I Love Marketing Podcast #9
Dean:Hey, everybody! It’s Dean Jackson.
Joe:And Joe Polish. Welcome to I Love Marketing.
Dean:Yeah.
Joe:That’s right.
Dean:I’m very excited.
Joe:Yeah, this is good. Okay. So, we are here, and we want to let everyone know that as we do the I Love Marketing podcast, you can actually download and get the complete transcripts, word-for-word, of all of our I Love Marketing calls at ILoveMarketing.com, the companion site. For those of you that are only finding us on iTunes, you can also go to ILoveMarketing.com and you can find videos and you can make comments, and all kinds of stuff like that.
Dean, what are we up to today?
Dean:Perfect. You said it right there. Comments. People are making comments, and I thought it would be a great idea for us to go through the comments and talk all about the things that people want some help with.
Joe:Awesome.
Dean:Use some of the examples, some of the questions that people are asking. So, we’ll call it something from the comments.
Joe:And I will tell you, because a lot of people think there’s no truth in advertising, so I’m going to be very truthful with everyone right now, literally we’re just going to look at the comments. We have nothing prepared of like, “This is the ones we’re going to respond to.” We’re just going to go through the list of some of the most recent ones, and we’re just going to talk about it, and we’re going to go for as much time as we’ve got available with all of you today, and we’ll talk about it. That’s what we’re going to do.
Dean:That’s good. The comments are ramping up. We’re seeing a lot more comments on each of the episodes. Since we asked people for what they want some help with, I think it would be good to go in and actually give them some help.
Just so people know, here’s what’s happening.
Right now, we’re logged into the control panel of our ILoveMarketing.com blog, and we’re in the comments, and we’ve got them sorted so that the most recent comment is right at the top, and we’re just going to look and comment on the comments as we go here.
Joe:Yes. So, there’s been quite a few. And we’re going to kind of pick and choose, since Dean is in another location.
Now, there’s been a couple of comments about like, “Why don’t you guys go into a recording studio?” Me and Dean would love nothing more to go into a recording studio, however he’s in Florida most of the time and I’m in Arizona most of the time, so we can’t really do that. So, we are doing this over a telephone, and we provide the best sound quality we can, currently. We’ll always work on talking loud.
Dean is sort of a gentle giant, so he is soft-spoken and everything. I try to prod him a little bit.
Dean:Gentle giant?
Joe:There’s one comment here from Chuck. Actually, this is going to sound funny because it starts off with almost kind of maybe a negative slant, but Chuck is actually responding to some of the comments where people are maybe not saying the nicest things. And he says, “As I continue to read the comments, I’m amazed at the lazy-ass do-it-for-me attitude. Dean and Joe literally cook the steak, set the table, poured you some wine, and all you need to do is pick up the knife and cut the darned thing. Take 2 hours and brainstorm what a guide might look like,” meaning like a consumer awareness guide, “and if you can’t come up with a few topics, you really don’t know your industry very well. No wonder 80% of businesses fail in the first few years, if that’s the attitude.”
Now, I actually haven’t read the most recent comment that he must be responding to, which I’m sure we can find it because it’s down below a few of these. But the point I want to make on that, and I’d like to get your input on this, Dean, is the Internet is very interesting. And when people read stuff, and I think anyone that puts themselves out there, you can get 100 positive comments and you can get one that someone’s kind of negative with, and we can have a tendency to focus on the negative one.
I’m human. I would love everyone to comment wonderful, beautiful things all the time, but that’s not the reality.
There’s 2 types of criticism. There’s constructive criticism, which me and Dean will always take very seriously and will look at, “Well, can we constructively do something about it?” And then there’s destructive criticism, where people are just complaining.
One of the things about the Internet, especially like YouTube, where people can make anonymous comments, you find that a lot of stuff, especially when you put it out there for free, can attract people that just want to whine and complain.
There’s a book by Hugh McCloud called Evil Plans, which is a fantastic book that I recommend everyone read, and he says that, “Whining is not an exit strategy.”
Basically, in order to do something effective in your business, yes, you can voice complaints and stuff, but for the most part it’s not going to change anything. You have to go out and actually do something.
What’s interesting about how people make comments, I’ve seen things on YouTube where I’m like, “Where do these human beings actually come from?” It’s the most insane stuff people can write.
But then, there’s people that actually have a lot of constructive things to share.
So, why am I saying all of this? Well, what we have purposefully done with the I Love Marketing podcasts is me and Dean said, “We’re going to tell our stories, we’re going to share things, and we’re going to talk about very tactical strategies of what’s working and what’s not working, how we got into marketing, why we love marketing, how you can make it work for you.”
The comments we’d really like are take the ideas that we talk about here, test them, implement them, use them in your business, and let us know the results.
The real comments that matter are not what you think of the idea, but really what the idea did for you after you used the idea.
Emerson has this great line, and I’ll probably quote it a lot whenever I do these, when it seems appropriate, “You ask for a new idea when you haven’t used the first one that we gave you.”
I know a lot of people are going to fish for ideas, but we really want you to use the ideas.
So, Dean?
Dean:Here’s a great comment. I think we should talk about this, because I know that a lot of people who are listening are probably students and trying to figure out what to do in marketing. Here’s a great comment from Bobby. He says, “Thanks for the podcast. I’m a marketing student, starting out at a community college. I find your podcasts very helpful in my learning experiences. They also keep me motivated to keep going with my studies. I was wondering where you both went to college? Also, what are some good books to read to help expand my marketing advertising knowledge?
I think that’s going to be an interesting thing, because although I went to college, I don’t actually know if you did go to college. You didn’t go to college, did you?
Joe:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to New Mexico State University for a couple of years.
Dean:But you didn’t finish, right? And neither did I.
Joe:No. I don’t have a college degree. As a matter of fact…
Dean:We’re college drop-outs, essentially.
Joe:Yeah.
Dean:We’re never going to amount to anything.
Joe:Exactly. And I use this whenever I speak, on some occasions. I actually went to Mexico State University for a couple years, and took communications and journalism and criminal law, psychology classes, and that sort of stuff. And then I went to Chandler-Gilbert Community College, when I moved back to Arizona.
At Chandler-Gilbert Community College, I took “Owning And Operating A Small Business,” and I failed. And I took “Principles Of Marketing,” and got a C-.
I had an ex-girlfriend that recommended, “Why don’t you show your transcript during your presentations?” So, I actually have a slide that shows basically my report card from college, that I failed “Owning and Operating A Small Business,” and I got a C- in marketing.
Dean:And that’s amazing, because, again, another similarity. We both kind of didn’t finish college, but we’re both, I love what you say, just like old Abraham Lincoln, self-taught.
When you look at it, it’s like that does not mean that our education stopped when we dropped out of college, because for both of us I know that our education just began when we dropped out of college.
Since then, we’ve probably collectively spent the equivalent of 10 Harvard educations on getting our marketing education.
Joe:Totally, yeah. All true education is self-education. Even if you do it in college or if you do it on your own.
Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license. And if he needed to have a degree in order to fly, no one would maybe be flying airplanes today. I don’t know.
But the bottom line is don’t ever let school get in the way of a good education.
Now, are we anti-college or not? As a matter of fact, I sort of am, as it relates to certain types of businesses. I think if you really want to be good at marketing, I’ve never seen what I would consider amazing, awesome marketing classes taught in college, but there’s thousands of colleges out there and I’m sure some of them have some really great stuff. But I have yet to see a professor that knows really much of anything about say direct response marketing, that I’ve ever encountered. Not that they’re not out there, but I rarely encounter them.
And I tell people, all the time, “If you want to be an entrepreneur, you’re going to learn more in 6 months, either working for a real value-creating entrepreneur or trying and running your own venture, than you will in probably 4 years of college.” I just believe that to be absolutely true.
I think at the time when I was going to college, had I stayed in college for marketing, not only do I think it would have not helped me all that much, I think it would have been a handicap. I think I would have had to unlearn much of the stuff that I learned.
Dean:College marketing, especially when you’re talking about marketing, a college marketing education is really equipping you to fit into an organization in the marketing department, probably, in a bureaucratic way; that you’re learning all of that.
Let’s hear you talk about our top 3 books each, or the reading list for if we started I Love Marketing University or I Love Marketing College. What would be the curriculum book-wise, if you had to narrow it down to 3 books?
Joe:Well, it’s going to be really hard for me just to say 3 books, but 3 books that no one should literally be in the advertising business or marketing business without reading. And they’re all going to be old books. Many of them many, many years old.
Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins.
Dean:My Life In Advertising, a combo.
Joe:Yeah, yeah. There’s a combo that you can get by Claude Hopkins, My Life In Advertising and Scientific Advertising. How To Write A Good Advertisement by Vic Schwab, and Ogilvy On Advertising, by David Ogilvy. They’re 3 amazing books. What about you?
Dean:I’d put all 3 of those on there. When you get down to if I had to limit it to 3, I’d definitely put those on there. But I think one of the most influential books, the book that started me down that path of being aware of money and aware of being self-directed in the getting of money was Think And Grow Rich. I’d definitely put that in there, to get the mindset thinking that way.
That was the very first book that sort of awakened my entrepreneurial awareness kind of thing, I think. Was there a first book that you read?
Joe:You know, yes. There were several. And the very first book, and I talk about this when I explained my jet ski story, which I believe was on one of the first episodes of the I Love Marketing podcasts, and I read The E Myth, by Michael Gerber, which was not a marketing book. It was a book, really, about setting your business up as if you were going to have many different franchises, like you’re going to replicate your business. And it was really about systemizing your business.
I thought, when I was reading that book, before I discovered direct response from Gary Halbert, because Gary Halbert’s book, How To Make Maximum Money In Minimum Time, which was a compilation of some of his best newsletters, is actually what introduced me to Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy and Vic Schwab.
So, had I not read How To Make Maximum Money In Minimum Time, I never would have been introduced to the other one.
So, I guess if I had to go back and reapply my favorite book, I would almost say, “Read How To Make Maximum Money In Minimum Time by Gary Halbert, which probably can only be gotten at TheGaryHalbertLetter.com.
So, having said that, The E Myth, going back to The E Myth, when I read that book, I thought, “If there’s any area of your business that you want to systemize and automate. It’s the one area of business that is most responsible for bringing in the money, which is the sales and marketing divisions of an organization. And if you can systemize the marketing and the selling, and you can automate that, that’s the best part of the business to systemize, because without those no money comes in.
You can have the most systemized filing system, computer system, how to clean the office system, but if you don’t automate the generating of clients, like Peter Drucker says, “The primary purpose of business is to create key clients. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are cost.”
If you don’t get the marketing down, you’re going to do a lot of manual marketing.
So, reading that book game me the mindset. And then when I first got introduced to direct response, I was primed in very much the same way that Think And Grow Rich set up a mindset for you.
Dean:Yeah, exactly. Everyone of these books that we’re talking about, they really are like pivotal. But each one builds on the next.
I think that the thing that’s really important, as you go through and start studying, is to realize that just knowing the information is not the same as knowing and applying the information to something, so that you get a depth of awareness about it.
I had a friend who said that same thing. He really hasn’t been studying marketing and was asking what’s the 10 books. He said, “If you could just narrow it down to 10 books, so that I could get a fast-track,” like cram a marketing education kind of thing, like he could really become an expert marketer in the next 6 months. And I really started thinking about it.
The truth is as I was listing the books for him, I realized, “This one only makes sense if you know and apply the lesson from this other book.” And as I’m reading, I told him, “Dude, I don’t think you can catch up. Like in 6 months, you can’t get that without the experiences that go along with it.”
Joe:Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people, one of the fastest ways they can learn direct response is simply listening to this podcast and testing and utilizing the ideas that we are recommending.
You don’t need 100 tools in your toolbox to do well. You just need to have a couple of them, and you need to make sure you’re using them.
Some people can completely change their entire income and their entire business, and their entire relationship with their prospects and clients simply by using education-based marketing. Creating a consumer awareness guide, putting a sales letter together, getting testimonials from your existing clients, going out into the marketplace and educating them in very much the same way that we’re doing this.
A lot of people who are listening to this podcast can probably start a podcast in their industry, about their product or service, or whatever it is that they do.
You have this Evil Scheme Hatchery, Dean, which we talked about, and you have your 50-minute focus finder video, and you play GOLF. The acronym is goal, have a goal, create an optimal environment, limited distractions, and a fixed timeframe.
You have this office called the Evil Scheme Hatchery, and we even have a video at the ILoveMarketing.com.
Hugh McCloud has this book called Evil Plans. It’s about world domination in a good way.
But everyone that’s listening, what is your evil plan? And if you want to read Hugh’s book, go and read that. It’s very much in line with our thinking, as it relates to you don’t have to know everything, you just have to get out there and do something, just like Seth Godin always talks about, “You’ve got to ship it.” You’ve got to get it going.