What Marketing Really Means, And How Entrepreneurs Should Use It, with Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, and Mark Young

Dan Sullivan: Hi, everybody, it's Dan Sullivan here, and we have something really special for you today. And this is a totally spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment podcast that we did in Toronto, where we had just completed for the day our first Free Zone workshop in Toronto, which is now a quarterly affair. And some of our very, very longtime friends in Free Zone were there for this initial meeting, which I'm very thankful for. So we have Joe Polish. Joe's been in the Program for 27 years. Dean Jackson, 20 years. Mark Young is about 10 years in the Program. Joe has a great workshop program called Genius Network, which Babs and I are a member of. Can't say enough good things about what I've learned about marketing from Joe. And then Dean Jackson is considered the marketing Buddha. He and Joe have a great podcast series called I Love Marketing, which has been going for 15 years. Dean is just a marvelous thinker about marketing affairs, and he's got a great program of his own, which is called the 8 Profit Activators, that he coaches really top-notch entrepreneurs who really want to get every part of their marketing system, their whole structure, their whole process of their marketing, so that every part of it turns a profit.
 
And then Mark Young is just an amazing advertiser from Detroit. Dean is from Orlando. Joe is from Phoenix. But Mark is in Detroit and also in Florida. And Mark has a point-of-purchase product advertising, so where we go to a store and things are sold over the counter, now of course online, he is an advertising agent for that, and he's a doctorate in psychology. He's formerly a street cop in Detroit. He has just broken the record as being the oldest rookie professional race car driver this year. In the last three or four months, he and his team have won three races. Okay, but it was just a joy. Joe is the master. Joe Polish is the master of taking people who weren't expecting to get together and say anything. He gets them together so they can say a lot of things, and this is the result. And Joe just went into all different areas of marketing and how you look at marketing and everything, and each of us hit this cold and we got hot very, very quickly. And so this is a first time that we did this, and it's just put it in our mind that the title of this particular podcast is called Super Partners. So this is just the first episode of our first Super Partners collaboration.
 
Joe Polish: Hello, everyone. I am sitting in a recording studio in Toronto, Canada, with three awesome people: Dean Jackson, Mark Young, and Dan Sullivan. And all of us have been in Strategic Coach here for the last couple of days, and we decided we would do a podcast, and we would put this podcast episode up on all of our different podcast channels because Dan… Yeah. I mean, the way this starts is me and Dean started I Love Marketing back in 2010. And then me and Dan started 10xTalk back in 2012. And then, Dan, when did you and Mark start one?
 
Dan Sullivan: It was about five years. About five years ago. Five years. We started American Happiness.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah. And then you and Dean have been doing one since how long?
 
Dan Sullivan: '19, I think. So, five years. Maybe even longer. Yeah, very incestuous.
 
Joe Polish: And what's funny is I think all of us have known each other for at least a couple decades, more than that for me knowing Dan and Dean, this guy over here. So, I wanted to start this because we could do a week-long podcast, but we're going to go for about an hour or so. In Genius Network, there's this one thing I always talk about, which is one elegant idea is worth more than a thousand semi-good ideas. And so, I thought I would ask all of you, you know, this year, in business, in building and growing a business, what is an elegant idea that you feel would be worth sharing with all of the aspiring, ambitious entrepreneurs that are listening to us right now?
 
Dean Jackson: Well, I'll start. Today, we did an exercise where we looked back at catalyst moments, catalyst compounding. And I was reminded, the one that came to my mind was the first time in April of 1991 that I sent out a direct response postcard compared to, you know, I was doing 100 cold calls a day at the time. And when I learned that I could put words on a postcard and send them out instead of me making a hundred calls, I could send a thousand postcards and get people to reply back to me. I still get giddy when I think about that feeling because that was the moment that I knew I would never have to make a cold call again. And I never did. And it was just that compounding of starting with that one elegant catalyst of sending the postcard in lieu of you. That's what we always say. Instead of calling people, just send your messenger. You can hire a uniformed government employee to deliver a message to anybody in the world.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, that's good. Okay, Mark.
 
Mark Young: So, I was listening to Dean here, and it's funny because when you think of the three of us, Dan's a little different background, but the three of us all started peddling real estate, peddling carpet cleaning, peddling furnaces. I had that same moment when I realized I could send cards. So, we would sell a furnace to one house, and I realized every other house in that neighborhood was the same age. So, we sent everybody a letter before we would get there, and we would apologize for the inconvenience of us being in the neighbor's driveway and tying up the street with our people. And because we were making an inconvenience, if you wanted us to stop by and look at your furnace free while we were in the neighborhood, we would stop and give an inspection to your furnace for nothing. And same as you, we figured out we could sell six furnaces on a block. We literally would just sell the entire block of furnaces and realize, okay, we don't have to make cold calls. We don't have to go door to door. We can communicate if we find these ways to communicate to people. Now, you're talking about an elegant idea. The idea that has come to the top for me this year with a lot of clients has been that perfect has become the enemy of good. I have several clients right now that can't get out of their own way, to put it plain, because "We can make this better. Don't put it on the market yet. We can make this better." And I'm trying to explain to them, but you're not making any money right now, so let's go sell the thing you have, and we'll deal with the better when the better gets done.
 
Joe Polish: Right, right. It's almost like one thing done equals money, five things undone equals no money. Absolutely. That's great. Okay, so we'll go to Dan Sullivan, who's the founder of Strategic Coach, which is probably the highest level group for entrepreneurs in the world. How many years you've been coaching now, Dan?
 
Dan Sullivan: Thirty-give in the Program, but I started coaching, in a few months, it's 50 years since I started coaching entrepreneurs.
 
Joe Polish: And you just turned 80?
 
Dan Sullivan: I just turned 80. I started when I was 30. I'm starting to get a feel.
 
Joe Polish: One day, you might be good at this.
 
Dan Sullivan: I'm starting to get a feel.
 
Joe Polish: I love it.
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, the thing that, as an elegant idea, I reported this on a podcast earlier in the day, and it has to do with the writing of books. I think books are very, very important. Bigger postcards. So, Dean and I were in London, and we made a bet that we could each write a book in a week. You have to start fresh, and then a week later, you got a book. We used an Amazon service, and we both did it. We ran into each other by accident, actually, in London. And we got talking about, do you think you could write a book in a week? And he said, sure. I said, I think I can write a book in a week. We both did, and neither of the books were very good.
 
Mark Young: You took a week!
 
Joe Polish: And by the way, this was before AI, so let me just clarify that too.
 
Dan Sullivan: And what had occurred to me, and I talked about this on a podcast today, that if you're writing one book, it's really, really hard. So when I was 70, 10 years ago, I said, I think I'm just gonna write 100 books in 100 quarters. And actually writing 100 books in 100 quarters is a lot easier than writing the one book of your life.
 
Mark Young: I can see that, because you're not worried about getting every thought in your head into…
 
Dan Sullivan: Actually, you can just get one thought in one book. And I've talked to people about this. I said, the problem is you're writing too few books. If you were writing a hundred books, it's got to become a system that involves a lot of different people. You've got a part, and you get it together. So, the thought is that if you're trying to do one thing, think of doing the one thing a hundred times and how much more economical you would, and that probably help you actually write the one thing if you were thinking about writing a hundred things. So, that's my thought.
 
Joe Polish: I love it. I mean, I think that's almost like a bit of an antidote to what Mark said earlier about perfect is the enemy of good. What you just described is, I think, a way to do that, because how many people never put anything together because they just want to get it so right.
 
Dan Sullivan: By the way, we're working on book 39 and quarter 39.
 
Mark Young: I was about to say, so out of everybody here, who's working on a book right now? You're working on a book.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Mark Young: Joe, you've got another book coming up?
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, a new addiction recovery one.
 
Mark Young: Okay, I'm working on another book right now. Dean, do you have a book?
 
Dean Jackson: Always, always.
 
[crosstalk]
 
Joe Polish: Well, okay. Well, that'll lead to my next question then. So, and also, let me say something about Dean. So, for people that don't know, if you've not listened to my and Dean's podcast, Dean was the first guy that he invented the squeeze page. And that was back in 1997. And a squeeze page back then, you know, there's many ways to call it, you know, people have different names for it, but it's where you enter your name and email, and then you go to the next page, and that became the modern-day opt-in page, which is now used by millions of websites. So, Dean, if you're using an opt-in page, you're using any sort of positioning, you can thank Dean for that because his crazy brain originated that way back when. Think if you just had a penny for every website that exists.
 
Dean Jackson: I know, exactly.
 
Joe Polish: My God, you'd have a lot. So, marketing. We're sitting here with everyone here does a lot of marketing, has spent millions, has generated millions, has helped God knows how many people, lots. So, I'd like to ask your definition of marketing. And what I'll just say, first and foremost, is I look at marketing as anything you put in front of somebody is marketing. You can look at this podcast as marketing. You can look at the books that Dan's- 39 books he's done. He's more than that, but he's got these, you know, quarterly books. He's on quarter 39. And anything you put in front of somebody is marketing. And it could be, you know, only the hungriest fish snap at the crappiest bait, is something that Gary Halbert would say. So, I'd like to have you talk about what is marketing, what's the definition of it, and why is it so important? Why do you love it?
 
Dean Jackson: I love marketing because of that exact catalyst reason that once I figured out, it's the ultimate leverage. I mean, it's certainly the thing that you can do one time and you can send out, you write one postcard, you could literally send millions of them and it doesn't get tired. You know, you still have to continue to do it. So I look at marketing as the whole thing, the aggregate of all of the steps that you do to go from somebody not knowing you all the way to that they're engaged in a relationship with you. We talk about, on I Love Marketing, the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, where we think about the before unit of your business as a supplier to the during unit, which is the part that actually helps people do whatever it is you do. So, I look at marketing that makes up everything that gets people to that point. And doing it, you know, there's lots of different components to it. But that's what I love about marketing, is once you figure out a marketing algorithm, I love to call it, that it just works again and again. You know, different than, we use the distinction of a vending machine versus a slot machine.
 
Mark Young: I really love that analogy, that example.
 
Joe Polish: One thing with marketing, too, just on that analogy, I used to say this to carpet cleaners, because I started out as a dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards, and I learned marketing because I needed to survive. I never thought I'd teach it to anyone. I didn't even know I'd like it. But once I realized, man, you can create control in your future if you learn how to put a message out there that causes people to want to give you money. And I had to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy, which is carpet cleaning. And it made me pretty good at it. And so, I used to say to these carpet cleaners about a slot machine, they would be reading, you know, these business books, or some of them had gone to business school, and it would say, you need to have a 10 percent budget for your marketing. And I would be like, the only reason that you would budget marketing is in case it's not working, so you don't go broke so quickly, right?
 
But if you're putting, like, a dollar in a slot machine and you're pulling the handle and five bucks are coming out, why would you put a budget on that? You wouldn't be like, let's shove this much. So, the time to budget is if you can't fulfill the orders, if you can't keep up with all the customers, because there are people that, there are businesses that die of starvation and some that die of indigestion, right? So, you could have too much business, but that's usually not starting out how people are. So, the whole way you look at how you spend marketing dollars... So, Mark, so you wrote a book called Hypno-Tising. I want to mention that. It's a great book. So, anyone listening to this, get that book. It's awesome. You have an agency that has generated literally billions of dollars, and you've seen people spend a lot. So, you know a lot about marketing, sales, advertising. How would you define it? How do you look at it?
 
Mark Young: So, I look at marketing and advertising... First, I look at it kind of through the lens of psychology. And as you guys know, I'm a doctor of psychology at this point. Not that that does me any good, but first off, I think of using words and images to cause a change in behavior. And when we think of therapy, whether it's talk therapy, cognitive therapy, hypnotherapy, what are we doing? We're using words and images to cause a change in human behavior. Well, advertising is the exact same thing. We're using words and images, depending, you know, regardless what the medium is, we're using words and images, and we're trying to change people's behavior. But there's a difference, and Joe, you and I have talked about this, and that's the difference between the ethical use of these kind of powers, if you want to call it that, and the bad use of it. So my definition of advertising is always that it is not for the purpose of selling people things they don't need. It is for the purpose of informing people of a better future and of products and services that can make their life better. And our job is to help them overcome their fears and their biases that they already hold, because people have all of these heuristics and built-in cognitive biases against fear and change and all these things. So how do we help them overcome their issues so that they can get to a better place by using this new product or using this new service?
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, that's awesome. Great. Thank you. Dan?
 
Dan Sullivan: First of all, I started coaching our program in 1989. And in those days, you were using landlines. And if you phoned, you had a 50% chance of the person you wanted to talk to would actually pick up the phone.
 
Joe Polish: No caller ID.
 
Dan Sullivan: There was no caller ID. And the big change, you know, it's 35 years since 1989, is that there's more and more barriers between actually getting in touch. And you gave a great definition of what marketing was as opposed to sales. And it would be useful if you put that in right now because the whole point is you're still going to have to sell.
 
Joe Polish: Right. You know what? We'll make that the next topic. And if you want, I'll give you a definition of that or if you had a thought you wanted to finish.
 
Dan Sullivan: My whole point is, you know, we've had, I think the number is close to 23,000 now in Coach, and right now we have closing in on 3,000 for this year. And they're all really good salespeople, but I would say that the majority of them are not great marketers. And that is, if you get them in front of someone, it's usually a sale. It's the getting them in front of that is the difficult point today. And we've learned how to shield ourselves from people trying to sell us things. But one of the things that came up, we talk about this, still the greatest form of marketing in the world is direct mail. And the reason is it's physical. You get a whole bunch of letters and different pieces of paper that come in the mail, and generally you'll pick it up and you'll actually handle it. And most online marketers could just dream of actually having the experience physically and acting with it. So even though the means of marketing have gone very high-tech these days, I think it's the actual physical experience of engaging with someone's message that's still the number one thing that inclines them to say, "Well, this is interesting."
 
Mark Young: Well, think of the clutter that people have right now. The average person receives between 5,000 and 24,000 advertising messages daily. That's the amount of information and the amount of times that somebody is trying to pitch you something every day of your life. So, your brain doesn't have the capacity to take in 5,000 to 24,000 messages.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, on top of the fact that, you know, depending on your activity online, you know, you're being followed around, you're being pixelated, there's algorithms, there's everything that's built in that's trying to get something to you. And I think there is something to be said absolutely about the tactile thing. And then when you think of face-to-face selling, people, even in shopping, now they can do online shopping, they can go into a place, not even talk to a human and check out. So, I think because of less human interaction, people are getting less trained with socialization and being around other humans. And part of sales is just connecting with someone. I mean, it's being able to talk to someone. And I'd ask Dan, this was probably, let me think, because I did this video called, "Is Selling Evil?" You can just type in, "is selling evil" online and watch this video.
 
Mark Young: And I recommend people do that. That's a great video.
 
Joe Polish: Thank you. It's, like, under four minutes. And I say this definition of selling that I got from Dan, because I was with Dan 14 years ago, probably. And I said, "Dan, what's your definition of selling?" And he just, with not much prep, he just said, "Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result." And I was like, "Wait, wait, what did you say? Let me write that down." And so, he said it again, and so I wrote it down, and I looked at that definition, and I was like, wow, that is pretty profound. And so, I'll say it to everyone. Now, think about this. So, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result.
 
And I've, in front of, you know, several hundred people, I've said, what do you think are the most important words of this definition? People will say, "engagement" or "emotional," you know, "intellectual." And I was like, well, if you take out the words "good for them," it changes the context. So, I think the three most important words are "good for them," and it goes back to your point about ethical selling, because you can get someone intellectually engaged in a future result and get them to emotionally commit to take action, to eat this crappy food, to, you know, take this drug, to watch this porn, to drink this alcohol, to smoke this cigarette. And you could argue that these things are probably not good for people, right? And so I want to talk about your thoughts on selling versus marketing. And I will say that it took me 20 years to figure out that people, when you say sales, a lot of people will throw up a barrier, like a vampire's coming after them, or it's like one of those words where they have a bad association with it.
 
I would say, think of selling as persuasion or influence, and think of marketing as storytelling. And if you become more persuasive and influential, you're going to do better. If you tell a better story, you're going to enroll more people. So everyone that has a business, everyone that makes their living putting products or services out there into the world, you're going to have to do marketing and selling. And if you don't, you're going to unsell people. And a lot of companies, as we know, have a sales prevention department. They will do whatever they can to make sure that a sale does not happen. And so, Dean, let's start with you. So what's the difference between sales and marketing?
 
Dean Jackson: So I look at marketing as the whole thing. If we look at sales, we have to be in relationship with somebody, in conversation with them. So sales is a dialogue kind of process, right? And we've heard always people talk about this destination that you have to get to: people know you, like you, and trust you. But they always kind of read that as one thing: know-you-like-you-trust-you, as that's where we're headed, and they don't properly revere the giant leap of going from not knowing you to knowing you. And then from knowing you to liking you is a much smaller distance, and even smaller distance from liking you to trusting you. So, with the 8 Profit Activators that we talk about on I Love Marketing, I look at sales as the three-step or three-act play of compelling somebody to raise their hand and indicate that they're interested in something that's good for them because they're compelled to do it under their own power. So you align with something that they're already compelled to do. Then Profit Activator 3 is educate and motivate them so that they become convinced that you know what you're talking about and that you've got what they need. And then Profit Activator 4, make an offer. And that's really the three-act play that has to happen. And so often, people start jamming the make-an-offer at the beginning of the play. They start jamming that in without properly knowing that this is something that somebody's interested in.
 
Mark Young: Absolutely, you miss a step, your odds of closing keep going down.
 
Dean Jackson: Yep, exactly.
 
Mark Young: But think about selling, though. Selling's gotten a bad name, and it's gotten a bad rap by people who are selling inferior things, so they have to add more pressure, and they have to be more subliminal and conniving in what they're doing.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hypey.
 
Mark Young: Yeah, because the product's not there.
 
Joe Polish: Right, so they're bullshitting, they're exaggerating, they're… Yeah.
 
Mark Young: If you are really bringing people a value, and you are really going to make their life better, and you are really selling them into a better future, then you really just need what you said. You just need them to know who you are and to be able to connect with you and be able to accept what you're saying is true. And the rest of it takes care of itself.
 
Dean Jackson: That's why, you know, I've talked and you did a great job, but we did a book with someone that was called The Adult Acne Cure. So if somebody asks for a book called The Adult Acne Cure. There's a pretty good chance that if you educate them and motivate them about the solution that you have, and then you make an offer to them, that they're going to want to follow that because you've started the conversation with their own compulsion to seek the solution that they're already looking for.
 
Mark Young: You made it about them.
 
Dean Jackson: That's exactly right.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah. Dan, so yes, since you came up with that definition, what would you say about this?
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the big thing, I'm more and more convinced as I go along, that the first thing you have to sell is a relationship. And people are getting more and more selective in who they relate to in the world. So I was very, very taken with the podcast that you and Dean were doing because the two of you really come across the way that I know you. There's a tremendous reality. Each of you have thousands of people who consider you to be a guide to them. And so my sense is, the podcasts were really great, and we started 12 years ago. And I was talking to a new client, someone who had just joined Strategic Coach, and he said, you know, one of the things that kind of gets me about your podcast, you're never selling anything. And I says, can I ask you the question, why did you join Strategic Coach if I didn't sell? He says, I felt you really understood me. I felt you really understood me.
 
Mark Young: And there's the relationship.
 
Dan Sullivan: And that's the relationship that I sold. So I've done 1,500 podcasts now with a variety of rogues.
 
Dean Jackson: And scholars.
 
Dan Sullivan: Rogues and scholars.
 
Joe Polish: More rogues than scholars, but...
 
Dan Sullivan: The interesting thing is that what I'm selling is a particular person who has spent 50 years working with entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur myself for 50 years. And I'm saying, you know, there's some very fundamental first principles that you really have to grasp if you're gonna be an entrepreneur. And then we go through first principles, like show up on time, do what you say you're gonna do, finish what you start, say please and thank you, and be appropriate. You know, this is what people check out when it comes to relationship. And then you have to do that. But one of the big things is, we've been generally writing very small books. What I learned from that was when the big retail bookstores were there, Barnes & Noble and Borders. Borders did a really good job because ebooks were really selling. And they'd set up an entire lab to determine what the reading habits were of people who bought ebooks, because electronically you can tell. And they found something about the length of books that was very interesting to me, that if it was more than 200 pages, 2% of the readers finished the book. I'm talking about non-fiction; I'm not talking about fiction.
 
Mark Young: Interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: If it was more than 100 pages, it was 10%, and then between 100 and 200, it went down the tube. But if it was less than 80 pages, 80% of the people read the book. And ours in actual text are 44 pages, and then we have 22 pages of cartoons. But I also have an audio track that you can listen to the book. I have a video track where I'm interviewed, and I've got a scorecard where you can grade yourself on the main attitudes. So I've piled a lot of different communication mediums into a very small book. Well, it was because of these small books we got a big three-book contract with Hay House Publishers. Because Joe was very kind to actually invite the publisher to his workshop. And he invited the guy who actually sealed the deal, Tucker Max. And Ben Hardy, who was the writer there. And within a matter of 24 hours, a book deal had been put together for a big book, and possibly more than big, and it turned out to be a three-book contract.
 
These books were just killer marketers for us. And, first of all, Ben Hardy is a great, great writer. He just has a feel for the everyday reader. He just has a tremendous feel for that. And he did wonders with our ideas. Within the three books, we probably have 20 of our main concepts. And he goes into depth with them, interviews people. And we noticed the moment the first book came out, that was the fall of 2019, our salespeople, we have a good team of salespeople, and they said, you know, a funny thing's happening. People are calling us who have never called or talked to us, but they know a lot about Strategic Coach. OK, and the first one was Who Not How. The second one was The Gap And The Gain. And the third one was 10x Is Easier Than 2x. And the coaches noticed that people are coming into the Program knowing the Program.
 
Mark Young: They're pre-sold.
 
Dan Sullivan: They're pre-sold. And then it's overlaid that people are listening to the podcast and everything else. So we're surrounding them with conceptually interesting set of ideas, but we're also allowing them that this is a very consistent person that they're relating to. The whole company, there's a great consistency of message. And that they've already formed a relationship with us before they attend their first workshop. So I think more and more today, you have to put the emphasis on forming really great relationships in the public and maintain a consistency of who you are over a long period of time.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, that's great. I think it's really critical that we bond with people. I think bonding with people is the most important thing that one could do so that, you know, the rapport is trust with comfort. And you can build rapport quickly. Trust takes a little bit more time, especially if it's real and sincere. And one of the things that I learned, like my very first sales letter was a consumer's guide to carpet cleaning. And if I put the Consumer Guide to Carpet Cleaning in people's hands, it educated them on how to hire a carpet cleaner. So I tried to figure out how to make my advertising and my marketing useful so that people would know, like, and trust me if they actually read it. So I think of selling as what you do when you're on the phone or face to face with somebody, and marketing is what you do to get them on the phone or face to face with you properly positioned so by the time they're talking to you or your salespeople, they're pre-interested, pre-motivated, pre-qualified, and predisposed to do business with you. And if they read one of your books, and they talk to one of your people, they are pre-motivated, they are pre-interested, they're pre-qualified, they're predisposed. And that's the same thing that you did with the squeeze page. That's the same thing we did with any form of lead generation. Or if Mark puts together a television commercial, or if he puts together any form of advertising.
 
And so, one other thing that you said: people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood. And that is a real key. You know, people love to be sold; they hate to be pressured. And when there's a transaction going on that there's not pressure or manipulation, you don't even notice it. It's just seamless. And people in those sort of selling experiences, environments, are very encouraging to people. Because if you think about, who do you really like to buy from? Well, they're selling you something. But why do you like to really buy from them? Because there's something going on in a way that they make you feel a certain way. We had done a podcast episode, I don't know how many years ago it was, about branding equals bullshit. Remember that one? And there's all these people that are pitching, "Build your personal brand, build your personal brand." And it's really easy to sell that sort of stuff because it's kind of like about me. You know, I wrote a book that's What's In It For Them?. It's the opposite of what's in it for me, right? So, people are always thinking about themselves, and people are easily persuaded to be like, "Oh, this is going to make you look good. This is going to make you sound good. This is going to make you famous." And so, you have probably the best definition of branding that I've heard. So, I'd like you to talk to that.
 
Dean Jackson: Sure, absolutely. Because I've been looking, as you have, for when people say, well, what's a brand? And I really, like, think about this a lot. And the thing that I came to was, by looking at, well, who are we pointing to as examples of what a brand is? And, you know, the biggest brands, you talk about Budweiser and Coca-Cola, people look at those as…
 
Joe Polish: Or Apple.
 
Mark Young: Yeah, everybody uses Apple.
 
Dean Jackson: But in specifically, so I started looking at those and I said, okay, let's take Budweiser as an example that what they've done, if you look at it, is they have established a wide scope of brand, meaning that millions and millions and hundreds of millions of people have this reaction to the brand that is useful in that they make a decision when the time is right. And you start to say, well, what is useful about what they did and what's emulatable? Ray Dalio has a great thing on YouTube where he explains the economy, explains markets. And his definition, which was really interesting, is that when we talk about the auto market, for example, the size of the auto market, what they're really referring to is an aggregate number of all the individual microtransactions between one person buying one car. And when you put it all together, that's the size of the auto market. And so I started thinking, well, that's true. It's easier to impact one mind at a time. There's nothing that we can do to, if you're an upstart beverage company, it's going to be very difficult to unseat Coca-Cola, or if you're a microbrewery, you're not going to unseat Budweiser as the king of beers overnight.
 
But I started thinking, when you look at where that brand is useful, when people are in a situation where, say, would you like a drink? What can I get you? And they say, I'll have a Bud or I'll have a Coke, that that is a reflexive response to that moment when they're asked for, what would you like to drink? And so I started thinking about it, that that's true overall. More people say, I'll have a Bud or I'll have a Coke. But if you were to go to, and I don't know if this is true, but if you go to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and you were to go there, there's probably a microbrewery that makes a Punxsutawney pale ale. And if you ask somebody in Punxsutawney what they'd like to drink, probably many people would say, I'll have a Punxsutawney pale. Just like if you were in Guelph here in Canada, they'd say, I'll have a Sleeman's, right? That that kind of impact is where the key lies to a brand. And so…
 
Joe Polish: And by the way, I think you're supposed to snap your fingers for the mic, because that mic…
 
Dean Jackson: Oh, is that what you're saying, Gord? Okay, so… I get so excited. The thing that I realized about that, so I created an acronym for "BRAND." And what we're really trying to establish in the minds of individual people is a Buying Reflex Affecting Now Decisions. So when the moment comes that they need to make a decision about your good or service, who's going to clean my carpets? Their buying, their buying reaction, their reflex is to...
 
Joe Polish: So BRAND stands for?
 
Dean Jackson: Buying Reflex Affecting Now Decisions.
 
Mark Young: Now, let me talk about brand for a second here. That is, I'm the anti-brand ad agency.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, and by the way, I have been mostly anti-brand from this standpoint, because most small business owners can't afford what it requires in order to quote-unquote build a brand. So, if you're a small carpet cleaner and you try to model Coca-Cola, good luck.
 
Mark Young: You're going to die.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah. However, it's such a big word, and everyone uses it, and it gets used by it, that it's like, okay, well, that was probably the one episode we did that caused hate mail and all this stuff. But the point is, a lot of people are like, you're absolutely right, and I've been throwing so much money away trying to be one of these big brands, and I'm a small business. So, love to hear what you have to say about this.
 
Mark Young: So, clients will call us, and we're in the consumer packaged goods business. So, we live in this world where people expect they're going to be a brand. Whether I'm selling canned soup or soda, whatever the case is. And we try to explain to people that ad agencies, because ad agencies tell people, we're the brand managers, we're the brand ambassadors, we're the brand builders, we create the brand. And I always tell people, if an ad agency tells you they're going to create their brand, they're liars. Because brands aren't made by clever advertising. Brands are built by amazing products and amazing service. And my point to that is, we'll use Harley-Davidson. How many companies do you know get people to tattoo their logo all over their body?
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, there's a handful, but few.
 
Mark Young: Very few, isn't there? And do you ever see anybody drive around with a Microsoft sticker on the back of their car or a Microsoft t-shirt? No, but they'll have an Apple sticker on the back of their car. Because these are products that have an ethos. They have become part of the fabric of that person's life. Harley-Davidson is a lifestyle. By the way, we were motorcycle dealers. My wife was the biggest motorcycle dealer in the country. Honda makes a better motorcycle than Harley-Davidson. You can practically run a Harley without any oil in it, or Honda, and it'll just keep running. It's not a lifestyle. And by the way, I contend that the Harley Motorcycle Group, which I'm a member of, is actually the largest cosplay group in the world. But… It is. It's cosplay. But it doesn't matter what you do, you had a leather vest and you got blue jeans and boots. But at any rate, brands are built by amazing companies that build an ethos with their consumer, not by clever advertising. So I always say that when people come to us and they want us to help build their brand, whatever it is, where I'm selling pain pills. Whatever it is, we're a dating service, we're match.com. Yes, we can help you make the logo. We can make the package prettier. We can help you position it. We can help you come up with, you know, the organizing idea and all those things. But what we're really doing is we're getting you first dates. I can't get you a second date. A good product will get you a second date. Great service will get you asked out again, and will get you engaged, and it will get you married. But if you don't have the goods, there's nothing any of us in this room can do for you when it comes to making your product have brand kind of value or longevity.
 
Dan Sullivan: Apple, about three or four weeks ago, put a commercial out, and it shows a huge crusher coming down. And it's saying all the traditional and historic tools of creativity are now being destroyed. And a crusher came down and it crushed violas and it crushed all the instruments that were used to create music and create drama and create everything in history, and it crushes them, and then the crusher comes up, and the only thing that's left is the new, thinner iPad. But this is a corporation that was always David versus Goliath, if you think back to the '80s. And you think about the 1984 commercial of destroying Big Brother. Well, they were the little company that was going against the Goliath Microsoft in those days. And what's really interesting about that, they're now, until today, were the most highly valued company in the world. Nvidia surpassed them today.
 
Mark Young: Well, in fact, Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Apple. Because she says they have a monopoly on the cell phone business. Which I'm not quite sure how to figure out because they have 56% market share, and I thought monopolies were 100%.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but the big thing is that there was a particular type of person that Apple understood. And it was the artistic. They took over the artistic community. And we're going through this technological crisis time for creative people because they're being replaced by artificial intelligence. And so basically, you know, if you put the crusher together, all creativity is being crushed, but we've got the replacement for all the creative people. It's called the Apple iPad, the thinnest we've ever had.
 
Mark Young: Which doesn't make sense because no one in my office is editing videos on an iPad.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. If you're tired of carrying around your fat, heavy iPad, we've got the solution.
 
Mark Young: It's weighing me down, yes.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but what I'm saying is, why would they do that? I mean, Apple is one of the most well-established brands in the world.
 
Mark Young: I'm going to tell you why. And we see this in the ad business. So you guys will get this. When you look at the typical ad agency, it is occupied by frustrated movie makers and novelists. And these are people, I want to be making art, I want to be writing scripts, I want to be doing a novel, I want to be shooting television shows.
 
Dan Sullivan: Don't confuse me as an ad writer.
 
Mark Young: Absolutely. And I didn't get that job, so I'm having to take this job. And by the way, our industry is closely aligned to entertainment. I mean, Jerry Bruckheimer was a copywriter in Detroit. I mean, that is not an unusual…
 
Dean Jackson: So was James Patterson, by the way.
 
Mark Young: Absolutely. So it's not an unusual road to entertainment to start in advertising.
 
Dan Sullivan: Dan Sullivan was a copywriter.
 
Mark Young: Absolutely, Dan Sullivan was a copywriter.
 
Joe Polish: And I was a carpet cleaner.
 
Mark Young: So it's not unusual. The problem is, we have a lot of people in our industry who are more focused on their highlight reel than they are selling stuff. I'll give you an example from the past. Do you guys remember the ad that Nissan did with Barbie and Ken and G.I. Joe? They did this fabulous animated ad, and they had Barbie and Ken, and Barbie had a pink Nissan toy car, and G.I. Joe came along, and Ken was left on the curb and so on and so forth. It tanked the sales. I mean, it damn near put Nissan out of business. But it won every award for television commercials. So the agency was happy: We got all these awards. We got Telly Awards. I mean, they got awards coming out of their ear for being so creative, but didn't sell anything. What I did find interesting was the vice president of marketing at Nissan, after this commercial ran for a while, he announced his retirement because "I need to spend more time with my family." And the following day, they replaced that ad campaign with an ad campaign that showed a Nissan car driving down the street with a payment that said "$199 a month." That's what the ad campaign was changed to. Here's our car. Look how pretty it is. Camera goes inside. Look at all these features. You can have it for $199 a month. Guess what. Sales went back up.
 
Joe Polish: Well, years ago, I remember a "Heartbeat of America," today's Chevrolet, and young people may not even know of that. And that year, they had won all these advertising awards, and it was also the worst sales in their history up to that point. Something like that. And it's amazing how people get rewarded for… Remember, "Have You Driven A Ford Lately?"? So, my friend Paul Hoffman is the one that actually created that. He got paid $600,000 in royalties, which he then proceeded to snort most of it up his nose. And we did an interview about addiction and everything. But yeah, what people think is actually working does not necessarily… you don't know. And that goes back to the whole point of the type of advertising and things that we all prescribe and subscribe, which is track it. You know, see what actually works.
 
Mark Young: Right, and everybody in this room cares about the results, not cares about getting an award. A friend of mine made an award-winning campaign that you used from stage at CoachCon. His name's Tim Williams, and he's a guy who did, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."
 
Joe Polish: Oh, that's great. Yeah, and I was like yeah except guilt, STDs, death. That shit ain't staying in Vegas.
 
Mark Young: But you notice Vegas dropped that for a while, and travel to Vegas went down.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah. Well, because, you know, look, from a standpoint of accomplishing what they want to, it's a great way to be like, oh, yeah, come to Vegas and just be a total degenerate and just party your ass off and be crazy, because, yeah. But it's, you know, if you know your target market, you can, yeah. So let me say this thing, because we've got just a few minutes left. And there's a lot of things that we can talk about. It's great to bring all of us together at the same time. I wanted to get your perspective of, if you were to go back in time and there's something that you would or could have done that would have changed the trajectory of your life and your business in a more beneficial way—because I know we're going to have a lot of younger people that are listening to this—what would that be? And it could be business or it could just be personal life advice. Or it could be nothing. It could be like, you know what? Everything happened because it needed to. But if you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self, or what would you have done or not done that would have made what you think a big difference?
 
Mark Young: Wow, that's a tough one.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, I'll go with it.
 
Mark Young: Dan's the sage guy. Let's let the sage guy comment.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. At the beginning of our program, and just when we were starting our program, our main market was financial services. Particularly, it was life insurance. And I've known some really, really phenomenally great life insurance agents in my life. And you gotta believe it's a tough sell because you're selling something that the person is gonna be dead before it benefits them. I made a real splash in the life insurance industry, and I was brought in as a main speaker at Million Dollar Round Table, which is a huge venue and there's about four or five thousand agents there. I did it one year, and I was on main platform, and it was highly praised. And the next year, they brought me back, and they gave me a whole evening, two hours. And I created a special book, which was called How To Get To The Top And Stay There. And I took them through Coach concepts and everything like that. We had 65 sales at the booth the next day. I mean, that's a really big result for us. But then I had a Q&A period that went on for another two hours, so I was on stage for four hours. And somebody asked, "All this change you think is going to happen in the life insurance industry, how are the presidents of the life insurance companies going to handle this?" And I was feeling very, very confident. And I said, "Well, they've got two plans. They've got plan A, which they're telling you, and plan B, that they're going to do." And what I didn't realize, there were 35 presidents of life insurance companies in the audience, and they had a special meeting the next day with the organization of Million Dollar Round Table: "How can you have a speaker like this at Million Dollar Round Table?" And I was blackballed for 10 years.
 
Mark Young: So that's the "know your audience" comment there.
 
Dan Sullivan: No—"be more economical in your answers."
 
Mark Young: So don't spend four hours on stage.
 
Dan Sullivan: I did well after that because I had great referral business at that point. But I said, next time you say, "Well, it's very, very complex, and the different presidents are going to have to come up with different strategies." And just wimp out with that question.
 
Joe Polish: Well, I guess that would be, would you rather be rich? Would you rather be right? Maybe, you know.
 
Dan Sullivan: But 10 years have passed. And what happened is, all the presidents of the insurance companies told their agents plan A, and they did plan B.
 
Dean Jackson: You were right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah.
 
Mark Young: Well, there you go. All right. What would I change? So I wouldn't change anything that happened. And the reason is because I love my life the way it is right now. And I would be concerned that if I changed anything in that process, it wouldn't be what it is today. What I would change, if I could go back and talk to the younger version of me, I would have told me to have more confidence in what I was worth and charge what I was worth when I was younger and at the beginning of the career. Because when you start out in business and you don't have any business, then a sale is a panic. A sale is, I need a client, I need business. So you will give everything away because you want to work, right? And that's probably the thing that I probably did too much of at the beginning. Didn't value it enough.
 
Dean Jackson: Very interesting. I think, you know, one thing that always comes back to me when I think about that is Dan had a great concept about guessing and betting. And we all are really good at guessing and seeing where things are going. And if I look back... You know, we did that exercise today in the workshop of looking back at the catalysts, like recognizing those catalytic moments. And I think that just looking back, anything that- It would have been going all in or more in on the things that I was shown were right. And you look at where it could have gone, you know. They were all about catalysts that were compounded, but a lot of them are under-compounded because of not betting more on the outcome, on them.
 
Joe Polish: Got you. For me, I would have paid attention to more of the red flags and taken them seriously. I didn't even notice the yellow flags back then, right? So it took a lot of pain to do that. You know, more intentional on cutting ties with dishonest, negative, and lazy people. Also, I would have dealt with my addictions earlier on because I spent many years of my life just really struggling and in pain because I ignored the pain. So, I would have paid attention to the pain. Today, I look at pain as a messenger to pay attention to stuff. And I guess just really hiring amazing people earlier. Because you can leverage yourself tremendously. We talked a lot about one of the ultimate forms of leverage, which is marketing. And the other leverage is through the talent of other people.
 
Dean Jackson: Who Not How.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, exactly. Who Not How. I'll say this too, because we're all here at Strategic Coach, and Strategic Coach was really instrumental into my life. And, you know, those of you listening, we're not just business colleagues, we're friends, and we all collaborate together. And we've been doing it for many years, and we all make money together as a result of it. So that's what a real collaboration is. We were having a discussion in Coach today about collaboration. It's not about a joint venture. It's not about getting someone to pitch your stuff. It's about creating or producing something of value together with other people that, you know, they respect you, you create value for them, they create value for you, and it helps people. And so, I've always done my best to do that sort of thing and to develop those sort of relationships. So, last thing I'll say is, for people that want to hear more from you guys individually because they can certainly listen to our podcast. Obviously, they just heard this one. So, Dan, if someone wants to find out more about you, where do they go?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, StrategicCoach.com. We've got a great website, lots of stuff on that, and you even have a "take action" button.
 
Joe Polish: It's right there, and you don't even need AI to do that. You can just go visit it. Awesome. Awesome. Mark?
 
Mark Young: Well, website-wise, it'd be jekyllhidelabs.com, or if you just want to find out what I'm up to, you can go to meetmarkyoung.com.
 
Dean Jackson: That's great. So, mine would be deanjackson.com. It's so funny. I've started putting out all these social media things, and every one of them, I've got a little thing in the bottom corner that says, "Don't stop now – moredean.com."
 
Joe Polish: More Dean all the time.
 
Dean Jackson: Don't stop now! moredean.com.
 
Joe Polish: Well, my website is my name, obviously. Joe Polish, like nail polish. What I would say is I also have a ghost town, a 40-acre ghost town called Cleator, Arizona. So you can come visit that at some point if you want. What's Your Cleator — C-L-E-A-T-O-R — .com [whatsyourcleator.com], and if anyone is struggling or has a friend or family member struggling with addiction, I I have geniusrecovery.org, which is an educational platform that will provide all kinds of resources on where to get help and how to receive help. And we even have a recovery clone that you can speak with and ask questions. So, anyone have any famous last words you'd like to share before we wrap this party up?
 
Dean Jackson: That was awesome.
 
Mark Young: I want to tell anybody who's listening from my audience, these are three of the smartest guys that you will ever listen to. Sometimes people ask me, you know, who do you pay attention to? Who influences you? And these are the people who influence me.
 
Joe Polish: Thank you. And likewise.
 
Dean Jackson: I think that could go for all of us. We all say the same thing about the other three, yeah.
 
Joe Polish: Yeah, it's mutual respect. We definitely have mutual respect, and it's fun, and we've done a lot together. So I'm super happy we put ourselves into a freezing recording studio right now in Toronto, and it's been awesome. And is there anything else, Dan?
 
Dan Sullivan: No, I just remember Oscar Wilde, the great writer, his last words were, "I never liked those drapes."
 
Joe Polish: Awesome. All right, everyone, go out and do good in the world, and keep listening to our podcasts, and we'll talk to you next time.