The Results Economy: Getting Out of the Employee Mindset with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #480

You're listening to ILM Live. We're chopping this up for the audio podcast because that's exactly what we need to do. We sent out a message to a lot of you asking for questions to go with. And our first one is from Cliff. Cliff might get his own episode based on what Joe and Dean give us. We might combine him with another one if things work thematically in here. But Cliff says, I'm newish to entrepreneurship and business ownership. Getting out of the employee mindset? What's the best way to get clarity on this? I have handful ideas around relationships or there's round implementation but what would you do in order to cut through the noise to get to implementation faster smarter easier? And I'm gonna do little bit editing here— I'm going say "to get through the noise" easier lucrative and more fun! We'll start with Dean and then we go to Joe Polish Polish polish accent. But newest entrepreneurship... Best Way To Get Clarity?! Go Dean.

This is like, you set this up. This is classic. What would you do if you only got paid if your client gets a result? What is the, what is the signature result that you're able to create? That's the most important question that you could ask. I'd be curious to see, like, you know, in that transition where people get stuck is trying to pick a direction, trying to pick an option, and they start thinking about, well, how do we get, how do we cut through and how do we get to people? Well, you know, it depends how good your product is. You know, I was thinking about Chris Rock very famously in one of his specials said, nobody sells crack, crack sells itself. And that's exactly the way that you want this people to think about your product is what is the crack version of your product that people would be lining up outside your door to get some at 2 in the morning. And so, but that, I think that goes a long way. The only thing, the thing that you should look at defining for yourself is completely. I, I can't tell you how many times I mentioned Joe Polish Polish's book, What's in It for Them, that, that model of thinking should be completely ingrained in you because what it does is you are absolutely in alignment with the number one thing that every person in the world is thinking about themselves. So if you get online with that, it's like, you know, when magnets when you're thinking about yourself, how can I get people to buy my stuff? And people are thinking about themselves, how can I get these things? When you're on opposites, there's that magnetic repulsion field that's there. But when you're aligned and turn your magnet around to latch on to what they want, it's immediately— the bond is cemented and very difficult to pull apart. So the, the meta wisdom of aligning yourself with somebody else's desires is— it's magnetic. It's because that's what everybody else is thinking about. Nobody is waking up thinking, how can I help this guy do more business as a customer? Nobody's thinking that. They're all thinking about themselves. And we all— we're all very selfish. All of us.

Well, speak for yourself, you very selfish human. Yeah, no, but yeah, people operate from their own self-interest, and that's why you got to ask what's in it for them, right? Because no one's gonna— I mean, look, there, there are some people that, uh, uh, based on upbringing or whatever, will bleed for others and will sacrifice everything, and they will not, you know, they'll give away the farm instead of really caring for themselves. But there's different layers of human greed, ambition, motivation, ethics, integrity, behavior, et cetera, et cetera. One thing I want to speak to with what Cliff said is, "I'm newish to entrepreneurship and business ownership, getting out of the employee mindset. What's the best way to get clarity? I have a handful of ideas, some around relationships, others around implementation." What would you do in order to cut through the noise to get to implementation faster, smarter, easier? I mean, I am a highly distracted person. So for me to pretend like I have some modicum of skill at being focused would be an absolute joke. I've had to learn how to live my life having a monkey mind and creating architecture and scaffolding and tricks and people to help me and all kinds of things. And I still suck at time management because it's really not about about managing time, it's about managing, you know, priorities, and it's really about managing energy. You know, for one, don't miss the fundamentals. Eat good food, drink water, get sunshine, uh, don't stay glued in front of screens all day. That will scramble your brain. Have a health regimen in place to the best of your abilities. Get sleep, because you can't focus if you are not a fit animal as well. Now, some people can, but you'll function always better if you are coming from a healthy environment, healthy people, doing something that you feel really good of. Like, I would do everything that I do today even if I didn't get paid for it. I just figured out how to get paid for the things that I want to do, which is different than, you know, do what you love and the money will follow. Not necessarily. There's a lot of shit that I love that no money follows that, right? So, you know, there's realism involved in this. One thing he said, getting out of the employee mindset. Well, here's the thing. An employee mindset is typically time and effort. You get paid for how much time you're there and you're going to get paid by the hour. You're going to get paid salary. You're going to get paid for showing up. The entrepreneur gets paid for results and outcomes only. And you can work, you know, 100-hour weeks and be broke, or you can work, you know, 2 hours in a week and become a millionaire depending on how you deploy those skills and those abilities. And so, the entrepreneur just has to really get themselves to a place of fishing. They don't eat if they don't catch a fish. Now, you can have a lot of people that can work for you and there could be no sales coming in. And as long as you have money, you're still paying them, right? And so, hopefully, you can have people that work with you or for you that are entrepreneurial They may not be the entrepreneur, they may not be the founder, but that's the thing. And then everything that Dean said, what I would say, my friend Keith Cunningham, who wrote The Road Less Stupid, Thinking Time, there's a chapter number 2, the whole process where you just sit down and you think and you write and you resource yourself. And it's a Keith Cunningham created a thinking time process for He just likes living that way. That's what he says. He goes, I just like waking up and posing a problem or an opportunity or a question to myself and letting my brain work at it. You know, Dean has this great clarity exercise called the 50-Minute Focus Finder. It's one of our very first I Love Marketing episodes. If you went to I Love Marketing and typed in 50-Minute Focus Finder, It's just Dean has a process of thinking and dumping things out of your brain. And if you're a new business owner or you're in a new startup, and I do think that even, you know, how many of you that are here, raise your hand, feel like you're in a startup even though you may have been in business for decades? Right? So, there's always something new. And so, when you're going into something new, you got to give your brain time to percolate. You got to give your brain time. To be creative, especially if you're ADD. You know, most ADD people go into the default mode network and they're very negative and they beat themselves up. And I say that because most of my self-talk in my entrepreneurial career has not been positive. It's been very negative. It's not been, "Joe Polish, really good job. All that effort you put forth." It's more like this internal dialogue.

My—

if I got Jungarian shadow self is, "Oh, you're a piece of shit. Oh, you're worthless. Oh, you're not doing enough. Oh, why are you making such stupid decisions?" Why can't you focus? So, we've got this little devil and angel that are sitting on our shoulders. One's like, "Do it. Go for it. You're awesome." The other's like, "Screw this nonsense. Whatever." And so, part of it is harnessing that creativity in your brain and directing it into solving problems for yourself and other people and reaching your opportunities. But again, the moment someone decides, "I'm going to run a business," you are no longer in the time and effort economy. You are in the results economy. Which is something that Dan Sullivan is one that originally turned me on to that understanding and that distinction. So, that's how you cut through the noise is you just focus on what actually matters and make a list of the top 10 to 20 people that would be the highest leverage relationships that you have. Give those people the time and attention that is needed to nurture something from the standpoint of what's in it for them. If you can help the most important people get what they want, those people will help you get what you want.

That was solid. I love the fact that you guys do such a good job at, you know, here's the next 6 years of your life to contemplate, you know, if that's the path you take. But also here's, you know, the immediate next step. The immediate next step that I heard for this loudly was just see it all through the lens of what's in it for them.

Mm-hmm.

See it all through the lens of what's in it for them. So we're going to combine the first two questions into one episode. And Wayne Hatter, we had asked everybody to give us a marketing win and then a question. Wayne gave us absolutely a fantastic marketing win. I'm not going to read the whole thing because it's a bit specific to him, but I think the theme of what he said is really interesting. My biggest marketing initiative that I've implemented the last 6 months is what I call my click handoff website workflow system. Uh, he's put in a system. He's put in a process in place to sort and sift through what's going on. He says at the end that the shift helped me build a focused website and workflow support page. Again, focus. This is this term that we seem to be thinking about. So his question for you, Joe and Dean, is for local service business. With a small audience and a limited ad budget, how would you structure front-end offers and follow-ups so businesses aren't just buying clicks but creating trust all the way from first attention to real customer action? For the next 6 months, I'm trying to figure out how to balance giving away real useful work up front with building a clean, repeatable path that turns generosity into the right conversations without feeling like a pitch.

Uh, Wayne does, um, the website integration stuff, and that was The very funny thing, a little funny story about Wayne Hatteritz. I've known him for years. He used to live in Winter Haven. And you know how sometimes you, my operations guy Stuart and I would go to the Starbucks every morning and we would sit outside. They had a little patio area and then Wayne would be inside at the big table there with his laptop working away. And Stuart and I literally like 4 feet away from him, just separated by glass, would be talking about some WordPress integration that we needed. And literally weeks later, we struck up a conversation with Wayne, and it turns out that's exactly what he did. And he did a lot of really great work with us. But how funny is it that we're literally sitting 3 feet away from the solution that we were looking for? Just separated by glass and not really realizing it. So when you know what it is that you do, and he had a crystal clear sort of, you know, thing that he did where he helps people with WordPress integration. So in the first interaction with him, he was able to articulate what he did. And I immediately recognized that. As what we did. So I think that the lesson in this for you is to think about when we talk about your signature result, what is it that when you say in the first, you know, in the first interaction with someone that they have a crystal clear understanding that this is what you do. So often people get paralyzed by having so many options of things that they could do that they can't even in conversation get themselves to clearly articulate one specific thing. So I think that goes a long way, you know?

So for those of you listening to the audio version of this, we're chopping a live, and I love marketing live, into a bunch of sections that just seem to go better as an audio podcast. But of course, a lot of fun is in doing this live when you hear what's going on right here and right now. Um, to sign up for I Love Marketing Live, you head out to ilovemarketing.com. You've got some options there as well as all the past episodes. So we're going to be taking a look at, um, some more wins and questions in the next episode of I Love Marketing. Stay tuned, stay subscribed, and we'll get right to you.

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