Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

I learned four words from Jeffrey Lant that carry about 90% of what you need to write copy that works: you get benefit now. If any word you write doesn't sit under one of those pillars, you're on the wrong path.

The mistake almost everyone makes is thinking their prospect cares as much as they do about them and their product. Nobody cares that you're the leader or that you've spent your life at this. They care about what they get. I share the Stop Your Divorce letter that opens completely on the prospect's wants and has sold over $5 million from one sales letter I wrote in 1998.

I'll walk you through the exercise I run on any piece of copy: strip the adjectives and adverbs, look at the nouns and verbs, and ask if you're actually saying anything real. Then read it as your prospect and ask whether that's how they'd want to be introduced to your message.

I also give you the people worth studying: Jeffrey Lant's Cash Copy to start, plus Dan Kennedy, Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, John Carlton, and Brian Keith Voiles. Nearly every dollar I've made in 30 years came from something I wrote or said.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/027-90-of-copywriting-comes-down-to-4-words/

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If you want one place to start with behavioral psychology, go down the path of social psychology. The most cited name in it is Robert Cialdini, and I read his book Influence back in 1996. There's a direct through line from that moment to everything I do today.

Cialdini calls them the six weapons of influence, things hardwired into us that shape our decisions without us knowing. Reciprocity is the first. Do something nice for someone and they feel they owe you one back.

That's why I lean so hard on giving away free books. It starts a relationship, and it stacks with commitment and consistency, where once you've raised your hand for something you feel pulled to keep moving in that direction.

Technical skills go obsolete. Everything I learned about building sites in Microsoft FrontPage is useless now. These psychology principles are durable, so I'd start with Influence and Pre-Suasion, then Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/025-the-psychology-behind-why-people-buy/

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The second cornerstone is creating mental models, frameworks you can overlay on a situation to give yourself a shortcut. Michael Gerber's franchise prototype was the first one I was ever exposed to.

My model was simple. Create a guide, run ads to get people to raise their hand, then treat them like someone who's going to buy and give them valuable information. I've since learned that's roughly a 50% chance over the next two years.

I'm not trying to convince anyone up front. I'm identifying the invisible prospects who are already thinking about buying, then letting reciprocity, liking, and commitment and consistency do their work. Those eight profit activators grew out of this exact thinking.

There's a line I love: a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an idea. Take whatever you do, build your own model, document it, and you'll trust that anything you run through it has a better shot.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/026-turning-buyer-psychology-into-a-marketing-model/

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A man named Jerry Ballinger shaped a lot of my thinking when Eban and I were in our late twenties. Looking back, everything I've done traces to four cornerstones I picked up around him.

First is behavioral psychology, understanding why people do what they do so nothing baffles you. Second is building mental models and frameworks, like knowing music theory so your ideas fit together instead of being random.

Third is copywriting, which I really mean as communication in every form, speaking and writing your ideas so people accept them and change. Fourth is design, framing your message so there's zero friction between your idea and the world.

AI can help with all of it now, but the thing that hasn't changed is behavioral psychology. People still do what's in their own self-interest, and if you frame your ideas around that, you win.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/024-master-these-4-marketing-skills-first/

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San Francisco, 1996, sitting across the bay from the city with Eban Pagan. This is where I first felt income showing up that didn't come from my own effort.

Eban and I mapped out a system where every piece, the ads, the voicemail, the follow-up calls, the newsletters, could be done by other people. The less I did myself, the more I could actually make.

What most people really want isn't to do the work. They just want someone ready to buy or sell. So the goal grew from replacing me to replacing the client too, doing everything for them.

Back then it was outsourcing to other humans. Now it's AI, which I couldn't have imagined in 1996. Same core model though: build something that runs without you, then duplicate it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/023-the-less-i-do-the-richer-i-get/

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The foundational thing behind everything I've built is a duplicatable model. Michael Gerber taught me to treat the business as the product, something separate from me, not something I identify with.

My guide to Halton Hills was one core unit I could copy again and again. Toronto and Beyond was just that same thing duplicated, the way Ray Kroc built Hamburger University to prototype every McDonald's.

I'm great at getting something scale-ready, cracking the code the first time. I'm not the guy who wants to sing the same song every night on tour, and that's the first place I can see my ADHD wiring, looking back.

Most businesses live in a five-mile bubble. If you can make something work in one market, you've got the key to duplicate it. So look at your own business and ask what parts you could copy.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/022-if-youre-in-business-have-adhd-watch-this/

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I'm 30 years into journaling every day, and I've been reading back through journal number one from 1996. Some patterns in me haven't changed, and neither has human nature.

Back then, the realtors I was coaching expected to run an ad today and sell a house this weekend. I had to learn something harder, that investing time to build a system with a future payoff beats chasing the immediate result.

What struck me is that sellers wanted the exact same thing in 1996 as they do now. Sell fast, get the most money, least hassle. It's the same bet Jeff Bezos made building Amazon around what people would always want.

If you keep people focused on the result they really want, and you handle whatever it takes to get them there, that hasn't changed in 30 years and I don't think it'll change in the next 30.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/021-these-3-principles-built-a-2-trillion-company/

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I'm a creature of habit, and going through 150 journals made me see how much of life is a kind of Groundhog Day. What kept jumping out at me was the growing wake of intellectual property I've built up over the years.

Cold calls work. That's not the problem. The problem is there's no residual value, so the second you stop, the results stop. Michael Gerber's E-Myth taught me to put things into a format I could use again and again, which is how I built the Halton Hills guide and licensed it to 40 agents.

One project in this journal was the Home Buyer College, a set of education pieces we mailed to people who'd buy a home in the next year or two. It started as physical mail and became the email follow-up sequences we still use today. Eben Pagan and I would mine Cosmo covers for headline formulas to make it all land.

The lesson I keep seeing is how valuable it is to package and document what you know. Every piece builds on the last, and 30 years later they're still creating value in the world.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/020-cold-calling-worked-thats-why-i-stopped-doing-it/

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This one's a full walkthrough. I take you through exactly what I'd do if I walked into your business tomorrow and took over the marketing, starting with the before unit, the part that finds people who want what you do.

I'd begin with fresh eyes and one hard question. What could you do if you only got paid when the client got the result? That's where the real money is, and it's how the Koch brothers grew their company by investing in the outcome alongside their partners.

From there it's selecting a single target market at the highest level, then figuring out whether your prospects are visible or invisible. The best way I know to get invisible prospects to raise their hand is to offer a book, so I walk through my five title formulas and the word palette I use to build them.

Once someone raises their hand, I show how I think about them as an asset, why about half will act within 100 weeks, and how to greet them and make an offer so easy they can't help but take the cookie. It's the whole profit activator model in one sitting.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/019-if-i-ran-your-marketing-heres-exactly-what-id-do/

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I've kept a journal every day for more than 30 years, and it's without question the most important habit in my life. As an introvert, writing is how I think out loud and have a conversation with myself.

Journal number one is where I first met the Myers-Briggs types and found out I'm an INTP. Knowing how you're wired is an advantage. Over the years I added the Kolbe and Working Genius, and the lesson hasn't changed. Don't fight your natural tendencies, change your environment to support them.

So instead of forcing myself to be tidy, I ask my mind a guiding question. I write down the question, paint a picture of exactly what the ideal looks like, then list every idea I can think of to get there. Your mind loves to solve problems if you give it the question and a pencil.

I've been using that guiding-question format for 30 years, and it evolves into something even better a few journals from now. More to come.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/018-how-i-tricked-my-adhd-brain-into-building-my-business-life/

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