Perry Marshall 4:10
Oh, it really is, if you get it. it’s mind-blowing. There are levels within levers within levers. And then the third part is that it’s actually remarkably predictable. Okay, so like most of us, in business, we feel like we’re just swimming in this world of chaos. And things happen for no rhyme or reason. And well, I’m going to write this book or I’m going to like or launch this product. And I have no idea how this is going to do and actually think the world is a lot more predictable than you think. And that gives you the ability to take much more calculated risks and know with much more certainty than most other people. how things are going to turn out and so when you start To recognize these patterns, they’re incredibly powerful. And so most people consequently are wasting enormous amounts of time, basically polishing turds. And, and, and they’re neglecting the really important stuff. You know, the typical $15, an hour receptionist, has little narrow bands of like, a minute here, two minutes thereof literally $10,000 an hour opportunities, or situations that often they just go by. And they don’t even notice, it doesn’t even occur to them. Like she’s thinking, Well, you know, if I got a 10% raise, I would be making 1615 an hour instead of 15. That would be amazing. And she misses the $10,000 an hour thing that just went by so, um, well, so you can ask more questions, I guess, if you like, but that’s
John Corcoran 6:01
the point. And I’m glad you brought up the $10,000 an hour thing because literally, I think a day doesn’t go by that Jeremy. You know, and of course our business, he’s like, it’s this $10,000 an hour activity that we’re engaging in right now. And it’s is a great question to ask yourself, just in the course of doing business, you know, is this the highest leverage type of thing I should be doing right now, but give us some ways in which we can understand whether we’re engaging in a $10,000 an hour type of activity, or how to spot them?
Perry Marshall 6:30
Well, so John, if you think back over last year, if you think with a little bit of care, you’ll probably end up agreeing with me that half of the money you made all year, hinged in what you did in about three to five days. Okay, so like if we went, but if you’re on commission, we go look at your biggest sales, if you’re an entrepreneur, we look at your deals or your product development and your sales and, and we can go even deeper your Facebook accounts and everything. But what we find is that, like, Oh, well, you know, on February 22, last year, we landed this client, and on April 14th, this thing happened on June 27. This happened in like, you know, you take like these four things, and this was half of my income for the year and you go, Well, alright, so really, it came, like all those things came down to a couple of weeks of preparation, and 16 phone calls, and four zooms, and three in person meetings, and all of that stuff actually happened in the space of, you know, actually about five days. And, in, in, in not only that, like when that client came on, and APR 14, you know, there were like 27 things that you’re going to do for them. But the real reason they bought was three of them. Right? And it might be the reason they picked you instead of the other guy was there was this one thing they knew would not be a problem with you. But it probably would be a problem with the other guy. And they couldn’t risk that. And so it’s like, there’s this very small number of reasons why you have a client, a very small number of things that you did that made that client happen. And, frankly, to be honest, most of the rest of the year was filler. And not only that, there was probably six weeks of last year that sent you backwards instead of forwards. And you shouldn’t even do it at all. Like if I had just not even taken that class in the first place. We would all be so much better off. And my you know, I’d probably be living longer, right. And so 80/20 is incredibly powerful. It’s all over everywhere all the time, waiting to be noticed.
John Corcoran 9:08
Yeah, yeah, that’s great examples, you know, of things that we should be looking at. So we’re wasting a lot of time, we’re spending a lot of time and activities that we shouldn’t be focused on. And we should be doubling down on those other ones. What else? What are some other lessons that we should get from that whole body of work before we go on to talking about the new project?
Perry Marshall 9:31
Well, and another thing is what I call the principle of the 20 $700 espresso machine. And what that says is that for every if you got a Starbucks in 1000 people every week buy a $5 latte. It says it’s almost like a law of physics. One of those 1000 people will buy a 20 $700 espresso machine And, and, and I want you to notice it’s not some other person somewhere else. It’s one of the people that already came and bought a latte. Okay, so this is what we’re talking about, is making a lot more money from existing customers where most people are all obsessed with getting more than they’re spending all this money on Google or Facebook advertising or wherever to get those. They’re chasing those cold leads right there. They’re not even maximizing the potential they have with their existing clients. In fact, a lot of times the only reason that a business can even exist or survive, is to sell the espresso machine. It’s like, well, the lattes, just keep the lights on. Yeah. Hey, like, I know, you sort of think they’re making a lot of money on those lattes when not, not really. Yeah, yeah.
John Corcoran 10:54
Yeah. Right, right. It’s amazing. You use that example. It’s amazing how many businesses don’t think through that they’re actually selling to different types of, of customers, you know, like to use that example of Starbucks, a coffee drinker might also buy an espresso machine because they might think, Oh, I’d like to be able to make espressos at my house. That’s a natural extension. But it’s amazing how many businesses would also sell a peloton or something if you know, in a completely unrelated different type of customer? A lot of times they don’t, people don’t think that I should just be selling to one type of customer and products at different price points, correct?
Perry Marshall 11:32
Well, yes. Because your customers propensity to buy is on a wildly exponential scale. This is probably the hardest thing for people to grasp is that is it’s the principle of the hyper responsive customers is some customers want 1000 times more espresso. Like their itch, their espresso is 1000 times more powerful than the next guy. And their ability to spend money is 1000 times greater than the next guy. So you know that? Like most people, they just buy their latte, and they go on their way. But like, well, that lady over there, she’s going on a Mediterranean barista cruise for $5,000. In April, yeah. Um, and like, she can’t wait to vibrate for a week on caffeine with all of the other people that are on the cruise ship. Right. Right. Because, like, like, they’re going to have a contest, and they’re going to pick the best barista of the Mediterranean award and right,
John Corcoran 12:50
and they can’t get enough coffee in their life in different forms. Yeah, yeah. I mean, other examples. I don’t remember this was in your book, or where it came from. But I like to think of Disney and also Tony Robbins, because they have really well defined audiences and different product offerings at different price points, going from free to hundreds of 1000s of dollars,
Perry Marshall 13:11
right? Oh, that’s, that’s, that’s right. And, like Vegas, most people don’t know that 20% of Las Vegas is money made from whales. That’s what they call them. They’re like guys that fly in from Hong Kong, and they’ll put $100,000 on one hand of poker. Again, there are entire wings of hotels that the rest of the public doesn’t even know exists. And it’s just for these very small percent of super high end clients. Okay. And see, actually, everything in the world works sort of like that. Okay, it’s like, there’s this very small number of people that influence almost everything or to give you just like a completely different person. Think of a cause, like, in the last 10 years, the word trafficking has become a household word, right? Oh, there’s this whole sex trafficking thing, and it’s horrible. Do you realize it probably about 12 people got together and decided, this is such a bad problem. We are going to make sure that this becomes a household word. It’s in the newspapers, it’s in the magazines, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, it’s in social media, we are going to drive awareness, you know, in somebody who’s, I don’t know, maybe their daughter got kidnapped and murdered or something. She’s like, I am not gonna stand for this anymore. Right. And they raised awareness of things. And here’s the point. It wasn’t 2000 people that did this. It was like 12. Yeah, yeah. This is how mass movements start. This is how politics works. If there’s political correctness in the world, as there is right now, there’s a lot of it is Because there are about 12 people that just can’t stand for other people to talk about X, Y, or Z, right? And so and so there’s huge, huge levers, there are tiny little hinges that swing big doors in the world. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
John Corcoran 15:20
Yeah. So how do you make yourself one of those? If you have a cause, or a mission or a business, you want to get behind you want to get others behind? How do you make yourself one of those?
Perry Marshall 15:29
Well see, you’ve got to figure out where the levers and where the pain points are. Now I’ve got my own version of this. And, and it’s a work in progress. But so for example, you said in the introduction that I’m, I’m the founder of the Evolution 2.0 Prize, it’s actually the largest Science Research Award in the world. And I went, I went down a rabbit hole of where did we come from? And how did all this work? In fact, there is an interview with me and Jeremy Weisz, and you can easily find it. And we talked about Evolution 2.0 and all of this. And so I’m not going to go into, like what that’s all about, because you can hear that there. Okay. But yeah, I said, here’s, here’s what I said, I said, I have to like you. I’m not, I’m not a professional scientist, I don’t have a PhD. I don’t work in that profession. But I have to figure out a way to change the conversation that’s going on in that profession, I have to have a way of proving that there are some questions that nobody’s answered. And we can’t pretend like we’ve got answers when we don’t. How can I do that? And I eventually arrived at the best way, the simplest way to do that is with a prize model.
John Corcoran 17:03
Yeah. And I’m sure you read Peter Diamandis, his book, he wrote extensively about this and the founder of the XPrize Foundation, of course, and, and that’s a perfect example of small hinge, you can open a really large door. And it was, I think, was originally the Spirit of St. Louis, the competition to fly across the Atlantic that led Charles Lindbergh to actually accomplish that.
Perry Marshall 17:27
Yeah, back then it was a $25,000 Prize. And, and so and so like, I guess, what I’m saying is, you have to ask yourself, what is the, like, the biggest lever with the smallest amount of resources that I can use to get this. So like, so like, when I set up the prize, the prize is a search for a patent. And what the investors have agreed to do is pay for the patent and buy the thing, you know, buy the rights to the thing when it’s discovered, so I didn’t have to go get $10 million, I only had to get $10 million of commitments. Okay, against it. See, this is exactly what I mean by 80/20. The commitments, like the size of the checks, they actually wrote to me were much smaller than that. But I have a, you know, if we issue under these conditions, if we issue a capital call to you investors, you guys are contractually bound, you guys have to write a check. And, and there’s a lot many, many times where you can use a piece of leverage like that. And then you only need 1/10 or 1/100 of the resources that everybody would assume that you do. Right, right. demandas you got an insurance company to cover it?
John Corcoran 18:59
Right, for the original? Yeah, for the original XPrize. And more recently, they were recording this in February 2021. There’s the Ilan Musk, 100 billion dollar climate change prize, which was announced recently. anything more than that, before we get to the new book, I want to ask you about that.
Perry Marshall 19:16
Let’s go ahead to the
John Corcoran 19:17
Yeah. Well, so I love about this is, you know, we’re recording this in February 2021. We’ve been in the midst of this pandemic for the last year. And what better time to come out with a book that’s about decluttering than when we’re all stuck at home looking at all the clutter we’re surrounded by. So was that deliberate? Or was this plan before the pandemic?
Perry Marshall 19:35
Well, the word declutter isn’t really about your physical space. It’s about your mental space. And it actually came about before the pandemic, it just, you know, it took that long to kind of get through but, but here’s the thing, I think, the pandemic so that yes, it’s created awareness of people’s physical clutter. But it has created a huge up spike in mental clutter. Why? Because people are in the media all the time instead of at the pub talking to their friend or going to a restaurant or having coffee, and having real conversations. And I actually think this is a very serious problem. Okay. Like, like, and if you want to do it on zoom, that’s great. But you but you have to have a real conversation with a real human being. And well, so to that end, like, when the Black Lives Matter, protests, were all exploding all over the place. Um, there was a, you know, I got a little group family chat on our smartphones. And a topic. Well, some discussion about all the protests. In our little family chat, it got out of hand, a couple people, family members got upset. And I’m sure this has not happened to ever anybody else. No, not
John Corcoran 21:16
at all. This isn’t only unique to your family situation, of course.
Perry Marshall 21:20
And, and so I slowed down, and I had lengthy conversations with every one of my kids face to face. But one of them I took her out to a restaurant, well, hey, let’s talk about this. And my 20-year-old son said to me, so I’m probably the most conservative member of my family, and my daughter, Tana is the most liberal member of our family. And he’s somewhere in the middle. And he goes, you know, Dad, it’s really funny. He goes, he goes, if I just look at the two of you, I go, or Alright, she and he like, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think there’s any way to kind of reconcile his view with her view. He goes, you know, it’s funny, though. And he told me this after we had talked for an hour. In fact, it might have been an hour and a half. And it was like, well, I’ve lived in Chicago for almost 30 years, Chicago has a lot of racial problems. Let me tell you about a bunch of experiences I’ve had. And then like, we had this whole conversation. And he goes, you know, when I listen to you, and your stories, in your experiences, what you say makes a lot of sense. And I would have never guessed that you would make that much sense. But then the funny thing is, if I go to talk to Tiana and I hear her experiences in her stories, she makes a lot of sense. And actually, you guys are more compatible than I would have ever guessed. It’s just that you have a right and I said that’s exactly right. And when you reduce people to bumper stickers and slogans and headlines, you completely kind of like butcher humanity. And, and so now what this has everything to do with this book, why? Because step one of the seven steps is to use Renaissance time to gain discernment and clarity.
John Corcoran 23:33
Yeah, talk about that. what that is.
Perry Marshall 23:35
Okay, so the worst possible way that you can start your day looks like this. Ring, ring, pole. device in bed and start.
John Corcoran 23:51
Scrolling? Yeah, through social media.
Perry Marshall 23:54
Okay. Yeah. Okay, the worst thing is social media or news. The second worst thing is email. But like if your day starts with that, right, being bombarded by people who are, you know, trying to get you to fit within their agenda? Yeah, right. It’s now going downhill. Even just the reactiveness of email. Oh, no, there’s a refund request. Oh, no, there’s a support ticket. Oh, no. I’m like, What? Okay. And like, No, no, you start with prayer, meditation, reading music, take a walk by the lake sitted you know, sit in the park and watch the geese. You know, whatever spiritual space you need, you do not get sucked into any media you do not do that. And, and I actually tell people, delete Facebook App off your phone. You can still use it on your computer. One Day does not like this one of the biggest productivity killers ever. Yeah,
John Corcoran 25:05
I was actually gonna ask you about Facebook since you’ve obviously known you’re known as someone who’s written about Facebook, if you have a thing or two to say about it, you were early on talking and writing about Facebook. But
Perry Marshall 25:18
that book right there. Facebook ads, fourth edition. Yeah. No, you know it. The first chapter says, let’s just delete the Facebook app off your phone.
John Corcoran 25:31
And when did you say that? Did you say that early on in the first chapter? I mean, did you say that in the first edition? Or is that something you said?
Perry Marshall 25:39
I said that in the third edition.
John Corcoran 25:41
Okay, got it. Okay.
Perry Marshall 25:42
Okay. Now, why would I see that? Because you’re a chef in the kitchen? Not a diner in the buffet. Okay, you are creating the content. You’re not like, it’s not your job to like and share and comment and argue. Yeah, oh, no, no, no, you’re creating offers, you’re advertising you’re dialing in audiences? like making food, eating food, like two completely different activities. Right. I know, in the kitchen, you taste the food a little bit a little. Right.
John Corcoran 26:22
Do you think that, you know, we’ve got a number of cybersecurity consultants as clients who I’ve had lengthy conversations with about, you know, the different social media scandals and stuff that have happened over the years. Do you think there’s greater awareness now of the role that social media plays in our lives, perhaps because of different scandals with Facebook and other social platforms that have come out?
Perry Marshall 26:44
Okay, certainly. But I think it’s completely misplaced. So like, this bet a good while ago, I bet this was six or seven years ago, there was a newspaper reporter that was like, Hey, you know, you’re like this advertising genius. Tell me about how the advertisers are all exploiting us. And I said, Listen, all the advertisers care about when you get to the end, like at the bottom line, they do not want to show ads to people who are not going to buy, that’s what they care about, okay, they’re not stealing your credit card data, they’re not doing anything. Like, they just want to find the people, they’re going to buy the stuff. Okay, they said, you know, what you need to be really concerned about is all of the tools that give Facebook and all in Google and everybody the ability to target ads, they can also use those tools to shape the content that you see. And they can tilt the conversations one way or another however they want. And nobody is even discussing this. That is the real crime. Now, I would say probably in the last year, it’s starting to become obvious to a lot of people that that’s exactly what’s going on. And now you’re shadow banning people, they’re banning people, they’re, they’re disabling accounts. Now, advertisers have been putting up with this for 15 years. Okay, but now regular people who happen to say the wrong thing about vaccines or the wrong thing about Donald Trump or the wrong thing about guns, or Israel or whatever, like they’re out of there. Okay. And I don’t think it’s like, somebody watches What is this? that whatever that Facebook movie is about, like, all of a sudden? Yeah, there’s
John Corcoran 28:48
a social hack or the social dilemma. Yeah. Okay.
Perry Marshall 28:50
Okay. It’s See, the problem is not marketers and advertisers. I think that’s pretty benign, frankly. Okay. The problem is, is you have no idea how much all kinds of hot political and social topics are being skewed by somebody can just twist a number and I promise you, they’re, you
John Corcoran 29:21
know, I mean, those movies make a very compelling argument that, you know, even someone who thinks one way has googled certain terms and lives in a certain part of the country, they’re going to see different Google search results, or Facebook search results than someone who lives in a different part of the country and it validates what they’re thinking and their fears and all that kind of stuff. I mean, this is a big debate that’s been unfolding over the last year so I don’t think we’re gonna solve it you know, in of course, this podcast interview, but you know, the other end of the spectrum is, you know, these platforms, which is now I guess, the funk like the parlors of the world, which don’t have any moderation. Where do you think These platforms should end up, because what you’re talking about ultimately is the platform making decisions about what content is shown. And that’s one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is zero controls whatsoever.
Perry Marshall 30:14
Well, okay, I don’t think it’s realistically possible for these platforms to have zero adult supervision. It’s, I mean, you’re gonna end up with, like child pornography if you don’t have some of that. But I think, in general, there has been a dramatic devaluing of the basic value of free speech. Like, I think, if something is not criminal activity, it needs to be left alone. Now what I think there’s a, there’s a fundamental issue, which is that is that if, if a platform has the right, to regulate, at will, whatever they like, however, they want to, if they want free rein, they should also be held responsible for what’s on their platform. Yeah. If they are indemnified from being responsible for what’s on their platforms, they largely are. Yeah, evil taneous Lee gets to pick and choose what gets to be on there. Because do you like, essentially, a public utility or not? Now I have a personal now, we could argue about this all day long, and it won’t necessarily solve anything. But I do have a solution to some of this. And here’s what it is. read something written before Gutenberg every day. Why would I say that? What does that have to do with social media? Okay, if Gutenberg invented the printing press, if it was written before the printing press, it means the way it got to you is it was hand copied on a scroll, which was hand copied from another scroll, which was hand copied from another school and hidden in an urn somewhere. So the burning of Rome, the sacking of Alexandria didn’t. If it survived all of that, it must be really good. Okay. And you know, you know, what would never survive all that is? Hey, look, I just had a California roll for lunch. Here’s a picture of it. Okay, that would never survive. Okay. So think of pre Gutenberg as, like the litmus test of only the valuable stuff made it. Yeah. Okay. And anything written before then it speaks to universal human condition, human values, thinking, poetry, and all that writing that kind of literature, it runs at a much slower RPM than social media does, okay. And this is actually the antidote to the shallow thinking in the pinball brain. In the end, like the temporary fleeting nature of all the stuff that’s in social media, if like, if, like if you’re reading, I mean, I don’t care if it’s the Quran, or the Old Testament, or the Kama Sutra, or, or Seneca, or Plato or whatever, it’s still going to be just as true in 100 years, or 200 years. It’s a totally different way of orienting your life in your thinking. My brother deleted his facebook account about five years ago, and he’s never regretted a single day. And the reason he did it was he would get sort of tricked into getting into arguments and debates in discussions with people about relatively trivial things. And he would all he would get all emotional about it and thinking about it during dinner and yeah,
John Corcoran 34:33
yeah, yeah. And there’s a lot of people who do that. It’s interesting. I’ve thought about it as well, for the exact reasons that your brother did it. What would you say to there’s so many, you know, over the years, there’s companies that come dependent on these platforms, you know, that use these platforms that their business depends on. And we’ve got this principle in the United States of like, due process where we think that you know, before we can be deprived, Right, that we have to have some due process. I think that’s what this gets setting for. The reason that people are so upset about the social networks is they feel like there should be more due process. And there isn’t. In many cases, you hear stories, whether it’s an Amazon seller or whether it’s someone that an advertiser on Facebook, they have everything shut down, and no way to get it reenacted and their livelihood. What do I mean, is reading something before Gutenberg the answer, or is there an answer for them?
Perry Marshall 35:26
Look, my customers have been struggling this 15 years, I mean, the first major Google slap was in 2005. And I can’t tell you how many advertisers woke up one morning, and all of their minimum bids are $10. And all their quality scores are zero, and you effectively cannot do anything on Google Ads anymore. I know all kinds of people whose businesses just went okay, there was no due process. Um, generally speaking, I’ve rarely seen that there’s any kind of a due process, it just kind of doesn’t exist. And, you know, I’ve hoped for years that something like that would be set up, I imagine it would probably be very contentious and very inefficient. And, like, I don’t know, maybe it’s just not not practical. But one thing that everybody in online marketing learns the hard way, sooner or later is you have to get your eggs in more than one basket. You have to, like, you have to be very good at serving your existing customers. Because what happens if your supply of new customers is suddenly cut off? Well, you better have something you can do. And you better have some friends. You better have some affiliates. You better have some other advertising venues. You need some other kind of internet traffic, whether it’s SEO or Yeah, I’d castes right. or books or Yeah, whatever. You name it. Yeah,
John Corcoran 37:01
right. Yeah, you got it. You got it something.
Perry Marshall 37:04
You need direct mail like you, you have to have ways to get to a customer that you have control of. And you’re in trouble. If you don’t, I mean,
John Corcoran 37:17
yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. Yeah, I mean, I practiced law for many years. And it was the same principle back then. Because businesses were too dependent on one thing, when that thing went away, whether it was a collaborative agreement with a strategic partner, or whether it was a business or a building or a person, all their eggs were one bet one basket and it caused so many problems. Perry has been great. I’ve gotten a lot longer than I promise to you. So I apologize about that. But I have two more questions that I want to ask before we wrap things up. And the first question of those two, is, I’m a big fan of gratitude. I love acknowledging people that have been meaningful to us. So as you look around at peers, so I’m talking like, you know, people who are doing things similar to you right now other thought leaders, other authors, business strategists, that sort of thing. Who do you respect who you admire right now?
Perry Marshall 38:08
Well, you know, there’s, there’s a whole group of people that I admire, and it’s, it’s my co authors. So in the case of the Facebook buckets, bobrick neris, in the case of the Google Book, it’s Mike Rhodes. And his some others, Tom Walsh, Brian Todd. You know, I have this customer base, and, you know, we affectionately call it planet period. But I mean, I’ve got all of these students who, you know, once upon a time, they were in their business diapers, but they are not in their business diapers anymore. Most of them are doing really extraordinary things now, and I admire their work, and I love what they are doing. And, and I just think they’re extraordinary, like bobrick neris, is extraordinary. Um, he’s really good at teaching Facebook, he’s really good at small business. He’s really good at empathetic communication. He’s really good at figuring out what somebody’s story is. And I guess the wider theme of what I’m saying is, it’s really rewarding when you’ve been a teacher for a while and you start seeing your students grow up. That is just incredible. Yeah. And, well, some people will certainly know what I mean. And most all of us have been on the receiving end of that. All of us have had teachers that believed in us and then we grew up and it turned out we could do that stuff.
John Corcoran 39:44
But right, we weren’t so sure about which is a perfect transition to my next question, which is really about those types of teachers. So looking back even further back in your career, your trajectory. Let’s pretend we’re at an awards banquet, like the Oscars or the Emmys. you’re receiving lifetime. He has an award for everything you’ve done up until this point. And are there any teachers, even business coaches, mentors, other people that you would acknowledge?
Perry Marshall 40:08
I’ll tell you a story about when his name was Dr. Knoll, and he taught my English authors before 1800. Class.
John Corcoran 40:18
Man, I was an English major in college. So I would love that.
Perry Marshall 40:22
Oh, yeah. Well, so it was like Beowulf to 1800 or like, probably Twain. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And like, and so this guy was amazing. He was, arguably the best, most loved professor at the University of Nebraska. Incredibly provocative. Every single lecture was just amazing. Jordan Peterson reminds me of him. You know who that is? very provocative guy. Well, um, I turned in a paper. And I was walking out of class one day, and he goes, period. I’d like you to come talk to me in my office sometime in and I go, am I in trouble? He goes, No, not at all. I got some observations. I just, okay. So eventually, I went to his office. And I’m, and I didn’t know what to think like, what is this guy want? And he goes, so I got a question for you. He goes, I cannot figure out why you are an engineer. Because anybody that could write papers, this good understands people and engineering is boring compared to people. So why are you an engineer? Is he insulting me?
John Corcoran 41:43
Great, I think I am trying to get you to change majors. This sounds like, well, I
Perry Marshall 41:46
thought he was but we talked about it. And he’s like, Oh, well, you understand engineering in people? And he goes, huh, he goes, That’s remarkable. He says, you know, he goes Perry, that’s not terribly common that people can like do the things but they could also do the people. He goes, you can do both. He goes, huh. He says, You know, I think you’ll do very well in technical sales. Actually, I think you’ll be the president of the company someday. Okay, now I was 20 years old. I had never thought about any of these things. Okay. And, um, he, he had like, rubbed the fog off my mirror to see much more clearly who I was. In fact, I remember in that conversation, he said, I said the wall will thank you really nice of you to call me in your office and everything goes well. It’s my job when my students are exhibiting their giftedness, it is my job to call that out and point out and get them pointed better in the right direction.
John Corcoran 43:07
How did you change your career trajectory or choices?
Perry Marshall 43:11
Well, I never heard of technical sales. I had never even thought about going into sales and turned out. The first job that ever really worked out well, for me was a technical sales job. Okay. And then I did become the president of the company. And I’m not sure either one of those things would have happened if he hadn’t said that. Like, I look, it is really easy for us especially. Like, okay, you’re 37 years old, or you’re 67 years old, and you’re watching somebody who’s 15 or 20 or 25. It is so obvious to you that you fill in the blank. It probably isn’t obvious to them. If you have an opportunity to say something encouraging, say it.
John Corcoran 44:04
That’s a great lesson. Well, “Detox Declutter Dominate: How to Excel by Elimination” is the name of the new book. And I should also mention that you and Jeremy put together a digital course on it as well, which is available as well, you can go to our website and check that out or Perry’s website and stoked
Perry Marshall 44:19
about that. That is an awesome course. Jeremy is so good, by the way. Oh my goodness,
John Corcoran 44:25
I learned from him every day. He does an amazing job. So I’m glad you guys have the chance to collaborate on that. That was really cool. Perry, where can people go to learn more about you and connect with you.
Perry Marshall 44:36
Go to go to PerryMarshall.com scroll down, sign up for the 30-day street MBA. And I promise to punch you in the face and the very first email and you’ll like it. If you don’t like it, then you won’t like me and you just unsubscribe and go away. But if you enjoyed this interview, you’ll really, really like that. Excellent. All right. All right. Thanks.
Outro 45:00
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.