Jim (http://www.thejimedwardsmethod.com) and Stew discuss What is Good Enough with business products, webpages, services, content. But always keep evolving as good enough today should be different from good enough 5 years ago. Check out how Jim and Stew handle the things that make us all human – typos, errors, mistakes, technology evolution, and much more.
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Transcript…
Jim Edwards: Hey guys Jim Edwards here along with Stew Smith…
Welcome Stew…
Stew Smith: Hello, everybody…
Jim Edwards: This is episode 46 of the Sales Copywriting And Content Marketing Hacks Podcast…
I have no rhyme for 46 except something that rhymes with sex…
So…
Stew Smith: Picking up sticks with 46…
Jim Edwards: Oh my gosh…
Well, it’s better than I have…
Stew Smith: I usually just say what pops in my head, right?
Jim Edwards: No, you don’t…
Stew Smith: I do.
Jim Edwards: Because you never guess…
Stew Smith: I had no filter…
Jim Edwards: If you had no filter, you were in the Navy for eight years…
You have a filter.
I heard you say the F word lately though…
That was kind of cool…
You kept saying fantastic…
I was just thinking that was awesome.
So, okay, today’s topic is Good Enough…
What is good enough?
And when I said I wanted to talk about good enough, Stew said, “I wrote two articles about that.”
I know the answer.
So Stew, give us your answer of what is good enough…
Stew Smith: Okay…
When I use the term good enough, I usually mean that in the realm of tactical fitness where you have to be good at multiple elements of fitness, all of them, right…
You can’t just be great at strength and lack endurance…
Right.
Cause where people go wrong is they tend to work on their strengths too much cause they like them…
And they neglect their weaknesses.
Jim Edwards: So that’s usually where the pain is pride and especially in physical activity…
Pride and I’m going to lift you see their muscle heads, but their nutrition is crap and their cardio…
I mean they’re getting winded going out to their car from the gym, drinking a muscle milk…
They need to pause halfway because they’re getting winded.
Stew Smith: Yes. Or they catch a cramp.
Jim Edwards: And they get a cramp or as opposed to the guy that looks like the…
Remember the comics with the Charles Atlas ad, the guy getting sand kicked in his face and they’re wearing those little butterflies shorts and a tank top look like that they need an emergency infusion of a pork chop to save their life because they’re so fricking skinny…
But they can do four 45 miles, and they’re like “you guys are slow”…
Stew Smith: Right?
So anyway, we all have weaknesses…
We all have strengths coming into this realm…
And so when I write an article on like what is good enough, obviously those standards are rather high.
You still want to be good and have high standards…
It’s not like getting a C or something…
Right…
(It’d) be you still want a good B plus.
Well, that is good enough if I were to grade them…
But to have an answer like what is good enough…
I typically just say here, if you can score this level on the fitness test, your fitness test is good enough…
You don’t need to score a minute faster on the run or do an extra three pull-ups…
Who cares?
You’re passing, you’re well above the minimum standards, and you’re in the zone…
Now you need to focus on what’s next…
And that is getting through the training…
You got to the training I get through the training…
So that’s how I use what is good enough.
Now in writing, I also use good enough…
And I think that’s where we’re going with this one…
But I’II let you take it to the next…
Jim Edwards: Maybe.
But, I also think that good enough is a…
In what in a business sense.
Good enough…
If you want to be great, good enough as a personal definition…
So what’s good enough for somebody who’s willing to accept one level would be totally unacceptable for someone in another who wants to be at a different level…
When I was in real estate, good enough for me, every day was I had to talk to at least a hundred people on the phone, ask them if they were interested in buying or selling real estate for other people in my office…
A hundred people a month was good enough…
But then again, that’s why I took 50 listings my first year, and most of them were averaging six listings a year…
So what’s good enough?
But there’s a difference between good enough and perfection…
So there’s this triangle that you have to…
There’s timing good enough and perfection you’re, and getting it done…
That maybe I’m not doing this right, but…
Stew Smith: I got it.
Jim Edwards: You’re never going to be perfect in everything because if you’re aiming for perfection, it takes forever to do it, and it’s never going to get done…
And I’ve seen a bunch of people, especially in the online space, that they took forever to do something because they wanted it to be perfect…
And by the time they got done…
Either that ship had sailed, that it was no longer relevant or important or breakthrough or whatever they needed to actually sell something or somebody else came along with good enough and owned the market…
So if you look at Funnel Scripts…
Here’s the other thing, the definition of good enough can change over time…
Just like you say, okay, good enough to get you to training may not be good enough to get you through training, or it’s a different type of good enough to get through the training in a different type of good enough after the training.
And so if we look at Funnel Scripts when I first launched Funnel Scripts with Russell Brunson back in the day…
And back in the day now is like four years ago, coming up on four years or more…
Anyway, we launched Funnel Scripts, and it was at a certain level, and it was good enough because it was breaker…
It was new, it didn’t have any of the bells and whistles that it has now…
It’s gone through three different complete rebuilds…
We’re actually on the fourth complete rebuild now…
Stew Smith: Nice!
Jim Edwards: When you see Stew the features that we’re adding now you are going to be like, O, M, G…
But the thing is it’s good enough until it’s not good enough anymore…
And then you gotta have a new definition of what’s good enough because if it’s just not good enough…
I gotta make it better…
Okay…
Now it’s good enough so that definition will change…
But let’s talk about good enough for a book for a second…
Okay.
My book Copywriting Secrets, we came out with it…
I thought it was well proof-read, and it is well proof-read okay…
Until we did the audiobook version…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: I found seven typos, and as I was reading them, I was like, Hm…
Typo…
Not gonna do nothing about that…
Oh, typo…
No, I’m not going to do anything…
There are seven typos in this book, and I know there are…
And I am not going to do anything about it…
Maybe if we do a second edition, I’ll clean it up…
Maybe I won’t…
I don’t know.
But we’ve still sold over at this moment 11,376 copies…
Stew Smith: And in what, two weeks?
Jim Edwards: Four weeks…
Stew Smith: Four weeks…
Jim Edwards: Okay…
So four weeks and two days…
30 days…
Stew Smith: Nice…
Jim Edwards: So that’s pretty good, and people are excited about it.
Now the thing is what’s happening on social media, and I don’t think this person meant it badly…
So I didn’t take it as badly…
It was actually kind of fun to see it…
The person took a picture of the book and showed, “Hey, there’s a little typo in the book”…
And honest to God, that might be typo number eight because…
Stew Smith: You don’t, I remember that…
Jim Edwards: I had to read it four times to see what the typo was…
But then an interesting thing happened on Facebook…
It starts this big debate about whether this matters and focus on the message rather than focusing on that…
And it’s interesting to see people jumping on the guy…
And it’s interesting because it makes you think,
“Okay, what’s good enough to put out there?”
Now I’ve read books that went were from real publishers, and stuff had typos in them…
It’s very hard to put out a book without a typo in it…
And at what point do you say it’s good enough?
And may my opinion may be different from somebody else’s, but ultimately good enough is to me, just like you said, good enough is to get you to a certain level, whatever level it is you’re trying to get to…
For me, in this case, good enough was…
You know what, this reads, right?
I can’t see anything…
I sent it to people that I trust, had them read it…
They liked the content, and then people are reading it, and they’re telling me that they like it…
And so I’m just not gonna worry about it.
So, that’s good enough.
Now, if we do in all seriousness when we do a second edition someday…
Stew Smith: It will be easy to clean it up too…
Jim Edwards: Will I fix it?
Yes…
(That you’re looking at…
Yeah…
10 minutes…
10-minute work…
Yeah…
Yeah…)
So the point though is that especially since I’m just collecting these up, people are doing the proofreading for me…
Crap…
I have to pay somebody a couple of grand to proofread a book…
Well, the people are gonna do it for me…
Free through Facebook…
Stew Smith: It’s part of answering emails and listening to comments…
I mean, you find ideas to fix…
I do that all the time, especially if it’s a workout that is confusing…
Maybe I had a typo, maybe I just didn’t explain it well enough…
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: I’ll just re-explain it and fix it…
Jim Edwards: And that’s the other thing, feedback…
Will help you.
And we did a whole podcast episode on feedback, but feedback can really help you, so don’t poopoo on people…
There are certain ways to tell somebody, Hey, there’s a typo on your book…
You might want to check the second paragraph on page 193…
Love the message, great day.
But on the flip side, you can’t let the fear of that happening to you…
Like some people that would be debilitating to have somebody go on Facebook and say, there’s a typo in your book, they would have a fricking meltdown…
It just hey would be debilitated.
Whereas me, I’m like, okay, thanks…
Hey, good job…
You found it…
Yeah, it’s not a big deal.
So yeah, that’s another part of good enough is you got to give yourself permission not to be perfect also because it’ll never be perfect.
I have books that I’ve been selling for 20 years that still have typos in them that I am aware of, and we’ll get around to fixing some day, maybe…
Yeah…
Stew Smith: I have written things for books and articles, and it goes through an editor, maybe even a second editor and another draft, and still finds a typo in it…
Jim Edwards: Yeah…
Stew Smith: That gets published…
How did that happen?
Jim Edwards: Just because we’re people.
People are imperfect, but part of good enough means being able to stand behind what you did too and taking ownership of it…
Both good and bad and just moving forward and again, good enough…
Your good enough will change over time as your abilities change…
My first sales letter I wrote that was good enough to make me 1500 bucks a month, would I write that sales letter the exact same way now?
No.
Is a video that I made even a year ago…
The first letting the chickens out with Jim videos were interesting.
People still liked them, but I’m constantly looking for ways to improve them and raise the standard of what’s good enough.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: So as your abilities increase and improve, then your definition will change.
It’s like my PT testing…
I’ll use the example from today…
Today was PT test Tuesday…
Why we would have a PT test on a Tuesday after a big run 90 minute cardio day the day before…
I have no idea, but there must be a plan…
Stew Smith: That was an easy day…
Jim Edwards: What!!
Stew Smith: Monday, who was easy?
Jim Edwards: A 30 minute run for max distance and then a 30-minute ruck for max distance and then…
Stew Smith: Easy day…
Jim Edwards: Okay, cool…
Stew Smith: (So you) frame it…
Jim Edwards: You’re right…
The easiest day of this week was yesterday.
You’re absolutely right.
So, but I have a certain number in mind for me that is good enough…
And when I do a PT test, good enough is a minimum of 90 pushups in two minutes…
90 setups in two minutes, 20 pull-ups, and then under 12 minutes for a mile and a half run…
Those are the good enough…
Anything better than that means I’m doing better than good enough…
So today I did 92 actually did 93 pushups, but the 93rd when I was like, Stew would not have counted that one…
So I didn’t count it…
So 92 pushups, 96 setups, but then only 15 pull-ups…
I’m like WTF man, what the hell?
Stew Smith: You had a bad day.
Jim Edwards: And then I ran the mile and a half in like a minute…
All right…
And 11 minutes and 40 something seconds…
Stew Smith: Yeah…
Jim Edwards: Which was actually really good cause it was a really good negative split.
So then I ran the second one, 12 minutes and 47 seconds and then I did 21 pull-ups but then my pushups kinda sucked…
It was like 60 and then 76 setups or something on the reverse on the back…
Stew Smith: It’s a hard test…
Jim Edwards: But here’s the thing…
So I wasn’t good enough today on my pull-ups…
Yes, it could have been a bad day…
It’s also a strategy…
I went out too fast on the pushups…
I mean, I busted out 60 in like 45 seconds, and they were all good…
They were just fast…
So I think I burned up a little bit on that…
So it wasn’t good enough today…
But when I first started working out with you five years ago, six years ago, whatever it was, I mean seven pull-ups was good…
That was pretty good for me…
And 50 pushups and 50 setups and a like 13 minutes on the mile and a half.
So that good enough is gonna change…
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: If you’re keeping track and if you’re actually trying to get better…
The old saying “if you’re not growing, you’re dying”…
It’s true…
If your definition of good enough today is the same as your definition of good enough 20 years ago for virtually any aspect of your life, then you’re screwing up because you should be getting better in every aspect of your life…
I mean, what’s it in marriage, in relationships, in your ability to, write…
Your ability to make videos, your ability to manage your chickens.
Stew Smith: Yeah…
I look at some of my older articles, I’m like, Ooh, I wish could delete this from the internet…
Yeah, this is bad, I would write it much differently now…
Jim Edwards: Right…
So good enough It’s gonna change…
Stew Smith: Of course…
And an evolution occurs as well.
I mean technological evolution now enables Jim to let us see him let the chickens out…
Six, seven years ago, there was not that feature…
Jim Edwards: No…
Stew Smith: He was able to evolve with technology and make it happen and make it happen easier than had he done it with a video camera and software and downloadable stuff…
Jim Edwards: And coding and( [inaudible] to get a five Meg…)
Stew Smith: File downloaded…
Jim Edwards: Yeah, over dial-up…
Stew Smith: Yes…
So if you haven’t kept up with that evolution, it’s time to play catch up…
So yes, good enough does also evolve as well.
Jim Edwards: Right.
So here’s the thing, if your sales copy is good enough right now, but you want to evolve, you need to get a copy of Copywriting Secrets because this is going to help you take your sales copy from good enough to the next level of good enough.
And 11,376 people can’t be wrong…
I am just going to tell you that right now, maybe 10% of them are wrong, but 11,000 people ain’t wrong.
If you don’t have a copy of this book yet, you need to get a copy because right now, I am still giving away copies for free…
All you have to do is just pay the shipping.
I already bought you the book.
You just have to pay the shipping to get it sent to you no matter where you are in the world…
So I think that’s it for the Sales Copywriting Content Marketing Hacks Podcast today…
Make sure if you are not already a member of the group on Facebook, you should be because it’s amazing…
You can also check out all of our past episodes @ thejimedwardsmethod.com forward slash podcast we recently had a guy…
He didn’t even know we were doing this…
We drove a thousand miles with somebody in the last couple of weeks…
Dude, listen to every single podcast episode while he was traveling across the United States.
Stew Smith: He had some great takeaways…
Jim Edwards: He did actually…
He made us sound smart.
Stew Smith: Yes.
Jim Edwards: So absolutely…
We’re with you at the gym…
We’re with you on a walk…
We’re with you in the car, wherever you want us, jump on the podcast, download them all, listen to them all…
Let us know what you think, Stew, great job today, man.
Any final words?
Stew Smith: No, just everybody has a different good enough, you just need to make sure you’re good enough is profitable.
Jim Edwards: You know what, the best thing to do is make sure that good enough for you means always getting better.
Stew Smith: Yeah…
And you’re growing, you’re changing…
Eventually, you’ll fix those typos.
It will come around to it…
Jim Edwards: Someday.
Stew Smith: Someday, but if right now it’s selling…
Keep selling it.
Jim Edwards: Exactly.
Okay, guys, have a great day, and I’ll talk to you soon.
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