EP013: Rich or Famous?

Stuart: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart here. This week we've got a slightly different type of episode. I wanted to share with you an interview that Dean recorded with Joe Polish and Tucker Max earlier this year. So Tucker's company, Bookina Box, is a similar organization to us in that we both help you get your book out into the world. But though our processes are very similar, as you'll hear in the show, the outcomes, the objectives of the book are really quite different. So Dean summarizes it great at the end saying the difference really is do you want to be rich or do you want to be famous? And that I think is a great way. As you listen to this, we often get people coming into the process wanting to create a book and they have some preconceived ideas of what the process should be or what they want to include. And we spend quite a lot of time doing discussing with people what the outcome is, what the objective of the book is, and do all of the extra bells and whistles that people are perhaps talking about, the extra effort, does it make the boat go faster? So we're aiming to get books out into the world, collecting leads for people as quick as possible, making sure that they get a return on that investment. And this is a great discussion of what's the best bang for your book. There's certainly some use cases where that bigger book is worthwhile, but it's definitely something that you should validate yourself, check and balance in your own mind just before you disappear down a path that might not give the best returns. So great, great show. Looking at the details of both, there's some real gems in here for particularly around the outline stages. As you hear people talking about the outline, thinking about how you can best engage your audience, what's the best message that's going to engage the the most people. So encourage people to have a listen through. I'll put a link in the show notes through to the full episode. It's about twice as long the sum of Tucker's backstory in there as well. So put some links in the show notes through to the Isle of Marketing episode. And then as always, we've got some great shows coming up. There's a couple of really interesting interviews we've got with previous authors. Another Q and A show is in the works. So if you've got any questions for that, then just shoot me a message across at podcasttyminutebooks and we'll include those in the next episode. If you want to get started after you hear this, there's some great motivation. Then just head across to 90minutebooks.com or drop as an email to hellotyminutebooks, and either myself, Betsy or Susan will get back in touch with you straight away. Okay, so with that, I'll leave you to listen to this episode. Just one quick warning. This is Joe Polish and Tucker Max talking. So there is some profanity in it. So if you're listening with kids, then you might want to put some headphones on and. Yeah, just a slightly different language from the usual show. Okay, enjoy, and I'll catch you next week.

Dena Jackson: So let me first ask, what are some of the most effective strategies, techniques, and marketing secrets that you know when it comes to succeeding in business? Let's kind of start with that and then set that as a stage for talking about how you help other people get their messages out to the world.

Joe Polish: Yeah, so the first thing I would say, we kind of talked about it. But I love storytelling. I mean, I'm a natural storyteller. And I think not enough businesses tell great stories. And this ties back into what we were talking about earlier. Not only do they not tell great stories, but when they tell a story, they tend to tell a story about themselves to the listener. Right? So they'll be like, you know, we have the best lawn mower ever. Here's why. Like, horsepower, gadgets, blah, blah, blah. Right? But here's the thing. I don't think anyone gives a shit about a lawnmower. I think what someone cares about is how amazing their lawn looks or whatever. I'm not a lawn person, so this is probably a bad example. But the point is, a lawnmower gets someone what they want. It's not what they want. Right? So a story about a lawnmower should really be a story about how a homeowner can become a lawn hero with this cool lawn, with this lawnmower. Right? So now you've shifted the story from being about the lawnmower to being about the buyer, the person.

Dena Jackson: Right?

Joe Polish: So that's what I try to do with our business. The business is very simple. We basically turn book writing and publishing into a service. So we have, like, a very algorithmic almost process and an amazing publishing team. And you spend about 15 hours on the phone with us, and we get all your ideas out of your head, structure them into your voice, and into a professionally published, amazing book, like something you'd find at Barnes and Noble. And it's literally 15 hours of your time. So when we talk about this, we don't Talk about our process. It's how we do this, even though it's really cool how we do it. And it's this really amazing. We've taken something that people thought couldn't be processized and systematized, and we've done it. And we've done it in a way that not only maintains quality, it actually improves the quality of books. But no one gives a shit how the sausage is made. What they care about is what the book is going to get them. So we try to tell stories about, like, you know, there's a lot of different audiences, but let's say a consultant who wants to really establish their authority and credibility in their field. If they have a book where they kind of explain what they know, whatever they're consulting in, especially if it's something new or novel, then all of a sudden they are the authority, they're the go to person. And that book acts as a business card for them and an amazing business card for them. So we tell that story, not our story. And now the consultants engage because what the consultant is seeing is themselves as their own, the hero of their own story. Everyone is constantly thinking of themselves and they're thinking about their story. So what we try to do, in my advice to anyone else, and you guys know this, you both do it really well, is when you tell a story, but tell a story where the customer is the hero and you are the sword helping them to slay the dragon, you're not the hero slaying the dragon, you know? Yep, yep.

Dena Jackson: So, Dean, since you actually put together books for people and stuff too, what I'd love to have you speak to this and. Because I've got a whole slew of questions that I could ask Tucker, but obviously this is something that is near and dear to you, so.

Tucker Max: Yeah, no, I mean, he's hit right on the head. That's the thing that people respond to are stories. And the thing that a business owner is going to get as an advantage of writing a book is ultimately, it's a calling card. Just like Tucker said, it's a really cool thing. And even in. You talk about consultants and I'll tell you a story, we did a book with a guy in Toronto who is a safety workplace safety consultant. And, you know, how could you think of anything less sexy than OSHA compliance? You know? And it's profitable, though. Passionate. This guy's really passionate about it, you know, And I had a conversation with him and we talked and I said, what would be, what's the best thing that you could do for somebody if they would just get out of the way and let you do it for them.

Dena Jackson: Right. What's the.

Tucker Max: What's the greatest result that you could create? And he went on and talking about how. Well, actually, by really focusing on safety, you can create a better work environment, you create less absenteeism, you create all these great things. And that creates a great return on investment. And we wrote this, we came up with this title of Return on safety, turning workplace safety into a competitive advantage and bottom line profits. And now instead of having a conversation with business owners about, hey, let us do your mandatory workplace compliance issues, you've now got this thing that elevates it to the point of something that at the C level, people are interested. So this guy became an instant sort of outlier in that world. And people gets invited to conferences. People are saying to him, when can you come and install this in our business? So he's turned it into a real advantage. Nobody else is talking about return on safety. Everybody's looking at it as a mandatory thing, as an expense. And telling that story in the form of a book really can change people's minds.

Joe Polish: Exactly.

Tucker Max: I agree with you 100%. There's nothing like a book to create that credibility for people. Yeah.

Dena Jackson: So, Tucker, you talk about there's four phases of writing a book. You talked about it at my Genius Network group. Can you kind of go through that?

Joe Polish: Yeah. So the way we structure it, actually, we wrote a book about our process, which I sent a PDF to. Eunice. Joe, if you want to give it out to your listeners, I'm happy, happy to let you, like, on your site. However you want to do it, it's totally fine. But the way we structure it is we do sort of an outline first, and then the outline starts with positioning. And so the positioning is. There's basically three questions you need to ask yourself before you start your book. The first one is, what results do you want from this book? Because no one wants a book by itself. They want. Because if you just wanted a book and you didn't care about the results, then you can just. That's called a diary. You don't need to write a book, just write it down and then put it in your drawer.

Dena Jackson: That's great. It's called a diary. That's the classic.

Joe Polish: Seriously, it really is. If you just care about the book, that's fine. But it's not a book, it's a diary. So you need to think, what result are you trying to get? So for a consultant, it can be more business it can be credibility. CEOs can be credibility. It can be about attracting people to their company. I mean, there's a million sort of results you could want to. So now, once you know your result, let's say you're a CEO and you're trying to attract great talent to your company, right? So, and you want to talk about your company's culture and all that stuff. Okay, fine. You want to attract talent. So the second question is, what audience do you need to reach in order to get that result? It's basic sort of marketing positioning, right? So if you're the CEO looking to attract talent, then your audience are people, the talent you want to attract, and recruiters who serve that talent and the people who know that talent. That's your audience. Very specific. The more specific you can make your audience, the better book you do because of the next question. The third question you have to ask yourself, which is, what do I know that is valuable to that audience? So if you're the CEO and you've got a great company culture and you want to use it to attract great talent, tell you exactly. Here's an example of who that is. Christian Cattuccini, good friend of yours, Joe, who's doing a book with us, Herox. He's got an amazing culture at Herox. He's writing a book with us about his company culture to not just really promote Herox, but to get great people to come join their mission. Right. And so what does Christian know that's valuable to people who could join his company of recruiters? He knows how to run a company in a way that people get up every day super excited to go to work and love what they do. Right?

Tucker Max: Yeah.

Joe Polish: And that.

Dena Jackson: No, no, no, that's not. Finish it. You finish your thought. I wanted to say.

Joe Polish: Well, I was gonna say, well, once you pair those. Those three things together, Right. Like using Christian example. Now, the book is about how to run a company culture like Herox is. Right? Because even though it's a relatively small niche, he's not going to sell, you know, a million copies, but he'll sell, you know, that copy. That book will go out and reach all the people he wants to reach because it's exactly positioned to reach the audience that will give him the benefit he wants, which is great talent coming to his company.

Dena Jackson: Yeah. And one thing I wanted to mention, since you brought up Christian Cattochini is like the. He's so good at company culture. And we were having lunch in Vancouver last year and I was, you know, we were talking about, you know, incentivized compet, because that's what Herox is about. But he started telling me about his company culture. And I'm sure Christian would even say this, that that is where the first thing started, where, wow, I should really be teaching people about company culture. And it's a good way to get people interested and seeing what they actually do in Herox. And we ended up doing a podcast episode on I love marketing with Christian. And so I just wanted to actually plug that. But it all starts from, I think I was the first that, you know, he's been talking about company culture for the longest time. But I said to him, I was like, christian, this is like, incredible. Do you realize, like, what, you know, many people don't. And it's fantastic that he's going through your thinking process here, because that's exactly where. How it needs to get out to the world.

Joe Polish: Exactly. So then from there, basically we structure the outline. Like, we figure out, understand exactly what he knows about culture and how it applies to companies. We turn it into a five to ten page outline. Then we have professional journalists that we work with who interview him and get everything he knows about culture out of his head in sort of like the right structure and the right form for the outline, which usually is about five to eight hours of interviews. So sometimes a little bit more, but that's the average. And we get those interviews transcribed, right. And, you know, like reading a transcript, just a straight transcript, is kind of hard. So what we do is we take that transcript and then we essentially have the journalist translate it from transcript writing into book prose. So it's all of Christian's ideas, all of his words in his voice and structured exactly the way he needs to be. His book needs to be positioned. Then the way we edit it is really cool too. So instead of just sending him the manuscript because he doesn't want to sit there and edit a book, right? So he doesn't actually have to touch a computer. We send him the manuscript, and then the. The interviewer, the journalist gets back on the phone with him and he reads the book out loud to the journalist. It's this weird trick that most professional authors know about that other people don't. I learned it when I did my first audiobook. When I read the audiobook for Beer in Hell, the manuscript was already locked and I almost wanted to, like, open a vein. I was so angry because I found like 50 little mistakes that if I just read this book out loud, I would have seen, right? You hear them much easier than you can see them. And I thought I had edited this book like 20 times. So I thought there's no way there was a mistake. And there were so many. I was pulling my hair out. So anyway, so that's how we edit now is he actually speaks the book out and then that way we make sure it's perfectly in his voice, everything he wants to say exactly the right way. Then from there we do the rest of sort of the professional publishing process which is like we do an amazing layout for the interior, interior design, we do a great book cover with high level book cover designers. We do all the sort of things that self publishing is great. But the problem is a lot of self published books look amateurish and they don't look really well done. So we make sure to us, I think the most important distinction is professional people, they care about professional books versus amateur books, they don't care who published it. So we make sure the book is super professional. And we actually use a lot of the COVID designers that the big six publishers use because most of them work freelance and they're not expensive. You'd be shocked actually like $1,000 to $1,500 a piece. And so we do all of that. You know, we set up Amazon page, itunes, all the sort of stuff you need for a book. And then we do a little bit of marketing, you know, press release, we do like an Amazon bestseller package and things like that. So almost every author we work for, work with gets to number one on some subcategory of Amazon and then from there it's sort of up to them.

Tucker Max: Gotcha.

Dena Jackson: So Dean, I mean there's more. There's a lot of stuff I could ask Tucker, but I wanted to see what you. Anything you want to add or say

Tucker Max: or ask, I'm tracking.

Dena Jackson: I mean I believe it all.

Tucker Max: It's really interesting. I mean the whole. That's essentially our process for the 90 minute book except without the, you know, not 15 hours of interviews and or those kind of things. Just getting the initial. Imagine if you could think about what the difference is between. It's from concentrates, getting the high points, getting the most important, like as if you only have an hour to do a presentation to an audience of

Dena Jackson: your

Tucker Max: very best prospects, your audience who you're trying to attract. And it's really all of these things. Everything that Tucker has said, it's all brilliant. It's exactly the process that people need to go through. The thing that's really interesting about the Amazon best sellers, which we've had a lot of people go through that process too, and then be Amazon bestsellers. But the truth is that being an Amazon bestseller has nothing to do with the book and everything to do with how you do it. I've had. I mean, we have people who have come to us, have gone through another. A similar process to what Tucker and I do, but have gotten the Amazon bestseller status for presale and then have come to us and said, okay, I got this Amazon bestseller, now I need

Dena Jackson: to write the book.

Tucker Max: Because they do it before they've even written the book. Which shows you the absolute truth that it has nothing to do with the book.

Joe Polish: To do with the book. Yeah, you're right. 100% correct.

Tucker Max: It's kind of a disillusionment at the same time for people that they realize that. That the truth about what's happening on the Amazon list, that it's not at all about the merit of the book.

Joe Polish: It's about hacking.

Tucker Max: It's about hacking the process to be an Amazon bestseller and that. Let's just get that out there and on a larger scale. That's exactly the same thing that's happening with the New York Times list.

Joe Polish: Oh, dude.

Dena Jackson: The same process.

Joe Polish: That's exactly. They're the snobby is most elite. Listen, my book spent five years on the New York Times bestseller list. They're the worst. I think they're the least legitimate, actual bestseller list. At least Amazon's is tied to something. Even if you think it's tied to sales, it's tied to sales. So that is legitimate. Right? The New York Times list is a curated list. So the fucking snobs on the Upper east side who think they're better than everybody decide what the right book in quotes will be for the list. That's total bullshit. I've always thought the New York Times list was bullshit, but. But, you know, it's like one of those status things that people think are important even though they're actually not, you know.

Dena Jackson: You know what's funny is I've helped quite a few famous people with their book campaigns and book promotions and several that, because of my help, as a direct result of my help, ended up on the New York Times, you know, be there in the number one ca or staying on for many weeks, months, et cetera. I remember talking to one of the companies that handles the logistics of buying books in bulk, and one of the authors I was helping who was high profile, basically saying, well, how the books are purchased, I don't want to be viewed as like, I'm trying to game the system that this person was saying and the person in this company that orchestrates that. My feedback first I said, look, I go, if you are super wealthy and you just want to buy a bunch of your own books and stick them in boxes in a garage and no one's ever going to read them, but you just bought your way onto the top of the list, that's one thing I would consider that. What the hell are you doing? It's just pure gaming the system. I go, however, if these books that are being purchased are actually going to human beings and going to readers that are either buying them or someone's buying large quantities and sending them to their client base and they're actually getting used, that's a whole. I mean, you can take that and moralize it all you want. But I go, that's a completely different thing. But the comment that struck me as the most funny is the guy that was. There's several companies that do this, but I'm not going to name names here. But he said, this is the funniest line. He said, the only thing ethical about this would be going into a gunfight without a gun. And he's like, you know, he's like, that's just what it is. And if you're not willing to play this game, don't make it a focus that you want to be on New York Times. Because he's like, it's all rigged, you know, and just very interesting. But you will. Okay. So that being said, for people that are out there listening to this, like, talk about the time savings of. Because you both have companies that you have services that help people put a book together, take their ideas, get them out of their head, and organize it into a book format and audio books. As far as I'm concerned, this is a way to tell your story. There are very slow ways to do it. It's kind of like the thing that I always think about. There's three ways you can learn something. You can learn through the school of hard knocks, which is painful and expensive in the long term. And maybe if someone has zero money, they can't do anything. But the school of hard knocks is one way to learn. The second way to learn is go to people's seminars, read their books, listen to their stuff, hire them as consultants. And the third most effective way to learn is you actually teach other people. In your particular case, someone can go and do this on their own, or they can hire someone to do it. So, Tucker, you went through the time savings of why someone would think about utilizing A service like yours and what the actual time savings are. So in a lot of ways, people are not only getting something done that they're never going to get done any other way, but they're buying speed. So I'm always willing to cut a check if someone's going to help me get to a result quicker. So your first thing of the process is what sort of result do you want? But in your particular case, talk about what results do you want do for people and how should people think about this? Because I know hundreds of people that have over the years. I'm going to write a book. I've written a book and here we are today. They've never written that book. They never get around to doing it. They talk about it a lot. But you actually both of you, in your own ways, can make this happen. But people do need to cut a check. So the question is, is this really an expense or is it an investment? So I'd like to have you talk about what this process does for people.

Joe Polish: Right, exactly. So I think there's a few things. Well, first off, my company charges 18 grand for the base package, which is what most people need, and then 30 for the higher one. And I think the reason you want to do this is not just because you want a book. There's more than that. It's what do you want the book to accomplish for you? Right. And so to understand sort of what you want that book to accomplish for you, it's like you need to understand how the book process works. You need to understand what ideas of yours should be. Are your ideas a book? How can they be positioned in the market? What's the best way to do it? Right. And that's really hard to do. Some books, I shouldn't say for all books. I think a lot of the stuff Dean does, it's like the book he described, I think was a perfect example of someone who clear idea, not very long book. Like you can go get through this quickly and get basically all the sort of value you're going to get from a book. But a lot of people, a lot of people with us, they want a professional publishing team behind them, right? And so we have, you know, like just on staff, we have guys who spent 20 years at HarperCollins as executive editors or guys who spent like, you know, decades editing magazines and who've written, ghostwritten or written their own best sellers. And like we have 12 full time people and all of them are like that. So we bring, I think an entire, we bring a lot of expertise. So Most of our clients are people who are pretty, pretty high up, pretty top notch. And they're people who, they want this book, their book, to reflect their status in the world and to show the world how much they know and to sort of put it into a book that really makes them feel proud. And that's for people like Christian. Claudicini is a great example. Like, someone like Christian needs a lot. He needs a team of people behind him who know exactly how to take his ideas and position them in a book and into the market to reflect what he's done and who he is. It's sort of like you can think of it like cars, right? Like a Hyundai is a great car. It's cheap, it's efficient, it's safe. It gets you where you need to go. But you're not buying anything except utility for the Hyundai, right? Then you can look at like, you know, like, let's say a Bugatti or a BMW or something like that. Like a BMW, let's say a high end 7 series BMW. It's like 10 times more expensive than a, than a Hyundai or, you know, what, eight times, right? And it's going to do everything a Hyundai does and then 10 times more. But all the 10 times more stuff is going to be stuff you don't need, but stuff that if you have, you can really enjoy. And it can help you sort of get to other places or do other things that a Hyundai won't do. You know, it confers status, it confers, you know, credibility, all those sorts of things that having a high status car can do, right? Whether it's right or wrong, they do it. And so I think it's sort of, that's sort of why someone want to come with us. And our service is like, if you have a sort of a full big idea and you need, you want to make sure you get the best people possible, working on your book and putting it in the best possible light. Because that last 10, 20% makes the difference to you. You want to use us. If you have like a great idea, but you don't want to spend a lot of money on it. You just want to get it out and get it out in a way that's effective and works, then probably Dean's service is actually a better call than us. How long does your service take, Dean? Ours is five months from start to finish. You guys got to be shorter than that, right?

Tucker Max: Yeah, 21 days.

Joe Polish: Yeah, there you go.

Dena Jackson: Right.

Joe Polish: Exactly. I mean, like, I think that was a brilliant.

Tucker Max: Yeah, that was a brilliant Loving refrain in comparison the.

Dena Jackson: So wait, would I be able to say Dean, like if they want to use your process, it'd be like a one night stand. But if they want to go with Tucker's, it's like a long term relationship with that.

Joe Polish: No, like a Hyundai versus a Bugatti.

Dena Jackson: I love that.

Joe Polish: It's brilliant, right?

Dena Jackson: You know, a lot of the zig is the,

Tucker Max: you know, it's time matters

Dena Jackson: for this too, right?

Tucker Max: Like I guess that part of the thing is whether what your objective is. Just like you said, if we go back to the very beginning, here's what

Dena Jackson: result do you want?

Tucker Max: If you're a small business owner and you want a result of getting more clients, that's your result and your audience is clearly defined. You know who you're trying to reach and you know what you have that's valuable to them, that's going to reframe or help them in some way. That, that's really, that's all part of the, you know, the entry level to even writing any book, whether you do a 90 minute book or whether you do a, you know, a status bigger process. But when you look at it, I think part of it is the time and the return on that investment. If you look at the starting process, if I were taking a local consultant or you take any kind of business owner whose goal is to get more clients, if they're a consultant, a coach, a practitioner, product or service provider, whatever it is, if you take the time value, if you take the whole process and look at the return on investment and the time that it takes to get there, you could start down one path. Take the path of doing a 90 minute book. Here's the thing that is the truth. First of all, the thing that's going to compel people to call or to raise their hand or to identify themselves if that's what you're looking to do, generate new leads, start new relationships with people. The thing that's going to do it is the fact that you have a book and that you have a title that conveys a compelling message to them that they're going to want to raise their hand for it. The proof right there is that you can become an Amazon best seller or whatever. It's all based on the title and the COVID of the book. Now if you start right now, if we take two people, you start the process right now and within 30 days you can have the completed book, have a landing page, URL, the whole everything you need to start generating leads and you've spent $1800 and take the remaining 15,000 or $16,000 and start driving traffic to generate those leads with a Facebook campaign or a postcard campaign or whatever. There's no difference in what's going to happen with one book versus another. If you take a, you know, you got the COVID of the book, what's inside isn't going to be known until people respond. So it's not going to make the boat go faster to have a book that took you 15 hours and more editing time in five months to generate the lead that's not going to make that go any faster. So you've got a time advantage in that. You can start generating conversations right now. Because the reality is, even with any book, Even with a 90 minute book, people often don't even read the book. Everybody buys books that we never read or we start the process of doing a book like that. And the proof of that is that I would guess just anecdotally in the people that I've talked to who've done 90 minute books with us, that I would bet that that at least 60% of the people who have actually paid and done a 90 minute book with us have never read the 90 minute book. They got it, they hold it in their hand, they see it and they say, I could do that. This is what you get in 90 minutes. Yeah, I would love to do that. And then they sign me up and they do it and they go through the process and they've never even read the book. And that's the proof that, you know, it does is not what it is. You know, it's not about that process.

Dena Jackson: So

Joe Polish: we have a very different audience. I think we have a very different services.

Dena Jackson: Yeah, let me actually take another angle on all this too. And it's not about justifying or rationalizing anything. It's just about human nature. Like, one of the things that drives me bananas with some people is all of the shit that people focus on. It's kind of like. I don't know if you remember this, Dean. I did it years ago. I haven't done it recently, but in Genius Network, I think I did this probably five years ago. And I had this anatomy, like this figure of a human body where it had the heart and the lungs and the nervous system and the kidneys and the brain and the eyes. I call this tool Anatomy of a Successful Business. And it had things pointing to it, with its blank things pointing to the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, the digestive system, the genitalia, which of course is your favorite part.

Joe Polish: But

Dena Jackson: it had all of the. That was a joke, by the way. I have no reason to say that that was Tucker. Guys bust on each other. There was really. That was just being mean to Dean. But anyway. Because I secretly don't like him that much. But anyway, it had this anatomy of a successful business. And I had everyone say, what do you think these things represent in a business? And some people be like, management is the heart, or marketing is the brain, or sales is the nervous system. Every person would have different things of what they actually. So everyone's criteria is going to be different based on things. But what's always driven me nuts and why I'm such a champion for marketing, which is why we have a podcast called I Love Marketing, is I truly believe marketing is like the oxygen that makes a business work. And if you're gasping for air, it's kind of like hating oxygen, but you need it to survive. So people that do not focus and put emphasis on, like, in the scheme of things, paying you $1,800 to get a damn book started or to do a book. Who gives a shit? Payne Tucker, $18,000 or $30,000? Who gives a shit? Now who gives a shit is if you don't have $1,800 or if you don'. $18,000, or you don't have $30,000. But I will tell you, the only way you're ever going to make that money is if you actually get out there and start selling something. And a perfect example is there's a book. I'm not going to name the book because I'm going to end up interviewing the author later. But I was over my buddy John Butcher's house about three weeks ago, from the time we're doing this interview. And John runs the largest collectible company in the world. He's the chairman of Precious moments. They done $12 billion in worldwide sales. And he's a dear friend of mine. I've known him for about a decade, and he's also creator of MyLifeBook.com, which is an amazing personal development system. So I see this book sitting on his desk, and I'm one of these people, like Tucker was saying, I buy books at probably 10 times the rate that I could ever read them. Plus, because we do a podcast, and I do a couple podcasts, and I'm this marketing guy, I probably get sent 10 books minimum a week from people that think they're doing me a favor by sending me their book. And some of them are actually good books. But for the most part, I Can't read them all. So I am in no way, shape or form limited on needing reading material. And I see this book sitting there because I have another book up in my backpack that I'm halfway through, but I'm add. So I got to start reading another book. So I pick this book up and I start reading it and. And it catches me right from the very beginning. It's just very interesting. It's about things that you can do to save money in your business and slash expenses and basically double your profitability is the subject matter. And I say to John, I'm like, can I order you one of these from Amazon? And I'll just take this one with me. He's like, no. He goes, books like that, they make my head hurt. You can just take it. So I take the book and start. Start reading it. Well, day before yesterday, I literally reach out to this author. This book was written when he was 37. He wrote the book when he was 37 years old. I think he first wrote. I think it was published in 94, 95. But he told me on the phone that he wrote it in 93, but before I ever had a phone conversation.

Tucker Max: So get this.

Dena Jackson: I'm reading this guy's book by the time. Like, it's a short book. The audio version of this book is only 2 hours and 15 minutes long. So it's not a long book. And I'm about 80% through the book. I'm just reading it saying, I want to interview this guy. This is a freaking killer book. He wrote it over 20 years ago. So I send an email to the guy saying, hey, would you like to do an interview? And he basically, you know what, I should probably just find the emails and read it to you. But if I can't find it quickly while I'm talking, I'll just say it from memory. But he responds back and says, he goes, you know, if you want to pay me for the interview, I'm happy to do that, but it's probably not. I told him I liked the book. He's like, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. As far as the interview, if you want to pay me for the interview, great, but that's probably not part of your business model. And I liked his attitude because it was the same sort of attitude he had in his book. And of course, doesn't know anything about me. And I'm in the same position. So many people ask me to do interviews with them that I have to turn them down. My criteria is if you're Not a genius network member. You're going to. Either you need to have a big following or there needs to. Because most people want to do interviews with me to use me as a way to help leverage their whatever, their podcast or their interview. And if I don't have a relationship with them, I get so many requests, I just can't keep up with it all. But I responded by going, you know, I understand, I'm actually interested in hiring you. And so we have a couple of emails back and forth and he's like 25 grand a month for consulting and he usually does it with big. And I just basically write an email to him saying, I'm happy to hire you for a month and see where this goes. Because of this guy's book. The email chain literally was within about a four hour period. And then I said, hey, I would like to hire you, but I can't do it in the month of February, which is where we're coming up to right now. I'm going to TED in Vancouver. I've got a genius network. I'm just busier. Joe, in March, I'd like to do some consulting with you over the phone. So I basically cut this guy a check. I said, but I will pay you in advance. And I go, well, to start in March, I send this guy a check for $25,000 because I read his book. Now, everything I just said is not that big of a deal, but it's a huge deal to me because I was like going, you know, this guy wrote this book in 1994. He wrote it when he was 37. He's now 60 years old. And I just sent a check to someone who I've never met. I had literally a five minute conversation with him and a few short emails and I sent him a check for $25,000. And if I really like the guy, I might continue to pay him 25,000amonth because that's his thing. What most likely will happen is I'll just become friends with him and I can help him. Unbeknownst to him, I can help him as much, if not more, than he can help me financially. But I'm a guy that I'm happy to pay for expertise. And had it not been for that book, I would have no awareness of it. Now, to bring this back to you and Tucker, there are so many people out there that have shit to sell. They have ideas, they have causes they want to fund, they want to change global conversations like I want to do with addiction. And all of these things are Sitting in their head. And they will sit and they will spend months or years of their life trying to figure out if I should ever write a book, book, how do I put it out there? And their services now, because of technology, because of this shit just gets done for you. And if you don't have the ability to pay for services like this, then what's ever going to change? Figure out how to get enough money, put stuff together and get these stories out there. Because like, I define marketing. Marketing is storytelling. And if you have something that needs to be packaged and told. And so it dawned on me. I had this conversation with Tucker. I was like going, you know, I need to write a book about what I do the best, which is I've written books, I've talked about it. I obviously have 245 people that pay me $25,000 a year to be in Genius Network. It's not like I'm not making money, but I have skills and I have resources. Episode 29, the one that we did years ago, Dean on the Magic Rapport formula, is still one of people's favorite episodes because I literally go through how I meet people. And so I talk Tucker. And I said, we're going to put together not just a short book. I mean, like, I'm not just trying to get it out there with a book cover. I mean, I'm really going to put together in my words, I'm not going to have a ghost written. I talked to Tucker how we're going to actually do this thing, but I'm going to, you know, he has resources that I could, that I can utilize. And you helped me with the first version of the Magic Rapport formula. So the way that I look at it is if you just need to like, get your thoughts down, you know, get Dean's process and do it, you know, if you want to do it at a higher level, keep going deeper. And if you want to go at a much higher level level, there's people beyond Tucker that can help you do stuff. The point is, don't do this shit on your own. It's stupid. I mean, it's just fucking stupid. I mean, stroke a check, get something and put your thinking together. It's the same reason I tell people, like, oh, I got something that I want to sell to people, but I

Tucker Max: don't know what to say.

Dena Jackson: Like, well, hire the draw shop at fifteen hundred dollars a minute to do an animated video for you. And if you have to do a three minute video, it will cost you $4,500. But because of that three minute minute video, you will think about your business in ways that's going to be worth way more than the $4,500 on a three minute video or if you spend $10,000 on a video. If you do a 90 minute book for $1,800, it could be the best $1,800 you ever spend. Just to think about it. If you go to tucker and spend $30,000, you know what's going to happen to your brain? Do you know what's going to happen to your business? Do you know what's going to happen about how you talk about what you do? What it does is it increases the value of what you're offering to the world. So it's packaged and you have a deliverable. But it's what it does for your own thinking. And people like, I'm amazed that they will not, they don't get that this is not about a book. I mean the book is the thing that will come out of it. But it's what it does for your thinking, it's what it does for your positioning, it's what it does for your brain. And the people that are unwilling to understand that or make that sort of investment are the ones that we will go through their whole life and they'll never get the shit done because they live in a scarcity mindset, someone that comes from an abundance mindset. They'll put money into things all day long because it goes back to if you've got enough money to solve the problem, you don't have a problem. If one of your problems is I want to write a book but I don't have enough time. Well, if you have the money, you don't need a lot of time, you just don't. So that was a very long rant. I hope it was maybe useful in some way shape or I probably could have said it in a third of the time, but that's. I felt I needed to say that just for therapeutic reasons.

Tucker Max: Dean, I don't think you look at your version one. That's the thing, you said the right thing there. You know, like you look at all these books that Dan Sullivan does, for instance, all like the 25 year framework, the four Cs, all the books that he's working on that he's doing one a quarter start out with the 90 minute book process that starts there and then his team takes over and does

Dena Jackson: the

Tucker Max: next levels of it to turn it into what it becomes. But that's exactly it Joe, get movement over Meditation. That's really what it's about.

Dena Jackson: Out. Yeah, yeah. And. Sorry, Tucker, you're gonna say something before Dean just.

Joe Polish: No, I was gonna say, I think you just nailed a pitch for why to do a book better than I could. Yeah, it was much longer than I would have done, too, but it was.

Dena Jackson: No, no, you know, part of it. I was just trying to get my thoughts in my head. But at the same time, you know, it's like, fortunately, if I. If I would have scripted that, it would have been much more articulate. The point is the thing that made the difference for me. When I was a debbroke carpet cleaner living off credit cards, I paid a copywriter $1,800 in 1992 to create my very first consumer's guide. And I knew that I needed something to position me other than people calling up and saying, how much do you charge? I didn't want to advertise price. But what I did know is I learned about, you know, sales letters. And I read Gary Halbert in his newsletter wrote, any problem in the world can be solved with the right sales letter. And there was no Internet back then, and it was all paper and ink. And we're doing direct mail and Valpak coupons and every other carpet cleaning company's advertising price. And I create a consumer guide to carpet cleaning. Read this guide and discover seven questions ask a carpet cleaner before you invite them into your home. You know eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Six costly misconceptions of about carpet cleaner, carpet cleaning. You know, crawling critters and crud. A guide to the slime, grime and livestock that's seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. How to avoid 4 Carpet Cleaning RIP offs. The difference between value and price. How to get your carpet cleaner to 100% guarantee their work. And it said that on the COVID Then they would open it up. It says, dear homeowner, choosing a carpet cleaner isn't easy. Why? Because you're bombarded with confusing claims, simply bad information, low price methods, near unqualified technicians. How to ever find a professional qualified carpet cleaner. You start by reading this guide. With this information, you can make an informed, intelligent decision. And then they would read that would describe all of the stuff. And it was a short guide. But I paid $1,800 to have this, frankly, this half. You know, if you take an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper, fold it in half, and that would end up turning into about 10 pages. That was the guide. And I paid $1,800 to have that written back in 1992. And I paid on credit card to have that done. But what that did for me was I no longer became just some guy that had carpet cleaning services. I now had something to tell my story. I now had something to be able to educate people. That consumer guide ended up becoming the first thing that not only helped me turn my carpet cleaning company around, obviously I had to learn other marketing strategies. I had to learn how to advertise the consumer guide. I turned it into a 24 hour free recorded message. And that was in 1992 and 1994. I started my marketing company. I sold my carpet cleaning business when I was 26 years old. In 1995, I did a quarter million in sales of selling a how to course teaching carpet cleaners. By the next year, I did half a million in sales. By the third year, I literally did a million in sales and I was a millionaire by the time I was 30. But it all started with that consumer guide. And by the late 90s, every, every major phone book in the United States had one or multiple versions of my free recorded message ads running in all kinds of different industries all over the United States. And today over $2 billion have been generated that we can even loosely track based on my ads and campaigns. But if that shit just if I wasn't willing to stroke that check for $1,800 when I was broke, none of this ever would have happened. I never would have built any of my business. And that's the thing that drives me bananas about people. It's not something about people are so cheap they don't realize they're screwing themselves because they're not willing to do some of these things. And that's not to say that if anyone goes and hires you or hired Dean, that all of a sudden it's going to make them rich. I mean, that's not my point. The point is that you really, if you have the message, is the most critical thing in the world. Do you think there'd be any such thing as Christianity if there was no Bible? The Bible is one of the most successful sales letters ever written. And the point is, you know what, like there's 2200 different versions of Christianity that have made billions of dollars based on the fact that there was a Bible written.

Tucker Max: So it's like, you know, to Tucker's point, it's all stories.

Joe Polish: Totally, totally.

Dena Jackson: Yeah. So, but by the way, if I keep talking guys, this is going to be like a four hour podcast. So what did we Learn here today. What?

Joe Polish: What did we learn? We learned that Joe has a future in marketing, clearly.

Dena Jackson: Well, here's the thing too. Had I not paid someone to help me put the words in my head, because I spent 30 days with this copywriter teaching him about carpet cleaning, one of the most boring subjects on the planet for someone who's not a carpet cleaner. I had to figure out out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy. And I always tell people, like, if you've got anything more exciting and sexy than carpet cleaning, you could probably learn a thing or two from my marketing techniques because I had to figure out how to learn how to sell in accidental industry. Just like Tucker. You're saying some of this shit was accidental? I mean, I wasn't growing up saying I want to have a carpet cleaning company. I bumbled into it. And I think a lot of people just stumble into their careers and there they are trying to figure out how to make a of lot living. And so if you want to go beyond making a living, these are the things that you do. It's not the only thing. I mean, frankly, to be a successful human being, I wish it was as easy as many of the books write that there's only three things you need in order to be. There's a lot of things. I mean, you have to develop yourself as a person. You got to have integrity. And not always. Some people have no integrity, but they have a lot of wealth in terms of financial wealth, but I don't think they have a lot of relationship wealth. You could have a lot of money and be imperial piss poor physical conditions. So being a success has to do with a lot of many factors. But as it relates to marketing, if you want to replicate yourself, canon, clone yourself, you're either going to tell your story day in, day out, one on one, hire a whole sales force of people, or you're going to put a book together and the book could talk to tens of thousands. I mean, look, let's go back to your thing. How many books have you sold, Tucker?

Joe Polish: Sorry, I had to mute.

Dena Jackson: Out of all your books, how many? Do you have any idea what the. Like how many have sold? I know it's over 3 million, but is it more than that?

Joe Polish: Yeah, 3 million.

Dena Jackson: Yeah, yeah, 3. I mean, that's a lot of books. Now, has every single 3 million books been read cover to cover? Probably not.

Joe Polish: Probably not.

Dena Jackson: But there are a shit ton of people that have read your stuff. You've become world famous, a movie's been made out of you, you've Millions of dollars. And now you've parlayed this. Why? Because you started with writing, you got the writing down, and had you met someone like you when you were first starting out, your career would be decades ahead. If Dean had met someone like him. Years. And now with I love marketing, I mean, we put this shit out for free. No one even asked to pay us for this. So in a lot of ways, we're just pointing people into different directions. So that being said, let's plug your service, tell people where they need to go. I'll take the PDF to that you have given us and we'll put it on. I love marketing. And we'll also. Dean, if people, you know, let's just do plugs for people to get started with if they want to get a book done and make this happen.

Joe Polish: Yeah, just go to bookinabox.com and there's like a form there they can fill out. One of our people will get back to the person in like 24 hours or less and we have a whole conversation, see if it's right. Our service isn't right for everybody. I would say maybe only about half the people who contact us really should use us. Like, Dean's right. There are some people where it's much better to go with him than with us. And there's some people probably who shouldn't be writing books at all. They just don't know. Have anything to say.

Dena Jackson: Well, absolutely.

Joe Polish: Yeah.

Dena Jackson: No, it is.

Tucker Max: It is true.

Dena Jackson: And I would tell you that's in you and that'll be filtered out through the whole process. Because I do know enough about your whole process now because I'm going through it myself, Tucker, to do that. And Dean, I think a lot of the people that have gone through your book process, a lot of them have developed them into much bigger books. And I think utilizing a service like Tucker's to take it up even.

Joe Polish: Yeah, absolutely.

Tucker Max: That's the whole thing. Because we, you know, we offer a very specific thing as a version one, you know, 80% approach. Get it out there and get focused on generating leads and getting business. That's the focus of who we're working with. Some people do want to go further. And you're absolutely right. We talked offline that that's something that we may have people who would be perfect for what Tuckers do. Yep, yep.

Dena Jackson: And so, Tucker, what didn't I or Dean ask you that we should have asked you? And what would the answer to that be?

Joe Polish: Man, that's a good question. I don't know. You guys covered Just about everything. As much as you talk, Joe, if you didn't cover everything, something's wrong.

Dena Jackson: We're going to start this podcast over to Tucker's team and we're going to have this turned into like a 12 minute book that just contains the essentials of what the hell you need to say. So you'd have to. But you had to suffer through. Listen to me babble for part of this, but hopefully you found it useful. And to all of our listeners, please give us your feedback. If you end up doing a book, let us know about it because I'd love to see how many people this actually inspires to, you know, kind of go through the process. We'll. We'll put up Tucker's PDF. I think we should actually make people opt in for to Dean. I mean, why just give away this gold for free, you know?

Tucker Max: Yeah, sure.

Dena Jackson: So you can make a deal. If only there was a way.

Joe Polish: Yeah, yeah.

Dena Jackson: I don't even know if you know this, but you know that Dean was the first one to ever create a squeeze page online.

Joe Polish: No, I didn't know that. I didn't know I was talking to marketing words. That's amazing. For real, the first one.

Dena Jackson: Oh, yeah, no, he invented the squeeze page back in 1997. He did it with a stop your divorce. It was an ebook. And he was the first one that ever put a, you know, a page up where you have to enter your email in order to go to the next page and get through. So he created that whole secret door, and now millions of people utilize that formula. And then of course, he taught it to his buddy Evan Pagan, who ended up creating, you know, double your date out of it. But Dean taught Evan that whole process in the very beginning, and that's how it all started. So for all the listeners out there, you know, when I sit and listen to your story, Tucker, I mean, there's so many people that are really utilizing marketing methods and technologies and stuff that now, you know, back then it was like no one ever did it. And today some people like, it's annoying. I don't want to opt in. But, you know, one thing that you will learn by putting together a book and watching how this is done is not only will you have a book, you actually learn how to develop a list and you'll learn how to develop an audience. And if you have enough people that like what you're about, that gives you true staying power, that gives you real equity. And a lot of people have books, but they have no lists, they have no relationships. And there's a lot more to it. So hopefully we shared with everyone today some, you know, some solutions and some different ways to. To think about it. So any final last words from either one of you guys before we wrap?

Joe Polish: Yeah, I, like, I didn't even know a squeeze page is one of those things you don't even think someone invents. It's just been there since the Internet has existed. I had no idea you invented that, Dean. That's amazing.

Dena Jackson: Yeah, that's what he's famous for. And yeah, so, I mean, Dean, look, look, I mean, we could do this for two weeks because at this point, I' already violated the one hour thing. And usually I'm the one that's trying to, like, tighten things up, but I just kind of went on a tangent. How are you sitting around one day and you thought that through? I mean, I know we've told this story before on past podcasts, but give Tucker the short version because people that are new to I love marketing may not know this and it's good to. I mean, we talked about this five years ago, but.

Tucker Max: Yeah, well, part of the thing was realizing that I've always been a fan of, of what's going to get the best result, right. And I started experimenting with, you know, you could put a form on your page and get people to leave emails. And what people were doing was they'd have their normal website and then they'd put this box that said on, you know, in the sidebar of their site that says, hey, join my newsletter or whatever it is and leave your name and email address. And. And then what I started experimenting with was because I realized then the less that I put on my actual site, the less options there were, the higher the opt in rate was. And then I just thought, well, you know, it's like I started doing it like the COVID of Cosmo magazine, how that's the thing that they just put compelling stuff. And actually it was the real estate website was the first one that I did it for. And instead of saying click here, click here, I would say more inside, free, inside all these things, which was you're looking at the table of contents, which is all this compelling stuff. And then as soon as I took out the other links, like where you couldn't click on anything, the only thing you could do was decide, oh, I want that, and leave your name and email and. And opt ins skyrocketed. So that was the genesis of making it the only option. And I didn't name it the Squeeze page. Jonathan Meisel Named it Name squeeze Page. Yep.

Dena Jackson: So what do you think of that?

Joe Polish: That's pretty amazing. That should be in the big book of Internet history or something.

Dena Jackson: I know. You know what? Maybe you should have Tucker do a book for you, Dan, on this.

Tucker Max: Yeah, I could have absolutely booked it.

Dena Jackson: No, I'm dead serious. And so I guess in a nutshell, I think your child is yelling for you, Tucker. So what I would say

Joe Polish: movie.

Dena Jackson: That's what we could do. The early years of the Internet.

Tucker Max: We could do it straight out of Compton.

Dena Jackson: Well, so I guess what to summarize this is that Dean's process is an appetizer and yours is the main course. Is that what you guys are saying, Saying here?

Joe Polish: Yeah, pretty much.

Tucker Max: We should have a contest. Yeah.

Dena Jackson: The next episode will be a celebrity death match between like the different people that I like.

Joe Polish: The Hyundai vs Bugatti. Because that's not a put down to me. Hyundai sells millions of cars and they're amazing and people love them. Like, Bugatti doesn't sell as many as Hyundai, but it fits. They both fit specific niches. Yeah.

Tucker Max: I would say it's really the choice has to become down to would you rather be rich or famous? That's really what it is. You want to be rich, then just let's get started. Do a 90 minute book. You want to be famous. Let's go talk to Tucker.

Joe Polish: Yeah, that's actually a pretty good distinction too,

Tucker Max: Sam.