Rob Kosberg:
Hey everybody, welcome. I’m Rob Kosberg, and very excited to be with you today for our Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast. I have a friend with me today, and somebody that I think many of you already know, or have heard of, Mr. Perry Marshall. I’m going to read a little bit about Perry because there’s so much to say. I love the first part of your bio, Perry. Perry’s “one of the most expensive business strategists in the world.” I love that. I know that it’s true, and I know where some of that came from, which we’ll be talking today.
You’re endorsed by Forbes and Inc. I did not know that you were involved with FanDuel. Of course, InfusionSoft, I knew that. But FanDuel, holy cow. From helping these companies go from startup to hundreds of millions of dollars. You mentioned the $10 million Evolution 2.0 Prize, which of course, we love that. I love your Evolution 2.0 book. I highly recommend it to people.
Perry Marshall:
Well, your company helped me quite a bit with that project, and it was fantastic.
Rob Kosberg:
Thank you, my friend.
Perry Marshall:
You guys got me on a TV station in Virginia once.
Rob Kosberg:
I remember that. That was pretty cool. All of what you’ve done with it is just amazing. It’s the world’s largest science research award, which is incredible. This touches my heart a little bit. I think you know, but maybe you don’t, I did not know this. NASA’s JPL, Jet Propulsion Labs, uses your 80/20 Curve as a productivity tool. My middle son, Jake, works for NASA JPL.
Perry Marshall:
Really?
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, right out of college. He got his degree in math and physics. He really is a coder, and had an internship with a man named Kevin Hand, who is a fairly famous scientist. He was the guy who went down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench with James Cameron in a submarine.
Perry Marshall:
Wow.
Rob Kosberg:
It was very cool. This guy just fell in love with Jake, my middle son. He’s been working for NASA for almost three years now, which is crazy, and cool at the same time.
I got to know you originally from your Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, the biggest and world’s best-selling book on Internet advertising. Thanks for being here. Thanks for taking some time. We’re going to talk about your new project and what you’re doing, which is a phenomenal book that everybody needs to get. At any rate, welcome to 2021. How did you get out of 2020?
Perry Marshall:
2020 actually was a very productive year for me.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Perry Marshall:
I would just generally comment the people who I know who are really committed to excellence, which I know sounds really cliché, are hard asses about excellence. For example, Darin Spindler is a friend of mine in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He has a pizza restaurant called Heartland Pizza. He’s had his best year ever, despite the fact that the dining room’s been closed most of the year, there’s no alcohol, and people can only get take-out and delivery.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
If you go hunt for it, I’ve got an interview with him, and you can hear him explain how this happened. By the time he gets done explaining all of the ways in which he has built excellence into his processes, it’s not surprising that business for him actually went up instead of down when the world just went sideways. I’ve had, arguably, my most productive year ever despite having all of the same aches and pains as anybody.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
Helping clients pivot, not all of them have been great. The guy in the trade show business, not so great. I don’t know how to carry out and deliver a trade show.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
Watching people maneuver and go, “Okay, one thing I know is there’s more problems to go out and solve now than there was before. So we’re going to work out some problems. There is money in the world. It’s not like it all went away. So, I’m going to go solve a problem, and I’m going to collect some money, and we’re going to make things happen.” That’s been the prevailing attitude. A lot of my business is live events, so I’ve had the same craziness as anybody else.
Rob Kosberg:
Mine, as well, although, I hate to travel, as you maybe know a little bit. All the live events we’ve done have always been in my backyard when we were in California. At the same time, though, I wonder, “Why can’t I do a live event just as a challenge? Or a webinar? Or fill in the blank? I mean, aren’t those live? And aren’t those events?” Yes, to both of those things.
Perry Marshall:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
We had our best net revenue year ever, and our gross was down slightly, but a little bit of this detoxing, decluttering, and dominating is what we did. So, we had our best year ever, and are set up to do even more amazing things. I want to get to that in just a second, but let me make a damning admission, if I could.
I do quote you quite often. I’ve been on your email list and a part of the Renaissance Group, and various things that you’ve done. On your email list. I remembered some time ago, years ago, you sent an email. I don’t even remember why you sent the email, because I just clipped a part of it, but you talked about the importance of writing a book. There were several bullet points that you made.
I actually took a clip of it, and I show it on my webinar. In fact, I did a webinar once for you. You may remember, I actually showed that clip, as well. You talked about how your income grew 500% when you wrote your first book, and a number of other things – the power of a book. I quote you quite often. I just did a big webinar last week with over 1000 attendees. That was my intro, along with some Dan Kennedy stuff. I know you’re a dear friend and big fan of Dan’s.
Let’s start with the general and go to the specific about the new book. Tell me about why you wrote your first book. Did it lead to surprising things for you? In what ways has it helped you to expand your business in amazing ways?
Perry Marshall:
Tell me how you want to dial in. I could tell you about my first book. The first book I’m actually known for.
Rob Kosberg:
The first book was an engineering book, right? I know the whole story. So how about the one you’re known for, because that’s your business.
Perry Marshall:
The one I’m known for is Ultimate Guide to GoogleAds, which is now in its sixth edition. It’s sold about 100,000 copies. Before that book came out, I was an engineer turned marketer, who hung out his shingle after 9/11.
Rob Kosberg:
Great timing.
Perry Marshall:
You’ve got to remember; it was a lot like COVID. At the time, this seemed like a really bad time to leave your employer. It was actually the best time. I mean, literally, I would say 9/11 was when the world switched from job to gig economy.
Rob Kosberg:
Beautiful.
Perry Marshall:
Okay?
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, but you didn’t know. That’s all hindsight, right?
Perry Marshall:
Hell, no. There was a lady who was a financial planner. She told me, “The times of greatest uncertainty are the times of greatest opportunity,” which is true. In fact, that’s what we’ve been talking about for the last 10 minutes with Aaron’s Pizza Restaurant. You don’t run away from the burning building. You run into the burning building, but you don’t save the building, you save the people.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
Get it? Do not save building. Do not use any of your buckets of water on the building. Just get the people.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it.
Perry Marshall:
So, what happened was I got invited to speak at Ken McCarthy’s System Seminar. Ken asked, “Who should I get to speak on Google ads?” I gave him a name, and he talked to that guy. The guy turned him down and he came back to me and said, “I think you should speak at my seminar.” Now, you’ve got to picture this. I’m a guy, I’ve been a diligent student of marketing for six years, and I’ve done some interesting stuff, but I have a lot more in my head than I’ve actually been able to do. Okay?
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Perry Marshall:
I said, “Oh, okay.” I’ve heard how this game works. I’ve listened to tapes about this. When I go to the seminar, I have to have something to sell, and all of that. I guess I’m now in the Google advertising education business.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice.
Perry Marshall:
I have to write some kind of a book. Originally, the idea was, it was going to be a course, and I was going to put it in a binder and sell it in the back of the room. Within a couple of months, it was an ebook that I sold for 100 bucks because people were doing that back then. That was kind of a common thing. The ebook sales took off.
Now, what I think is probably pertinent to your readers is, the ebook was making money, but a strange thing happened. I was at a mastermind meeting, and everybody naively, not really knowing the rules, agreed, “You know, I think we should all have Wikipedia pages.”
Rob Kosberg:
Okay.
Perry Marshall:
So, we all paired up. It was like, “You write one for him. And she writes one for you.” We were totally clueless about and had no idea how stringent Wikipedia is. Okay. So somebody makes me a page and they put it up there. A day later, it gets tagged. The tag at the top says, “This appears to be a vanity article about a non-notable person. This article will be deleted unless adequate references are added.”
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. Non-notable person. Come on.
Perry Marshall:
Yeah. Rob, you’ve got to slow down and really understand what’s happened here. Because what had happened was a bunch of people in a very particular strand of marketing, and affiliate marketing and certain internet advertising people, were like, “Oh, man. This is like the hottest. Oh, this is so great.”
Rob Kosberg:
Right. Right.
Perry Marshall:
The rest of the world was totally clueless. I could go to a marketing seminar, everybody’s like, “Oh, you’re Perry Marshall.” I would get that.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Perry Marshall:
Now, again. I was a big fish in a tiny pond. Tiny. So decided, “Okay. Let’s add some references.” There was not one single standard media mention that any journalist would consider to be real, anywhere. Nothing. The Wikipedia page came down. There was nothing we could do to save it. I had an existential moment. It thought, “Perry. Okay, big fish, little pond, good strategy. That’s a good idea. Fine so far. But you are nobody. No. Body. Do not drink your own pink Kool-Aid. The only way the world is going to consider you valid is if you have a book in the bookstore, and you’re quoted in the Washington Post, or whatever. You’re going to have to go play that game.” I was smart enough to realize, if I don’t play this game, somebody else will.
And right now, I’m selling this ebook for$49, $97, and I’m making a lot of money. It isn’t going to be long before there is a $15 or $20 book on Amazon, and they’re going to go buy that. If you don’t do it first, you’re history. And you’re going to have to do a book in such a way that it actually has some longevity.
I got an agent, and I took this business where I was making money on these books. I basically cannibalized it, and I gave it to the book publisher, and I said, “Well, I hate giving up this income, but I am actually going to trade income for credibility and permanence, because if I can establish myself as the lead dog in the main book industry for Google ads, and not just this weird little cult of affiliate marketing, which is the most ephemeral business on earth, you’re going to have to make that trade. You’re going to have to buckle down and make an actual book, and do all this.” So I did.
I took a hit in income. I thought, “All right. Well, I’m going to have to make it up in the back end and make it up in coaching.” I could see the writing on the wall. The Kindle was coming out and so, that’s what I did. Rob, it’s one of the smartest things I ever did in my life. I mean, USA Today wanted to talk to me a month after the book came out. I’m in USA Today. Being in USA Today probably is not going to do you a bit of good in terms of selling books. It’s probably not to get you any clients, but it credentializes you as somebody who’s actually real. I actually have a Wikipedia page now.
Rob Kosberg:
You’re somebody that’s notable now.
Perry Marshall:
Yeah. I’ll even add, because of my evolution project, some of the Wikipedia editors did not like me at all.
Rob Kosberg:
Really?
Perry Marshall:
Oh, yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Because of the Evolution 2.0 stuff.
Perry Marshall:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding?
Perry Marshall:
They don’t like the spin that I put on it. So, there’s all these arguments and fights on the top page that say, “Hey, man. This guy has way too much street cred in marketing for you to delete him because you don’t like what he’s doing in science.”
The way that I think about it, it’s like you’re a tree, and you get planted. You have to put down roots. You need every bit of credibility that you can get. If you’re going to be taken seriously as a thought leader, then in any medium that the world takes seriously, which it could be Joe Rogan, I suppose, or it could be Vsauce, or it could be Popular Mechanics, whatever media outlets that the world does actually take seriously, you’ve got to have a place in there. Being an author is a really good way to do that. It’s pretty hard to do it if you’re not an author.
Joe Rogan didn’t write a book, and that’s fine, but generally, you need that kind of credibility, especially if you are a thought leader and if you want your ideas to be taken seriously. It’s been quite the adventure. It’s a very important part of what I do. I want to throw in something else unadvertised.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Perry Marshall:
This book, you’re the one that convinced me to self-publish.
Rob Kosberg:
Really? I’d love to hear about that.
Perry Marshall:
Up to that point, I had been fairly happy with my relationship with my publisher. The only thing I was unhappy with was the fact that when I sell 80/20 books on my website, I still have to buy them from the book publisher, which is kind of perverse.
Rob Kosberg:
It kind of sucks.
Perry Marshall:
We were talking on your webinar, and you were making a case for self-publishing, you said, “Perry, there’s actually really hardly ever any good reason to go with a traditional publisher anymore.”
Rob Kosberg:
True.
Perry Marshall:
I was like, “Ding. I think he’s actually right.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Let’s roll it.
Perry Marshall:
We did the self-publish this thing. So thank you, Rob. You didn’t know this.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, thank you for that. You’re making a beautiful case. I don’t often hear that from people, quite frankly, about the willingness to trade dollars for credibility. I love the story. I didn’t know that story. I knew that you were making money, and I knew that you were selling. I bought one of the first editions of it, going all the way back. I knew that, but what I didn’t know was the trade-off that you had to make. It was smart. Even at the time, I bet it was a little like, “Is this really a good idea?”
Perry Marshall:
Oh, right.
Rob Kosberg:
“I mean, who cares if I have a Wikipedia page or not?” But obviously, you were thinking much bigger than that.
Perry Marshall:
I was thinking much bigger. It wasn’t about having a Wikipedia page. it was a canary in the coal mine. It was like, “Perry, don’t be a legend in your own mind and don’t get caught up in the tiny little echo chamber of internet marketing, because you need to be taken seriously way beyond that.” I’ll tell you, when you have significant street cred from external sources, the whole world really does deal with you at a different level. They take you seriously. In fact, Rob, you would be surprised at how many science doors my marketing background has opened for me.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding?
Perry Marshall:
For example, I was asked to speak at a university a couple of years ago. I go there, and then the head of the department and one of his professors take me out to dinner. The first question was, “So how do we get our department to rank on Google?”
Rob Kosberg:
That’s awesome.
Perry Marshall:
I mean, this is not the conversation I thought I was going to have with a guy who runs a physics department.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s fantastic. I love it.
Perry Marshall:
Expertise opens doors and it crosses disciplines. Every person listening, you’re going to have your own particular eccentric way that you roll in the world, and the people that you relate to, and the media outlets that resonate with you. You need to take that really seriously.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Beautiful, Perry. Hey, let’s talk about this. I guess we’ll skip over Evolution 2.0 a little bit but if anybody does want to look into that, they should. It’s fantastic. I’ve read this a couple of times, and have gone through several of these steps. I love it. It’s small. Like I said before to you, it’s one of the most powerful and actionable things I’ve ever read. Detox, Declutter, Dominate. You start the book with your own damning confession, which I respect and appreciate, because that’s the last thing I would think about you. You’re the engineer guy. You have all of your numbers on a spreadsheet, and you know everything that’s going on. So, I think, “Okay, wow, Perry’s a real person.” Maybe talk a little bit about that.
Perry Marshall:
The truth about me, Rob, is, as a CEO I’ve got a dozen employees and running a company is more like an artist and a guy dancing on an airplane wing than I am like an engineer with all my spreadsheets and stuff. The truth is, I struggle to be interested in financials, reporting, spreadsheets, management, all of that stuff.
That is why the story in the book is what it is. What happened was, it was a winter day, kind of like today, talking on the phone in my office. I looked through my French doors, and the president of my company was in the next room, unannounced, from Nebraska. I’m in Chicago. I ask, “What’s he doing here?”
Rob Kosberg:
Whoa. Something’s going on.
Perry Marshall:
Promptly, I get off the phone and ask, “Brian, what’s up?” “Perry, we need to discuss cash flow.” “Okay.” Like most marketing and salespeople, I think, “Cash flow. I know how to talk about that. We’re going to sell something, Brian. Don’t you know this? Don’t you know about…” This is like 3:00 in the afternoon. We argued until 11:00 PM.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
We were all over the place. He said, “Perry, we have too much overhead. We have too many expenses. We have too many employees. We don’t have enough money coming in.” I would say, “Oh, but Brian. You don’t understand. We’re going to do this…”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Yeah.
Perry Marshall:
So, I won the argument, and he went home. About three months later, I realized I won the argument, but he was right. That was not good. It was like, “You know what? You’re going to have to get your ass off that airplane wing and into the airplane, and you’re going to have to pilot this thing. You’re going to make sure that we don’t smack into the side of a mountain.”
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
This is what happened to me. Most of that year I was completely flipping my understanding upside down, because at that point I’d been in business for 15 years. The solution to everything was always to add something. We’re going to do another program and another project, and this, that, or whatever. It was like, “Dude, you’ve got too much stuff going on, and you have too much complexity. You have too many hypodermic needles sticking out of your arm and it’s draining your blood. You’re rowing really hard to make this thing go.” It’s way, way easier to get into stuff than it is to get out of it.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. So true.
Perry Marshall:
And so, we spent several months chipping away and reducing staff and cutting product lines. “Do we really need to do this?” The way it works is, you do a round of it, and then you circle around to the first stuff. All of a sudden, everything looks different. It’s like, “Well, yeah, you know, we could take away this, we could take away this. We could take away this.”
Rob Kosberg:
Painful.
Perry Marshall:
This was painful. This was just not fun. On top of that, for whatever reason, I don’t know how the cosmos works, but it was like right about the time after Brian confronted me, that our sales just started sagging.
Rob Kosberg:
Great.
Perry Marshall:
It was like the universe knew that Perry’s in denial and-
Rob Kosberg:
We need to wake him up.
Perry Marshall:
It was not fun. By the time I get to the end, it was like, “Wow, this shit is a lot easier to run now that all that ballast and barnacles are gone.”
Rob Kosberg:
You have, over your shoulder, your 80/20 book, and for people that don’t know, you are, would fanatical be fair to say about the Pareto principle? Is that where the genesis of that was? Is that where it started?
Perry Marshall:
Yes. So, I’ll give you another confession. I did a fairly famous seminar with Richard Koch in 2014.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
It was 700 bucks a head. People are still talking about it. It was incredible. The day after the seminar, we go to Richard’s hotel room, and we have a little debrief. We talked about how it all went. I was about to leave, and I said, “Richard. You know, you’ve been working a lot more closely with us now for a year, and we’ve done all this. Are there any observations or helpful comments that you might have for me? Or anything that I should probably know?” He says, “Yes. Perry, you are the epitome of 20/80.”
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, my gosh. Wow. Just give me a knife to the heart.
Perry Marshall:
Thank you, sir, may I have another?
Rob Kosberg:
Why did he say that? Was there something that stood out?
Perry Marshall:
If you’ve read Richard, you’d understand this even better, because he’s a Zen-like minimalist. He’s said, “Perry, you do so much stuff, it’s unbelievable.” I think one of my flaws and strengths is FOMO, fear of missing out. I love doing all these crazy things. It’s fun. Richard, literally, says no to 99% of anything that crosses his desk. It is so hard. Investment, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, that one.”
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding?
Perry Marshall:
I mean, in the last six years he’s gone from being worth 200 million to a billion.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
His investment track record rivals Warren Buffet.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding?
Perry Marshall:
He told me, “Dude, you have way too much stuff going on.” He said to me, “Look, what you need to do is go to the chapter in my 80/20 book where I talk about basically finding the parts of your business that are losing money, and the product lines that are losing money, the clients that are losing money, the employees that are losing you money, the vendors that are losing you money. It’s tedious. You have to do some cost accounting and stuff, but you need to get rid of stuff.” I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.”
It took a year or two and then it was like, “Perry, you’re going to do this.” I’m describing is an intervention that was forced upon me.
Rob Kosberg:
Interesting.
Perry Marshall:
Where I had to take my own medicine. I was saying that 80/20 is about elimination. I say no to a lot of things, don’t get me wrong, but I was still saying yes to too many things. It was this complete inversion. So, we canceled product lines, we got rid of people, and we scaled things down. I changed my mindset about growth and scale. To be honest with you, Rob, I think scale is way overrated right now.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, I so agree.
Perry Marshall:
It’s probably physically impossible. You haven’t figured it out yet. You can burn all kinds of rocket fuel finding out that it’s not possible. I’ve done that. One of the things I had to internalize was, “So Perry, you realize if you take 80/20 seriously, you have to believe that you can make 95% as much money with 70% as much activity. It’s almost guaranteed to be true.”
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
If you get rid of all this overhead. Maybe your revenue is 85% or 90% of what it was before, but your profit could actually be higher, and you could do it with half the staff or half the products or half the clients, or whatever.
Rob Kosberg:
Half the hassle.
Perry Marshall:
Half the hassle. It’s almost always true. Fire one employee, fire one client, discontinue one product line and you will instantly make more money with less effort.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, I love that.
Perry Marshall:
It’s almost guaranteed to be true. Somebody may have to get you in a head lock and start pounding you on the head before you even…
Rob Kosberg:
There may be an intervention coming, is what you’re saying.
Perry Marshall:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Give our listeners an overview of what they can expect to get from this. How this may help and get them focused. I think everybody needs to take a look at this. I want to talk to you a little bit about your plans with the book and your goal with it. Because it’s the beginning of something. It’s not the end of something, like with most authors.
Perry Marshall:
The way this book was born was Robert Skrobe consults with my company and he’s a longtime friend. We hired him to help us with our membership. He said, “In a membership, people need to know, what are we doing? What are we here for? What is the story we came from? What is the story we’re trying to get to? It has to be simple and clear and unambiguous.” He used the example of Dave Ramsey. If you get involved in his debt thing, it’s like there’s these eight steps.
I was trying to figure out if I was going to distill everything that I teach and do in the last 15 years of my career down to half a dozen things, I don’t even know what they are. Rob’s said, “Let me help you,” and basically came up with these seven things. The Seven Steps to a New Renaissance. They’re on the back of the book.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. I love it. Go through them, if you don’t mind, briefly because they’re simple, but brilliant. Each one has so much depth.
Perry Marshall:
Before I go into them, I’ve got to say Rob really helped me dial this in. I don’t think I could have distilled this the way that he did.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it.
Perry Marshall:
These are the seven things. What are these? These are the seven things that are the things, whether you’re making 10,000 a year or 10 million a year. I don’t know any other book that could say, “These are the seven things, whether you’re a freelancer, hustling, or if you run a $100 million company.” I stick by, these.
Rob Kosberg:
I believe it.
Perry Marshall:
Number one: Use Renaissance Time to gain discernment and clarity. It’s your time in the morning. No CNN, no Facebook, no social media. No texting. No emails. None of that stuff. It’s you, your notebook, maybe it’s prayer, meditation, scripture, free writing. You get your private space to get your head straight before anybody else gets to stick their hypodermic needle in you. That’s number one. Number two: Make your business twice as profitable with 80/20 focus.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. We’ve been talking a lot about that. Beautiful.
Perry Marshall:
Number three: Earn $1000 an hour, at least one hour a day with 80/20 time. People don’t believe this is possible, it’s possible. Number four: Create an irresistible product that’s a joy to use by simplifying. Number five: Carve out a niche where you are the undisputed number one, via Star Principle.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, another great book.
Perry Marshall:
You need to be a big fish in a little pond. Number six: Build an impenetrable moat around your business. This is so important. It’s easy to start businesses. I could do it in my sleep. Businesses that last a long time, that’s what’s interesting. Number seven is actually a step. It isn’t just a little rainbow sunset picture.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Perry Marshall:
Enjoy freedom to create and reinvent every single day. That’s an activity. That’s part of this process. It’s not just a lean back and stick your feet on a thing and sip iced tea. No. It is engaging in creative endeavors that feed your soul which will actually feed your business and make this whole thing run even better. Those are the seven steps.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Of course, you have details on each one of these things throughout the book, and action steps that people can take. I love the story about Mark Mcshurley’s business, what he did with a super simple, non-sexy business. A roofing company went from under a million bucks a year to now over 10 million bucks a year.
Perry Marshall:
In less than five years.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
In roofing. He didn’t start Uber.
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Perry Marshall:
This is a roofing company.
Rob Kosberg:
Were there any one of these steps that stood out for him? I know all of them are important, but was there anything that was the step?
Perry Marshall:
Yes. Step four. The name of his company is not an accident, Roof Simple.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. I saw that.
Perry Marshall:
Roofsimple.com. Mark said, he took my work, Richard Koch’s work, and got a full-time job selling Catholic bulletin advertising.
Rob Kosberg:
I saw that.
Perry Marshall:
That is a hot, lucrative gig if I ever saw one.
Rob Kosberg:
He’s joking. Don’t go out and look for that job.
Perry Marshall:
He has this side hustle running a roofing company. He’s living in his in-laws’ basement, and he’s taking anxiety pills. He has a realization. “Honey, I got this stuff from Perry. I got this stuff from Richard. I’ve got this vague idea of how I’m supposed to do this. But I don’t have any energy. I’ve got to sit down. I’ve got to think about how to do this, and I got to do this right. Honey, I’m going to quit my job selling Catholic advertising in bulletins, and our income’s going to drop $40,000 a year. Maybe we’re going to live at your mom’s house for longer. I am going to go to a coffee shop until I figure out how to run this roofing business the way that Perry and Richard say you’re supposed to do it.” He quit his job.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
He thought, “All right. I’ve got my yellow note. I’m going to figure this out.” He said, “Buying a roof sucks. Roofing salesmen suck. Roofing companies suck. I’m going to make one that’s good. I need to make every single touch point that the customer ever experiences, including dropping nails in their yard, a pleasure. I’m going to design this company for five-star Google reviews.”
Rob Kosberg:
Love it.
Perry Marshall:
“From the first search to the phone call to the appointment, all of it is going to be a pleasure.” He did it. He has roofing contractors lined up to subcontract his jobs.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding?
Perry Marshall:
Yeah, this thing is a well-oiled machine. They have 300 Google reviews in Washington DC, 4.8 stars because they do such a good job.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Perry Marshall:
This could be done in any industry. These are the kind of businesses that I was talking about, the pizza restaurant, these are the ones that prosper when everybody else is in flames. Rule number four. He’s said, “If it takes 174 tiny little steps to buy a roof, and all the phone calls and all the emails and all the nonsense, I’m going to chop it down to 60. They’re going to be 60 pleasurable interactions instead of 174 irritable interactions. I’m going to own this business.” I tell you, Rob, if Mark wants to, Mark could basically own the roofing industry in 20 or 30 states by 2025, if he wants to.
Rob Kosberg:
If he wants to scale it.
Perry Marshall:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Amazing. Very cool. I saw one thing that he did, the on-site concierge. I thought, “How brilliant.” We have been doing all kinds of work on our home in St. Augustine. It is like pulling teeth. It is so painful dealing with these people. I just want to give them money, and just do the work. A good company could make a fortune. I guess that’s what you’re saying about Roof Simple, right?
Perry Marshall:
Yeah. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of industries that are doomed because somebody like Mark is going to show up. What I’m saying to the people on the podcast today is you want to be one of those people. You want to take something. My son graduates from high school, and we want an awning in our back yard. The frigging awning company can’t even show up with the right awning. How hard is this people?
Rob Kosberg:
I know.
Perry Marshall:
There are dozens of industries that are falling all over themselves with Homer Simpson’s finding the donuts instead of installing the awning. Just fix it. You don’t have to start Uber. You don’t have to be a Silicon Valley company; you don’t need venture capital.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. I love it. All right, we’ve been going a long time. Tell me, what’s the plan? We’ll talk about where people can get it, and how can they contact you. Where are you going with this? I’m the book guy. So for me, it’s always about where the book is going. Where it’s taking you. What’s the plan with this?
Perry Marshall:
I’ve got to tell you another story. Rob’s helping me with this book. This was originally a 150-page book.
Rob Kosberg:
No kidding? Wow.
Perry Marshall:
Rob says, “I want you to send me the book. I’ve got an idea.” He sends me the book. He chops it down to 36 pages, and he goes, “Perry, I 80/20’d your book.” Seriously. I would have never done this. He says, “I chopped it down to 8000 words, and I added all these graphics.”
Rob Kosberg:
They’re very cool.
Perry Marshall:
They’re very cool.
Rob Kosberg:
They stand out. They make the point.
Perry Marshall:
It is a 36-page book. Here’s my plan. I have been saying this for years. I want to start another Renaissance, because the one 500 years ago, that was too long. So, da Vinci and Michelangelo, those guys are great, but every year it becomes that much longer ago.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Right.
Perry Marshall:
Most people in the world are sleep walking. They are scrolling through Facebook, running into telephone poles as they walk down the street.
Rob Kosberg:
Literally doing that.
Perry Marshall:
I want people to stop doing that and see. I believe the portal into a new Renaissance is entrepreneurship, because I find entrepreneurs are the most wide-awake people that I ever meet anywhere.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s true.
Perry Marshall:
They’re the people that are going to do it. If you go read about the Renaissance, it was an incredibly entrepreneurial time in the world. This is my 36-page manual for a New Renaissance. People might think, “Really? You do it by doing this?” Yeah, and guess what? It starts with Renaissance Time. If I got a million people to do Renaissance Time every morning, I think we would be well on our way.
Rob Kosberg:
I agree. I love that went in directions I didn’t expect it to. That was a lot of fun. I love the stories. What else is there, other than stories? So thank you. Thanks for spending some time.
Perry Marshall:
Well, thanks for pulling them out of me.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. So where can they get it? Where should they get it?
Perry Marshall:
Just go to Amazon and buy this book. Then when you read it there are all these resources in the book. Sign up for the resources and see where they take you. There’s a freaking DNA Test. There’s an Espresso Machine Calculator where you can… I don’t have time to explain it, but believe me, it’s really powerful.
Rob Kosberg:
Right. We can’t explain it. You’ve just got to go to it. So start with Amazon. Look at the resources. It’s Detox, Declutter, Dominate. Man, you’re going to love it, and I think really enjoy it.
