Speaker 1: Everywhere where I crunched the numbers that twenty percent of
Speaker 1: what I was doing was producing eighty percent of the action. Well,
Speaker 1: the big epiphany that I had was that there was
Speaker 1: an eighty twenty inside every eighty twenty, so that twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the people have eighty percent of wealth. But
Speaker 1: guess what, twenty percent of the twenty percent have eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the eighty percent. And that's once again, it's
Speaker 1: true of the grocery store aisles, or the support tickets,
Speaker 1: or the complaints or the product defects. And so my
Speaker 1: brain set on fire. I'm like, oh my word, there's
Speaker 1: all these levers in my life, in my business that
Speaker 1: I never noticed before, and I can start pulling them.
Speaker 2: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 2: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 2: much out of the day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 2: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 2: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work.
Speaker 1: Date.
Speaker 2: Before we get into today's show, I just wanted to
Speaker 2: say a big thank you to the many listeners that
Speaker 2: have been writing to me with listener questions. I'm going
Speaker 2: to be digging into those throughout summer and you can
Speaker 2: look forward to hearing the answers to some of those
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one. And also a big shout out
Speaker 2: to the people that have been leaving reviews for how
Speaker 2: I work. I read every single one and I'm deeply
Speaker 2: appreciative of everyone that does take the time to pen
Speaker 2: a few words, So thank you so much. Now on
Speaker 2: to today's guest, who is Perry Marshall. Perry is one
Speaker 2: of the most expensive business strategists in the world. NASA's
Speaker 2: Jet Propulsion Labs use his eighty twenty curve as a
Speaker 2: productivity tool.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool, I think being used by NASA.
Speaker 2: His reinvention of the pereto principle is published in Harvard
Speaker 2: Business Review, and he also founded the ten million dollar
Speaker 2: Evolution two point zero Prize with judges from Harvard, Oxford
Speaker 2: and MIT, which is the world's largest science research award.
Speaker 2: And where you might have heard of Perry, and this
Speaker 2: is where I've come across his work is through his
Speaker 2: book The Ultimate Guide to Google Ads, which is actually
Speaker 2: the world's best selling book on Internet advertising. Perry's latest
Speaker 2: book is called Detox, Dclatter Dominate, and.
Speaker 3: I was very excited to have Perry on the show.
Speaker 2: I'd consumed a fair bit of his work over the
Speaker 2: years in the world of digital marketing, and I know
Speaker 2: a lot of folk in the industry who really swear
Speaker 2: by the stuff that he has written about. He's got
Speaker 2: a lot of really good practical ideas, and we delve
Speaker 2: into a lot of i would say, very pactical and
Speaker 2: actionable strategies around how to be more productive but also
Speaker 2: how to use your time in a more valuable way.
Speaker 2: So I personally learned a lot of stuff in this
Speaker 2: chat with Perry, and it got me thinking differently about
Speaker 2: quite a few different things. So on that note, let's
Speaker 2: head to Perry to hear about how he works.
Speaker 3: Perry, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me on. It's an honor.
Speaker 2: Now I want to start with something that you're very
Speaker 2: well known for, which is your application of the eighty
Speaker 2: twenty rule. And perhaps for listeners that are not familiar
Speaker 2: with that principle, maybe we describe what that principle is first,
Speaker 2: and then how you think about that in the context
Speaker 2: of your work.
Speaker 1: So I think most people have probably heard somewhere that
Speaker 1: twenty percent of the people have eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: money and the other eighty percent of the people only
Speaker 1: have twenty percent of the money, and that maybe that
Speaker 1: applies to customers. I remember I had heard something like
Speaker 1: that a long time ago. In fact, I was a
Speaker 1: sales manager at a software company, and I was like,
Speaker 1: is that right? And I printed out a quick books
Speaker 1: report and I literally went through with a calculator, and
Speaker 1: after a few minutes I was like, well, I'll be darned,
Speaker 1: I guess it is true. And I didn't really see
Speaker 1: the significance of it. But a few years later I
Speaker 1: was reading a book by Richard Kash and he made
Speaker 1: this almost throw away remark, and it sent me down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole, and I suddenly realized, Hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this isn't just some business rule of thumb. This is everywhere,
Speaker 1: and it might be the most important thing that I
Speaker 1: ever learned about cause and effect. So the eighty twenty
Speaker 1: rule started with a guy named Pareto in Italy who
Speaker 1: was an economist, and he figured out it didn't matter
Speaker 1: which country he looked in, twenty percent of the people
Speaker 1: seemed to have eighty percent of the wealth. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing is is. This isn't just like real estate or something.
Speaker 1: This is eighty percent of the dirt is on twenty
Speaker 1: percent of your carpet, and eighty percent of the water
Speaker 1: flows through twenty percent of the rivers, and eighty percent
Speaker 1: of the traffic is on twenty percent of the roads.
Speaker 1: And so here's the kicker. It applies to your time,
Speaker 1: it applies to your web traffic. It's your best customers,
Speaker 1: it's your worst customers, it's your support tickets, it's your
Speaker 1: warranty returns. It's all over the place. And when I
Speaker 1: saw this for what it was, I flipped out. In fact,
Speaker 1: I was in the middle of reading this book and
Speaker 1: I was so overcome with my epiphany that I jumped
Speaker 1: up from the coffee shop where I was. I drove home,
Speaker 1: and I at the time, I was about a year
Speaker 1: and a half into a brand new business, and I
Speaker 1: sprawled out on the living room floor and I had
Speaker 1: all these papers and reports, and I had a calculator.
Speaker 1: I'm like, is this really true? And I saw everywhere
Speaker 1: where I crunched the numbers that twenty percent of what
Speaker 1: I was doing was producing eighty percent of the action. Well,
Speaker 1: the big epiphany that I had was that there was
Speaker 1: an eighty twenty inside every eighty twenty, so that twenty
Speaker 1: percent of the people have eighty percent of wealth. But
Speaker 1: guess what, twenty percent of the twenty percent have eighty
Speaker 1: percent of the eighty percent. And that's once again, it's
Speaker 1: true of the grocery store aisles, or the support tickets,
Speaker 1: or the complaints or the product defects. And so my
Speaker 1: brain set on fire. I'm like, oh my word, there's
Speaker 1: all these levers in my life in my business that
Speaker 1: I never noticed before, and I can start them.
Speaker 2: And so how do you think about that as a
Speaker 2: thought later as a consultant and the products and the
Speaker 2: services that you're producing. What are some ways that you've
Speaker 2: applied that in your own work.
Speaker 1: Well, So it not only applies to the upsides and
Speaker 1: small numbers of people spending large amounts of money, but
Speaker 1: it also applies to things that are losing you money
Speaker 1: and things like holes in your bucket, things that are
Speaker 1: dragging you down. So most people, most companies, almost anywhere
Speaker 1: you go, ten percent of what they sell is actually
Speaker 1: losing them money. Ge years ago, back when GE was
Speaker 1: like really hot and happening, back in their heyday about
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, they had a policy of they always
Speaker 1: fire ten percent of their employees every year. Now that
Speaker 1: sounds cruel, but it's actually very good business. About ten
Speaker 1: percent of whoever's with you doesn't belong there anymore. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be like some mean and nasty thing.
Speaker 1: It could be just you need to mutually agree that
Speaker 1: it's time for you to go find a job that's
Speaker 1: a better suit for you. Know, you're like Roger, You're
Speaker 1: not passionate about this job. I don't see a lot
Speaker 1: of energy like I Recently, I had one of my
Speaker 1: team members where we had an honest conversation and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just not feeling it anymore. And it's like, okay, great, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's find a way to get you off to
Speaker 1: something that you like better. And let's find somebody who
Speaker 1: wants this job, because this is a great job for
Speaker 1: the right person. And so eighty twenty is about what
Speaker 1: you don't do more than it's about what you do.
Speaker 2: Something that you talk about in Detox decluttered is you
Speaker 2: talk about ten dollar, one hundred dollars, thousand dollars and
Speaker 2: ten thousand dollars per hour tasks and on the topic
Speaker 2: of eliminating things, how do you identify what you're doing when?
Speaker 2: And how do we do less of these ten dollars
Speaker 2: an hour tasks.
Speaker 1: If you talk to Helen, who works as a receptionist
Speaker 1: at a dentist office for fifteen dollars an hour, probably
Speaker 1: if you asked Helen, what parts of your job make
Speaker 1: more money and what parts make less money? Like, Helen,
Speaker 1: if we paid you for the tasks you perform instead
Speaker 1: of you paying you by the hour, then how do
Speaker 1: you think we should grade those tasks? She would probably say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I suppose these jobs are these little things are worth
Speaker 1: five dollars an hour, and probably these other things are
Speaker 1: worth fifty dollars an hour. What she doesn't realize is
Speaker 1: that's actually the truth is probably most of what she
Speaker 1: does is worth almost zero. Some of what she does
Speaker 1: is worth negative money, and a few things she does
Speaker 1: are literally one hundred dollars an hour, one thousand dollars
Speaker 1: an hour, even ten thousand dollars an hour. And you go,
Speaker 1: how does a fifteen dollars an hour secretary make ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars an hour? Well, I'll tell you. So you
Speaker 1: got somebody they need five thousand dollars of crowns and
Speaker 1: dental work. And they looked at all the websites and
Speaker 1: clicked on all the Google ads, and they think wood
Speaker 1: Dale Dentel looks pretty good, and so they call wood
Speaker 1: Dell Dental and Helen goes, woo Dale Dental, can you
Speaker 1: hold please? And then she puts them on hold for
Speaker 1: two minutes and then she picks up two minutes later,
Speaker 1: she goes, Hi, can I help you? And they're gone.
Speaker 1: So they were going to spend five thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: two minutes to hold music scared them off and they're
Speaker 1: not coming back. It took two minutes to lose five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So how many dollars per hour is that?
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's one hundred and fifty thousand dollars an hour that
Speaker 1: she lost. Okay, so a secretary lost ten thousand times
Speaker 1: her hourly wage in two minutes.
Speaker 2: And so how then do we get better at identifying
Speaker 2: what are those thousand or ten thousand dollars an hour
Speaker 2: tasks when we're thinking about our.
Speaker 3: Own work life?
Speaker 1: So first you have to be aware of it. So
Speaker 1: it literally is true that at least for a few
Speaker 1: minutes or seconds a day. Certain things that you do
Speaker 1: are incredibly valuable. Like let's say that you're buying a
Speaker 1: car and you spend an extra five minutes getting the
Speaker 1: price done by one thousand dollars. Well, you just made
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars an hour for five minutes, right. And
Speaker 1: our days, in our schedules and our lives are full
Speaker 1: of these little high leverage things, and so first you
Speaker 1: just have to be aware of it. And so I
Speaker 1: have a chart on page twenty three of Detox Declutter, Dominate,
Speaker 1: and it's got a column of ten dollars an hour
Speaker 1: tasks like renting errands and cold calling people or talking
Speaker 1: to unqualified prospects or doing your expense reports. And then
Speaker 1: there's a column of one hundred dollars an hour tasks
Speaker 1: like talking to a qualified prospect or helping an actual
Speaker 1: customer solve a problem or outsourcing a really simple task.
Speaker 1: And then there's thousand dollars an hour work like planning,
Speaker 1: prioritizing your day, or negotiating with a qualified prospect or
Speaker 1: building out your sales funnel. And then there's ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars stuff like what I was talking about with Helen
Speaker 1: as an owner of a dental practice, you realize maybe
Speaker 1: you do some mystery shopping, and you're like, oh my word,
Speaker 1: a third of these people are getting put on hold
Speaker 1: for a minute or more or five minutes or whatever,
Speaker 1: which is disastrous. Well, whatever you and your staff do,
Speaker 1: whatever time it takes to figure out how to never
Speaker 1: put anybody on hold like that again, how to always
Speaker 1: make sure the call gets routed to the right place.
Speaker 1: Whatever time you spend solving that problem is easily thousand
Speaker 1: dollars an hour work because it controls a major lever
Speaker 1: in your business. Because if twenty percent of your time
Speaker 1: produces eighty percent of the predit activity, and twenty percent
Speaker 1: of the twenty percent makes eighty percent of the eighty
Speaker 1: percent and so on, that means one percent of your
Speaker 1: time generates fifty percent of your income. And this is
Speaker 1: true for almost everybody. It's just masked by the way
Speaker 1: we put people in salary hourly wages. It makes the
Speaker 1: accounting easy, but it doesn't tell you anything about what
Speaker 1: you're actually getting from the work.
Speaker 2: And so once we've identified these ten dollars an hour tasks,
Speaker 2: and I would say the average listener probably doesn't have
Speaker 2: an assistant that they could delegate to. For example, what
Speaker 2: do we do with those ten dollar tasks? How do
Speaker 2: we do less of them?
Speaker 1: Well, so I want you to reconsider whether or not
Speaker 1: you should have an assistant. First of all, a lot
Speaker 1: of us have children, and you know, even maybe simple
Speaker 1: things like cooking dinner, or doing the wash or shoveling
Speaker 1: or you know, mowing the lawn. Okay, there's things like that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about assistance for a while. So if you
Speaker 1: want to go on the really cheap end, for probably
Speaker 1: seven or ten dollars an hour, you can hire a
Speaker 1: virtual assistant from the Philippines. They'll do all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff for you.
Speaker 3: How would listeners go about doing that?
Speaker 2: So I've had an awesome virtual assistant, Elaine, who we've
Speaker 2: had an inventium for many years. But for those that
Speaker 2: have no idea how they would even start with hiring
Speaker 2: a virtual assistant, what would they do?
Speaker 1: The Deep Talks book has an online bonus. It's free.
Speaker 1: It comes with the book where we actually spend about
Speaker 1: forty five minutes or an hour with a guy who
Speaker 1: runs a company that just hires virtual assistance, and he
Speaker 1: walks through the process and he talks about how you
Speaker 1: match an assistant to an entrepreneur. It really is a
Speaker 1: very important thing. Now you could go on a site
Speaker 1: like up work dot com and you could try people
Speaker 1: out literally for two hours at a time. Now, now
Speaker 1: what I want you to consider is, let's say you
Speaker 1: have a virtual assistant for ten dollars an hour and
Speaker 1: you're only going to hire them for four hours a week.
Speaker 1: That's forty dollars a week, and it's going to give
Speaker 1: you four hours of time. In the four hours of
Speaker 1: time that you gained. Can you find a way to
Speaker 1: make one hundred dollars an hour for a half an
Speaker 1: hour or one thousand dollars an hour for five minutes.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay for the assistant for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and so this really is feasible, it's
Speaker 1: not unrealistic. I think anybody whose time is worth more
Speaker 1: than thirty dollars an hour should get themselves an assistant.
Speaker 1: It will completely change your.
Speaker 2: Life, definitely. I couldn't agree more. And what else should
Speaker 2: we do? Like in our personal life? I know something
Speaker 2: that I do is that I will delegate or outsource
Speaker 2: tasks that completely drain me of energy, like whether that
Speaker 2: be food, preparation or cleaning or gardening. So I'm such
Speaker 2: an advocate of that, But how should people be thinking
Speaker 2: about this all sorts of ten dollars an hour tasks,
Speaker 2: even outside of their work life.
Speaker 1: So that's a great question because a lot of times
Speaker 1: when people start talking about outsourcing, they immediately think things like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to outsource my Facebook ads or my copywriting
Speaker 1: or writing my emails or something like that. Those are
Speaker 1: the hardest things to outsource that there is, Okay, you
Speaker 1: know it's easy to outsource is well, best four hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a month I ever spent is the cleaning ladies
Speaker 1: that come over every week. It's really easy to find
Speaker 1: people who know how to do stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to find people who do a
Speaker 1: good job working in a business. And so usually the
Speaker 1: easiest place you can make yourself a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: time available is just by outsourcing some of your personal
Speaker 1: life and getting things you don't even like doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's such great advice. And look, you
Speaker 2: mentioned not outsourcing writing and writing great persuasive copy is
Speaker 2: something that you're.
Speaker 3: Very very well known for.
Speaker 2: And I want to ask because I think any listener
Speaker 2: writing is part of their job, writing to persuade, and
Speaker 2: some listeners might be like, but yeah, I'm not a copywriter,
Speaker 2: but I mean even every email that you send is
Speaker 2: probably persuading someone to do something. So what are your
Speaker 2: top strategies for writing really great persuasive copy.
Speaker 1: We have a test called the Marketing DNA test and
Speaker 1: you can find it at Marketing DNA test dot com.
Speaker 1: And what I found the hard way over many years
Speaker 1: was that different people sell very very differently from each other.
Speaker 1: So there are people who are natural copywriters and they
Speaker 1: would love nothing better to do than sit in front
Speaker 1: of Microsoft Word for you know, several hours and get
Speaker 1: the exact right phrase and word and everything, and like
Speaker 1: that is a certain kind of salesperson, but they're completely
Speaker 1: other kinds of salespeople. Like I call them hostage negotiators,
Speaker 1: and they are people that you can just throw into
Speaker 1: a situation and they have this gift of somehow magically
Speaker 1: walking out the door with whatever they wanted, the purchase
Speaker 1: order or the deal or what have you, and you go,
Speaker 1: how did you do that or what did you say
Speaker 1: to make him? Usually they go I don't no, I
Speaker 1: just said it right. And then there's another kind of person.
Speaker 1: They like they're they edit videos for hours and get
Speaker 1: they get it to look exactly right, or they design
Speaker 1: the brochure or they design the graphics. So in other words,
Speaker 1: there's there's completely different kinds of salesmanship. And what I
Speaker 1: found is you have to figure out what is your
Speaker 1: marketing DNA. And so if you're a writer, then writing
Speaker 1: is ten thousand dollars an hour work, or at least
Speaker 1: thousand let's say, if you're a hostage negotiator, then being
Speaker 1: on the firing line that's thousand dollars an hour work.
Speaker 1: Or if you're a great public speaker, then that's what
Speaker 1: you should do. So the point is is you need
Speaker 1: to figure out what is your most natural selling modality,
Speaker 1: because everybody has one, and I have worked with thousands
Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs and one thing I've seen over and over
Speaker 1: is I've seen hostage negotiators trying to be copywriters. I've
Speaker 1: seen copywriters trying to be video production editors. And when
Speaker 1: you find your groove, it's going to be so much
Speaker 1: more fun and enjoyable and productive to sell.
Speaker 2: I think that's great advice in terms of finding the
Speaker 2: method through which you sell naturally, and I know for me,
Speaker 2: writing is one of those methods. So I'd love to
Speaker 2: hone in on writing and how can we be persuasive
Speaker 2: when we write?
Speaker 1: So a long time ago I hired myself a writing coach,
Speaker 1: and it was John Carlton, who's fairly famous. So I
Speaker 1: would send him stuff that I wrote and he would
Speaker 1: send it back and usually you would say, you know, Perry,
Speaker 1: you need to take your inner salesman out for a
Speaker 1: walk every now and then. And he would say, Perry,
Speaker 1: you are writing from your heels. In other words, you're
Speaker 1: not being bold enough, you're not being clear enough, you're
Speaker 1: not being assertive enough. And an amateur would assume that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: John just has a different personality than me. No, a
Speaker 1: good writer is a good writer, regardless of their style.
Speaker 1: And what I had to learn to do was I
Speaker 1: had to picture. Well, John gave me a picture. He said,
Speaker 1: imagine that the person you're talking to is a giant,
Speaker 1: eight hundred pound somn ambulant sloth laying on the couch
Speaker 1: in front of this TV. And you have to smack
Speaker 1: him with a two x four just to even get
Speaker 1: him to move, okay, and you have to light a
Speaker 1: fire under their butt, so they will get up and
Speaker 1: pick up the phone or send the email or whatever.
Speaker 1: So how are you going to get his attention? Well,
Speaker 1: then the next thing is you have to talk about
Speaker 1: what he cares about, and you have to enter the
Speaker 1: conversation inside his head. You need to read him a
Speaker 1: page in his own diary. Now how do you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: my experience is I have only been able to read
Speaker 1: a page in the diary of a person i've already been.
Speaker 1: So if I've been an engineer, I can read an
Speaker 1: engineer's diary. If I've been a sales guy going to
Speaker 1: house to house trying to sell vacuum cleaners, then I
Speaker 1: can read that diary. If I've been a kid whose
Speaker 1: dad is dying of cancer, then I can read the
Speaker 1: kid that diary. And so you need to sell to
Speaker 1: people that you've had experience being. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are out there trying to sell to
Speaker 1: people they've never been. They're trying to sell things that
Speaker 1: they've never bought, and then they wonder why they're not persuasive,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of it is picking your battles.
Speaker 3: So how does that apply.
Speaker 2: Let's say if someone's trying to persuade their boss to
Speaker 2: do something. And a lot of people that have a
Speaker 2: boss have never been a manager and they've never had
Speaker 2: managerial experience, So how then would they apply that kind
Speaker 2: of advice.
Speaker 1: So try writing a day in the life of my
Speaker 1: boss and write it in first person. So my name
Speaker 1: is Jane Smith, and I am the manager of a
Speaker 1: Hurtz rent a car unit in Elmwood Park, Illinois. And
Speaker 1: I get to work at seven o'clock every morning. I
Speaker 1: leave at six o'clock at night, and I have these
Speaker 1: twenty three employees and you just go from there, okay.
Speaker 1: And I take lunch at twelve thirty. And while I'm
Speaker 1: at lunch, I get this phone call and I get
Speaker 1: this phone call. And when that well, and when he
Speaker 1: said that to me, what I thought was, oh no,
Speaker 1: not again. And you put yourself in their shoes.
Speaker 3: So'y literally writing a diary entry.
Speaker 1: Yes, And if you can write three or four pages
Speaker 1: of that person's life and maybe you actually give it,
Speaker 1: give it to somebody who has that job and go
Speaker 1: it is this about right now? That's that's actually really
Speaker 1: easy nowadays, because like you go on fiver and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you could find a rental car manager or a
Speaker 1: manager of something, and go, so have I, like, have
Speaker 1: I nailed the life of a manager? And they'll tell
Speaker 1: you you'll probably get Okay. Page one and page three
Speaker 1: were great, Page two and page four totally off. Okay,
Speaker 1: well tell me and you know, it's really such a
Speaker 1: an insightful endeavor to do this. But see that is
Speaker 1: exactly that is almost exactly what sales copy is. So
Speaker 1: amateurs write sales copy that talks about the features and
Speaker 1: the benefits and how wonderful your life is going to be.
Speaker 1: Really great copywriters suck you into a story. They suck
Speaker 1: you into even if it's not written like a diary.
Speaker 1: It's somebody's diary and it's completely believable. And when you
Speaker 1: read it, you're in the store.
Speaker 2: And so once we're in the person's shoes, so to speak,
Speaker 2: how do we think about putting structure to a piece
Speaker 2: of writing that we want to be persuasive?
Speaker 1: So my favorite structure is problem agitate, solve, And the
Speaker 1: most important part is agitate. So let's say that, okay,
Speaker 1: we're selling to a rental car manager and we are
Speaker 1: trying to sell some sort of insurance that makes it
Speaker 1: a whole lot easier when somebody damages a car. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just making this up, all right. So what an
Speaker 1: amateur copywriter will do is they'll say, Hi, we're this
Speaker 1: insurance company and we are quadruple A rated by all
Speaker 1: these agencies, and we've been in business since nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: and they're going to tell you and we have this
Speaker 1: incredible new policy that's blah blah blah. And so that's
Speaker 1: an amateur copywriter. What a real good copywriter, Well, he'll
Speaker 1: echo something that this manager thinks. Almost every day, if
Speaker 1: I get another phone call from another person who turned
Speaker 1: down the liability waiver who now wants to give me
Speaker 1: a piece of their mind, I think I'm going to
Speaker 1: strangle and then I am going to somebody's going to
Speaker 1: call the police, and I'm going to be in the
Speaker 1: back of a police cruiser and I will be taken
Speaker 1: to Cook County Court and I will end up in
Speaker 1: Cook County Jail for the next six months. And I'll
Speaker 1: almost enjoy it for the first half an hour, even
Speaker 1: though I'm getting arrested, because at least I choked to
Speaker 1: the living crap out of So you make it so vivid, Okay,
Speaker 1: So all right, dear hurts manager, I'm writing to keep
Speaker 1: you out of prison and then you chuckle, you know,
Speaker 1: But seriously, I want to handle this for you. I
Speaker 1: don't ever want you to have another one of these
Speaker 1: phone calls ever again. The rest of your life. I
Speaker 1: want you to eat your French fries at Arby's without
Speaker 1: the slightest worry that your cell phone's going to ring
Speaker 1: and you got another one of these yin yangs who
Speaker 1: wrecked another cock. See that's what a good writer does
Speaker 1: is you can see it, you can taste it, you
Speaker 1: can smell it, you can imagine. It's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is so realistic. It's like Stephen King. And by
Speaker 1: the way, if you like horror fiction, read a Stephen
Speaker 1: King novel. It will make you a better writer. I
Speaker 1: guarantee it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know that a lot of writers recommend
Speaker 2: I want to say, is Stephen King that wrote on writing?
Speaker 1: I think, oh, yeah, that's a great book.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've had a lot of people recommend that. And
Speaker 3: that's interesting.
Speaker 2: On the topic of books, I'm curious what books have
Speaker 2: had the biggest impact on how you approach your work.
Speaker 1: Well, the dtax Declider Dominate book I would say about
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of it is a distillation of what
Speaker 1: I've learned from Richard Kash. I think he's the most
Speaker 1: underrated business author. So he wrote the book I had
Speaker 1: the epiphany reading was called the eighty twenty Principle, and
Speaker 1: I took what he did in that book and I
Speaker 1: extended it to the eighty twenty inside the eighty twenty.
Speaker 1: And he's got two other books that are really extraordinary.
Speaker 1: One is called Simplify and one is called Our Principle.
Speaker 1: And I'll just briefly give you a capsule because I
Speaker 1: in Detox, Declutterer, Dominate. Those are two of the seven
Speaker 1: steps that I teach. So Simplify says that your highest
Speaker 1: aim from the standpoint of what you're going to sell
Speaker 1: is create an irresistible product that's a joy to use
Speaker 1: by simplifying. And what that means is, you know, let's
Speaker 1: say it takes eighty six steps for somebody to do
Speaker 1: business with you and use your product, or install the product,
Speaker 1: or get a roof put on their house, or like
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you sell. What can you do
Speaker 1: to cut the eighty six steps down to fifty or
Speaker 1: thirty or however much you can shave off, and have
Speaker 1: you ever paid attention to how many of those little
Speaker 1: steps there actually are. There is hardly a business in
Speaker 1: the world that can't shave ten, fifteen percent, twenty percent
Speaker 1: of the complexity in the hassle out of the process.
Speaker 1: And what people don't know is if you cut the
Speaker 1: steps in half, it won't double your business. It'll probably
Speaker 1: quite ruple your business because everybody else is so difficult
Speaker 1: to do business with.
Speaker 2: It's something else that you talk about in the book.
Speaker 2: You spend a bit of time talking about the morning
Speaker 2: ritual that you've been doing for the last seven years,
Speaker 2: and I'd love you to describe that because I think
Speaker 2: I thought it was quite interesting and also quite extreme,
Speaker 2: the amount of time that you're spending doing what you're doing.
Speaker 2: So can you describe that for listeners?
Speaker 1: So I call it renaissance time. The worst possible way
Speaker 1: to start your day is you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: you reach over your ninth stand a phone into your bed,
Speaker 1: and you either get in your email box or you
Speaker 1: get on social media and you start reacting to people.
Speaker 1: That is the worst way to start your day, and
Speaker 1: it's how most people start their day. Here's a great
Speaker 1: way to start your day. The only thing you get
Speaker 1: to do with your phone is look at what time
Speaker 1: it is, or maybe you look at the temperature outside.
Speaker 1: You are not allowed to open Facebook, You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to open email. You are not allowed to text anybody.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to let anybody pull your strings. You
Speaker 1: take a shower, you get a cup of coffee, and
Speaker 1: you sit down with a notebook for twenty minutes and
Speaker 1: you get yourself sorted out. If you had a dream,
Speaker 1: you write down your dream. You had an idea in
Speaker 1: the shower, you write down the idea in the shower,
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do today? You meditate, you ask
Speaker 1: for wisdom. And only after you've done that, and probably
Speaker 1: you also like look at your day and think about,
Speaker 1: all right, so what do I get going on? How
Speaker 1: can I best approach this? What are the twenty percent
Speaker 1: the eighty percent of useless things? And I'm going to
Speaker 1: push those off my plate. Only after that do you
Speaker 1: get into your day. That's renaissance time. And I suggest
Speaker 1: at least twenty minutes. And if you will do that,
Speaker 1: you will be amazed at how much better your whole
Speaker 1: day goes.
Speaker 2: And I know in your book you talk about doing
Speaker 2: that for you for a minimum of one hour, sometimes
Speaker 2: two hours. Is that something that you do every day?
Speaker 1: I have not missed a day in seven years.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's that. That's very inspiring, Perry. I know we're
Speaker 2: almost out of time. My final question for you is, Perry,
Speaker 2: for those that want to consume more of what you're doing,
Speaker 2: what is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 1: So I don't know the price in Australia. I know
Speaker 1: in the US our book on Amazon, Detox Declutter Dominate,
Speaker 1: it's a little over nine bucks. Maybe it's fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty Australian, but it's not very expensive. You go to
Speaker 1: Amazon and buy Detox Declutter Dominate. This is thirty six pages.
Speaker 1: It is the most informative thirty six pages of any
Speaker 1: short business book that you have ever read or bought.
Speaker 1: And everything in this book will still be true twenty
Speaker 1: five years from now. And I don't know how many
Speaker 1: other books can tell you that, but this is true.
Speaker 1: There is not a wasted word in this book. In fact,
Speaker 1: quick story, a year ago, this was a fifty thousand
Speaker 1: word book and my friend Robert scrub said, Perry, send
Speaker 1: me your book. I want to play around with it.
Speaker 1: I go, okay, send him this document. He chopped it
Speaker 1: down to eight thousand words and and he goes, Perry,
Speaker 1: this is your real book. I just chopped out the
Speaker 1: eighty percent that you didn't need. And he said, but
Speaker 1: I want to do something else. He goes, I want
Speaker 1: to add some infographics and charts and illustrations so that
Speaker 1: it's a fun book to read. So everything we're seeing
Speaker 1: in words is also in pictures, so that it's incredibly
Speaker 1: easy to consume. And we're taking twenty years of what
Speaker 1: you've been doing and teaching, and we're crunching it down
Speaker 1: to seven things. And that's what he did, and that's
Speaker 1: why he's the co author of the book. I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: I would never have come up with this myself, and
Speaker 1: I think it was absolutely brilliant and this book will
Speaker 1: completely change your life.
Speaker 3: That's a very cool story of how it came to me.
Speaker 2: And look, I would echo that the book is packed
Speaker 2: with very practical strategies that really powerful, So I will
Speaker 2: link to that in the show notes. And I think
Speaker 2: it is a rare business book in that sense that
Speaker 2: is not just patted with stories and waffle fantastic content.
Speaker 2: So Perry, it has been awesome chatting with you and
Speaker 2: having you on the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it was a delight to be able to
Speaker 1: talk to you, and Amantha, I want to thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me on today.
Speaker 3: My pleasure. That is it for today's show.
Speaker 2: If you enjoyed my chat with Perry, why not share
Speaker 2: it with someone else who you think would benefit. Just
Speaker 2: click on the little share icon, which is generally a
Speaker 2: box with an arrow pointing upwards wherever you listen to
Speaker 2: this podcast.
Speaker 3: And that is the easiest way to share it.
Speaker 2: And next week, for the next few weeks, there are
Speaker 2: going to be some best of episodes that I've got scheduled.
Speaker 2: Over Christmas, well, I take a few weeks off from
Speaker 2: the show, so hopefully you will enjoy those best of
Speaker 2: episodes because I certainly enjoyed doing every single one of
Speaker 2: those interviews over the last couple of years.
Speaker 3: Of doing this show.
Speaker 2: So that is it for today, and I will see
Speaker 2: you next week, and I will also see you in
Speaker 2: the new year with fresh episodes.