The One With Ryan Deiss (Idea Incubator) - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #46

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.

Welcome to I Love Marketing.

Exciting.

Very exciting.

This is the hotel series.

Well, you just said something to our guest, Ryan Dice. You said, it's about to get real. What did you just say?

It's about to get real.

Okay.

It's gonna happen. We're about to drop it.

Let's get real. Okay. So you are the founder.

It sounds like the type of things that rappers would say.

Yeah.

And that's all I ever try to do is just, what would rapper do?

Yeah, yeah.

Because there's been some discussion in our little circle of what, you know, it used to be. What would did he do? Was the answer to all questions.

He went all corporate, forgot where he came from.

You trying to say he sold out?

Yeah, he's totally sold out.

Do you think selling out is a bad thing? But think about the term sell out. Because, you know, you have to first sell, right? And when people become successful at selling, all the people that are not successful at selling say they sold out. Well, I mean, you know, there's one. There's a deeper meaning to that too, saying you're not sticking with your roots. You're abandoning people. You're no longer the authentic. I mean, there's different interpretations of the term selling out. However, I'm a very big believer of someone that has a product or a service via music, be it whatever that says. Hey, I figured out a way to really leverage it, make a ton of money, and so why not?

Yeah. And hey, it was so successful, I sold out of it. Yeah, that just got really. It went from a very, like, bizarre place into something that actually kind of made sense. Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Nice stream of conversation because I was.

Going to say that Frank and I have decided that the knew is what would Jay Z do?

Frank Kern.

Yeah.

Okay, well, don't talk about it, okay?

No, we don't want to talk about it. No, he doesn't deserve it.

I'll edit that out.

Nobody gets him anyway.

So why don't you introduce my good buddy Ryan Dice?

Go ahead.

We're very excited to have Ryan Deiss.

Yeah. You guys have spent like a couple weeks ago or something. You spend the whole day brainstorming, cuddling. So who is this dude? Who is this dude? And we're bringing him. I mean, a lot of people know who Ryan Deiss is.

Yeah, they actually. I think it's Ryan Deese.

Ryan Deese.

But, you know, I Appreciate the way we said the record straight and at least the pronunciation.

You're a young guy running a multi million dollar company. You have how many children now?

You got three and a three and one on the way.

Okay, cool. So 31 years old. Other than that. Who is he? D. Who is this guy?

Well, you know, it's very fun to have Ryan here because this guy is like the most prolific publisher of, I would say, really cool stuff. You know, got all kinds of things going on. Your company. I love the name Idea Incubator. Yeah, you've grown that over the last 11 years, now that you've been in Internet marketing to be one of the premier, one of the biggest, one of the best information publishing operations. And so we're excited to hear some of the lessons that you've learned, some of the things that you think might be the keys to success that other people could apply to their business. So based in Austin, Texas. Pretty cool setup that you've got over there.

Yeah. You didn't. You weren't actually able to make it.

Out to go to the office.

Make it out to the office.

I've been here. I had to chase you around and do a damn flip video because you're kind of camera shy.

Yeah, I'm terrified of cameras, actually. There's a better way of putting it. So.

Well, okay. You work with some really incredible marketers and the word on the street is to most, you know, I mean, you're really, for some bizarre reason, you're very much admired because like Dean said, you are very prolific. You know, you're. You're very ninja. You tend to contradict almost everything that we say. And I love marketing. We talk to, like, people how to do free reports. And here you are saying free reports don't work anymore and everything.

Oh, crap. When did I say that?

Oh, you said so you're. You're always trying to spin things in order to make you like. I mean, did I say free reports don't work?

It must have been when I was talking about blogs or blog.

Yeah, but I actually said I was wrong about that.

So. No, but like, what. Where did you start from? I mean, how did you become this marketer that, like, I mean, how many people do you think on a daily basis read your emails? You know, I mean, just reach lots of people.

Yeah. I mean, two or 300. Yeah, like a couple hundred. No, across all the different companies. Because there's one company, you know, there's kind of the Ryan Deiss brand, I guess, where we do teach and talk about Internet marketing and that's one aspect of what we do. It's the most public. We actually make more money as a company doing the stuff in all the different markets than we do from the Ryan Dice brand. So in terms of the number of people that my company reaches, I mean it would be in the millions, which you know, for some companies that's nothing like we're just a spec. For me personally, you know, a couple hundred thousand I guess, which you know, is good. It's worked out. There's people that do a whole lot more and that are a whole lot bigger. For me, I'm a lot more interested in the businesses where I'm not the front man, you know, where I'm not, where it's not my face out there. I mean, I really wish more than anything that back in the day when I first got started, I would have used a pen name because I don't like, you know, there I am sitting around the Thanksgiving table and I've got my uncle, you know, my wife's uncle. So I guess my uncle in law, you know, he's like, so I googled you the other day and you know, and I'm like, give me a break. So I'm not comfortable being, you know, being the face of stuff. It is what it is now and there's no going back. But I much prefer the publishing side.

Well, we asked on the last episode we talked about being introverted or extroverted. Dean's like an introverted guy. Are you an introvert? An extrovert?

What Would you consider yourself a situational extrovert? Yeah, I can. I mean that's a great term.

That's exactly what all of us are. I would say have the ability. But you're probably. Preference would probably be.

Yeah, my preference would be just kind of hang out, do my thing. Especially now that you know, I've got wife and kids and you know, it was different when I didn't worry. Yeah, it's when it's when you have weirdos calling your house and it's like your wife answering. That's a different experience than, you know, when you don't have that.

So weirdos calling your house and you get to the phone before.

Yeah. Or if it's just me then it's like, hey, it's just me. But you know, I don't. That thing goes into a dark place. I don't want to go there. But I'm. I would much prefer to hang out with my friends. There's the whole thing. Would you rather be Rich or famous, I would much rather just be rich. And some people would like both. There's some people, if they're really being honest, they would take the fame over the money.

Oh yeah. I think there's a huge amount of people in the how to business that would rather be well known than well paid.

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's what you want, right? I mean, I've heard some people before talk about, oh, I feel so bad for this speaker over here. Maybe it's a prominent. I'm not going to name names, but you got certain people that are, that are prominent motivational speakers and they might be in their 60s or 70s and they're still speaking like, oh my gosh, how, how sad for them that they still have to do that. In a lot of cases they don't. A lot of cases they just enjoy it. Me, I would pretty much rather eat my pinky than speak on a stage in extended periods of time. But I'll do it. I'll do it. I mean, I think that's a good point. Eat my pinky. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cute. Yeah, thank you. Feel free to use it.

No, no, I hear you. So, okay, so what do you consider your frickin, you know, to use a. We have to keep mentioning Dan Sullivan on every episode. Unique ability is a term he uses. What are your unique abilities? I mean, what are your real skill sets and expertise?

Yeah, I'm good at identifying holes in markets and figuring out where needs aren't being met, but mostly piecing the things together to the different things that need to come together to actually release a product or service to market. A lot of people have good ideas, but they don't necessarily know how to launch it. They don't necessarily know how to ship it. And I've been successful at bringing the right. More times than not it winds up being people. But bringing the right assets in place.

Well, that's a good term, bringing assets. People are one asset, but there's many assets, but you're good at assembling it all together.

That, yeah, that's something that has worked out pretty well. And a lot of it's been, you know, luck. I've had the right people dropping, you know, come around me at the right time.

But you kind of is a self perpetuating thing too because you've had the right people, you've expanded that, built on it and then you become other people kind of seek you out for that.

Yeah. And I'm really only good at the first part of it, I think it is. I know the things that I'm good at, so I'm really good at taking it. Taking a company to about the million dollar mark, really, you know, maybe million, 2 million. And at that point it's dead to me. I'm bored with it. Somebody else needs to take it over. Yeah, it's not fun anymore. That's exactly right. I like piecing together, creating the puzzle that is how do we get a profitable sale. And once we figured that thing out, scaling it up. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

It becomes about. I always talk about that, that once it becomes at a point where you figured out the mechanism, you figured out the psychology, figured out how it works, and now it's only about the money getting. I mean, it's just getting out there and expanding that. That's the mechanics more than the.

And it's the mechanics that I suck at. Like, I'm getting better. But I mean, I used to not respect that skill. I used to be like, oh, business person, mba, you know. But man, oh man, I learned. I mean, I don't like to talk about numbers, but there was one company, one of my companies was about an eight figure business. Not like, you know, I mean, it was a lower eight figure business. And we were. Our profit margins were terrible. And I discovered then there's a big difference between making money and keeping money.

Yeah, there's a huge difference.

And bringing somebody in to fix all that stuff, boy, it just changed my life. And so now really my goal is to get off of my own or charts.

Okay, how do you. Because you have a lot of people that listen to. I love marketing. I mean, there's brick and mortar, there's info marketers, a whole variety of people that listen to it. And you have built an organization. I think you currently have what, like 39 employees?

45 in ID incubator. And then there's some other companies as well that have a few more. So ID Incubator is kind of my holding company that represents my interest in a number of other companies. It just depends on how you want to slice the pie. Let's call it 45 for now.

Okay, so how do you deal with the complexity of like, how does Ryan Dice prioritize, you know, very innovative, creative guy. How do you actually prioritize, you know, where to spend your time? Because you said you're really good at identifying holes in the market, which means you can see opportunities all over the place.

Right.

So how do you decide what to do and convert that into money?

Well, my whole goal and this is kind of my number one overarching business goal. And it's the thing that I spend 80% of my time focused on, which is, okay, we've identified an opportunity that's pretty easy and that's fast. It doesn't take a lot of time. Something will pop out. The next question that you got to figure out is how can I have the highest 30 day average customer value in this particular market? If I can create an offer, if I can go into a market, and this is whether it's information publishing, whether it's physical products, because we do, you know, import, we do sell physical products, we manufacture certain products, we sell chemicals and cleaners across the board. If I can solve the mystery, that is how do I have the highest 30 day average customer value of anybody else in my marketplace? Then I win. Now, I don't need to be the best search engine optimization guy, I don't need to be the best pay per click guy. I don't even be the best media buyer. I can go out and find people to do all those things because I've equipped them with the one thing that they need most, which is a high converting offer. And if you have a high converting offer, so if to me, somebody coming into this particular space, they're worth $300 within the first 30 days. Because I have created an immediate funnel that converts well, I have a good follow up and there's a lot of tactical technical things we can talk about if you want to. But if I can really architect that process, and that's what I see, my primary thing is architecting that first 30 day process. If I can architect that process such that within that first 30 days we've got the highest average customer value. I know we can't not win. I mean, that's nothing new. Dan Kennedy, I heard Dan Kennedy say he or she who's able to spend the most money to acquire a customer wins.

I said that this morning.

Yeah, that's one of the oldest rules in marketing. And he's right. If you can spend more than anybody else to acquire a customer, then you win. Well, there's only two ways to be able to spend more than everybody else to acquire a customer. It's have a butt ton of money sitting there in a pile that you can pull from, go negative. Right? And this is a lot of the Silicon Valley companies, this is what they do. They raise money, they buy critical mass, they buy market share, and that's fine. But if I had a great big pile of money, I would probably just like roll around in it. I probably wouldn't be motivated to go start businesses.

You know, that would really add a new element to it, like a cuddle meeting.

I just feel like there's someone in.

The room that I really think likes rolling around in piles and money. We won't say who that person is.

All right, I'm just gonna start staring awkwardly. I'm just gonna start staring awkwardly and judgingly at people. But that's one way. And if you can go and raise funds and do that. But there's. There are pitfalls to that. Right. Like, I don't like taking investor money. I don't like being beholden to other people. You know, if you go and take a whole lot of money and you own a minority share in your company, you're kind of an employee.

I like what you're saying, though, because you're identifying it.

The other way is cash flow.

Yeah, yeah. You're identifying your philosophies. You don't want to be beholden to anybody. What are some of your philosophies and how to set up your business so that it works for you? I mean, because you obviously, in your. All of the different things you've done at a very young age, you've obviously done a bunch of stuff that didn't work, and you've done a bunch of stuff that has worked. And, you know, how have you. For our listeners, I think, you know, setting it up in a way that actually fits your skill set in the beginning. In the long run, it really sets you up to have a successful business. Dean has a process called I know I'm being successful win, because his definition is funny how someone's sitting in front of me and I'm giving their definition of success. What Dean talks about is that, you know, you're not successful or unsuccessful. He's successful when certain things exist. And if those things don't exist, you know, you're unsuccessful. I mean, you know, your life can change on a dime. However, he kind of has some core philosophies. What are some of your, like, prime directives? Your core philosophies, whatever you would call them.

Yeah, mine are. I don't have the kind of. I'm fortunate that I have. I believe the two. The two best things that anybody can experience in this life is to, like, the most blessed, fortunate people are the ones that find their calling at a young age and find their soulmate. And I was fortunate that I discovered both my calling and my. Like, what do I want to do when I grow up and my Soulmate before I was 20 and I think that's part of the reason why, you know, and if you want to go into what, what's the, what's Napoleon Hills chapter and thinking you're rich creepy one that everybody ignores the trends transformation. Yeah. I think that that's a large transmutation. Transmutation. Sexual.

Yeah, sexual transmutation for people don't know he's talking about I guess to say it and probably not these exact terms but it's like the reason that most men are successful after the age of 40 is because they take pent up sexual energy and they redirect it in business because prior to the age of 40 they're spending their time, you know, chasing women.

Yeah. And so I mean I, I stopped you know, at 19. I was like. And it's not like I set out to, you know, I don't want this to get into like my philosophy on marriage and relationships. But it's not like I, it's not.

Like I said, no one gives a shit about. We're going to take it wherever we want.

This I promise is going somewhere. But the, that shirt's coming off before the end of the interview. But no, I mean I just, you know, I'm, I, I met, I met someone, I was like this girl's cool, I'll probably wind up marrying her. I didn't tell her that that early on. Right. That's called being creepy. But there's, there's something to sequence in proportion. But, but I, you know, I had that and I'm fortunate that she'll tell me like she will keep me on the straight and narrow and she'll say hey, your stuff's getting out of balance. You need to kind of get back into shape. So I don't. I've got somebody there who's sort of an arbiter of balance in my life who will tell me that. But I do. So for me it's very practical things. Like I know I'm successful when every Saturday morning I'm playing golf with my son. I know I'm successful when I. And I do use your. I know I'm successful when I love that. I know I'm successful when I get at least one super happy fun day a week. I mean this is my thing, like everything that I have in this. I think it's appropriate that you quoted Dean because I'm going to quote him also while he stands there. But most of the stuff I've got from this guy right here in terms of having balance but I'm also totally cool with there being seasons of life where, you know what, for the next six months, I'm going to buckle down and this is what it's going to be. Yeah, this is what it's going to be about. But so it kind of depends on the season that I'm in. But really when I know I'm doing the stuff with my family, you know, I didn't. Well, one, I missed one T ball game, one of my son's T ball games this, this year because I was with my wife in Mexico. So that was a necessary, you know.

So I've been texting you this week about when you're getting here and you're like, well, it depends on the T ball win. And we were talking last night, like, literally you said, if they had a one, I would have chartered a flight.

Yeah. I would have had to charter a flight. Yeah. Cause last night I would have been at a T boat.

And no way to get out of Austin in time to get here. But that total crystal clarity on your values and knowing.

And the emphasis on the ability to make money so you can live the way that you want to live.

Yeah.

That that's even an option. Yeah.

Yeah. Turning a flat is not that.

It's an option.

So why do you, you know. And again, this is going to maybe sound kind of weird sort of question. I always am interested in where the drive stems from for driven entrepreneurs that are already doing well financially. And a lot of people that don't quite understand the entrepreneurial mind thinks they think, you know, inappropriately about all they are is, you know, money, greedy, driven sort of individuals. When in reality, you know, I think most successful entrepreneurs are pursuing freedom. And money just happens to be a way to access freedom and options. Where do you think the drive comes from? Because you're. You're a driven guy and you do a lot of stuff.

What, what.

Where's the juice come from? Because some people are born with batteries included, others with batteries not included. And you're. You're just doing a lot of stuff. Where does that come from? What's the. What's what. What causes.

I think for me, it's the only thing I'm good at. You know, I mean, I think I'm not. I enjoy golf, but I'm not good at it. You know, I wasn't one of those people that played. I played baseball, you know, but I wasn't good enough to go and do that. I mean, I think it's all about doing, you know, again. Dan Sullivan, what's your unique ability? What are the things you're good at? You're going to be, have the most fun and be the most fulfilled when you're following those things. For me, the thing that I'm good at happens to take on a business y sort of role. That's what it looks like. And yes, the way that we measure it is through money. And I like having money. But I mean, I know people who are very, very, very good at other things that maybe they're more pastoral or maybe they're just, they're very giving and nurturing and what they love is doing, you know, being actively involved in charity or social work on a day to day basis. I'm not a particularly nurturing person. Right.

I would totally agree with that.

Yeah. So as much as I might like, as much as I like the idea of being, you know, charitable and giving and all that stuff and it's a part of, it's a, it's a part of my life. It's not something I want to be actively engaged with every day. I'm just not that good at it. There's other people who are way better at that. And so for me, I don't know what else I would do. It's fun. And that's kind of when I realized I don't enjoy running businesses, you know, so my title, I don't really have a title in my company. I guess I would be founder. I think my official title is managing partner of ID Incubator. It's kind of my official title if we're going out and talking to banks and stuff like that. But I'm not CEO. I'm not director of marketing. Nobody reports to me because I don't enjoy that. That's not any fun. I just want to do the stuff that's fun.

I like that.

I think it's fascinating though to. Because when you started out, you kind of. It was just you. Everybody starts out as just you. If you could go back there now knowing kind of the path to 45 people plus in your organization with different people doing different things, different divisions of your company, what would be kind of your, you know, the benchmarks, the things that you would take from that experience to grow from just you all the way up to 45 people, you know, you've learned some things going that way.

And I made it easier for you.

To get there again.

Made a ton of mistakes. Yeah. For me, I'd always tried to hire from the kind of. From the bottom up. So I always put myself on the top which is fine. Again, if you're, if your unique ability is one of being a good organizer and being really good at running a business, being good at that skill, then maybe you should be the CEO of your company. If all you're good at is selling stuff, which at the end of the day all I'm good at is selling stuff, I should not be at the top. I felt like, because I was the owner, that I should be at the top of my organizational chart and I shouldn't have been. And that's another thing that I did that was right. I always had an organizational chart. Even when it was me in all those different spots, I always acknowledged that there were varying roles. And so I went out there and I said, this is what kind of organization looks like. There's a CEO, there's a director of marketing, there's an editorial director. And I went and I blocked director of operations, director of legal and finance. All these things, I had them out of my head. And for a while it's you and all of them. And then you start looking at the things that, okay, what am I especially terrible at and what do I enjoy the least and what's costing my company the most money by me doing? Those are the ones you fill first. But what I wish I had done is gone out there and got that person at the top sooner.

Yeah.

Because when I did that, what I found was. And I did that, you know, this year we went out and we were able. Still don't know how she agreed, how we were able to get her to agree to do it. We got Mary Ellen Tribbe, who's maybe one of the smartest business people I know. She's absolutely. She is insanely skilled at running a business and, and a brilliant marketer. I mean, so when you find somebody like that, it's a no brainer. She came in and basically fired everybody that I had hired. I mean, like most of the people there, she had to turn them over or move them into substantially different positions. I never ever would have built the things that she put things the way that she put them. I just didn't know how to do it. And so being honest about what you're good at and what you're not, Let.

Me ask you a question about that too, because it's always interesting to me because, you know, things I experience in my own company, I see in a lot of other people's company is that usually the big breakthroughs come from the outside or they come in an environment which is not your normal routine. And if you get into a routine of a certain group of people. There's this great line again from Dan Sullivan that the skills that get you out of Egypt are not the same skills that get you to the promised land. And the skills that the people that get you to one place are not the same people that always get you to another place. And so you mentioned she fired a bunch of people. Is part of that because you hired the wrong people or that you might. They may have. If there was the right setup in the beginning, they could have maybe blossomed. Or was it just because. I see in a lot of ways, you know, and I agree with you, Mary Ellen, I've interviewed her before. We've been hanging together all week. You know, she's very smart, and she really has a good perspective. And she, you know, her philosophy is, you're doing a huge disservice to your company if you have mediocre people or the wrong people in there. So her intention is to build great company and have people working together and have profits and all that sort of stuff. My question to you is, was her replacing the people and putting new people in because a culture had been developed that it was easier to just get them out of there, or was you just simply didn't have the right people?

It was both. It depended on the people. So there was one person in particular who I had doing way too much, and unfortunately, this person was. He was unfortunately kind of ruined because of that, because he should have been focused on one thing. I said, well, I kind of need you to do all this stuff. And we gave him an opportunity for a period of time, even after we changed the culture and changed his environment and said, no, no, okay, we need you to do this, he would still gravitate over into the stuff that he wasn't good at. Now, had I never had him over into that role, he wouldn't have done that gravitating, probably. So I did. You know, I made some mistakes that unfortunately cost people, you know, their jobs. And I. And I, boy, I mean, you want to talk about not sleeping and just feeling really, really bad about it? I did. Now, Mary Ellen was absolutely right because she was like, look, number one, it doesn't matter, because if the company doesn't grow and the company doesn't survive, they're going to be out of a job anyway. So it's, you know, we got to do. We got to do what's best for the company. And she was right. And the other thing that she said is, these people know they're not performing they know they're underperforming. If they're honest, sincere individuals at all, they'll feel better after you let them go. And that's been the case with everybody. Now for a few people, they were just wretched, bad hires. There was one person in particular that was a cancer that when we got rid of them, everybody was like, oh, thank God. He was disgusting. We found he had photocopied some of our company business cards that we found in his desk drawer. So when he wanted to order something, he would just order it. And because it was my card that he had photocopied, accounting didn't question it. Yeah, credit cards. And he had actually started his own thing on the side where we were paying for something. I mean, it was a. It was a nightmare. He was effectively stealing from the company. You know, it's. So those types of people. Yeah, they were just. They were, they were. They were bad. They.

Well, the reason I bring this up, for one, I mean, I've been. Always have my own personal interest in it because I look at, you know, my flaws in terms of setting things up. And the thing is, you aren't going to be an entrepreneur if you're not willing to make mistakes and take risks and take responsibility. This comes with the territory. I mean, you know, a lot of this you're learning as you go along. You know, my friend Kendra Todd, she. We have the conversation one day, she goes, you know, Joe, sometimes I feel like running a business is like trying to, you know, change the tires while you're driving 60 miles an hour. You know, and I mean, you have.

A lot of that stuff.

There's a lot of people that are listening here that I can assure you they. There's difficult decisions of. There's someone in the company that is keeping them from going to a better place, a higher level, the next level. And it's this difficult. You know, they may be a friend, a family member, and they just can't bring themselves to make that change. And, you know, what I want to identify here is that you've. Because even talking to Mary Ellen, you've had incredible growth and multiplication of your profits and accelerating the success of your business as a result of making some of these difficult choices. And if people are not willing to do that, they are going to be stuck, even if they have the greatest marketing, which we're going to get to, because, you know, I do want to spend some time talking about marketing here. It's.

I love operations.

I love operations.

But the thing is, is like how, what having Just gone through this, right. You know, what would you say to someone that is stuck in that place? There's someone that, you know, because Jim Collins says, you know, if you find yourself questioning, if you have somebody's in hip layer or whatever, you probably made a mishap. And, you know, what would you say to people out there?

Man, There's. I mean, okay, so let me. The thing that the right decision is exactly what you said, right? If you're questioning and if you're continuing to question it, and especially if you've tried to give this person another opportunity and say, look, you know, I really want you to focus on this. And you've worked with them and it still ain't happening. They gotta go. I mean, they just do. And it doesn't matter who they are if they're your best friend. I mean, I had. I've had, you know, people work for me that were very good friends that I've known that were there from the earliest days. That had to, you know, that had to go. And God, man, it sucks. There's no way around it. I know. Now I would not hire friends and family. I just won't do it.

Yeah.

I mean, or. And if I do, it would have. They would have to be hired. I would basically not have to know about it. They'd have to be managed by somebody else. And it's like, look, you're totally on your own and all this other stuff.

But I'll put it in a good word for you.

Yeah, there cannot. There's no. There's no sacred cows at all. But I, at the same time, I sympathize with it, because sometimes if you're an entrepreneur and your company's making good money, it's easier just to continue keeping that person on the dole than it is to deal with it. But what you have to keep in mind is that you will absolutely ruin a good employee if you allow them to watch you tolerate a bad employee.

Interesting.

They're done.

That's what Mary Ellen said that when she was talking this week about that you have a fiduciary responsibility to everybody in your company, that they're depending on the company thriving. And if somebody is underperforming, that's robbing the other people of everybody.

It's robbing your family. I mean, when she finally said to me, she's like, look, you're having to step in and cover for these people. You're taking time away from your family. You said your families are more like, you know, you're right. You're absolutely right. So what I would say, I think the biggest lesson of all is that if you're having that hard a time making that call, guess what? You're not. You're not a CEO. You're just not, you shouldn't be a CEO of your company. So bring somebody in at the top and allow them to say, hey, these are things that need to be made and allow them to make the tough decisions. Now I didn't skirt away from it. I mean, with these people that, you know, after they were let go, I mean, I, I got in touch with them and you know, it wasn't one of these things where it was like, okay, I'm gonna go away for a while and you know, when I get back, I'm gonna go to China. When I get back, I want all these people gone. And I don't. It's not that I didn't want to deal with it, although that wasn't fun. But sometimes you've got to bring somebody else in, you know, to actually do deed.

Because when you're the, Even though when you, when you're making good money as a company, you're making, you're being successful and you've got employees and you know that it's probably time for you to bring somebody in. It's. Sometimes it's not cheap to bring in the right, the right person to bring in somebody.

But you know, but you realize, yeah.

It'S going to multiply. You know, the mindset of, I think you've found that of. Even though, you know what, it would be not an inexpensive proposition to bring in a really good CEO.

But the beautiful thing that they multiply what you're, what you're paying, they don't just multiply. They come with a 12 month finance plan.

Right.

I mean, that's the thing. A lot of people want to, A lot of people want to like, you know, they're like, oh, I don't, I don't want to hire this person because they're going to be 250,000 a year. Well, it's not like they walk in day one and you cut them a check for 250 grand. Right, right. They walk in and you pay them what you own for that month and the next month you pay them more and at some point multiplied it.

Yeah.

I will tell you this. Mary Ellen came on board the very first month. She saved enough money in the company to pay for, you know, just her salary. I'm not gonna go into what her compensation thing is, but she saved enough within the first. Basically, what would be saved in her first quarter working there to pay her salary for an entire year, that doesn't even account for all the growth that she's been responsible for. So people. It's like marketing people should have a roi. You don't like to look at them in that way, because they are people. But they need to deliver an roi. And that's one thing. I've never been shy to hire, and I've never been afraid to pay somebody a really good salary. I'll be real slow to dole out equity. I'll be real slow to dole out equity, but I won't be slow to pay somebody a high salary. Because when I look at it, if they're that high of a performer and they're that good and you're paying them that much money, if they don't work out, you got to cut them loose. They're gonna find a job somewhere else. It's when you bring on the person that's kind of iffy, and you. And, you know, you're telling. If I fire this person, they're destitute, like they're living on the street. I mean, that's the case. You never should have hired them in the first place.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good advice, man.

Good food for thought.

I think that's very helpful. Okay, we're done with that.

Yeah, you'd need to have Mary Ellen on talk about that, because anything I said that even sounded remotely intelligent, I probably heard from her, right?

No, no, that's good. It's great, though.

That was.

That was very, very useful from my perspective.

So you want to talk about marketing?

Let's talk about.

What's your definition?

Why do you love marketing, man? We're here on an I love marketing call and. Or call episode. What's your definition of marketing? Why do you. Why do you.

Definition really thought about. That's very esoteric. No, I mean the classic. What is it? Johnny Kennedy said, salesmanship is advertising.

Advertising.

Yeah. I mean, the job of marketing is to make selling superfluous. I've heard that before. I mean, so I like that. All that. I mean, it's basically.

What's the definition of superfluous?

Superfluous, Joe says.

Yeah, I like that.

Yeah. But so it makes. So I like the idea that everybody is impacted by inertia. And I love the idea that words and experiences and stories and things like that can move someone to take an action that they wouldn't otherwise take. That's kind of magical. And if it's A worthwhile action, then it's, it's not just magical, it's noble.

Yeah.

You know, and I think that that's a big, big part of it. I mean, you know, if you're using this to. To do harm to the world, then screw you. But, you know, if you're doing something that's good, it's pretty, it's pretty noble to be able to move.

And you know what I want to say because we, you know, being in this hotel room and by the way, we're going to post, if we haven't already, a video on ilovemarketing.com so those of you listening to this on itunes, you got to go to ilovemarketing.com because I actually shot a little video right before we started of me, Dean and Ryan in studio. Yes. You can see the setup of this podcast being recorded with a towel on top of a piece of luggage. So it props up my Apple Air computer. And we're recording this and we'll show you the little mic that we're using to record these studio quality. I love marketing things. And there was. The phone rang on the episode we were doing with Craig Valentine. And so now we're actually getting a room service was knocked on, knocking on the door. And I think it's just hysterical because this is such an interruptive environment. It's all great.

I'm gonna get a massage.

Yeah.

While we're doing.

I'm getting a massage right now.

Okay. So how do you use marketing in order to drive and build, you know, IAD incubator? I mean, it's, it's what you teach people marketing. You use marketing, like you said. I mean, our listeners here want to learn how to be effective marketers. So how do you do it?

Yeah, for me, it's more like it's, it's the structure, it's the message that gets, that gets created. So there's a lot of tactical things that come around marketing that a lot of people will. It gets lumped into marketing. So traffic generation gets lumped in to marketing. You know, and it is. Marketing gets everything, but it is not per se market. Yeah, but it's, it's the message that gets applied to a given media where I believe really that message is more what gets tied up into the marketing and more again, it's sequence and proportion. That to me is the biggest thing about marketing. And it was Perry actually that really helped to crystallize this in my brain, the importance of sequence in marketing. So understanding in old school direct response, it would be what's the list? Is it a buyer's list or a subscribers list or a compiled list? Well, depending on that quality, that's going to affect the sequence with which you deliver your marketing and the proportion with which you deliver your marketing. So if you've got more time with somebody, you know, you're going to more subtly kind of try to woo them. A lot of it, it's dating, you know, I mean, you're not going to walk up to a girl at the bar and be like, hey, want to go back to my hotel room?

I think you're my soulmate.

Yeah, you're probably going to get slapped. But that's what a lot of people do in their marketing.

You know, the thing to use that analogy, because I think selling is like seduction. And if you go immediately up to some woman and you just say, hey, I'd like to sleep with you, like you just said, you're probably going to get slapped. Unless you're Brad Pitt and. Or she's really desperate or something and vice versa.

She says yes. You've really got to kind of wonder.

Yeah, yeah, well, especially if either one of those people is you guys. But anyway, I'm sorry. Sorry for that. Yes. That was just out of love. That's how I bond with dude. So if you, It's a positioning thing, though. But if you build rapport, if you go out and you have some, you know, like you take joint ventures or endorsed relationships. If a friend says, hey, you know, you're really into yoga. And I've, you know, I have a friend who's really into yoga and I think you guys should meet each other because you're also in the German Shepherds and you like skydiving, you know, whatever, right? And you get together and you get to know each other and you find you like each other's personality all of a sudden now and then you go out on dates and then you go through the courting stage and then comes that time where you decide, you know, yeah, this is the person I want to marry. Your chances of then getting yes versus doing. You know, it right from the get go. So it's like Dan Kennedy's language annoying pest versus a welcome guest. And within that sort of analogy is how I define, you know, marketing. It's literally positioning, you know, people that are pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to give you money because of some things that have been done in advance so that selling becomes, how do you say the word?

Superfluous.

Yes. So that's the whole thing Though, I mean, it's a great analogy, though.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, so that is kind of all the things that you do in your business, through your videos, through your emails, through your writing, is accomplishing that. I mean, you're seducing. It's the foreplay that allows the sale to exist.

I mean, and one of the clearest ways that I've ever heard that illustrated was the cheese and whiskers thing, which is on, I don't know what episode it was of. I love marketing, but if people listen to this and they haven't listened to that, I mean, that's one of the greatest summations of that whole concept of timing, you know, sequence and proportion. I mean, that gets it. Sequence and proportion. The other big element of it is market maturation.

Explain that.

Where is the market right now in the context of what you're trying to sell them? So if I'm in the desert and I happen to have a water stand, you know, and there's other people wandering around who are dying of thirst, I don't need to yell at them and scream at them, be like, ladies and gentlemen, you know, who else, who else wants to not die of thirst today? You know, I mean, you don't need some. Like, you just need a sign that says water. But if somebody comes next to you and they open up a water stand, too. Now your water needs to be ice cold and refreshing. It might need to be organic water, if that even exists. That's when you start taking it up to the different levels. I mean, it might be, you know what, I need to change the medium or the mechanism a little bit. I'm not going to sell water. I'm going to sell snow cones. I'm going to sell flavored snow cones. And so understanding the maturation process of your market is also an important part of marketing. So take the fitness industry, right? The weight loss industry. A few years ago, you could sell weight loss pills and people were like, cool, I can take a pill and lose weight. Done. And everybody's like, well, that doesn't work. The market matures. So then people need to, oh, no, you need to drink this smoothie or this shake or this thing. Okay, let me try that. Okay. No, you need to drink this shot. Okay. And now what's working today? What's working today is P90X insanity. This is going to be the hardest thing you've ever done in your life. You're going to do this workout, you're going to vomit all over yourself. You probably will die. But if you don't die, guess what, you'll lose weight. That's what's working today because of market maturation cycles. Now, in a couple of years, people are going to go, well, that seems hard. And everybody will have forgotten that diet pills don't actually. You can't actually take a pill and lose weight. Then some people are going to come along and start selling. And I'm not suggesting that everybody do that. You've got to reconcile what is working in the marketplace with what's actually good and. Right.

It's kind of like, sell people what they want, give them.

It will come full circle again. And understanding where people are in that space is another thing. So if you first identify where are people right now, what's the maturation cycle that folks are in? And then you say, what's the appropriate sequence and proportion? What's the appropriate cheese and whiskers kind of thing, then that is sort of how marketing campaign, a marketing message gets orchestrated.

We were talking about the diet pills and how, you know, you're right that everybody's tried diet pills and they know that they don't work and they're all in the $39 range.

Right.

And so how do you differentiate in something like that was when leptoprin came out. When is a diet pill worth $153? And then people sit up and notice, oh, well, this must be the stuff.

And then they go out and come out with a generic of their own offer. I mean, and so that's. Yeah, that I think one of the. If you did nothing but study market maturation cycles, you would instantly become a better marketer. Because a lot of people want to take these proven headline formats, these proven headline templates. They laughed when I took a diet pill that cost this much, but when I lost weight. Everybody wants to take these, which are great. They're a great place to start. But you want to make sure, you know, if I'm going to utilize and model from a proven marketing message in the past, does it match the maturation cycle that the market is in right now?

So, I mean, are you just a wizard that has this ability to understand it, or what is your process for looking at it, understanding it, predicting it, knowing where to put attention, how to message, how to. How to identify? I mean, how do you do this?

Look at how he glows when he called him a wizard.

Yeah, I appreciate it. No, the. I mean, most. The economy is going to drive a lot of market maturation cycles. So one of the things that you can do is you can go back and, you know, you can get these online or libraries, probably don't have it back this far. But so right now we're in kind of a recessionary, post recessionary environment. So I would look at what types of things and what types of messages were resonating back in a post recessionary environment. Certainly if I had anything related to do with business, making money, general success, what types of messages resonate. And you can also just look at what's been around for a while and what's starting to get old, you know. So I gave the example. If you're in the market and you're selling weight loss pills and you're starting to see a decline, then guess what, you know, the market is maturing. You know that it's time. If you're just on the out outside looking in, you know, you. When something starts to go to retail, that's when that's kind of a signal that, okay, this is, you know, now everybody knows about it. It's time to. Everybody's zigging, it's time to zag. That, that, that's, that's a pretty good indicator. But just I think, I think a lot of it, I, I guess I don't, I don't have a really good process, but I think a lot of it's just understanding, understanding people and where they are. I mean, if the Lazy Man's Way to Riches, right. Is one of the best books and ran, but think about the time in which it ran. That's not so much the time now. Right now people don't expect to be lazy and get rich. Now. A few years ago, when a book called the Four Hour Workweek came out, that was essentially a modern day lazy man's way to riches. If the Four hour work week had come out, you know, this year or last year or at the, you know, at the absolute pit of the recession, I'm not confident it would have done as well.

You're so right. Yeah.

And that's not taking anything away from Tim, because I think it's a great book. No, no. I think he would absolutely destroy me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't fight at all. It's just embarrassing. I would. I've never really been in fights. Oh, you think you, you like a walk off?

Yeah, yeah.

Walk off.

The Tim dress. I went on. I went to Vietnam with Tim. He dresses very weird.

Yeah. Do you think you dress better? I mean, if we're in. It depends on where the judging happens. So if the judging is occurring in San Francisco, he would Win. If the judging were in Austin, Texas, I think I might be able to take him.

Yeah, no, but you got a great point though. So this ability to identify what's going on in the marketplace, different from your ability to write, do videos, knowing multi sequence marketing campaigns, how important is the success of your company to that first identification? Because it goes back to the first profit activator is select a single target market. It's select a single target market where you actually can make an impact and understand the mindset of that market and what's going on. How important in the success of someone.

With their marketing is that it's everything. It's the hook. Right? That's where the hook comes from. And if you miss on that, you can do everything else right. You can have the best product, you can have the best upsell path, you can have the best follow up. Look, if nobody gets into your funnel because you swung and missed on the hook, then you're done. And we had this experience because we're not right all the time. We just test a lot, you know, we try a lot of things. We had this experience with one of our currency trading offers where we, we were really kind of pushing hard and selling against the stock market because this had worked. And we were like, you know, look, the stock market's for, you know, suckers. I mean, there's all these crashes, blah, blah, blah. And it just, we went out there, we thought, okay, we got this message. And I'll tell you, if somebody were to look at it, they would say we had one of the best copywriters, paid him a fortune, write this piece for us. If somebody were to look at it, they would say, that is a great letter. Very, is very. Technically, you could see going through it the different threads that were flowing through and how it was. I mean it was beautiful. But when we released it, the stock market was soaring back up, you know.

Yeah, everybody's back.

And so everybody's back in on it. Yeah, they don't. It's just you missed, you missed on the hook. And that's where market maturation and all that is, is so important. And if you fail to identify that. I've seen a lot of people with great products and good general concepts that just missed on that hook. And the funny thing is, a lot of times it's just a little bit further down in the copy, you know.

You know, it's kind of interesting. I think one of the tangential benefits of mark maturation.

Tangential. I mean, superfluous. I mean, I like these $10 words, you guys.

Yeah, well, there you go.

They're more like twelve dollar words.

One of the.

I think it's very anaphylactic. Yeah, that's not even. That doesn't even mean what. It does sound big.

We should have Jay up here right now.

Right.

We'll talk about engineer reciprocity.

So.

No, but one of the extra benefits of having a model where you're not the face of the model is that you can go that way 100%, get on that track and know that that doesn't work, but then come with another face, another somebody else with the opposing that maybe hit the right. Hit the right note that harmonizes with the market.

And rarely do you actually have to change up the face. Right. A lot of times it's just changing up the message of that particular product and tweaking it just a little bit. But no, it is. It is nice to know that. No, but I mean, the experts come out interchangeable.

Yeah, I mean, well, you know what, it's like you just said hitting the right note. I mean, I love that line. There's the only thing worse than singing the wrong note is singing it louder. And you know, the whole whole selling is not yelling. And there's a lot of people that have lost it, that were doing really well because the tune that they were singing, you know, a few years ago worked really well. But, you know, Dan even was talking about, you know, people thought they were geniuses when they were, you know, making money when the economy was just killing it. You know, and Warren Buffett has that thing. It's not until the tide goes down where you find out who was swimming naked and who wasn't. So, I mean, is your business doing better in the middle of what people would consider right now a horrible economy? Is it doing better than it ever has been?

Yeah, we've. I mean, I've never gone through a year where I made less money than the year before. Yeah, actually that's not true. I've. I've never gone through a year where we grossed less money. I've gone through years where we netted less money because either we were going in a heavy growth phase or because I did something real dumb that was called 2009, which we don't need to go. But I mean it. Last year, same. I mean, last year we did. We did better, but 09 was like worse than 08. Not because of the economy, though, just because we were really scaling up and adding a bunch of new things and expenses went up. But no, I mean, I Do believe that the economy, I mean, people who say, I don't like the expression. I'm choosing not to participate in the recession because there's, I think, the way. I get what people mean when they say that, but saying I'm going to ignore it, like I'm gonna stick my head in the sand like an ostrich in the sand kind of thing. It's not right. I mean, I'm gonna participate in the fact that the recession's going on. I'm just going to change my message to account for it. People still have money. There's. People are still buying stuff. I mean, it's cliche, but yeah, tons of millionaires were created during the Great Depression. You know, a lot of the great publishing empires were launched during the last big, big recession in the 80s. And so we're using this as a time to grow and to just gobble up as much market share as possible when everybody. And we're watching. God, man. I mean, it's weird. I mean, I know you guys see it. You've got to see a dean in the real estate space. I'm betting your competition's gone down substantially.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, so I've seen in the marketing space, we're seeing. In the financial space, we're seeing in every industry that we're in, it's just. They're gone. They're nowhere to be found. So.

But along with that comes new opportunities. Like you said. What are you seeing as the. The future, the way things are evolving? Anything.

Are you. Do you mean from like a. From a market.

Future trends of the industry is perhaps what, deep? No. Yeah. What do you see?

Like, you know, you're the wizard.

I mean, we're asking the wizard.

Yeah, I'm. I will tell you, I'm one of these. The better person to ask this question to is that Dale who we referenced earlier, because he's. He's good. I'm actually very slow to jump onto new things because I never. I don't know, is this another bright, shiny object or is this one actually going to stick? Clearly, I think the Internet's going to stick. I think we're cool there. I think Facebook's going to stick. But the other thing that we're kind of. We've been watching with bated breath for the last year or so and wondering is this going to happen? Is kind of mobile and home mobile commerce. And that's the thing that right now has, if I'm being honest, has me the most freaked out because that's going to Change a lot. A lot of you're going to see right Now, I think 10, depending on the market, 10 to 15% of our total traffic comes to our webpage from a mobile device. 10 to 15% and the conversion rate from that traffic is approximately 0%.

Right.

We get almost no sales people. They're typically not buying in a mobile environment unless it's a one click, unless it's a one click iTunes thing or, you know, really low micro purchasing. And this whole micro purchasing concept in mobile and that being so identified with it, I think that's going to be one of Steve Jobs greatest legacies really is that whole concept.

Well, that's what Ed would suck when he always says us to us. That's the whole thing.

But that changes everything. That totally changes the economics of everything that I do and everything that we do. So we're watching that very closely. I still don't know what the answer is and I hope when it happens, it happens very quickly because it's when these things like, oh, it goes from 15% to 20% to 25 that now you're having to sort of adjust and it's very, very awkward. But I do think that mobile and mobile purchasing and mobile commerce is going to be the future and I think that that's going to dramatically affect the types of things that we sell, certainly from an information publishing standpoint. And I think it's going to affect the way that we market as well.

That's awesome. Well, we've just got a few minutes left. And so in the time that we have, if you would just kind of rattle off knowing what you know now, things, fundamentals to know, to learn to do and things not to do. If you were sitting down and only had a couple of minutes with, you know, an entrepreneur and say, you know, from what I know about marketing, what I know about business, here's, you know, some of my top elegant ideas. They could be, you know, what to do or they could be what not to do. What would you, what would you say?

There's. If you're new and you're going in and you're evaluating. Let's, let's work. You want to work from that thing? Somebody's just getting started.

Yeah.

So if you're just getting started, I will tell you it's a crowded landscape out there. It's harder today than it was when I first got started, I'll freely admit that. So there are sort of three things that I'm looking at when evaluating. Okay, do I really want to take this idea and run with it. And the first one is, is there an actual want, need or void in the marketplace? Again, it's said a lot. It sounds very, very cliche, but I think a lot of people are very willing to go out with a Me Too product. They're willing to take some private label content and cobble it together into something that is sort of like a book and sell that. You can't do that. You cannot do that. You have to have a reason to exist. That is the big thing that I look at this is not today. It's not about, you know, who's the best marketer, you know, the whole thing, oh, this guy's so smart, he could sell ice to Eskimos. Screw that. Why would they want to buy ice? It's everywhere. I don't care if you can sell it to them. You shouldn't. And just because you can doesn't mean you should. So what are you selling people that they would actually want? Because we're getting a lot of market consolidation. And also everybody talks. You know, there's review things, there's commenting. You cannot afford to be another me Too product. You will get found out. And so that's the first thing is, is there a real live want, need or void? And then be honest with yourself. Does your product have a real live reason to exist there? And if it doesn't, keep working at it. And probably the answer, by the way, is to shrink your idea just a little bit and try to serve a smaller segment of that market better than to try to make it bigger and bigger and bigger, you know, so have a hunt, you know. Yeah, that's that big thing. The other, the other deal that I look at is this thing that's being sold. Is it currently being, you know, is it currently being offered through traditional distribution channels? If it is. So I've got an idea. I've got the best dish soap in the world. It's such good dish soap. Well, guess what? Dish soap is sold at Walmart. It's sold at the grocery store. If somebody really has dirty dishes and they want to fix this problem, they are not going to think about finding, you know what? I don't just need dish soap.

If only there was some sort of.

I need the best dish soap possible. And yet this is what people do, right? They've got incrementally better products that, where there are products that are established that are out there. If you want to go out there, and we're talking specifically about online selling, what you want to make sure is that there's a want, need or void that isn't currently being met through traditional distribution channels. So, you know, we sell retractable band stanchions, which are those poles that have little bands that come out of the side that you see in banks. Right. That keep you in line. Those are called retractable belt stanchions. Now, you know that. Wow. If you wanted to buy a retractable belt stanchion, where would you go and buy it?

The same place you'd get a turnstile.

Yeah. You don't know. And that.

And that's Joe's belt.

That's. Yeah.

Belt Stanchions and Turnstiles Emporium.

Come on down.

No, but if the answer is. If the answer that your market would say is, gosh, I don't know, well, then where are they going to go? They're going to go to the crazy. Yeah, that whole Google thing. They're going to go to the Googles and they're going to look for it. And now you got something. If the answer is, oh, I just go to grocery store, or I'll just go to Walmart, or I'll just go to the bookstore, because that's being sold, that's not your deal. That's not your jam. Don't do that. All right. That's not it. So that's kind of the second. The third thing is, are there any clearly recognized brands in that space? If there is, can I partner with or associate with them? If there is not, can I become it? So that one's not a make or break, but you got to be honest with yourself there and acknowledge, you know, hey, again, like, so what's the number one stanchion brand, retractable stanchion brand in the country? People don't know. So now that. That's good for me, because now it could be me as far as they're concerned. If I do a better job marketing and positioning all that stuff, if there's an obvious go to place, then be concerned. Be very, very concerned. So, though, between those three criteria, you know, making sure that you have a legitimate reason to exist, making sure that what you're selling is not being met through a traditional retail channel, and making sure that there's not a dominant brand. If you can go with those, then I'd say you got a great shot. A really, really great shot. If you got some issues there, then you better go raise a whole bunch of money and it's gonna be a tough road.

That's fantastic. So, Dean, do you have any final things you want to Ask Ryan because we're gonna wrap this up and then we'll give out his website so people can see.

That's what I'm thinking is let's really do something for him because he's. We're exposing him to probably two or three hundred people here. So where can those people go to really get more information about you?

Yeah, digitalmarketer.com digitalmarketer.com yeah, digitalmarketer.com is kind of my main stuff where I talk about all this kooky things like marketing stuff that we're talking about right now. And part of the reason, by the.

Way, that there's somewhere that they can put their name and email in there.

Is on that page. I'm sure there's something. But we do have a, we have a newsletter, the $50 a year newsletter. So digitalmarketer.com join if you want to check that out. You get some stuff. And yeah, there's. But I'm sure that there's an opportunity on that website. I'll be honest, I haven't looked at it in a while, but I'd almost guarantee that we do ask for a name and email address at some point.

Yeah, you would hope. Well, Ryan, it's been real and that was very valuable. And you, you've accomplished some great things. And so thank you for sharing. As much as I can fake sincere to hear.

It was good.

Were you buying it?

Well, no. I mean, I could see his face. I knew it was total. But for the people listening, I'm sure they know, in all seriousness, whoa. As I tear stuff up, does that tear up the studio? Thanks, guys. Thanks for doing this whole thing.

Yeah. And for all our listeners, again, if you listen to this on itunes, go to ilovemark and you'll see the fancy video and even a clip of Ryan socks, which is a must see. And please give us your comments@ilovemarketing.com and share this with every human being that you know that has even an inkling of entrepreneurial intelligence, because it will be very valuable. So thank you, sir, and to all of our listeners, be cool.

There we go.