Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

Up until 1996 I was a practitioner. I used marketing to build my own real estate business, but I wasn't teaching it to anyone yet. Going through journal number one, I can see the moment that started to change.

One of the first times I applied what I knew outside real estate was helping a friend in Ottawa who placed contract programmers. Instead of chasing companies for job openings, we ran an ad that gathered the programmers first, then walked into the telephony companies with the people already in hand.

That's the first principle I keep coming back to. If you help enough other people get what they want, you can get anything you want. It's why finding buyers first makes you valuable to any realtor who needs listings.

This same journal also holds the day I first walked into the Strategic Coach office and picked up Dan Sullivan's How the Best Get Better, before I'd ever met him. It's funny to see where these things start.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/017-the-1996-marketing-idea-that-changed-my-life/

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When I got started in real estate, all I did was make cold calls. People actually answered the phone back then, but I realized fast that it was a hamster wheel. Take me out of it and there was no business left.

Michael Gerber's The E-Myth flipped that for me. I learned to work on the business instead of in it, so I built a lead-getting system. I made a guide to Halton Hills real estate prices that let people learn about the area without driving out to see it, and an old agent's box of floor plans gave me the idea.

That guide, plus a Market Watch newsletter I mailed every two weeks, brought in leads while I did nothing. I licensed the whole system to 40 agents across Toronto and beyond, and that's what led me to Joe Stump and to meeting Eben Pagan.

This is where my life with direct response really began, and it's why I haven't made a cold call since.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/016-i-havent-made-a-cold-call-in-35-years-heres-how/

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I just turned 60, and to mark it I went back to the Eagle Ridge Mall in Lake Wales where I sat with my very first journal in 1996. I've written in a journal every single day since then, and there are now hundreds of them.

Back in 1996 there was no Google, no YouTube, no Facebook, and Apple was failing. Looking back, I can see my whole life as a series of vector-changing moments, the handful of times something happened and I ended up pointed in a completely new direction.

The biggest one took me off the tennis court. I trained at Rick Macci's academy alongside future champions, but at 22 I realized I didn't want to still be grinding on tour at 30. A story a former player told me on a boat in Vero Beach made me pivot to business, and that's how I ended up back in Florida starting this journaling adventure.

This is the start of a series. I'm opening journal number one and working through all of them, pulling out the insights that still hold true and the opportunities I saw but didn't act on. Hope you'll come along.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/015-i-journaled-everyday-for-30-years-heres-what-i-know-so-far/

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What does it actually mean to establish a brand? As a direct response guy focused on results, I've always felt the tension with the branding camp. Then a Ray Dalio video on the economic engine clicked something for me. A market is just the sum of individual microtransactions, one person trading money with another. A brand works the same way.

So here's my definition: a brand is a buying reflex affecting now decisions. The only time anyone can buy is now. Buying intention and buying history feed into it, but you can't bank those today. Coca-Cola and Budweiser have simply built that reflex in billions of individual minds over time.

That's actually hopeful. The microbrewery in Punxsutawney owns the reflex in its own town, often just through proximity, recency, and a clear message. Figure out the exact moment someone chooses, then make your reflex the one they lean toward.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/014-establishing-a-brand/

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In less than 90 minutes, Joe Polish and I are going live on Zoom with Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy for their new book Who Not How, so join us at ilovemarketingzoom.com at 1pm Eastern on Friday, October 30th.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/013-who-not-how-zoom/

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I'm in Amsterdam on our summer world tour, and I just saw Lee Iacocca passed away. It reminded me what a master target marketer he was. He put the Mustang in front of the largest baby boom in history right as the leading edge turned 18 in 1964, exactly the young, sporty, affordable car they wanted. Twenty years later he gave those same people the minivan at 38 and turned Chrysler around.

Demography is an inevitability. If something appeals to a huge group and there are millions more right behind them every year, you've got a hit on your hands.

Look at today. We've got 10,000-plus people turning 60 every day for the next 20 years and a massive transfer of wealth underway, while the youngest millennials are just turning 19. Ask what those groups will inevitably need or want, pick one, and get in front of it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/012-lee-iacocca-target-market/

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I'm in Toronto starting a Breakthrough Blueprint, and over coffee with Ross O'Laughlin we got onto ideas versus execution. I've always defended the value of ideas in a world that fetishizes execution. People say ideas without execution are worthless, which is true, but you can't execute nothing either. They're paired.

Grant that something is being executed flawlessly. The only thing that can improve it is executing a better idea. Ross showed me a campaign humming along at a steady opt-in rate, then he had a brainstorm, executed it with the same precision, and the opt-ins exploded. That's the power of an idea.

As I said in the execution arbitrage episode, execution is becoming the commodity. AI and machines can execute anything. Where we win is coming up with the ideas someone has to program the machine to run. That's our trump card.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/011-ideas-versus-execution/

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I'm at dinner in Phoenix with Annie Lala the night before our email workshop, and we got onto how you capture ideas and get them into the world. Annie shared something that stuck with me: to experience love, you have to be willing to experience pain. The heart is a muscle, and the more heartbreak you turn into strength, the more capacity you have to love.

Most people run from that feeling in a relationship, the urge to give up mid-conflict. But those are the last three reps, the ones that hurt most and make the most difference. Stay in, keep talking, and you turn conflict into intimacy.

The conversation itself is the lesson in the other thing we were discussing. We spoke this out loud, recorded it, and in minutes it's a podcast anyone can learn from. Talking is the fastest way to get your best ideas out into the world.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/010-love-is-pain/

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I'm outside a packed Starbucks in Orlando, sitting comfortably in the sun while the line curls around the building, because I ordered and paid from the app. It reminded me of a New York Times piece called The Tyranny of Convenience, which argued convenience is the most powerful and underrated force guiding our decisions.

The easiest way always wins. It's the same reason I record these podcasts by telling Siri to start, then speaking the title and description, and it's on iTunes before my drink is ready.

So look at everything you do and ask how you can make it as convenient as possible for the people you work with. Do that, and watch them come straight to you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/009-the-tyranny-of-convenience/

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I woke up with words for something I've been watching for a while: execution arbitrage. Right now you can get almost anything executed on demand, at scale, which means the idea person who sees how pieces fit together is positioned to win. Kylie Jenner runs a $350 million cosmetics company with seven core people because everyone else, the manufacturing, the e-commerce, the distribution, is outsourced.

You see it everywhere once you look. Airbnb and Uber are just interfaces between people who want an outcome and people with the capacity to deliver it. My own Getting Listings program for real estate agents works the same way, push a button and we handle all the execution.

Execution is becoming the commodity. So look at the outcomes your business is paid for, ask how much of that could be handed to someone else, and get paid for the bundle. That's the arbitrage.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/008-execution-arbitrage/

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