The One With Perry Marshall And Brian Kurtz - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #134

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 welcome to a.

This is going to be a shorter.

I Love Marketing episode. But the reason being is it's my fault. Actually, about 90 minutes ago, I decided to contact a couple of people that are guests on the phone with us. We're doing this over the phone, four of us in different locations, other than Brian Kurtz, who is one of the guests, is upstairs in my office in Arizona because we're starting a genius network meeting in a couple of days and.

He'S here for that.

And I decided to send a message to Dean and Perry, Marshall and Brian to see if we would all do a quick I Love Marketing episode on the subject of Perry's new book, which is called 8020 sales and marketing, the definitive guide to Working Less and Making More. But I'm going to ask Brian to actually explain more of who Perry is and what he does. Although we have did a fantastic interview with Perry on I Love Marketing, which everyone should listen to if they haven't already. But first, I want to tell you about Brian. Brian is one of the greatest marketers on the planet. He knows more about direct mail than almost anyone that I know. He will never say bragging things about himself, but he has overseen literally the mailings of probably billions of letters, hundreds of millions of dollars, probably in the billions of dollars range with the company Boardroom Inc. Which he has run for many years, founded by the late Marty. And so Brian, of course we've done interviews with, but Brian, we're going to talk about Perry and his new book and just about the whole concept of 80 20. So what would you say about Perry.

Before we jump into this? Yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm so happy to be on this call because Perry is such a rock star. He epitomizes what actually he's most known for, his ultimate guide to Google AdWords book. And he also wrote the ultimate guide to Facebook advertising. But he's so much more than that. And what. When I was putting together a one day workshop with some of probably 75 of the best creative and copywriter types on the planet, who am I going to bring in that could be someone that people could learn from at the highest possible level? And Perry is the guy that I targeted to come in and do that. And he did an amazing day in the new marketing hub of the world, Stamford, Connecticut, and I had this one day workshop where Perry did a bunch of Things with his. He's got his Swiss army knife method of writing copy. He talked about evolution, and I'm not just talking about marketing evolution. I'm talking about the real evolution. And he spent a lot of time on this concept of 80 20, which is his new book, 8020 Sales and Marketing, which I think is the best, by far the best book I've read this year. And we'll put an offer out to people for a penny later on that people can buy it, because we got to get this book out to anybody who. Who is in sales and marketing today. And certainly anybody who listens to the I Love Marketing podcast needs to know much more about the way that Perry has researched this book and the way that it applies to everything that we do in sales and marketing. I don't care whether you're on Google, whether you're doing direct mail, whether you're doing whatever you do, Joe, or whatever you do. Dean, I don't even know what two of you do. I think you do some marketing stuff. I don't know. But anyway, I'm just so excited that we have Perry on the call and we got Dean and Joe ready to grow them on the 8020 sales and marketing principles. Again, best book I've read this year or maybe any year.

Very exciting.

Well, that's good.

So, Perry.

Well, let's talk about it.

You took the 8020 principle concept, Pareto's principle, and you applied it to sales and marketing. I guess the first place to start would be defining 8020 for anyone who's living in a cave and doesn't know what that even is. And then why did you write a book as it relates to marketing?

Well, thank you for that really special introduction. And so I'm just honored to be here. So 8020 is, you know, it's been around for 100 years, and it's, you know, the economist Pareto who figured out that most countries that he looked at, 20% of the people had 80% of the money, and the other 80% of the people had 20% of the money. And people for years have known that this applies to all kinds of things. My story goes back to actually when I was a sales manager at this company about 15 years ago, I heard about 8020 and I printed out a sales report and I sorted it from biggest customers to smallest customers, and sure enough, about 20% of the way down the list, that was about 80% of the money. And I'm like, well, that's neat. Actually, here's all I really got from that. Then All I got from it was I had this thought, you know, there's this guy named Dimitri who calls me with all these complex technical questions all the time. And he only buys something, like, maybe once a year, and it's not a very big order. You know, maybe I should fire him as a customer. But I didn't quite have the cojones to do that, so I didn't. And so, gee, I guess I should pay more attention to the people at the top of the list than at the bottom. That's all I got out of, was just an interesting fact. It was like, okay, if I look in the rear view mirror, I will find out that, yes, in fact, 80% of my sales came from 20% of my customers. But I didn't really get it. Most people know that. And what I want to propose to you today is most people really don't get 8020 for what it really is. So fast forward a few years, and Richard Koch wrote this book called the 8020 principle. And Ken McCarthy said, you have to read this book. So I went and I read this book, and Richard has kind of. He's like the Obi wan Kenobi of 80 20. He's written a bunch of books, and they're all great. Well, I'm reading this book, and somewhere at the very beginning of the book, he makes this almost throwaway remark, which wouldn't mean much to most people, but it connected to some other things I knew, and my brain set on fire. I'm like, oh, my word. And like, I had this giant epiphany. And there were two things that I realized was. First of all, this is not just, like a business rule of thumb. It's actually true of most things. Okay, so, like, 80% of the traffic is on 20% of the roads in your town or any town. 80% of the tree SAP runs through 20% of the tree branches. 80% of the rabbit babies come from 20% of the rabbits. And it just goes on and on. It is so pervasive. It is absolutely everywhere. All of a sudden, it was like I had these lenses on my glasses, and I could look out the window and I could see 80:20 where I didn't used to see it before. Okay, that was the first thing. But here's the other thing. The other thing that I realized as a result of really diving into this was that inside of every 80 20, there's another 80 20, and then another one, and then another one, and then another one. Let me explain what I mean by that. If you hired if you had a great big company and you hired 1,000 salespeople, you would find out that 200 of them sell 80% of the stuff, and the other 800 of them only sell 20% of the stuff. Now, what that means is the people in the 200 group, the effective 200, each are selling an average of 16 times more than the other 800. Okay? In other words, the other 800 are really not very good at all. All right? And that's basically a law of nature. There isn't anything that you can do to change that. And I'll circle back to that, because that's just gonna make you wonder all kinds of stuff, right? But if I look at the 200, and that's 80% of the sales, 20% of those 200 people are gonna generate 80% of the 80%. So if 20% of 200, that's 40, 40 of those salespeople are actually going to generate 2/3 of the sales. And then I can do another 80, 20 again. I can say 20% of the 40, which is 8, are going to generate 80% of the 80, which is to say that less than 10 people are going to generate half the sales in the whole company. And it keeps going until you run out of salespeople. In my book, I actually had to come up with a new way of representing it. And I made this little chart called the 8020 curve. And I had to invent it because it didn't exist. Nobody else had anything like that. But it's really simple. And it's just where we line them all up from left to right, from least to greatest, and we chart how much they're selling or how much they're buying or how important it is. And you find out that there's huge, huge amounts of leverage in tiny, tiny numbers of people or tiny numbers of.

Products.

Or expressways or what have you. And that if you can see this for what it is, then it's like you have x ray vision into seeing exactly where you're leaving money on the table. And almost everybody is leaving money on the table somewhere. And 8020 will take you right to where it is.

Interesting now is this across the board always operates in this way. I mean, it's one thing to say when you broke it down, that would be incredibly valuable insight. Not only to have the insight, but actually to be able to apply it. And you could literally reduce a tremendous amount of an ineffective team or ineffective marketing or ineffective whatever, and be left with just the gold coins or the gold coin producing activities. People, situations, client base, etc. But where does it not apply? Or in your particular case, Richard, has this been proven to apply everywhere?

So like in the book, I show a bunch of different things and I put them on the 8020 curve. So one of them is the sizes of Fortune 500 companies and they fit the curve almost perfectly. And another one is the the net worth of the Forbes 400. And another one is donations to a little church on a particular weekend. And another one is dairy production of 38 counties in Wisconsin. Or we could put the files on your hard drive on that chart, or we could just open up one little directory on your computer and just look at the files in that one little directory and it would be true. The 8020 is true. I'm like, if you don't believe me, just go to your computer and open up a folder and sort the files from top to bottom and see if 20% down the list. That is not, in fact 80% of the hard drive space. So I mean, this is everywhere. And here's where it's true and not true. It's not always true of everything all the time, but it's generally true anytime. Behavior is rewarded. Okay, so if I put a carrot in front of somebody or a stick behind them, either way, or even both, and you're going to get some people that respond very well and some people who don't. So if a little girl starts playing the piano and everybody cheers her on and her parents make sure she takes her piano lessons, someday, all those feedback loops of carrot stick reward, carrot stick reward, she's going to play in Lincoln center with a symphony somewhere. Or a 14 year old boy takes a first drink at Jack Daniels and he decides that he likes it and 30 years later he's an alcoholic. What's going on here is you've got the cycle of I want something and I want the carrot. I reach for the carrot, I get the carrot, I run through the maze, ring the bell, get the cheese, run through the maze, ring the bell, get the cheese. If that is going on, then 8020 is going to kick in. Because 8020 is what happens when some people really respond to that carrot and other people don't really care. And at the beginning, it only has to be a slight difference, but you roll the tape forward 10 weeks or 10 months or 10 years, you're going to have this huge disproportion and you're going to have some people are Warren Buffett and other people are on welfare.

Perry, go ahead.

No, go ahead, Brian.

I was going to ask a question because one of the things I think came up in our session or came up in a marketing group I was in recently when we were talking about this phenomenon as it pertain to someone's customer base. And I don't want to just throw online marketers and Internet marketers under the bus as a group, but because of the inexpensive nature of how they market, how they look at their customers, and the way it breaks out by.

How.

Much everybody buys on their file and how much they're really contributing to the bottom line doesn't seem to correspond to how their commun communicating with them. Meaning that communicating with the 20%, you would want to theoretically spend more money and develop the relationship at a higher level. And then the ones who are the ones who are the stragglers, you may not delete them from your list, but you're certainly not going to spend the same kind of money and effort. Can you speak to that? Because I think it might have come up in our session in Stanford. And it's certainly that part of the concept to me is so fascinating because I spent my whole career looking at big databases and trying not to spend time with people who are never going to buy from me again, which sounds so simple. But online, because it's so cheap, you don't see that mentality taking place. Is there something there that you'd want to share?

Yeah, I'll give you two super quick examples. So the first one would be email. Okay, If I say email is free, well, I guarantee you, no matter who you are, what you do, that whatever Your list is, 80% of the interest is from 20% of the people. And you'll see that in the opens and the clicks and the click throughs and you know, the signups of whatever comes next and the purchase of whatever comes next. It's always going to obey. 80 20. Okay, basically 80% of the people on that list are not interested and 20% are. Well, if you treat them all like they're interested, you will wear them out and they will ignore you. They will become literally blind to even seeing your name in front of them because they have mentally written you off. Right? But if you practice 80 20, what that means is you are going to segment a list and you are going to segment more and more and more based on what people know. So you can start out with a list of 10,000 people, but you are going to have a little group of 200 people like you. They are interested in this one exact thing and they will pay a lot of money for it. And most of those people, there's no way you'd get them to spend a dime on it. And so if you obey the 8020 law, everything will get easier. Because. Here's what it really comes down to is the principle of the hyper responsive customer. I have a chapter in my book and it's called the principle of the $2,700 espresso machine. There's a little calculator that comes with the book that's online and you can punch into that calculator, you can say, I got a Starbucks and I got 10,000 people that come in and spend money. And the least money you can spend is a buck 40. So I got 10,000 people at at least $1.40. And you can punch that in the tool and the tool will say, if 8020 is true, then one of those people will spend 2,700 bucks. Okay? In other words, somebody will spend 2,700 bucks to scratch their coffee itch. And you go, well, how are they going to do that? Are they going to buy 2,700 bucks of coffee? No, they can't drink $2,700 of coffee. But it says they'll spend that much money. So it was funny. I came up with this number, $2,700. And then I checked out Starbucks and I found out they have a $2,700 espresso machine. And 8020 says that one person a month will come and they will spend that much money. They also have a $270 espresso machine. And 8020 basically says that 10 people will come along and buy that. Now what that really means is that you'll never get the amount of profit that is possible to get from a coffee shop unless you have a high end product that one person occasionally comes in and buys.

You know what's very interesting, I have a friend in Toronto that owns a pen and paper store in Yorkville in one of the nicest areas in Toronto. And exactly what you're saying there is what happens with him. They also sell these high end pens like Aurora pens that are three or $4,000 pens. And every month somebody will come in and buy four or five of these pens to commemorate a merger or a contract signing or something like that. So that they'll sign the contract and all the officers will get one of the pens to go along with it. But those little pen sales account for the, you know, a big portion of the profits on the, for the store that offset it because everything else in.

The store is, you Know.

Inexpensive sort of thing.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, Dean. I got the same lesson. And it's like, Perry, you're being like. It's like being in school with Professor Perry here. But I was in. When I was selling lists, mostly in the 1980s, the same principle was true, especially in the political fundraising area, where I remember going on a meeting once. I was selling the boardroom list to, I think it was the Republican National Committee, who used a lot of our names, and they used a ton of our lists. And I said, wow, our list must work really well for you. And they said, well, not really. I mean, we get, you know, a 0.6% response overall. But every time we mail your list, there's always like, one $5,000 donor or there's always one $10,000 donor. And I'm thinking to myself, well, now that I think back on it, looking in Perry's book, in the context of Perry's book, it's like, what an idiot they. What idiots they were if they weren't doing any kind of regression model to figure out all the characteristics of the $10,000 and the $5,000 donor. So they wouldn't have had to mail, you know, 300. I'm glad they were mailing 300,000 of my names, believe me, at, you know, a hundred dollars, a thousand so that, you know, paid for, you know, my mortgage. But that wasn't the issue. The issue was they were not practicing 80, 20. And of course, not surprising that someone who's involved with government might throw some money away. But it was just a fat. But now I'm looking at your whole principle, Perry, in terms of that and, you know, the predictive. The things we can do. And you and I have had a lot of discussions about the predictive nature of what we can do analytically today versus what we could do in the 1980s, obviously, is exponentially higher. So we can probably make so many predictions about the people that are going to walk in and buy this $2,700 machine. The person who's going to come to the store in Canada, or the person who's going to give 10,000 bucks to. If they do. To anyone. Anybody would give that much to any political candidate, but that's a different discussion.

Well, let me tell you a little story. So my friend, John Paul Mendocha, He helps us in sales, and he's a sales consultant. But when he was 17, he dropped out of high school, he hitchhiked to Las Vegas, and he became a professional gambler after a few Weeks of this. He's like, geez, this is like harder than I thought it would be. I think I could use some mentoring. And so he's scouting around and he finally finds this guy and he runs a little gambling ring, which probably tells you a few things about him. And John's like, hey, can you teach me how to do this? And he's like, yeah, for percentage of your winnings, yeah, we'll do that. And so they shake on it. And Rob goes, okay, John, jump in the jeep. So they're in the jeep. And John goes, so how do I win more poker games? And Rob goes, well, it's like this. He says, you got to find people who are marks, and marks are people who are going to lose, and you're going to win because they're dumber than you. And John goes, well, how do I find the marks? And he says, here, I'll show you. And they pull into a driveway and they go in a parking lot and it's a strip club. And they walk into the strip club and Rob sits down and there's girls and rock music and everything. And Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket and he puts it under the table and he goes, watch this. And he racks it and it goes. And there's a few people in the club that in the midst of all this music and girls and everything, they turn around and they're like, what was that? And then a couple minutes later, the club owner comes over, he's like, hey, is everything okay here, Rob? And he goes, yeah, everything's fine. Just teaching the lad a lesson. Then he says to John, he goes, hey, John, did you notice the people who turned around when I made that noise? And he goes, yeah. And he goes, those people are not marks. Do not play poker with them. Okay, racking the shotgun. Racking the shotgun. Now everything we do in marketing is racking the shotgun. We are making a noise and we are seeing who turns their head and who doesn't. So you send out the email, who opened it, who didn't, who clicked on the link, who didn't, who signed up for the webinar, who didn't, who bought the plane tickets, who didn't. Whatever it is, there's the few who do and the many who don't. You'll be surprised how often it's 20% do, 80% don't. The number, it isn't always 80, 20, sometimes it's 90, 10, sometimes it's 95, 5, sometimes it's 70, 30. But if there's positive feedback. If there's a carrot or a stick, then you're going to have this hugely disproportionate response and you're going to have a few that are super responsive and most who are not. And it's just like the rack, the shotgun thing in the club. Sales is a disqualification process. Who should I not be talking to? Okay. And so everybody's so preoccupied with, gee, you know, I got a 15% open rate. How do I get a 30% open rate? Well, that's actually the wrong question. The right question is, okay, 15% of these people open the emails. How many of them want a $2,700 espresso machine? Or how many of them want a $270 espresso machine or this fancy pen or whatever it is that's more valuable than an opened email?

Well, Perry, it's so interesting because I'll tell you a story that will fit exactly into this. One of estate clients had a list of 5,000 prospects who had come into his website. So he had 5,000 emails. I was suggesting to him that we start sending daily emails to that group, doing daily videos updated on the new listings, but cautioning and saying, well, we've got to be prepared that what I suspected would happen is that we would polarize the list that you're thinking about, that a 20, that we would repel the bottom 20%, but we would attract the top 20%. And almost that exact ratio happened. And we started sending. Within 30 days, he had lost almost 1,000 subscribers, but he was getting almost 1,000 daily viewers of his videos. And when you really think about it, the top 20% are the only people you're speaking to.

They're the only ones who are really.

Going to buy a home. So why not be exactly what they want, give them exactly what they want and not worry about trying to tone it down to be more inclusive of the bottom 20% or to not. I don't know, offend isn't the right word, but to not push them away. Often people take that kind of approach to their list where they're trying to be moderate about it. But our approach was to focus on speaking to the top 20% and do what they would find very valuable. The people who are really serious and in the market for buying a home, they want that information, they're seeking that information. So that's.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Speaking to.

Yeah, that's brilliant, Dean.

As a first step, that is exactly what you do. Now, if we start segmenting, here's what you're going to find out. You're going to find out that 70 or 80% of these people want to hear from you somewhere between once a week and once a month. And that's really all the interest level they have. But now, let's take that top 20%. Let's say that 20% of these people want to watch a video every day. Well, guess what? 20% of them, they'll watch three or four or five videos a day. If they're good, they'll come to the lunch, they'll come to the dinner. They'll, you know, they'll drive across town, they'll drive across the country, they'll buy a plane ticket. So we can keep segmenting. If you market to people based on how they respond. So if you're like, okay, that guy watched this video, so let's give him another one. Well, you start ramping that up, at some point he's going to be like, hey, this is a big buffet. I'm full. I've had enough to eat. And if you let him just kind of peek out at his level and you don't keep pushing more on top of them, somebody else, they'll consume everything you've got, and you can't produce enough to satisfy them, and they'll fly across the country or halfway around the world to sit at your feet.

Doesn't Marie Forleo talk about. I mean, she's been talking a lot about this whole concept of basically firing people. I'm not saying it as well as she does, but it's firing people on your database. There comes a point.

I think you're absolutely right. That is what she's saying.

Don't worry about the one.

You're not going to.

Right.

You're not going to be able to please everybody. And that's okay.

It's entirely. Well, no, she did.

She did actually talk in New York.

About that at our. At our Genius Network meeting.

Yeah, but.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're. You're.

You're absolutely right.

Well, here's what.

Here's what I'd like to get. Go ahead, Dean. You're going to say something.

I want to ask Perry something.

No, that I think this whole principle of just really only speaking to the people who you really want to speak to, realizing that there are. I mean, it's enough of a reason, just like Brian was saying that it was enough that within that 300,000, this could be somebody who's going to donate 5 or $10,000. It's enough that that's the person that you're speaking to, you know?

Right.

I mean, the value there, of course, is they're paying $500 per thousand in direct mail to do it. So, I mean, it doesn't make sense anymore. But. But yeah, absolutely, Dean. Absolutely.

Well, here's, by the way, since we always talk about Dan Sullivan and, you know, strategic coach on most of the I Love Marketing episodes, we've managed to go almost every episode mentioning them. Yeah, they're on their way over here to my office right now.

So I.

Perfect.

Just perfect.

There's no segue into 8020 with that.

Just.

Just letting you know.

Actually he's got the book called the 80. His book is the 80% approach.

Well, exactly.

That.

There's the thing where, you know that that is. So it harmonizes with this because that. That whole 80% approach is. Is very similarly based on the same principle.

Yeah, no, totally. So, Perry, with the time we have available now, if it's not clear, I have not read the damn book yet. And I was speaking at an event over the weekend where my friend JJ Virgin was up on stage talking about how amazing this book was. And that's when I was texting you, because there's a handful of people this weekend that have, like, have you read Perry Marshall's 8020 sales and marketing book? That's what prompted us doing this interview. Now, Brian, of course, who's obviously cooler than we are, has read the book. What I wanted to hear is you obviously wrote an entire book on this, which we're recommending everybody get. I know you're also doing cool marketing campaigns with it. So I'll have you tell people, either go to Amazon and buy it or get the book for Penny or whatever campaign you're. You're doing. You have a website which is sell8020.com, I think.

Is that the site?

Right.

Okay, so we'll talk about that at the end. So everyone brace yourselves. You're going to get a pitch to go buy. Get a book for a penny.

I'm going to give them the pitch because I want them to go somewhere else, but go ahead.

Okay.

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

Brian's got.

That's okay. No, we can go any. I mean, yeah, we're going to get him the book for a penny. We're going to get him the book for a penny.

Yeah.

Okay.

What will people get out of the book?

I mean, what does it actually. Why is this something that every marketer should read, absorb and use?

Okay, so here's really why 8020 is a law of cause and effect. And we are all trying to get more done with less going in, less money, less time, less everything, right? And most people, if you really understand 80, 20, most people are wasting 90 to 95% of their time. If you're on commission or if you're self employed or anything like that, you earned half your money from less than three days of your work last year. Half of your income came from less than three days of your efforts. And I can prove it to you. And if you went back through your calendar and you looked at the deals you you did and all that kind of stuff, it's an amazing amount of concentration of the stuff that really works. It applies to everything you do in marketing, whether it's list segmentation or which advertising medium do I go in first and which one do I do second? Or whether even your giftedness. One part of the book is I actually spent a year building a tool. You know how Dan Sullivan is always talking about unique ability, right? Well, I made a software tool called the Marketing DNA Test and it assesses unique marketing ability and it breaks marketing skills down into eight different categories and it measures them. And the test is 37 bucks, but it's free. With the book, there's a link inside the book that will bypass the payment and you can find out, okay, what is the 8020 of Joe Polish's sales ability? Or what is the 8020 of Brian Kurtz's sales ability? So like some people, the way they sell is they're basically a hostage negotiator. They're live, they're in the moment, they're tuned into every emotion, they connect with people instantly and they work things out and they just bang it out on the spot. It might be ugly, but it's amazing, right? And then you've got other people, they sit in their cave and they write copy and they meticulously script everything and that's how they roll. There's other people, they'll sit there with spreadsheets and Google Analytics and they'll do that. Well, those are all valid ways of selling. But if you are not selling in your 8020 concentration of unique ability, you're wasting all kinds of time. What I really hope to do with this book is there's two kinds of readers. One is the beginner. Boy, I hope I can save them like two or three years of misery that I had to put up with that. Hopefully you don't. I really think this book will save you some misery.

What are you going to do? You tell them on every Page to listen, I love marketing or how does that take place?

Yeah, that's exactly what I do.

In fact, it's actually psychically and karmically embedded in the book that it radiates these waves and they say, Joe, Polish I love.

Yeah, no, the thing on evolution that Perry did in Stanford, it's like these cranial inputs or something. It's like, yeah, yeah, Perry's. Perry's way advanced. He's like so much more advanced than any of us. So don't even try, Joe. Don't even try.

Okay, but then also, Joe, for the advanced marketer, if you really get 80 20, you will never look at everything you do the same way again. I promise you this book. It'll be like, oh my goodness. Because you know, Gary Halbert said marketing is arithmetic in human psychology, right? Yep. Well, the arithmetic is all 80 20. Well, if you don't know that, you know, you've got like one arm strapped to your ankle and you're hopping down the street on one leg. If you really get 80 20, it opens things up to you and you'll see. Well, okay, so there's not just the person that buys these expensive pens and there's not just the person who clicks the spam button and they're a pain in the ass. There's these different segments, there's one of these super amazing high end customers and they're hyper responsive. And for every one of Those, there's like 10 nice, good customers. And for every one of those, there's 100 decent customers. And then all your customer service problems and all your headaches and all your complaints and refunds, they actually come from this tiny percentage of people. And you can get rid of them and you get all of it. You get the best of both worlds, but you have to know that it's there.

Yeah.

You know, there's a thing that started with conversations with Dan Sullivan that we constantly talk about and our 25k group, which is multiplication by subtraction, you know, how do you multiply your business while simultaneously subtracting things, people, projects, products out of it?

I like when Dan says, go find some new friends as you get more successful.

Yeah, of course. And no. So I think, I mean, I think what you obviously are talking about here is not only brilliant and obvious in so many ways, but completely like your statement at the very beginning. I really don't think most people understand and know what 8020 is. I mean, I think most people can speak to it, but to apply it is a whole other scenario. And to apply it in the area that has to do with your results as it relates to money and products and customers and everything. That whole comment about half your income came from less than three days worth of work. I mean, you know, it just reminded me of the event that I did. You know, our annual event for our 25k group. You know, we have 200 people, you know, showing up. I mean, there's a huge cash flow surge. And what are the things that was most instrumental to that sort of thing? So I think this is definitely one concept, one skill, one area that has the potential to change everything. I mean, in a very profound, very impactful way. So, Dean Bryant, is there anything you guys want to ask? Because I know that Perry has a hard. He's got approximately six minutes before he has to bail. And so I'd like to talk.

And then we can stay on and talk about him for another 15 minutes after he leaves.

That would be okay. So go ahead, Perry.

Give us your greatest insights and things and how to get the darn book.

Or Brian.

I'll do the pitch. I'll do the pitch because I never pitch anything, but I want Perry.

We'll have you pitch after.

After Perry. Exactly. Let's get as much Perry as we can. Yeah, let's get as much as we can.

Well, you know, I want to actually tell a crazy story, and then I'll. I'll hang up, and you guys can continue and you can pitch and everything. So if you are doing 80 20, there's two things that will always bother you. One thing that will always bother you is, like, man, there's all these little things that I'm not getting done. That's right, because they're not important. If you're a perfectionist about finishing everything, 8020 will drive you crazy. And all I can do is say, get over yourself because you want to do the important stuff, or you just want to obsess about minutia. The other thing that will bother you is you'll be like, gee, this is awfully mercenary. You know, like, man, I just like picking the winners and, like, ignoring the losers. Well, yeah, Yar. And so, like, there's this other side because, you know, there is this dark side of the world. And so. So, like, my kids. Okay, here's how you know when your kids are just a little bit spoiled. If they say. They say it just like this. My latte is too foamy. That's how you know that's pretty good. If that happens to you. If you ever hear that, here's what you do? This is what I did. I put them on a plane and I took him to Calcutta. That, that will solve it. I literally did that. Friend of a friend, like she, she works with these women in Calcutta and I take her there and we go through the red light district and we go through the temples and we see all this poverty and everything. And I won't go into the details. Basically I have my 14 year old son, 16 year old daughter, and we get back to the hotel room after seeing all the stuff and my daughter says to me, she goes, hey, dad, you know that thing you say about half your battles were won for you before you were ever born? I go, yeah. She goes, I get it. Can we go home now?

That's powerful.

Okay, now why am I telling you this story? Well, first of all, like, you may actually need to do that, okay? But the real thing is you can't help those people if you're not successful in your world. Okay? It's actually really easy to help a bunch of poor kids in Calcutta if you have some money, if you're doing the $1,000 an hour work that marketers should be doing instead of doing the $10 an hour minutia that we shouldn't be doing. It's not too hard to have some money to give somebody else to help the world be a better place. But you have to be mercenary about getting the money if you're going to be generous to the people that don't have any. And you can't be conflicted about it. You can't be like, oh, well, you know, if you're a marketing consultant and you just want to help people have better bake sales, you're never going to have anything to give to anybody. And so that's the last thing that I just wanted to leave you with. And then, Brian, you can take it from there.

You know what? I do want to say something before you get off the phone, Perry, just to make sure that people know how special you are. I mean, you know, you practice what you preach. One of the things you wrote in the, you sent me a copy of the book when it was printed with an inscription about, you know, one of the best things about this last year was us getting to know each other better and becoming good friends. And, you know, the feeling is not only mutual, but I would just recommend to everybody who listens to. I love marketing and anybody in Joe or Dean's network as well to just follow everything that Perry Marshall does. Just understand that this guy is, you know, anybody who calls Perry Marshall, an Internet marketer, is really dumb. You know, Perry, when I rattle off the great. I mean, he's quoting Gary Halbert, one of the best copywriters of all time. But what Perry has studied and what he has learned and now is putting it into the work that he's doing today is basically not just the blending of the old and the new, but you're inventing new stuff. That's why they say we go to Planet Perry, right? Because it's its own planet. So I just have to say that.

I'm going to jump off. But I really appreciate you doing this, and I'll just let you keep going. Okay, Brian, we'll just keep bragging about.

You while you're off the phone. It's more.

It's more than you deserve, Perry. But I really want to thank you. No, seriously, I'm kidding there.

Of course.

Now, thank you for taking the time. And we whip this together real quick. So we will have continuing conversation. Everyone needs to run out and get Perry's book. So have a good day, Perry, and you'll hear more from Perry in the near future.

Thanks.

Thanks, man.

See you, Perry. All right, Dean.

Brian, what are your thoughts?

I want to hear, Dean, because you were onto some good roles there, too, Dean. So I'm going to hear.

I think it really fits with. I think it's almost like the two ends of the spectrum. You've got the 80, 20 as it applies just the way that Perry was talking about it. And then it meshes completely with Dan's 80% approach and realizing, I think the big thing, and I've thought about things in terms of incremental improvement versus exponential improvement. And what Dan has really identified that fits completely with Perry's thing is that it's the first 80% is where the big exponential gain is. Because if you do kind of the next 80%, that goes from 80% now to 96%, that gap, the incremental gain is not as much. So if you're looking at getting something started, getting it out there where you don't. You don't have a product, and you create that product, Even if it's 80% as good as it could be, that from having no product to now having 80% as good a product as you can have is an exponential increase, you know, so it's almost like it helps people get over this thought of perfectionism that you. You know, the speed really counts, getting that 80% out there. And as version one and, you know, kind of creating. Creating the product with the first version, the people who are most anxious to take part in creating it. You know, it's like where he was saying how within that list there are people who are your most rabid fans, the people who are the leaders and early adopters of things. And if you just speak to them and in collaboration with them, almost create a product, you've got, you know, a really great way to get that first 80% going.

Yeah, I think that, you know, I agree with you 100%. It's like, you know, the done versus perfect mentality that, you know, again, you combine this with Dan Sullivan and you just have a prescription for focus. You have a prescription for really, you know, not spending time on. On the stuff that's just not gonna make a difference. And, and that's what we all strive for every day in our lives. We talk about it a lot more than we do it because we get caught up. But you know, Perry, you know, this book and a lot of the concepts you just mentioned just really starts getting you kind of solid on it. And then I. The thing that my biggest takeaway from the book was when he started doing it, the 80% of the 80% or the 20% of the next 20% of the next 20% kind of went back to my example of the one donor out of 300,000 who gave you all the money. That was a ridiculous example. But it was this concept of it's not just 20 giving you 80, but it might be 5% giving you half or something like that. And that to me is like a blow away concept.

Well, you know, it would be silly for me not to mention that I did a episode on 10xtalk.com with Dan Sullivan on the 80% approach, which would totally tie into this. So how are you going to. How you started using this now, Brian? I mean, what's your practical application of this in terms of your behavior and.

Well, you know, I'm teaching. Yeah. I think the big thing is what I mean, I've been doing a lot of it, or at least conceptually in all the database work that I've done in direct mail my whole career. Maybe not to the extent that with the vigil that I should, but what I really want to do. And we were talking about this yesterday, Joe. We did a video about direct mail. But it's really about what I want to teach going forward. Remember I gave that example of. I was looking at the database of an online marketer that had a fairly small list. I don't know if it was a few thousand people and she was showing me how it broke out. Like, I have, you know, 16. I have 400 people who bought three products, and I have 300 people who bought nine products. And it went all the way down to, like, one person has bought 17 products from me. And my response to her was, so how many times has that person who bought 17 products from you been to your house for dinner? And I wasn't trying to be. Well, I was trying to be cute, actually, but I wasn't trying to be obnoxious. But I really wanted her to get the concept of treating the people at that end of the database. And then that's what I want to teach. That's what I want to teach marketers. So as far as applying it to my world going forward, if I could get especially online marketers who have not spent as much time in the world of list segmentation and database, I think the applications of what's in Perry's book to database and list segmentation is going to take it to another level for me. And I've already done it. This is what I've done my whole career, and I've been successful. But probably, as Perry would say, I probably left a ton of money on the table over the last 30 years because I didn't segment even further based on the 80, 20 rule.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, just hearing and thinking about stuff like that, I mean, you know, it just makes it obvious to me how much money has been left on the table, how much time has been spent on nonsense. You know, I mean, one of the tools that I use in 25K, the Genius Network exercise, where we, like, hone in on the most important relationships, where we simply have people, you know, make a list of who are the most important people in their. In their business and in their life, and then narrowing it down to the eight most important, which is kind of funny.

And I think you're. Your. Your master list has about 40. So isn't. I'm not a math person, but isn't 8 on 40 20%? Yeah, it is, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Harry would be proud.

Which is pretty funny.

Yeah.

And it is pretty 80, 20.

Narrowing down.

And.

And what always happens when we do that exercise with. See, here's the funny thing. Based on what kind of Perry was even talking about, these are already very successful people doing that thing. And when they do that level of thinking, the number one thing we hear, you know, in 25k is people are like, well, you know, I'm not spending enough time with my most important Relationships, because the minutia, you know, Peter Diamandis has that one Peter's Law, where he has a bunch of different laws that he's come up with. And one of them is, you know, the squeaky wheel gets replaced because, you know, the whole spin off of the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And you know, if you. And that's what happens to a lot of people's lives is they just spend their time and attention on what squawking the most. In reality, if you were to do an 80, 20 on it, you could ignore a tremendous amount of that shit and just focus on what's important. And so, you know, and also, Josh.

I know you would agree with this. I think, Dean, too, that it's not, you know, it's not just about money. The money comes because of the choices that you make. And so let's use the example that you just gave about the genius network and surrounding yourself with the people in your life where that are the ones you want to be with the most. You know, Jeff Walker says this all the time. You know, he's created a life for himself where in his most intimate groups, he wants to be only with the people. He wants to be with people more often that are going to stimulate him the most, that are going to make him be his best. And that doesn't mean that he's going to make money off them, per se. And, you know, while people pay you, Joe, you know, $25,000 to be in your mastermind group, I'm not saying you would do it for free, but the idea of surrounding yourself, you don't have to have a mastermind group to narrow down the 20% or maybe even 5% of people that you should surround yourself with, which will then exponentially move your career forward. So answering your other question about how I've applied it to my life, that's how I'm applying it to my life. I'm watching people like, like you and Jeff Walker and how you guys do and how, you know, and I think Dean does it too, and Dan Sullivan does it. And you know, Dan has a top 50 for everything, right? And it's top 50 out of. I'm sure it's top 50 out of 300 or top 50 out of 250. So it just applies to everything. You know, when Perry did this thing in Stanford, he talked about, you know, 20% of the roads is 80% of the traffic and all that stuff. It was like every one of them was, if it wasn't 20, it wasn't 80, 20. It was, you know, it was 78 or it was 69. It wasn't. You know, it's just so clear about. And it's all about focus. I mean, that would be my bottom line. It's all about focus.

Yeah, totally. So, all right, Dean, what are you going to do with this concept to make my life better?

Well, that's really what it's all about.

He's such a selfish guy, isn't he, Dean?

I really am.

I'm just applying 8020 questions here. It's like, out of all the things that I could ask Dean to mention as it would apply to me, I mean, let's just forget the fact that we've got hundreds of thousands of people that listen to our podcast. How are you going to use this concept to make my life better?

Let's just say on average, there's a hundred thousand people listening to this episode and that the 8020 would tell us that there are 20,000 in the top 20%. Let's take the top 20% of that, which would bring us down to 4,000, and the top 20% of that would bring us down to. What would that bring us down to? 800. I think I'm going to invite the top 20% of those 800 over to your new house for bubble bath. Like a marathon.

And if we had a turnstile there.

Where there was a fee to go.

Through of say, like $10 or 100.

For the makeover, those people would pay you big bucks. Those people are gonna pay you big bucks or the makeover, because do it for charity. Do it for charity.

Dean would be wearing a, you know, I'd be in like a Batman suit, and he'd be in a robin suit, and they would be coming to greet him for marketing wisdom.

That would be good. I like that.

I'm in. I'm in. I'm coming.

All right, so what's the story on the book now, Brian?

I mean, it's like, funny because I'm saying it's a pitch. It's not really a pitch. I mean, we're going to get Perry's book for a penny. So basically, after Perry and I became fast friends after our event, or maybe it was right before he did an interview with me on, like, the three. One of the three biggest surprises of my 30 year career. So I did this interview, which I'm just so proud of, because Perry, as you could tell after being on the phone with him for an hour, he cuts to the chase. He's, you know, no nonsense, you know, Real, you know, always gives good examples. So I knew, you know, the clock was ticking and I needed to deliver like a really good interview. So it was probably the best interview I've ever done, except the ones I do for you, Joe. And I was so proud of it because it was like three major case histories that probably made Boardroom well over $300 million. And one was about direct response television, one was about list selection, and one was about creating new product from non producing assets in bookstores. And so the interview was I put it on a squeeze page because I said I want, I'm just so proud. I want people to come in, you know, building a list, but I'm not doing anything with it right now. And then I said to Perry, what can I do if you give me this interview as my squeeze? What could I do for you? And Perry said, we're just going to set up a funnel and I'll send them a thing. What do you think of the interview? And then offer the book for a penny plus shipping and handling. So for, I think half the price you'll get it for on Amazon, even with shipping and handling, you can get Perry's book. So if you go to www.briankurtz.me briankurtz me, I couldn't get.com because it's some faith healer of some sort. Maybe you guys will buy it for me. But I can't get briankurtz.com so briankurtz me, you go on sign. You don't have to listen to the interview. Although I think it's a real. I'm really proud of it. It's a really good interview. It's all free, of course, and then you'll get a bounce back for Perry's book for a penny. And I would just love to see more. And I'm not getting an affiliate commission on it. Perry offered me one. I said I don't want one because my goal on this was a. He gave me the interview to put on my squeeze page. And so in return for that, I want as many people to read this book as possible. That is kind of on my list of things to do for the year. So you guys have a tremendous podcast here. I was very excited that I finally got on the I Love Marketing podcast. I've never been on one before.

I said to Joe in New York, that's an embarrassment that we have.

Oh, I'm just honored to be with you guys. I really, I mean, all the jokes aside, although I still want to do the bubble bath thing.

But all the.

Jokes by the way, me and Brian, Dean, we. Yesterday we recorded a video interview on direct mail and why direct mail is the new thing.

Yeah, everybody's going right. It's time to go left, right?

Yeah.

And we're gonna put that up as a special episode on. I Love marketing also. And of course, if Dean was cool, he would have been here in person.

But he's. I think Dean is cool. Stop. Don't pick on Dean. I just, I'm not.

He didn't get on a plane.

He didn't fly here.

That's true.

But I.

The two of you are two of.

You know, basically big heroes of mine. And so I'm so. And the fact that you came up this idea with Perry today was just fantastic. So anyway, Briankurtz, me go to the squeeze, listen to the interview, don't listen to me, I don't really care. But then definitely buy the book. When it comes back with a bounce back for a penny, it'll be the.

Best to pay shipping and handling.

Or do they.

Yeah, they have to be shipping and handling. I think it's, I don't know, 795 or something. It's still half of what they pay on, I think Amazon is like 16 bucks or something. Okay, so do that. Buy it through there. I don't get anything except the satisfaction of knowing that everybody who's on I Love Marketing gets Perry's book. And as you can tell, I'm a huge fan of Planet Perry.

Awesome.

Awesome.

No, now.

So I'm going to read this book, like right away. I mean, literally. I just got back from a. Five days of. Three days of conferences and a couple days of brainstorming with all kinds of people from Brendan Burchard to Jack Canfield to Les Brown to Mike Koenigs and all these smart marketers. Several people were talking about how awesome this book was. So I just very quickly acted on this and wanted to get this out to our I love marketing listeners. And so everyone made the time to fit this in today. I'd love to have all of our listeners comments. Please list your comments@ilovemarketing.com what you you get out of the book after you've read it? Because I think this will lead to lots of future discussions. And all kidding aside, what other insight and concept and application could make you more money and save more time than applying this to the application and usage of direct response marketing and powerful psychology and offers? I mean, this is such a game changer. So thank you, Brian, and you're awesome in so many ways. And Dean, I mean, you're okay.

I'm a regular listener to. I love marketing. One of my favorite things to listen to. You guys are just doing a tremendous job. I can't say enough about what you've done in terms of getting the kind of content out there for marketers. Very proud that we did this today. So thank you for including. Thank you, Dean.

Do you want to insult me or anything before we end?

You know, Joe, I love you.

God, that makes me look like a bad person without anything.

You know, you just think about it. That's right. Yeah.

Let's think of the slight 80.

He's a bigger man than you, Joe. We know that.

Yeah.

That's awesome. All right, everyone, have a great day and apply slightly 20 right now to your life and we'll talk to you on the next episode of I love Marketing. Share this with anyone that is on your team that really needs to be more productive. And there you go. Take care.

There we go.

Thanks.