Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, I'm going to share the last in a 3 part podcast series that Joe Polish and I did way back in Episode 12 of the I Love Marketing podcast, talking about the concept of the self milking cow.
It's particularly relevant now because Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy have just released their new book 'Who Not How' and this concept was the genesis of that idea. So it's a great time to listen to the behind-the-scenes thinking that evolved to their big concept.
If you haven’t listened to the first part of the series, I'd recommend going back to the last episode, but more importantly, go get a copy of Who Not How. It truly is a revolutionary book that will make a big difference in your life.
You've heard me talk a lot about this idea of being the cow and not succumbing to the temptation to be the self milking cow, trying to do it all yourself. Well, this is the framework and the philosophy that gets you there.
It's a great time of year to contemplate going into 2021 with a real Who Not How plan to multiply your efforts in the coming years. daily routines and a lot of really cool stuff. There is great information here that I think you will find valuable.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 208
Dean: Hey, everybody. It's Dean-
Joe: And Joe.
Dean: There you go.
Joe: Yeah. What are we talking about today, Dean?
Dean: You know how I feel today? You want to talk about how I feel first?
Joe: I don't really care how you feel, but I mean, unless it's going to somehow enhance my life or the lives of our I Love Marketing listeners because-
Dean: You know why I-
Joe: ... you don't have to feel good in order to -
Dean: You'll actually enjoy this. The one word from me today-
Joe: Yeah.
Dean: ... is happy.
Joe: Happy?
Dean: Yeah. Have you seen Pharrell Williams has this new video that he just launched for that song, Happy? Have you heard that song from the Despicable Me soundtrack?
Joe: You know, it doesn't ring a bell. Why don't you sing it for everyone? Go ahead.
Dean: It's light and happy and he's got a 24-
Joe: Sing it. I mean, let's hear it.
Dean: Okay, I'll just play it.
Joe: I want you to sing i-
Dean: You've heard that song, right?
He's got a 24-hour video for this song at 24HoursOfHappy.com and they shot this video, just continuous loop, 24 hours, from midnight to midnight, of Pharrell and all these different people just walking and dancing through the streets of LA to that song, one song on a loop for 24 hours. It's just the most fascinating thing. You can't listen to it for than four and a half minutes without being happy. That's my prescription. I think this, right here, I think doctors should be prescribing this. Instead of saying, "Take these antidepressants," is "Here, go to 24HoursOfHappy.com and you need about 12 minutes."
Joe: Well, you know that's... Why don't we make the I Love Marketing episodes only four and a half minutes long and if you come up with something-
Dean: Let's just play that.
Joe: ... that we could say, just think about how many episodes we could knock out in an hour.
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: I mean, the entire years' worth-
Dean: Oh, one hour.
Joe: ... instead of us devoting this much time to recording all these episodes as a public service of building our... I don't know... the relationship and rapport that we have with all of our friends and clients and -
Dean: Sounds great.
Joe: ... droppers and bystanders.
Dean: We could do 15 episodes an hour.
Joe: Right, that would be good. Okay, so what's that have to do with... other than going to 24HoursOfHappy.com or whatever, what's the message?
Dean: I think that will set the tone. I think that sets the tone, but the thing is that I have been on this quest and grand experiment of embracing my bovinity -
Joe: Your what?
Dean: ... and really... Embracing my bovinity.
Joe: Bovinity.
Dean: Allowing myself to be a cow. You know, cows are bovines, so I made up bovinity as the word, embrace your bovinity.
Joe: Okay.
Dean: It's really interesting because as we've been talking and talking about this concept, it's really interesting the conversations that it's starting because people are asking about the difference between being a cow and being a farmer and where do I start with really embracing my cow and how do I start with... what if I'm a farmer? It's fascinating to me to see how all of this is unfolding because when I realized that really the things that are the most valuable things in my work life are things that are creating, they're things that only that I can do, the adaptive challenges as Wyatt Woodsmall calls them, doing the things that only we can do and allowing all the technical challenges, things that anybody else can do to do those. To be supported.
The biggest shift for me has been now working with a project manager and that is, I can already see, going to be the turbo booster for me. That's the thing of just almost like having some adult supervision in a way and somebody whose good at organizing and moving things along. It really fit so well with Dan Sullivan's concepts in The 80% Approach of focusing on making it up. That's the real work of being a cow or a creative. He talks about the three phases of make it up, make it real, and make it recur. What he does, he works with project managers. He's got four different project managers who they're really the only people that he speaks to. Where he'll come up with an idea or a project and he'll do an impact filter. Then he will meet with this project manager and completely convey the what of what he wants, what his vision for the product or project and what it will look like, what are the things that have to be true when it's complete, and all the elements of the impact filter. In that conversation then, the project managers role is to then go and do an impact filter of their own and create the strategy circles to make those things happen.
It's really kind of a really different thing. I tend to, on my team, to have a lot of process managers, meaning people who are... they want to work a system, not so much create a system or create checklists or create something out of nothing, which is really where there were sort of bottlenecks in my kind of throughput process where I was having to make it up, but also make it real and then have something completed to hand off to team members. This has been a big step. I think it's going to be a really powerful, a powerful thing. I mean, you and I haven't really talked about our processes for getting things done, so I'd really be curious about how your team plays out and who plays the project manager role and how you actually process things.
Joe: Well, I'd be happy to give you my input on that, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It's interesting what you just said, just thinking about it, and this maybe will put you on the spot and you don't have to do it if you don't want. Nothing embarrassing here, just the recommendation because when you started... me and you both attend Strategic Coach, we're both friends with Dan. I certainly spend more time with Dan-
Dean: Right.
Joe: ... than you do because he likes me more than he likes you, but that being said, we both go to Strategic Coach and we both do things with Dan outside of Strategic Coach. I do my 10X Talk Podcast with Dan. He's in my 25K group. We spend a lot of time personally and professionally hanging out because we're very close friends. I spend a lot of time with Dan and Babs. I'll stay over their home, either the one in Chicago or Toronto several times a year, but we both get different, obviously, interpretations and perspectives on the individual work that we do and how we think about things. It's always, of course, fun to talk about Dan because he's so much a thinker, a systems guy, a bigger future strategist, a focuser, a clarifier, I mean, there's a lot of elements that come out of working with a guy like Dan.
When you're talking about the biggest shift with working with a project manager, I've heard that conversation, discussed that conversation and thought about it many times. The thing I was going to suggest is you talked about The 80% Approach and I've done an episode on 10X Talk with Dan talking about The 80% Approach. We've had numerous conversations about making it up, making it real, talking about how to use the impact filter, things like that. I think it'd be really cool if you took one of those 30 minute episodes that we do on 10X Talk and you actually give your interpretation of it, in the same way that me and you have listened to... we've interviewed people and then we talk about it. That would be a really... I'd love to hear your perspective without me literally on the call.
Dean: Oh, yeah. No, I'd love to do that. I listen to all the 10X Talk episodes, so that may be one to - talking about. That would be a -
Joe: No, I think it'd be really cool to put it up as a I Love Marketing Episode, so that Dan can go deeper with it, with your recommendations and your interpretation. I always think that adds so much to it because you have a really good mind for how to hear something and then break it down and make it more tangible and more real and more useful for people. If you'd be willing to do that as a follow-up episode on one or two of them, I think that would be incredibly useful and insightful, because me personally, I would just love to hear what you'd have to say about it. That's my suggestion. You can choose to do that or not. The second thing I would say is who is your project manager? Did you just recently hire someone as a result of this because this sounds like a new shift for you?
Dean: Yeah, so I've been working with a project manager and this whole idea, what it's really brought to me is keeping everything... helping me keep everything very organized. I'll be interested to hear how you do this, but I'll explain how we've been doing it. I've been working with a guy, Stewart, he comes from kind of a corporate background in project management, so he's had a lot of experience like that and done a lot of consulting in that kind of a role. He is what Dan Sullivan talks about in the Kolbe index as a... I think they're called facilitators is what it is or mediators or facilitators, whatever it is, they're in the middle of-
Joe: Well, program advisors are-
Dean: What's that?
Joe: You talking about in Strategic Coach?
Dean: In Strategic Coach, I'm talking about the Kolbe index for what a project manager is. It's somebody who is right across the middle in all four of the elements there.
Joe: You'd think I would know this after many years of doing this and my assistant, Eunice, being certified in Kolbe, but I don't know. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Dean: Kathy's even right down the street from you.
Joe: Yeah, you know.
Dean: That's so funny.
Joe: You can't be good at everything.
Dean: Typically, entrepreneurs are long quick starts, which is ideas and getting things going, and a project manager, the ideal score... or I don't know what we call them, score, for their Kolbe is right across the middle in all things. Stewart is, I think, like a five, four, six, four or something like that, which he's right in the middle, neither insistent or resistant to any of the four elements of fact finder, follow through, quick start, or implementer, so he's able to just go along with it. He's not resistant to it and he's not bringing... not insistent on one being stronger than the other, so he's able to take things and really just see what needs to be done, give it some structure to help things stay on track and be organized. For me, it's really been just great to have a sounding board and somebody that I can say, "This is what I want to do, and this is the big picture of what I really want."
He can then help me organize the path to get there and interface with whoever needs to take that project from there and who can keep everything moving and, more importantly, add that element of adult supervision where now it keeps me on track, that I'm able to do and know what the most important things that I should be working on are. It's really been a great thing. We've been using something called Trello.com, which is a project management sort of online app. Are you familiar with it? Have you heard about Trello?
Joe: Yes. I mean, I use Basecamp and we use a couple of other things. I've never used Trello though.
Dean: Yeah. I've got Basecamp, too, but it's always been... Basecamp seems kind of overwhelming in a way, and it may be great for managing teams and stuff, but when I really evaluated what my needs are, and we're going through this looking at it as setting up something that is cow compliant, almost like a cow compliant project management system. We've broken Trello into three different areas where we've got the pastures, which are my boards where I just can capture all of my ideas. I can just put everything in there. Those are only visible by me, so that I can organize everything in categories. If I've got an I Love Marketing board where I can go in and I can list all the things, all the potential projects or all the things that we could do with I Love Marketing or I could do it with my Breakthrough Blueprint live events, I've got a board for that with all the projects, all the things that could capture all the things that I want to do. It's like a playground in a way. The pastures.
Now, the freedom of knowing that everything, all the ideas that I have are stored in one area, they're captured, kind of like what getting things done, would say getting them to in, that would be the biggest thing. That alone has been just a huge inspiration for me because if I look at the way that I have in the past organized things, I've always kept them organized in my journals and I've kept to-do lists and project plans and done 50-minute focus finders in my journal where I'll have paper lists of things. It works, but it's very... it's not that easy to move around and to organize. When you go back to that or you want to add to it or create something, now you're starting over. There's a little bit of inefficiency in it.
Having these pastures, where I can go in and put all of the projects that I want to do, so that the basic categories, I've got organization, so based on the things that we do. We've got helping entrepreneurs make more money. Underneath that are all the things that go into that. We've got I Love Marketing and the Breakthrough Blueprints and the Breakthrough Blueprint Mastermind, and GoGo clients, and all of the things that we do to help entrepreneurs. Then I've got the helping realtors make more money where we've got all of the things that I do underneath there with getting listings and moneymaking websites and finding buyers and the World's Most Interesting Postcard, all of those things all have their own area that I can go in and I can just bring up, put all of the things that I want, all the ideas that I have for any one of those categories are now captured in a place where I can add to them, I can review them, I can look at it. I've got the iPhone App too now, so I can add to the board. If I have an idea on the fly, I can add it to the appropriate board and I know that it's captured. That's been a big thing.
Now, that's just one part of it and if I look at then getting those ideas, those things out into the world, the next step is that they need to become projects that are in process now. Stewart came up with this idea of the milking shed, which is where we go to put the projects that are the things that I'm working on, that only I can do, so this episode, recording an episode of I Love Marketing is something that only I can do and only you can do. We're the cows in this particular context here, but once it goes from the milking shed, now it goes into the processing plant. We're setting it up just like a real farm operation. We've got ideas move from the pastures to the milking shed to the processing plant and the goal-
Joe: We should Temple Grandin on. You ever watch that movie?
Dean: Yes, I have, actually.
Joe: Yeah. We should get her on as an I Love Marketing guest. That would be awesome. If anyone has never seen that movie, Temple Grandin with Claire Danes, just watch it. We won't go into too much details, but it's a brilliant movie based on a true story and a real person with autism. It's fantastic, but yeah, you reminded me of that. Just talking about this as it relates to obviously business.
Dean: Right, exactly. It's pretty fascinating that this whole process of setting things up with a view to making them real in the world. Not only making them real but making them recur seamlessly and flawlessly. Now, this project manager role is really about being the transition from the pasture to the milking shed and then being the sole transition from the milking shed to the processing plant because that's where you really get into trouble and get tipped as a cow is when you start moving into the processing plant. You start wondering around the aisles in the processing plant and messing with the machinery and all that, and the things just -, so as a cow-
Joe: Well, that's a really great analogy to where I get into trouble and where tons of frustration and messes and anxiety are caused. It was funny when you mention let's talk about... because I'm very good at front stage. I don't like backstage and that's strategic coach terminology.
Dean: Me, too.
Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Me, too, both... I mean, that's the-
Joe: To the degree that you have some area of your backstage that needs to be handled, that needs to be made real, to put it in a make it up, make it real part, and you're no good at it or it's not getting done or whatever, then you're going to have a lot of frustrations. It's one of the areas where it will just kill creativity and performance if you... it's kind of like the Frank Sinatra doesn't move pianos, but if you're Frank Sinatra and you are having to move pianos and sell tickets and do everything, which initially, in a business you're going to have wear many different... you don't have to, but most cases you do wear those hats because for one, you don't have any sales maybe in the beginning or not enough to even afford people or you just don't have your shit together.
It's a stage that we all have to go through, the getting our shit together stage, and getting our shit together not only is getting clear on what to sell, how to sell it, which is where marketing comes in, but also in who is going to assist you and how resourceful and discerning and diligent are you going to be to set those [inaudible 00:24:45] things up to have a "functioning business" from a small operation to many thousands of people. This is a really good distinction to make because different people... there will be people that were listening to this that really are project managers in terms of the way they behave and the way they think, and there's other people that are like us that aren't like that at all.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely. They may be thinking, "Well, of course this is the way." I think that there are people who just organizing things is certainly a... comes natural to them. It's like that's their preference is to keep everything in order and to think that way. The way you and I think about marketing, they think about organization and management.
Joe: Right, right. Well, and see, you take-
Dean: It's fascinating as realizing that not everybody's about-
Joe: Yeah. I mean, my assistant, Eunice, would be a perfect example. I mean, Eunice has been with me at this point 18 years and left to her own devices, she would rather... She's innovative and created certainly. I mean, she reads a lot of books. She's adopted a lot of entrepreneurial... I mean, she's very entrepreneurial. She lives very much and operates in the results' economy, not the time and effort. I do pay her a salary, but I also pay her bonuses and she also has single-handedly helped facilitate millions of dollars' worth of sales for my company over the years. She's even been off... people come in and try to offer her way more money than I pay her in terms of financial money, but she never takes it because she also is not just there for money. Although, I do pay her very well and she's incentivized, it's just that there's this whole little setup that we have that just works for both of us.
Her thing, though, she's much more comfortable as a process manager, dealing... not a project manager. I want you to make the distinction because these are things I first heard from Dan, but I like the way that you explain it.
Dean: Okay.
Joe: I'm a guy whose always coming up with new stuff, so right now, I'm needing to find another assistant who, for one, Eunice has adopted a tremendous amount of stuff that is very high-level things that she needs to spend her time on. If I throw everything at her, which I certainly throw a lot at her, it's not an easy position in terms of... I mean, you need to be bright, you need to be sharp in order to hang around me and keep this machine moving forward and doing all the things that we do and blah, blah, blah. The thing is, if I gave her a choice in, hey, just focus on 25K, trips to Necker Island, ethical services, different things that we have, she would be completely fine with that. If I said hey... she would not get really excited about every three days we've got a new thing that I'm going to throw at you, that is very disruptive to her, but to me, I love that shit.
Dean: Right, right, exactly.
Joe: You know what I mean? It's like, I'm like a kid in a candy store. I mean, I'm bored with something almost instantaneously and I'm off to the next thing. We always have this I can get anything done that I want as long as I'm not the one that finishes doing it because I'm not very excited about finishing, whereas Eunice is.
Dean: Well, one of the... Yeah, okay. One of the best things that I've ever seen you talk about was when we did our Breakthrough Blueprint event together in January in your office and you drew up on the whiteboard the racetrack. You had this idea of that what you're really good at is taking the baton from the start to the hundred-yard line and then dropping it right there. Then, go back and getting another one and getting it to the hundred-yard line. You end up with this big pile of batons at the hundred-yard line with nobody there to take them the rest of the way. That's kind of frustrating.
That's really what I'm finding quite enjoyable about Trello is that you and I both have no shortage of ideas or inspiration for ideas and enthusiasm for ideas. What I find is that to capture that enthusiasm and to at least get everything that you know right now about it into a Trello board. You have that to come back and pick up where you left off at least. I'm not sure that you have that kind of a capture system or maybe you've been just keeping it secret from me, but I sense that you don't have that sort of system either and I think that would be a great-
Joe: Let me make a confession about this and do it in a way that I think will be instructional to everyone because, I mean, frankly, we're making it up and making it real as we go along. That's entrepreneurs do. First off, for our listeners, you want to hopefully -
Dean: - 136 episodes.
Joe: ... anything you're doing. I mean the founders of Google are doing this. Everyone is doing this.
Dean: Good.
Joe: Even companies that seem to be so completely automated and systemized. I mean, now, there are certain areas that just are solid. I mean, I think McDonald's doesn't need to make it up and make it real on how to make a Big Mac, not that I'd recommend anyone ever eat that crap, but in terms of -
Dean: I'd imagine somebody had to have the idea for the McRib and somebody had to go through the process, a project manager had to go through the process of researching how are we going to compress these snouts and hooves and ears into something that looks like a rib and get the grill lines on it and make it palatable to taste. That's a project man-
Joe: Right, right, right. They can actually taste good and addictive to children and put it in a little Happy Meal box, and all that sort of thing.
Dean: That's a project manager.
Joe: No, but the point is, there's all kinds of things that people are constantly doing. I mean, I've always loved saying, which it was really a conversation I had with Dan Sullivan when I first started Strategic Coach back in 1997, where no matter how well structured and organized you are, most people get up every day and bumble their way through life. I mean, they just do. I mean, you can do it with a time management system, you can do it with a schedule, you can do it with employees, you can do it with a mission statement. I don't like mission statements too much. You can do it with a company vision, a culture. I mean, there's all kinds of ways that you tap dance even if you know the moves, but you're still... I mean, if you're growing, you're continually making up new stuff and making it real. That's just simply how you grow a business.
There are very few businesses or opportunities that are going to be exactly the same. Go back to McDonald's. I mean, with all of the different forms of communication in social media, like Gary Vaynerchuk is going to be at my office in a couple of days. We're going to do a video interview. He's got a new book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. I Love Marketing is kind of like our jab, jab, jab. We're just putting things out there to people for free and then, the right hook is we ever actually ask them to buy something from us. It's that sort of thing. We're making it up and making it real as we go along.
Going to my example, we have JR, who we've done a couple of interview with for I Love Marketing who works with me and is brilliant. We're in the midst of the holidays and there's a bunch of different things that I had ideas for. You talk about my operating system, JR is one of them. I mean, I just dump ideas with him, and we strategize. We have stuff on Basecamp, but am I using it as thoroughly as a dumping ground, as a bucket to capture stuff in the same way you've just described Trello? No. Now I have ideas just from listening to you talk about it on how I can improve it. A perfect example today, there's three letters that JR wrote last week that are great letters. Now, there's a couple of changes that I probably want to make to these letters, but these would be the combination of a holiday letter, one with a book attached to it, giving a book to some of our best clients, different things that we can set the stage to offer to sell. I mean, they were just ideas that I had, and I sent the idea over via email. I think one of them was even in an audio that I recorded and then, he just takes it upon himself because he takes initiative. He anticipates what it is that I am talking about, what it is I think I need, and he just does it.
He does it and then he sends it back to me. Now, I've got all kinds of performances scheduled this week. I mean, we're doing a radio interview with Jay Abraham later today, I've got a crowd funding event I'm on tomorrow, I'm doing a teleseminar of Peter Diamandis tomorrow, I'm doing the interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. I've got other people in town. I've got about seven performances that I need to do in the next three and a half days if you have to take the time it is right now that I'm talking to you, so I don't have a lot of logistical time to make sure this letter, or any of these letters, get done and get put into a calendar and get mailed and I don't have a project manager that is looking at those things and saying, "Okay, now that this stuff's been created, let's make sure we can then make it real because JR made it real by writing a letter.
Now, the other part of making it real is actually getting the letter finalized, edited, planned, printed. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts and by you describing this, it made me realize that's... I sent a letter to three of my team members, my CEO, Eunice, and another person whose kind of an assistant for me and saying, "Who, right now, is capable of being the project manager on this?" I mean, that's the terminology that I actually used that could actually print these letters out, determine when we're going to mail them, that sort of thing because I just needed some movement on it. See, that is a huge area where execution does not happen for entrepreneurs is things like that, and I've been doing this for almost 20 years and I still have those sort of things.
Later today, when I'm done with all of my calls and recordings and performances and creation and stuff, there's a person in my 25K group, a new member, who actually referred someone locally as a project manager. Her name's Tammy. I've not interviewed her yet, I've not done anything other than ask Eunice to get a Kolbe to her so that by the time I talk with her, I know what her Kolbe is. I am in the pursuit of finding another person for this because it's one of my biggest areas of opportunity and by not having that place, it's also one of my biggest areas of frustration.
Dean: Yeah.
Joe: Now, in the scheme of things, this is a very exciting thing because it's like, oh wow, you can take this stuff-
Dean: It really is.
Joe: ... and actually, you can make it real. I'm not saying this to be like, oh shit, poor me and I'm so overwhelmed, but it is overwhelming when you don't have it handled. For our listeners, you can learn everything in the world about marketing and strategy and stuff, but if you yourself don't have the ability to make it real or have even a system for getting it down, you're going to have trouble and that one more thing I'll say, Ned Hallowell, the top ADD, ADHD psychiatrist is a real dear friend of both of ours and, of course, he likes me more than you, too. That being said, Ned, I was talking with him one day about systems. He made this comment, which I never forgot. It was so funny. He goes, "You know, Joe," he goes "for ADD people, like a lot of them avoid systems like the plague." He's like, "You hate systems. Systems cramp your style." I was like, "That's so funny." What he meant by it was I just resist them like no one's business because it's just... However, not having them and not having a person or a way to set it up could really lead you completely astray.
Dean: Right.
Joe: I understand the critical nature of this stuff for eliminating complexity and messes and overwhelm, and at the same time, it's one of these things where I have to really bring myself back to reality and say, "You know, all these great ideas, all these great strategies, without a road to drive the vehicle on, it doesn't matter if you build an amazing hot rod. I mean, you still got to have people that will do the pit stops and will help build the damn thing. When you start going down the track, you've got to keep yourself on track." I mean, I think this whole conversation is really, going back to the cow compliant, is knowing where you need to... like, your whole thing about the milking shed and the processing shed and Dean's boards, all of those, it's a great way of looking at it. Hopefully, it will-
Dean: We were just saying, we laugh and laugh as we're going down this, but the deeper we go down this path of stretching that analogy to its limits kind of thing, it's uncanny how it fits, I mean, how it really does fit is like the only thing that I aspire to be doing now is going from the pastures to the milking shed and that's it. Having the milk master in her kind of knowing what my role needs to be in some things, so that I can do my part of it. Then knowing what has to go into getting everything outlined for the processing plant, so they've got the instructions of what to do and that it continually recurs.
We've got examples of it because the I Love Marketing podcast, we look at that as really... that's the perfect example of in isolation, a project that is completely throughput engineered. You and I come from our separate pastures, we come on into the milking shed and we talk for an hour. That's our involvement in this. Now, we've already set up the process that will take this audio that you and I have created here, and that we'll get it edited and processed and put the theme music on and go through the 30-something steps that it takes to get it from here to there, to on the website and on iTunes without you and I having to wander into the processing plant. It was a project to set it up so that the system is in place, and now having the team in place to take that process and make it recur 136 weeks in a row here. You know?
Joe: Right. Right. There's a tremendous amount of snafus along the way. I mean, it's just part of as you're figuring... Gary Halbert used to have this line which is vulgar, but it's very, in my experience in working with thousands of entrepreneurs over 20 years, it's more accurate 99.99% of the time than anything else. He said one day, he was going to a direct mail campaign years ago, I mean, this is before the internet. We were talking about this campaign and one of the people that worked for me at the time was talking about the logistically difficulty of this and what about this and what about that. Gary said, "Look, everything's a cluster fuck until it's as smooth as silk. Just put it into action." I was like, that's such a great way of looking at anything that you start and people that are perfectionists that, oh, it's just got to be right, I mean, good luck. I mean, those are the people that are, in many cases, brilliant and they're talented and they're smart and they see the vision, but they just can't stomach the fact that this is going to be messy and things are going to make mistakes and you're going to deal with all kinds of bullshit.
Your tolerance level of dealing with human mistakes and human incompetence's, including your own in figuring stuff out and it might not work right, it might not fit right, it's like with anything... I mean, if you sit and look around, if you're in a home or a building, like right now, or a vehicle or a car, I mean, considering you're not hiking the middle of nature, listening to on an iPhone or an iPod or something listening to this, if you just look around at everything from if you're in an office building, you're looking at desks and computers and chairs and carpeting and lights and tacks on the wall and drywall and everything and if you're in a kitchen, you're looking at knives and glasses and maybe scissors or maybe microwaves or George Foreman grills or Vitamix blenders, I mean, whatever. You just think about the initial time that any of these things started, someone had to invent a George Foreman Grill or a Vitamix or a Macintosh Computer. If you sit and think about all of these things that are real first had to be made up. A lot of times, people really like, "Oh, my god, I've got so much shit to do," as you're surrounded with all of these tools that people that had to make these had so much shit to do.
I mean, you could be surrounded in a small room by stuff that has cost billions of dollars to develop and perfect, that is there to make your life easier, and even capable of doing things that even five years ago you could not do, and people will still come up with some reason to get annoyed with a few fuck ups that are going to happen as they start their project, as they start their business, as they try some initiative. Part of it is, for one, get that nonsense thinking that you cannot do it out of the way and adopt the Book of Survival quote from Anthony Greenbank, "To get through an impossible situation, you don't need the mind of an Einstein, the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, you just simply need to know what to do." It's one thing about figuring out what to do and now the element here, what you have brought to the table with this cow compliant analogy is just how to take all of these thoughts and the concept of a project manager.
Okay, so if you have all of these things, how do you actually... because when you break down project manager, what does that actually mean, because everyone that's listening has some sort of projects, something they want to create and then there's a process for doing that. Going back to my thing in my long rant here, I'd love to have you make the distinction between... your distinction between a process manager and a project manager because learning that sometimes totally clarifies it. It's even helping me just think this through and talk about it right now.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. I look at it that even in the way that... my understanding of it. A project manager is really about, would be more from the transition between making it real... or making it up and making it real. A hundred percent cow compliance is making it up. We have the idea; we know exactly what we want to have happen. Then, the making it real part is thinking through what would have to happen to make this happen once sort of thing and how all the decisions that go into when you start something new. Like, let's just even use the podcast as an example or let's see, let use the 90-Minute Book process or last week's episode was all about the 90-Minute Book. That's a perfect example. Everybody's got the ideas that they want to get out into the world as an entrepreneur. They know what the idea is, and they love the idea of creating a book, but there's a lot of steps involved in that whole process.
I started out with setting up... realizing that I would be more comfortable talking about my idea. I can draw an outline and talk about something for an hour, in 90 minutes. Just 30 minutes to outline what I'm going to talk about and then an hour to talk about it, and that turns into ultimately a 50 or 60 page book. It happens so much faster than if I was to write a 50 or 60 page book. I mean, that takes hours and hours and hours to do something like that. Most people, most entrepreneurs, ADD entrepreneurs especially, would have a hard time sitting down and being still for that long. That's my whole problem. Same with you.
Joe: Yes, it's still.
Dean: Yeah, it's still. The first time that I went through this process was almost exactly a year ago, after meeting with Dan and Babs in London, just kind of serendipitously he was talking about this... he had just done his book breakthrough process and introduced me to this whole create space situation where you can print the books in low quantities. I had just hired a guy who his role was to help me package up all of my ideas and all of my programs and all the stuff like that, so I told him what I wanted to do and had he went and found all out about how all that works and what got us set up as a publisher and got the format that we need and the templates and set up the process, actually, for getting a book from idea to out in the world.
When I look at it now, I have a capability called a 90-Minute Book. I have the ability to write a book on anything with no more than 90 minutes. Last week's episode was an example from beginning to end that turned an idea into a 90-minute book. I had the idea... I don't know if I even told you this, Joe, I have this idea of there was a Seinfeld episode where Kramer got a publishing deal for doing a coffee table book about coffee tables. It kind of felt like this, doing a 90-minute book about the process of creating a 90-Minute Book seemed like exactly that kind of irony.
I had Susan Austin, who is in Phoenix there actually, Joe, she was Thomas Leonard's right hand. She was the one who was his project manager and packager and packaged up all the intellectual property and programs that Thomas would create for CoachVille, training coaches and stuff. I had her. I did an interview with her for me explaining the whole process of the 90-Minute Book and we spent 30 minutes on the phone going over the outline, then we spent 60 minutes recording the actual content, and then from there, the whole process takes over. Now, I had Glen makes the cover to the book, we got the domain name, 90MinuteBook.com, we got the cover of the book designed, we got it transcribed, we got it laid out. I wrote a little intro page for it, and set up the whole thing, got it over to Create Space and now, we have a real tangible book called The 90-Minute Book, which from beginning to end only took 90 minutes of my time.
Setting up that process started with conceiving of the project of being able to write a book and get it to my Strategic Coach class a year ago because I told Dan when we were in London that I would have a book for our next workshop, which was two weeks away, so I had to move quickly like that. Now, that as a process for entrepreneurs is something that anybody now has as a capability. If they've got an idea and they can afford 90 minutes to put that idea into the world, and then let the process take the rest of that stuff and get it out into real packaged, tangible form and in their hand, that makes something very, very easy. That is at the stage now where it is in the hands of a process manager, where now that we've figured out all the adaptive challenges of creating a book in 90 minutes, which would be how are we going to outline it, who's going to do the interview, who's going to get it transcribed, who's going to design the cover, who's going to lay out the book, where are we going to get them printed, what size are we going to do, how are we going to get them shipped to the person? All of that stuff, figuring it out for the first time is a project.
Outlining steps, creating the checklists, creating the system is now a process that can be managed by a process manager. Doing something the first time is really what a project manager is about and doing something on an ongoing basis, once you've already figured out how to do it, is a process manager. Often they're different people, so if I look at my own team, I have people on my team who are mostly process managers and you've probably run into this, too, Joe, where you have things where you have people, if you tell them what to do and you lay it all out and they know exactly what they need to do, they are a hundred percent reliable. Nothing is going to get in their way of making sure that whatever needs to be done, gets done, but often where they get frustrated is when they don't know what you want them to do, what the step in the process is, and they're not as adept at making it up like we are. They're not going to figure out a solution or figure out what needs to be done intuitively or what would add something to it. They're coming to you to ask you what you want to be done next, you know?
Joe: Right, right. That is a difficult thing to do for both parties. From their standpoint, they're like just trying to do the best they know how to do. I don't think anyone wakes up and figures out how to do the worst they can do. I mean, certainly lazy people or people that aren't really engaged, which is a whole another episode we can do an hour on, if they're not engaged, that's a whole another issue, but from the entrepreneur's standpoint, there's the real frustration of why aren't people resourceful, why can't they think straight. A lot of it is just simply different operating systems. You're expecting a Mac to perform like a PC, or a PC is expecting to perform like a Mac, and they don't. That's why it requires a real understanding, as much as you can, about how things and people and different people actually work and function and who is reliable for you and what you have done to set it up because if you have not set up a reliable system, then you begin to despise or hate or criticize or feel that you can't count on anybody. If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.
That's a tough position that every entrepreneur has been in or is currently in right now is just that belief that you can't find good people or this and that. It's not that it's even just good people, it's this good people for certain things because as Dan Sullivan says, "There's no such thing as bad work. There's just bad work for certain people, including yourself." If you find where you're frustrated, it's just because you've probably put yourself into an area or situation where you're not able to perform in the way that you can perform. You know?
Dean: Yeah. Or if you find where somebody else on your team is frustrated or you're frustrated with somebody else on your team's performance, if you really evaluate it, probably the most common thing or the thing that you might want to ask, is this person a project manager and I'm asking them to manage a process, which to them would be boring. I already know how to do this. It's like, their project managers get more joy out of doing something new the first time. They love figuring out how to do something, researching and evaluating options and setting up... making something real, but then they would get bored very quickly if they're going to do that one thing again and again and again. Then, there are other people, process managers, who just, just tell me what to do. If you just tell me what to do, I'm more than happy to do it and I want to do it exactly like you tell me to do it, I want to do a great job for you.
It is frustrating when they don't know what to do and they don't either know what the next step is or have the... I don't know whether it's self-confidence or they don't have... the preference isn't to just come up with an idea. People who are lower quick starts, that's not their thing. They're not trying to figure out how to do something, but they will come to you if they're fact finders, if they're high on fact finder, low on quick start, they'll come to you and say, "What would you like me to do in this case or with this situation," or "How would you like this? You can do it like this or like this or like this. Which way would you like me to do it," where you have to figure out what to do.
Joe: Right, right. That's a frustrating thing is to be in a reverse delegation situation where you believe you're hiring somebody to help you with work and all they're doing is-
Dean: Right.
Joe: ... bringing more work to you.
Dean: That's exactly what happens is... you're absolutely right... is now they are coming to you and dropping at your... and they come to a standstill.
Joe: Right, and then you're left figuring out and then you get frustrated because you're paying-
Dean: Because they need your input.
Joe: ... to have someone help you, but what you've just paid for is to add more work to your life in the process of trying to get work done or take certain work off your back, so you can do other work. It's really a setup. I mean, you can have the very best of intentions with setting up something. You can rewire your entire house, but if you have the wires in the wrong place, things aren't going to turn on or you might want to go for the light switch, but a blender turns on. I mean, it's the same way in your business.
Dean, for time purposes, and this I thought was a really good, insightful way to think about getting things done and certainly, I mean, I've learned some stuff just from talking about it. When I say I learned, one of the ways I learned, I don't need to learn something new. I love the line, "You never step in the same river twice," I mean-
Dean: River twice, right?
Joe: ... and every time I hear something or if I read a book that I've read before or I attend an event that I've attended before or I listen to something that I've listened to before, I never in the same person when I listen to it or hear it and I think all of these discussions about the self-milking cow and project management and process management and make it up and make it real, and the analogies and stuff just give me a whole another perspective and approach on how I can take things on in a more capable and more confident state. For people listening here, how would you take them out? I mean how would you -
Dean: Yeah, I think even before-
Joe: ... summarize what we said in-
Dean: I think that as a cow, as an idea person, the output of an idea, the output is what do I want, what does it look like, what am I trying to accomplish? You can describe what it is. The very best tool for describing something like that is I really started embracing the impact filter that Dan Sullivan talks about in Strategic Coach, it's one of the tools, one of the primary tools of Strategic Coach. That's why when you talk about how you and I, that's where we invest time and money is in thinking about our thinking, and the impact filter is a tool that helps you think about your thinking in a way that translates it into what the finished product looks like, so that you can then pass that onto a project manager who can look at that impact filter as their input and their output would be a process or a plan to get that out into reality and only come to you for the things that truly only can be done by you and to be able to handle all the other things.
I think immediately, Joe, that's kind of a... that would be a multiplier for you is if you can find somebody like that, that if you can... Now, I just feel like I'm so happy that if I can get to a point where, A, I've got a place to capture all of the ideas that I have, that's my playground and I can roam the pastures and add to all of these ideas or think about, or get clear on what I want and evaluate which ones I think are the ones that I really want to take to the milking shed now and start the process of getting them out into the real world. Having somebody there in the milking shed to help you get that out into a form that he can translate it for the processing plant, that what's actually going to need to be processed here once you get those whole things.
The whole 90-Minute Book process was an experiment in creating. It's kind of like creating a farm for entrepreneurs to get intellectual property out there. Myself first, that's how I set it up, so that I can in 90 minutes create a book.
Joe: Yep. I like it.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Joe: No, very good, very good. Well, here's what I would suggest. I'd love to have you do one of the... if you think it's a good idea, one of those episodes with Dan and if not, people can hear like The 80% Approach and hear more about the impact filters and making it up and making it real and process manager versus project manager or the number 10XTalk.com or you can hear a version, if Dean decides to do one and put it up. We're also going to have some cool bonus episodes that are going to come up in the next few weeks. I did an interview with the voice of Siri.
Dean: Oh, nice.
Joe: The Australian voice of Siri, which is really cool. How she uses the... like even the whole system of the GPS and the navigation system to come up with your goal, so that was a short video interview that I did off the cuff when she happened to be in town. Then, the Gary Vaynerchuk video, which I'll be doing here shortly, this week, and then we'll put that up in, I don't know, soon, and anything else. Any final last words before we wrap up this fabulous episode, Dean?
Dean: Awesome. This has been great. I love it. I was so happy to see how it all keeps evolving, so it's great to have the-
Joe: Yeah, I guess everyone could go to 24 hours of Dean dot com or - get happy. Could you imagine? That would be painful. If you wanted to be depressed, you could go to 24 hours of... I'm kidding -
Dean: They could go to 136 hours of Dean and Joe right now at ILoveMarketing.com. We should set that up.
Joe: They could play that in the background subtly for their children, even from the moment they're born-
Dean: I love it.
Joe: ... so that they can instill this marketing knowledge because anyone that grows up not loving marketing truly is at such a disadvantage. If they're already in that disadvantaged state, that they have been trained that marketing is somehow this bad, evil thing because some marketers are bad and evil, if they believed that the actual thing of it is, then of course, we're here to save the day by providing ILoveMarketing.com. I'm so glad we're able to provide this public service to humanity and just make everyone happy.
Dean: There we go.
Joe: That's it. All right, thanks everyone. We'll talk to you on the next episode.
Dean: Okay, bye.
There we have it. Another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, want to go deeper in how the profit activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com and you can download a copy of the More Cheese, Less Whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA process. You can download a book and a scorecard and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at BreakthroughDNA.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. That's it for this week. Have a great week and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese, Less Whiskers.