Episode 058: The one about knowing what to do

Dean: I’m Dean Jackson, he’s Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing podcast. Hey, everybody! It’s Dean Jackson.

Joe: And Joe Polish. That’s right.

Dean: The ever-wandering, traveling Joe Polish. Where in the world is Joe Polish today?

Joe: Well, I am in Los Angeles. I wonder if I should tell you my exact location.

Dean: Your second home.

Joe: I’m at the London Hotel in Hollywood, off of Sunset, and I got in yesterday. And it’s been a whirlwind since I got in here.

Dean: What are you doing? It’s so funny, because people say, “Where’s Joe?” I say, “I have no idea where Joe is. I cannot keep track.

Joe: Well, okay. We had Peter Diamandis speak at our 25K group like a little over a week ago, and blew everyone away. So, at the time that we’re recording this, and for people that listen to it later, in the future, this might be dated, but I think it’s all instructional. He gave a presentation on Singularity University, the XPrize Foundation, which he founded, and Abundance, which is his new book that came out literally less than a week ago. It’s hit New York Times. All of these marketers, some of the top people in the world, are literally promoting people buying the book. Not for any compensation, just simply they believe in the message, and they’re telling people about it. And all of these marketers are friends, like Eben Pagan and Frank Kern, and Jeff Walker, Tellman, Mike Cline is working his butt off, Jon Benson, who’s creating video sales letters. The list goes on and on and on.

So, Peter, of course, this is a whole new world for him, all these marketers, and he’s so incredibly grateful that we’ve got all these people that really believe in the message, that want to go out and promote it with no compensation and stuff. And, they’re all radical marketers, too. So, there’s a question of a lot of people aren’t used to this sort of marketing, it’s kind of like, “What the heck?” So, part of it, my whole thing, is getting as many people as possible to promote Peter’s book and tell people about it. For one, I think it’s a great book.

Secondly, his message is awesome. If you’ve ever seen the guy speak, if you’ve ever met him, he’s just a fantastic human being. He’s so smart. Dan Sullivan is selling Abundance books at Strategic Coach, and just lots of cool stuff. Peter, we have a guy named Steve Sims, who’s in the 25K Group, who has one of the highest-level concierge services in the world called The Blue Fish. I went, a few weeks ago, to Paul McCartney’s lifetime achievement dinner, because the Blue Fish can organize all kinds of interesting events and tickets for interesting events, and all kinds of stuff. So, I came out here originally to go to Elton John’s Oscar party, which is happening tonight. So, that’s why I’m here, and we’re squeezing in a podcast right before I go to this thing, which we’re going to head out of here at 2:30 today. But last night, Peter had this book signing party at Norman Lear’s beautiful home here in LA. He’s a producer that’s basically known for The Jefferson’s, Good Times, Maude.

Dean: Yeah, Archie Bunker. Wasn’t that him, too?

Joe: What’s that?

Dean: Was he All In The Family?

Joe: Yeah, All In The Family, Jefferson’s, Sanford & Sons, Good Times. Unbelievable house, and just amazing people there. There were some amazing entrepreneurs. Susan Sommers was there, Ashton Kutcher, and the singer Sarah Brightman, and just a whole slew of interesting people, a lot of incredible entrepreneurs. Tellman went up there with us, and it was great. So, we went to that, and then I decided I’m going to stay here all week. I’m going to go to Dr. Phil next Monday, for 2 episodes, for filming of that. I’m going to go to Peter’s Fox TV event later this week. I’m going to meet up and have dinner with Neil Strauss, our friend and author. So, I’m going to spend a bunch of time in LA.

Dean: Every time I’m out there with him, we go to Katsuya. Has he taken you there?

Joe: Is that the dark place?

Dean: It’s the sushi place. There are 2; there’s one in Hollywood, and there’s one in Studio City. And the one in Studio City’s the one that’s the very best sushi I’ve ever had in my mouth.

Joe: Well, there you go. I’m not sure where we’re going. But every time I’ve gone out to dinner with Neil, he really knows where to go for good places.

Dean: He really does.

Joe: That would be awesome. The point is I’m just doing genius networking. That’s what I’m doing. People always ask me what do I do. I go out, and I just try to have interesting, incredible experiences and events. There’s a price you pay for that sort of stuff. Lots of travel, really fast pace, coordinating a lot of stuff. Right in the middle of Peter’s book launch, where everyone’s devoting a tremendous amount of time to, with no compensation, just because they believe in something. The thing that’s really kind of cool, that I’m witnessing here, is that it’s neat to watch all of these people get behind a movement and to see how a movement starts, and things like that. Brendon Burchard has been texting me today, with suggestions on various things. David Bach is going to promote this.

Dean: From vacation, yeah.

Joe: There are just all of these people. It’s an interesting world. Like the characters in a Star Wars bar. That’s what all of these marketers and people, everyone has just incredible insight.

Dean: And they’re spread out all over the galaxy. Brendon’s on vacation, right now, sending pictures from vacation, I just got. But, he’s texting. It’s amazing how you can stay so connected.

Joe: And Brendon, of course, because he’s on vacation, is keeping himself from going online. He just knew that we had this thing going on, and he doesn’t want to interrupt his vacation. And, at the same time, he wants to contribute because he knows the importance of it. It’s really kind of cool. It was really sort of disruptive too, here, because I was actually supposed to have free days this entire week, so now I’ve rearranged my time off, vacation time, to later. Because one of the things I’m really sticking to this year is having at least 110 free days, where I’m away from any computers or electronics whatsoever, which is really difficult in this day. It was easier even 3 years ago, than it is now, because things get so more and more interconnected.

Dean: You know what’s so funny – and I think this is really good to talk about this because it is getting frantic paced. You have a far more frantic pace than I do, in terms of the travel and all of the different things. But being able to block off time for free days and being able to block off time to actually get stuff done in the midst of all of this, there’s an art to it. It’s funny that you talk about disconnecting and having no electronics, and stuff like that. On Wednesday’s, I play golf with a bunch of friends at my country club. For the first time in a long, long time, I told everybody I was going to play golf like it’s 1989. By that, I meant I didn’t have my cell phone with me, was completely disconnected, left the cell phone in my locker. It’s amazing what a difference that is, how we’ve become so connected to stuff. With the Smartphones, everybody’s got your iPhone, and you’re literally connected instantly to anybody. I can text you at any time, just like Brendon’s texting us and emailing pictures, or whatever. We’re connected all the time, and you don’t really realize how much you actually spend time – what our friend Ned Hallowell calls – screen-sucking. You’re just kind of looking at this screen. So, being able to disconnect for 110 days, that’s really something.

Joe: Yeah. And it’s challenging when something new like this gets thrust into the middle of it, because I literally had a week’s worth of free days that I’ve had to now say, “Okay, now I’m going to take maybe one this week, so we’ll figure that out.” So, part of it is figuring out what exact day that’s going to be, but I’m sort of juggling it. But it’s a good topic to talk about, because in a lot of surveys that are being done of entrepreneurs, and asking them, “What’s the biggest challenge you have from marketing or management, to hiring the right people, to cash flow, to a variety of stuff?” the biggest complaint, the biggest issue is overwhelm. Certainly, this inter-connected world is massively overwhelming.

I think we’re going to go through stages where we sort of figure it out. We’re living in a really interesting time. Even think about where the world was 100 years ago, versus where it is today. Its mind-boggling, if you think about it. Having spent so much time with Peter Diamandis on the phone, hanging out with him, literally in the last 2 weeks, if anyone has never seen his TED presentations, go to AbundanceTheBook.com and buy the book. Watch the interview that I did with him, which you can go ILoveMarketing.com and type in “Peter Diamandis” or type in “Abundance” in the search box and just watch that. If someone wants the transcript of it, we should have the transcript there.

Dean: The transcript’s up there.

Joe: Oh, is it? Okay.

Dean: It’s right with the video.

Joe: Okay. Good. Check that out. He’s even speaking at TED. What was kind of cool is we saw a preview of his TED talk last night, at Norman Lear’s house. He actually gave the talk he’s giving at TED this week, and it was phenomenal. One of the things he talks about, what you can do, there’s 3-billion new people that are going to come online, that have never had access, their voice is never heard in the way they’re going to be heard before, electronically, over the next few years, which is huge. He calls it the rising billion. There’s a stage, right now, where it’s like, “How do you even handle it all?” It’s Moore’s Law, multiplied. It’s an interesting age, because there’s so much cool stuff and, at the same time, there’s consequences of this massive insurgence of technology and new ways to figure it out.

So, there’s going to be a leveling out period that I think is going to last for a long time. I’m very optimistic about it. Part of it, though, is it goes back to what Ned Hallowell says. “You either manage modern life, or it will manage you.” I’d like to ask you about that, because you are one of the few people, like Dan Sullivan, that I know, that still does a pretty darn good job of being in the midst of a lot of busyness, that doesn’t seem to get caught up in it. Admittedly, I get way more caught up in this stuff than you do, and part of that is because of my personality. Part of that is because I’m just so insanely curious about a lot of things, and I like saying yes to stuff.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. The yes man. That’s a great book, by the way, too. The movie was good, but the book, I don’t know if you’ve ever read it, but the actual book, The Yes Man, that movie with Jim Carrey was based on, was a fantastic book. You definitely are that way, saying yes more to everything. Something that you said – and this is kind of an interesting thing, because, for a lot of years, 14 years, Joe Stumpf and I did big seminars all around the country, every single month. We did over 200 of them. It was going out and going into a new city, and constantly traveling. So, for 14 years, the longest period of time that I had at home was 4 weeks. Mostly, it was 3 weeks, and then off to do the next one. Occasionally, where we’d have those 5-week months where there’s an extra week kind of thing, we’d end up with 5 weeks between events, so I’d have a month in a row in one place.

When we stopped doing the Main Events, about 3 years ago now, that was a big shift in the way that my life worked, because you’re in this rhythm. I read this study about these crabs that they would take them out of the ocean, and they would put them in a tank that had a sloped bottom. And at tide times, when the tide where they were from was going out, they were scurrying up the hill just because they’re biorhythmically trained to be, at that time, trying to go uphill. And it was amazing, even though they’re in a perfectly still tank. I found that in Joe, and I’ve talked about this, too, that it took us – both of us – it took us about 6 or 8 months before that rhythm got out of your system, that you get into stillness. I’ve really grown to like that. And Joe, actually, it was funny because he was talking with somebody about it, and they were saying that what he was going through is a completely new shift. For even years before I was doing all of these seminars, Joe used to even do more than that.

So, he would be gone 2 or 3 weeks a month, out on the road. And his metaphor for that was really being like a torchbearer, where he would go out, city to city, bring the torch, we’d go, and we’d light people on fire, we’d spread the message, and people would get all excited, and it would be a real boost for people. And the shift was switching from being a torchbearer to being a lighthouse. A lighthouse stays in one place and shines its light and is guidance to people, a guidepost, so that people know a direction to go. That’s a pretty strong and profound change in metaphor, but equally powerful.

Joe: It’s kind of funny hearing that, because that basically means that I’m the torchbearer and you’re the lighthouse.

Dean: That’s why I said that story. It’s a little therapeutic teaching tale for you.

Joe: I just go and travel around bringing – if you want to call it light – sometimes it’s a flashlight in someone’s eyes.

Dean: Bringing the fire.

Joe: Yeah. No, that’s a great metaphor, actually. I have a real dear friend, she’s 71, she’s a brilliant psychiatrist named Janice, and I’ve interviewed her before, for Genius Network. I was talking with her the other day, and I was telling her some of the stuff that I’m doing. She just loves hearing about all of the crazy stuff that I do. She’s like, “You know, you’re at the perfect age to do all of this stuff. Just do it. Get as much of it as you can. Go out there, because the impact that you’re making.” A lot of these rhythms are times in your life; they’re seasonal for some people. Some people love it; other people don’t. There are a million different things that make people tick. I think part of what Dan Sullivan has a really good handle on is one of Dan’s things is helping people discover their unique abilities. The more human beings that he can help become aware of what their unique abilities are is the biggest impact he can have on value creation for people, especially entrepreneurs. What’s cool is I’ve been doing a lot of conversations with Dan because we’re getting ready to launch the podcast with Dan Sullivan on Genius Network. Part of his whole thing with unique ability, you have different abilities as I do.

One of the abilities that both of us have gotten really not only skilled at but became very interested early on is the area of marketing. If I didn’t have marketing systems in place, some people will say to me, “Well, it must be nice to be able to travel and do all of that stuff,” and sometimes I want to say, “It really isn’t, sometimes. The being there is great. The getting there is, frankly, a pain in the ass.” Traveling on airplanes, and packing, and going to a hotel, and just commuting to different places to do cool stuff is very challenging. I can only do so much of it without wanting to go nuts. I can’t even remember what the hell else I was going to say, Dean. You know me well; what was I going to say? Where was I going with that?

Dean: I think you were talking about the season.

Joe: Oh, no, I know. I know. This is how my brain works. See, this is what happens when you travel too much. If it wasn’t for having these marketing systems, I couldn’t do a lot of this stuff. People say, “I wish I could do that. It must be nice to do that.” The response is, well, it is nice to be able to do this. It is nice to be able to have the money to go out and do all of that stuff. But, you know, I had to set up a lot of things. I’ve been at this for 17 years, with the marketing business. I couldn’t do things like this for a decade. Some people are like, “I don’t want to put in that time.” Well, hopefully with what me and you share with them – and we’re not spending a lot of time on this podcast talking about marketing strategies – what I will say that the big takeaway is, is that you can have almost anything you want if, for one, it’s possible and practical. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be practical; it just has to be probable and doable, if you’re willing to put in the right time and the right level of thinking and willing to master the skill of marketing.

I think it was Jim Rohn; I’m not sure. Dan Kennedy always used to quote him. He’s like, “Look at all he has because of everything he does.” If you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it, or ask a busy person to help you with it. If you want to look at everything someone has, look at what they do. How do they spend their time? There is the hard work element, in the beginning. Before you have an ELF business, you’re probably going to work really hard. I certainly am not going to be one of those people that say you have to work really hard. There are some people that are like, “The way to success is hard work, hard work, hard work.” And that is a way to success, one way to success. And in certain things, it’s the only way to success. However, what I tend to really think about is work hard on smart things. It’s not working hard versus working smart. If you’re not very smart, you have to work hard on smart things. Part of it, you don’t have to be super intelligent. You could be the most brilliant, intelligent human being on he planet, working, or going in the wrong direction really hard, and you’re not going to get anywhere. Part of it is looking.

Dean: I think there’s a lot to be said, too, because you always talk about ELF marketing – easy, lucrative, and fun. But the opposite of that is what you always call HALF – hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Or lucrative and frustrating, even. It’s real timely, because I’ve been having a couple of different conversations with people, completely unrelated, who they’re at a point where they’ve got a business that sort of works, they’ve figured out some marketing stuff. They’re very keen to start a business teaching other business owners in their category how to market, but there’s so much still unfinished in their business and applying it to their business. I think what leads, sometimes, to a HALF business is a half-finished business, where the idea of teaching marketing to other business owners is exciting, and it’s new to them, and it’s the future, perhaps, for them. It’s where they definitely see themselves.

But I think that they’re both in a situation where their personal businesses could, with a little more focused attention for say the balance of this year, working hard on creating their business to be the ideal model of what it is that they’re going to be sharing, would set them up with such a better foundation to move forward with. Teaching marketing to their business category is still going to be a good idea 12 months from now. It just feels like so often, they’re going down 2 paths without a real strong foundation.

Joe: You’ve got a great point there. Let me bring something up. The last Meetup group that we just did – and all of the people that are in the Meetup group listen to the podcasts, so they’ll all hear this one – we had a hot seat. Kevin Donahue, who runs the Meetup groups in Tempe, at my office, he invited a guy to come up. I’ll just leave him anonymous for now, and not specifically talk about him. He’s in the fitness business, and he helps people, niching to people that are CrossFit, helping them with preventing injuries, fixing injuries, just be in better physical shape. We had a hot seat about getting CrossFit gym owners to actually utilize his services. Ultimately, one of his goals is to actually teach other people that do the type of treatment and injury fixing and prevention, how to better market it. He doesn’t like working as much on that part of his business, as he would being in the marketing business, but he also feels, from an integrity standpoint and also doing it right, is to get that down first.

And it’s an interesting scenario, because me and you, which I think we’re very different than a lot of people that are in the how-to business, the training business, the marketing expert, guru, whatever business, is both me and you are converts of our own system. We never went into what we were doing learning it with the intention of we’re going to teach it to other people; we’re going to do seminars, coaching, write courses, books, and all of the stuff that we’ve done over the years. Both of us went into it because you had a real estate business and you wanted it to work better. I had a carpet cleaning business, and I needed to eat and survive. So, we learned marketing out of the need to build our own business. And the information publishing, the training, the creation of knowledge products, which is a Dan Sullivan term, came as a result of us mastering marketing and mastering a lot of these skills that we are now teaching people for free on I Love Marketing. There’s a much different sort of result that people get out of their businesses and how they apply themselves into it, based on what their intentions are in what they’re trying to do. Your statement about a HALF business that is half-finished, there’s tremendous wisdom in that. My initial thing with being on the hot seat, it was funny, too. You should have been there. It was the last one. I was fried. I’d been going all day.

Dean: Imagine that.

Joe: I go on tangents all the time, anyway, and most people actually tell me they like my tangents. Whereas, to me, half the time I don’t know how other people interpret my ramblings. But, part of me wanted to just immediately jump in and tell this guy how to build and grow an info business and everything that he was doing, but I really refrained from doing that, because I had to sit and think, I’ve been doing this now. I first got introduced to marketing… You know what’s so weird, Dean? It didn’t even occur to me until right now. The very first Gary Halbert newsletter that I read, that introduced me into the world of direct response marketing, was this month in 1992, 20 years ago. Exactly 20 years ago was the first time I read a Gary Halbert newsletter, which is about the Halbert Index, that was written in February of 1992. We’re doing this at the end of February, 2012.

Dean: Wow. Happy anniversary.

Joe: Yeah, exactly. I’ve got 20 years invested in studying and learning this stuff, and the last thing I wanted to do is tell this guy. Because I can tell him, “Here’s what you need to do in order to build. You don’t necessarily to have it successful in your business in order to sell information,” but part of me actually thinks you do. Morally, ethically, whatever, even if someone doesn’t use strategies themselves, it doesn’t mean they’re not valid strategies. Welcome to the world of the self-help business. It’s the whole saying, “If you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you’ll never read another book or attend another seminar.” However, I tend to really like people that live their message, that preach their message, that are byproducts of it.

I think they have a different understanding of it, a different experience of it, and I simply think people are much better instructors, teachers, and guides when they, themselves, have done and do what they’re telling other people to do, which is why everything me and you talk about we pretty much have done, are doing, and will continue to do into the future. I think there’s more integrity there. I also say that with a caveat. I don’t think someone is a fraud just because they give someone great time management advice but they themselves suck at time management. That doesn’t mean that their advice is bad. I just tend to want to associate with people that pretty much walk the walk and talk the talk, which is why we love Dan Sullivan. Dan is so congruent with what he not only teaches people, but how he lives his life.

But, going back to what you’re saying, a lot of people that listen to our podcasts, they want to be in the information business. You are in the information business, even if you’re selling information or you’re just using information to help other people. There’s something to be said, though, if you are trying to run 2 races. It’s like your thing of AAA, BBB, CCC. If you’re trying to run 2 races and both of them are half-assed, you’re going to get half-assed results, you’re going to be frustrated, and it’s not going to be ELF. Having said that, Dean, everyone listening has a bigger future. Let’s use Dan Sullivan terminology. You want your future to be bigger than your past. In order to get to your bigger future – and it might be another business, it might be a different division of the type of industry or business that you’re in, you might be in a job, and you want to be an entrepreneur, you need cash flow, though. It’s like the guy we were doing a hot seat with. He needs to make enough money. Right now, his primary thing is have a client base survive and get things working.

But his bigger future is he actually would like to, once he really creates the code, he cracks the code, he creates the secret sauce, he builds up this business, he creates a model, he would love to go and teach that to other people. One thing I will say, one of the things he’s challenging with, and I know this about him, is he has people like his family and people around him that aren’t supportive of him being an entrepreneur. I was told this by someone that’s close to him. I didn’t know this when I was doing the hot seat. He doesn’t have a lot of support, so he comes to the I Love Marketing Meetup group because he’s in a room with other people that, for one, totally believe in this, believe in him, and are wanting to go that path, which I think is really intelligent. My question to you is everyone has a bigger future, they want to get there, but at what point do you not become so perfect that you never take the risk, take the challenge and all of that? What’s the balance? How would you advise someone? Even if people can connect with what I’m saying or not, I think this applies to everybody that is an achievement-oriented individual.

Dean: Another way of looking at that concept of multitasking, which really is what it comes down to, divided efforts, you say it in so many different ways, running 2 races or doing 2 things, chasing 2 cats, there’s so many different ways of looking at it, but it’s all the same thing. One visual that I had, that really helped clarify it for me, was I imagined a Trivial Pursuit board. Have you ever seen the Trivial Pursuit board with the circles, that it’s round?

Joe: Yes. I don’t really pay much attention to Trivial Pursuit, but just pretend I do.

Dean: That’s fine. Let’s say there’s a circle in the center, and coming out from that circle are different spokes that lead to a bigger circle going around that as well. Let’s just imagine that. Let’s imagine that each one of the paths from the center, let’s call those your ideas, are sitting there and that’s the raw material where everything is. And, let’s say that the outer ring represents out into the real world. I call that being in orbit, where it’s up, and it’s self-sustaining, and it’s bringing in money, and it’s going and being active in the world. Now, let’s say that in order to get these things from the center out to that outer ring requires you pushing those ideas up that. You have to push them down the path there to get them to the outer ring. That is, metaphorically, the effort that it would take you to create whatever marketing materials need to be created, create whatever systems need to be created, create the protocols and the procedures and the tools that support that, everything to get to a point where you’ve got that out in the world, and it’s orbiting.

And it’s so much easier to keep something in orbit, than it is to get it into orbit. The danger, the thing that often people do, when I talk about half-finished, is they’ve got something that they’re pushing that one up into orbit there, and they stop and go back down to the center and start pushing this other idea up through the channel, to get it out into orbit, and they don’t complete that one. And they go back into the center and start pushing the other idea up. It’s all about units of effort, and effort meaning time spent on marketing, on attention, on anything. That’s really all you have is your focused attention is the core unit of measurement of what you have. You can only focus on one thing at a time, well, and there’s so much extra energy required to switch in between these channels. You’ve got to come back to the center and start pushing that other one up there. If you can, take one and push it all the way into orbit. I’ve talked about 2 completely unrelated people who are in exactly the same situation.

You’re sort of talking about a third guy in the fitness world, that I would say that applying their stuff that they’re going to teach to the other people completely to their business, to get it completely into orbit, where it truly is an easy, lucrative, and fun business that runs without them and is bringing in money, that’s almost like what Ray Kroc worked on as the franchise prototype for McDonald’s. Getting any effort spent in that prototype there is really going to make the business of teaching other business owners how to do it that much better, because you will have faced the same things, obstacles, challenges, that they will face, and you will have something to point to and say, “Here’s how it works.” There’s so much benefit that comes from having a business that actually works in the category that you’re trying to be a thought leader or a marketing leader, even when you think about the idea of having people come and paying you to come and watch the prototype work and see how it goes.

Joe: Yeah. For instance, in the cleaning industry, people hear me talk about how I sold a lot of stuff to carpet cleaners, which I have. Thousands and thousands of cleaners all over the world have purchased my programs. Thousands of people, on a daily basis, all over the world, use my marketing systems and strategies that I started developing and using back in 1992, to this day, generate millions. It’s in the couple of billion-dollar range in the cleaning and restoration and various service industries that have been generated as a result of my stuff. People will see the marketing programs, they’ll see the sales letters, they’ll see the online campaigns, and they’ll try to either plagiarize and copy the outright, knock them out, knock them off, and sell them to other people and do seminars. No one has been able to get anywhere even close to the results that I’ve gotten.

And, over the years, I can count on one hand the amount of people that are selling stuff to other carpet cleaners – most of them are past clients of mine or personal friends of mine – that really even fully understand it, because they never really figured it out and mastered it for their own business. And they started dispensing advice thinking part of being a successful marketing guru, or whatever the hell they want to be, is whip together a 3-ring binder, have a designer print up a real pretty looking eBook or course, and do all of this stuff that looks real, but it’s no different than a fake Rolex. One’s real and one isn’t. But the real stuff has depth to it, it has understanding, it has application. And I don’t think that fully happens until you yourself fully plant the tree. You’re either going to plant the tree in the ground or it’s going to walk around in a pot. One’s going to have more of a solid root system, versus another one.

What I would say is get to the point to where it’s real. It’s not just sort of there. Then, you’re just posturing. One of the funniest things about being out here in LA is a lot of places you go to, you see enormous amounts of posturing and enormous amounts of bullshit. That’s what happens for a lot of people, in their business. There’s a lot of bullshit. However, in the beginning, there’s something to be said about getting it down, getting it down, getting it down. And one day, you wake up and you’re like, “Damn, I’ve kind of mastered this!” Anything in life worth doing, you’re probably going to do it poorly, and you may do it poorly for a while, and you may make lots of mistakes. But it’s out of that that comes the discoveries and comes the growth. The real reason I think I was really able, and have been able, and same with you, have been able to really help people with the marketing and the stuff that no one wants to hear about, they want to hear, “What’s the strategy? What’s the process that’s going to make a killing?” No one really wants to hear about the labor pains; they just want to see the baby.

The fact is, through the suffering, the figuring it out, the mistakes and everything, is where we’ve really learned the wisdom. That’s not as exciting of a conversation for us to talk about, about all of the shit that didn’t work and about all of the failures and about all of the testing and all of the time that went into it. Take Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged. Most people don’t know it took her 13 years to write that book. People will complain how long it takes to read it, because it’s a big-ass book. It’s like, you know, it took her 13 years to write it. You’re going to put in less than 13 years reading it. The same thing goes with this sort of stuff. Put in the time. If it’s going to take you 100 hours to master something but, if you did it, it would really be not only awesome for your business but you’d end up with a blueprint, a template, something that you could actually teach and sell to other people, but you think, “I don’t want to put in 100 hours, I only want to put in 20 hours,” you know what? You’re going to have a 20-hour deal, where someone else may have 100. People will be jealous of the person that put in 100 hours.

Dean: I think the thinking is that, on all appearances, it appears that the information marketing business is easier than the actual business.

Joe: Exactly. Exactly. The grass is always greener on the other side. That’s the delusion. Most info marketers that we know, that are successful, are really smart, really hardworking people. And I don’t say really smart like gifted in IQ intelligence. They’re smart because they put in the time. What a lot of people think of as genius is just redundancy, where they just kept doing something.

Dean: For 10,000 hours, like Malcolm Gladwell talks about.

Joe: Exactly. You ever look up any old comedians, you could never do this 10 years ago, look up on YouTube where someone actually happened to have some video footage of a world-famous comedian starting out at one of their very first gigs, and you watch, they weren’t all that funny. They were very awkward, but they kept at it and they kept at it, and they kept at it, and they got the timing down, and they’re amazing. I don’t think that’s much different than any sort of occupation, if you look at it from actors, singers, writers. There are some world-famous writers that I read their stuff, and I’ve read some of their very first books and first writings that just were terrible, but they kept at it. If you want to be a world-famous person in some area, mastery is not snapping your finger, and it’s not going to a 3-day seminar. That’s just one of the many things you do. It’s not listening to one of these podcasts and saying, “Okay, I’m a world-class expert.” You might be. You might be gifted, but it’s usually layered on many, many hours. There is a foundation to be built. So, what’s the core message you think we’re communicating in this podcast, Dean?

Dean: I want to bring it back around to some of your strategies for getting stuff done in the midst of a real hectic travel schedule and an environment, but my point that I was trying to get across is that there’s never going to be a shortage of ideas and things to pursue. One of the very best questions that you can ask is, “Is this still going to be a good idea 6 months from now, or 12 months from now?” You and I have talked about the idea of your not-to-do list. It’s so much of really getting something really complete is about focusing on getting it complete, to the exclusion of other stuff.

Joe: Right. Right. Just to be completely transparent, which is always kind of a funny word because when people say, “I’m going to be totally honest with you, I’m going to be completely transparent,” what does that mean? The rest of the time you weren’t? What I want to say is that there’s a lot of stuff that me and you have entertained with I Love Marketing, in the direction of where we’re even taking this, and things that were starting to go down certain paths. And then me and you get into conversations, and we get caught up in the fact that we get a lot of comments, and people send us gifts and they send us letters and they’re like, “It’d be really great if you did this. Can you do this, and can you do that?” We love hearing those sorts of things in our comments, although we may not always comment on everything that’s in the I Love Marketing podcast. Because there’s so much stuff that comes at us, we take it in and it certainly influences what we think we’re going to do.

And there are certain directions that we start going down, and we say, “Is this really the place to go?” So, anyone’s backstage of their business, there’s always these things that you need to figure out. Part of the reason I think I thrust myself into doing unique experiences, and I do travel is, to me, and this works for me, the different ways that I stimulate my brain allow me to see things from a different perspective and a different paradigm. I’m always wanting to put myself into situations where it kind of pushes my comfort zone, meeting high-level people that, in some cases, I’m not a person that really enjoys mingling, almost at all. It’s not my thing. I’d rather be around people that I know, instead of going out and interacting with people that I don’t know. However, I do put myself in those situations, because I know there’s a part of me that it stretches my comfort zone. That’s not to put myself in situations where I unnecessarily have to feel uncomfortable; I just want to do enough of it because it actually does force me to grow. It’s the same reason that when I was deathly afraid of public speaking and I did it anyway; I ended up mastering and getting really good at something that used to scare the living daylights out of me.

So, part of that is in order to have an ELF business or more of an ELF business; it will require certain things that are uncomfortable, just like working out. Working out in the gym is uncomfortable, but I want the consequences of it, but I don’t want to over-train, either. I don’t want to injure and hurt myself. So, as you go about your day looking at all of the activities that you’re doing, take everything that me and Dean have suggested and layer it against your own unique abilities, your own goals, your own dreams, your own desires. More than anything, the 8 profit activators, before/during/after, there’s all these places that you can come back to that are principle-based ways, and the more that you master those and the more you put them into entrepreneurial endeavors, the better you’re going to be. Your question of is this still going to be a good idea 6 months from today, that’s a really good question to think about if you’re in an overwhelm state, and there’s ambitions and aspirations that you have, and you’re frustrated. Frustration is just a lower level of anger – that you’re not getting to them, you may want to ask yourself, “Is this still going to be a good idea 6 months from today?” And triage. Do a little bit of triage, or a lot, if you have to.

Dean: It’s almost like you’re creating another visual metaphor for it. If you look at your workspace, your desktop, you’ve got all of this stuff, all of these papers here, and it’s almost like pushing aside some of the papers, pushing them down to one end and clearing a space for you to just focus on the thing that you’re focused on. There’s a great book, I believe it’s called Your Brain At Work, and it is essentially talking about that, how our brains actually work, that it is like a stage, and all of the different things that we have going on are up on this stage, competing for our attention. How we manage those and how we keep that stage clean and focus only on what’s going on right now really creates the experience of having peace and the experience of having that sense of calm without being too frantic.

And there’s something peaceful, though, about acknowledging these ideas, acknowledging that you have them, writing them down. Literally, the 50-minute focus finder, of sitting down with 4 sheets of paper and, in 50 minutes, writing every possible thing that you have, every thought, every project, everything that you could possibly think of onto that – it’s typically about 100 items – is a great start for that, because you can look at it then and kind of evaluate it, and ask yourself that question. “Is this specifically going to be a good idea 6 months from now, or a year from now?”

Joe: Right.

Dean: To winnow it down, to get to what is the most important thing, what’s the thing that’s going to have the biggest long-term benefit for me. So often, it’s so much easier to complete something that’s already going, that’s already working, than it is to try and maintain something that’s half-running, and then go over here and try and start something up that isn’t yet making money. If you have a business that is making money and you’ve got some marketing systems around it that can continue to make it a profitable venture, then you kind of owe it to yourself to continue going down that path. And that goes for people who don’t have any aspirations for being in the info marketing business, people who want to make their business as great as it could possibly be. There are so many ideas. Every podcast that we do, there are ideas of things that you can implement. And every one of the 8 profit activators has dozens of ideas within them, of what to apply.

But looking at them as what do I focus on first and complete is really the thing that’s going to have the biggest impact. I think the most important thing that you can do is have a system that delivers more business than you can handle, and use that to drive the growth. Use that to drive your ability to shore up in your during unit. Because if you spend time in your before unit and you get a system that generates and delivers as many clients or customers or patrons or whatever you call them in your business as you can handle, you’re going to quickly need to build out the system to accommodate all of that business. In the after unit, sometimes people often put that after unit as an afterthought. It’s one of the things that is the simplest thing to get going. If you can get something, some sort of communication that goes out to your clients in your sphere of influence, every month, like clockwork, that’s a pretty lucrative thing.

Joe: Totally. It’s an extremely lucrative thing, and it’s worth doing. When we did our Platinum 2.0 meeting, and Dan Sullivan was there, one of the last things I asked him to talk about was his experience in the army where, when he was going through boot camp, the whole troops were asked, “How many of you are scared?” and Dan’s the only one who raised his hand. The drill sergeant, or whoever it was, said to the group, “Dan’s the only one that’s telling the truth. The difference between fear and courage is fear is peeing your pants. Courage is what you do with wet pants.”

Dean: Doing what you have to do with wet pants.

Joe: Courage is doing what you need to do with wet pants. Dan Sullivan says the difference between courage and confidence is courage never feels good. You’re going into a risky situation. It may be dangerous, in some cases. Like in that situation, it could be fatal. You could get killed. It takes tremendous amounts of courage. So, courage applies on all kinds of different levels. If you’re putting yourself in a situation where you’ve never publicly spoken before, or you’ve never written a sales letter before. Or you’re going for your first job interview or your 20th job interview, you’re starting a new venture, you’re going out to the marketplace with an idea that you think you can change the world, innovate, whatever. All of that takes courage, and you can’t delegate courage. I think you can do things, in terms of mastering, that will allow you to make it easier to go out and do stuff, but you will get to a point, if you take intelligent, courageous steps forward. Every great human achiever in the world, even people that are heavily criticized, have courage.

For instance, tonight at the party, we’re going to meet the Kardashians, and there are a lot of people that think these are stupid people, and how can they make that much money, and they don’t do anything. People don’t know behind the scenes. Even the most ridiculous things that they would think of, in Hollywood, make money. Most of these people work their asses off. Even if you don’t like it, there’s stuff to it, and it takes courage to go out and do stuff when a big percentage of the world is attacking you, criticizing you. Even politicians, who I absolutely have no alignment with their policies, one thing I do give them credit for is in order to go out into the world and have, in some cases, more than 50% of the population despise you, but still get up every day and go and stand for something you believe in takes courage.

Some people, it takes insanity and ignorance. But I’m saying, for the most part, it takes courage. My point here with all of that is that, in the beginning, some of the things that you may need to do in order to go out and build out your business and some of the things, Dean, you’ve been talking about will require courage. It will get to a point, though, where the courage actually, when you learn, and you’re getting results, and you actually make your first sale, your website that you’ve created into a direct response machine, you’re mobile marketing, you’re social networking, when all of the stuff that you incorporate starts working, and you start cracking the code, it becomes confidence.

And then, all of a sudden, you’re able to get results, not because you’re pushing your way through in an uncomfortable state, you’re doing it because you just simply know what you’re doing. One of the lines that I wrote up on the wall comes from the last 25K meeting and that Platinum meeting – and I have this memorized – is from The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenbank, and it says, “To get through an impossible situation, you don’t need the reflexes of a Gran Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, or the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.” And that’s it. In order to get through an impossible or just a difficult situation, you just simply need to know what to do. People that aren’t making enough money, don’t have enough business, and they’re frustrated, it’s not that the business isn’t out there, it’s not that you can’t become a millionaire, you just haven’t learned how to do it yet.

And if you keep at it, and you do it intelligently, and you focus on what’s most important, not bullshit minutia and confusing activity with accomplishment, you actually can really make a tremendous amount of progress. Not everyone’s going to be a millionaire. Not everyone’s going to do some of the things that they wish, dream, hope they want to do. The ones that actually will do it are the ones that put it together and do it right. You get rewarded in life for getting it right, never before. You have to get it right. Part of getting it right, unfortunately, is, in some cases, getting it really wrong until you figure that out.

Dean: “Well, that didn’t work.”

Joe: Yeah. I go back and forth with this whole go through a lot of failures. I think every form of failure that can be avoided is probably smart to do. I don’t think you should just go out there and trip and fall just because everyone tells you the road to success is tripping and falling and making mistakes. At the same time, if you are paralyzed because of the possibility of failure or public criticism or whatever, you’re never going to get shit done anyway. There’s a balance, and courage is part of it. If you don’t have a lot of courage, borrow where you do have confidence, which is totally in line with Dan Sullivan’s message about unique ability, which is if you can at least spend your time developing your strengths. And not trying to nurture your weaknesses, you’re probably going to overcome the things that stand in your way. Dean, having said that, if we could put up the interview, as a bonus, that I did with Dave Crenshaw, the guy that wrote The Myth of Multitasking, I’d love to put that up as a bonus.

Dean: Yes, that would be great.

Joe: Whenever you feel it’s right, let’s put it up on ILoveMarketing.com, because I think that would be really good. Secondly, I really would encourage people, especially new listeners to I Love Marketing, if you’ve never watched Dean Jackson’s Focus Finder video, and even if you have watched it, if you’re a long-time listener to I Love Marketing. Even 5 years from now, I’m probably going to tell people to listen to the Focus Finder or watch the Focus Finder video with Dean Jackson. It’s truly one of the best pieces of 50 minutes.

Dean: I’m still amazed by how well that 50/20/50 works. Literally, I had just done 50/20/50 before we did our podcast here, and it really is the only way that I’m able to get stuff done.

Joe: Yeah. Because you’re pretty lazy, as far as I’m concerned.

Dean: Exactly.

Joe: If you are lazy, at least you can develop workaround systems to do it. And the bottom line is here we are on a Sunday, actually, recording a podcast before I head to the Elton John Oscar party and meet all kinds of famous people. So, type “Focus Finder” in ILoveMarketing.com, in the search button, and you’ll find the video from Dean. And last but not least, go and get a copy of Peter Diamandis’ book, Abundance. Please share the message with other people. Take the video that is at ILoveMarketing.com with Peter Diamandis, the Abundance video, please share it with people, post it on Facebook. I really want to help Peter get this message out to as many people. I think it will be really an impactful, life-changing for many people, encouraging, helpful, optimistic message that needs to be shared with the world. That’s all I’ve got to say, Dean. I think we should wrap up.

Dean: That’s all you have to say about that.

Joe: I’ve said plenty. What I’m saying is I say any more, we’ll miss Elton.

Dean: Say hi to Elton for me.

Joe: You know what I mean?

Dean: I understand. Say hi to Elton for me.

Joe: I will. Even your buddy Tony Robbins is actually promoting Peter’s book, Abundance. Tim Ferriss wrote a great blog post about it a few days ago. So, this is a big thing. I will take some pictures, assuming it’s appropriate, because I don’t like being one of those people that annoys. If it’s a right fit, I’ll take some pictures, and I’ll Photoshop your face over them and send them to you, so it looks like you were there, because I know you’re not cool.

Dean: I like that. See, that’s what I love about you. Always thinking about me.

Joe: Exactly. Even if I have to be sneaky about it. That’s it. For all of our listeners, as usual, thank you and start an I Love Marketing Meetup group, if you haven’t. For those of you that have started I Love Marketing Meetup groups, you guys are awesome. Keep them going. Thank you, as usual, for all of the wonderful feedback. Me and Dean are here to serve and entertain ourselves.

Dean: And entertain ourselves. Perfect.

Joe: Okay, talk to you guys next time.

Dean: Bye. .A