#but yeah. the game itself is like fine. super minor issues for me so far. but the raid battles??? awful.

[vanillabat99]

Now that I've beat the main storyline of Pokémon Scarlet and unlocked 5 star raid battles, I have some opinions on the raid battle mechanics. Short Version: I think they suck.

Long Version:

First off, the difficulty jumps between 4 Star and 5 Star is outrageous. I am able to do a 4 Star den with the AI team, and it might take me another try. So far it has been genuinely impossible to do a 5 Star den with the AI team, as well as taking at least 5 tries with an online lobby. The only time I've been able to do a 5 Star den in one try is when my lobby makes me wonder if they're cheating. I shouldn't have to hope for a lobby full of exploiters if I want to have a reasonably fair fight.

I've also encountered many moments (regardless of difficulty level) where the health bar of the opposing pokémon will jump up to a seemingly random point, without the use of a healing move or effect. It's also really hard to tell how accurate the timer bar is when my team's health status doesnt seem to be displaying properly throughout the battle. I've had the display say they had half health, only to see they didn't have a pokémon out whatsoever.

The lack of structure has caused a lot of issues. I have sat through 10 seconds of "opposing pokémon removes negative effects" and other such text, and watched as the timer ticked away, only to have to wait for another 5 to 10 seconds with no battle displays for (again) seemingly no reason!! It's never clear if I'm simply taking too long, have unfortunate timing, or if there's been a bug.

What little structure is there has such poor prioritising that it almost doesn't matter it was there to begin with. The "running out of time" warnings are often so late they're just delaying the "you've been kicked out" text. There's so many moments where there's genuinely nothing happening whatsoever, and so many moments where there's so much status text I'm not even playing the game anymore.

I am of the opinion that every game should be playable without having to purchase extra features. I shouldn't need an online subscription to have even the tiniest chance of beating a 5 Star Raid Battle.

In conclusion, it appears that removing the turn-based function of battles causes things to fall apart. And it sucks.

[jane-penvellyn-of-blackmoor]

Nancy Drew #33 Midnight in Salem Game Review

So I gave in and paid the damn $30 to play the dribble that HER's pawning off as their latest game. While there has been major controversy within the fandom over the latest Nancy Drew Game and HerInteractive in general, I'm going to stick to just the game here. My thoughts and opinions on how HER managed the fandom after Penny Miliken came onto the scene have been made clear on my sh!tposts on my blog lol. So we're talking just the game here, nothing pre-start menu - that includes real world HerInteractive drama, none of that. So let's begin...

The Start Menu - Tbh I hated the start menu. It was like a FNAF game's opening menu, clearly made in Unity and the grass textures were nightmarish. If this were my first Nancy Drew game and this was the first sight I saw upon booting the game up, I would never buy another one again.

Voice Acting - Now before ya'll go off on "That's just your nostalgia talking, give it a chance" I will have you know that I tried, I really really tried to like the new voice actress for Nancy but ugh I can't stand it. She sounds like someone pretending to be Olivia Benson off Law & Order: SVU. Like I get they wanted Nancy to sound more like a modern teenager and less "Barbie voice" like Lani's voice would stray towards but letting go of Lani was their biggest mistake. If they had kept Lani as Nancy's voice - especially for such a drastically different game setup - would have helped keep fans fixed within the Nancy Drew world that we've been following for years. Everyone else was great, I especially liked Mei and Lauren's voices and the emotions expressed within them. Also Tourist Girl outside of the Town Hall needs to be brought back in the next game and have her lines recorded on actual recording equipment because what you did HerInteractive was hysterically pathetic and unfair. I don't know if that was a place holder that got overlooked or what but for a $30 game released by a company with so many quality games under it's belt - I expect better.

Storyline - Was pretty good. Fire, robberies, political unrest, sabotage, fraud, hidden wills, all things we've seen before a dozen times but they never get old. I think it's safe to say that the storyline itself is actually what kept me playing, however about half way through I did know it was one of two suspects who was the villian and the very next reveal ensured me which one it was. Still though good story.

Script - Whoever was in charge of the character conversations, for the love of all that is holy please water the interactions down! I felt like 99% of the game was never ending conversations about crap that wasn't useful to the plot. Like filler and fluff is great but conversations that drag on and on and on aren't fun. Have a character say a line or two, then it's Nancy's turn - all this monologuing has me flying through conversations just so I can move onto the next thing. Also some of the way the lines are written make it hard for the actors to read and sound authentic. Like "I can not." (versus "I can't.") levels of unauthentic lines.

Characters - Loved the different characters, would have appreciated more that had models you could interact with.

Puzzles - Needed way more puzzles. Like WAY more. It felt like there was less than 10 puzzles in the game and the majority were stupid easy, the only 'difficult' ones were easy once you understood what they wanted you to do which for some reason wasn't made clear at the start of the puzzle.

Mini Games - Loved making Johnny Cakes and mixing herbs.

Graphics - Horrific. I played on the highest settings of graphics on my HD computer, I had zero issues with it rendering or playing through as intended and smoothly - the graphics were still shit. I've seen better graphics in Barbie's Horse Adventures or The Sims 3. If you're entire argument of shifting onto Unity was for better graphics, HerInteractive, then you need to deliver and you failed miserably at that.

Navigation - I actually had zero issue with the 'swoosh' way we moved around. At times it felt a little restrictive (like in Town Square getting around the stage) but it was fine. I just actually didn't care for the camera tilt feature, it made things ten times more complicated trying to figure out what nooks and crannies they wanted you to notice and which they didn't. I'd happily go back to the old navigation and old engines but I'm fine with the new one so long as they work on making it better.

Cursor - Hated the new cursor, bring back the magnifying glass plz.

Location - I felt that the location of Salem, MA. wasn't utilized to it's fullest potential and that the layout of the town square and the maps of the city were surprisingly unsimilar to IRL Salem. I liked the aesthetic of Lauren's Shop, The Cemetary, The Hathorne House, and Olivia's Store but all of those locations fell victim to the game's graphics, still though props to the designer of those locations in the game.

Austrian Castle - This was jarring. To have a game so drenched in it's location of Salem then it starts off in Austria, it was weird. I get it that they were like "It's connected to the Salem Witch Trials cuz of da Judge dude" but it was super unnecessary and felt like a strange sub-plot location to a game set in Salem, MA. 

Music - I liked the music, felt a little Harry Potter-ish at times and the 'indie rock' music they had that had zero lyrics was annoying but overall it was fine.

Witchy Stuff - I myself am a real practitioning witch, I am an ecclectic pagan wiccan and I know I am in the minority here but some of the puzzles were obnoxiously easy if you know anything about witchcraft. Like even the most basic level of witchcraft. If you ever skimmed through a wicca book in highschool with your edgy friends than you already know more than this game expects you to know. What pissed me off is that it's never actually explained to you. Like they bring up Samhain and fling the word around so it's all spooky and mystifying but they never once have a book or person discuss real Witchcraft with you. Like yeah Olivia is a 'real witch' or whatever and Lauren teaches you about mixing some herbs but it's still not like "Here is The Wheel of the Year, These are Sabbats and Esbats, This is an Athame, This is what we use brooms for we call them Besoms, etc" like the fact that we didn't get a wise old lady who was a clear rip off of Laurie Cabot teaching us about real Witchcraft in a very censor friendly and warm way pisses me off to no end. MISSED OPPORTUNITY HER!!!

Nancy's Behavior - So many times in this game Nancy behaved out of character to me. Like I get it, ya wanted to be all like "let's challenge her belief in ghooooosts!!" but it wasn't done correctly. Nancy wouldn't react to seeing ghosts like Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Call Backs/Easter Egg - I appreciated the Easter Egg in this game being a literal colorful egg but it was a lame spot to hide it considering it was in plain view. However I appreciated the call backs to previous games with KoKo Kringles, Robotic Cats, and the Dear Sweet Charlotte jack-o-lantern.

Ghosts and Jumpscares - 10/10 best aspect of the game by far. The witch ghost over the bed actually got me really good and the ghosts in the underground tunnels were the best graphics of the game.

Pumpkins - Another charming part of the game that I actually enjoyed more than I anticipated. It was really cute and a fun stupid little thing to work on through out the game to find all the candles and put a pumpkin on each one.

Hardy Boys - PLEASE BRING THEM BACK FOR MORE GAMES AND NEVER STOP THE FRANCY SHIPPING. Also I could be tempted for Joe/Deirdre shipping js.

Overall - I'd rate the game a 4/10 and that's being nice. I liked it more than RAN but that’s really not saying much. It doesn’t come close to classic Nancy Drew Games.

Final Thoughts - I can't see any person who isn't a die hard Nancy Drew fan playing this and being like "Yeah I'll buy more of HerInteractive's future games!" like no. But I do see potential. I can see this as a beautiful beginning on a new platform making more immersive games. Or you know this could be the last game we get from HER and they close and go bankrupt and get flushed away and then the Miss Clue crew buys the rights for Nancy Drew and they make new Nancy Drew Games on the old platform with the old team....whichever works just fine for me :)

[ruteekatreya]

Granbelm Aftermath!

This show is so good.  I’ve reblogged enough Machikado Mazoku stuff that I’m sure it’s obvious I’ve liked where it’s going, but Granbelm I haven’t seen many posts on, so! I really loved the show at pretty much every step.  A magical mecha BR with a cast solely comprised of gals?  Where the mecha are Ryu Knight-styled chibis?  Sure thing!  Where Minion A (voiced by YAoi) has a mecha that’s even shaped like a Demon Lord’s wizard minion?  The show knows where it’s at!

There’s a lot of minor stuff throughout that I’ve loved - such as Nene-nee having her NEET tendencies come out in a perfect sniper mech (That’s also a mobile armor because honestly she’s a cheating jerk, I love it), or the way that even Rosa’s dorky open shirt pilot outfit has cute hood-ears and feels like something someone would actually wear (I see you there, Shinichirou Otsuka.  Even if I wouldn’t have realized the relevance without my friends who comment on the backend, doing so)  The fights are also, quite frankly, the best mecha fights I’ve ever seen.  Period.  And I’ve been in on The Mecha for a long, long time, even if I fell out of it like 8 years ago!  Seriously, it’s great shit.  I’m glad me and wifey started watching it, since it suffered the most being streamed with friends.  (Probably, I haven’t gone back to check on Fire Force, and won’t now because lolno, nor do I have Amazon to watch Vinland Saga myself.)

But at its core, I was super interested because it put together a pair of female leads who were probably going to be lovers into a situation with a lot of drama, and dang did it deliver on that.  The stakes always feel pretty high, and pretty personal!  And I was pleasantly surprised by how they handled it all around, when Nene-nee made it clear to Shingetsu and Mangetsu that some folks are here for imminently personal reasons, rather than Anna having an inferiority complex to her ex- and a pair of minions who do what she wants. Nene-nee was probably the antagonist they needed to beat there, since she and her sisters are adults and can handle losing out on the easy solution to getting their mother back.  From there, Suishou coming out as a villain in her own right who’s been playing Anna (And exacerbating all the toxic shit Anna beats herself with) works well, culminating in the honestly heart breaking scenes where she forgives Shingetsu, then stabs her mother so she can try to prove her own superiority to ERNESTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA anyway (Yoko Hikasa did a superb job torturing those syllables.) 

Thematically, I think, once the theme first came out more explicitly, I got a bit eye-rolly at first.  But on reflection, I’m fairly sure “There are no quick fixes, and the dream for the quick or sweeping fix can be toxic” is not one that really comes up a lot anymore, so I guess it’s fine, it just feels more common than it is.  And they certainly never actually betray the theme unintentionally.  The most useful thing Magic lets people do in the text is grow flowers or do parlor tricks for real.  We can guess that Nene-nee, Nana, and Mimi were subsisting off it (Presumably by either Jedi Mind Tricking everyone or selling shady immortality), but they do that just as well off of whatever they’re doing in the epilogue (Nene-nee is evidently a teacher, f’rex).  Yes, Magic can heal the curse on Shisui, but the curse on Shisui is itself a form of magic, so it’s hardly uniquely helpful (And Shisui ends up healing her curse herself before the time shenanigans means she never got cursed.)   Equally, Granbelm doesn’t fall into the other failure state of this theme, of  “Trying for the quick fix is thoroughly Bad, especially if you’re in a bad situation.”  The show’s never cruel to Nene-nee and her family for trying to get their mother back, for instance.  Is it the most useful theme?  Nah, but it’s done well - the scenes with Mangetsu coming to terms with it (After having spent a bit more than half of the series glowing about how awesome her mecha is) are a favorite.  I do think the series could have stood to just not even engage in some of that ‘is she human’ stuff that Japanese media generally tends to spend more time on (Even tho it does come down quite emphatically on ‘ye she is’ at least).  I also liked that Mangetsu got to respond to “You’re just here for your friends, your family, and your lover” with “yeah, so what?  So what if I don’t have a Grand Thesis on How To Save The World?”

The ending was also well done.  I think I’d rather a longer epilogue, to be honest - Whether the show could have done more with more slice of life elements is debatable, maybe, but the ending definitely could have.  And while I get that we can infer that yes, Anna and Kuon get to live too, rather than having to stay dead while Mangetsu comes back... I still want to actually see Anna get the hugs she needs (in particular.)  I like her! ( I liked all the gals, the characters are really all quite good.)  And we were tragically robbed of seeing more of Shisui, the super-cool amazing big sis... who’s actually kind of a space case derp, her younger sister just dotes on her.  A slower paced epilogue would be very nice.  But it does work as is, and with Mangetsu coming back... makes it clear that the others do as well.  And indeed, the girls are all going to get the lives they wanted; Nene-nee and her family presumably never lost their mother (As whatever Magical bullshit she got into that altered her mind never happened,) Shisui and Kuon are presumably living together, and Anna...  will get to actually live a normal life (And because she was superb at basically everything but magic, she’ll presumably excel now, though she’s lost any memory of her ex-).  The only one who kinda gets left high and dry is Suishou... and Suishou probably didn’t want a happy life at all.  ...also, Shingetsu’s regular moon-bunny ninja princess outfit is far superior to her stealing Mangetsu’s clothes and hastily stitching them onto her own in the scene at Magiaconatus.  That was a little silly as a design. :V

So many of the details are superbly done as well.  YAoi handles Suishou amazingly and gets to flex her muscles as an actress with a shitload of range, convincingly pulling off that range with just one bastard of a gal.  And similarly, Suishou’s look in the OP, and the way her mecha is so thoroughly a Minion’s mecha... until it turns out, she’s the villain (...sorta!  She gets kind of a raw deal too!) , and her mecha correspondingly switches to be more Demon Lord-looking.  The spirits were a nice touch I’d like to have seen more of.  The animation is just so fucking top notch.  And while you can be annoyed Mangetsu’s a mech, the way they actually did the protagonist switch is pretty good.

My only real complaint is pretty moderate.  I *really* liked a lot of the mid-game where it becomes clear Shingetsu and Mangetsu have The Depression, that depression manifests in different ways for them, and both are dealing with it as best they can.  That gets handled well while it has the camera on it, but ends up falling out of focus with the reveal that Mangetsu’s depression is more directly magical, since she’s a magical construct.  The show could probably have worked with that a lot longer and been different, and fairly interesting; and while it’s on screen, it’s legitimately very good.  Probably something I’d like better, personally.  But where it ends up going was still quite good, so hey.  The other thing I really didn’t like was people’s tendency to jump to Madoka as their point of comparison.  It’s... it’s just not.  Really at all.  If I were going to compare it to something recent (Though Madoka’s more quasi-recent by now) it’d be Revue Starlight (Though it’s not oriented on queer issues, which is pretty damn important to Starlight itself, so that comparison’s more superficial too, tbf.  But it’s also a damn sight more accurate.)

[mysteriousdreaming]

Symmetra had always had mixed feelings about flying. Something about being tens of thousands of feet off the ground in a large metal bird both intrigued and terrified her. Usually however when she flew for work with Viskar, the perks of first class helped soothe her anxieties. The private lounges, priority boarding, free drinks and spacious seats always helped to calm her nerves long enough for her to reach her destination.

Unfortunately Overwatch’s budget did not allow for such luxuries.

Winston had booked them last minute economy seats on a budget airline and the seats themselves were so cramped she almost felt as though she was sitting on the lap of the Junker next to her. Not that he was much more comfortable, his long legs were almost pressed up under his chin and he was fidgeting constantly throughout the flight. For once though she couldn't blame him. Thank god the flight to France had been a fairly short one and not a long haul journey. She was also thankful the Junker had been forced to clean up before the trip, the claustrophobic environment was bad enough without adding the Australians usual...musk. 

But despite the uncomfortable conditions they had got to the airport safely, slogged through security and baggage claim, and Symmetra was now sat in a taxi patiently waiting for Jamison to finish helping the driver load up their belongings. A minute or two later he joined her, telling the omic the address of their hotel before slouching back in his seat.

“Don’t trust being driven by a bot one bit.” He grumbled, earning himself a glare from the architect. He was looking very different to his normal self, almost unrecognizable (which she supposed was sort of the point of the whole mission). As well as the rarity of being clean and the welcome addition of some cologne, he was wearing a loose fitting shirt and a pair of black jeans along with a pair of sunglasses. After much protest before they left his usual scrap prosthetics had also been temporarily replaced with basic prosthetics Mercy had found in storage.

Her own appearance didn’t experience as much of a dramatic change. Casual clothes and a pair of shades was more than enough to make her look ‘normal’. Unlike Junkrat she was even able to keep her own prosthetic, thankfully giving them the ability to defend themselves with hard light if needed. 

She had to admit the ‘illusion’ worked, they looked just like a normal couple on romantic weekend to the city of love.  

The drive to the hotel was quick if not slightly awkward. Despite the drivers and her own best efforts any attempts at pleasant conversation were quickly shot down or ignored by the somewhat moody Junker. She was relieved when taxi finally pulled over at their destination and looked over to Jamison who seemed just as eager as her to escape.

“Love, can you grab our stuff? I’ll go check us in.”

Love. Obviously it was just a professional charade, one they had been partaking in for a few hours now, but she couldn't help but feel a little red all the same at how naturally he said it. She’d never thought of him as an actor, but Junkrat was putting on an almost too convincing performance for her liking. Still, she needed to keep herself together. Two days, one night, and they would never have to act like this again. She just hoped no one from Vishkar saw her in the meantime.

She grabbed the two bags, giving the driver a rather generous tip and a heartfelt apology. The omnic however didn't seem too bothered by Junkrats attitude and gave her a warm, but sad, smile "Your boyfriend isn't the first passenger to be hostile to me, and he won't be the last." He shrugged "I'm honestly more thankful he didn't throw anything at me or try and do a runner." 

"Does that happen a lot here?" She questioned, quickly correcting her abruptness "Sorry, I hope you don't mind me asking."

"All the time I'm afraid mademoiselle. It's been getting worse recently too. World's a scary place right now, ominc or otherwise."

Well, she couldn't disagree with that. Even if Talon weren't stirring things up for their own gain, tensions were still high. South Korea, Russia, the Outback, people were still hurting from the omnic crisis all these years later and without groups like the old Overwatch to help…

She didn't want to think how close order was to breaking…

With one final thanks to the taxi driver she grabbed the bags and made her way into the lobby.

The hotel they were staying in was far more luxurious than the plane they took to get there. It turned out that Winston had an old contact in Paris who had a close connection to the owner of one of the most classy five star hotels in the city. They had managed to pull some strings and got the pair a premium room free of charge, which Symmetra was immensely grateful for. The last thing she wanted was to also be sharing a small hostel room with the lanky arsonist.

The lobby itself was large and tastefully modern. There were several seating areas made up of plush sofas and coffee tables, long green hanging plants fell like waterfalls from the first floor balconies and a large chandelier was attached to the ceiling, filling the room with a warm orange glow. The lobby was also filled with quite a crowd of guests, talking, checking into rooms or just generally relaxing.

Waiting for her in one of the seating areas was a very pissed off Rat, sitting on a sofa and bouncing his leg viciously. What was wrong with him now? Regardless she sat down next to him, putting the bags at their feet.

As she sat down Junkrat nonchalantly put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a close embrace and whispering in her ear "Metra, Ah swear to god, when we get back to Gibraltar I'm gonna turn that monkey into a fucking rug."

Ignoring his use of that annoying nickname she pulled away from him a little in surprise, both at his words and at the physical contact, although she assumed the latter was due to the busy nature of the lobby "What? Why?"

He simply grumbled in reply, bouncing his leg a few more times before standing up and grabbing the bags "Ya’ll know in a minute. Come on, I've got the key and the room number."

His reply infuriated her. Why did he have to be such an over dramatic child? And why was she just expected to follow him? If it was something important to the mission that could compromise it she should be told, not strung along. If it wasn't for the crowds and their cover she'd put her foot down and call him out right there and then. But she had to bite her tongue...for now at least.

Instead she reluctantly followed him out of the lobby and up the flights of stairs to their room where Junkrat unlocked the door and made an exaggerated gesture for her to go inside. At first she couldn't see the issue. The room was large and spacious, exactly what Winston's contact had promised and more than enough for a weekend stay. There was a large TV mounted on the wall in front of a glass coffee table and a sofa with a fridge she assumed was fully stoked. At the far side of the room there was an open door leading to a big en-suite bathroom. Then she saw the bed.

The one bed.

Jamison must have noticed her expression from where he was leaning against the door frame as he let out a loud laugh. “Looks like we’re going to be getting quite cosy Metra” he smirked, although there was still a hint of anger in his voice.

She took a deep breath, bristling at the use of that nickname once again. It wasn’t that bad, was it? It was a ridiculously large bed after all, at least super king size or bigger, and it was only for one night. That would be fine right? As long as they stuck to their own sides…

Their own sides of the same bed. Her and the almost attractive Junker. In one bed

To her horror even the thought was making her face feel flushed. Pretending to be partners with a college for the sake of a mission was one thing, but sharing a bed with them? It was unprofessional. Yes that was it. That was why she was flustered, embarrassment and nothing more. “Is there not another room we can-”

“Nope!” he interrupted her before she could finish with another manic laugh. “This is one of the most popular hotels in Paris, we were lucky to get a room last minute at all.” However he seemed to (thankfully) mistake her expression for one of discomfort, and his own face softened a little “...Metra if you feel uncomfortable I can just sleep on the floor. I wouldn't mind.”

She quickly pulled herself together, taking another deep breath and smoothing out her dress before flashing Junkrat a smile “No, that wouldn't be fair on you. Besides, I'm sure we’ll manage, its big enough it’s practically two beds anyway, so no need to make a fuss.”

The lanky arsonist didn't seem too convinced himself but nodded along anyway, running a hand through his hair absentmindedly. “Yeah...guess it is only one night…”

“Exactly. And we're professionals and teammates. No need to act like teenagers. We should be getting ready to head back out”  She motioned for him to place the bags on the bed and began looking through her things for her toiletries. She could worry about the nights arrangements later, for now they had a job to do.

Junkrat was starting to see why this was the only mission ol’ Angel face would let the ape send him on. At first the little scouting mission he’d been tasked with alongside Symmetra wasn't half bad, they’d landed in Paris in the early morning and, after a minor hiccup with their hotel room, had left to begin scouting out the spots Winston had listed for them.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying being undercover. After all, for two days he wasn’t Jamison Fawkes, Junker, missing half his limbs and currently on the verge of dying. He was Victor Norman, a normal guy with a girlfriend, probably a normal job and a normal family he could visit on the weekends.

The name ‘Victor’ had been Metras idea. The night before she had come to find him tinkering away in the workshop and had stood in the doorway, her arms folded over the front of a light blue nightie. “Shouldn't you be heading to bed soon? We’re scheduled to leave at 4am”

He’d shrugged, waving her away with a hand “Ah’ll sleep in a minute. Just gotta tweak this first. '' His attention was focused on a modification to his Riptire. The things were far too big to make and tinker with while in his room and had fallen annoyingly behind when it came to upgrades and improvements compared to the rest of his gear. 

“Have you packed? Got the temporary prosthetics from Angela? Thought of an alias?”

He absentmindedly nodded along until she got to the last thing “An alias?”

Symmetra rested her palm on her forehead and sighed, giving him a disappointed look that made him squirm a little “Yes. A name to go by for the mission.” she paused “We’re meant to be undercover, surely you realised you couldn’t go by Junkrat? Or even Jamison-”

“Yeah yeah I knew that.” He winced, not wanting her to say his full name out loud. “Just ma brain didn’t fill in the bit between not using that name and me needing a new one…” The Junker finished faffing with the tire for now and span his chair around to face her. “You got one thought out?”

“Of course” She smiled “Saffron Sharma. I quite liked the ring of it. The forename is that of an old acquaintance at the academy, and ‘Sharma’ means joyfulness”

He liked it too, it was elegant and formal. Although he much preferred ‘Satya Vaswani’. The way it flowed, the way it rolled off the tongue. A cracking name for a beautiful lass.

Once again the strange fuzzy feeling in his belly returned and it took everything inch of his will not to turn bright red when he realized he’d been sat staring at her for several seconds. “It’s not bad.” He finally forced out with an awkward cough. “I’m fresh out of ideas for me self though.” For fucks sake, pull yourself together Rat. If you can’t deal with this you won't survive the next few days…

Life was a lot easier before he fixed that fucking clock…

Symmetra moved to sit in her own chair for a moment thinking, crossing one leg over the other and staring at the floor. The architect stayed like this for a few moments before smiling and looking back at him “How about Victor?”

The suggestion took him back a little at first. It wasn't something he would have chosen himself, but it wasn't bad, he actually quite liked it. “Why Victor?”

“Its a Latin name. Quite a popular in Christian countries.” She paused, going a little red with embarrassment “Well, that and it’s the name of a mad scientist in a literary classic, one of my favorites… Actually a retelling of the original has become quite popular in recent years.”

The Junker leaned back in his chair, resting his arm on the work top and wiggling an eyebrow at her teasingly “Fancy me a bit of a mad scientist then Metra?”

“Its Symmetra please. And I guess I do, well more mad inventor, but it's close.” She smiled “Is it suitable? If not I can try and think of another.”

It was more than suitable, and the fake passports and other documents had been printed ready for them in the morning.

He was brought back to the present by a light shake from the architect sat next to him. “Junkrat you need to focus, stop daydreaming” She whispered annoyed, her voice low enough that no one would hear her using his ‘real’ name. “I know you're finding this boring but please just pay attention”

The junker slouched in his chair grumbling to himself, picking up the boba tea he’d brought and taking a long, angry drink. He looked around him at the tourists sat outside the same little cafe. As with the last two locations, no one looked suspicious or was doing anything anywhere close to talon-y looking things. Hell the worst ‘crime’ they'd even seen was when some stupid Parisian 14 year old's had wolf whistled at Metra.

A chilling glare had soon sent them scarpering

 Again, at first he hadn’t minded the slow pace scouty shit. Sitting in the sun in somewhere as appealing as Paris wasn't the worst way to spend a weekend after all. But the longer the day went on the more and more bored he got. Halfway through the second location he began fidgeting, and by the time they got to their third and final destination Symmetra seemed to be growing tired of his antics.

He had better things to be doing for fucks sake! He wasn't a scout, he was a fighter! An Inventor! He should be tinkering in the workshop on his riptires, working on new designs and schematics or even just blowing shit up. He was even starting to doubt if there had been any talon sightings, or if it was just all one big plan by his trio of baby sitters to get him out of the house. It was all a waste of time, and he didn’t know how much of that he was working with anymore…

Jesus mate. Where the fuck had that thought come from? 

Then again...It wasn’t exactly wrong was it? Hadn't Mercy had said so herself just over a month ago? If this poison she was pumping him full of didn't work he had about year, 12 months, 52 weeks, 365-

The Junker shook his head, trying to rid himself of the morbid thoughts. No. He was fine. Angela Ziegler was a top crack doctor, one of the best in the world. If anyone could fix what the Outback had done to him it was her, and in a years time he’d look back on this and laugh that he was ever even worried.

Once again Symmetra brought him out of his daydreaming, although this time it was with a soft touch on his arm and a concerned expression, her dark eyes studying his face carefully. “Are you ok?”

He froze up for a moment at how softly she asked the question before quickly throwing on a smile and bolting upright “Course I'm alright! Just off in me own little world ah guess!” He laughed quickly. “Just thinking up some new bomb ideas is all.”

She seemed satisfied enough with his response, picking up her own tea cup and drinking from it while taking a break from scanning the area to look at her watch. “We’re almost done here, don't worry.”

As she moved sparkle from her wrist caught his attention and, without really thinking, he gently grabbed her arm to get a closer look. She had a bracelet he never noticed before and sitting in the middle was a tiny Rat charm. “Hey, when did you get this? It’s pretty.”

To his surprise she didn't try to pull away from him, although she did still tense up a little at his sudden touch “I made it myself, quite a while ago now actually. Apart from the charm of course, that was brought during a day out with Lena.” she took another sip from the cup and eyed him almost suspiciously “With your love of shiny things I'm surprised it took you so long to notice.”

“Guess I’ve just been spending more time in me room not the workshop..” And when he had been there he was never really in the right mind to notice, with him either being sick from his treatment or far too engrossed in his work.

Not wanting his mind to drift back to...that.. He tried to change the subject “Ah didn’t know you were a fan of Rats.”

She gently pulled her arm away from his grasp “I'm not. It’s actually a mouse. Something about it called to me, so I bought it.” The architect put the now empty tea cup back on the saucer with a smile “I tend not to make impulse purchases, but for this little guy I had to make an exception.”

The lanky arsonist gave her a cheeky grin “Well, I’m gonna say its a rat anyway. Like a little me as a good luck charm.”

“I don’t feel your much of a bringer of luck. Maybe a bringer of chaos”

Junkrat put his hand to his chest in mock offence, drawing in an exaggerated gasp “How dare ya! I feel I’ve been a pretty good luck token so far. Stopped you from getting blown to giblets didn't I?...even if it was my grenade…”

He got an eye roll for that, but he could see the shadows of another smile pulling at her cheeks all the same. “Come on, we best get going” She stood up, neatly tucking her chair under the table before turning and begin to walk away. “The restaurant at the hotel is meant to be quite marvelous and it would be a shame for us not to get a table. The earlier we get there the quieter it will be.”

Us? The words made him freeze for a moment, and he had to perform an awkward running hobble to catch up to her “Hang on, you wanna grab dinner together?”

She stopped walking to allow him to catch up and looked back at him confused. “Why is there something wrong with that?”

The Junker shook his head, going to pick at his prosthetic arm out of habit but not finding any paint to pull on. “Nah, Just thought you were more the ‘eat alone’ type that’s all”

“While I do prefer my own company on most occasions, dinner with a coworker can always be pleasant as well. Particularly one who may not have experienced much fine dinning” She blushed slightly out of what he assumed was embarrassment “Well, at least I assume you have not…”

He laughed rubbing the back of his neck “Nah, not many 5 star eateries in Junkertown. Most of the fancy suit places on our crime spree wouldn't let me and hog in either, always said something about a dress code.”

Symmetra stifled her own giggle with a hand and Junkrat quickly felt the fuzzy feeling once again. That laugh, it was just music to his ears and he wanted to stand here cracking jokes just to hear it again and again. And here she was, actually wanting to spend time with him as well, even if it was only as professional friends.

“Well then I guess it’s time to change that isn’t it?”

[aching-tummies]

Snowy Days, Aunt Flow, and Sleep

TMI warning. Gonna be talking about Aunt Flow.

Aunt Flow decided to visit today. Great...it's cold, it's snowing, it's slippery and treacherous to walk around outside, I'm at work where I have to stand all day before I slide around outside, trying not to trip or twist something too far. For those unaware, Aunt Flow packs something called "cramps" when she comes--it's like when an actual aunt brings or shares something nobody asked for or wanted--e.g. stories of your snot-nosed, game-stealing, you-blaming, brat of a cousin. The cramps are why I'm also complaining about the snow and cold. Cramps always suck, but when they come on top of the already cramped muscles from shivering all day it's not just painful, it's exhausting. Also, Aunt Flow's effects on one's body, the new pains and cramps everywhere, tend to make walking and moving different. You could move the way you normally do, but you're usually "rewarded" with a sharp pinch to your innards for it. Trying to parkour and "Twister" my way through all the loose snow drifts all over the sidewalks on a normal day is pretty bad and I always run the risk of spraining something. Heck, my entire right side still smarts from when I basically sled down the front steps...without a sled. With the cramps and internal pinching to contend with, trying to navigate the snowy outdoors becomes even more difficult, frustrating, and often painful than an ordinary snowy day.

Luckily, I had the foresight to pack supplies this morning (new bag...haven't put Aunt-Flow supplies into it yet) as well as slipped on some leg-warmers I had lying around. I actually didn't know it was snowing when I put them on--I thought my legs felt chilly before bed last night so I slipped the leg-warmers on on a whim and went to bed. I decided not to remove them before heading to work today 'cuz I wanted to test out whether or not they're the kind that will stay up despite gravity and movement (so far, yes).

I've been dreading Aunt Flow's visit for a long time. I used to be pretty regular and could usually predict what days I'd have to switch to black underwear. Since 3rd year Uni...nope. I was aiming to get into a highly competitive program at the time, so I skived on sleep, a proper diet, etc. I didn't take care of myself and I could tell I was running my body to the ground. Back then the skipped days felt like a triumph against nature--I had warded off the Bloody Monthly Devil and postponed having to do an impromptu set of sheets in the laundry. The triumph was short-lived as I started to live in fear--was it actually going to come? After the academic semesters wrapped up and I had 4 months at home, things started to try to return to normal. Nasty business...it was like trying to pass all of my skipped periods at once. It lasted longer than it should have, the cramps were about five times more intense--basically, everything was dialed up exponentially. Fourth year comes and I realize there's a new "pattern"...not necessarily in dates, 'cuz those were waaay unpredictable. The new pattern was that even if Aunt Flow didn't arrive in all her crimson nightmare-ishness, she'd send her "luggage" with her for about two weeks some random time of the month. All the cramps and digestive issues, and the constant anxiety of whether or not I get to wear my favorite pair of underwear, but barely any of the blood...or it'd be double or triple what it should be as though Aunt Flow decided, "riiight! I couldn't make it out to visit you last month, or four months ago...so...here, I'll just send you EVERYTHING! Oh...whoops...that was the teal pair, wasn't it? Your favorite?"

Back to the present, I guess. I've since graduated post-secondary and it seems my body is trying to right itself. Luckily for me, right before I left for work I thought, "if Aunt Flow comes, it'll probably come today...grab supplies". I've been wrong before, but everyone that deals with an Aunt Flow knows that the second she enters your thoughts, you grab supplies just to ward off the bad thoughts--even if she doesn't come at all.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but for me there are different kinds of periods. There are the "nice" ones where I only cramp a little and can go about my day, there's the ones where I'm nauseous all the time, the ones that decide to make me hungry literally all the time, sometimes the hungry one is coupled with my entire digestive system forgetting that it's supposed to digest/absorb the stuff I eat and it all goes straight through me, the ones that mess with my moods, the ones that mess with my taste-buds, and the ones that make me really lethargic and sleepy. Sometimes it's a combination of a few of these "symptoms"...yeah, it sucks. I kind of wish that being ace and a virgin meant I could opt out of Aunt Flow's visits--dude, I know I'm not pregnant. I haven't boinked anyone, so leave me alone!

Today's visit is shaping up to be a lethargic/sleepy one. I got off of work and had plans to take the bus out to a store further away (a couple of transfers over) to use a limited time coupon to get some item. I went, I got the thing, and headed back on the same routes...which usually means staying awake and being super anxious that I'll miss my stop. The legargic feeling got to me on the ride home and I'm sure I nodded off for a bit. The fact that the sun had set didn't help matters 'cuz it was already hard enough trying to figure out what stop we were at in the dark. Luckily, I managed to get off on the right stop and made it home. I was so tired and had plans to just toss my purchase into a corner of my room and pass out. No dice--family wants to eat dinner together...on top of that they want me to do some of the prep-work (slicing veggies). I get down to business, slicing veggies and praying I don't nod off. I don't need more cuts on my hands, thanks, the ten or so I already have from various activities are plenty.

I prep dinner and hear that they want to hold off on cooking and eating, so I go upstairs, intent on setting up my purchase (it was some organizer for my bathroom) and maybe going online to pass the time until dinner. Before you say "coffee--coffee is your answer", coffee tends to screw with my stomach on a good day...usually in a minor way. When Aunt Flow visits, coffee makes her really angry...and when she's angry she sends more cramps. I had my coffee ready and waiting in a thermos in my bag all day...but when I felt the tell-tale twinges during work that told me "she's here" I realized "great...tired...and coffee is not an option".

I'm pretty sure I ended up napping in and out for about twenty minutes at a time. I dragged myself out of bed to see if family wanted to eat. I was hungry, but I was so exhausted that I actually prepared to tell them "gonna go to bed early--not eating dinner". I actually wanted to just sleep off the lethargy and deal with the hunger pangs after waking up...but no dice on that one. Dinner tonight wasn't anything super enticing to me, but family decided they wanted all of it gone 'cuz there wasn't room in the fridge to put stuff in. I was craving hot tea 'cuz I was really cold (hungry = harder time regulating body heat, I guess), so I made a beeline for the hot water. Luckily for me, family didn't empty the thing boiling greens and there was literally just enough left for me to make one mug of tea. Yay! No 20+ minute wait for the electric kettle to heat up. I refilled the kettle (don't be a douch!) and made my way to dinner, still trying to come up with ways to maybe pawn off my food to my family members or maybe pack it in the fridge for later.

I made the tea and started picking at my dinner. I'm pretty sure I ate enough to ensure nobody would be concerned. I live with male family members so they wouldn't understand the nuances of Aunt Flow and I didn't want them to get concerned--I just wanted to sleep. Throughout the meal, I hoped and prayed that it'd just be lethargy and I wouldn't have to contend with cramps or hurried trips to the bathroom.

It's after dinner now and I'm back in my room. No intense cramps or trips to the bathroom (yet) 'cuz I guess I've lined my stomach with about two and a half mugs of hot tea. My stomach is sloshing and letting out some pretty intense burbles and it's pretty loud. I'm not even manipulating it--it's sloshing around just from my normal breathing. I don't feel stuffed or bloated, but my tummy's pretty full. Just lying here, it feels fine...but when I put a hand on it or press into it even lightly I feel like a full water-balloon

Anyway, all of this sort of inspired a couple of lines for me as fic-inspiration so I wrote out this post in hopes I'll go back to it for more inspiration to write, preferrably after I've gotten my long-awaited sleep.

Fic inspiration: -A knowing B is unwell 'cuz they're not the type to take naps and A just found B asleep in their outdoor clothes, halfway on the bed/couch. Clearly, they didn't intend to fall asleep. A debates whether or not to wake B for dinner, but B makes that decision for them, rousing on their own and grimacing when they realize they must have nodded off. B gets up and goes to dinner, seemingly intent on acting fine...but A knows and is concerned. -A knows B isn't feeling good when B makes a beeline for tea rather than sit down to eat dinner. A knows B's probably either chilly (maybe coming down with a cold), or has some stomach issues considering they're making themselves hot tea. -A knows B isn't feeling well when they see the apprehensive look on B's face at seeing dinner. That knowledge is further confirmed when B picks at their food in the beginning, and seems to be gulping down their tea at an alarming rate--trying to get it down before it cools or so it seems. A's concern-meter fills up and shatters when B finishes their portion of dinner. A suspects B was hungry, but knows from their expressions that they're not well or didn't want to eat for some reason. -A keeps an eye on B, knowing that B doesn't like being fussed over, but they're worried all the same. They ensure there's hot water in the kettle and A does a mental check to ensure they know where the heating packs are...in case B needs it. B's clearly nodding off against their will somewhere right now and A's waiting for when they're half-lucid to grill them about how they're feeling.

I've got an idea of the pairing I wanna write this for...but whether it'll actually happen is another story. I'm full and tired, but each time my tummy rumbles I'm low-key terrified it means I have T-5 seconds to get to the bathroom for one thing or another. Right now, each rumble sounds like a variation of those water-cooler things when they burble to suck in more air as people take water from it. Maybe I overdid it with the tea, but it beats having cramps and having to confine myself to the bathroom for a few hours.

[8bitsupervillain]

Dragon Quest Heroes -thoughts and so on.

Recently I've been playing Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below. It's a pretty decent game, it's a Musou game so if you've played any of the Warriors games (Dynasty, Samurai, Gundam, or its Berserk variants) you'll have some notion of what to expect in terms of gameplay. It is a very solid game, and I did quite enjoy my time with it, I would go so far as to say that this might be one of the best spin-off DQ games out there, but I find it lacking.

It's not terribly complex, almost all the levels and missions are a variation on "kill all the things." Which is fine, simplicity isn't a bad thing, but the game really doesn't do anything to shake it up. Kill all the monsters and progress to the end of the map. Kill all the monsters by killing the big ones that are the mini-boss "mawkeepers." Defend the Yggdrasil root... by killing all the monsters. There are a small number of side-quests that involve you having to kill a certain boss monster in a certain way, but they're the minority, ninety-nine percent of the rest of the game is slaughter all the monsters.

The action itself is pretty good, I like the Musou games and I found this one to be really pleasing to play through. That might be because I'm a big fan of the Dragon Quest games, but I don't think the game gets a free pass because it's wearing the skin of my beloved. If you were to do only the critical path of the game you're looking at a fairly solid thirty hours or so depending on how good you mash those buttons. There are a few missions toward the end of the campaign that grate on my nerves, and they are all invariably the missions where you have to keep the monsters from destroying a stationary target while running around the map. Normally this won't be a problem, but in the end game it becomes frustrating because of the high-level unique enemies the game starts spawning in addition to the Mawkeepers that open portals that summon more and more monsters as time passes.

Storywise the game is somewhat lacking; during a festival of some sort a man in a dark robe uses magic to turn the normally docile and peaceful monsters of the world into ferocious monsters that attack humans on sight. Surprisingly the game never makes a big deal over the fact that you are having to engage in the wholesale extermination of creatures the main characters and numerous others claim to be friends with. You play as the (either female, or male) captain of the royal guard for the kingdom of Arba; there's not much of a difference between the two captains other than Aurora gets ice-magic, and Luceus gets fire-magic. You're joined by a healslime named Healix who is somehow unaffected by the sudden change in monsterkind, and as the story advances you're joined by characters from previous Dragon Quest games. The story is fine, I suppose, it's not exactly the deepest thing written especially by the rather lax standards held by Dragon Quest as a whole. There's a small, mild attempt at a twist about roughly the half-way mark but it just comes off as so rote and predictable it's not really worth mentioning other than as a "oh yeah" moment.

The story isn't told particularly interestingly, maybe if this had been a proper Dragon Quest it might have been told differently but the story is just kind of poor. Each chapter always seems to breakdown the same way: "We need to go to this part of the kingdom to see how they fare against the monster attacks. Oh no, the town/city/castle/whatever is besieged by monsters. Let's save whoever's in charge. Look it's *insert character from other Dragon Quest here* 'Let me help you against these monsters.' I'm from a different dimension, but I'll help you in this time of need." Repeat five or six times until you unlock every character from Dragon Quest IV-VIII, except Psaro, he's his own sidequest.

For the most part I like the characters they included from the other Dragon Quest games. It makes perfect sense that they didn't include the player characters because they're all more or less blank slates. I can understand the reasoning behind why some characters were chosen but honestly Nera is a waste of a character. She's just so weak and uninteresting that almost anyone would have been a better choice. If you really needed a spellcaster that badly why not Maribel from Dragon Quest VII? (Please note that I am aware that Gabo and Maribel actually made the cut for DQ Heroes 2.) Hell do something really unexpected put in the first recruitable character from Dragon Quest II, that would've been a surprise.

I love the fact that Psaro the Manslayer is quite obviously a DLC character added after the game was done, because he does not contribute to the story one bit. The boss fights in this game are honestly kind of weak, there's a couple that are interesting I liked the fight against the Dragon of Light and Darkling that happens after. The final boss fight was cool, even if it wasn't particularly tough. The one thing I really dislike about this game is the sidequests that are inevitably about collecting a certain amount of whatever alchemy ingredient the quest calls for. The drop rates for these items is pathetically small and you'll often be running a circuit from one end of the map to the other trying to force monsters to spawn just for a very small chance of them dropping the item required. Granted you could also use the mini medals you acquire through the game to buy whatever quest item you need. Even then though you'll find yourself repeating the process, only now for mini medals. I liked Gragworts quests, because that lizard guy is just a delight to interact with, but his quests almost always just boil down to "kill the creatures in X amount of time" but they are pretty easy, and usually worth the effort.

There's not a whole terribly lot to do after you finish the story mode. Each of the characters usually has a small handful of quests you can perform for them to unlock special items that are usually just some equipment that always results in unlocking an alternate costume for that character. Which is nice, even if the costume is just a recolor of their standard outfit. There's only three costumes that do anything significant; if you do Alena's colisseum quest you unlock her DQIV outfit; and if you beat the super-boss Zoma (the final boss of DQIII) you unlock the heroes costume from Dragon Quest III for Luceus and Aurora. It's not much of a reward if I'm being honest, but the Zoma fight is hands down the best fight in the entire game.

I'm actually kind of surprised there weren't more bosses from the other Dragon Quests in this game. Maybe they added in some of the bosses in DQH 2 (I know they added the Dragonlord), but I thought it would've been really neat if you could test your mettle against bosses like Malroth, or Nimzo. They could've made a packaged deal, and after beating Psaro you unlock a fight against Aamon, that would've been really neat!

Overall I quite liked this game, the story is admittedly super weak, and the side quest stuff is quite repetitive after awhile. But I'm glad I played it, hell I sunk 78 hours into hundred percenting the game so I guess it did something right.

I hope that Dragon Quest Heroes 2 fixes some of the issues I had with the original.

[petite-neko]

Stability - 3

Fanfiction: Stability Story Summary: It wasn’t because he was self-conscious or ashamed. No, it was because he was afraid. His greatest fear was being alone after all. Characters: Luffy, Zoro, Chopper, Nami, Ace, Sabo, Law Pairing: Eventual LawLu Rating: T Warnings: Swearing, AU/UA, canon-typical violence, angst A/N: OTLOh my god. This.... this is a fucking monster. 17 pages guys. 17 mother fucking pages. Here's the lawlu portion of this! (I still can't believe how long this is. Like wtf!)

.xxx. = Time/scene skip

.+++. = PoV change

Read on Ao3

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

“S-Sabo?!”

Sabo looked at the young man sobbing in front of him. His brother. His brother.. He nodded.

And he got a face full of Luffy’s chest.

(To be honest, he was really glad not only for Luffy that Iva fixed him up right now.)

Sabo laughed and patted Luffy’s back.

“Thank you Luffy. For living. For helping Ace to live…”

Luffy nodded furiously.

“And I’m glad for you too. That you met Iva… does it feel better?”

More furious nodding. And a hilarious story of asking another Super Nova how to take a leak. The Super Nova who was apparently allied with him…

(And the one who had saved both of his brothers’ lives.)

.+++.

To be honest, Trafalgar Law had no idea just what he had gotten himself into…

It was just supposed to be an alliance not this… this… thing it had turned into.

First the idiot insists that they were nakama, then he fucking saves his life against his wishes, bonds with his crew, and now?

Now that mother fucker just kissed him!

“…Have you been drinking Mugiwara-ya?”

(Law remember the last time a foreign substance had influenced Luffy’s behaviour. Seriously. The idiot forgot how to take a fucking piss!)

Luffy was pouting at him. “No!”

Law only rolled his eyes. “Of course not,” he drolled out, “you’re completely in full control of all of your capacities.” The sarcasm was practically dripping from his voice. “Because it’s completely normal to want to kiss me.” He rolled his eyes again, pushing Luffy away when he tried to press closer. “Just like it’s completely normal to forget how to piss.” And since Luffy obviously wasn’t taking the hint, Law just decided to stand up, letting Luffy just fall unceremoniously off of him.

“But Toraoo~”

Law sighed at the whining and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Not even he was free from some slight intoxication. He was nowhere near drunk, mind you, but still inebriated. Probably was why he was saying the things he was saying, in all honesty. “We’ll discuss this when we’re both sober.” He said with some irritation before walking away.

Seriously… just what had he gotten himself into?

.xxx.

Law had settled against Bepo as he mulled on what just happened.

Luffy had kissed him. Had just clambered onto his lap, purred out his nickname, leaning in a bit before just pulling Law down by the cheeks and pushed their lips together. It was sloppy, awkward, and just… well… shocking. Of all of the things that Law had ever expected Luffy to do, this was probably one of the last things on that list. If it even made the list that is. (Not to mention that list was quite long...)

And what if? What if Luffy had truly wanted to do that? Somewhere inside of him. Alcohol was something that tended to loosen up any inhibitions people had. Certainly, yes, it made people do things that were uncharacteristic of them, even made them do things that they would never think of doing otherwise…

But, what if?

Law groaned.

Sure, the Strawhat was pleasant enough, even if irksome to no end. Sure, Law had gotten used to his presence, but mostly because he had to. Sure, they got along fine enough, even though some days Law regretted pulling that idiot and his brother out of the war.

But this?

Gods…

Whatever… Luffy acted all sorts of odd when inebriated by drugs – medically or otherwise. That, at least, he consoled himself with.

.xxx.

“Torao~”

To say he wanted to wake up with Luffy’s face far too close for comfort was a lie in of itself. Law groaned, pushing Luffy’s face away, and sat up.

“Morning, Mugiwara-ya.”

Well, at the very least, he didn’t have a hangover.

Luffy was laughing and on his heels as they walked, spewing out random things that, quite frankly, Law couldn’t give a damn about.

“Can this wait until I get my daily dosage of caffeine Mugi-”

(Apparently the mention of any sort of drug had prompted memories of other drugs to come flooding back, namely, alcohol. Even if that mention was a self-deprecating attempt at a joke.)

…Fuck, that really happened, didn’t it?

Never was Law so grateful to have a mug shoved in his hands. (He knew, with the expression he was currently wearing, he looked worse than he actually was. Because it wasn’t dehydration that paled him, no, it was mortification.) It also seemed that the chef had sufficiently distracted a rambunctious captain with food.

God. That’s what Sanji was right now. Gifting Law with everything he wanted before he even realised it.

He was already starting to feel better after his first cup, but he held it up for another. Not only would it keep Luffy at bay for awhile longer, Law felt that he was going to need it for today.

If Luffy asked him about last night, just what was he supposed to say? Fuck…

(Fuck indeed.)

No thank you, peanut gallery. He didn’t need his sardonic humour right now. Couldn’t it take a skip day or something?

Law sighed and stared into the black depths of his coffee.

Luffy, huh?

Well, the usual first two excuses he used couldn’t apply to the Strawhat, Law knew that much. As begrudgingly as he was to admit it… Luffy was his friend. And, foremost, a man he trusted. This was a man he was willing to die together with.

But that didn’t necessarily mean…

Certainly, yes, Mugiwara no Luffy was far from unattractive. Powerful and caring to boot. And it wasn’t as if Law only played for one team…

But this was Mugiwara no Luffy. The man who refused Boa Hancock of all people. The supposed most sought after woman in the world.

And this was him. Trafalgar Law. Whose personality and traits, in his own opinion, had to be the most unappealing in the world. Insomnia. Paranoia. Anxiety. An over-seasoned dosage of PTSD and abandonment issues. His humour bordered on insanity and insulting – both to himself and others. And, don’t forget that healthy dusting of suicidal, self-destructive tendencies. All in all, such a perfect and appealing candidate for a partner, wouldn’t you agree?

(Yeah, Luffy had to be intoxicated last night to even begin to think kissing him was a remotely good idea…)

Luffy wasn’t the problem here, it was him. He had never entertained the ideas of a relationship for too long. And, always, Law made a point to find a problem in them as well. Mostly to convince himself to not even see if they were willing to take on his shit load of problems.

He’d find something in Luffy. Eventually.

.xxx.

Despite all of his efforts, however, Trafalgar Law could not find a single, game changing fault in Mugiwara no Luffy. Anything and everything that he could find in the other Super Nova was either something he had already become accustomed to, or something so minor that it, in all realities, wouldn't have bothered him.

Weeks. It had been weeks since the incident, and, thankfully, Luffy had not brought it up.

But, by now, Law almost wanted the idiot to approach him and bring up the topic. There were things that Law wanted to know, things that Law had wanted to ask Luffy. And maybe, just maybe with answers to those questions, he could finally find something in Luffy that would turn him away.

Quite honestly, it was driving him insane. He had lost sleep on the issue. Had become paranoid and skittish around Luffy. And his anxiety was through the roof because, because...

He was afraid he wouldn't find anything.

All of this over a fucking hypothetical scenario that, in all probability, wasn't even going to happen.

Because if Luffy was going to ask, well he would have already done so by now. It's not like Luffy to put something that he wanted to do off for such a long period of time after all.

(Why? Why did that bastard kiss him damn it!)

.xxx.

In the end, it was him that caved. After the god-knows-what-numbered timed of losing sleep over some stupid drunken kiss Law decided to drag the other captain from his bunk.

"We need to talk."

(One of the bad side effects of brewing on this for as long as he did was the idea was starting to become appealing. This. This was why he never thought on these scenarios for so long. That's why he always tried to convince himself that the person in question wasn't suitable for him. He didn't do relationships. Even if there was that small sliver inside of him that craved it and wondered just what it would be like.)

...And he'd be damned. Fucking Monkey D. Luffy looked adorable right now, with a yawn on his lips, a fist rubbing sleepily at his eye and...

"Torao?"

Law sighed, before the most pathetic line of his life slipped out of his lips.

"Well, we're both sober..."

And the look on Luffy's face...

Well, he looked like a dying machine that was slowly being brought back to life. The way that the light slowly flickered to life on his face... the realisation...

"We can talk about it now?"

(...Did that idiot...)

...Never mind, he didn't want to know... Nor was he going to ask.

"...Yeah." He admitted awkwardly, glancing off to the side.

"Yay!" And the light that was slowly being ignited was now a fire. "I mean, I didn't know what you meant by sober and… I wasn't drinking and..."

"Wait a minute!" Law interjected - and now that he actually thought about it, wasn't Luffy a horrendous liar? "You didn't..." Oh God... Oh God... Shit. Fuck. This wasn't good. No. This wasn't what he had been anticipating at all and - Fuck!

"You - you just..."

His head was spinning and going a mile a minute and...

"I just what Torao?"

And god damn Mugiwara no Luffy was acting as if this was not a big fucking deal.

That somebody had actually...

"That I just kissed you?"

"Give me a moment..."

(He was not panicking. He was not panicking. Fuck. He was panicking. Over a fucking kiss that wasn't actually a drunken kiss and that somebody had actually...)

"...Yeah, I kissed you because I like you, duh. I mean, why wouldn't I..."

(See? Perfect partner material right here. Number one. VIP. Soon he'd have everybody flaunting themselves at his feet and--)

"...Seriously, why did you think I was drinking?" There was a pause in Luffy's babbling that Law wasn't really paying too much attention to right now. "Torao? Torao?"

"I said give me a moment Mugiwara-ya!"

Law had all but yelled and just squatted down, holding his head, closing his eyes.

He didn't get it. He didn't understand any of it. Why? How?

"...Torao?"

(See? Look. Luffy was worried about him now. Lovely, just lovely.)

Law inhaled deeply a few times, trying to calm himself enough not to lash out again. Trying to calm the chaotic thoughts in his mind.

"...Why?"

That word was croaked out - a barest whisper.

He felt Luffy's gaze on him.

"...How?" Law felt his body trembling again. "How can you like me?"

His stomach felt like lead. His head hurt. His heart racing. How can you..." And his lips wouldn't stop moving. Rambling, he was rambling. Listing off all of the god damned things that were wrong with him and...

"...full of problems and paranoid and everybody always leaves me anyway and-"

"Torao!"

At the mention of his name Law felt himself jolt. It wasn't that the voice was laced with Haki, but it held power regardless.

"You're not any of that - and even if you were I don't care. You're Torao, the man that I care for."

Law didn't know what to call the look in Luffy's eyes right now. It wasn't love, it wasn't empathy (he knew that from Cora-san) and it wasn't even forgiveness. But, whatever it was, it drew him in, and they remained there in silence for a few moments. Eventually, Law felt control returning to him.

"Feeling better Torao?"

Despite everything, Luffy smiled at him.

"...Yeah."

.xxx.

It wasn't long after that conversation that Law had agreed to try. To try a relationship.

He didn't make any promises - and Luffy seemed fine with that.

He couldn't find any reasons to decline Luffy after all.

(And the idea was appealing in its own sense. That he appreciated Luffy's company, perhaps more than just an ally or friend should. In different ways...)

The secrecy lasted a month.

(To be honest, really, Law was surprised Luffy had lasted that long. Given the guy's tendency with secrets and all...)

But, at least by then Law knew that, yes, this was something that he wanted.

.xxx.

Thankfully, they lasted a bit longer until Luffy's brothers found out.

Apparently Ace and Sabo had bumped into one another and had decided to jointly come to visit their little brother.

When the two brothers had boarded the ship, Law had been greeted warmly before they quickly bombarded Luffy with updates about his life. Inquiring about certain events that had happened in the news and such.

In the meanwhile, Law had just decided to wander off while Luffy caught up with his brothers.

His peace didn't last all too long however.

"What?!"

Both of the brothers had said that simultaneously. He didn't quite like the sounds of that. And low and behold, he had both of them at his side.

It was his turn to be bombarded with questions.

All about the topic of their relationship. Great. And a few about his sexuality and preferences and past history...

Needless to say, Law avoided answering the more personal questions.

"Relax Torao~ They just want to know more about you~" Luffy sang once he catapulted himself over, and hugged him.

"What we do by ourselves is of no business to anybody but us Luffy-ya."

(He received some scandalous sounds from the brothers.)

Law suppressed a blush. "Sh-Shut up! whatever it is that we do or do not do is none of your business!"

They were all laughing at him.

(He was just going to ignore the suggestions and scenarios that the brothers were laying out for him. Yup.)

Finally, it seemed that the teasing was mostly done. (For now, oh Law knew he wasn't escaping that easily.)

"So, I guess I should tell Dragon not to expect being a grandfather anytime soon~" He said with a teasing wink.

Ace had rolled his eyes. "They could always adopt, ya know Sabo. Just pick up some stray child in a war ravaged zone - you never know."

Law just ignored the two brothers in favour of looking down at Luffy who had tangled up on top of him.

"Shishishi." He was laughing.

Yeah, that's what really mattered here.

Luffy.

.xxx.

...Those god damned brothers of his...

If they hadn't gone and opened their mouths and...

"Torao? Did you ever want to have a kid?"

Damn those brothers for putting that idea in Luffy's head. Damn them.

"...This is because your brothers mentioned it, isn't it?" He sighed.

And Luffy only nodded enthusiastically.

Of course, Law went into the explanation that adopting a kid, really, would only be due to the scenario that Ace had given. Of course no orphanage would let pirates adopt children. Nor would they be able to pick up a child who was known by villagers, or other people. That the only children they would able to 'adopt' in a sense were those without homes or family or people to care for or remember them.

Most of which went over Luffy's head, but at least he understood that adopting a child wouldn't be as easy as it sounded.

But then Law went into the schematics about biological children, and then shit just... hit the fan.

"Statistically speaking, the chances of us being able to father a child together are nigh impossible. We're both guys after all." Law's voice was very matter-o-fact right now, as it tended to be when he was explaining. "Unless there's a devil fruit to change one's sex and keep their DNA intact..."

"Oh! Iva-san can do that! We could always just ask Sabo-"

"Well," Law paused, not at all expecting that response, "I suppose that would leave us with a few questions... First off, would we even want to have a child? Would I be able to even have a child considering my past? When would we do so, considering it would be a year of inactivity? And lastly, who would willing become female to carry the child to term?"

Luffy started acting... well... strange after that.

Law hadn't noticed it, however. No, not until Luffy had lashed out at him.

They had been exploring the questions - all hypothetical of course - and when they had gotten to the last comment, and Law had been listing out the pros and cons of Luffy carrying the child (after his own study of himself) Luffy had just...

Flipped.

Protesting about how he would never even consider carrying the child. That he was a guy and would never change into a girl.

Then went off on some incoherent rant that not even Law understood - but it seemed that Luffy had taken great offense to him even suggesting Luffy turning into a woman. That he was faulting him for something.

He let Nami take over from there.

And now? Well he was wandering the Sunny, just avoiding Luffy. And right now he had ended up in the men's quarters.

It was quiet down here. Empty too.

To be honest, Law never spent much time down here. He mostly slept in the infirmary or on the deck when he was aboard the Strawhats' ship. Occasionally Luffy would drag him to his bunk, if he wanted to sleep next to him.

(That being said, mostly when he was visiting nowadays, he would have his own submarine nearby and chose to sleep in his own bed.)

He sighed before sitting down on some furniture.

He glanced around, making a face at the apparent lack of tidiness of the room. There were clothes everywhere.

...Well not everywhere but more so than he would have liked.

(And were those Franky's speedos hanging off a nail in the wall? He fucking hoped they were clean. He wasn't going near them in any case...)

Law sighed and shook his head before leaning back, his head falling behind the couch he was seated on.

He stared at the room, which was now upside down.

There were a few other things he noticed. One of which was a dresser off to the corner. And a half-walled off area right beside it.

The dresser had accumulated a lot of dust. As if it hadn't been used in months. Years maybe.

Why was that, he wondered?

(He was curious, yes. Why there was an area that, in all appearances, looked like a changing room with a dresser nearby? And if that dresser was unused, well maybe he could use it as a storage for some of his clothes? He was on the ship often enough...)

Curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered over there.

When he was about to touch the dresser, he thought the better of it and just used his scan instead.

...Huh, so there were clothes in there.

But what were they doing unused?

As he focused in a bit more at the clothes, he began to recognise the style.

Luffy's?

He found himself glancing back to the dresser he had often seen Luffy rush to.

What the hell?

By now, Law knew that probably - probably he should just dismiss this. It probably was nothing. And Luffy tended to wear a lot of the same clothes over anyway... so it was probably just extra clothes that his ally never got to wearing yet.

(But the half wall was bothering him now. Why was Luffy's clothes over here? By the design, the thing looked to be a sort of changing room. Luffy was always flaunting his chest and he doubted the boy had any shame when it came to other body parts and strangers...)

Really. He should just walk away and go read a book or some shit. Luffy was already mad enough at him as it were. For god knows what reason. He didn't need to worsen it.

He was staring at the bubble his Scan had revealed.

Plenty of jean shorts. Hell, even a few boxers... and a plethora of shirts...

Bandages? And - wait a minute, that isn't a...

"Shambles."

Law was staring at the garment in question in his hands.

If he was honest in his opinion - really - this looked like, well...

A bra. The kind that women wore if they were smart about regular physical activity. (And the ones that were, quite frankly, a bitch to get off. At least, in his experience.)

But, no. The fabric under his hands didn't have much give. And with a brief tug, he confirmed his suspicions that, yes, it hardly had any stretch at all. Enough to fit over the head, be still be comfortable but...

It would do a whole lot of compressing.

... Was that why there were no button up shirts in Luffy's wardrobe? And those bandages...

Law groaned and just threw the... binder behind himself (with a quick, last minute correction to shamble it back into the dresser) before slumping onto the couch.

He was such a fucking idiot.

.+++.

"Luffy, Luffy. Calm down. He didn't know."

Luffy sighed and hugged his legs. He knew it wasn't fair to lash out at Torao like that. Torao didn't know. Of course he didn't.

Sure, they met before Iva fixed him up - but unless somebody saw him without a shirt on, they never suspected...

Well, maybe Torao could have - he was a doctor after all...

But by the time Torao had to really fix him up... well...

Apparently that was more than enough for Law to not suspect.

(Not to mention...)

Luffy sighed, frustrated. He needed to find Torao and apologise to him. Torao didn't know. He didn't mean anything by it. He just thought Luffy was normal like everybody else, and that's why he said those things. Torao didn't know and Luffy couldn't fault him for that.

Soon he found Torao, who was sitting by the tree like he always did.

He felt bad...

But Luffy swallowed and took a few steps forward.

"Torao!"

...The look in those yellow eyes hurt. They hurt a lot. He looked sad and angry and...

"I'm sorry Luffy-ya."

"I - no - it's okay Torao! It's my fault! I shouldn't have-"

Why was Torao apologising?

"I fucked up."

"...Torao?" What was Torao saying? He didn't know... he shouldn't...

"I was stupid. So fucking stupid!"

"Torao!"

(This time, his yelling did nothing…)

"I can't believe..."

Torao was holding his head again. Like before. Like when they talked about the kiss.

"Torao!" Damn it! What was he supposed to do here?! He grabbed the other captain's shoulders tightly, shaking him a little. "Torao!"

"I'm sorry - I - I can't... I didn't know... Fuck..."

Luffy froze at that.

...What... what did he mean by that?

"I'm such a fucking idiot... I just thought that you were..."

(Fear. Fear. That's what was lumping up in his throat right now. His arms trembled. His entire body did. No... No... It was like when he argued with Nami's doctor... when Nami came into the room... His arms went limp, he took a step back…)

"...If only I had know... I would have never..."

(The next thing he heard was the sound of flesh hitting flesh.)

.+++.

"You would have never what Law?"

Law had looked up at the woman who had smacked him: her hands now balled up and on her hips - but ready to attack him again. Her expression was angry.

(He could still hear the whispers though, in the back of his mind: God, how could he have been so stupid! How! He fucked up. Royally fucked up. Royally screwed up. Big time. Stupid. Insensitive. An asshole. That's what he was.)

And he glanced over to Luffy - only feeling that guilt hit him even more. Scared. Afraid… That's how Luffy was looking at him right now.

He had really fucked up big time, hadn't he?

"Well?"

...Nami had asked him a question, hadn't she?

(God, it was hard to concentrate...)

Law avoided her gaze, and Luffy's. "I would have never said what I said." He found himself biting his lip, trying to let the pain distract him from the deafening chaos inside of his mind. To let it ground him to the here and now. Nami's slap had knocked him back to his senses, and was he ever grateful for that. "It was insensitive... I'm sorry Luffy... I'm sorry that I suggested..."

(He reached his hand across his body and grabbed his elbow, fingers digging into the flesh there.)

"I fucked up and made you uncomfortable and angry and it wasn't right for me to do that and-"

"Y-You're not angry?"

Law looked up immediately at the tone of Luffy's voice. Why? Why was it so terrified and sad and pleading and -- oh gods he fucked up again didn't he?

(What did he do this time?)

He dug his nails in deeper. Luffy. He had to answer Luffy.

"No." He shook his head. "At least, not at you. The only person I'm angry at is myself. I was such a damn idiot and apparently I just fucked up again and don't know just how or why or-"

Nami slapped him again.

...That woman had a really fucking strong hand.

"Well, at least that shuts you up."

He felt Luffy prying his hand away from his arm.

"Y-You're okay with... with this?" Luffy squeezed his hand, gently but desperately.

...Wait. Wait. What?!

Law just stared at Luffy in astonishment. "I- of course I am Luffy-ya!" To emphasise the point he took his other hand to clasp Luffy's. Why did Luffy even think...?

"But I'm not-"

...Ah. Fuck. Law sighed and placed his forehead on top of Luffy's head.

"I couldn't give a damn about that Luffy-ya."

"B-But what If Iva couldn't-"

But Law could already guess what Luffy was getting at. "Then I would. Devil fruits are not the only way to fix that problem. Sure, it might not be as effective, but it still does a damn good job. Of course... only if you wanted me to."

Luffy moved and grabbed Law's face with his free hand so that their gazes matched. "...And what if I didn't want you to? What if I turn back or what if-"

Law leaned in and lightly kissed Luffy on the lips to shut him up for a moment, since his hands were otherwise preoccupied. "It wouldn't matter. We would do what you wanted. It's not like female bodies aren't appealing to me either."

(Law vaguely could hear Nami scoffing something about sappy or too much information before she stormed off in her heels.)

"...And if I want kids?"

Law chuckled softly. "If I agree, I suppose I'd have to carry them, wouldn't I?"

Luffy pulled him down for a kiss.

When they parted, Luffy was laughing.

"...Oh, Torao... how did you find out anyway... since I'm a guy now..."

Law groaned and placed his head in his hands.

...Ah well, it was bound to come out one day..

[seo90210]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

from FEED 9 MARKETING http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

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Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

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Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

[vidmarket32514]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

[restateagnt17101]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

[duiatty48170]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

[seo53703]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

[lxryrestate28349]

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB

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Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20

Transcript of Unlocking the Power of 80/20 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is your host, John Jantsch, and my guest today is Perry Marshall. He’s an online marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and author of numerous books, including one we’re gonna talk about today, the 80-20 of sales and marketing. So, Perry, thanks for joining me.

Perry Marshall: John, it’s great to be here. It was great to be at your summit a couple of years ago where I met a lot of your people. The world just seems to be getting more and more eccentric, and there’s a lot for us to talk about today. Man, you’re either harnessing the eccentricity, or it’s pounding you on the back of the head with a two by four. And there’s not much in the middle, so very timely.

John Jantsch: Let’s get kind of a baseline. I mean, everybody’s heard the 80-20 thing. It’s almost become cliché how people apply it. But I don’t know that that many people, and this is your contention with the book, that many people get the leverage that it provides at a business level, do they?

Perry Marshall: No. First off, it’s not just a business rule of thumb. It’s a fact of nature. And, in fact, if I go to the beach with a bucket, and I pull out a bucket of sand, the sizes of the sand grains is gonna be 80-20. And how much water is in all the rivers is 80-20. The dirt on your carpet is 80-20, and the files in your hard drive. Okay? That’s the first thing. The second thing is that there’s an 80-20 inside every 80-20. When people really get this, it kind of flips them out. And so I can run a spreadsheet or a sales report of all my customers, and if I sort it from top to bottom, 20% of my customers are gonna generate 80% of the sales, but then if I chop off the bottom 80% that only produces 20%, whatever’s left, that top 20%, it’s still 80-20.

And I can do that again. And 4% of my customers are 64% of my business. And then I could do it again, and 1% of the customers are 50%. Well, this is true in almost any part of your business, and we’ll get into that. But then there’s a third thing. And this is probably a little bit new to most people, but the world is really becoming much more 95-5 where 5% of your efforts or your customers produce 95% of your results, and the other 95% only produces 5%. And this is especially true online. I’ve been watching this develop. People really need to understand this. The world is not … Cause and effect in the world operate fundamentally different than they did even 15 years ago. And I don’t think most people have gotten the memo. There’s a lot of examples of this out there.

John Jantsch: Let me stop you there, because I want to clarify something. And we’ll get, obviously, into examples, and I want to go back to the nature comment.

Perry Marshall: Yes.

John Jantsch: But it’s the simple kind of no-brainer lesson, then, to say, “Look, 95%” or if we want to use 80-20, still, to not scare too many people, is 80% of what you’re doing a waste of your time almost? I mean, especially when you get 95-5. It’s like 95% of my effort is on 5%? Quit doing that?

Perry Marshall: Well, yeah or almost, okay? You’ll always find that there’s a bunch of those things that somebody’s gotta do. It might not be you. It shouldn’t be you, but it’s gotta be somebody. But for example, 80 to 95% of all businesses fail or most entrepreneurs, we have all these little projects that we get into, and the project is a miniature little business, truth be told. Even if we didn’t go form an LLC or something. But actually anywhere from four-fifths to nine-tenths of those really don’t produce anything at the end of the day. And what’s happening in the world is that there’s more and more people kind of getting nowhere or just treading water or altogether losing, and then there’s this minority of people that are just absolutely slamming the ball out of the park, like it’s a triple. It’s a home run and then some. There’s less and less that’s in the middle. And so I think people today have to be more ruthless about how they spend their time than they’ve ever been before. There’s never been a time when busy work would get you less far than it does right now.

John Jantsch: And there’s probably never been more busy work.

Perry Marshall: Oh my gah. Yeah. Like, amazing amounts of busy work, and it doesn’t even look like busy work on the surface. You have to be really discerning. Lots of things, they just sound like good ideas, and a lot of them are based on, well, it’s really what was working in 2003, and it’s not really based on what’s going on right now. So I am issuing a wake up call.

John Jantsch: So let me go back to the nature comment about the grains of sand on the beach or all the things you cited from nature. I mean, is there some sort of principle that suggests why that’s the case?

Perry Marshall: Yes. Yes, and I’m not gonna get super theoretical. I could go into all kinds of stuff about chaos theory. This is really what it’s based on. But, John, I just want you to imagine that we put a table in the middle of your living room, and we went to some machine shop, and we machined the top of that table to be absolutely flat to within 100,000th of an inch, and it was a mirror finish. But then I want you to imagine that there’s a leak in your roof, and now we’re gonna drip water on that table, and the water is gonna drip into the middle of the table. So here’s a question of, “If I have the table perfectly level, and it’s perfectly flat, does that mean that the water is going to evenly spread out on the table, and then drip off the edge of the table in a smooth-flowing stream?

John Jantsch: My guess is it would probably gather as much energy to spread itself out in a very small section of where it landed.

Perry Marshall: Well, right. Right. And what would happen is no matter how flat you try to make that table, it’s gonna be a little bit easier for the water to go in one direction than the other ones, and then it starts going. And once it starts going, well, the erosion will wear, and then a million years later, there’s gonna be this big giant groove in the middle of your table that started out as flat. There’s nothing you could do to make the water flow equally. And here’s the thing is everything in life and nature is like that. So how water erodes or, for example, you’ve 10 14-year-old kids yesterday tried Jack Daniels for the first time. And maybe they all sort of liked it. But one of them liked it a little more than the rest of them, and so 30 years from now the rest of them all take a drink a week or two drinks a week and one of them has five drinks before breakfast, and he’s an alcoholic.

Okay? So your customers are like that. And my customers are like that. Everything is unequal. And the thing is is education conditions treat everything like it’s equal, treat everybody like they’re equal. The teachers try to make all the kids equal. Well, I just want everybody to get A’s and B’s. It’s like, “Well, they’re not going to.” And so entrepreneurs harness the eccentricities where a lot of more ivory tower people, they kind of try to pretend they’re not there. And so you have to just completely reverse the normal way that you think.

John Jantsch: Okay. So for that person out there that’s thinking, “Where in the world is this going and why is this gonna apply to my business?” Let’s bring it back to something very practical inside a business. How could somebody start spotting that 95% opportunity?

Perry Marshall: Let me tell you a story, and maybe a couple of your people have heard this one before, but this is my favorite 80-20 story. I have a friend named John Paul [inaudible 00:10:15] who dropped out of high school when he was 17, and he hitchhiked from Denver to Las Vegas with a couple of gambling books under his arm, and he’s like, “I’m gonna become a professional gambler.” He starts going to casinos and playing poker every day and living by his whits at age 17. And after a few weeks of this he was like, “Dang. This is harder than I thought.” He bumps into this guy who runs a gambling ring named Rob, and he starts talking to him. And he says, “Well, could you teach me how to do this?” And Rob says, “For a percentage of your winnings I could teach you how to do this.” And so they shake on it.

And after they do that, “Hey, jump in the jeep, John. We’re going for a ride.” So they get in the car, and they’re going down the highway, and John says, “Okay. So how do I win more poker games?” And Rob goes, “You have to play people who are going to lose. And those people are called marks, and you need to find the marks in the room, and you need to play poker with them, and you don’t play poker with anybody else.” And he says, “Well, how do I find the marks?” And he says, “Here. I’ll show you.” And he pulls into a parking lot of a strip club, and they go in there. And there’s women and there’s rock and roll, and there’s people drinking and all this commotion and noise in there.

And he sits down at the table, and Rob pulls a sawed off shotgun out of his jacket. And he opens the chamber, and under the table, then he snaps it shut and it goes “chitch.” And all these guys look around. And John sees them. And the owner come over, and he says, “Hey, what’s going on over here?” And Rob goes, “Hey, we’re just fine. There’s no problem here. We’re just teaching the lad a lesson, not gonna cause any trouble. Don’t worry about us.” And then Rob turns to John and he says, “John, did you see those guys who turned around when I made that noise?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Those biker guys over there?” “Yeah, those guys.” And John goes, “Yeah.” And he says, “Don’t play poker with them. They’re not marks. Play poker with everybody else.”

Now, that was what I call racking the shotgun, and everything you do in marketing is rack the shotgun. In fact, I’ve trained my customers and clients to use that phrase all the time. Rack the shotgun is when you … You know who racks the shotgun all the time is Donald Trump, okay? Now, I’m not saying he does it for good reasons or whatever. I’m not making any statements about any of that, but he does it. Okay? And he gets a response. Now, what I have always found out is most people are instinctively afraid to rack the shotgun. They’re afraid to find out the truth. They’re afraid to go make that big noise out there and see, “Okay, who’s gonna turn their head and who’s gonna ignore?” Or, “Who’s gonna say no and who’s gonna say yes.”

I mean, it could even go all the way down to your teenager like, “Well, you know, I don’t want to … She came in at 2:30 in the morning last night, and I don’t really want to ruffle any feathers, and we seem to be getting” … Well, that’s like being afraid to rack the shotgun. Like, well, if you don’t know why your teenager came in at 2:30 in the morning, then whatever the reason is is probably not a good one, right? But you have to ask.

John Jantsch: Ignorance is bliss, right? Yeah.

Perry Marshall: I talked to a guy about … He owned a smoothie store, and he was doing all this Facebook and social media stuff, and I’d go, “Well, do you ever send them emails?” He goes, “No, I’m afraid of them unsubscribing.” Well, that’s racking the shotgun, man. I said, “Email is 10 times better than social media. You’re not emailing, because you’re afraid some people won’t like it? Send them an email. Let them unsubscribe. It’s fine.” In fact, if you’re unsubscribe rate is less than 5% or even 10, you’re probably not selling hard enough. So everything you do, everything you do in marketing is racking the shotgun.

John Jantsch: So what you’re, again, coming back to my original question on that, what you’re suggesting is that’s how you’re gonna find the leverage?

Perry Marshall: Yeah. With people, right, you’re gonna find that most people actually aren’t gonna respond to anything that you do. They’re never gonna buy, okay? And maybe it’s 80% aren’t gonna buy or maybe it’s 60% or maybe it’s 95% aren’t gonna buy. But there is a rack the shotgun just with buying. Now, the interesting part about 80-20 is that if you rack a shotgun, and you get, let’s call it $100 shotgun. It’s a $100 transaction, let’s say, and you get 100 people to respond. Well, if you quadruple the price, if you rack a $400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And if you rack a $1,600 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. If you rack a $6,400 shotgun, 20% of those people will respond again. And so you’ll find that even though you started with only 100 people, let’s say, who would spend $100, you might find one person who would spend $50,000. And you didn’t know it, and that person was already there. That person is already in your audience. And what I am seeing is that all of this is becoming more pronounced than it used to be.

John Jantsch: So it really, I mean, again, one of the sort of core principles was you build a business, you got customers. You need to be trying to sell them more. I mean, essentially you’re saying that, but maybe at a level people haven’t considered, that not just is there an opportunity to maybe sell more, but that there is a sort of almost mathematical equation that says what you should you sell them and how much it should cost and who’s gonna respond?

Perry Marshall: That’s right. There is a hunger in the marketplace that there’s a small percentage of people who they have an extreme itch that they would like to scratch. And it’s almost unscratchable. When it’s just your product line, there’s some other things I want to get into, but let’s just restrict it to your product line right now. So 80-20 says, “If I have a Starbucks, and a thousand a people a month are buying a $5 latte, one of those people will buy a $2,700 gleaming stainless steel espresso machine.” And it’s just about a law of physics. Now, I started to notice something really interesting when I started teaching Google AdWords. I wrote the world’s best selling books on Google and Facebook advertising, and all of a sudden when AdWords came into existence, all of these new businesses that might not have even been able to exist before suddenly popped up.

And it was this giant feeding frenzy and gold rush. And what I noticed was that if somebody could get to the top in AdWords, they could get the number one position, which gets the most traffic. And then if they could streamline all the stuff in their website, the shopping cart, the sales pages, the landing pages, the offer, the unique selling proposition, if they could dial all that in and test it to the hilt, they would get to a point where nobody could shove them out of the way. They’re number one, they might be number on TV, and they might not be number one on the radio, and they might not be number one on main street, but if they’re number one in Google AdWords, and if they got their sales machine dialed in, they’re almost unstoppable.

Now, here’s why this was. It was because number two, number three, number four, number five, they all have to test their way to success, and they have to experimentally find what works, but you’re already getting more traffic than they are, and you can already do more tests than they are. And so you’re previous success greases the skids for you to continue to be successful, because you’re the incumbent. Well, I’ve been watching very carefully, and what I’ve seen is that an incumbent in the brick and mortar world is 80-20, but an incumbent in the digital world is 95-5. So here’s an example of this. You could go ask your 10-year-old kid, “Can you name a dozen car manufacturers?” And any 10-year-old kid could think of a dozen, Ferrari and Toyota and Kia. They could come up with a list. But can anybody name 12 search engines or 12 auction sites or 12 bookstores where you can buy any book?

John Jantsch: Well, I don’t know about you, but I have the top 100 search engines that every business should be in sitting right here next to me. I’m being facetious, of course, but remember when people used to talk about that.

Perry Marshall: Right. Right. And they all got washed out. Well, that’s because the internet is frictionless. So making cars, that’s friction all the way. Whether you go to the Toyota dealership or the Ford dealership, you have to drive across town, right? Okay. And so that supports there being 12 different car manufacturers. But if it’s Bing versus Google, there’s literally no difference whether you type in B-I-N-G or G-O-O-G-L-E on your browser. The only thing that makes a difference is how much you enjoy the experience. If Google is 10% better, then pretty soon everybody’s gonna use Google, and the Google’s gonna become 1,000% better, because they have more data and more customers and more bells and whistles and more everything. And pretty soon Bing doesn’t really have a chance.

And, see, everything in online marketing is like this. Basically, you’re either number one or you’re nobody. And I don’t think most people have really gotten this that this has happened. You’re either number one or you’re nothing. So that old phrase being a category of one, oh, it’s dead serious no. In a 95-5 world you have to be the number one. Whatever you do, you have to be the only one or you are hamburger.

John Jantsch: I think you can see that at a very real level for the local plumber, for example. I mean, all the searches are being done on a mobile device, and Google is determining, “Here’s the three positions that they’re gonna show.” And certainly if you don’t show up in those three, and as you suggest maybe number one of those three, you really don’t exist, I think. And so the digital world is even cutting into the world of friction.

Perry Marshall: It is.

John Jantsch: We may see a day when there’s only one car sale search engine, and the manufacturers are really, I think, playing basically to be there.

Perry Marshall: So I’ll make a prediction right now is that 10 years from now self-driving cars will be extremely common, and half of the auto manufacturers will either be out of business or bought out by the winners.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Yeah, because to some extent the brand won’t matter anymore.

Perry Marshall: No. It won’t. So watch out. Now, if you know this, if you know this, you can make predictions about the future. In many cases if you project 10 years in the future, if you are already pretty much know who the winner is, then you can bet on the winner, and you’ll gain. If there’s somebody out there … I don’t know. I don’t know who it might be, but if somebody out there already pretty much knows who’s gonna control the self-driving car thing, then you buy stock in that company. In 10 years from now you’ll be happy about it, because there probably isn’t that much that anybody can do even right now to change it. To give you another idea, there’s Bitcoin and there’s Ethereum, and there’s all these other little cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin already won. All the rest of them, that’s like .net, .cc, .name, .whatever. It’s just like domain names. They’ll have their little day in the sun and people will think. Bitcoin’s already won. It’s the winner-take-all phenomenon is on steroids.

John Jantsch:  I’m trying to figure out which direction to take this, because there’s so many we can go, and we’re really already out of time. So let me ask you how somebody would … And I’m trying to, again, end it on a really practical note. How would somebody apply this to an existing business? I can see a lot of people thinking, “Okay. If I could figure out this thing and predict the future, and I’ll create a business around that.” But how could somebody apply this? I mean, is this something that you have to have an epiphany? Or is this something that you have to just go out and start testing things in a certain way?

Perry Marshall: So here’s what you can do, and this is extremely practical. Richard [inaudible 00:26:29] and I put together this website called StarPrinciple.com. It’s free, and you can go click a dozen radio buttons and score your business. Basically it tells you how likely it is that you can dominate the niche that you’re in right now. It’s kind of a truth serum of this winner-take-all thing. So the score goes from zero to 200 points, and anything over 100 points is a home run. Okay? Now, some businesses will get a 25, and some will get a 75, and some will get 150. If you’re 150, man, you’re good, and you should pour on the gas. Well, so here’s what you do. Most of our businesses are really three or four businesses or three or four product lines or three or four markets, and they’re all kind of one umbrella. Here’s what you need to do. This could save somebody years of heartache and frustration right here. Okay?

You go, “All right. Well, I have product A, B, C, D. I have market A, B, C, D.” You score each one individually, because in one of your markets you’re really the number six player. In one of your markets you’re the number one player. One market is shrinking, and one market is growing. And you score that. And you break it up, and you need to figure out which part of my business do I pour the gas on and which part do I really just kind of ignore or I let coast? Right? Just give it as little gas I can get away with while I build the others, because 20% of your business is gonna produce 80% of the growth in the future, and the rest of it’s just gonna waste your time.

I think a lot of us aren’t really honest with ourselves about where our business is actually at and what it can really produce, and you need to be the winner. There is probably some part of your market where if you’re like, “Well, this part of the market isn’t very well served right now. Nobody else is really truly paying attention to this aspect, and I could totally nail it. And if I really put my resources into it, I could emerge as the absolute dominant player within six or 12 months,” and that’s what you should do.

John Jantsch: Visiting with Perry Marshal. We’re talking about the 80-20 principle, which is now 95-5 online. Winner take all is the game that we’re playing. Perry, thanks so much for joining us. Where can people find probably the best place to plug in to your, kind of, vast universe?

Perry Marshall: You can go to http://ift.tt/1TMHaKs. And just start by reading 80-20 in sales and marketing and just know that it’s even more true now than it was in 2013 when I wrote it. And the race is on. The race is on. It’s winner take it all, and whatever it is that you do, you need to find the thing where you can be number one, and you can totally dominate and be a category of one, because all..

http://ift.tt/2iF42kB