Episode 047: The one about your annual marketing calendar

Dean: Hi everybody it’s Dean Jackson.

Joe: And Joe Polish. Yes that’s right, did you hear I said that.

Dean: What’s that?

Joe: Did you hear I said that with authority?

Dean: You said it with authority and a slight delay.

Joe: There is no authority in that introduction. Welcome, everyone.

Dean: We’re out of practice because it’s been a few weeks. We recorded all those episodes in your hotel room in Atlanta, and now here we are. We’re a little rusty.

Joe: Craig Ballantyne, Jon Benson, Ryan Deiss, if you’ve not heard those episodes go to ilovemarketing.com immediately. Stop whatever you’re doing even if it’s important.

Dean: It’s really been an all-star cavalcade.

Joe: Yes it’s been good, and people have loved those episodes.

Dean: Yeah.

Joe: And those of you that listen to us on iTunes, go to, we get so many people that listen on iTunes, but there’s you know, there’s not an easy way for them to comment unless they just do a random comment on iTunes. Which I do want to say there are glowing wonderful comments.

Dean: And I looked at them just the other day, and it’s really.

Joe: There so good.

Dean: Yeah it’s awesome. I mean we get a lot of comments just on iTunes. People loving what we’re doing.

Joe: Yes. And they’re most appreciative, and I think there’s like, I always go and read the negative ones first because I want to see what people are complaining about.

Dean: Yeah.

Joe: And for the most part they’re just really good comments.

Dean: I agree.

Joe: One negative one says that we could say what we say in an hour and thirty minutes, which of course is probably, maybe true in some cases but they clearly would not listen to all the episodes.

Dean: But it would be as fun.

Joe: Wouldn’t be as fun. And certainly, and that usually would be a comment where someone listens to like one episode and then they’ll.

Dean: Right.

Joe: Ah, they could have said this in half the time, but everyone who listens to all these on a regular basis will clearly see that the hour that we give for the very expensive price of free is worth every penny.

Dean: The very expensive price. Oh, that’s good.

Joe: Let’s hit it, let’s talk about the subject of today’s I Love Marketing episode between like deep discussion with me and Dean on our mobile phones was marketing calendars, and how you’re really going to lay out next year. And it’s kind of something I think everyone that is a business owner probably thinks about either in a very shallow way more deeply towards the end of the year. My friend Dave Kekich has all these credos called Kekich Credos, and one of them is review the basics of your profession at least once a year. And I think it’s an important point. And Dean you know, you’re known between you know me, I mean people who know both of us know me as the calm, cool, collected one and you the obsessive, compulsive, crazy, very busy.

Dean: That sounds about right.

Joe: I always have to calm you down when you’ve got like an overbooked travel schedule and activities, right.

Dean: Try to reel me in.

Joe: No, basically it’s the reverse of that. So you spend a lot of time thinking about time, about rituals, about routines, about creating friction free sort of environments and activities.

Dean: Right.

Joe: And so, you know all of that sort of ties in to, if an entrepreneur is sitting there thinking ok, I did a lot of things this year. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t work. Some people are really overwhelmed and busy and don’t know how to prioritize and make decisions, and other people are not. I think most people are that are business owners. However, how do you think about a marketing calendar and how do you think about time?

Dean: Well right now, this time of year, so this will be our first episode in December, and you know the time between Thanksgiving and New Year is just kind of a time when I think most business owners are kind of reflective on what happened over the year, or they should be.

To kind of look back and see what worked and what didn’t work and what they could, you know what opportunities they could take advantage of. Because most of the time in most businesses there’s a real sort of cyclical nature to things that go with the seasons or go with the times of year. And knowing ahead of time what’s the optimal time to start promoting certain things or to start planning ahead of times so that you’re there when the right time is. So for instance for me, and the real estate agents right now is the time of the year when people are most thinking about. If they’re going to make a change to the way that they communicate with their clients, with their sphere, with their after unit, with people who know them, like them and trust them. December January is really the time that feels like the right time to kind of make that move.

So on my promotional calendar right now, on my marketing calendar, the main focus is getting referrals and the world’s most interesting postcard.com is the main thing that we’re doing. I just finished a report; this would actually be valuable for everybody to read. I just finished a report called the secret psychology of why people refer real estate agents and how to be the only one they refer. And it’s just a twelve-page report that outlines the psychology of how referrals actually work. And that would be applicable to any business. You could replace the word real estate agents and put carpet cleaners in there as you know the secret psychology of why people refer carpet cleaners, because the psychology is all the same. But this time of year, knowing that this is the time, I planned ahead of time to be ready with this report to email to people, to set up joint venture partners, to let their lists know about this free report. And to get the word out so that in December and January it’s the time to harvest for that particular product.

Now when we get into the sort of middle of January and into February and March the focus shifts to getting listings. That’s when most people who are going to sell their house put their homes on the market in the spring, in sort of that February, March, April, May that’s the busiest time of the year for that. So to know that and to see that that’s happening and that’s an annual recurring thing, it always happens that that’s the way it is, my focus shifts to being in that mode of showing realtors how they can get more listings. And so when you look at it, whether you are, you know if you’re a retail store, you shape out your calendar, and you look at what’s going on throughout the year. What kind of events are happening that you could plan some marketing around. In January you’ve got the Super Bowl. Or if you could take advantage of New Year’s resolutions in the first couple of weeks of the year. You know people have made resolutions to lose weight or to get healthy or to eat better or to, you know whatever it is that they’ve set up in their mind to do, could you slant your marketing towards that.

At the end of the month you’ve got the Super Bowl and then in the middle of February you’ve got Valentine’s Day, and then you’ve got spring break or St Patrick’s Day, or you’ve got Easter coming up. There’s always things that you could plan around if you took the time to kind of layout the calendar and look at what’s going to happen and make up your ideal timelines. A lot of times what happens with business owners is they get so busy just doing the work within the business that these things kind of sneak up on them and it’s February 1st and all of a sudden they start thinking, boy we should really do something for Valentine’s Day. And then it’s almost too late to really get that momentum going.

Joe: You got it.

Dean: You probably found that with people with carpet cleaning too right? There’s probably different reasons why people would get their carpets cleaned. I mean now, you know probably October/November was the perfect time for people getting their carpets cleaned for the big Thanksgiving dinner. Right now getting it cleaned for Christmas parties. Maybe in January getting them cleaned up from all the Christmas parties that they had or some of the spills and stains and whatever, you know then spring cleaning. There’s probably a lot of different things that motivate people to get their carpets cleaned by the calendar.

Joe: Right, people get their carpets cleaned typically because of an event, and that’s going to be kids going back to school or Thanksgiving or the holidays, or it’s seasonal, or there’s an emergency spot spill something along those sorts. Well, the reverse is almost true with how you’re planning out your marketing. Marketing and selling is rarely an event it’s a process, and if you don’t plan that process out and you do it very episodically, you’re going to run into situations where, oh I could have done that. You know there’s many people well had they started thinking about a holiday promotion during Christmas or Thanksgiving they could have really capitalized on it in a great way. I mean many businesses, you know, they operate on this, in many ways, fascinating launch day called Black Friday where they just prepare all of these sales activities usually built around price discounting. And it’s kind of funny. But there’s a lot to be said about planning things out, and if you don’t do it, you know the old cliché everyone’s heard a million times, if you fail to plan, plan to fail sort of thing.

Dean: Right.

Joe: And it’s true. It’s true, I mean a lot of it you can run by your shirt tails all the time, and you can be very episodic, and some people thrive under the mountains of pressure.

Dean: It’s a good word that you just, you used it twice now, but it’s a great word I wanted to point it out.

Joe: Which word?

Dean: Episodically.

Joe: Episodically, yes.

Dean: It’s good.

Joe: There’s episodic marketers, and then there’s planners. And if you want longevity it’s really hard to do longevity when you are completely episodic because that’s really typically required of a person being in tip-top shape at the time of the event. Meaning like a boxer as an example, or any sort of athlete. They have to be well prepared and practiced to just be put on the field, or put into the ring and expected to perform at their peak. Well, the same thing goes with a marketing campaign. If you just drag a boxer out of bed and say, by the way, you were partying last night in Los Vegas, and I know you’re hungover, but we’re going to do a match for you tonight. I hope you do well. You know, he’s probably going to get the shit kicked out of him. Well the same thing goes if you just throw your marketing together and just expect it to happen because you want it versus giving yourself some practice time, giving yourself some time to set it up and turn it into a process, you’re really going to do well. Because the problem of being episodic is once the brilliant person is not there to just operate on a dime, and there’s no system in place because you haven’t thought it out and you haven’t planned it out, then you’re really just lucky if it works.

Dean: And you know you start to think about that but we just, you and I both just got an email from Eunice picking out dates for certain events next year and picking a date already for Hello Marketing Conference next fall. Which is already months and months away. But it takes that kind of time and preparation; you think through the calendar how that’s going to play out.

Joe: Yes. And I mean the way that we, for instance, we have our first Platinum 2.0 which is a brand new version of a coaching program that I have run for over a decade. And I’m giving away a Land Rover next year, a really dialed out Land Rover LR4, my personal vehicle and I’ve given away ten different vehicles in the past from Mercedes to Jaguars to Corvettes to all kinds of crazy things, and I incentivize people for bettering the best. Now me and you have discussed this with opening it up for everyone that was at the I Love Marketing Conference. We’ve got an event that’s going to be me, and you and anyone’s that in Platinum. And it’s a program that’s a monthly program where we deliver, we just me and you and Tim Polson who’s the coach in it and several other people on my team, we have calls every month and materials and everything that people get as part of it. And we’ve got Dan Sullivan speaking at it. Dan rarely does stuff like that.

I mean this is the top coach in the world to successful entrepreneurs, and he’s coming and speaking about how to set up the year. So it’s just going to be phenomenal and awesome, and this is the best entrepreneurial coach in the world. Both me and you are part of his program, he’s part of 25K group, and we’re doing a 25K meeting two days prior to that. So on January 28th and 29th, we’ve got that meeting going on. Well, you can bet right now there’s all kinds of activities that are going on with people who were at the I Love Marketing Conference including delivering the program to them. The stuff we do monthly but we have a whole year that needs to be planned out and a whole level of curriculum to not only provide tremendous value to those people but to also put other people that want to be coached by me and you and Tim into that particular program.

You just can’t snap you’re finger and make programs like that happen. I mean they need to be planned out, people need to be sold into them, and you need to deliver stuff constantly. Just like any other business just different ways that we provide service, the ways we sell it, the way we deliver it. But our marketing calendar right now is filled with the emails that are going out. The actual snail mail letters that are going out. Videos that need to be recorded and that’s just how it works, that’s how any successful marketer.

Dean: By the way, we should invite, let’s invite the people who are listeners who just listen on iTunes. If you haven’t already gone to ilovemarketing.com and downloaded the breakthrough DNA report with the eight profit activators that you can trigger in your business right now. Right there on ilovemarketing.com leave your name and your email address, and that will put you in our world here, so you’ll hear from us, you’ll get our communications, you’ll find out all about our Platinum program that’s starting in January. And you’ll get all that information and have a chance to join us. So if you haven’t done that already get over to ilovemarketing.com and do that so that you are the first to hear all about all these things.

Joe: Exactly, plus we have the I Love Marketing product is actually done now, these DVDs and videos.

Dean: Is it done? Perfect.

Joe: It is done. It is ready to be shipped.

Dean: Have you seen one? Like you have them in the office right now?

Joe: I just saw it yesterday, and they look spectacular.

Dean: What are you waiting for, get me one, get it over here.

Joe: Alright, well they just came in man so hold your horses. Look just because you’re half of I Love Marketing with me doesn’t mean you’re entitled to see the stuff.

Dean: I’m on a need to know basis.

Joe: That is funny. Alright so I was so half tempted right now but you know we’re recording, I don’t want to have you do weird editing here. Like there is a person who is a really sharp marketer and is a really good speaker, and I’ve done some products and stuff with him in the past. And this guy is like, you know he’d end up taking stuff that we did together, and he would put it in different formats, and he would package it in certain ways, and he would never even send it to me. And I’m like, what the hell is wrong with you. Are you on a sales prevention department, you’ve been talking to them and they, I mean if I saw some of this stuff we could probably, anyway that’s all.

Dean: Right.

Joe: That’s one of the beauties of partnerships. So one thing that people should put down on their marketing calendar is also, if you really want to work with someone then build it into your schedule. I mean if you want to develop a joint venture, if you want to launch a new product line, a new campaign, it will not happen by itself. I don’t know about you Dean, but I’m a big believer in seeing things that are visual. I mean my team uses electronic calendars, I mean they all have places from Base Camp, from 37 Signals and various other online tools.

Dean: I’ve just started using Base Camp too.

Joe: I do that because I interviewed Jason Fried for Genius Network, you know the founder of it, he’s just a smart guy, and he has a really great book called Rework, and I really like that company. I just think they’re cool. We have a lot of different electronic tools. I’m a huge fan now of seeing something on a wall. You can walk into a room that we just identified this week that’s going to become the new marketing calendar; it’s kind of like a wall room. So I can just walk in it, and it takes up an entire wall space. And the early version of this one for next year is just simply printing out on an 11 x 17 each monthly calendar on a thicker stock paper and putting it on a corkboard. So I can see the entire year, including the remaining month December of this year, and I see it up on the wall, and I can just look by what is already on there.

And every time there is new stuff added electronically it’s simply print out another piece of paper, put a thumbtack in the corkboard, boom you’ve got the most recent calendar. I mean it requires nothing right. And for me, I can look at that and visualize how, oh here’s what I want to do here, here’s what I want to do here and for me that’s helpful. Some people they just want to be glued, they can operate and somehow retain into their mind by staring at a smartphone.

Dean: I’m totally like you, the visual stuff is, well you’ve seen my office, like in the whole way I organize everything on the corkboard there. It helps you keep on track.

Joe: Yes. So that’s what I recommend. If someone doesn’t have some sort of visual representation. If you don’t have a large company and you’re not dealing with many different people on your team, because I like the fact that my team can walk in and just put something on it. And we have another wall that has a particular space where they’re writing down what their activities are and stuff.

Dean: I’ve seen yours where you’ve got their names on there, and they’ve got their top five projects on the dry race board there right?

Joe: Right exactly. What I’ll do in the, I’m not going to promise it to be up on I Love Marketing right away, maybe next time you’re down there, or when we’re doing the, for any, I know a lot of our Platinum members listen to this. And I’ll just point this out, if any of our Platinum members or anyone who’s going to be down in January, at the end of January want to actually see it. Where we’re going to hold the Platinum meeting is at a hotel right next to my office. I’m happy to walk anyone over there, and they can literally look at how I run my company, and they can see what’s up on the wall and they can look at all that stuff. I’m happy to show that to everyone. Some people that have virtual companies where they have outsourcing people all over the place, you know we realize you might need to do this from a computer screen.

But I will say whoever is the main person who that’s planning marketing campaigns, if you’re working out of your house, I still think you would be well served to have some visual thing up on the wall that you can just look at, and you can just sit there and think. Because it’s planning things out is really thinking time, and I think being on a computer is distracting. I think most people aren’t going to think as effectively as, just like in your Evil Scheme Hatchery. I mean when you go there, sometimes you’ll take your laptop, and other times you’ll just sit in there with a yellow pad.

Dean: Right, exactly.

Joe and you have a whiteboard in front of you, and you’re just thinking.

Dean: Yes that’s exactly right.

Joe: Let me ask you, because you’ve worked with so many people over the years, what is the best way to plan. I mean this sounds like the most basic sort of question, but how do you think about planning? What is the most valuable thing.

Dean: That’s a great question because I always do this this time of year, like right now. Before Christmas I’ll do this so that I’m planning out the year is that like you and I both have unlimited ideas for projects, for things to do, unlimited opportunities presented to us. But other people’s opportunities that they want us to work on and stuff on our own. So there’s all kinds of things. Really what I do is just like what I explain in the 50 Minute Focus Finder video, is I’ll sit down for 50 minutes, and I will write an exhaustive list of every project that I can think of. Everything that I’ve got on my mind, whether I’m doing it actively right now or I’m not, it’s holding a space in my mind. And so I will go through, and I will get that list, not so much, you know in the very beginning, like the first 10 minutes of doing that 50 Minute Focus Finder, what you end up with are the things that are tasks that are on you mind that you’ve got, things you need to do right now. And then as you get those tasks out of your brain you have an opportunity to think through what are the projects that I’ve got. Not the tasks that I’ve got to do right now but the open projects that I’ve got.

So if I look at it, so even just with the things that you and I have would be, that I Love Marketing is a project context. What David Allen would call a context, you’ve got that as a project. And every week I know that that means we’ve got to record an episode, we’ve got to maybe talk ahead of time and think when we’re going to schedule to do the recordings. But the big picture thing that I would write down would be I Love Marketing podcast. Another project would be Platinum the implementation program that we are working on, so putting that as a project. Then putting the I Love Marketing DVDs would be another project that has a set of things that need to be done to get that out. I Love Marketing live, the live event we are going to do next fall is another project. These are things not necessarily that we are going to do anything right this minute about them, but they are things that are on your mind. All the possible things that you could do, whether you are going to do them or not. Now honestly when I do this too I have projects that have been on my list for a long time that I have yet to do anything with, but they’re there as a potential product or project.

So what I look at then, when I get that list done, here is how I kind of evaluate them. I know that you can’t do them all now. When that really came to my mind was that I think that I saw that Quentin Tarantino has done I believe eight movies maybe so far. And you think about those guy as like this prolific movie maker, but the reality is he’s done eight movies in his career. And it struck me that that whole Hollywood model that those guys are working on one movie at a time kind of thing, you can’t shoot three movies at once you know?

Joe: Right.

Dean: And so I look at them as those projects and I ask myself is this going to be a good idea in twelve months from now? Is this going to be a good idea in two years from now? Is it an idea that is only valuable right now because it’s timely and topical, like is there a timeline on it or is it something that’s going to be a perennial or have long-term reaching value. And sometimes I look at it and say, so I don’t feel like I need to do anything about it right this second. The most terrible position to be in mentally, it’s draining, is to be in a position where every project has equal weight, and you’re not moving forward on any of them. Where you get all these projects where you’ve got so many things that it’s hard to make a decision on which one is the one that you need to dedicate your time to.

So when I look at it I’m looking at those projects I’m asking myself is it going to be a good idea in twelve months, is it going to be a good idea in two years? How much money is this going to be worth? What’s the upside of this if this really works the way that I think it’s going to work? Is it a small opportunity? Is it a big opportunity? I’m using those words because it’s what is small or big for you or I or somebody listening to this are different numbers. But contextually is this a big financial opportunity or is it a moderate financial opportunity or is it a small, short-term promotional opportunity. And I look at them, and I’m kind of getting a sense which ones are the most valuable projects to work on. When you and I are at Strategic Coach one of the exercises that Dan has us go through all the time is called Money on the Table. Where you are looking at the projects that you have right now and how much money they could be worth as a way to kind of discriminate against which projects might be the ones that would be the most valuable to work on over the others.

And so going through your own version of that is a very valuable thing to do because it helps you get clarity on which projects are the ones that will be the most valuable investment of your limited time. And going through that and that’s just sitting down in an environment where, you know you talked about my Evil Scheme Hatchery, and I talk about in the 50 Minute Focus Finder video of where to find a space where you can remove yourself from the reactive activators. So when I go into the Evil Scheme Hatchery I’ve removed myself from the internet, I’ve removed myself from the telephone, and I’ve removed myself from people. So the only reactive activator is my thoughts. So that’s what I’m there to harness. I’m trying to round up all those free-range thoughts that I have to gather them in one place, get them to in, as David Allen would say, get them to in so I know I can see everything that I’ve got to work with. All the potential projects that I can work on and to then go through and evaluate which ones are the ones I’m going to be able to work on. You want to hear something cool too, I just came up with a new, because I’ve been thinking a lot about this project management, and that’s really.

Joe: Well do I have a choice, if I don’t want to hear about it can I say no I don’t want to really hear about anything cool?

Dean: I could tell you a joke instead.

Joe: No, no let’s hear it.

Dean: Ok.

Joe: Go ahead.

Dean: So I’ve been thinking a lot about this project management because when I look at it, you know that is one of the areas that could be, that I’ve got room for improvement in. I say that, that I’ve got room for improvement, but everybody’s got room for improvement of that. But I’m looking at it for me that’s the difference. If I really were to improve my ability to manage multiple projects that would be a big win for me and for the people that I am involved with. The people that I hang out with, that would be a big win for you too. You know?

Joe: Yes it would.

Dean: If we could work together better on managing multiple projects.

Joe: You can say that again.

Dean: So this is going to be, because you’re such a glowing model of it.

Joe: Of course.

Dean: This will be good for us. So here’s my thing is that I came up.

Joe: I’m a pinnacle of structure.

Dean: I came up with the COD model of project management because I always love to name things like that.

Joe: I’m going to write this down.

Dean: Yes, it’s good stuff.

Joe: Ok, COD, what does it mean?

Dean: Ok so C is collect, that’s like collect all of those projects that I could work on. Get them all onto paper, get them into, I put them all into Base Camp after I’ve gone through the list and I narrow it down to the top projects. The ones that I really want to advance, the ones that I want to move forward. So when you start looking at that, collecting is about getting all of that together, all of the materials, all the things that you could possibly do. Whether you are ever going to do it or not, if you’ve got the idea for it, write it down. Collect it, gather it all in one place. The only way your mind can be freed to focus on the thing that you have determined is the most important thing that you could be working on is to be absolutely confident that there is nothing that you’re forgetting that could be more important. So it requires that you go through that collection process to get all the possible projects you could work on out onto paper or out into your planning system. So the C is for collect. The O is for organize, and that is where a tool like Base Camp, which is what I use and I guess that’s what you use too, or your team uses Base Camp.

Joe: Yes

Dean: So I’m really starting, I’ve committed to Base Camp as my project management tool. And so I’m really making an effort to organize everything within Base Camp, and that means that I set up the projects, and I set up, it’s really organized very intuitively because they’ve got a master calendar. But then each project has it’s own calendar within it where you can put benchmarks or due dates or special events or things that need to be scheduled on the calendar. You can make ‘to do’ lists that are broken down into the tasks or components of a project that need to be done. You can have a ‘to do’ list for a different person on that team. You can associate the people on you team who are going to be involved with you on that project and invite other people who might not be on your team but are in other companies to be part of that project on Base Camp.

So it’s a great tool to organize everything and organize your thoughts onto what needs to be done and when and who needs to be doing it. So that leads to the D in the COD project management method, I call it dispatch or distribute the products, the project, the tasks, the accountabilities, the deliverables. You’re dispatching or distributing who’s going to do what and when. And that is kind of the way when I put those tickets on my focus board in the Evil Scheme Hatchery, that’s what I’m doing is organizing, after organizing those projects, so I know which ones need to be done first and dispatching them to whoever needs to do it. So like I said right now, a main focus is the world’s most interesting postcards. So if I’ve got a project manager Tracey who runs that whole project.

So I’m in a lot of communication with Tracey right now, and we communicate on Base Camp. I putting things on her ‘to do’ list, she’s communicating back and forth to me on what’s happening, she’s updating the calendar on when the mailing packages have gone out, who she’s spoken to. So we’re really kind of managing that project back and forth and it’s only me and Tracey and Jessie who are on that project. That’s all that we need to have involved in that one. And [Sony]*38:32.3 is on that one too because she’s been doing some of the web stuff with that. So that’s all the people on that. If I’ve got something with our project Siris Project that would be me and Nicky and Sony and that whole project is self-contained that it’s just us working on that project.

So it’s really a great way to organize everything and dispatch what needs to be done and when and keep track of it. But it all happens as a result of really taking the time to do a 50 Minute Focus Finder, and it may take two or three 50 Minute Focus Finders to really feel like you’ve got it all out there. You’ve collected all of the possible projects that you could work on and get them set up in somewhere, wherever you are going to organize them. So for you, it sounds like your preferred method is to organize them on visual things, on pieces of paper, in your Wall Room to outline where everything, that’s where you choose to organize everything, right?

Joe: Yes, that’s where it starts. I mean a lot of this ends up electronically, I also will take a lot of notes on stuff that I do, and I will transcribe them, or I will take pictures of things that I’ll draw out on flip charts or whiteboards. And someone on my team will actually type it up and put it into the right places and that sort of stuff. But I’m definitely a starter, not a finisher. But when it comes to thinking and planning things out I prefer big visual stuff. And a lot of that has to do just because I’m ADD, so there are certain types of ways that my brain interprets stuff that other people don’t.

So people that are kind of like this understand exactly what I’m saying, other people, like huh, but that’s the difference. People are different, and everyone has, if this resonates with what we’re saying, adopt what you like and don’t take what you don’t like. But the point of this is do something to really think it through because without being reminded of this most people will forget how beneficial it is to actually do it. And I think you just need to get yourself into the mindset of doing it, even reading a book like David Allen’s Getting Things Done or something along those lines.

Dean: I would think certainly watching the 50 Minute Focus Finder video, reading David Allen’s book, reading Rework is a great book for that, getting yourself a Base Camp account, like really making a commitment to being someone who gets stuff done.

Joe: And by the way, I’m just thinking out loud Dean, if anyone that is listening to I Love Marketing, I’ve got not enough time obviously because we’ve got thousands of listeners doing marketing now. But if you actually, I’m trying to think of what I can do to ethically bribe people to give us a video on what they think of I Love Marketing. So here’s what I’ll say, if anyone wants me to send them a copy of David Allen’s book, David’s a friend of mine he wrote the book Getting Things Done, I will send you a copy of that book for free in exchange for this. You post a comment on one or two ideas that you got from listening to us talk, just think of the ideas you got from us, or just something that you thought of that would be beneficial for a marketing calendar, for planning out your year, for better utilizing your time. Post a comment on I Love Marketing and make a video of your thoughts on I Love Marketing, what you get out of the whole series. Just I Love Marketing in general and post a link to that video on I Love Marketing. You know there’s a Facebook add in there, or you can just post a comment with a link to the video, and we’ll use that video if they’re really good videos and stuff. Just send an email along with the video also if you’re an iTunes person and you’ve never made a comment on I Love Marketing, if you can send it to gina@joepolish.com with your mailing address I will physically send you a copy of book Getting Things Done.

Dean: That’s great.

Joe: And we’ll get that out as soon as we can, so give us just a real short video, here’s what I think about I Love Marketing and make it public on YouTube so that people can hear about it, and that would help us, and that will help you, I know it will.

Dean: That’s great. So all they need to do is just comment on this episode right here.

Joe: Yes, comment on this episode and shoot a little video about what you think about I Love Marketing. Because more than anything, we hear about it. You know I recently went to, I was speaking at Brendon Burchard’s Expert Industry Association event, the first one and I’m one of the founding members of that now and Dan Kennedy’s recent event. I mean literally, we probably had a 100 people come up to us at that event that 800 people at it that listened to I Love Marketing.

Dean: Yes exactly.

Joe: You know they never comment, so you would think by the amount of people that just told us there, that there are just so many people. And they shared great things, like so many people like how much money they’d made.

Dean: Oh yeah.

Joe: Someone recently told me that we solved their collection problems with the collection letters that we talked about on a recent episode, that sort of stuff. So people are getting tremendous value. So comment on this episode but really just in general, what does I Love Marketing do for you? What would you say to someone? Create a video so that other people can watch it because it just continues to help us share the love.

Dean: Yes, perfect.

Joe: Did I interrupt your train of thought with any of that?

Dean: No, it’s fluid, let’s call it. It’s a fluid train of thought; we can get it right back on track again.

Joe: So for this particular month Dean, like December, I’m going to spend the last couple of weeks really thinking through what I want to prune and eliminate out of my schedule because I always have to say no to stuff in order to open up room for better things. Better in terms of more financially better, more of a use of my unique abilities, more passion that’s involved in them, eliminating any sort of messes which could come in the form of physical messes, mental messes, project messes, people messes you know with people that I really don’t want to continue to have a relationship with, things like that.

Dean: You trying to tell me something?

Joe: Yeah, yeah I mean I was trying to do that subtly but. So having to weed the garden so if I had to remove, like this whole policy we have now Dean other than the I Love Marketing because we don’t talk to each other. We pretend we like each other. Don’t you like movie stars, you know it’s like the movie was great, you guys were so pat, that love scene, yeah, yeah you should have seen us when we weren’t filming the love scene.

Dean: Like you guys really love each other.

Joe: Yeah. Could you imagine, I mean I would never want to work in a condition like that where you earn a living getting paid, you know there are all kinds of books on how to deal with difficult people and stuff and certainly learning how to interact with people without wanting to kill them is probably a smart thing. However if you have the choice, which most entrepreneurs do, I really think you should eliminate any negative or toxic people, environments or anything from your life. My friend Barbara Hemphill the organizational export has this great saying that says, have nothing in your home that you don’t know to be useful, think to be beautiful or love. It’s a great line, I literally have it up on my wall, have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful, think to be beautiful or love. And so whenever I’m walking around my house, and I see some object or something I’m like do I, is this useful, do I love it, is it cool and if it’s not then give it away, get rid of it. Like why keep stuff around that’s not serving you. Do you remember that Nicolas Cage comic book interview thing you originally told me about?

Dean: Yes.

Joe: Could you talk about that? I think there’s a great lesson in that.

Dean: Well I forget now, what was the point of it?

Joe: Well I can remind you, well ok.

Dean: Remind me.

Joe: Nicolas Cage was being interviewed about his comic book collection and the interviewer, I’ve never read this interview, I mean I could be saying this completely. I can almost swear you were the one that told me this and so if you can’t remember it, I’ll say it and maybe it wasn’t you, but I think it was you.

Dean: I think it was too.

Joe: Basically he had collected like a big comic book collection for years. He got started in his childhood, and as he got older basically he decided one day to get rid of it, and the interviewer’s like well why did you get rid of this comic collection that you actually loved and everything. He said, I realized I didn’t own the comic books the comic books owned me.

Dean: Right exactly.

Joe: Are you the one that told me that?

Dean: I did. That was a while ago though that I told you that.

Joe: Yes it was a while ago.

Dean: Yes, yes.

Joe: I have a selective memory man.

Dean: You really do, it’s like a genius level.

Joe: I can remember quotes and dirty jokes and things like that, but if you asked me what I did yesterday afternoon I don’t really know.

Dean: Yes.

Joe: Unless I look at my schedule. So there you go. So what I was saying as we’re at the later part of this year I want to leave our listeners off with just some suggestions and recommendations on what’s going to set up 2012 to be the best year for them ever. And part of that is really, no matter what year you say, most people actually do know things that will be really good for them to do. It’s really more of just encouraging them to probably look at all the habits and skills and rituals that have served them well in the past and served other people well in the past that they know and do those things. And the things that you know that don’t serve you well, quit doing them. As an example, I went the last few days not getting enough sleep, and I got a lot of sleep last night. I actually was a really long sleep. I felt like crap physically yesterday.

Dean: Because you sounded.

Joe: And I woke up.

Dean: I talked with you yesterday, and you sounded completely different than you sound today.

Joe: Yes I was stressed, and I had not gotten enough sleep, I went a couple of days without work.

Dean: And a headache.

Joe: Yeah, yeah, and I didn’t work out I typically work out every day. And I just went to bed early last night, like earlier than I ever really go to bed early and slept probably 10 hours and I just felt infinitely better. And I already know this, I can say this a million times over, but it just occurred to me like at a very deep level. How dam important it is to get sleep when you can. I mean there are certain types of situations where you just push through because you have a lot of stuff going on. However, given the option, if you have the ability to get sleep, get sleep. You know most things are not a crisis. You know I recently finally finished my buddy Neil Strauss’ book Emergency, which you were one of the original people that even read the book before he published it.

Dean: Yes.

Joe: And I was talking to Neil yesterday about all kinds of different, now that book is enough to freak anyone out, and kind of make them paranoid about the potential end of the world and all kinds of stuff.

Dean: Right.

Joe: But it is a great book to read and the thing though about it, until things are really an emergency, don’t set your life up to where everything is an emergency. Because all you are going to do is stress yourself out. So prepare yourself so if an emergency really does come you’re strong. And one of the ways to prepare yourself before you read any time management books or any sort of learning activity or skills, anything you’re doing on lack of sleep or in a fatigued state is just not going to be done as well. Even if you execute properly, if you execute properly in a state of being tired, you’re just simply not going to execute well. One of the biggest things I would recommend, if you’re one of the people that does not get enough sleep, exercise and nutrition, those are the fundamentals. I mean fix any of those areas or all three of them and everything that you’re going to do next year is going to be better, I just will be. So I just wanted to say that, and the rest I’m going to leave hopefully to you to say some smart stuff.

Dean: Well I think that a great thing to do between now and the end of the year is to schedule and complete four 50 Minute Focus Finder sessions and I’m going to share with you what those four, what I would recommend for you. Number one is to do a 50 Minute Focus Finder on your before unit. On everything that you do, could do, the projects that you know from listening to the I Love Marking podcasts, things that you had notes that you would like to implement. Get all of that out, just spend 50 minutes focused in getting all of your thoughts about your before unit out onto paper. Collecting all of your thoughts about the before unit. Then do the same thing for your doing unit. Go through and look at your current customer experience timeline so that when you’re looking at it what are all the things that are reality now? The things that you are actually doing and delivering. And then looking at the ideal of what you could do, the things that you know that you could do.

By the way, one of the greatest books that you can read when you start thinking about your doing unit, is the Glen Blanchard book Raving Fans. You know it’s an easy book to read and just reading it and going through it and then creating a little narrative that describes the experience that you want your clients to have when they go through your process, or they come into your environment, or they go through a transactional process with you. All of that stuff, look for the projects, the things that you could do in your doing unit that would have the biggest impact. And then the same thing in your after unit. The things that you can do to communicate with the people who know you, like you and trust you, so that you can nurture lifetime relationships with the ones that you are already in relationship with. And orchestrate referrals so that they introduce you to people who you don’t know who they know. People to orchestrate those referrals for you, that’s a great thing to focus on in your after unit.

So if you spend your 50 Minute Focus Finder on each of those three, then the fourth would be what I call your me unit. You know the Dean unit or the Joe unit, because we talk about the before unit, the doing unit, the after unit and the me unit is the things that are going to make your life better. The things that you could do like focusing on getting more sleep. What could you do to your sleep environment that would improve the level of comfort you have. Is it time for you to get a new bed? I switched a few years ago to the Tempur-Pedic mattress, and now I’ve got one in every room basically. We’ve got them in both of our houses and both of my offices. They’re just such great things that add a wonderful experience to my sleep. What kinds of things could you do to improve your sleep or to make your life better? And just start paying attention to the things that are the friction in your life. I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday about this idea of kind of paying attention to the things that show up in your world that are little irritants, the friction. For a long time, I used lose my keys all the time, I could never, you know when I’m getting ready to go I could never find my keys.

So we decided to solve that problem I would get a bowl and put it on the table we have a little chest of drawers in the front entrance where we keep stuff in the little drawers, stuff for the mail or change or anything like that. But have a bowl where as soon as I walk in the house I put my keys in that bowl and the moment we implemented that little system, I’ve never had a problem with losing my keys. So when you start looking at your life there, then in looking at the opportunities that you have to remove that friction your life starts to get pretty cool because you really can have an incredible experience when you start going down the path of lifestyle design. And our friend Tim Ferriss is really big on that; it’s one of the favorite things. Whenever we’re together, that’s one of the things that we always talk about is lifestyle design.

Joe: That’s what I’m trying to say.

Dean: Making your life as friction-free as possible. I was going to share one thing about.

Joe: Not now, well.

Dean: You really just can’t get me to, you really just can’t get me to shut up tonight can you, it’s just like I’m overbearing.

Joe: No, no, it’s easy I just started interrupting, but keep going finish your thought.

Dean: One of the things in the me unit, when I was doing the live seminars for realtors with Joe Stump, we would go around and do a big real estate seminar once a month somewhere in the country. So I was travelling every month to get to a main event, and I started looking at that experience and thinking what would be the ultimate experience for that. And I developed this whole friction free travel program where I had a list of things that I knew needed to be packed for me to go to the event. We’d pack up, Sony would actually pack for me, pack up all the stuff, I never had to have any involvement in it because I would always take the same things. And we started using FedEx to ship my bag to the hotel where the event was.

Two days ahead the event FedEx would come and pick up my bag and ship it right to the hotel, so I never had to check a bag or carry on a bag to go to the event. I got a computer, like a Mac book that I would keep with the gear that at the seminar I didn’t even have to carry my laptop with me. I got a clear pass for getting past the security lines at the airport in Orlando. I would drive up, and because I never had any bags I was able to print my boarding pass ahead of time, so I never had to go check in, I would just have my boarding pass right there. I would valet park at the Hyatt Hotel which was attached to the airport. So I would drive right up, just go up two floors in the elevator and then literally nine paces from where the elevator let me off would be the clear pass lane to get to the gate, and I would just go right to the gate. And then at the end of the flight, I’d walk right off the flight, get straight into the limo, go to the hotel, check in and they’d say, oh Mr Jackson you had a package arrive, would you like us to bring it up to your room? Well yes, that would be great. And I’d walk into my room, and then they’d bring up my bag for me, and there it was. I never had an ounce of friction in that travel.

But what got me to that point was examining that process and looking at where is the friction. Because if I was doing a connecting flight there was, I mean we did 200 main events. Two hundred times I flew out and did an event, and there were times when my bag didn’t make my connection. And there were times when, even on a direct flight, I would get to the airport and then you’d have to wait for 20 or 30 minutes sometimes for my bag to come out. And those were things that were little friction elements. But examining them, thinking about them, looking for the opportunities to make my life better, which is what your me unit is all about, gave me the opportunity to really design the optimal experience and remove that friction from my life.

Joe: Well there you go. That’s quite instructive because I think people can look at their lives and look for friction points and things that can be removed and set up your life in order to eliminate them, and to have it work better. And that just simply is going to make everything work better. The little bowl you talked about with keys, I do the same thing. I actually learned that from Dan Sullivan of all people, we kind of always mention him don’t we?

Dean: Yes we do, every episode, we have to.

Joe: Well here’s what’s really cool is we’re going to have a special upcoming episode of I Love Marketing is going to be a video of Dan Sullivan. When he was in town for 25K I was doing a meetup group one of the evenings, and Dan actually came and spoke, and we’re going to make a couple of episodes for everyone on I Love Marketing and for those of you.

Dean: Let’s do that next. Let’s do that the next episode because you and I are going to be up in Toronto with Dan.

Joe: That’s true. Plus I’m going to be, in a couple of days I’m leaving for Singularity University which I’m going to be there for a week, Peter Diamandis one of the founders, Ray Kurzweil he is a friend of mine, and I’m going to Singularity University. If you guys want to check that out, I would recommend when I say you guys I mean you guys and gals who listen to I Love Marketing watch the Transcendent Man, Ray Kurzweil. You can get it on Amazon; you can rent it on iTunes for $4.99, it will blow your mind, it’s called the Transcendent Man.

Dean: Wow.

Joe: But I’m going to Singularityu.org is Singularity University, pretty cool stuff. But basically, let’s put the episode up at the end. Sullivan Dan is going to be a speaker for us at our first Platinum 2.0 meeting which is going to take place January 28th and 29th. And since you mentioned it earlier Dean, if you want to find out information about that and all the cool stuff we’re up to then make sure we have your name and email. Which you have to go to ilovemarketing.com and enter that information so we have it and we’ll get that information to you. The other thing I was going to say, you mentioned, which is kind of funny, the mattress, you know you switched to a Tempur-Pedic, which I do have a Tempur-Pedic in the bedroom.

Dean: In your office.

Joe: Headquarters. We actually have, people always ask me do I live there, and no I have a house. But basically I have this really funky bedroom that I have a Tempur-pedic mattress on a bed that’s made out of a 1960 Lincoln, and the headlights actually turn on. It’s pretty crazy. People can probably find that on YouTube, there’s some videos up there. But there’s a lady, those of you who are very much into organic stuff and you don’t want any of the chemicals that are on conventional and commercial mattresses, you can actually get an organic mattress. They are not cheap, but they’re one of the most unbelievably comfortable beds on the planet, and you can shoot an email to Puma@gracegrove.com, and she’ll have no earthy idea how she’s getting emails from people randomly. So just say that you heard an I Love Marketing podcast with Joe Polish, and he said you sell organic mattresses and she can help you out.

Dean: What kind of mattress is in my room at your house?

Joe: It’s a Tempur-Pedic.

Dean: It’s nice.

Joe: Yes of course it is. Yes, my guest bedroom. For a minute I had to think about that, like what are you talking about. So yes the guest bedroom in my house.

Dean: I just call it my room.

Joe: You mean that couch I have you sleep on, the rollout. That is funny.

Dean: Yes.

Joe: Ok, so we need to wrap up Dean, so we’ll have a couple of episodes with Dan Sullivan for all of you that are doing meet up groups, keep going. I have one tonight that I’m going to be doing at my office. They’re going really well, and we really appreciate those of you that have started meet up groups all over the world. We have people in Germany and Japan and Australia, and you can see the different locations at meetup.com. Some of them are listed on ilovemarketing.com but because of the updating and linking a lot of people have to have I Love Marketing in the name of the I Love Marketing Meet Up Group in order for it to populate on our website. So please make sure those of you that are starting I Love Marketing Meet Up Groups that you are doing that. And if you do want to start an I Love Marketing Meet Up Group just click on the meetup tab at ilovemarketing.com, and there’s a whole pdf of how to do it and how to set it up along with themes and ways to run the meetings. We just such great response from people that are holding them and how much they’re learning, and it’s helping their businesses, and it’s great genius networking that’s taking place, all that good stuff. So, what else Dean? What else?

Dean: I think this was a good, this is a good thing to talk about.

Joe: Yes and when we come back, I know I’m going to come back with this brain filled with all kinds of stuff related to nanotechnologies from going to Singularity University, you know we’re going to be with Dan Sullivan, we’re going to be together. So I know we’re going to be recording more stuff while we’re together up there. So those of you that got some great thoughts and ideas from this, please comment at I Love Marketing for this episode. And if you do, and you shoot a video of what you’re getting out of being a rabid listener of I Love Marketing, please make a short video, pop it up on the YouTube, post the link on ilovemarketing.com and send an email to gina@joepolish.com with your mailing address and the video and I will send you a copy, free of charge. I’ll even pay for the book and for shipping to send you David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. And I’ll include genius network interview with David, a link to that if you want to listen to that also.

Dean: There we go.

Joe: That’s it, Dean. So until next time.

Dean: Until next time, we should have a sign-off. We should have some kind of like, you know, what could we use as like our official sign off.

Joe: I don’t know.

Dean: Let’s think about that.

Joe: Good night. You know what it is because I’m sitting here looking out my backyard right now and it’s dark, and I see a flashlight, and for a moment I’m like freaking out, and it’s my pool guy.

Dean: You see somebody out there.

Joe: Yes, can you imagine it, at the end of an I Love Marketing call this is the sign-off. So this shouldn’t be the consistent one we do because I can’t replicate this every month. But for a minute I was like, what is going on? So there you go.

Dean: There you go. Alright, Joe.

Joe: Alright everyone have a wonderful week, and we will talk with you next time. Thanks, Dean.

Dean: Bye.  

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