The One With Tim Larkin - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #86

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 back.

You're welcoming back me or everyone?

I'm welcoming back you.

Well, thank you. Yes. Yeah, I was, I was in New York, you know, for the first couple of weeks of last month, and then a two week vacation and went to Cape Cod for a week and then went to Boston, and it was, it was, it was wild. And during that period of time, we put up my interview with Tony Horton because, you know, Republican candidate for VP, Paul Ryan is a big P90X guy. And Tony Horton is the creator of P90X with beachbody.com.

You see how we do that, capitalizing on current events for our own selfish advancement.

Well, you know what? That. Well, I don't know what's selfish about it. You're not charging anyone for the interview, but for the service that we provide. But anyway, that being said, we have got a very special guest today, and I can ramble for a little bit here if we want to, but we have a very special guest who not only is smart as heck, truly one of the top industry transformers in his area of expertise, but a guy that, you know, both me and you have known for many, many years. And he's also listened to every single episode of I Love Marketing, Literally every single episode that we've done. And this episode, I think, is what, like number 86?

86. I've listened to every one of them, too.

Yeah. And see the cool thing about him listening to every one of them before I say who he is. This is a very successful guy. Right? Exactly. I mean, he's a very successful dude. I mean, he personally trains Tony Robbins to be, you know, more physically capable. And I'll have him explain what the hell I'm even talking about there. But anyway, with no further ado, let's introduce our very special guest, my good friend, Mr. Tim Larkin. What's up, Tim?

Hey. Hey, guys. How you doing?

Good. Doing awesome. And, you know, it's really a pleasure to actually have you on. I love marketing because we've done a genius network interview before where it was actually called, I think, the Science of Violence. And this great saying that violence is never an option unless it's the only option. And now that people are thinking, well, what the heck are we talking about? I love marketing. Maybe you could give all of our listeners a bio of who is Tim Larkin and what do you actually do? And then we'll, you know, determine what is the relevance to them as it relates to, I love marketing and building their, their businesses and careers and so let's start with your bio. Who are you?

Yeah, my bio is basically I've had a complete passion all my life. I've always, I've always been fascinated with the idea of the human beings, you know, the human race's penchant for turning to violence. It's just one of these ongoing themes that, you know, throughout history where when you really look at things, you realize that war is a much more constant state in the human environment than peace is. You know, we, we happen to be living in a country right now. You know, if you're living in the US then you're living in, you know, really the last superpower and we've known peace. Anybody who's alive right now is only really known peace as far as, you know, our country's concerned. We fought wars, but our country very, very much doesn't get affected by that. And so as a little kid I was always interested in that aspect of it, particularly in the idea of martial arts, combat sports and you know, I was a practitioner early on and then through the military was introduced into a hand to hand combat system that just fascinated me and I went into become a professional contractor doing that for the military and law enforcement. After my, my time in the Navy, I started out, you know, to be a SEAL officer and I was injured two weeks before, two weeks before my, going to the SEAL team that I was assigned to. And they, that was the seminal change in my life. I thought my life was over. But what really happened was I was put into the place that I needed to go, which was the intelligence community. I worked directly for the admiral of the SEAL teams who, who ran everything. And I was put into a place, you know, where I was, you know, I made amazing connections during that time. I've, you know, my company is called Target Focus Training and that's, you know, that's what I do, that's what I sell. That's, that's the, this, you know, the business that I'm in. I have 52 instructors, we do it all over the world. Been on multiple covers of magazines, Black Belt, all the industry publications. I've been in just about every major publication as far as regular media, Forbes, Financial Times, areas that normally in the self defense world you don't get covered. And the reason being is because we talk about the principles of violence and we don't talk about it in a macho way, we talk about it in a very realistic, straightforward manner. The assumption with the. With the training that we have is that your assailant's always going to be bigger, faster, and stronger. They're going to carry weapons and they're going to have friends. And so that's a baseline level of what we do. The reason I wanted to talk to you guys, though, is because as passionate as I am about that system and doing what I do, it's completely useless if I can't get the message out, I can't get people in. And that's. That's why I'm so passionate about, you know, the program that you guys have put together here with. I love marketing. And as I told you guys prior to the interview, not only have I listened to every episode, but, you know, I've turned on so many people, so many people starting out in their careers to this program, and it's just helped a tremendous amount of these young kids just bypass, you know, years of trying to figure it out. I mean, you guys are providing a service that's just outstanding. And, you know, we kid a lot. We're. We're. We're in a lot of different groups together and stuff. And I know, you know, we joke a lot, but I really am very serious about what you guys are putting out here. I just think it's an outstanding service. And I wanted to share today, you know, kind of how I used marketing when I didn't even know I was marketing, you know, coming on, and how it's played such an important role throughout my career. So that's really what I want to do today.

Well, first off, thank you. And you know what, Dean? Something he said that I think is really kind of important. He was doing marketing before he even knew he was doing marketing. I think all of us, the one common thing. There's a lot of things we have in common. I think the one common thing as it relates to business and how we got into this marketing world is none of us actually started out thinking we would be marketers. I mean, we're always trying to run, you know, different businesses in completely different industries, but it doesn't matter how good you are, it doesn't matter how good your product or service is until someone actually gives you money for it, you know, and marketing is what gets the message out there. And we. We all needed to survive. You know, we needed to figure it out. And through a course of events, you know, we stumbled upon the most effective way of marketing anything, which is really direct response. And so, yeah, let's kind of get into it. Anything you want to Say Dean, because I want to kind of.

I can't wait. I mean, you know, I'm excited because, you know, we've both gotten to spend time with Tim sort of offline, and I'm really excited to hear what he, what he's going to share with us today because, you know, he's. There's no arguing. He's built a phenomenally successful business and, you know, just proving in any niche, you know, that if you're focused on marketing, even if you don't even know it at first, that it's marketing that you're focused on, there's so much opportunity. So I'm grateful that he's going to share what he's learned in his path.

Yeah. So I'd love to have this kind of like a before and after sort of thing, Tim, like, where were you before your business and what you got into and sort of explain the lessons along the way before you actually do that. I'd love to even just hear what, what is your definition of marketing? I mean, when you think of marketing, what does that mean to you?

Marketing is setting the stage so that somebody has all the information they need to make a decision about whatever it is that you're presenting to them, whatever the topic is that you're presenting to them, whatever the end goal is. Marketing is making sure that you've answered every question that you can think of. You've thoroughly thought out, you know, all the objections that you really, really understand. Your prospects head where they're looking at, you know, how they look at the market, not the way you wish they looked at it, but, you know, to really spend time in their shoes and understand. And luckily, you know, in my world, I was always that guy. I was. I was the. I never saw myself as the guru. I never saw myself as the lead person. I always saw myself as the end user and how I would look at that and what I wanted. You know, I always tried to present information not the way it was given to me, but the way it would have been great to have it. So rather than, you know, make people go through all the windy road I had to go to get the information that I got and present it in a very clear, concise format. You know, I want to make sure that those people were better than me every step of the way. And from a marketing aspect, that's what I need to convey. You know, I need to convey that information to people and get them excited that, you know, you're interested in the subject. That's why you're reading about this, and I'm going to be very direct with you, and I'm going to. I'm going to give you the answers to the questions that you're currently asking. You know, and to me, marketing is just absolutely essential in getting your message out. Yep.

I love it. You know, look at yourself as the end user, end users is a great point, I think, in a lot of ways. Do you think you're like an intuitive marketer or were you just. Did you at some point really suck at being able to do that? And through force of, like, either needing to survive or whatever, out of frustration, you got that, or did you just sort of intuitively get that from the beginning?

You know, I think probably my. You know, when I really look back on it, Joe, I mean, I had to sell myself from day one. I was a Navy brat. My dad was a naval officer, and we lived literally all around the globe. And I was one of those kids that every two to three years, I was thrown into a new school environment. And I was the oldest in my family, and I had to break ground. You know, you had to go into a completely new social environment. You had to, you know, sit down. And I remember I was always, you know, I was always one of those kids. I think my grandfather told me, just, you know, when you go to a new place, just sit and observe. Everybody just watch. And it was interesting, was learning to be patient and just get your information on the social structure. You know, I could quickly see where the clicks were, what kids were doing, what. And then you could sit there from a survival mode because, you know, being a new kid, kids can be brutal. And you had to sit there and realize, okay, how am I going to approach this, how I'm gonna make friends and who do I want my friends to be? And all those things. You had to think that way, you know, because you are constantly in new environments. So I was forced to, you know, present myself to new groups and, you know, and learn to, you know, engage people. And what's really funny is you see what works and what doesn't work, you know, and so early on, I kind of got that feedback loop. And then, of course, you know, I was molded that the Navy was an option, you know, for me. And I went into the military. They paid for my school. You know, it was a really great deal. But I was interested in a part of the Navy that my. My parents had no real knowledge of, which was the SEAL teams, which was special operations, community. And, you know, that was a whole fact finding, you know, situation that I had to go into because back then it was in the early 80s, there was very little knowledge. I mean now of course, you know, there's numerous books on the SEAL teams and you know, it's a very popular thing, but back then it was really not known. I mean it was a very hush hush organization and it was not talked about and it was really not written about. The only reason I came across it was because I literally lived across the street from the training base. My, the Navy housing that I was in in San Diego when my dad had a ship out there was literally across the street from the SEAL teams. So I, I literally, you know, was jumping over a barbed wire fence with my brother and we were playing on the, the obstacle course there and that's how I got introduced to the seals and I learned all that. The interesting part though is, you know, what I wanted to kind of share with people is I know a lot of people are listening to this and you're, you're in your own job, you're in, you're in a current job, maybe a corporate environment, you know, a regular job and you're thinking, well, you know, it's going to take a huge risk for me to start using some of the principles that you guys talk about. And looking back on my own career, the way I was able to sell myself to, you know, first I had to sell myself to get a scholarship. You know, I had to sell myself to, you know, put together a presentation of package because I didn't have the strongest grades, but I put together an extracurricular package back then. And this is before any services were available to where I really presented myself in the best light I could. You know, my idea was, you know, I didn't have money for college, my parents weren't wealthy, I needed the scholarship and therefore for me to get the scholarship, you know, what would I need to do above and beyond what everybody else does? And really what it is is just delineating yourself, you know, letting people know that, you know, hey, you're going to put the extra effort in, you're actually a kid that's going to, it's going to do there. And it worked. You know, I got a scholarship and they were pretty competitive scholarships back then for, for the ROTC scholarship that I got, then got into the, you know, into university, you know, did good, did good in university. But my training, I kept going back to that 13 year old kid that saw the SEAL teams and going, wow, that'd be a really cool career, you know, and I wanted to do that, and it was back then extremely tough to get selected for seals, not for the reasons most people think. Back then, you were highly discouraged as a scholarship person to get into the SEAL teams. And I had to really, really work to get that selection. They gave very few officer selections to anybody on scholarship. So there were two slots available for the year that I graduated, and there were 2,500 people that applied. 275 of us actually made the cut, meaning there were 275 guys up for two slots, you know, to get training. And I knew it came down to that. I knew on paper, we all kind of looked the same. So I had, you know, I had met a lot of SEAL officers, you know, and I had actually volunteered to do extra military service to serve with the seals as a. As a young midshipman. And they put me through a program, and I got, you know, I got the recommendations there, sent those in. I. I realized that, hey, there's. There's a couple of other things, you know, I know there's some key players here. They know, you know, they can talk to you as to my tenacity. They can talk to all the things that the SEALs were looking for. But I also knew that, hey, that's, you know, that's not enough. What's something I could do that I can at least tell myself? I've done everything I possibly could do to get one of those two slots. And I decided that I had a buddy who was going to school at American University in D.C. and I decided, I'm gonna fly to D.C. i'm going to. I'm gonna go stay at my friend's house, and I am gonna sit outside the office of the SEAL detailer, the guy that makes the decision, the officer makes the decision on the SEAL teams. I'm gonna sit outside his office until he gives me five minutes. And I did that. He made me sit for three days. But I thought of exactly what I was going to say, and I didn't waste his time. And I basically told him, I said, sir, I know you have a very tough decision to make. He was. He goes, you know, he started the whole conversation by saying, I'm not even supposed to talk to you. I said, I know that, sir. And he said, what are you doing? Why did you wait here three days? I said, I just need five minutes of your time, sir. He goes, what do you want to tell me? I said, sir, I know you have a really tough decision. I said, I know we all look the same on paper. Will tell you that this is what I've wanted to do since I was 13 years old. This is why I put this package together. And I just want you to know that I know your biggest concern is that you're gonna make the wrong decision. You're gonna pick the wrong kit. And if you pick me, you're gonna get 110%. I said, I will not quit. Because, of course, the attrition rate back then was 75%. And I walked out of there having no idea, you know, what to think, because he was really played it really good. I walked out the door, young officer that was sitting there, that worked in that command, ran down the hall, the Pentagon, after me. And he said to me, he goes, hey, man, I can't let you go. I gotta let you know. He goes, you had it two days ago. He said, they couldn't believe you actually came out here and sat outside the office and stuff like that. And so that really taught me. I said, wow. Okay. You know, when you look about it, you know, when you're looking from a marketing aspect, you have to ask yourself, okay, you know, doing the norm is not enough. You have to go above and beyond. And you have to. You have to put your message out in such a way that if somebody says no, you can at least breathe a sigh of relief and say, you know what? I did absolutely everything I possibly could to reach this person.

But you know what else in that you were you. What I hear in that is that you, you know, the very first thing is you had absolute clarity of purpose. You knew exactly what you wanted. I mean, you wanted it more than anything, and you were willing to do whatever it took to get it right.

Yeah. You know what? I want you to keep going, Tim, because I know you're not complete with this. I'm sitting there listening this, thinking about the old selling rule ada, which we've all heard a million times. People watch Glenn Ross if they want to see a pretty funny scene on it. But attention, interest, desire, action. I mean, talking about just sitting there waiting as it comes from their standpoint, you know, getting their attention, showing you're interested, showing you desire it, you know, I mean, you've just set it up. I mean, you're totally positioning yourself because you're willing to do the things that most people are not willing to do. And that was just one example of it.

And that's just like Napoleon. It's like Napoleon Hill's, you know, number one thing, a definite chief aim.

Yes. I thought you were going to say Napoleon Dynamite.

I was gonna Say, Napoleon Dynamite. But then I caught myself. Napoleon Hill. Yeah, like Napoleon Dynamite says. Yeah.

So keep going, because this is actually quite instructional.

It really is.

Well, you know what happened, what was interesting was I, I, so I get it. I get, I get the slot and I go, I'm the number one guy. I'm, I'm the golden child in my, in my training. I'm leading charge. We, my group, I had. They put you up in boat crews. My boat crew won every major event. We won something called Hell Week, which is, you know, a five day event where they keep you up for five days doing all sorts of physical evolutions. And the reason, the reason I did so well in that part of the training was because as a young kid, you know, at 13, I did all the research. I knew what Hell Week was. I saw multiple hell weeks. It wasn't, it wasn't because I was tougher than anybody else. It wasn't because I didn't. It's because I did the market research. I knew, you know, I knew where to hide food. I knew where the instructors looked and where they didn't look. I knew the best routes to take. I knew certain ways that you could protect your guys so that while everybody else is working, you can be hiding and saving up your strength. I knew all these strategies. And the reason was because I had that complete clarity of focus of what I wanted to do during that time. Now, what I didn't plan for was, you know, the outlier. And the outlier was two weeks prior to my graduation, I had a massive random diving accident. You know, literally on one of the dives. It's like a no big deal. It's like, you know, you're kind of cruising. I had already had an assignment to the SEAL team that I was going to and all of that stuff. And, you know, all of a sudden, you know, my whole world gets turned upside down. I blow my. I blew both of my eardrums, one of them, pretty severely, to the point to where I lost my ability to be dive qualified. At that point. My ears, I basically have cardboard for eardrums right now. And, you know, you need flexible eardrums to be able to dive. And so I had, you know, my whole world got turned upside down literally two weeks before I was, you know, going to the place I wanted to go. Everything that I'd worked for my whole life. What was interesting about that was that was an injury to the human body. Meaning that was something that I could not overcome. I could not will, I could not do anything. It Was something that the body, you know, the body absolutely shut me down. Had nothing to do with whether or not I was a tough guy or any of this other stuff. It was an injury that I just couldn't overcome, which was really interesting because that became the nexus of how I teach people to protect themselves. I teach them about injury to the human body and how it is. And that story is seminal. Meaning, you know, I was literally, you know, the anchorman of the class, which is the, you know, the guy that gets the most physically proficient in class, all this other stuff. I was, you know, everything the epitome of what training should be. And yet, you know, no matter what, I couldn't overcome an injury. And that's my. That's my. My mantra to everybody is, you know, the human body is actually pretty easy to injure. And when you learn that, it bypasses will. It bypasses, you know, tenacity, it bypasses strength, you know, and it's literally one of the best ways to protect yourself. Now, I learned it the hard way, but because of that, because of that, you know, how that shut me down. I'm extremely passionate about passing that information on. At that time, of course, I didn't know that. At that time, my life was over. They switched me into the intelligence community. I end up working for a group that, you know, I never should have worked for, which was directly for the Admiral. They put me in a much more senior position than my, you know, my little butter bars, you know, warranted. And I worked for the Admiral. And the reason they did that was because they knew I was really good in training. They knew I understood special operations community. And they realized they needed an intelligence officer because we were expanding back then. And they figured by using me, they didn't have to take an active duty seal off and take him out of the mix because there's. At that time, there was only about 2500 of them. And so everybody was precious back then. And they figured using me, I'm already broken that way. They're not using a healthy SEAL in my position. So even though I wasn't a seal, they had me as an intel officer working a very senior position. So there I noticed some things. And this is where people, if you're working a regular job, here's where you can start using some marketing. The military is a really huge bureaucracy. You want to talk about corporate, you want to talk about Byzantine, it's crazy, but I had a bunch of guys under me, and I noticed that, you know, it was really tough sometimes for a lot of these guys to get training taken care of, to get special schools. There's a lot of cool schools you can go to, but there's paperwork involved. And these guys would go through the traditional chain of command, and they would. They would do. They would look at things, and I had the ability to sit back and kind of watch how things actually got done. And I realized that most people were just doing the norm. They were looking at things from, okay, I put my request in. It goes through, and then my co, you know, says something, and usually it comes back, because maybe something's wrong with paperwork, and then it gets denied, and then I miss the class or I miss getting that piece of equipment, or my guys don't get to go to this training. Well, I started to realize that the real power didn't line the chain of command. The real power lied in the supply system. And the supply system was run back then mostly by the Filipino officers. And you had the Philippine. The Filipino mafia, basically. We used to call it, you know, supply chain because the Filipino officers, that's where they all kind of gravitated to, was there. And what I learned was most of the requests were getting turned down and stuff because paperwork wasn't done correctly. These. These guys in supply were completely overwhelmed with requests and all. All. You know, they were just basically telling me, hey, you know, if you just do your paperwork right, just. Just to get you out of here, we'll stamp you, we'll get rid of you. So just bring us the paperwork. I learned. I learned. I spent time and I learned with their people how to fill out paperwork correctly. That was really it. All my stuff got rubber stamped. I got approved for stuff that was just. My guys thought I was a God, because we literally. I even got us a speed reading class. I sent everybody to Evelyn Wood speed reading because it was available. It was already paid for by the military, but you had to fill things out. Oh, my God, I've got speed reading, which really helped because a lot of us were reading intelligence reports and stuff, and it really helped us do our job better. But we got to go, you know, we got to go Nordic skiing. We got to do special shooting classes. We got special equipment, all because I sat there and took the time to realize that if I just make somebody's job easier, and this is where, you know, the whole premise is, when I want somebody to buy from me, you know, they're already psyched, and they like what I have. I go out of my way to make it really easy for them to purchase. You know, if you make it just. You know, I hear Dean talk about, you know, zero resistance, frictionless life and stuff. If you can make anything frictionless for somebody and you can make their day better. And I made the supply people's day better because they didn't have to do anything. They knew everything was correct. So they. Whether or not I really was justified to have some of the training requests and some of the equipment requests that I got, they didn't care. They were just so appreciative of somebody actually giving a crap and doing things right that they just automatically just approved all our stuff. And so that taught me a really great lesson, is that, you know, really look and see where. Where the resistance is, and then see how you can kind of get through that. You can do stuff like that right now. If you're in a job right now, I guarantee you there's a way you can. You can. You can go to your boss or whoever your person is, you can put a presentation together to ask for something. It might be you want a new whiteboard or you want something that's just not approved. I guarantee you, you can figure out a way to test out some of these marketing theories that you hear about them. I love marketing. And just test out and you learn so much. You know, I didn't get everything right the first time I got things back, but what was cool was every time I got something back that was wrong, I was able to go back to that person and say, okay, how would you really want to see this? What. Why did. Why did this not happen? Right? You know, what did I fill out wrong? Did I. Did I. Did I use the wrong nomenclature? Did I say something wrong here? Did it? You know, and that was the last time I made that mistake. And, you know, you can do that right now in a corporate environment for free. You know, you can test out a lot of the theories that you guys talk about and get your skill sets down so that when you enter the market, when you have your idea, when you have your product, you've already learned a lot of really valuable skills on how to present stuff to people in a way that makes them more open to, you know, agreeing with you. And to me, the military just was. I didn't realize that's what I was doing. I was just trying to help my guys out and get some cool training. But when I look back on it, that's why it was so easy for me. And plus, I really believed in my guys. My guys really worked really hard. And so if I could do little things like this because you can't give people any more pay in the military. You can only get them, you know, you know, some, some, you know, cool benefits like this. I remember one time we came out and SEAL Team six at the time was the only group that had these special boots that Adidas made called GSG9 boots. And I knew there was a supply of them down there and they're really cool boots. You know, back then they were cool boots and my guys were doing a great job and they were going to be doing a shipboarding drill. And I said, man, wouldn't it be cool if my guys showed up with, with the Adidas boots? And so I went through and I put this, this whole presentation together in a justification with the, with the supply people and they, they just said they go, they go, you know what? We know you don't deserve these, but this is so well done. We're not only going to give you your boots, but we're going to also use this as a template to show the rest of the guys how to ask for equipment. And so my guys ended up getting boots that were designed for a very specific group that had nothing. You know, my guys did not deserve these boots, but we all had them, you know, and to me, I just wanted, it was more of a thing at that point. I wanted to see. I had no expectation that I would get those boots, but I wanted to see. I said, listen, I'm going to test this out. You know, if I do everything correctly, I make this a frictionless, you know, offer to these guys. I wonder if they'll approve it. And sure as hell they did. And it pissed off a lot of people. But, you know, everything was legit. So, you know, that's kind of my message to people is, is I think a lot of people hear what you guys are talking about and I love marketing and they think, oh, okay, I got, I gotta wait. I gotta wait until I have my website, I gotta wait till I have my product. I gotta, you know, all these excuses not to start testing out some of these theories. You can test these out in so many different ways that don't cost you anything that are really risk free. The only thing that's going to happen is you're probably going to make mistakes and that's your opportunity to learn and hone from it. So, you know, when I was listening to a lot of the episodes, you know, I was kind of listening it from some of these kids that I'm sharing your information with and I was hearing some of their resistance, you know, how they were thinking about things. And I just wanted to convey this. You know, there's many, many different ways to test this stuff out. It's almost like the concept in. In trading, you know, when they have you paper trade, you know, you can really paper market in a corporate environment and, and learn these skill sets. And I just think it's something that, you know, the sooner you start, the better you get.

Yeah, absolutely. Dean, I'm going to say a couple things and let you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Questions and stuff, because I know I, you know, tend to dominate because of probably a better person than you in all ways. But I was supposed to get a chuckle deed at least you could play.

I did chuckle.

Didn't you hear me?

I was chuckling, like, silently. I was chucking. Pretty quiet. Yeah. Pretty quietly, though.

No, but, you know, it reminds me of something that Dan Sullivan talks about where, you know, Dan loves Tim Larkin. I mean, I don't know how much you know that Tim, but Dan has always mentioned great things about you. You think she's just an awesome dude. And Dan, you know, talks about in his military career how one of the things he picked up on early on when he was in the army was that people would warn him about certain positions. Oh, you know, don't volunteer for that. Stay away from this. And he got it into his head, he's like, huh, you know, he goes, if everyone's like, trying not to do these things because there's this position about it that it's a bad thing, what if I just volunteered and agreed and sought out everything that people are saying not to do, you know, how would that position me with, you know, the officers and everything? So he literally had his, you know, free reign through his entire military career. He got, you know, the best housing, he got his own car, he got people working underneath him, everything, because he just volunteered for these positions like theater and various. You know, I can't remember them all, but, you know, his. His whole point is just looking at things completely differently. And I think in a lot of ways, you know, that that's what you've done. And I sit and look at, you know, I was recently watching, you know, the conventions, the Republican convention and whatnot, and hearing about the job stats. You know, one out of six Americans is, you know, is out of work. And then I don't know exactly what the statistics are, but I was Dr. Mesa Community College yesterday because I like the Mesa Community College library. I love libraries. They're just great places of focus. And it was, you know, around 6pm and there were. The parking lot was just packed with people going to school in many classes that in that particular world, they're going to get out of these classes. And they're literally, you know, whatever degree they get, and they're just. There's not going to be jobs available for them. And, you know, part of me, if I could just wave a magic wand and just, you know, instantly make people entrepreneurial, which you can't. I mean, there's people that are set up to be entrepreneurs, and most people are not. If you could just help people think that way. And, you know, one of the things that Dan Sullivan says is other people's bad news is your good news. And one of the things that I get out of this, listening to what you're talking about, Tim, is that you have the ability to kind of see where there's bad news that's happening and knowing how to make it better. Converting people's bad news into good news is how all of us as entrepreneurs make money and getting somebody to say, God, at least this guy paid attention to this. He removed this friction. I mean, you just have this understanding of, let me see how to eliminate the bad news for people. Think of it from. Look at yourself as the end user. What's the bad news? What's the complexity and how can I simplify it?

And.

And that's what not only allowed you to really position yourself in your career, but what ultimately became the way that you actually now run your business and how you train people. And I think it's just instrumental in getting people to actually get outside of their own heads and think about things from other people's perspectives. And right now, the world is filled with bad news that lots of people have the ability, if they so choose, to convert that bad news from making people happier to fixing medical problems, to teaching somebody something, to, you know, whatever, you know, becoming whatever sort of career, whatever business you want. It's just getting people to understand that. And that is a marketing issue, because in the process of converting anyone's bad news, you have to have the ability to communicate to them what you're going to do, how you're going to do it. And our system, of course, is before, during, after, and the eight profit activators as it relates to. I love marketing. So anyway, those are just my thoughts that I wanted to spew out there. So Dean, hit us with some.

I love how it really does fit into the profit activator. It's exactly what Tim's been saying. He's selected a single target market. I Mean, he observed and saw exactly who the right person is and then asked the question, what would be a dream come true for those people? Anytime that you have the ability to make something the equivalent of an easy button for somebody where they could just push the button and their dream comes true, like those, like the supply people, you know, there's the thing. It's like, push that easy button and it's, you know, their job is easier because Tim thought through enough how to prepare the paperwork in a way that's going to make their job easy. He did the same thing with getting selected, you know, for. For the program by selecting his target market. He knew exactly who he needed to. To go and reach, flew out to D.C. and thought through what would be a dream come true for this guy is to know that he's making the right choice. You know, he had the foresight to think that what's the conversation that's going on in this guy's mind, you know, and the conversation is, I don't know these guys. I don't want to make a bad decision just by looking at what they've got on paper. And when Tim flies out there is the only one. It wasn't that he was forbidden from doing it or anything like that, but he's the only one who took the initiative to do it and proved that he wanted it more than anybody else by sitting there for three days. You know, it was an easy button for that guy. There's. There's so many lessons in that.

Yes.

I think people need to realize, too, also. I mean, I don't want to convey the wrong information either. I mean, I wasn't probably the best guy, you know, I mean, I mean, on paper, I'm sure there were guys that far more qualified than me, probably had better ears than me, you know, in the long run. But the issue is that's never the reason not to put yourself forward. Because what I found is, especially in my field, you know, I deal with a lot of top operators. I deal with a lot of guys who, you know, you guys hear about groups like a Seal Team 6 or something. I've dealt with those guys for years, those types of people, like, you know, Delta Force personnel, guys who are just amazing. And I'll tell you what's interesting is in those fields of expertise, trying to get a guy to come out and maybe do a shooting course. I had a guy that I was trying to tell who I truly feel is probably the best guy in the world to teach people how to shoot a handgun. He's Just phenomenal. But nobody knows about him. And the reason nobody knows about him is because this guy relates everything to his peer group. And so he's surrounded by, you know, 15 other Jedi Knights that he says, well, you know, any one of these guys could do this. I'm not, you know, there's nothing special about what I'm doing. Whereas, you know, I'm sitting there going, you know, Dave, they're, these jackasses are out here with not even a thimble full of your knowledge. And I said, they're touting themselves. And as experts, you can do things in minutes that take these guys days, if ever, to get across to people. Let me, you know, because he's out, let me, you know, let me get you some clients. Let me do this for you. I go, it's, it's disservice that these people are learning from these other guys, you know, when you have what you're learning. But he was so afraid of his peer group, you know, judging him in a certain way that, you know, he was very uncomfortable, you know, getting out there. And I found that a lot with people who actually probably the guys that are probably the best as far as the actual practitioner or instructor or whatever, are usually the worst at, you know, getting the message out. And, you know, I never saw myself, I always was pushing my original partner in. This was just phenomenal, had a phenomenal story, very difficult individual. You know, personally, I always called him a functioning sociopath, but he was brilliant. He was absolutely brilliant, brilliant when it came to hand to hand combat. And. But, you know, when I met him, he was in a little dingy 900 square foot studio which used a carpet, teaching kids this elite system of combat training that he didn't realize how elite it was for 35 bucks a month. And half of the kids weren't even paying them. They were just college kids. And they were performing far better than any of the elite special operations warriors that I saw at that time in the early 80s as far as hand to hand combat. And, you know, I was able to introduce this guy because of my position, I was able to introduce him to the right people. And that started off what became now, you know, 20 some odd years later, target focused training, which is what I do now. But the process was, because I was so passionate about, you know, this thing here was a guy that basically busted his eardrums, never got to perform as a SEAL officer. My big goal, didn't have any, at that time, any sort of combat experience. And I was with a group of Guys, the command I was at was the most senior personnel, the legends of the SEAL teams. Basically, these guys all had, you know, combat records that were amazing back to Vietnam. And these guys were basically at that time putting together the skill sets because the Berlin Wall was coming down and they realized that the whole world was changing and they basically predicted the type of fighting that we have today. And these guys were looking at specifically hand to hand combat because they knew that people were going to start putting hands on people again, you know, under the Soviet system, the way we were looking at the Russians, you know, it was all big, big stuff. It was all, you know, aircraft carrier against aircraft carrier, missile against missile. You know, we really weren't talking about hand to hand combat or putting hands on people. Well, now, as you guys can see, in the wars that we've had, there's been a lot of that. And these guys, 20 some odd years ago were already looking forward towards that. So here I was in this group and they had me kind of training in the martial arts that we were doing at that time because I was a young kid, I was in good shape. I had multiple black belts and I was fun. Basically. To be a meat puppet for these guys had nothing to do with my professional capability because I had none. You know, I wasn't a seasoned officer, I wasn't a combat veteran or any of those things. Yet I recognized from what we were training in that this guy had it, you know, and I was so passionate about that that I had to do it.

So.

But I knew if I just said, hey, I found the guy, you know, that would be way too arrogant and people would look at me. So what I ended up using was kind of a, you know, a takeaway technique. I started just in our trainings with these guys. I was training with this guy for about six months before they noticed. And in the training sessions, I just started doing things that I was learning with this guy and I was being very effective. I was, I was doing things that all of a sudden they're like, how are you able to do that? How are you able to do this? And I said, oh, you know, just, just thought about it. Just, you know, I kind of played it off. And then one day I finally said, well, I've been training with this one guy. And they're like, you know, they just jumped me at that point. Oh, you've been training with? Who have you been keeping? I mean, they're begging me basically to bring this guy in, you know, And I told them, and he had a very good Combat background and stuff. But it was so funny how intuitively I knew. I said, listen, I'm pretty sure from everything I've seen, even though I don't have the experience these guys have, that I've run into the guy they're looking for. But, you know, I also realized my level of expertise and my credibility wasn't, you know, it wasn't going to sell. So, you know, out of, you know, a little bit out of kind of fear of these guys. And also I figured, why don't I just start using some of the principles I'm learning and see if that has an effect on these guys and then get them to ask me the question. And that's exactly how I played out. And this guy came in, he answered a question that they had been looking for, a combat question that they had been asking for the last six years that nobody had been able to answer. This guy answered it right away. The principles and methods, everything, everything went off. And it really launched the program, you know, and launched the program and launched my career on what I was in. But, you know, the, the deal was this guy never would have been discovered. And the method that I had to use was a classic marketing method, which was the takeaway, you know, and I didn't know that's what I was doing. It was just something kind of, you know, when Joe was asking me, you know, intuitively, intuitively I knew this is probably the best approach for these guys, get this across. Now what was interesting was, you know, I had, you know, we went in, I became a private contractor. I got out of the military after Panama and I become a private contractor with this guy, you know, and we start training all these huge corporate security groups. We were basically a private contractor before there were private contractors. You know, we're basically doing stuff like Blackwater did prior to Blackwater. You know, back then it was the end of the Bush 1 era, early Clinton era. And what you had was you had a time where you had to be very careful how you were training people outside of the US because you could be granted a mercenary and thrown in jail. So we were working with a group down in South America and I was putting together kind of these deals where we were working with this country in South America. We were working with some of the top people down there. I was training their counterterror teams basically in a variety of different things. We had a lot of guys, Delta Force guys, a whole bunch of other guys that worked with us during that time where I was doing not just the hand to hand combat Hand to hand combat for me was just kind of one aspect of what we did. But I was putting together this team. I really was. It was really cool. It was like having your own little army, basically. And we were legitimately doing it. We were approved by State Department. Department. We're doing all this really cool shit. So I put this whole group together. But what was interesting was I by far was the most junior guy in knowledge and experience. But I was the guy that kept defaulting to. Because every time we had to do some sort of a presentation or some sort of a setup or some sort of negotiation, I was the guy that naturally took the lead. And the reason being was because of all those things I'd been doing prior in the military, everything I just told you guys about making it frictionless, really figuring out what people wanted. I was the guy that ended up negotiating a deal. The big deal that we negotiated was there was a finance minister that left the country with. With $2 billion. South Americans are great, man, when they steal, they steal. This guy steals 2 billion bucks. And I put together a team that basically we have the guy that found all of Noriega's money and all of the former Prime Minister of. Of Philippines, Marcos, all his money, you know, he attracted all this guy hidden money all over the places. We did a deal with the government where we were going to get 10% of that back. We had found to date 500 million of this dollars. This team that I put together, we put 500 million bucks together. My take on that, my personal take ON that was 50 million. I got 10% of everything after expenses because I was just paying everybody out. You know, we were, we were working for a percentage. I was literally days away from my first payment. When we had trained two years prior, a security team for a guy named Henry Kissinger, who used to be the Secretary of State. Unbeknownst to me, I get a call from one of those guys who just felt tremendously guilty. And he said, hey, I just want to give you a heads up, man. He goes, you're going to be shut down in two days. And I'm like, what? He goes, you're going to be shut down in two days. And I said, what are you talking about? He goes, it's all I can say. And I said, okay. You know, sure enough, two days later, the country pays us off, gives us back the writ, says, no, quit looking. We don't want to find anything else. Nothing else. You know, we don't care about this anymore. This job's over. They paid us very well, but it certainly wasn't my 50 million. Find out what happened was Henry Kissinger does a deal, does a deal that gets the IMF to give this country $10 billion. And the deal was done with this finance minister as his client, basically saying, here's 10 billion, just forget about this guy for now, leave him alone. And that's basically what they did. And you know, I mean, there's a lot more to the story and there's a lot more intrigue and all that other stuff, but me, basically, I was going, shut up. You know, there's, there's my, you know, that was it. That was my big nest egg. That was my retirement. That was just, you know, I had all these plans and I was left with this weird situation where my partner comes to me and he had been contracted by a group while we were at the SEAL teams. They were selling supplements and they saw our training and they said, hey, this is really cool hand in hand combat stuff. Hey, do you mind? We have these clients that probably would love to buy this. Can we film you guys, you know, for a couple of days? We'll do a deal, give you a royalty and pay you for this. And so my partner was pretty savvy. He negotiated a deal where he controlled all of the information, he controlled all of the content and everything, but he leased at least, you know, licensed it out to these guys. So anyways, you know, I remember we did that. I didn't really think much about it. So after this thing's crushed and I'm, you know, I'm sitting here just steaming over my lost millions, my partner comes back to me, goes, hey, by the way, I forgot to tell you, I fired those guys.

And.

But we got all the tapes and, you know, we were doing pretty good. We were making some pretty good money off of this. Why don't you start selling these tapes for us, you know, we'll get us some additional income, you know, on this. And I'm like, ah, geez, I don't want to sell hand to hand combat tapes. I'm like, I was just so beneath me at that point. You know, as much as I love the system, you know, I was, I was operating at such a higher level. I was sitting there outside, looked at everything. Okay, well, we gotta find, you know, we gotta find somebody to help me, you know, market this. And I'd known that those guys, I had met those guys before and I knew they were talking about the stuff called long copy advertising, and they were really into it and, you know, they sold Supplements, golf products, all this other stuff. And I really didn't think too much of it. And so I find a guy who's a copywriter. I saw an ad I really liked and I tracked down. I figured out who he was. I go, you know what? This guy, the way he writes, I said, you know, he could really help me because I'll just give him the information. I bet he could write me a really good ad. And so I called up this guy who ended up being my partner for 20 some odd years now, Ralph Charlton. And I said, hey, I got these tapes. We do this hand to hand combat stuff. It was pretty successful. These guys that we were doing it with, they didn't really live up to their initial obligation. And it came down to an ego thing. They were only supposed to promote my partner. My partner had a tremendous ego, and they found out how lucrative hand to hand combat was, and they decided to find another guy and promote him and make more money, you know, and have a stable of people. My partner wanted nothing to do with that because, you know, his tremendous ego. So he told him to pack sand. So my. My soon to be partner in Direct Copy calls me up and he says, hey, yeah, I got no problem helping you out. He goes, do you have any idea who you're up against? And I'm like, no. He goes, well, you're up. These guys are using two of the top people in the industry. I just want you to know, these are the guys that are writing those three page ads. And I go, I don't know, who are they? He goes, well, he goes, it's Gary Halbert and John Carlton. And I said, yeah, yeah, I remember that John Carlton guy. He interviewed Jerry. Yeah, I remember him. Yeah, nice guy. He goes, no, no, you don't understand. He goes. He goes, they are it. He goes, we've got a huge thing to overcome here because they're dominating it completely. Didn't matter to me because I saw their approach. Their approach was what we ended up calling Fighter of the Month. Here's a saturated magazine. Here's a. Here's a saturated market, low volume. They pretty much figured out that, hey, at 67 or $97, that's it. They had a huge program, wildly successful. But what I knew was there was another market out there, because I was thinking as an end user going, you know what? There are a lot of guys that aren't on this martial arts vision where a different guy every month, you know, just kind of viewing, you know, training. There are guys that really want to be Trained, and they want to be trained in a way that's a little more in depth. So what we did was instead of doing a direct sale to things, we started offering information. So we did lead generation, multi step, you know, putting packages together. And we also charged a lot more than everybody else. And. But we delivered on content. And the reason he. It didn't dissuade me. I mean, thank God I didn't know what I was doing back then. The reason it didn't dissuade me was because I was so damn passionate about what we were sharing. I knew there was a hole in the market, and I knew there was a number of people. I figured there's. There's. Back then, there's approximately 15 million people practicing martial arts or combat sports. I figured 10% of those people were really looking for the type of training that I was going for. And I figured if I just got 10% of those people, we'd be doing really, really well. And that was kind of my idea. And I said, I don't need everybody. I just need those people. And I need to identify those people because I know they're out there because nobody's servicing those people. And that's what we did. Had nothing to do. I guess my point in people in this is just because you're up against somebody who has really fantastic marketing and fantastic. I could never have gone head to head with those guys doing the same exact thing. We would have. We would have lost big time. But if you've really got something you're really passionate about sharing, it will. The marketplace will find you. It will happen as long as you're willing to sit there and raise your hand and say, this is who I am. And you're also willing to. Those guys had the luxury of being able to do a direct sale, and they were very, very good at it. We knew we weren't that good. We knew we needed time. We knew we needed. We need to build a relationship. And we had to really, you know, let people know who we were and get in there. And that's kind of always been my approach with this is the idea of just, you know, doing. Doing this is. Is. Is just share information, you know, rather than try to sell people right away, which I know is very consistent with a lot of, you know, what you guys are sharing. And of course it's very much in vogue now. But back then it was pretty much. It was pretty much direct sell. The other thing was don't, you know, don't think that because everybody else is selling something at 29 bucks, you should be selling things at 29 bucks. If you value yourself that way, you will screw yourself. And has nothing to do with money. It has to do with the idea of the how people value information. And there's just that idea that people say, hey, if these guys are pricing something at a premium price, it must be good as long as you can back it up. Because you know, that was the one thing that I think everybody has to realize is whatever your passion is, you know, if it's tiddlywinks, if whatever it is, if you're the best at it and you really feel you've got a program that can teach people to do it better than anybody else, you need to own that, you need to be okay with that. You need to be passionate about it and you need to put it out there to people exactly that way. You can't be shy about it. Because if not, you know, believe me, a Gary Halbert and John Carlin will snatch that guy up. If you're not willing to say that, if you're not willing to sit there and say, hey, no, you want to take a look at me and I'll make it a little more risk free, you don't have to actually send me any money, I'll send you this report. You know, back then we were sending out reports and stuff. You have to be willing to do that. But you can't get dissuaded just because you think a market is saturated. You know, I mean, there's so many guys in 25k especially there are nutritional guys in 25k that I'm just amazed at. These guys are going into a market, they're going in headline and they are finding ways to reach people and you know, oftentimes offering very similar types of approaches. But it's their passion, it's their personality that comes across that people start to trust and they build their own, you know, they build their own client list. And I think that's something that people just, just lose, lose focus on is that, you know, people will. It has nothing to do with whether or not there's lots of products out there. If you're coming across and you're coming across with passion and you can deliver, you got to be able to deliver. It will find a market.

And you're speaking to a very specific group. I mean, you were sharing how, you know, it wasn't the 15,000. You're looking for the 10% who really are the ones that you're trying to approach. And you only speak to Them, I mean, it's, you know, selecting a single target market. Yeah. You know, it's funny how, you know, I'll say this, it's funny how, you know, you talk about this, you know, if you're focused on results and you know that you've got the ability to deliver those results and you know specifically who you can deliver those results to, that's going to come through. We were talking offline how the, you know, the, you know, maybe three of the most successful people who've ever been on I Love marketing, Tony Robbins and, and Dean Graziosi and Richard Branson all ultimately say that same thing, that it has to start with the result. Maybe they didn't say in those exact words, but it has to be that you have to be able to deliver. You have to have something that you're so proud about that you'd be willing to shout about it from the mountains.

Yeah. And a lot of times people don't have the confidence to do that. One of the things that really struck me with one of the things you said, Tim, is you're like, I wasn't the best guy, wasn't the smartest guy. You said during telling the story. The point is, I don't know who originally said this quote, but anything worth doing is worth doing poorly in the beginning. Now obviously if you're still doing it poorly after a period of time, you probably should be doing something else. But everything in life that you're going to learn, you're going to start somewhere. And so many people are trying to wait for that perfect moment which is never going to come. And you know, you're friends with Steven Pressfield and he wrote a great book called the War of Art where he talks about resistance and about just putting your ass out there, you know, going out there and putting stuff out there. And there's Bill Joy guy who is the co founder of Sun Microsystems. He has this great quote which I love, which is no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else. There's always smarter people that are out there. But the point is you can go in and identify a single target market, a single area of pain, frustration, need, want, whatever, and you can communicate effectively a solution to it. I mean, when I learned marketing, I was a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards and I actually learned way to actually get leads and to use marketing so that people would call me that were pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to do business with me because I used education based marketing and I Wrote an article for trade magazine explaining what it is I was doing and how I was doing that. And I put a little bit of, you know, just a little blurb of contact info. And this was before the Internet, so no one could email me. It was an 800 number which took people to a free recorded message. And within literally six months of writing that first article about what I was doing, I had actually put together an entire marketing program. And from the point of time where I was dead broke in an industry that I knew nothing about, it was an accidental business that I fell into because I was just trying to survive within a four year period from going from dead broke to two years turning that entire company around within a six month period. When I first learned marketing, I five times my revenue. And from a four year period from even getting in the entire industry. I was the most well known person in the world in that industry and had completely started to transform the way that people would position and market their businesses. And now literally it's over a period billion dollars in revenue has been generated with my marketing methods. Just in the cleaning industry alone, probably more. But it, you know, just because I took a chance and I, you know, I mean I, there was a lot of people that were more professional. Hell, I had long hair in a ponytail, you know, when I was doing this stuff. And so from this looking at me, but I just focused, I was, I was, you know, I desired it, I wanted it, I wanted to learn marketing. And I lived, eat and breathed, you know, direct response. And I just went out and helped people and I charged the money for the help, but I helped people and I educated them in advance before I ever asked them to give me any money. And I 100% guaranteed everything that I sold in that industry. And we still do. I mean we, you know, we have thousands of cleaners that to this day use these strategies day in, day out. But you know, the whole point is you just got to get off your ass and do something and a lot of people, they just don't. So anyway, I can ramble on and on, but I'd love to get, because we are getting towards the time. I'd love to get your advice, Tim, on next steps that you would recommend for people to take what you've shared and what you've learned and how to turn it into action in their own businesses. Be it if they're working for someone or if they're currently entrepreneurs.

Yeah, I'll tell you, and I'm also going to share, you know, I'm also going to share a great, you know, multi step deal where you can, you can actually lose some weight, learn and really better your business. I'm actually at a very interesting point in my life. I'm starting a new business. My other business is pretty much on autopilot. I am making some changes over there, but I got a new business that I'm working on and it's forced me to look at everything differently. So it's forced me to build, you know, from the ground up, you know, a marketing campaign and you know, forcing me now to really update all of my, my skill sets, my knowledge on technologies and how to deliver everything and immerse yourself. I mean, take advantage, you know, and this is not because I'm on this podcast and I know you guys and you guys know I'm, I'm a paying member of multiple groups. I'm a paying member of 25k, I'm a paying member of Strategic Coach. I absolutely believe in those things and as soon as you can afford them, get in them. They're absolutely invaluable. But that's no excuse to not start educating yourself right now. These, these episodes that I listen to, they're twofold. I decided, okay, I've got all this great information on audio that I've got to learn, you know, that I need to start immersing my mind on how can I do it in a logical way. I also read a, which was the impetus for this, I read a very interesting article on, in a study that was done in Israel about cardiovascular and overall physical fitness. And it basically, you know, looked at Olympic athletes, looked at all different people, you know, from all different walks of life to see who is overall, basically the most, you know, fit. And what they found was it was a mailman that carried approximately a 37 pound, 37 pound mailbag and walked anywhere from two to six miles a day doing that. And they found out that your overall fitness was there. Now I just got a new puppy, we moved into a new house and I had to, you know, I had to make sure that I walked the dog in the morning. And I also, you know, realized, okay, well, walking, you know, at first I was thinking, well, walking, I'm pretty much a big fitness guy and that's not going to give me enough of a workout and blah, blah, blah. Well, I read this and I figured, hey, you know what, I'm going to get a weight vest and I am going to get my ipod with all of my audio, you know, programs on it and I am going to walk for an hour every morning with my dog. But you get up early, and I'm just going to start feeding my brain again. And, you know, I locked. Let's see, I knocked off probably 22 pounds of excess, you know, weight that I was carrying. I wasn't fat, but I was just weighs. Carrying way too much weight. My cardiovascular is just in amazing shape, and it's very low stress. Meaning the weight vest itself does the work for you, basically. Now I'm one of those extremists. I'm already up to £100 doing it. And I'm, you know, I'm, you know, gonna sit there and try to pile on another 25 probably pounds walking around. But you really max out your value at about 30 to 50 pounds, which is achievable for anybody. And you can just start walking. You don't have to do anything crazy and feed your brain at the same time. It's been a remarkable program. I've accomplished a lot of things. It's made me listen to stuff that I've known for quite some time, but again, it reactivated it for me. There's another interesting part of the workout that is kind of an esoteric thing. But I'll tell you what, every day, when I finish my walk and I stop my ipod, wherever it's at, and I physically take that weight vest off in the morning, okay, and this is how I'm starting my day, right? I take the physical thing off, and you get that feeling of lightness. All of a sudden you get that feeling of, you know, you're standing really straight and you just feel great, and you sit there and it's just a metaphor that I ask myself the same question every morning. I go, what other things am I carrying around that I don't need? You know, what other things in my life am I carrying around? I am really trying to follow the Dean Jackson frictionless life, and I'm trying to make some changes. I don't think my wife will let me get away with the the same shirt and pants every day, which I love. I would love to be able to just fill my closet like you do that way, but I think my wife would literally just kill me. But, you know, what I do is by taking that weight vest off, it's one of those physical reminders where you sit there and you go, you know, there's a lot of things we're just choosing to carry around, and we're choosing it to obstruct us from doing what we really care about. And you feel so much better when you Just let go of that shit and you know, take it for what it's worth. But I've put about four people on this program already. They've not only improved, obviously from listening to, you know, your guys program, but they've all got in just tremendous shape. And I mean, it's really easy. It's not a, it's not a big deal, but the focus isn't, you know, people have to sit there, go, well, you know, there's better ways to work out. Yeah, there is better ways to work out. But how can you do something that's going to get you the maximum amount of benefit and also be able to achieve what you're trying to achieve from an educational standpoint and improve your, your thinking in mind. And I'll tell you, listening to these programs, along with all the other audio programs that I got through 25k, it's completely changed the way I operate now. And I'm a lot more efficient in my thinking and in what I do. And you know, you guys have really just done me a tremendous service with this program. You've reinvigorated my marketing knowledge. You've reminded me of a lot of things that I've forgotten about, a lot of techniques I forgot about that I'm actually incorporating. So, you know, I would say really, you know, you don't need to go any further than this program right now, you know, unless you have the ability to join if you want to, you know, if you have the ability to scrape up the money. And I mean, I would, I would rarely tell people to go into debt. But I'll tell you what, you know, you're not going to lose money by investing in any of the programs that, that you guys offer. I mean, any of your seminars, they're all outstanding. I would highly, highly encourage that. But if you don't have that, take full advantage of this before you go anywhere else, if you haven't listened to every single episode, listen to it. And you know what's really funny, guys, we have a lot of similar friends in the industry and I talk to them about this and most of the sharp guys, all the sharp guys I know, all the guys that are really successful are listening to you guys. The guys who need a little bit of help, who are friends of mine, they're still doing okay. Funny to hear some of the, the criticisms, you know, that I hear. You know, stuff like, oh, you guys joke around too much. Oh, you guys, you know, you don't, you, you meander, you do things. Yeah. I got to tell you Guys, from a teaching perspective, you guys make this digestible and real. I've heard the professional stuff. I've heard a lot of these techniques given in the professional format. And I get it way better with you guys. You guys get a Frank Kern on there or Evan and you guys start shooting shit. Believe me, that's highly, way more valuable than probably either of those two guys formal programs. I've learned more about some of my friends through your interviews. Stuff that I've known guys for years and I didn't know some of the stuff that you guys are able to get them to talk about, which is highly valuable.

Maybe that should be our signature. Joe. We should take like the Barbara Walters approach and make it our goal to make every guest cry.

Totally. Let's start with Tip.

Maybe that could be our new thing.

You know what, first off, thank you, Tim. We'll strategize this. Dean, that's actually a good idea. Very, very good. Tons of lessons and I mean you really kind of shared stuff that I've never heard you talk about. And we've known each other probably 15 years and yeah, I just really appreciate it. I love the comment that you made about what other things am I carrying around that I really need to drop and eliminate? Because I think a not to do list is way more important than a to do list. And what I really think is instructional about what you share towards the end about putting on the weight belt and walking is just the fact that you've turned it into a ritual. And if anyone wants to get skilled at anything, it needs to become a ritual. If you don't really consistently work on something, you're going to be as good as your practice. And you really have developed a practice. And I do want to have an opportunity to have you talk about what you do and how you've done it. I've actually been through your three day training. It's phenomenal. For men or women, it would actually bring a level of confidence. And in many cases, I know you saved people's lives by what you've taught them. When they get in situations where someone never wants to get into but is the reality of life. And so if someone wants to learn from you, either your educational programs or literally go through one of your trainings, what do they do and how do they do it?

The best place to start is TargetFocusedTraining.com and as I tell everybody, if you don't know anything about us, just sign up for the free content. You know, we give away five chapters of my book if you sign up. And again, all of it is just designed to have you understand where violence plays in life. You know, it's that 600 pound gorilla that's in the room that nobody likes to talk about. And we like to try to make it digestible, understandable, realize that violence is a reality and you just need to understand how it works so you don't have any unnecessary fears or you don't end up doing something that could lead you into a situation that you don't want to be into.

Yeah. And you know, we recently interviewed Tony Robbins like what, three episodes ago on I love marketing, where people can listen to it. If you just type in Tony Robbins in the search box and you actually personally train him. How'd that happen?

Yeah, Tony. Tony sought me out. You know, I gotta say, I had never known Tony Robbins. I read one of his books, I think years ago, but literally it was one of those contacts out of the blue. I get these every so often from VIP celebs and stuff. Tony contacted me. He had had an incident happen that he was concerned about with his family and had been watching me. We had a mutual friend who recommended me. And I guess Tony had been watching me for a while, ordered all my stuff, showed up completely humble, and I put him in a class because, you know, I basically tell all people same thing. You got to work with a lot of different bodies. But Tony showed up, worked with a bunch of cops that I had had a bunch of other undercover cops, went in and trained with us and just was the perfect student. I mean, humble, great, did everything, really learned. He asked a question, it was a relevant question. I mean, I had not had that experience with a lot of VIPs and celebs that I've dealt with before. And then he asked me to come to Scotland to work with his platinum group. And I got to meet, you know, these incredible people that he has in his platinum group. And I had the privilege of also going down to Cabo San Lucas and just having, you know, a true Tony experience, you know, twice, you know, teaching these people on multiple days. And he's just become an incredible supporter. He got me a amazing book deal because he felt that, you know, I really need to share this information with women. And my book will be coming out next year and he's writing a forward for me on the book. And it's just been one of those amazing relationships. But I think what he resonated with Tony is the same thing that I think he resonates with people is, you know, he's the real deal. And I think he realized that, you know, the information that he needed, he was ready for. He was ready to hear this message that we had. And he's talked to me about that a couple of times. Just saying that, hey, you don't like to think that this stuff can happen, but you've got to grow up and you've got to realize that, hey, you need to have a plan. You need to at least understand it. And, you know, my association with a guy like that's been really, really, you know, very pleasant and very, you know, very out of the blue.

Yeah. Awesome. So TargetFocusedTraining.com is your website, right?

Absolutely.

Okay, Dean, any final last words from you?

Tim, thanks for sharing. It's all been fantastic. It's amazing to see all the principles behind the things that you've been doing, even when you didn't know what it was that you were doing. How it all fits now and makes sense. It's phenomenal.

Lessons in that I thought this was totally fantastic. We can definitely do another interview. As a follow up, I'd like to have everyone give us your comments. What you took away from listening to Tim, how it applies to you, and I really think not only using his advice on doing more than other people expect, getting into the heads of your clients, listening to every episode of I Love marketing, looking at yourself from the end user, making things frictionless, that sort of thing. Also, the thing you said about pricing. I wrote down a note. The marketplace takes you at your own appraisal, which it really does. Wearing a weight belt and turning all this into a ritual. I mean, there's so much, much really valuable wisdom here. So. Yep. Thank you so much, Tim. Really, really appreciate it. And to all of our listeners, leave your comments@ilove marketing.com and awesome. You guys have a great day.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, guys.

Okay, hold on.