the, you know, human interaction dynamics. And one of the things that I read and found very interesting is the reason that, that mice are used as test subjects in scientific experiments is that their brains are very similar to our brains. They're much smaller, of course, but as far as it comes to their automatic reactions to things, their, their biology that they're, they're very to the way humans interact. And I started thinking about that, that, you know, you've heard other people talk about how, you know, people are afraid. And you've got to kind of visualize your prospects as mice that are afraid of you. And it really struck me that the two prime directives of a mouse that they come pre programmed with are two things. Number one, to get cheese and number two, to avoid cats. That is the, if you Boil it right down. That's the two prime directives of a mouse. And they go about their whole lives just looking for the cheese and being hyper vigilant and avoiding the cat. And that's how they live the longest possible life.

And wait, wait, wait. Hold on a minute too. Hold on a minute, Dean. Now what I'd like everyone to do is write down those two prime directives if you're in an area where you actually are not driving, so that you can kind of keep this in mind. Because prime directives would be the motivations, the drive, what is happening at the core of the mouse's being. Using that analogy, you know, cheese and cats. Because this will apply to everything with your prospects and your clients and what is their motivations and how you approach them. Because if you take away from this I love marketing episode, if you change your approach into a manner that is more approachable for your prospects for your clients, that will shift everything about how you do business and what I will say. Dee, when you mentioned you were out in Phoenix recently, at my 25k meeting in my office actually in Tempe, Arizona, everyone that was in the room was completely bought into this and they're like, wow, that makes total sense. And we're talking. There are some very high level people there. You know, bestselling author David Bach was there, Dan Sullivan, founder of strategic coach, Dr. Daniel Amen, Jeff Walker, Dean Graziosi, the infomercial guy, and John Jantz, who's the author of Duct Tape Marketing and the Referral Engine. Who else was there? We had Tel Knudsen was there, Fellman was there.

Fabian and Derek.

Yeah, Fabian and Derek Frederickson. And yeah, I mean, so we're talking. Who's that? Oh, yeah, Tim Larkin, Target Focus Training. So there were very high level people there that were all some of the top in the world at what it is that they do. And when Dean explained this, everyone like, wow, like totally got it. So I just want to reiterate that. So people place as much importance as I can convey how important this is on that. So write down the prime directives. And what are they again? Dean, Just say them again for get cheese, avoid cats. Yep, there you go.

If you sum it up, those are the two prime directives. And you know, just interested. Joe, I had lunch with Dan Sullivan on Saturday and he was telling me that they're that company wide in their marketing department now. They've completely embraced the cheese theory here and they're going right into. I'll explain how they're doing it. But they're completely embracing. It's great. It's funny to see. So when you look at that, you know, and that, that is really parallel to what our human drives are, is, you know, if you look at the, for the mouse, the cheese is pleasure or, you know, we're all kind of motivated by pain and pleasure and the cheese would be the pleasure and the mouse would be the pain and. Or the cat would be the pa. And so we're very similar as humans that we're, you know, we're driven to, to focus on the cheese, if you want to call it that, for our life, which are all the pleasurable things, the good things that we want, the things that we are attracted to and to avoid the cats, which would be the, the painful things, getting ripped off or getting hurt or losing money or, you know, taking risks. All those kind of things were naturally averse to risk. And we're naturally attracted to pleasure. And so there was a couple of really anchoring experiences that I've had over the last year that have really kind of tied this into place for me here. And so I'll share a couple of examples here and you can see how this was in play. One of the things that I did this winter I worked with company in Florida that does all of my postcard printing. They do all of the fulfillment for, for the world's most most interesting postcard. They do all of the fulfillment for our getting listings program. They've got these great digital variable printers and they can print lots of volume, high speed. You can completely personalize every single postcard and every element on the postcards. And one of the things that happened was I was in their office and just kind of as a sidebar, one of the people who heads a division of their company that they do birthday marketing and I, you know, they had these, they do personalized birthday mailing postcards out to a, out to people whose birthday it is for restaurants to invite people to come to download gift card for that restaurant for their birthday. And one of the things that they were doing was emailing to a list of restaurant owners or restaurants. They got this list from a supplier. They had 3,600 names on the, on the list. And they didn't know whether they were the restaurant owners or the restaurant front desk or the management or whatever, where these emails were going. But they sent out an email to this group that was a lovely looking HTML email that was sort of all about their company and how they can help you fill your empty tables. And so they would send out this email and they sent it to 3,600 people and got zero clicks of people to come to their website. And when they were kind of confused, you know, looking at the email, everything looked great. But when you really look at it from the perspective of the mouse looking to avoid the cat or to get the cheese, this email was all about the cat. It was all about them. It was saying, we can help you fill your empty tables. We can do you know, we send out these postcards. And it was very clear that this was a commercial message, that the intention was to get the restaurant owner to spend money to buy these postcards, to send them out to fill up their empty tables. And so what I said to them was, let's try and send a message to them that is completely 100% focused on what they really want. So if you. And this is going to sound sort of simple, it's going to sound incredibly unusual for a business to business email. But here's what we did. I said, let's send out a message. Just put the name of the restaurant in the subject line and in the body of the message. All I want you to do is I want you to put one sentence and let's call the restaurant Dominic's. So the message would say Dominic's in the subject line and then the body would say, do you do birthday parties, Jim? That's it. That was the entire message. And so sent that out. I said, don't send it to all of them because we want to see what happens. But they went ahead and sent it out to 3,600 people and got hundreds of replies back from people saying, yes, we do birthday parties, or of course we do birthday parties. How big is your party? How many people are going to be coming? All these different variations on that team of yes, we do birthday parties and them pursuing him. And so when you think about that, 3,600 of the same people who got an email a week before and paid zero attention to it now got an email that was completely focused on only one thing, the cheese to that restaurant and the cheese to a restaurant owner is more people coming in the restaurant or anybody in that restaurant. Those emails, we had no idea who those emails were going to. Whether they go to the owner, to the manager, to the front, the front desk receptionist, it could be going to anybody. But what I really discovered, what that cemented for me was this idea that on any level of a business, especially if you're doing business to business marketing and even if you're doing business to consumer marketing, but Particularly in business to business. On every single level of the business, every employee, frontline, middle management at Any level is 100% authorized to bring money into the business. But spending any amount of money, taking money out of the business often requires approvals from three levels up and forms in triplicate and is to be avoided. So when you think about that, by focusing completely on the cheese, the mouse who's opening that email, maybe on the front line, maybe one of the. The hostess people, or maybe the manager of the restaurant or the assistant manager or somebody was getting that and they looked at that as an opportunity to get cheese. So they were all over it. Because there's a reward that comes with bringing money into the business, and there's a hassle factor involved in spending money out of the business. So people look like, well, I don't want to make that decision, or I don't want to be the one to spend that, that money, or that we're not going to be interested in that, or we tried that, or all kinds of different dynamics are at play. But when you focus their attention only on the cheese, the thing that they really want, they become much more responsive. So let's talk about what happened in that first interaction, Joe, because if you think about it, even in your business or my business or anybody's business, would you say that everybody on your team is fully authorized to sell stuff, to bring money into your business?

Yes. And if they do that, it makes me very happy. And if they do not, it's quite annoying.

Now, when you say that it makes you very happy, how do you express your happiness?

I buy stuff.

You buy stuff for them.

Like, how do I express it? Meaning what do I do with the money or how do I express it to the team?

So how do you express your happiness with the team if they bring money into the business?

I say nice things to them. I let them know that they did a great job, that I appreciate it. I reinforce the fact that every time someone purchases something from my company, we're helping them and that they're doing a great thing to encourage and equip people. Because I think really what we sell at Piranha Marketing is direction, confidence, and capabilities. And so they're making small business owners. For instance, if one of our professional cleaners buys something from us, what they've done is they've equipped a person to be more capable, to communicate more effectively their services, to get their services in the hands of more people. And all the way around, it just makes. It makes the world a much better place. From our perspective. So we've helped someone. We're serving people.

When you think about that, is there anybody on your team who's not authorized to sign somebody up to join your $10,000 platinum coaching program for.

Well, it's a thousand bucks a month, but no, everyone is completely authorized to sign up. Anyone that fits the criteria and would sign up, absolutely. If someone wants to join my 25k group and they make a million bucks a year or more, yes, there's a process we take them through, but everyone is completely authorized and empowered to do that.

Is there anybody on your team, on your front line, who's fully authorized to spend $25,000?

Yeah. At that level of money, the only one in my company is my assistant, Eunice. Anything over $1,000, there needs to, you know, definitely be a conversation about. There's a couple of people in my company that, you know, I know, like, and trust and that are authorized to, you know, we have, like, accounts for office supplies and, you know, I mean, we've got a pretty substantial, you know, purchasing of stuff. But yeah, I mean, it's not free reign like it is with cheese. I mean, you know, we are open arms when it comes to cheese. When it's like open arms with everyone that can spend money in my company, no, we have lots of. Lots of, I would, I guess, restrictions.

Exactly. And that is not unlike any business in America, that there's far more attention paid to spending money than there is to bringing money into the business. Everybody joyfully has an unlimited budget for bringing money into the business.

Yes.

And so I just want people to really get that on a really deep level that there is no restrictions, there's no budget limits, there's no maximum allocation for bringing money into the business. Everybody is fully happy to bring money into a business and fully happy when anybody on their team brings money into the business. So when you really get that on a deep level, if you can, especially if you're going to have somebody making a decision that's going to involve thousands of dollars, it's very, very important that you focus first of all on on the cheese, on what that money's going to get. Now, when you look at it, that part of the thing that makes this really work is if you do have something that is going to help them make more money, if you're in a business that helps people get something that's going to bring them more money or something that's going to bring them a lot of joy if it's consumer item, that if you get them focused completely on that first. That is the, that's the number one way to get the most interest on, involved with people. Now when you look at what happened there, that's not enough because now you have to think, you still have to think like a, like you're thinking this all the way through, that you've got to know how this is going to turn into money for your business. So let's just continue the example of the birthday postcard guys because what they have is they have a product that helps people get their, get more business for their restaurant. And what we did was I sat down with these guys and said, what would you say would be the minimum acceptable requirement that somebody would have as a business owner or a restaurant owner to invest in doing birthday marketing? If they spent money to get people, what would you expect that there would be a reasonable return that they would be completely okay with. And so, you know, because a lot of times we try and overstate what the benefit is and you look at your best case scenario and there are people who, you know, are spending $500 and bringing in $5,000 and you look at that as like a huge, huge roi and you start talking about that as, as the potential benefit. But if you look at it that as a, as a business owner, most business owners for new customer acquisition program would be, would be content to continue or at least explore continuing if they were doubling their money. If they were going to spend $500 and bring in $1,000, there'd be a pretty good chance that they would want to continue doing something like that. Does that make sense?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah. So what I said to them was let's look at the psychology of the way people want to start these things. Most people don't want to commit to a long term thing. I mean, they would hope to get people to sign up for a six month program that they would do 500 birthday cards for $3,000 over the six months. And the thing is that most businesses, especially when they're starting something, getting something, most people want to test something on a, on a small level and make sure that it actually works. And that's, that's the dynamic that's naturally in play, especially if there's any kind of resistance at all. You know, like most people, if they're not familiar with it or they're not familiar with the way that you do business or what your business offers, they want to kind of take, you know, they want to take their time in making those decisions, unlike bringing money into the business where they can make that decision on the spot. And that's why everybody replies, yes, we do birthday parties. And now they're kind of pursuing you because they view you as cheese. So you have to think now two or three moves ahead to know that how this is going to translate into that business taking their first step in starting a business relationship with you. So we crafted some email messages that would be done in a dialogue method where when they replied, yes, we do birthday parties, we would reply back and say something just like this. Perfect. I've been working with Roy's restaurant here in Sarasota on some birthday marketing, and I'm looking for somebody to work with in Phoenix. Could you accommodate five or six birthday parties next month? That was the whole email.

Right.

So now we've got somebody who does birthday parties. We've introduced the idea that we've been working with another business just like theirs in another part of the country. We are looking for somebody to work with in Phoenix. And can you accommodate five or six birthday parties next month? More cheese? Can you accommodate even more cheese? And people would reply back and say, yes, we can do five or six birthday parties. We've got six different restaurants or six different branches or whatever, six different locations. And they were very interested in pursuing this. And you're showing them how you've been doing, introducing the idea that you've been doing some birthday marketing. And now they're even more invested in this cheese. And we haven't even. We haven't asked for an order yet. We're using email in this situation to engage somebody in a dialogue, just like we would if we were having a real conversation. And that's the best analogy that you can use for email, is to think of it as a conversation, just a really slow conversation where you say something and then I say something and then you say something. And we are engaged in this dialogue. So we only want to reach one objective at a time. Do you do birthday parties? Yes, we do birthday parties. Perfect. We've been working with Roy's restaurant in Sarasota. We're looking for somebody to work with in Phoenix. Can you accommodate five or six birthday parties next month? Yes, we can. Then now we would go in and introduce the idea of how we work together. We put together a video that shows them exactly how the birthday marketing process worked. Here's a video of what we've been doing with Roy's and take a look. You can find out exactly how we work and introduce them to the whole concept then. So they would go and they could look and see how everything worked, works. And then the next day would follow up with a message that basically said, you know, we're putting together our birthday mailings for July next week. And what I'd love to do is do a small test with you where we'll mail to 200 people who have birthdays within a mile or two miles of your restaurant. And the test is $199. And if you don't double your money, we'll give you your money back. That was the offer. Rather than making somebody commit to a long six month process that they're going to spend $500 or $1000 a month for six months, why not go with the dynamics that are already naturally in play, Go with their natural tendency to want to go slow, to want to test something. And I mean for small business owners, for a restaurant or for a salon or a cafe or any kind of small business, spending $200, that's a reasonable thing. Especially if you, you've seen that this really works for the other people that you were shown in the video. All of that stuff really helps people make a decision that. You know what, it's probably worth a test, but we started out, remember, with a list of people who were unresponsive just a week before. Same people with a different offer. Nobody replied. And then we send the simple all cheese message. And that's where I was saying to them, this is where I've really been sort of clarifying this whole concept, is that when you are initiating something like this, the very best thing that you can do is to avoid highlighting your whiskers, avoid letting people see that you're a cat in your business pages. You know, and that's the thing. It's like as soon as you see an ad or a business or email or a website or anything that's trying to attract people right away, and the first line is, we've been in business for 15 years doing this, blah, blah, blah. It's like the cat speaking, right?

The whiskers have just shown up.

Your whiskers have just shown up. So the best thing that you can do is to get your whiskers out of it. If you can focus only on the cheese, that's the thing that's compelling to people. I did this drawing for Frank Kern several months ago, maybe a year ago now, because I was back here in, in Toronto. I'm going to put it up on. I love marketing under this episode, but the picture basically shows the whole. Everybody's kind of focused on their four step process or this is how we work kind of thing. And when you look at it, they're showing essentially the path to get to the chief. But the thing is that the mouse doesn't really care about that process of getting to the cheese of how you get there. What they really care about is that you get to the cheese. And so the closer you are to getting to the cheese, the easier it is to get people to accept your message. So I'm going to put up this picture here, but it's kind of a great little illustration. Frank laughed and laughed when he saw it. But that's really what's kind of been clarifying this idea here, that when you look at anything that you do, how can you avoid looking like a cat? How can you get the whiskers out of your sales message and just focus on more cheese and less whiskers? You know, if you can initially present your thing only focused on the cheese of what it is that your prospect really wants, the better off you are. Now, we do this in the real estate situation, too, like for realtors going out to get new listings. One of the things that the whole evolution of this is realtors for years would send out and do send out personal promotion postcards that have their name on them, their logo, their picture. And they're saying, thinking of buying or selling, call Joe Polish, you know, or thinking of moving, call Joe and start packing. And all these things where, you know, Joe Polish is selling Phoenix one yard at a time. All those things where you're the star of these ads, right? And they. People mail these to homes in an area where they'd like to get more listings. And that is all about your whiskers, right, where you're saying, you know, sell your house with me because you're the cat. Now, one of the things that. That we've done with our getting listings program is focus only on the cheese. So if you are thinking about selling your house, Joe, what do you. What's the. What's one of the top things on your mind? What's the question that pops into your mind when you contemplate maybe selling your house?

Well, how much can I get for it?

How much is my house worth? That's the number one thing on somebody's mind, right. When I really discovered that and made a postcard campaign completely geared around that thought only. What's the name of your neighborhood you're in?

Tempe.

But what area of what neighborhood or area of Tempe are you. Well, your little subdivision, not your.

Yeah, because I'm trying Not to disclose where I live. Yeah, no, I understand people on Google.

Well, pick one in Tempe that would be like close to your office or something.

Well, it's like the Hayden area. Hayden.

So when you look at Hayden, if you live in Hayden and you're thinking about selling your house, the number one thought that you have is how much is my house worth? So if you look at how Robert Collier would say enter the conversation that's already going on in somebody's mind. If you were to get a postcard in the mail that offered you not thinking of selling your house called Joe Polish, but somebody sent you a postcard that had no picture of you, no logo on it, no indication that there's a cat attached to this, but was just a simple message with a picture of home or homes in Hayden or the gateway entry to Hayden. And the offer was free. June 2011 report on Hayden House Trace. And you could call or go to a website and get this report on all the homes that are for sale and have sold in Hayden in the last six to 12 months to get an idea of what your house might be worth. That would be very interesting to you because that's the number one thought on your mind. And it's not saying you're not by calling this committing to anything. You know, the first thought that people have when they're thinking about selling their house is of course, how much is my house worth now? The truth is that they have that thought 90 days, six months, nine months before they ever decide to actually do something about selling their house. That if they're going to sell their house is the primary thought, that's the thought that triggers the whole process. So by identifying people who are interested in knowing what their house is worth, that is identifying people who have a high propensity for selling their house in the next 12 months. And so that has been a tremendous thing that we've been able to do by just focusing completely on the cheese. So the cheese to a person who's going to sell their house is how much is my house worth right now? That's the thought. They don't want to get involved with a realtor right now, a cat, because they know that the cat's going to try and come over and get them to list their house with them right now and they're not ready to list their house right now.

Go ahead. I want to make a distinction here too because, I mean, I totally get what you're saying on all this and I love it and I hope everyone is kind of Fully engaged.

I want to kind of use different examples to kind of illustrate it.

Well, one thing I want to say is like, you know, because the cat, in the analogy of a mouse, is usually trying to attack and eat the mouse. You know, one of the things that I don't want people to get mixed up on is like, oh, you know, the cat is showing up as if you are victimizing your clients. We are saying all of this while Dean's saying it all under the assumption that you as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, a seller of a product or a service, what you're selling is actually providing value and is delivering what people want and preferably are going to get. It's going to be a win win situation. Meaning if you are selling something that does truly indeed take advantage of people and you're going to trap them, then that is not our objective here. Our objective here is to understand how if you really have something that can create value for people, but it's being presented in a way to where they feel threatened or like you talked about with the team, there could be people showing up at my company and talking to my staff that have something that could truly benefit me, that I would love to have in place in my company if I only knew it would benefit me and all that. But if they're approaching everyone in my company, not with cheese, but as a cat, then they're never going to sell anything to me if it comes or the conversation starts through me or whatever. So the point is that I don't want anyone to feel like, oh, I take advantage of someone. Watch out for the cat. Well, if the realtor is really not going to help someone, yeah, it's not going to be a good fit. But if that person could really help them, but they never get hired by that person because of their approach, then everyone loses. Right?

That's exactly right. And the primary assumption in all of this that I have with all of our listeners is that they really do have something valuable. That's got to be the number one prerequisite. You've got to have something that is a dream come true for your prospects. It's the ideal scenario for them. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help our listeners get over this natural tendency that people have is to view you and label you as a cat because they don't know that you're a good one. They don't know that you've got something that's going to be very valuable to them. So it's safer for them to assume that you're a cat.

Yeah. And can I say something about that too? And then I want you to continue. I just think this is such an important thing. I believe it's human nature to whatever you're not up on, you're down on. Meaning if you were to go to someone and say, oh, I really think you should go to this seminar because it's really going to help you. Now, most people are not going to say, oh really, I could really use some help right now. And tell me all about that seminar. They're typically going to be. They're going to poo poo the idea. They're going to be reluctant, they're going to be skeptical. You're going to have to sell them in the traditional sense of the word on what this is and why you think it's great or whatever. People have a tendency that if they don't understand anything, they don't view it or accept it with open arms and curiosity. They usually approach it as, I don't want anything to do with it. It's negative. The point is, if people are not up on your company, they're going to have more of a tendency to view you as a cat, not as chief, even if you offer nothing but cheese. The point is, it doesn't matter. There's this great overhead that I used to have based on a conversation I had with Dan Kennedy years ago that said, there's no difference. There's no difference. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. And it doesn't matter how good your product or service is or what it does until after somebody's bought it. There's a lot of people that are running around that are really good people, but they never get paid. The reason that they never get paid has nothing to do with the fact that they don't have good products or services any more than when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner. I knew how to clean people's carpets. We provided a great service, but if I couldn't get anyone to hire me, it didn't matter. And it wasn't until I changed my approach to buy my carpet cleaning services to Free Consumers Guide on How to Choose a Carpet Cleaner or How to Choose a Carpet Cleaner or how to those sorts of things where I started shifting the message to be before I ever met or heard you explain this analogy. Dean it wasn't until I learned how to position myself as cheese that people started because who wants to go out and hire a carpet cleaner? Everything about that is cash. Right. Let's wake up today and figure out how we're going to bring something scary into our lives. Nobody wants anything. So anyway, my point is I want everyone listening to take this in the positive sense. We're not trying to say, oh, here's how to sneak in and sell something that's not going to help someone to somebody by repositioning yourself. This is about if you are good, if you create value, you need to set up, you know, because if you have a process that's going to help restaurant owners put on birthday parties and get a lot more clients and make a bunch of people happy, you got to position it in a way to where it's appealing to them. Because if it's not, they're never going to do business with you and they're never going to get the benefit of doing business with you. And that's the point.

Yeah.

So carry on, my friend.

You're absolutely right. And so that when you look at that as the, when you look at that as the opportunity that you have to really differentiate yourself by making your product actually work, that's the biggest thing. When you look at your prime directive should be to only do things that are going to create incredible value. If you don't do that, you don't deserve to get paid. You don't deserve to have a business that thrives because in order for you to have long term success, you've really got to have that mindset that your business thrives to the degree that your client's business thrives or your clients lives are enhanced or they get the result that it is that they're looking for. And so you've often, I mean, you know, one of the biggest marketing ideas around is risk reversal is taking the chance, taking the risk and putting it on your shoulders instead of on your prospect's shoulders. And you know, we talk about reversing risk by giving people guarantees and knowing that your clients or your prospects or your customers or your patrons are not going to be damaged in any way, that there's zero risk that things could go wrong. And so one of the easiest things for you to do to just get into that mindset is to really look at the service or the product that you deliver and ask yourself what would happen if we only got paid if our clients get the result that we're actually showing them here. So, you know, you look at the, you know, you look at if you've got something that helps business owners make more money or you've got something that helps People achieve a certain outcome if you're. What would happen if you only got paid if they actually achieve that result. And that's, that's a very mind expanding thought because for some people that might be a really scary thought. You know, I, when you think about, I think back, Joe, in January when you were down in Florida and we had lunch with an information marketer who couldn't understand why people, you know, weren't really buying his stuff or getting the result with this stuff. And yes, it turns out that he didn't have something that was so sure fire that he would stake his life on it working. You know, and that's really the. And he was almost surprised when, when I asked him that, you know, do you have something that you would stake your life on that if they just did this one thing that it would, it would work? And you know, he was kind of surprised by that. But it was really, that was the bottom line. You've got to have something that actually gets the result before you can expect to get paid for it.

Yeah, exactly. What's even funny is how can someone expect to have confidence in building and growing their business or expect your clients to have confidence in you if you literally don't have confidence in what it is you're selling or you're not clear on it? Because in that particular individual's case, I know for a fact that I was almost sitting there going, I believe in what you're selling, not because I'm of this blind faith in it. I know people that have made money and have had results using what it is he's selling, but he himself could not articulate it or hone in on it. And it was just like this fog to him. And when you were taking him through the question process, he's like, huh, yeah, you know, I mean, so it's pretty weird. Yeah. But don't be one of those people that live in the, live in the fog. Right.

So when you look at, I mean, that's the first place to start is to look at your, to look at your business and say, you know, how can you make it so ridiculously easy for somebody to get started that there's 100% upside, it's all cheese for them. And your whiskers don't even come into play. They don't even notice your whiskers because they're so focused on the cheese and how readily available it is for them. They see only the cheese or they don't see that there's any possible way that they could, that they could lose in this arrangement.

And I got a funny exercise that everybody can do just to prove that people were. Do you know how you. I mean, this is like not a useful exercise. It's just going to be a ridiculously goofy, funny exercise, but it will still prove a point. You know how you have the question in the email that says, do you do birthday parties for restaurants? And they're going to be like, yes, cheese. I sat and wrote a little note here, like, do you eat pizza? I think everyone should go to go to Facebook and Twitter and just literally type in, do you eat pizza? And I bet you it will start a gigantic thread and perhaps I will be known. Let's give you credit because it stemmed from you. So it's really your fault. I don't ever really recommend from a health standpoint that anyone per se should eat pizza. But what the hell? If everyone just wrote do you eat pizza? Just randomly, you will see, assuming you have any friends, but you will see tons of comments of people. And why? Because it's like, well, if you wrote do you like pizza? Yes or no? Cheese. Cheese, cheese.

I'm doing it right now.

Do you think I do you eat.

Pizza or do you like pizza?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If everyone listening to I Love Marketing posted that from this episode on Facebook, input from Joe Polisher to question whatever, they have to do it and they have to promote I Love Marketing in the process and say, well, if you want to understand why I did that, you got to go and listen to this episode. It will create a viral thing. But the point is, tens of millions of people could perhaps at this episode, it could be the spiral thing about eating pizza. But, you know, the point is people are going to respond to that as cheese right now.

Do you eat pizza?

Honestly, it's such a simple, obvious cheese question. You know what I mean? What are your favorite ingredients?

That's the thing. If you know what the. Oh, there we go. Paul Reddick. He already responded in three seconds.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, see, we don't even sell it anything here. But the point is, that's the thing. Well, you know, that's why the I Love Marketing conference that's coming up is going to be all about how to position the cheese. So if you want to become a master deliverer of your cheese, then come to the I Love Marketing conference in September in beautiful Arizona during that time of the year. It's awesome. Okay, so how do we wrap up this? We gave the concept. I hope that from my perspective, you absolutely delivered on what I hope would we would do on this particular episode, which is really give people the perspective of how to look at how they position themselves. And I can assure you that if you really start understanding, as Robert Collier says, Robert Collier, years ago in the 50s, wrote a book called the Robert Collier Letter Book, that you want to enter a conversation that's existing in your prospect's mind. And like you have so eloquently explained with the cat and mouse analogy, people's prime directive, or the mouse's prime directive is to get cheese and avoid cats. And so you need to. In your own world, how do you position what you say, how you say it? The marketing, everything about. If you want to sell more stuff, you want people to not see you coming at them with whiskers and teeth grinding. I mean, you want to set it up so that you are as appealing as humanly possible. And if you do that, your entire business is going to change for the better.

Mm. You hit it on the head. I mean, what's more appealing to a mouth than Jeeves? Nothing. What's more appealing to your prospects than their dominant thought? Yep. You know, dominant thought. The thing that is most on their mind. If I'm a carpet cleaner, the thing that's most on my mind. By the way, just in this little time here, we got four comments and three likes already.

Oh, that's fantastic. This is cracking me up.

But here's the thing. One of the things that you can do to sort of get yourself into this is. And this is one of the things that Dan Sullivan said they're doing is they get a piece of paper and they divide a line down the middle, and they look at every message, component, everything that they're doing, and on one side is cheese, on the other side is whiskers. And they divide that line right down the middle. And you look at every component of your marketing message and ask yourself, is that cheese or is it whiskers? And the whole idea is to completely focus on the cheese and completely eliminate the whiskers in the messaging. And so any. Here's a little hint, any message, anything about you and your experience and your competency and your interest is whiskers. Anything about the result and about their desires and their hopes and their dreams. That's the cheese. So if you just do a cheese audit on all of your marketing materials, all of your marketing messaging, that's going to be an incredible place to start. I've got this whole analysis and this whole exercise that we'll be able to do at the Alive Marketing conference in September. And where to go with that, what to do and how to take it so that it becomes the backbone of all of your. Of your marketing.

That is what I am trying to say. No, it's true. And, you know, doing a cheese audit would be a very good exercise for everyone. And you said something I want to point out real quickly. You talked about, you know, like, what could be your skill, your greatest knowledge and capabilities in your mind could also be perceived as a threat. And you perceived as a cat with whiskers coming at the mouse. If you don't talk about what's in it for them. Yeah, if you don't think about it and see, that's a really. It's one thing to be, you know, a person that really is not delivering anything of value and you really don't care. And all you're trying to do is make a quick buck. And, you know, it's like, you know, it doesn't require any sort of empathy or compassion for people in order to have a scammy sort of business set up like that, to be a person that really cares. Like, when I was a broke carpet cleaner and I was certified, I mean, I went and got trained on how to clean carpets properly. I understood PH levels, I understood chemistry. I mean, I really cared about my clients. I didn't do bait and switch advertising. I worked really hard and I provided really good service. And it's really frustrating to live in a place to where you're like, I'm doing everything I know how to do. Why am I broke? Why is this not working? According to the Kauffman Foundation, I think it's like 94% of might be higher. It might be 95 or 96, but it's a tiny percentage of people that make good money. 94%, I believe, of entrepreneurs never make more than $50,000 a year in their entire careers. The vast majority, I mean, you're talking like, hardly anyone relative to the amount of business owners out there actually does well. And it's frustrating because these are some of the hardest working people in the world. And part of it is not because they don't have keys that they can offer people. Part of it is because everyone perceives them as a cat.

That's exactly right.

And so we're not just, you know, we're not doing this episode just to. Because it sounds cool and it's a neat analogy. I mean, this is really to be taken seriously. This could really change your life. This could really allow you to get the freedom that you became an entrepreneur for in the first place. And what we would like you to do is, you know, lots of business owners out there, you know, lots of struggling people trying to make a business work, start a business work, you know, out of all of the things, things that they can learn about the technical side of their business, the management side of their business. If they don't get this part right, the chances of them having any sort of success are virtually slim to none. So I would encourage you to share this episode of I Love Marketing with anyone that you feel needs to hear it, especially people that are always trying to sell things to you, but they never approach you with like, hey, man, set it up, up. So it's appealing to me. Don't come at me with these manipulative sales pitches and stuff like that. What's in it for me? Because you'll be doing them a favor. In a lot of ways, you'll be doing yourself a favor. Because I certainly don't like doing business with people that are always coming at me with whiskers, even if they have stuff I may like.

Nobody likes whiskers in their cheese.

Exactly. Next episode, we're going to talk about vegan cheese and, and maybe stuffed cats. I don't know. There we go.

But this one, we're going to sum up with your prime directive. More cheese, less whiskers. That's the thing. That's what we're looking for from you. I'd love to hear your comments. I hope we were clear on that. I mean, this concept is still kind of evolving. I just started articulating it just in the last little while. I'm anxious to hear your. Your feedback on it because I know that if you get it, and like Joe said, we've been in rooms with people who, at the highest levels who just get it and see how profound it is. I'd love to hear your comments on that, too.

Yes. So, you know, please, please put your Comments on Ilove marketing.com Share this with everyone. Go and post right now. Do you eat pizza or do you like pizza on Facebook? Just so you can kind of see how simple questions, simple words can evoke a response. Because that's what we all want. We all want positive responses. And let us know how you're using it. If you're using any sort of verbiage, put it on ilovemarketing.com because everyone that listens to I love marketing will probably find it really valuable. And let's use this as a jumping off point for you to dramatically improve the way that you position and package yourself to your customers, clients, prospects, etc. So until next time. Anything else, Dean?

No, that's it. That's good.

All right, man. Everyone have a great day. And thank you. Dean. Ilovemarketing.com Goodbye. Thanks, Ted.