The one with answers to YOUR questions

Joe: Hey everybody, it’s Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish, together again, as always. Every week. Sort of like a painful family member that you have to talk to. For the sole purpose of raising the kids, or something like that. I don’t even know. Dean: We’ve put on a civil front to raise the kids. That’s it.

Joe: But what we’re raising instead is the most marketing savvy entrepreneurs, that listen to I Love Marketing, and want to have a competitive advantage, and as I say in Piranha Marketing, eat their competition alive. And really not even have any competition, because the marketing that they do, the way that they uniquely package their products or services, the way they communicate with the world, the way that they develop relationships, through all the various

Joe: Hey everybody, it’s Dean Jackson, and Joe Polish, together again, as always. Every week. Sort of like a painful family member that you have to talk to. For the sole purpose of raising the kids, or something like that. I don’t even know.

Dean: We’ve put on a civil front to raise the kids. That’s it.

Joe: But what we’re raising instead is the most marketing savvy entrepreneurs, that listen to I Love Marketing, and want to have a competitive advantage, and as I say in Piranha Marketing, eat their competition alive. And really not even have any competition, because the marketing that they do, the way that they uniquely package their products or services, the way they communicate with the world, the way that they develop relationships, through all the various means, are done following a before-during-and after, as Dean Jackson so eloquently invented. And using the AProfit activators that we’re always referring to and talking about.

So. On today’s episode, we’re going to – we’ve been requested, by people we’ve spoken with to do some more Q and A, to answer some questions, and some of our listeners find it extremely valuable to hear questions of other people, have their own questions answered, and kind of hear how we would suggest and give advice in those areas, because for the most part, it applies to pretty much anyone, so that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re just going to play – what, like question roulette or whatever, Dean?

Dean: Question roulette. Exactly. And I was just thinking, this is our – this is episode 34 today. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Joe: I Love Marketing has grown up. And all of the people out there that have started I Love Marketing meet up groups, we want to, first off, congratulate you for doing that, because in the infancy stage, it’s great that you’re doing that. So the early adopters out there that are just taking on an I Love Marketing meet up group with really just very little coaching from us, other than episodes we’ve done prior to this one, that if you haven’t listened to them, please go back and listen to the past episodes of I Love Marketing. If you’re brand new to I Love Marketing go and listen to some of our past episodes, watch some of the videos that we’ve put up, that sort of stuff. We are doing out I Love Marketing event very soon here. It’s going to happen in a couple of weeks in the time that we’re doing, and so we’re going to see a lot of you live, in person, in Phoenix, which we’re totally looking forward to.

Some of you are going to watch it live via webcast. If you’re listening to this on iTunes, go to the I Love Marketing dot-com website (ilovemarketing.com) and there’s information about our event. You can watch it live via webcast, or you can come in person. We recommend in person if you can make it, because you have the community there. But if you simply cannot do it live, in person, then do it live, webcast, or reserve a set of the videos, because we are going to create a product. And that’s going to be a lot of the curriculum, the people that do I Love Marketing meet up groups, and it’s a blueprint that you’re going to run your whole entire business off of, and it’s going to be really, really powerful.

So for everyone that started an I Love Marketing meet up group, continue to give us feedback and comments posted on the site, or just let us know, and we’ll continue to go deeper with the meet up groups, and we will very soon, we’re going to have a place on ilovemarketing.com where we’re going to have a listing of people that have I Love Marketing meet up groups, so that those of you out there that want to go and really get face to face with people that are into marketing like we are, and like you are, we’ll do our best to have that sort of directory, which will have to be updated on a regular basis, but we’re going to have it set up. You can’t expect a lot from us; it’s not like we’re charging you for any of this stuff, so anyway… I have to keep saying that, because there’s always a person out there that gets all pissed when I say that.

Dean: Oh, that’s funny. But it’s true, isn’t it?

Joe: It is. It is true. We are charging for our event, because – if you’ve never done an event before, they cost like – we’re putting over a hundred grand into putting this thing on, so we have to actually charge for it, so that it makes sense for us to get a gigantic hotel, and bring in Dan Kennedy on a private plane, all that stuff costs money, so we would let the whole world come for free, but we are marketers. And we want you to actually charge for your products and services too, however, we give first before we expect to get, and for the most part, we spend our time giving, not trying to get people to buy stuff.

So, having said that, we’re going to answer some questions. Listen as if it applies to you, and the best way, whenever we do Q&A, is if you sell apples, and we’re talking about someone selling oranges, don’t think it doesn’t apply to you, because you sell… it’s kind of the same thing. So most of the questions that we’ll answer have applicability to you, even if you think it doesn’t. So listen from that frame of mind, and I think you’ll get the most out of our Q&A roulette here. And Dean, I’ll let you pick the…

Dean: The very best skill is connective thinking. Is being a connective thinker, where you can see how somebody else applies something and see the structure of it, and how it actually – how it works and how it could apply to you.

Joe: Exactly. Exactly what I was trying to say.

Dean: Let’s try and go through as many of these questions as we can then, because we totally ran out of time on the live call, but we got lots more questions, so I think it’ll be good to get as many as we can. So here’s one, this one’s from Danny Barrerra, he asks, ‘If you were starting a business in this economy, on a low budget, what media would you recommend marketing on? Internet, direct mail? Thanks, Daniel.’ What’s your thought on that right away? What jumps out at you?

Joe: Well, I guess I will say when I first started my carpet cleaning company, way back in the late – 1989, early 1990, we were in a recession at that time, probably not in the same way it is today, but there was definitely the same sort of mindset. What’s going on this economy? And it doesn’t matter if it’s a good economy or bad economy, people respond to what it is they want, what it is they need, emotionally. So that’s one thing. There are certain things that change, and there are fundamentals that never change. Also, one of the worst mindsets though, is a depression sort of economy.

So before we talk about what media we’d recommend, or at least what I’m going to recommend. Dean will say whatever Dean says. Before, I would say, what’s the message, what’s the media, you really kind of need to come at this – I interviewed a guy on Genius Network where he said, people are saying, when’s the recession going to be over. And he says, when are you going to be over the recession? If this is the way it is, you play with the cards that you are dealt, and you try to create the best hand that you can, to give yourself the best advantage. So before I kind of go into stuff, Dean, my whole thing about the economy is quit shooting yourself in the foot before you even start by thinking, oh my God, this economy, and how are we going to overcome it, because when you go into the outside world, you can very easily get sucked into negativity. Into the mindset, and I’m not talking about denying that there’s challenges for lots of people, and lots of people are broke and lots of people are out of work, and lots of things that people would buy up when they had more expendable revenue, that they don’t do it the same way anymore. I’m not saying that, I’m just pointing out that you’re not – you want to come from a position of power and do the very best that you can.

And you know, I’m running a very successful business right now in the middle of a quote-unquote ‘bad economy’, and we have lots of clients, thousands, that are kicking ass and taking names, and there’s other people that are struggling, and so what are the ones that are kicking ass and taking names doing that the others aren’t? They’re taking action. They’re taking action; they’re not letting themselves get immobilized.

Dean: With a positive expectation. I mean, so much of it is self-defeating in a lot of ways. If you’re taking action, if your belief is that it’s a bad economy and people aren’t buying, and you know – that’s the reality that you’re going to create. And so much – and I totally get how easy it is to buy into that. Because it’s all over the media, I mean, anywhere you go, it’s always talk about how bad the economy is, and how bad the job situation is, and if you really look at the reality of it, even if we’re at nine point something percent unemployment, what – the inverse of that is 90-plus percent of people have jobs. And you go – all it really takes is one trip to the mall or Wal- Mart or anywhere, and what you’re surrounded by are hordes of people, spending every dollar they make. That’s what people do; they spend every dollar they make on things that they want, and they need, and that’s not going to change really.

Joe: Yeah. On thing, I think I’ve talked about this before, but when I talk to my professional cleaners and restorers, I talk about how my father was a locksmith, and how you couldn’t drive down a neighborhood, and know who was going to get in a fight with their husband or their wife and lock that person out of the house that night, or who was going to get drunk and lose their keys, and lock their keys out of their car, and who’s going to break some padlock or something – you couldn’t really just drive through neighborhoods and know. It was one of those sort of emergency sort of businesses, that you’re kind of at the beck and call. And I said, for like a carpet cleaning business, you can drive through neighborhoods, and you can say, well, these are the sort of homes that I would like to service, and there’s all different variations of that, and all types of different businesses, even if you’re not in a service business.

Even if you’re a graphic designer, even if you’re a website developer. There’s all variations of that, but the point is there’s people out there like you said. You know, say the unemployment rate was 25%, there’s still three out of four people have a job, and those people live in homes, and those people have computers, and there’s access to those people, and so the real question to Daniel, is we have no earthly idea what you’re selling, so for us to say you should use internet or direct mail would be foolish on our part, because we don’t even know what you’re selling. So we can only speak in generalities, about what media you’d recommend. What I would say though, is what I would tell my cleaners, is if you’re driving through a neighborhood, I think of these people as they all have money that belongs to me, and I need to make a withdrawal out of their bank account, and that withdrawal comes in the form of a sales message.

It could be a direct mail letter, it could be a postcard, it could be free recorded message, it could be a TV or radio ad, it could be a connection on Facebook fan page, they could be in a Google+ circle, it could be a variety of different ways, linked in, whatever, that you would interact and communicate with some of those people, but that’s what you do. You first off, who are they? Who are your clients, customers, patients, prospects, who are they, what do they read, where do they lurk, where do they go? Like I live in Arizona, and if I want to say, well, what’s the best way to find a scorpion, it’s probably not in Chicago when it’s freezing. It’s probably in Arizona where it’s really hot, and it’s going to be underneath some rocks and stuff, and they sell these things at like Walgreens, and like different – Wal-Mart, where they’re like these scorpion flashlights, that are blacklight flashlights, and you go and at night, you put them on, and scorpions are like fluorescent, they glow, like a glow stick when you have…

Dean: Really?

Joe: Oh, yeah. It’s bizarre. And I could walk out in my backyard, with one of these scorpion flashlights, and you can find scorpions, in some cases, all over the place. It freaks you out, right? But no one would even see these things if you weren’t there. But your marketing needs to operate kind of like that scorpion blacklight, that just makes them shine, but you got to know where they’re at. You’ve got to be fishing with bait that the fish want in the lake or the ocean or the river that the fish are at. So before we say, what’s the hook, what’s the bait, what’s the pole, well, what are the fish, and where are they at? And if you know where they’re at, what do they respond to? And that’s where really understanding the mindset of your customer or your client, and even in the middle of the recession, the fish don’t know the difference. They still want to eat.

And I don’t mean to demean prospects or customers and call them fish, I’m just saying what you said, Dean, you go out to any mall, people are buying shit. And what are they buying, why are they buying it, where are they at, so there’s just – the point is, there’s plenty of opportunity. We’re nowhere in a recession to where someone is ever going to come to me and say, I can’t figure out how to make it work. Are some businesses going to need certain tweaks? Yeah, absolutely. But that…

Dean: Yeah, but in any economy, there’s always one element of almost every market that’s thriving. It was funny because Tony Robbins asked me that same thing, we were recording a DVD, and he was saying, how do people do and… what do you say to people who are starting a business in the bad economy, and I said to him, that it reminds me of when I was playing tennis, we had a thought that every shot makes somebody happy, and if you think about that you’re playing tennis, every shot makes somebody happy. It’s either if you hit the ball out of bounds, your opponent is going to be happy because the ball went out of bounds. If it goes in, you’re going to be happy because it went in.

And he’s not going to be happy. But the umpire, the person observing the event, doesn’t care one way of the other, whether the ball is in or out. He’s just observing it at seeing it like that. So the translation of that into the economy is if there’s some element of the economy that’s not good, there’s always some element of that market that somebody is happy. Let’s look at the real estate market right now, is probably the absolute worst affected element of the economy right now. That’s the driver of the whole thing. That’s what got us in the mess, it’s the thing that’s probably in the worst shape. And if you look at it, it’s true that people who are unhappy in this market, are people who bought their homes in 2005 or 2006 when the market was at its peak, and their house is worth less now than they actually owe on it. Those people are in a bad way. That’s the part of the market that really is hurting.

The part of the market that really is thriving right now, is that it’s an incredible opportunity for first time buyers, for people who didn’t buy a home in 2005 and 2006, because they now can get the lowest interest rates in almost in history, they’ve got a tremendous selection of homes to choose from, there’s all kind of bank owned homes that are on the market. Those people are happy. People who bought their homes ten years ago, and want to buy a bigger house now have a great opportunity, because houses that were selling for a lot of money in 2006 are selling for much less money now. And the spread between the lower price home and the bigger home is a great opportunity. It’s an incredible opportunity for investors right now.

Our – Dean Grassiosi, we were just talking about him, and he just had this incredible launch of his rock-bottom blueprint, broke all kinds of records for his business, because people see that investing in real estate is a big opportunity right now. So I think you have to kind of, like you said, Joe, shine that blacklight on your market, and think, what are the elements of the market of that are really thriving right now? People spill wine on their carpets in any economy, right?

Joe: Yeah. Totally. And you know, like the scorpions are always out in the backyard at certain times of the year, and all around certain neighborhoods in Arizona, in Phoenix, because they’re in pockets. It’s really weird how scorpions are. But they’re not everywhere. They’re not in every neighborhood. Other neighborhoods… I’ve talked a lot – even pest control people, they can’t even explain it half the time, like this is weird, so they just pop up in colonies…

Dean: Are they in your backyard?

Joe: Yes.

Dean: I got to see that sometime. I might come out there.

Joe: Yeah, I’ll show you. It’ll be pretty fun. But the point, here’s my point. They’re always out there, but if you don’t have the light, you don’t know, you can’t see them. Especially at night. You just can’t. And the same thing with the marketing. If you don’t have the DNA, if you don’t have our Breakthrough DNA report, first off, download it from ilovemarketing.com and read the darn thing. And those are the things that you do in order to generate business. And part of the I Love Marketing calls are always to introduce whatever strategies and methods, talk it through, but where a lot of these are fundamentals. There’s before, what do you before a sale to get business? What do you do during the sale, and what do you do after the sale? Those things are never going to change. Five hundred years from now, if the planet hasn’t self-imploded by then, it’s going to be the same – I just wanted to throw a little doomsday stuff in there – because some people think it’s going to be next year, right?

Dean: Next year, 2012. But it’ll be after our second annual I Love Marketing conference. Because it’s not until December.

Joe: Yeah, we’ll schedule our event to make sure that we can do an I Love Marketing conference, because if the planet evaporates, you’re going to need marketing skills. Much more… I mean, they can read Neil Strauss’s book, Emergency, and get all paranoid or whatever, but the point is, that’s the deal. And so they’re always out there. You just need to have the skills, and the light to find it. And sometimes it’s as simple as having the right tool. And so think of all these marketing tools as – all these marketing strategies as tools. What tools do you need on your toolbelt that you use every day, what do you need in your toolbox that you’re going to use frequently, and what are the special need tools that you’re going to have in your toolshed? Because all of these are a variety of marketing tools.

So to answer Daniel’s question, and then you can say any final thing on this, Dean, and then we’ll move on. I kind of wanted to go into that, because I wanted to create a sort of a framework for people to think about it. If you were starting a business in this economy on a low budget, what media would you recommend on internet or direct mail? I would rely on both, but the first question you really need to ask yourself is what are you selling, who are you selling it to, where are they, and what do they respond to? And if you don’t know that, then you need to start testing a few things. You need to start communicating them, and if you already are in business, and you sold something, I don’t know if you’re… Because we have no information to go on here, then what have the current people that have come into your funnel, how did they get there? And if they came in there in a good way, just ramp up and continue to replicate and duplicate what it is you’re doing. Because you don’t need a hundred tools in your toolbox.

Sometimes you just need one or two that work really well. And I know plenty of businesses that don’t even need to have a website that make plenty of money doing just direct mail, and just talking to people. I mean, plenty of my carpet cleaners – many of my carpet cleaners have websites, because they just want to appease all of their friends and people that keep convincing them that you’re never going to be successful without a website. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a website, I think everyone should, but the point is that you really got to just look at what do the fish bite on, you don’t need an iPad in order to be a successful fisherman. You just don’t.

Dean: That’s true.

Joe: Someone will create an app that will send out a signal… I have this freaking app that I can’t wait to test on Necker Island, which we had a trip tentatively scheduled in March until unfortunately Richard Branson’s home just burned down, which is a bummer, because I’ve stayed in that home, like 20 times. And that’s where we have all of our events and everything, the home that burned down, and so it’s so sad to see that incredible home and the history behind that. But he’s going to rebuild it, because he’s Richard Branson and all that. But you know, there’s an app that actually, supposedly wards off mosquitos, and when I go to Necker Island, I get freaking attacked by mosquitos. They love me. Even if I douse myself in mosquito repellent, these bastards still – they bite me.

And it’s probably because I deserve it for all those mischievous things that I’ve done in my life, but the point is, there’s an app that may work for that. I’m willing to test it and see if it works for me. But the point is, until that time comes, there’s plenty of things out there in the middle of a recession that work, but the only way you’re going to do that is go out and do it, because you’ll accomplish more through movement than you ever will through meditation, and we’ve beat on that horse a lot during – but it is, that is truth as I know it. That’s what I’ve got to say.

Dean: Well, and you know, part of it, the reality of that question is really probably found in the personal economy of saying, how can I do it with, A) with a low budget, that I don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing, and I think that a really good question to answer is what kind of things could you do on a low budget, and I think what we’ve just been talking about, by identifying the right target market, if you really shine that blacklight on your market and find just the element of the market that is actually moving right now or that’s actually – where there is, where there’s business being done, and don’t spend anything, any time, effort, energy, on anything but attracting that specific market. Like this is were really narrowing your focus, selecting that single target market, just like we talk about in Profit Activator Number One, is the most useful thing. Because you’re going to focus all of your attention on attracting that market. We’ve got people. I just did an interview with a realtor up in Portland who was using our bank owned buyer finding program. And he had generated, from a standing start, in one calendar year, last year, over a 160 thousand dollars from focusing on one segment of the market, people who want to buy bank owned homes. So I think if you’re – whatever business you’re in, there’s some element of that market that’s actually thriving and focusing your attention only on that part is probably the best thing that you could do. Ok, let’s go onto another question, Joe.

Joe: That’s what I’m trying to say.

Dean: This will fit right into something… I think you’ll have a lot to say about this one. So this is from Dwight, who says, ‘Joe, I recently launched a monthly interview program patterned off the Genius Network model. Thus far, my list members have said they think it’s a great idea, but no one is subscribing yet. Two questions for you; one, what do I have to show or offer my list members to persuade them to subscribe, and two, do you keep an ear out for what will eventually become a hot topic while you’re conducting the interview, or is that done afterwards?’

Joe: Ok, a hot tip while you’re conducting the interview – well, this will be an easy question to answer. It probably won’t be answered in the way that Dwight asked it. For anyone out there that’s thinking of producing information and sharing, we highly recommend that, because as you hear me and Dean talk about, education based marketing is one of the ways, one of the best ways for your clients to know, like, and trust you when you just put out stuff. And interviews are just one format, in order to create content. The I Love Marketing episodes, sometimes they’re interviews, sometimes they’re us just actually teaching stuff, and sometimes they’re us doing Q&A, so what I would do look at what we’re doing with I Love Marketing and really consider putting the information out there for free. Genius Network, geniusnetwork.com, I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time trying to get a lot of new subscribers as a front end. It’s typically a back end, sort of subscription based thing that people have already bought one of my marketing kits in the cleaning industry, have bought my <inaudible> *00:26:17 program, have attended one of my seminars, have purchased Six Strategy Secrets, a variety of different, other things that I have sold.

And so it’s usually like an add-on to an already existing service. Interviews as a standalone are difficult to sell. You can get a lot of great interviews online for free. And so unless you have a really unique subject matter, which people will spend a lot of money for because they really want what it is you’re offering, and it really is unique, just doing interviews on generic things like fitness or relationships or how to make money or whatever, those are like the big categories, they’re hard to sell just in interviews. So I would first off, what – to go back to Dwight’s question, thus far my list members have said they think it’s a great idea, but no one’s subscribing yet, well, I don’t know what the content is, Dwight, that you’re sharing, and maybe you just need a more powerful pitch.

Maybe if you’ve done some interviews and you do a couple and one of the ways that I started Genius Network, was I interviewed a guy, this is true, I interviewed a guy on sales and persuasion, on month when I was behind on writing my Piranha Marketing letter. I used to write a monthly newsletter. I don’t know why I don’t do this anymore. See this is all – I’ll just be transparent here. I had a gigantic, rabid following when I would do a monthly written newsletter, and I still do stuff similar to that, but I don’t publish it like I used to, and I was behind. I didn’t get it written, and I was like, shit, man, I need to crank something out. So I did an hour, a little over an hour interview on sales and persuasion, and sent an audio cassette tape out to my list and said, this month’s newsletter is this interview with this guy, and my list listened to it, and they loved it, and they were like, God, can we get more of these things?

And so I started out, and I charged $18.53, that’s what I started out – it was called the Joe Polish Superstar Audio Tape of the Month Series, and I came up with $18.53 after talking to Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy, say, what do you guys think I should charge for this? And they’re like, come up with some random number that doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. And so I did, and that’s how we built it, and that’s how we started it. And so in as far as – so my advice is just, it really depends on the content, and why don’t you put it out to your list and see what they respond to, but if you’re able – if you’ve got another back end product, put it out there for free. Just put it out there for free and model what we’re doing with I Love Marketing. We’ve got thousands of listeners to I Love Marketing. We now have an event that we’re doing, a handful of people will probably end up coming into my different business offerings, and Dean Jackson’s different business offerings that he offers, but for the most part, we’re just putting good information out to the world because we feel it’ll come back to us tenfold. And it’s fun. So don’t do it if you don’t – if it’s not enjoyable.

Dean: Well, there’s never been a better time to provide information like this. I mean, when you look at what we’re talking about, what we’ve been doing right now, would have been impossible when you first started doing the Genius Network.

Joe: Oh, yeah, there was no internet. I had to mail…

Dean: The only way for somebody to get an audio recording was for you to send them a cassette tape with it. They couldn’t go online and just listen or download right into their phone or their iPod, I mean, there’s never been a better time for that, and there’s so much of that available now. I really think it really is the perfect way to build a community, to build an audience, build a fan base, let’s call it.

Joe: Exactly. And I used to even send out cassette Walkmans with headphones with little Post-It notes that says, put the headphones on and press play. And then there would be a pitch as to why they should listen to, they should subscribe to my interview series, and then it would be like, you’re about to hear a sampling of the best interviews I’ve done, and you can get these every month in the mail, and that was like a theatrical pitch to people that were already existing clients, and I knew I could bump them into it, and it cost me probably about 20 bucks to do that mailing with a very cheap Walkman, this is before iPods and stuff, but – you know, it’s funny, I’m going to switch phones, because – can you still hear me, Dean,?

Dean: I can.

Joe: Yeah, I’m going to switch phones here. And here’s another thing with doing interview series. Maybe I’ll sound instantly better on this one, and they’ll be like, dammit, you cheated us, half this call. But you got to be ready to tap dance too, if you’re going to do live things like I Love Marketing calls, because you never know what Dean’s going to do to try and mess with you. But no, I had to actually switch phones because it started beeping, saying ‘Low Battery’ – I’m like, huh? All right, so where was I? So I was going to respond to his next part of it; do you keep an ear out for what will eventually become a hot tip while you’re conducting the interview, or is that done afterwards?

And so in my interview series, I summarize the very best ideas that come out of the interviews that I do, and basically I get the interviews transcribed, I have a couple of people in my office that listen to my interviews as soon as I’m done with them, and I get their perspectives on what they think of the hot tips, and I also have my transcriber, who’s been doing my transcriptions on stuff for years, and she’s super awesome, and she can pull out the best ideas also. But when we have the transcriptions edited and looked at, we kind of pull them out. And it’s sort of a collaborative effort. But I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to do it. It’s just what – if you hear someone say something really profound, I would just write it down and say, yeah, that’s a pretty good idea. The same way that if you read a book and you highlight it, I tend to look at interviews that same sort of way.

And you know, I do some really interesting interviews that – Dean, one of the things – sometimes they may have absolutely nothing to do with say, I Love Marketing, like I recently interviewed a gal that wrote a book called Spirit Junkie, and she’s an ex-drug addict, and now has built – Gabrielle Bernstein – and I did an interview with her a couple days ago, and it’s really about her take on spirituality and a course in miracles, and we talk about 12 step programs and stuff, and it has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, except in the very end of the interview, we talk about it, and one of the things I’d love to have you do is kind of put it out there as a bonus to all the I Love Marketing subscribers and listen to it, and if they like it, then great. And if it’s like too weird for people, then don’t.

But I do interviews because it covers a lot varieties of different topics from fitness to working out to addiction, which I’ve struggled with in my life, which we usually don’t talk about much in I Love Marketing but I talk about it on Genius Network, so I think, as it relates to Dwight, sometimes if you’re doing interviews, sometimes you can have a very expansive sort of thing, kind of like a talk show, where there’s a variety of different subjects, or you can do things that are very specifically targeted for your niche, your subject matter, your product or your service, and so it really – how you do things kind of depends on how you set it up. But any way you can do it to just put it out there for free, and that’ll work to feed your funnel, I think that’s a good model. And you can take what we’re doing with I Love Marketing and just look at what we’re doing. There you go.

Dean: Here’s another question. This one’s from Cindy Evans. She says, ‘Hi, Joe. I’ve been a realtor for many years now, but I’ve moved into a new market area, and I’m finding getting known and breaking into this market extremely difficult, to say the least. There are many large teams that myself and business partner are up against, and for the first time in my career, I’m wondering if I can overcome this. I’m not naïve, and I know there’s no quick fix, but maybe you can shed some light.

Joe: Well, I’ll let you respond to that one.

Dean: I was just going to say, I know a little bit about this. I think I can help.

Joe: It’s funny, a real estate question to me. You know, you’re the man.

Dean: It is funny. I love it. So here’s the thing. That’s a lot of the stuff that people deal with when they say, moving into a new market area, and I’m finding getting known and breaking into this market extremely difficult. And what’s inherent in that is that moving from a market where maybe she was more known, that because she had been in the marketplace for a while and moving into a new market, the model seems to think, I’ve got to get known. I’ve got to get my name out there. And it’s a classing thing that we see, in real estate especially, because people are so used to this name recognition type of marketing, where they’re thinking, if I’m top of mind, then people will call me, so what can I do to get my name out there.

So I always focus on reframing that for people first. Because it’s never about getting your name out there, especially in a situation where you’re dealing with something that most people are not going to need, in the next 12 months. You mentioned, Joe, driving around neighborhoods, and you can’t tell who’s going to break their key off in their lock, or who’s going to get broken into, or move or whatever, to need to get their house rekeyed. The same thing with real estate. And so the important thing is that you don’t need to be known to everybody. What would be very valuable is if you were known to the people who were going to actually move in the next 12 months. And so – I shared this with you, Joe, before. One of the things that we always did at the main events, at the big real estate seminars we did, was I would give people a choice. I would say, let’s imagine that this 500 person audience represents a 500 home subdivision, and in this room, we’ve got 500 people who own the 500 homes in whatever subdivision we’re trying to break into.

And you’ve got a fundamental choice. If I were to say to you, I’m going to give you two minutes to come up here on stage, I’m going to let you introduce yourself, tell everybody all about you, and I’ll hand out 500 of your business cards to everybody in the audience and help you get your name out there. That would be choice number one. Or, you could sit right there in your seat anonymously, and I’ll have somebody bring you an envelope, and in that envelope would be a piece of paper with the name, address, and telephone number, of the 50 people in this room who are going to sell their home in the next 12 months. Which would you choose? And it was very interesting, because when you present it like that, it becomes clearly obvious that ever person would choose to have the name, address and phone number of every person that’s going to sell in the next 12 months.

And that’s how you break into a market where you’re not necessarily known. The advantage that you can have is that you can find out who the people who are going to be moving in the next 12 months are, by doing lead generation cards, rather than sending out a postcard that’s all about you, that would have your glamor shot and your logo and your slogan and you know, ‘Call Cindy, and start packing…’ All of those kind of things that you see real estate agents do, trying to shout louder than the person who’s already been shouting longer and louder in that marketplace. That’s where it feels like you’re in a difficult situation. Trying to break into that market. But what you really want to do is go underneath the radar, go under the radar with this, and if you were to send out a postcard that offered people a free report on the – a free August 2011 report on River Oaks house prices, that’s going to appeal to the people who are going to be selling their house in the next six months, and when they respond to that, now you can start getting known to those people.

So its kind of like a two-step thing. You put your needs aside, you focus only on what your ideal prospect needs, and offer them something in a way – profit activator number two – is compelling them to call. So that they can identify themselves to you. And you do that, a few months in a row, and pretty soon, out of those 500 homes, you’ve got the list of the 50 or 60 people who are going to have a much higher probability of selling in the next six to 12 months. And you’re doing it in a real stealth way, that nobody’s even going to see it coming. That’s my favorite way to go in and take over a neighborhood from somebody who’s just been shouting their name longer and louder than anybody. You know?

Joe: Yeah, and you know what? When I was doing marketing a lot for when Bill Phillips owned EAS Sports Supplements, and was publishing Muscle Media magazine back in the late ’90s, he sold EAS in 1999 for 300 million dollars, and he would run image ads, that would create name recognition, and that did now work, in competitors magazines, because all of the people who were knocking him off and copying, he wanted them copying the ineffective marketing that he was doing so he could continue to make a ton of money with all the stealth marketing he was doing by doing underground direct mail and things that weren’t really on the radar.

And the problem with wanting to get your name out there and wanting to get well known, and we all, anyone that becomes a public figure, including myself, probably less with Dean, because Dean doesn’t have much of a big ego, I will say, and maybe this is far stretching to say this, I think it’s all ego based. And there’s a side that people want to be recognized, people want everyone to know their name, and so many marketing decisions that are the worst marketing, advertising and sales decisions, are the ones that stem from this need to be out there. And that is me saying, this is a guy who’s a gigantic name dropper, who links himself to famous people, who has this – probably self-esteem issue that needs me to feel good about myself when I like connect with big players and stuff – there’s a lot more to it than that, so I don’t want to, in any way, shape or form want to like appear that I’m completely shallow. I’m partially shallow as a human being, the but the point is that when you start making these decisions, you have to say, what is driving this? The need to actually service someone and help them and create value, or is it this freaking ego-based need to just feel important.

Because so many people just do all this crap, because they want to look cool. If you’re trying to look cool, just be cool. If you want people to think you’re freaking cool, help them. Offer them something of service, communicated in to a way that where they get it. Use emotional language that engages them, and that emotional language has nothing to do with you most of the time. It has to do with what you can do for them. There’s these trite freaking clichés, what’s the customer’s favorite radio station, WIIFM, ‘what’s in it for me’, and as goofy and corny as that sounds, it’s actually true. People don’t give a shit about what’s going on with other people most of the time. And I’m not talking about like the celebrity gossip side; there’s a reason people read US magazine and People magazine and National Enquirer, because they’re fixated on living vicariously, but that’s completely different than trying to position something to sell. Reading People magazine is different than reading an advertisement and wanting to give someone money and go to the store and buy it or go online and purchase it, so really focus – everything you’re saying, Dean, I totally agree with. So anyway, I’ve said enough. I’m going to go back into my shallow space of being Joe Polish.

Dean: Ok, well, let’s keep the fun going. You know what, I’m going to do a shameless plug here because Cindy, here’s the very best thing you can do to break into a new market like that is go to GettingListings.Com and look at the video, I’ve got a video on there on how to get listings in today’s market and that whole program is specifically for breaking into any market that you want to dominate. So there you go. Here’s one, Joe. I want to talk a little bit about this, because I’m in this situation exactly myself here. So Patrick Dennehey asks, ‘How do I market a 44 person assisted living facility that focuses on dementia and Alzheimer’s in a competitive California market?’

And it’s interesting to me specifically, because I’ve mentioned before, but my mother is sort of in mid-stages of Alzheimer’s right now, and so I’m very aware of the stuff that’s going on here. And one of the things that jumped out at me immediately is a 44 person assisted living facility sounds like sort of a smaller, nice facility. And I think that the market for people that are going to need this facility is not a mystery. It’s not really that all of a sudden somebody’s going to need an assisted living facility for dementia and Alzheimer’s. It slowly kind of creeps up on you. It’s not a disease that all of a sudden you get it and then you need full-time care. There’s definitely a progression. So the people who are going to fill those 44 spots are out there now, probably for two or three or four years, maybe, even, before they’re ready for a facility like that.

And I think that what you do, what I would love to see, because as I said, I’m going through it myself – you ever see those books on, ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’ – it talks about every week of a pregnancy kind of thing, what to expect in the third to fifth week, and what to expect in things… It would be very valuable to have some consumer awareness guides that would be of use to people who have parents who are in this situation. Because that’s the reality, is that you’re not – your customer isn’t ultimately the person who has Alzheimer’s. They’re not going to be the decision maker in all of this. It’s going to be the loved ones, either the husband or the wife, of the children, or the caregivers of the person that has Alzheimer’s, and I think that if you’re prepared, knowing that there’s going to be a long period of time where you can sort of educate people – it’s funny, Joe, what we’re talking about – everything comes back to these eight profit activators.

You know, if you’re identifying your target market as people who are – even if you can go to the point where you are identifying somebody who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, because that’s when the biggest question marks come for the person who is now going to be the caregiver, so I imagine it would be the husband or wife, or the children, whose mother or father has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There’s so many questions that you have. There’s so much, that you kind of want to know what to expect. And even though with a disease like Alzheimer’s there’s no definite timeline, there’s definitely very similar phases that people go through, and the period of time from the time they’re diagnosed to the time where they’re going to need care, which is different from supervision, is potentially a multi-year thing. It could be two to three years before they ultimately get ready for an assisted living facility, and I think that if you can create a list, create, generate relationships with people who have just been diagnosed, and profit activator number three, educate and motivate them, that by providing information. If somebody were sending me, right now, a monthly or every other month newsletter with Alzheimer’s information and tips and stories or introducing me to a community of people, there’s so much opportunity for that that filling a 44 person facility, you could get to a point where you have a waiting list for people coming in there.

Joe: I completely agree. It’s building a list, there’s a long timeline, it’s really nurturing and educating people. And if you haven’t – his name’s Patrick, right?

Dean: Yes, right.

Joe: Yeah, so Patrick, if you haven’t listened to our episodes on education based marketing and stuff, I’d go back and listen to some of those, and that’s what I would put together. And if you need to, have someone interview you about all of the stuff that you do. I mean one way that everyone can do this, and this applies to everyone listening, there’s an expertise and knowledge that you have about what it is you’re selling and what it is you’re offering that other people do not. And if you simply think of all the questions that people ask you, or when you were going through your learning process, or any learning process, you’re trying to figure out how to buy something or invest in something or get involved in something, you start asking questions, or you start reading, looking for answers.

And so what you need, is you need questions, and you need answers, because people that out there looking for things to buy, have questions, and most of them are unspoken and unexpressed, and so the job of the marketer is to know what it is that they’re going to ask, and also know what it is that would be useful for them to know, but they don’t know how to ask. So like one of the things we talked about on education based marketing, I Love Marketing calls, is it’s all of the things that people don’t know, that they don’t know, that if you were to provide them with the answers to those, would be not only beneficial and helpful to them, but could also see that you are the go-to person when it comes to whatever it is you’re selling.

So in this particular case, just tell people. And you can have someone sit down and interview you, and you can do it on audio and then get it transcribed, and that can become the original script for a free recorded message, a sales letter, website copy, if you want to do it on video, if you think you can do it one take, then just have someone videotape you and just ask you questions and have a Q&A section online, or create a DVD, a consumer awareness DVD, that sort of stuff. That would be really beneficial. And I can’t not say this, Dean, there’s been a lot of – for people with – lots of brain conditions, Alzheimer’s, dementia, that have been helped through hyperbaric oxygen, which I recently started doing myself, because I have a tad bit of frontal lobe damage that I recently discovered when I did a brain scan through my friend and client, Dr. Daniel Amen, who has Amen Clinics around the country, and just putting that out there. That has nothing to do with marketing, but there’s been some miraculous things that have happened to people, and I’ve actually seen some great improvements with people in bad situations. With doing hyperbaric oxygen in a pressurized chamber. But anyway, that’s different from a consumer awareness guide. I think writing a consumer awareness guide in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber would perhaps be an interesting experience.

Dean: But you know, the interesting thing, is when you say it, like my immediate thought, like I always, as soon as I see a business model like this, like I see the structure of what works. I know the constraint of this is that he’s got a 44 person assisted living facility, so they’re going to have 44 – if you got 44 clients, your business is full, basically, right? But if you start thinking upstream, especially in a situation like this, where if you were to create a solution for the people who are not yet in that assisted living facility need, where if they were to do a day program, or to certify some caregivers who go into your home and do those kind of things, like to start thinking about what other things in this category could we do, that if you had a caregivercompanion type of squad, people who were trained and able to go out into the community and work with people who just need supervision and companionship in their own home until they’re ready to go into the assisted living facility, that you’re creating your own feeder system in a way. Almost like creating a thing that – those are the people who are going to be the ones who fill those 44 spots, and what do they need now? And that’s kind of a great exercise for you, and one that we’ll talk more about in depth, at the, I Love Marketing conference, is really looking at the totality of the category that you are in.

And what other needs do people have before they consume your product or service, and after they consume your product and service. If you just kind of expanded out the rings around that, where are those opportunities? Even if it were doing special education things that you could partner with other companies who are already doing the companion care. There’s a big opportunity for that in every category. And this is one of those situations where we’re talking about apples, and they need to really think this through of how does that apply to their oranges, you know?

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And I will say, and this will be a plug for the I Love Marketing conference or the videos. We are giving out, as part of that event, a freaking manual that is specific templates and examples of all of the eight profit activators, different things you do before, during, and after – successful sales copy, consumer guides, various marketing tools that people can basically take and swipe and use. And I think just having that manual alone is worth many, many times the investment of coming to the conference, because we’re assembling literally marketing strategies and promotions that have brought in millions of dollars.

And we’re giving that to everybody, so it’s something that every marketer should have in their arsenal, and so if you’re not able to make the event live, which I highly recommend, if you’ve got any – if you just listen to this, because it’s going to be so close to the time we actually release this episode, if you can make it live, get registered, you can call the office, if you have any questions, at 480-858-0008, if anyone ever needs the phone number to my office, not to talk to me, because I’m expensive, so I don’t take like unsolicited calls and say get on the phone with Joe; I’m hardly ever actually in my office, but I do have a great staff, and that’s always a JoePolish.com where the phone number and all that sort of stuff. But come to the conference or watch it live via webcast or get a copy of the videos, not only so you can see all of the training that where me and Dean go really deep on all of this, but getting ahold of replicable marketing campaigns, education based marketing stuff, all the stuff that you’re going to need for before, during and after. So I just wanted to say that, just in the slight possibility that someone wants to give us some money.

Dean: How are we doing on time?

Joe: We’re almost wrapped up. If you want to do a real quick one. If not, we can just sing Kum Ba Yah, and call it a wrap.

Dean: Ok. Well, let’s do that. Let’s wrap up. And I think, what’s the common thread here that we’ve been talking about? We’ve been looking at these, and I think and hope that what people sense when we’re answering these questions is getting a view of how we actually think about these questions. Like our initial thought process is always to see what is the profit activator that this is going to address? I mean, when you really look at it, everything we’ve talked about today was really the before unit stuff, but every one of those situations was answered by applying and thinking about one of the profit activators.

Whether it was from selecting their single target market, compelling them to call you, educating and motivating them to meet you, those things in the before unit, when you really start looking at them, are – that’s the way that we think about these things. And having all these different sorts of approaches to things really helps you identify maybe what the best strategy is for your situation. And I think that’s really – you mentioned about the apples and oranges, and I think that’s really where our advantage comes, is because you and I’ve been exposed to so many different applications of these, not just in one business, that we can see definitely how something applies from another business to whatever business we’re talking about.

Joe: Yeah. And I have done some consulting for some of the most bizarre things, and seen some of the most bizarre things under the sun. I even remember meeting with a group of people that do cryonics, where they basically suspend people in liquid nitrogen to bring them back to life in a future, and my advice to them was, you know, there are so many social ramifications about what you guys are doing, celebrity endorsement. That’s sort – that’s one marketing method there. But yeah, me and Dean have seen so many different businesses from just normal ones, to bizarre and – but you know, all businesses have a before, during, and after unit. They have to emotionally engage people in a bigger result, and all of this works. It does work.

So put it to use, like you would see us going through questions. If you can start up an I Love Marketing meet up group, and play the role where you’re actually advising people; it will enhance and improve and accelerate your own learning and understanding and application in direct response. And put yourself in the role. If you’ve listened up to this point to even five of the, I Love Marketing episodes, and if you’re one of those people that have listened to every one of them, you probably understand more about marketing than 99.99% of every business owner on the planet. And I’m not kidding. Because you know, and if you really want to understand, it has taken me and Dean 15 years each, plus, of our lives, more than that actually, it’s more like 20 years each. And we both have spent a couple million dollars out of our pockets on our marketing education. And countless more through testing and various other things in order to have the insights that we have. And that doesn’t make us special, or better than anyone; it just makes us understanding marketing in a particular area here…

Dean: It kind of does.

Joe: Well, no of course. I just didn’t want to say that, because it sounds braggish and stuff. But who would I ever be to ever brag about something? So – no, so that is the deal. And you know what, Dean, I do want you to put up that episode of one of my Genius Network interviews as a bonus thing, and I’d like some comments on that.

Dean: Absolutely.

Joe: Yeah, and if people think that’s like too weird and they won’t like it, then I won’t put up an I Love Marketing interview with someone that’s in the quote-unquote ‘spiritual world’. But for the most part, that’s it, man. So Dean, by the time this episode is put up, I will probably be on the last leg of being a Burning Man in the middle of the desert, which will be a total freak show, and if anyone doesn’t know what Burning Man is, don’t worry about it. You don’t need to know.

Dean: Don’t worry about it. You’re probably better off not knowing.

Joe: Exactly. And that’s it. So we’ll talk to everyone on the next episode, and we’ll see many of you at our I Love Marketing conference on September 21st and 22nd, and we’re doing a special day on the 23rd for my clients and for Dean’s clients, so if you’re coming to I Love Marketing conference, you are welcome to stay for the third day because we’re really nice guys, just realize those will be very niche specific for my clients and Dean’s clients, but if you’re coming to the event, you’re welcome to stay, but the main two days are the 21st and 22nd of September in Phoenix, and if you do want to get registered for that, go to ilovemarketing.com, click on the button, do that, and if you have not yet downloaded Breakthrough DNA, download it, and if you have an iPad, freaking download it and put it on your iPad so you can always reference back to it, because that’s how you run and build a successful business. Adios.

Dean: Awesome. means, are done following a before-during and after, as Dean Jackson so eloquently invented. And using the AProfit activators that we’re always referring to and talking about. So. On today’s episode, we’re going to – we’ve been requested, by people we’ve spoken with to do some more Q and A, to answer some questions, and some of our listeners find it extremely valuable to hear questions of other people, have their own questions answered, and kind of hear how we would suggest and give advice in those areas, because for the most part it applies to pretty much anyone, so that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re just going to play – what, like question roulette or whatever, Dean?

Dean: Question roulette. Exactly. And I was just thinking, this is our – this is episode 34 today. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Joe: I Love Marketing has grown up. And all of the people out there that have started I Love Marketing meet up groups, we want to, first off, congratulate you for doing that, because in the infancy stage, it’s great that you’re doing that. So the early adopters out there that are just taking on an I Love Marketing meet up group with really just very little coaching from us, other than episodes we’ve done prior to this one, that if you haven’t listened to them, please go back and listen to the past episodes of I Love Marketing. If you’re brand new to I Love Marketing go and listen to some of our past episodes, watch some of the videos that we’ve put up, that sort of stuff. We are doing out I Love Marketing event very soon here. It’s going to happen in a couple of weeks in the time that we’re doing, and so we’re going to see a lot of you live, in person, in Phoenix, which we’re totally looking forward to.

Some of you are going to watch it live via webcast. If you’re listening to this on iTunes, go to the I Love Marketing dot-com website (ilovemarketing.com) and there’s information about our event. You can watch it live via webcast, or you can come in person. We recommend in person if you can make it, because you have the community there. But if you simply cannot do it live, in person, then do it live, webcast, or reserve a set of the videos, because we are going to create a product. And that’s going to be a lot of the curriculum, the people that do I Love Marketing meet up groups, and it’s a blueprint that you’re going to run your whole entire business off of, and it’s going to be really, really powerful.

So for everyone that started an I Love Marketing meet up group, continue to give us feedback and comments posted on the site, or just let us know, and we’ll continue to go deeper with the meet up groups, and we will very soon, we’re going to have a place on ilovemarketing.com where we’re going to have a listing of people that have I Love Marketing meet up groups, so that those of you out there that want to go and really get face to face with people that are into marketing like we are, and like you are, we’ll do our best to have that sort of directory, which will have to be updated on a regular basis, but we’re going to have it set up. You can’t expect a lot from us, it’s not like we’re charging you for any of this stuff, so anyway… I have to keep saying that, because there’s always a person out there that gets all pissed when I say that.

Dean: Oh, that’s funny. But it’s true, isn’t it?

Joe: It is. It is true. We are charging for our event, because – if you’ve never done an event before, they cost like – we’re putting over a hundred grand into putting this thing on, so we have to actually charge for it, so that it makes sense for us to get a gigantic hotel, and bring in Dan Kennedy on a private plane, all that stuff costs money, so we would let the whole world come for free, but we are marketers. And we want you to actually charge for your products and services too, however, we give first before we expect to get, and for the most part, we spend our time giving, not trying to get people to buy stuff. So, having said that, we’re going to answer some questions. Listen as if it applies to you, and the best way, whenever we do Q&A, is if you sell apples, and we’re talking about someone selling oranges, don’t think it doesn’t apply to you, because you sell… it’s kind of the same thing. So most of the questions that we’ll answer have applicability to you, even if you think it doesn’t. So listen from that frame of mind, and I think you’ll get the most out of our Q&A roulette here. And Dean, I’ll let you pick the…

Dean: The very best skill is connective thinking. Is being a connective thinker, where you can see how somebody else applies something and see the structure of it, and how it actually – how it works and how it could apply to you.

Joe: Exactly. Exactly what I was trying to say.

Dean: Let’s try and go through as many of these questions as we can then, because we totally ran out of time on the live call, but we got lots more questions, so I think it’ll be good to get as many as we can. So here’s one, this one’s from Danny Barrerra, he asks, ‘If you were starting a business in this economy, on a low budget, what media would you recommend marketing on? Internet, direct mail? Thanks, Daniel.’ What’s your thought on that right away? What jumps out at you?

Joe: Well, I guess I will say when I first started my carpet cleaning company, way back in the late – 1989, early 1990, we were in a recession at that time, probably not in the same way it is today, but there was definitely the same sort of mindset. What’s going on this economy? And it doesn’t matter if it’s a good economy or bad economy, people respond to what it is they want, what it is they need, emotionally. So that’s one thing. There are certain things that change, and there are fundamentals that never change. Also, one of the worst mindsets though, is a depression sort of economy.

So before we talk about what media we’d recommend, or at least what I’m going to recommend. Dean will say whatever Dean says. Before, I would say, what’s the message, what’s the media, you really kind of need to come at this – I interviewed a guy on Genius Network where he said, people are saying, when’s the recession going to be over. And he says, when are you going to be over the recession? If this is the way it is, you play with the cards that you are dealt, and you try to create the best hand that you can, to give yourself the best advantage. So before I kind of go into stuff, Dean, my whole thing about the economy is quit shooting yourself in the foot before you even start by thinking, oh my God, this economy, and how are we going to overcome it, because when you go into the outside world, you can very easily get sucked into negativity.

Into the mindset, and I’m not talking about denying that there’s challenges for lots of people, and lots of people are broke and lots of people are out of work, and lots of things that people would buy up when they had more expendable revenue, that they don’t do it the same way anymore. I’m not saying that, I’m just pointing out that you’re not – you want to come from a position of power and do the very best that you can. And you know, I’m running a very successful business right now in the middle of a quote-unquote ‘bad economy’, and we have lots of clients, thousands, that are kicking ass and taking names, and there’s other people that are struggling, and so what are the ones that are kicking ass and taking names doing that the others aren’t? They’re taking action. They’re taking action, they’re not letting themselves get immobilized.

Dean: With a positive expectation. I mean, so much of it is self defeating in a lot of ways. If you’re taking action, if your belief is that it’s a bad economy and people aren’t buying, and you know – that’s the reality that you’re going to create. And so much – and I totally get how easy it is to buy into that. Because it’s all over the media, I mean, anywhere you go, it’s always talk about how bad the economy is, and how bad the job situation is, and if you really look at the reality of it, even if we’re at ninepoint something per cent unemployment, what – the inverse of that is 90-plus per cent of people have jobs. And you go – all it really takes is one trip to the mall or Wal- Mart or anywhere, and what you’re surrounded by are hordes of people, spending every dollar they make. That’s what people do; they spend every dollar they make on things that they want and they need, and that’s not going to change really.

Joe: Yeah. On thing, I think I’ve talked about this before, but when I talk to my professional cleaners and restorers, I talk about how my father was a locksmith, and how you couldn’t drive down a neighborhood, and know who was going to get in a fight with their husband or their wife and lock that person out of the house that night, or who was going to get drunk and lose their keys, and lock their keys out of their car, and who’s going to break some padlock or something – you couldn’t really just drive through neighborhoods and know. It was one of those sort of emergency sort of businesses, that you’re kind of at the beck and call.

And I said, for like a carpet cleaning business, you can drive through neighborhoods, and you can say, well, these are the sort of homes that I would like to service, and there’s all different variations of that, and all types of different businesses, even if you’re not in a service business. Even if you’re a graphic designer, even if you’re a website developer. There’s all variations of that, but the point is there’s people out there like you said. You know, say the unemployment rate was 25%, there’s still three out of four people have a job, and those people live in homes, and those people have computers, and there’s access to those people, and so the real question to Daniel, is we have no earthly idea what you’re selling, so for us to say you should use internet or direct mail would be foolish on our part, because we don’t even know what you’re selling.

So we can only speak in generalities, about what media you’d recommend. What I would say though, is what I would tell my cleaners, is if you’re driving through a neighborhood, I think of these people as they all have money that belongs to me, and I need to make a withdrawal out of their bank account, and that withdrawal comes in the form of a sales message. It could be a direct mail letter, it could be a postcard, it could be free recorded message, it could be a TV or radio ad, it could be a connection on Facebook fan page, they could be in a Google+ circle, it could be a variety of different ways, linked in, whatever, that you would interact and communicate with some of those people, but that’s what you do. You first off, who are they? Who are your clients, customers, patients, prospects, who are they, what do they read, where do they lurk, where do they go?

Like I live in Arizona, and if I want to say, well, what’s the best way to find a scorpion, it’s probably not in Chicago when it’s freezing. It’s probably in Arizona where it’s really hot, and it’s going to be underneath some rocks and stuff, and they sell these things at like Walgreens, and like different – Wal-Mart, where they’re like these scorpion flashlights, that are blacklight flashlights, and you go and at night, you put them on, and scorpions are like fluorescent, they glow, like a glow stick when you have…

Dean: Really?

Joe: Oh, yeah. It’s bizarre. And I could walk out in my backyard, with one of these scorpion flashlights, and you can find scorpions, in some cases, all over the place. It freaks you out, right? But no one would even see these things if you weren’t there. But your marketing needs to operate kind of like that scorpion blacklight, that just makes them shine, but you got to know where they’re at. You’ve got to be fishing with bait that the fish want in the lake or the ocean or the river that the fish are at. So before we say, what’s the hook, what’s the bait, what’s the pole, well, what are the fish, and where are they at? And if you know where they’re at, what do they respond to? And that’s where really understanding the mindset of your customer or your client, and even in the middle of the recession, the fish don’t know the difference. They still want to eat.

And I don’t mean to demean prospects or customers and call them fish, I’m just saying what you said, Dean, you go out to any mall, people are buying shit. And what are they buying, why are they buying it, where are they at, so there’s just – the point is, there’s plenty of opportunity. We’re nowhere in a recession to where someone is ever going to come to me and say, I can’t figure out how to make it work. Are some businesses going to need certain tweaks? Yeah, absolutely. But that…

Dean: Yeah, but in any economy, there’s always one element of almost every market that’s thriving. It was funny because Tony Robbins asked me that same thing, we were recording a DVD, and he was saying, how do people do and… what do you say to people who are starting a business in the bad economy, and I said to him, that it reminds me of when I was playing tennis, we had a thought that every shot makes somebody happy, and if you think about that you’re playing tennis, every shot makes somebody happy. It’s either if you hit the ball out of bounds, your opponent is going to be happy because the ball went out of bounds. If it goes in, you’re going to be happy because it went in.

And he’s not going to be happy. But the umpire, the person observing the event, doesn’t care one way of the other, whether the ball is in or out. He’s just observing it at seeing it like that. So the translation of that into the economy is if there’s some element of the economy that’s not good, there’s always some element of that market that somebody is happy. Let’s look at the real estate market right now, is probably the absolute worst affected element of the economy right now. That’s the driver of the whole thing. That’s what got us in the mess, it’s the thing that’s probably in the worst shape. And if you look at it, it’s true that people who are unhappy in this market, are people who bought their homes in 2005 or 2006 when the market was at its peak, and their house is worth less now than they actually owe on it. Those people are in a bad way. That’s the part of the market that really is hurting.

The part of the market that really is thriving right now, is that it’s an incredible opportunity for first time buyers, for people who didn’t buy a home in 2005 and 2006, because they now can get the lowest interest rates in almost in history, they’ve got a tremendous selection of homes to choose from, there’s all kind of bank owned homes that are on the market. Those people are happy. People who bought their homes ten years ago, and want to buy a bigger house now have a great opportunity, because houses that were selling for a lot of money in 2006 are selling for much less money now. And the spread between the lower price home and the bigger home is a great opportunity. It’s an incredible opportunity for investors right now. Our – Dean Grassiosi, we were just talking about him, and he just had this incredible launch of his rock-bottom blueprint, broke all kinds of records for his business, because people see that investing in real estate is a big opportunity right now. So I think you have to kind of, like you said, Joe, shine that blacklight on your market, and think, what are the elements of the market of that are really thriving right now? People spill wine on their carpets in any economy, right?

Joe: Yeah. Totally. And you know, like the scorpions are always out in the backyard at certain times of the year, and all around certain neighborhoods in Arizona, in Phoenix, because they’re in pockets. It’s really weird how scorpions are. But they’re not everywhere. They’re not in every neighborhood. Other neighborhoods… I’ve talked a lot – even pest control people, they can’t even explain it half the time, like this is weird, so they just pop up in colonies…

Dean: Are they in your backyard?

Joe: Yes.

Dean: I got to see that sometime. I might come out there.

Joe: Yeah, I’ll show you. It’ll be pretty fun. But the point, here’s my point. They’re always out there, but if you don’t have the light, you don’t know, you can’t see them. Especially at night. You just can’t. And the same thing with the marketing. If you don’t have the DNA, if you don’t have our Breakthrough DNA report, first off, download it from ilovemarketing.com and read the darn thing. And those are the things that you do in order to generate business. And part of the I Love Marketing calls are always to introduce whatever strategies and methods, talk it through, but where a lot of these are fundamentals. There’s before, what do you before a sale to get business? What do you do during the sale, and what do you do after the sale? Those things are never going to change. Five hundred years from now, if the planet hasn’t self imploded by then, it’s going to be the same – I just wanted to throw a little doomsday stuff in there – because some people think it’s going to be next year, right?

Dean: Next year, 2012. But it’ll be after our second annual I Love Marketing conference. Because it’s not until December.

Joe: Yeah, we’ll schedule our event to make sure that we can do an I Love Marketing conference, because if the planet evaporates, you’re going to need marketing skills. Much more… I mean, they can read Neil Strauss’s book, Emergency, and get all paranoid or whatever, but the point is, that’s the deal. And so they’re always out there. You just need to have the skills, and the light to find it. And sometimes it’s as simple as having the right tool. And so think of all these marketing tools as – all these marketing strategies as tools. What tools do you need on your toolbelt that you use every day, what do you need in your toolbox that you’re going to use frequently, and what are the special need tools that you’re going to have in your toolshed? Because all of these are a variety of marketing tools. So to answer Daniel’s question, and then you can say any final thing on this, Dean, and then we’ll move on. I kind of wanted to go into that, because I wanted to create a sort of a framework for people to think about it. If you were starting a business in this economy on a low budget, what media would you recommend on internet or direct mail? I would rely on both, but the first question you really need to ask yourself is what are you selling, who are you selling it to, where are they, and what do they respond to?

And if you don’t know that, then you need to start testing a few things. You need to start communicating them, and if you already are in business, and you sold something, I don’t know if you’re… Because we have no information to go on here, then what have the current people that have come into your funnel, how did they get there? And if they came in there in a good way, just ramp up and continue to replicate and duplicate what it is you’re doing. Because you don’t need a hundred tools in your toolbox. Sometimes you just need one or two that work really well. And I know plenty of businesses that don’t even need to have a website that make plenty of money doing just direct mail, and just talking to people. I mean, plenty of my carpet cleaners – many of my carpet cleaners have websites, because they just want to appease all of their friends and people that keep convincing them that you’re never going to be successful without a website. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a website, I think everyone should, but the point is that you really got to just look at what do the fish bite on, you don’t need an iPad in order to be a successful fisherman. You just don’t.

Dean: That’s true.

Joe: Someone will create an app that will send out a signal… I have this freaking app that I can’t wait to test on Necker Island, which we had a trip tentatively scheduled in March until unfortunately Richard Branson’s home just burned down, which is a bummer, because I’ve stayed in that home, like 20 times. And that’s where we have all of our events and everything, the home that burned down, and so it’s so sad to see that incredible home and the history behind that. But he’s going to rebuild it, because he’s Richard Branson and all that. But you know, there’s an app that actually, supposedly wards off mosquitos, and when I go to Necker Island, I get freaking attacked by mosquitos. They love me. Even if I douse myself in mosquito repellent, these bastards still – they bite me.

And it’s probably because I deserve it for all those mischievous things that I’ve done in my life, but the point is, there’s an app that may work for that. I’m willing to test it and see if it works for me. But the point is, until that time comes, there’s plenty of things out there in the middle of a recession that work, but the only way you’re going to do that is go out and do it, because you’ll accomplish more through movement than you ever will through meditation, and we’ve beat on that horse a lot during – but it is, that is truth as I know it. That’s what I’ve got to say.

Dean: Well, and you know, part of it, the reality of that question is really probably found in the personal economy of saying, how can I do it with, A) with a low budget, that I don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing, and I think that a really good question to answer is what kind of things could you do on a low budget, and I think what we’ve just been talking about, by identifying the right target market, if you really shine that blacklight on your market and find just the element of the market that is actually moving right now or that’s actually – where there is, where there’s business being done, and don’t spend anything, any time, effort, energy, on anything but attracting that specific market. Like this is were really narrowing your focus, selecting that single target market, just like we talk about in Profit Activator Number One, is the most useful thing.

Because you’re going to focus all of your attention on attracting that market. We’ve got people… I just did an interview with a realtor up in Portland who was using our bank owned buyer finding program. And he had generated, from a standing start, in one calendar year, last year, over a 160 thousand dollars from focusing on one segment of the market, people who want to buy bank owned homes. So I think if you’re – whatever business you’re in, there’s some element of that market that’s actually thriving and focusing your attention only on that part is probably the best thing that you could do. Ok, let’s go onto another question, Joe.

Joe: That’s what I’m trying to say.

Dean: This will fit right into something… I think you’ll have a lot to say about this one. So this is from Dwight, who says, ‘Joe, I recently launched a monthly interview program patterned off the Genius Network model. Thus far, my list members have said they think it’s a great idea, but no one is subscribing yet. Two questions for you; one, what do I have to show or offer my list members to persuade them to subscribe, and two, do you keep an ear out for what will eventually become a hot topic while you’re conducting the interview, or is that done afterwards?’

Joe: Ok, a hot tip while you’re conducting the interview – well, this will be an easy question to answer. It probably won’t be answered in the way that Dwight asked it. For anyone out there that’s thinking of producing information and sharing, we highly recommend that, because as you hear me and Dean talk about, education based marketing is one of the ways, one of the best ways for your clients to know, like, and trust you when you just put out stuff. And interviews are just one format, in order to create content. The I Love Marketing episodes, sometimes they’re interviews, sometimes they’re us just actually teaching stuff, and sometimes they’re us doing Q&A, so what I would do look at what we’re doing with I Love Marketing and really consider putting the information out there for free.

Genius Network, geniusnetwork.com, I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time trying to get a lot of new subscribers as a front end. It’s typically a back end, sort of subscription based thing that people have already bought one of my marketing kits in the cleaning industry, have bought my <inaudible> *00:26:17 program, have attended one of my seminars, have purchased Six Strategy Secrets, a variety of different, other things that I have sold. And so it’s usually like an add on to an already existing service. Interviews as a standalone are difficult to sell. You can get a lot of great interviews online for free. And so unless you have a really unique subject matter, which people will spend a lot of money for because they really want what it is you’re offering, and it really is unique, just doing interviews on generic things like fitness or relationships or how to make money or whatever, those are like the big categories, they’re hard to sell just in interviews.

So I would first off, what – to go back to Dwight’s question, thus far my list members have said they think it’s a great idea, but no one’s subscribing yet, well, I don’t know what the content is, Dwight, that you’re sharing, and maybe you just need a more powerful pitch. Maybe if you’ve done some interviews and you do a couple and one of the ways that I started Genius Network, was I interviewed a guy, this is true, I interviewed a guy on sales and persuasion, on month when I was behind on writing my Piranha Marketing letter. I used to write a monthly newsletter. I don’t know why I don’t do this anymore. See this is all – I’ll just be transparent here. I had a gigantic, rabid following when I would do a monthly written newsletter, and I still do stuff similar to that, but I don’t publish it like I used to, and I was behind. I didn’t get it written, and I was like, shit, man, I need to crank something out.

So I did an hour, a little over an hour interview on sales and persuasion, and sent an audio cassette tape out to my list and said, this month’s newsletter is this interview with this guy, and my list listened to it, and they loved it, and they were like, God, can we get more of these things? And so I started out, and I charged $18.53, that’s what I started out – it was called the Joe Polish Superstar Audio Tape of the Month Series, and I came up with $18.53 after talking to Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy, say, what do you guys think I should charge for this? And they’re like, come up with some random number that doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.

And so I did, and that’s how we built it, and that’s how we started it. And so in as far as – so my advice is just, it really depends on the content, and why don’t you put it out to your list and see what they respond to, but if you’re able – if you’ve got another back end product, put it out there for free. Just put it out there for free and model what we’re doing with I Love Marketing. We’ve got thousands of listeners to I Love Marketing. We now have an event that we’re doing, a handful of people will probably end up coming into my different business offerings, and Dean Jackson’s different business offerings that he offers, but for the most part, we’re just putting good information out to the world because we feel it’ll come back to us tenfold. And it’s fun. So don’t do it if you don’t – if it’s not enjoyable.

Dean: Well, there’s never been a better time to provide information like this. I mean, when you look at what we’re talking about, what we’ve been doing right now, would have been impossible when you first started doing the Genius Network.

Joe: Oh, yeah, there was no internet. I had to mail…

Dean: The only way for somebody to get an audio recording was for you to send them a cassette tape with it. They couldn’t go online and just listen or download right into their phone or their iPod, I mean, there’s never been a better time for that, and there’s so much of that available now. I really think it really is the perfect way to build a community, to build an audience, build a fan base, let’s call it.

Joe: Exactly. And I used to even send out cassette Walkmans with headphones with little Post-It notes that says, put the headphones on and press play. And then there would be a pitch as to why they should listen to, they should subscribe to my interview series, and then it would be like, you’re about to hear a sampling of the best interviews I’ve done, and you can get these every month in the mail, and that was like a theatrical pitch to people that were already existing clients, and I knew I could bump them into it, and it cost me probably about 20 bucks to do that mailing with a very cheap Walkman, this is before iPods and stuff, but – you know, it’s funny, I’m going to switch phones, because – can you still hear me, Dean?

Dean: I can.

Joe: Yeah, I’m going to switch phones here. And here’s another thing with doing interview series. Maybe I’ll sound instantly better on this one, and they’ll be like, dammit, you cheated us, half this call. But you got to be ready to tap dance too, if you’re going to do live things like I Love Marketing calls, because you never know what Dean’s going to do to try and mess with you. But no, I had to actually switch phones because it started beeping, saying ‘Low Battery’ – I’m like, huh? All right, so where was I? So I was going to respond to his next part of it; do you keep an ear out for what will eventually become a hot tip while you’re conducting the interview, or is that done afterwards?

And so in my interview series, I summarize the very best ideas that come out of the interviews that I do, and basically I get the interviews transcribed, I have a couple of people in my office that listen to my interviews as soon as I’m done with them, and I get their perspectives on what they think of the hot tips, and I also have my transcriber, who’s been doing my transcriptions on stuff for years, and she’s super awesome, and she can pull out the best ideas also. But when we have the transcriptions edited and looked at, we kind of pull them out. And it’s sort of a collaborative effort. But I don’t think there’s any right or wrong way to do it. It’s just what – if you hear someone say something really profound, I would just write it down and say, yeah, that’s a pretty good idea.

The same way that if you read a book and you highlight it, I tend to look at interviews that same sort of way. And you know, I do some really interesting interviews that – Dean, one of the things – sometimes they may have absolutely nothing to do with say, I Love Marketing, like I recently interviewed a gal that wrote a book called Spirit Junkie, and she’s an ex-drug addict, and now has built – Gabrielle Bernstein – and I did an interview with her a couple days ago, and it’s really about her take on spirituality and a course in miracles, and we talk about 12 step programs and stuff, and it has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, except in the very end of the interview, we talk about it, and one of the things I’d love to have you do is kind of put it out there as a bonus to all the I Love Marketing subscribers and listen to it, and if they like it, then great.

And if it’s like too weird for people, then don’t. But I do interviews because it covers a lot varieties of different topics from fitness to working out to addiction, which I’ve struggled with in my life, which we usually don’t talk about much in I Love Marketing but I talk about it on Genius Network, so I think, as it relates to Dwight, sometimes if you’re doing interviews, sometimes you can have a very expansive sort of thing, kind of like a talk show, where there’s a variety of different subjects, or you can do things that are very specifically targeted for your niche, your subject matter, your product or your service, and so it really – how you do things kind of depends on how you set it up. But any way you can do it to just put it out there for free, and that’ll work to feed your funnel, I think that’s a good model. And you can take what we’re doing with I Love Marketing and just look at what we’re doing. There you go.

Dean: Here’s another question. This one’s from Cindy Evans. She says, ‘Hi, Joe. I’ve been a realtor for many years now, but I’ve moved into a new market area, and I’m finding getting known and breaking into this market extremely difficult to say the least. There are many large teams that myself and business partner are up against, and for the first time in my career, I’m wondering if I can overcome this. I’m not naïve and I know there’s no quick fix, but maybe you can shed some light.

Joe: Well, I’ll let you respond to that one.

Dean: I was just going to say, I know a little bit about this. I think I can help.

Joe: It’s funny, a real estate question to me. You know, you’re the man.

Dean: It is funny. I love it. So here’s the thing. That’s a lot of the stuff that people deal with when they say, moving into a new market area, and I’m finding getting known and breaking into this market extremely difficult. And what’s inherent in that is that moving from a market where maybe she was more known, that because she had been in the marketplace for a while and moving into a new market, the model seems to think, I’ve got to get known. I’ve got to get my name out there. And it’s a classing thing that we see, in real estate especially, because people are so used to this name recognition type of marketing, where they’re thinking, if I’m top of mind, then people will call me, so what can I do to get my name out there.

So I always focus on reframing that for people first. Because it’s never about getting your name out there, especially in a situation where you’re dealing with something that most people are not going to need, in the next 12 months. You mentioned, Joe, driving around neighborhoods, and you can’t tell who’s going to break their key off in their lock, or who’s going to get broken into, or move or whatever, to need to get their house rekeyed. The same thing with real estate. And so the important thing is that you don’t need to be known to everybody. What would be very valuable is if you were known to the people who were going to actually move in the next 12 months.

And so – I shared this with you, Joe, before. One of the things that we always did at the main events, at the big real estate seminars we did, was I would give people a choice. I would say, let’s imagine that this 500 person audience represents a 500 home subdivision, and in this room, we’ve got 500 people who own the 500 homes in whatever subdivision we’re trying to break into. And you’ve got a fundamental choice. If I were to say to you, I’m going to give you two minutes to come up here on stage, I’m going to let you introduce yourself, tell everybody all about you, and I’ll hand out 500 of your business cards to everybody in the audience and help you get your name out there. That would be choice number one.

Or, you could sit right there in your seat anonymously, and I’ll have somebody bring you an envelope, and in that envelope would be a piece of paper with the name, address, and telephone number, of the 50 people in this room who are going to sell their home in the next 12 months. Which would you choose? And it was very interesting, because when you present it like that, it becomes clearly obvious that ever person would choose to have the name, address and phone number of every person that’s going to sell in the next 12 months. And that’s how you break into a market where you’re not necessarily known. The advantage that you can have is that you can find out who the people who are going to be moving in the next 12 months are, by doing lead generation cards, rather than sending out a postcard that’s all about you, that would have your glamor shot and your logo and your slogan and you know, ‘Call Cindy, and start packing…’ All of those kind of things that you see real estate agents do, trying to shout louder than the person who’s already been shouting longer and louder in that marketplace. That’s where it feels like you’re in a difficult situation. Trying to break into that market.

But what you really want to do is go underneath the radar, go under the radar with this, and if you were to send out a postcard that offered people a free report on the – a free August 2011 report on River Oaks house prices, that’s going to appeal to the people who are going to be selling their house in the next six months, and when they respond to that, now you can start getting known to those people. So its kind of like a two step thing. You put your needs aside, you focus only on what your ideal prospect needs, and offer them something in a way – profit activator number two – is compelling them to call. So that they can identify themselves to you. And you do that, a few months in a row, and pretty soon, out of those 500 homes, you’ve got the list of the 50 or 60 people who are going to have a much higher probability of selling in the next six to 12 months. And you’re doing it in a real stealth way, that nobody’s even going to see it coming. That’s my favorite way to go in and take over a neighborhood from somebody who’s just been shouting their name longer and louder than anybody. You know?

Joe: Yeah, and you know what? When I was doing marketing a lot for when Bill Phillips owned EAS Sports Supplements, and was publishing Muscle Media magazine back in the late ’90s, he sold EAS in 1999 for 300 million dollars, and he would run image ads, that would create name recognition, and that did now work, in competitors magazines, because all of the people who were knocking him off and copying, he wanted them copying the ineffective marketing that he was doing so he could continue to make a ton of money with all the stealth marketing he was doing by doing underground direct mail and things that weren’t really on the radar.

And the problem with wanting to get your name out there and wanting to get well known, and we all, anyone that becomes a public figure, including myself, probably less with Dean, because Dean doesn’t have much of a big ego, I will say, and maybe this is far stretching to say this, I think it’s all ego based. And there’s a side that people want to be recognized, people want everyone to know their name, and so many marketing decisions that are the worst marketing, advertising and sales decisions, are the ones that stem from this need to be out there. And that is me saying, this is a guy who’s a gigantic name dropper, who links himself to famous people, who has this – probably self esteem issue that needs me to feel good about myself when I like connect with big players and stuff – there’s a lot more to it than that, so I don’t want to, in any way, shape or form want to like appear that I’m completely shallow. I’m partially shallow as a human being, the but the point is that when you start making these decisions, you have to say, what is driving this? The need to actually service someone and help them and create value, or is it this freaking ego based need to just feel important.

Because so many people just do all this crap, because they want to look cool. If you’re trying to look cool, just be cool. If you want people to think you’re freaking cool, help them. Offer them something of service, communicated in to a way that where they get it. Use emotional language that engages them, and that emotional language has nothing to do with you most of the time. It has to do with what you can do for them. There’s these trite freaking clichés, what’s the customer’s favorite radio station, WIIFM, ‘what’s in it for me’, and as goofy and corny as that sounds, it’s actually true. People don’t give a shit about what’s going on with other people most of the time. And I’m not talking about like the celebrity gossip side, there’s a reason people read US magazine and People magazine and National Enquirer, because they’re fixated on living vicariously, but that’s completely different than trying to position something to sell. Reading People magazine is different than reading an advertisement and wanting to give someone money and go to the store and buy it or go online and purchase it, so really focus – everything you’re saying, Dean, I totally agree with. So anyway, I’ve said enough. I’m going to go back into my shallow space of being Joe Polish.

Dean: Ok, well, let’s keep the fun going. You know what, I’m going to do a shameless plug here because Cindy, here’s the very best thing you can do to break into a new market like that is go to GettingListings.Com and look at the video, I’ve got a video on there on how to get listings in todays market and that whole program is specifically for breaking into any market that you want to dominate. So there you go. Here’s one, Joe. I want to talk a little bit about this, because I’m in this situation exactly myself here. So Patrick Dennehey asks, ‘How do I market a 44 person assisted living facility that focuses on dementia and Alzheimer’s in a competitive California market?’

And it’s interesting to me specifically, because I’ve mentioned before, but my mother is sort of in mid-stages of Alzheimer’s right now, and so I’m very aware of the stuff that’s going on here. And one of the things that jumped out at me immediately is a 44 person assisted living facility sounds like sort of a smaller, nice facility. And I think that the market for people that are going to need this facility is not a mystery. It’s not really that all of a sudden somebody’s going to need an assisted living facility for dementia and Alzheimer’s. It slowly kind of creeps up on you. It’s not a disease that all of a sudden you get it and then you need full time care. There’s definitely a progression. So the people who are going to fill those 44 spots are out there now, probably for two or three or four years, maybe, even, before they’re ready for a facility like that. And I think that what you do, what I would love to see, because as I said, I’m going through it myself – you ever see those books on, ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’ – it talks about every week of a pregnancy kind of thing, what to expect in the third to fifth week, and what to expect in things… It would be very valuable to have some consumer awareness guides that would be of use to people who have parents who are in this situation.

Because that’s the reality, is that you’re not – your customer isn’t ultimately the person who has Alzheimer’s. They’re not going to be the decision maker in all of this. It’s going to be the loved ones, either the husband or the wife, of the children, or the caregivers of the person that has Alzheimer’s, and I think that if you’re prepared, knowing that there’s going to be a long period of time where you can sort of educate people – it’s funny, Joe, what we’re talking about – everything comes back to these eight profit activators. You know, if you’re identifying your target market as people who are – even if you can go to the point where you are identifying somebody who has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, because that’s when the biggest question marks come for the person who is now going to be the caregiver, so I imagine it would be the husband or wife, or the children, whose mother or father has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There’s so many questions that you have. There’s so much, that you kind of want to know what to expect.

And even though with a disease like Alzheimer’s there’s no definite timeline, there’s definitely very similar phases that people go through, and the period of time from the time they’re diagnosed to the time where they’re going to need care, which is different from supervision, is potentially a multi-year thing. It could be two to three years before they ultimately get ready for an assisted living facility, and I think that if you can create a list, create, generate relationships with people who have just been diagnosed, and profit activator number three, educate and motivate them, that by providing information. If somebody were sending me, right now, a monthly or every other month newsletter with Alzheimer’s information and tips and stories or introducing me to a community of people, there’s so much opportunity for that that filling a 44 person facility, you could get to a point where you have a waiting list for people coming in there.

Joe: I completely agree. It’s building a list, there’s a long timeline, it’s really nurturing and educating people. And if you haven’t – his name’s Patrick, right?

Dean: Yes, right.

Joe: Yeah, so Patrick, if you haven’t listened to our episodes on education based marketing and stuff, I’d go back and listen to some of those, and that’s what I would put together. And if you need to, have someone interview you about all of the stuff that you do. I mean one way that everyone can do this, and this applies to everyone listening, there’s an expertise and knowledge that you have about what it is you’re selling and what it is you’re offering that other people do not. And if you simply think of all the questions that people ask you, or when you were going through your learning process, or any learning process, you’re trying to figure out how to buy something or invest in something or get involved in something, you start asking questions, or you start reading, looking for answers.

And so what you need, is you need questions, and you need answers, because people that out there looking for things to buy, have questions, and most of them are unspoken and unexpressed, and so the job of the marketer is to know what it is that they’re going to ask, and also know what it is that would be useful for them to know, but they don’t know how to ask. So like one of the things we talked about on education based marketing, I Love Marketing calls, is it’s all of the things that people don’t know, that they don’t know, that if you were to provide them with the answers to those, would be not only beneficial and helpful to them, but could also see that you are the go-to person when it comes to whatever it is you’re selling.

So in this particular case, just tell people. And you can have someone sit down and interview you, and you can do it on audio and then get it transcribed, and that can become the original script for a free recorded message, a sales letter, website copy, if you want to do it on video, if you think you can do it one take, then just have someone video tape you and just ask you questions and have a Q&A section online, or create a DVD, a consumer awareness DVD, that sort of stuff. That would be really beneficial. And I can’t not say this, Dean, there’s been a lot of – for people with – lots of brain conditions, Alzheimer’s, dementia, that have been helped through hyperbaric oxygen, which I recently started doing myself, because I have a tad bit of frontal lobe damage that I recently discovered when I did a brain scan through my friend and client, Dr. Daniel Amen, who has Amen Clinics around the country, and just putting that out there.

That has nothing to do with marketing, but there’s been some miraculous things that have happened to people, and I’ve actually seen some great improvements with people in bad situations. With doing hyperbaric oxygen in a pressurized chamber. But anyway, that’s different from a consumer awareness guide. I think writing a consumer awareness guide in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber would perhaps be an interesting experience.

Dean: But you know, the interesting thing, is when you say it, like my immediate thought, like I always, as soon as I see a business model like this, like I see the structure of what works. I know the constraint of this is that he’s got a 44 person assisted living facility, so they’re going to have 44 – if you got 44 clients, your business is full, basically, right? But if you start thinking upstream, especially in a situation like this, where if you were to create a solution for the people who are not yet in that assisted living facility need, where if they were to do a day program, or to certify some caregivers who go into your home and do those kind of things, like to start thinking about what other things in this category could we do, that if you had a caregivercompanion type of squad, people who were trained and able to go out into the community and work with people who just need supervision and companionship in their own home until they’re ready to go into the assisted living facility, that you’re creating your own feeder system in a way. Almost like creating a thing that – those are the people who are going to be the ones who fill those 44 spots, and what do they need now?

And that’s kind of a great exercise for you, and one that we’ll talk more about in depth, at the I Love Marketing conference, is really looking at the totality of the category that you are in. And what other needs do people have before they consume your product or service, and after they consume your product and service. If you just kind of expanded out the rings around that, where are those opportunities? Even if it were doing special education things that you could partner with other companies who are already doing the companion care. There’s a big opportunity for that in every category. And this is one of those situations where we’re talking about apples, and they need to really think this through of how does that apply to their oranges, you know?

Joe: Yeah, exactly. And I will say, and this will be a plug for the I Love Marketing conference or the videos. We are giving out, as part of that event, a freaking manual that is specific templates and examples of all of the eight profit activators, different things you do before, during, and after – successful sales copy, consumer guides, various marketing tools that people can basically take and swipe and use. And I think just having that manual alone is worth many, many times the investment of coming to the conference, because we’re assembling literally marketing strategies and promotions that have brought in millions of dollars.

And we’re giving that to everybody, so it’s something that every marketer should have in their arsenal, and so if you’re not able to make the event live, which I highly recommend, if you’ve got any – if you just listen to this, because it’s going to be so close to the time we actually release this episode, if you can make it live, get registered, you can call the office, if you have any questions, at 480-858-0008, if anyone ever needs the phone number to my office, not to talk to me, because I’m expensive, so I don’t take like unsolicited calls and say get on the phone with Joe; I’m hardly ever actually in my office, but I do have a great staff, and that’s always a JoePolish.com where the phone number and all that sort of stuff. But come to the conference or watch it live via webcast or get a copy of the videos, not only so you can see all of the training that where me and Dean go really deep on all of this, but getting ahold of replicable marketing campaigns, education based marketing stuff, all the stuff that you’re going to need for before, during and after. So I just wanted to say that, just in the slight possibility that someone wants to give us some money.

Dean: How are we doing on time?

Joe: We’re almost wrapped up. If you want to do a real quick one. If not, we can just sing Kum Ba Yah, and call it a wrap.

Dean: Ok. Well, lets do that. Let’s wrap up. And I think, what’s the common thread here that we’ve been talking about? We’ve been looking at these, and I think and hope that what people sense when we’re answering these questions is getting a view of how we actually think about these questions. Like our initial thought process is always to see what is the profit activator that this is going to address? I mean, when you really look at it, everything we’ve talked about today was really the before unit stuff, but every one of those situations was answered by applying and thinking about one of the profit activators.

Whether it was from selecting their single target market, compelling them to call you, educating and motivating them to meet you, those things in the before unit, when you really start looking at them, are – that’s the way that we think about these things. And having all these different sorts of approaches to things really helps you identify maybe what the best strategy is for your situation. And I think that’s really – you mentioned about the apples and oranges, and I think that’s really where our advantage comes, is because you and I’ve been exposed to so many different applications of these, not just in one business, that we can see definitely how something applies from another business to whatever business we’re talking about.

Joe: Yeah. And I have done some consulting for some of the most bizarre things, and seen some of the most bizarre things under the sun. I even remember meeting with a group of people that do cryonics, where they basically suspend people in liquid nitrogen to bring them back to life in a future, and my advice to them was, you know, there are so many social ramifications about what you guys are doing, celebrity endorsement. That’s sort – that’s one marketing method there.

But yeah, me and Dean have seen so many different businesses from just normal ones, to bizarre and – but you know, all businesses have a before, during, and after unit. They have to emotionally engage people in a bigger result, and all of this works. It does work. So put it to use, like you would see us going through questions. If you can start up an I Love Marketing meet up group, and play the role where you’re actually advising people, it will enhance and improve and accelerate your own learning and understanding and application in direct response. And put yourself in the role.

If you’ve listened up to this point to even five of the I Love Marketing episodes, and if you’re one of those people that have listened to every one of them, you probably understand more about marketing than 99.99% of every business owner on the planet. And I’m not kidding. Because you know, and if you really want to understand, it has taken me and Dean 15 years each, plus, of our lives, more than that actually, it’s more like 20 years each. And we both have spent a couple million dollars out of our pockets on our marketing education. And countless more through testing and various other things in order to have the insights that we have. And that doesn’t make us special, or better than anyone, it just makes us understanding marketing in a particular area here…

Dean: It kind of does.

Joe: Well, no of course. I just didn’t want to say that, because it sounds braggish and stuff. But who would I ever be to ever brag about something? So – no, so that is the deal. And you know what, Dean, I do want you to put up that episode of one of my Genius Network interviews as a bonus thing, and I’d like some comments on that.

Dean: Absolutely.

Joe: Yeah, and if people think that’s like too weird and they won’t like it, then I won’t put up an I Love Marketing interview with someone that’s in the quote-unquote ‘spiritual world’. But for the most part, that’s it, man. So Dean, by the time this episode is put up, I will probably be on the last leg of being a Burning Man in the middle of the desert, which will be a total freak show, and if anyone doesn’t know what Burning Man is, don’t worry about it. You don’t need to know.

Dean: Don’t worry about it. You’re probably better off not knowing.

Joe: Exactly. And that’s it. So we’ll talk to everyone on the next episode, and we’ll see many of you at our I Love Marketing conference on September 21st and 22nd, and we’re doing a special day on the 23rd for my clients and for Dean’s clients, so if you’re coming to I Love Marketing conference, you are welcome to stay for the third day because we’re really nice guys, just realize those will be very niche specific for my clients and Dean’s clients but if you’re coming to the event, you’re welcome to stay, but the main two days are the 21st and 22nd of September in Phoenix, and if you do want to get registered for that, go to ilovemarketing.com, click on the button, do that, and if you have not yet downloaded Breakthrough DNA, download it, and if you have an iPad, freaking download it and put it on your iPad so you can always reference back to it, because that’s how you run and build a successful business. Adios.

Dean: Awesome.

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