Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

Good morning. It's Monday, and my Tesla is driving me to the video shoot.

And today I realized something.

I've posted 100 videos in a row. A hundred daily videos on YouTube.

You've probably seen the other videos. I posted daily for 30 days, here's what happened. Here's how much YouTube paid me.

So I'm going to give you the full behind the scenes.

Because it's one of the number one questions I get, even from people who know me.

Is it worth it?

What people are really asking is... should I do it myself?

I'll tell you unequivocally. Yes. Absolutely worth it.

And how much has YouTube paid me?

Zero dollars. So far.

When I started, I had a channel I'd put up years ago that about 60 people had found.

Now it's around 1,800 subscribers.

We went from 60 or 80 views in the first 24 hours to routinely getting 500 or 800. Some have gone over 10,000.

But here's how I look at it.

I've set this up as a daily part of my life.

It all started because I've been journaling for over 30 years.

When I turned 60 in May, I started looking back through my old journals. What was going on 10 years ago? 20? All the way back?

And it was pretty cool to see things that started as a thought in my journal... and the path of what they became.

So the daily thing became simple. Go back to journal number one and trace the last 30 years.

What was I thinking then? What's still applicable today? Whatever became of it?

Here's what I've picked up from talking to other YouTubers.

The hard part is ideation. What are you going to talk about?

Thankfully I've got 160-plus journals, kept daily for over 30 years.

A gold mine of ideas and insights.

I'm calling this my Regis Philbin era.

I read a profile of Regis once. He lived across the street from the studio where they shot Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.

He'd get dressed at home, have breakfast, walk across the street, get touched up in hair and makeup, pick up Kathie Lee from her dressing room... and at 9 o'clock exactly, they were live.

By 10 o'clock he was done.

And his whole day was about filling himself up with things to talk about in the host chat.

That's what I've set up for myself.

Breakfast. The journal's open.

And by the way, 100 videos in, we've just started journal number seven. We're not going to run out of material.

I look through and find the idea for the day.

Camera on at 9 o'clock. I talk for 8 to 12 minutes. And it's up every day at 11am.

No editing. No formatting.

I laughed when I found out the YouTube consultants have a name for this format.

The grandpa method.

Well... at 60, I'm qualified to be a grandpa. I'm not one, but I'm qualified.

And that's the idea.

I'm building a collection of daily insights from 30 years of journaling.

I don't expect people to watch every episode in order. Some do, and I'm grateful for that.

But it's set up so the right people discover it. Real experience from actually doing things in the field for over 30 years.

A curated wall of 8 to 12 minute videos, each with a headline. If you're interested in that thing, you click on it.

In the beginning people would see a video with a hundred views and think, holy cow, that seems low.

I have zero ego attached to that.

I'm doing it because I want this collection out there. It's intrinsically rewarding.

So I'm not counting on YouTube to make it worth it.

What I am doing is gathering the right audience.

A very narrow band of applied marketing wisdom, from things I've actually done.

And here's the part that matters if you're going to do something like this.

You have to have a path for how people join your world.

Every video I do ends with an invitation to join me on Friday for the 50 Minute Profit Finder. Live on Zoom at 1 o'clock.

We go through a process to find the hidden profits in your business.

And some of those people choose to join our community. The Breakthrough Blueprint... all eight Profit Activators, my life's work, together in one place.

So YouTube has paid me $0.

But every day the community grows. People who aren't in my world yet opt in at 50minuteprofitfinder.com. Some come on Friday. Some continue on.

And the monetization of that is pretty significant.

So if you've got the inkling this is something you'd like to do...

Come on in. The water's fine.

The world needs your insight and your take on things.

From one YouTuber to another... go for it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/117-i-posted-a-daily-video-for-100-days-heres-how-much-youtube-paid-me-so-far/

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Good morning. A whole different view today... I'm in my dining room.

I've got journal number seven open. September to November, 1997.

And we're still in My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

Claude wrote it in 1927. I first read it in 1992 or '93.

And rereading it now, I can see exactly where it all seeped in.

Here's a line that stuck with me.

Fine writing is a detriment.

Because it suggests an effort to sell. And every effort to sell creates corresponding resistance.

Salesmanship in print is exactly the same as salesmanship in person.

So one of the best things you can ever master is writing conversationally. Just like you'd talk to someone face to face.

Here's the test I give people.

Imagine you ran into someone at Starbucks.

Could you picture yourself saying what's in your ad, or your email, to them? One on one?

Read your stuff out loud. You'll hear exactly where you stumble.

Now here's the follow-on thought from Claude.

The only way to sell is to seem to offer super service.

Most advertising does the opposite.

Especially in real estate. I'm the top agent. Look at everything I've done. Look at my cool logo.

It's all trying to position you as a superstar.

Claude's saying you'd be better off as a super servant.

The very first real thing I did in my real estate business was a guide to Halton Hills real estate prices.

This was before the internet. If you wanted to know what a house in Georgetown cost, you had to drive out there or flip through the real estate magazines.

I positioned it like the teacher's edition of your algebra book. Here's what you actually get for your money.

And we kept evolving it.

Instead of convincing people to work with us, we'd offer daily tours of homes. At 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock.

See, nobody wants anyone going out of their way for them.

Think about when someone asks if you'd like a cup of tea.

What do you say? "Are you having one?"

Because if you're having one, sure. But don't boil the kettle just for me.

Daily tours feel like the kettle's already boiled. It's happening anyway. Hop on.

And 99% of the time it's a private tour with just us.

Same thing with e-bikes. Not "buy an e-bike from us." Here's an e-bike catalog with every option and every price.

A bathroom vanity catalog for someone who's renovating.

And the next step is never "choose us."

It's another valuable service. In a short, personal email.

"Hi John, we're doing e-bike demos this Saturday at the bike shop. Would you like to join us?"

That doesn't feel like marketing. It feels like one person offering something useful to another.

Or take the mortgage side.

Most lenders shout get pre-approved.

That's in their interest, not yours. And anytime your approval is in question, there's resistance.

So we offered a free home loan report instead.

We monitor hundreds of loan programs to find the best zero down, lowest rate and lowest payment options... and put them all together for you.

A pre-approval feels like the banker looking you up and down from the other side of the desk.

A home loan report feels like he's come round to your side of the desk, going through the options with you.

So here's the takeaway.

Talk to people one person at a time.

Only offer valuable service. No convincing language.

Be helpful, hospitable and conversational...

And it can't help but work out for you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/116-the-secret-to-writing-so-people-respond/

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Good morning. No cameraman today, but the show must go on.

We're still in My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

And one of the things Claude was absolutely known for was sampling.

Giving people the experience.

Instead of asking people to take a chance on him, he took a chance on them.

Because he knew something...

If you have a good product, and it gets the result you say it's going to get, you're going to win.

So here's how he did it.

He'd test in small towns first. By direct mail, which is very controlled. Before ever going out to mass distribution.

Every household got a letter with a certificate. A coupon they could take to the druggist and exchange for a free bottle of Liquozone.

And here's the clever part.

He'd go to the druggist first and say, every household in your town is about to get this letter. They're going to come to you for it. And we'll pay you 100% of the retail price for every one.

Now the druggist kind of has to carry it. Because if people come in and he doesn't have it, they go to the druggist down the street.

One offer. Users AND distribution.

I've used this in so many ways.

A free facial. A free mosquito treatment.

Because you know it's going to work. And you know there's a really good chance they'll want to keep getting that result.

See, sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody a result than it is to convince them to give you money for that result.

That's not a natural instinct for a business owner.

You're proud of what you do. You want to protect your price. You don't want to feel like you're giving stuff away.

So what do most people do?

They discount. Twenty percent off. Buy one, get one.

Think about what that actually says...

You go first. You buy something from me, and then I'll do something nice for you.

That's hedging your bet.

When you set aside your own selfish desires and play the long game, it's a different story.

And by long game I don't mean years. I mean the next purchase.

For a facial, that's 30 days.

With cafes, we did a Best Birthday Week Ever coffee card. Free coffee every day of your birthday week. We even stretched it to the whole birthday month.

Because getting somebody started as a long-term customer is worth way more than protecting the profit on that first sale.

And here's the other thing. Doing it this way, you keep your price intact.

It's not a percentage off. It's a real thing with real value.

We've done a $25 gift card for restaurants. A $100 gift card for microblading.

Imagine you're a customer of a residential trash service. And tucked in with your statement is a $25 gift certificate to one of the nicer restaurants in town.

That feels like real money.

A lot more than 20% off ever will.

So here's the question for you.

What's the result you could give somebody that lets them sample what you've got?

Before you offer a discount... ask how you could get them to try you just once.

Because once is usually all it takes.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/115-before-you-offer-a-discount/

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Good morning. We're still in My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

And I keep calling it My Life Applying My Life in Advertising, because every time I reread this book I see the seed of something I actually did.

Stuff I made money with. Sitting right there in a principle Claude wrote down over a hundred years ago.

Here's the one on my mind today.

Nobody cares about your selfish desires.

Nobody is interested in helping you do something that's an advantage to you.

To succeed we have to care more for serving than selling.

You can see the whole seed of Jay Abraham right there. The strategy of preeminence. Taking on a kind of moral responsibility that this person gets the best outcome they possibly can.

And sometimes that means you have to charge more.

Not less. More.

Because a cheaper price that doesn't actually get them the result isn't serving them at all.

So stop positioning your product against the money they have available.

Start positioning it against the outcome. The bigger win that comes from using it.

Now, here's the line from Claude that this all hangs on.

Ask a person to take a chance on you, and you're met with resistance. But offer to take a chance on him, and the way is easy.

Read that twice.

Because that's everything.

Think about Money Making Websites. Five times more expensive than a regular website.

I knew they worked. I knew if somebody did the things I outlined, they'd have success.

But asking them to take a chance on me? To hand over the money and hope? That's a fight.

So I flipped it.

I created an offer where I was one hundred percent taking a chance on them.

Claude called it a proposition which no reasonable person could refuse.

Hormozi has the same thing now. An offer so good they'd feel dumb saying no.

That's the extreme version. But it's the same truth underneath.

And here's what happened when I put my outcome on the line for their outcome.

It stopped being about convincing anybody.

It became about me selecting the right person.

Because I was so confident, I got to have requirements.

You had to be in real estate at least a year or two.

You had to live in a town of more than twenty thousand people.

You had to have time to personally work with buyers and sellers. Not shuffle them off to someone on your team.

See what that does?

An irresistible offer draws people with zero friction. And then I get to be picky.

That was rocket fuel.

So here's the shift for you.

Stop asking what price they'll accept.

Start asking what would actually need to happen for them to get the result.

Price it accordingly.

And then reverse the risk. Not reduce it. Reverse it.

Put your outcome on the line for theirs.

That one move changed everything for me.

It could do the same for you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/114-how-to-make-it-ridiculously-easy-for-people-to-say-yes/

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Good morning. Maybe the deepest lesson I ever took from Claude Hopkins is this.

People buy things as individuals.

One person is the unit of measure. That's who we're trying to attract. One.

And here's his line from My Life in Advertising.

In a wide reaching campaign, we're too apt to regard people in the mass. We must get down to the individuals. We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person.

Think about basketball for a second.

There's man to man, and there's the zone.

And the danger with modern funnels is that they play the zone. Everybody gets shuffled through the same process. You're hoping something appeals to somebody.

But there's no such thing as a national market.

Every market is local. Every purchase is made by an individual.

So what did Claude do about it?

Catalogs.

Instead of running ads to convince people to buy, they offered a catalog. And the catalog got people who were interested in a category to raise their hand.

Then they treated each one as an individual.

He worked with a company selling sewing machines. And a woman writes in. She's got that machine and nothing else on her mind.

The general plan was to send everybody the same catalog, all inquiries alike.

Claude said no. Every inquirer should be treated like a prospect who walked into the store.

And I say that all the time.

Imagine your opt-in page is a magic portal. Somebody hits submit to download your book, and they get transported straight into your office.

They stick their head in and say, hi, I'm here about the sewing machine catalog.

Now you know exactly who that person is.

So here's what I did with it.

We had a product called Money Making Websites. Websites for realtors. Five times more expensive than what they could get anywhere else.

And I did not try to convince anybody to buy a website.

I ran ads offering a free book about growing your real estate business.

Because that told me who was interested in growing. Not who wanted a website. Who wanted to grow.

And the next day, a note. Hi Josh, welcome aboard. Here's the book. What's your mailing address? I'd like to send you our welcome kit.

Simple. But now we're in a dialogue.

I'm offering to send them something else, free.

And as people replied with an address, I'd look at my map of where our clients already were.

Josh is in Lakeland. So I'd say, oh, you're in Lakeland. Do you know Julie Matthews? I worked with her on livinginwinterhaven.com, and I'm looking for someone in Lakeland. Would you have time to work with a couple of new buyer clients a month?

And look what just happened.

I know he wants to grow, because he downloaded the book.

I know he's in Lakeland, because he told me his address.

And now I'm just asking, would you have time to work with a couple of new buyers?

I never once explained how the website works.

I'm bypassing the whole thing.

All conversationally.

And this is the genesis of the 9-word email. The spear email. Short, personal, expecting a reply.

Email treated as a dialogue. Inviting a response. Not broadcasting a stack of pre-written messages that shuffle people through a machine.

Now we're bonding one person at a time.

We did the same with the birthday postcards.

Cold email, just asking, do you do birthday parties?

And that pulls a yes, we do.

Then, I've been working with Roy's Restaurant in Sarasota on some birthday marketing, and I'm looking for someone in Tampa. Could you accommodate five or six birthday parties next month?

We never mention what we want to sell them.

We just engage, one on one, about what they're interested in.

That lesson is one of the deepest things I ever took from Claude.

Stop broadcasting.

Talk to one person.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/113-how-to-make-your-marketing-feel-like-a-one-on-one-conversation/

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Good morning. We're still going through My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.

And back in 1997, journal number seven, this was a recurring theme. I kept writing about the books I was going deep on.

So I'm calling this little series My Life Applying My Life in Advertising.

And here's a line from Claude that has shaped so much of what I do.

A good article is its own best salesman.

Think about what he meant.

The salespeople selling door to door, in a closed room, the thing they always did was sample.

Claude said it's uphill work to sell goods in print or in person without samples.

See, if you've got a product you know is going to get the result, a product people are going to love... you can feel confident letting them experience it.

Let them prove it to themselves.

I've done this again and again.

Take the mosquito control.

Awareness is already sky high. We all know mosquitoes exist. We're all annoyed by them.

But we've also all been disappointed. The citronella candles. The blue light zappers. None of it really works.

And then the Mosquito Authority comes and treats your yard, and instantly there's nothing. They stay gone for three weeks.

I live in Florida. My courtyard is a breeding ground.

And when they treat it? Nothing.

So all we have to do is get somebody to know that for themselves.

Especially when it's a recurring thing. A restaurant you want people to come back to. A food product. A SaaS subscription.

Getting them to experience it for themselves is the best proof there is.

Here's what strikes me about Claude's world.

Those companies would never dream of sending a salesman out without samples.

But they'd spend fortunes on advertising to urge people to buy without ever seeing or trying it.

And persuasion alone is vastly more expensive.

So I evolved this into one of my go-to moves.

If there's some way to get somebody started, and preferably get them a result in advance... that's the best advertising you can do.

So much so that I made my own little rule out of it.

Sometimes it's less expensive to get somebody a result than it is to convince them to give you money to get that result.

That was the whole idea behind Project Cyrus.

We all have an unlimited appetite for results. For wonderful things in our lives.

And once somebody has the good experience, they keep going.

Once you've lived mosquito free, you don't want to go back.

So instead of convincing somebody, give them a free experience. Let the experience convince them.

It removes all the risk.

We've done it with free facials.

Clients have built out entire aesthetic spas on this. The incremental cost of one facial is almost nothing once you've got the chairs, the staff, the equipment.

We've even given two free facials. They come once, they book the second, and then they book into a package.

You've built a client for life.

Same with restaurants. Come for free. Or here's a $25 gift card, come experience it.

And at the highest level, that was the whole basis of Money Making Websites.

Come in, I'll build your website, I'll show you how it all works, I'll teach you everything. And you pay when you get the result.

There's an unlimited appetite for that.

And this whole thing traces back a hundred years. To Claude Hopkins in 1927.

If you've got something that gets results, something people love...

Stop convincing.

Give them the result first.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/112-proving-is-more-convincing-than-convincing/

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Good morning. And I'm excited, because this kicks off a little series I've been promising.

All those books I was reading in 1996, 97, even earlier in my journey.

Because by 1997 I'd only been turned on to direct response advertising for five or six years. My true marketing education starts around 1991, 92.

And 30 years later there's one book I still read at least once a year.

My Life in Advertising, by Claude Hopkins.

If you follow any modern marketer worth following, there's a through line that runs all the way back to Claude.

I learned about him from Jay Abraham. And Jay is kind of the modern day Claude Hopkins. One of the greatest to ever live. I owe him a lot.

So we'll call this little series My Life Applying My Life in Advertising.

And right there in chapter one, on the very first page, is one of the things that has guided everything I do.

A conservative approach to advertising.

Here's the great thing about direct response. It's predictable. It's formulaic. Once you find an appeal that works, it's durable. You've seen the ads I made 30 years ago that still run today.

But they only work because I tested them.

And Claude has this line. All advertising disasters are due to rashness, needless and inexcusable.

Not failures. He's careful about that. We all attempt things that can't be done, because we're dealing with human nature. Wants, prejudices, idiosyncrasies.

But disasters? Those come from incaution.

And I've seen it again and again.

People come to me and say, we spent $70,000 on Meta ads. Or YouTube. Or direct mail. And it didn't work.

And honestly, it makes me cringe.

Because I can't imagine it. Direct response works right away if you've got a winner.

So here's how this evolved for me.

I think of new marketing almost like a pharmaceutical model. You're testing new drugs, so you run clinical trials.

And thanks to Meta, you can find out immediately whether you've got a winner or a dud.

We do it in four stages.

Stage one is the $100 test.

Because to sell anybody anything, first you have to generate a lead. Find somebody who might be interested. That's the bottom line. Do you have an appeal people will respond to?

So we come up with a book title. A report. A catalog. Some offer. Can we identify the invisible prospects and get them to come to us?

Here's a recent one. I use Winter Haven as my little laboratory. No need to do anything grand.

We made a book called Air Fried Carnivore. Beautiful cover, an air fryer with a bounty of meat in it.

We go to a meat shop here every day, so the idea was to run this and generate business for the shop.

And the test is simple. $20 a day for five days. A hundred dollars.

And right away you can see. How many people respond. What the leads cost.

We could generate those leads for $1.68 each. Sixty-eight leads out of a hundred dollar test.

That's enough to move to stage two.

Stage two, we generate 100 leads. Should cost less than $200. Then we watch their first 100 hours. Are they opening emails? Clicking? Replying? Watching a video?

We want 50, 60, 70% engaged. Only then do we move on.

Stage three, we watch 100 days. Maybe $2,500. Twenty-five dollars a day for 100 days.

Do the leads stay stable? What happens to conversion from day one to day 100? That's the critical part.

Generate the lead. Spot the five star prospects. Educate and motivate them across those 100 days. And you get conversions.

Then it becomes a scale ready algorithm.

And it all started with Claude. Never do anything until you know the outcome.

Once you crack a code, it keeps working. I don't know why, but it's one of the most amazing things. Ads that run for years at the same cost per lead. Predictable.

And here's the funny part.

Somewhere along the way, entrepreneurism got equated with risk taking. Big bold moves.

And the more successful people get, the more daring they get. They've got money, so they'll waste it on something big because they think they need a bold move.

It almost seems ridiculous to walk into a multimillion dollar company and say, let's run a $100 test.

But that's exactly how you build a fail proof system.

You limit your downside. The winners are going to be the winners. And you'll know in a week either way.

Don't bet the big money.

Spend the hundred first.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/111-before-you-spend-thousands-on-marketing-run-this-100-test/

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Good morning. It's Tickle Trunk Monday.

And I was thinking about yesterday, when I was going through all those old school tools.

Print ads. Recorded messages. Direct mail. Then the phone.

No digital anything.

And here's what hit me.

We were building funnels back then. There just wasn't an Internet.

The psychology of staged attention... that was the big win.

And honestly? I think we had more immersive attention back then.

Fewer distractions. Fewer options.

We're so used to TikTok now. One little scroll away from the next dopamine hit.

But when you're flipping through a home magazine, there's only 30 or 40 pages. Not much pulling you away.

So when you drop a pattern interrupt in there, a direct response ad in a sea of ads that all look the same... you get people.

And I found one in my Julie Matthews file.

Remember Julie? My little prototype lab here in Winter Haven. Everything I was developing for Realtors, I tested right here first.

This ad was for the USDA zero down program. Government money.

Running it back in 1996.

And picture it. You're in the homes magazine, everything looks the same, and then...

Free recorded message reveals how to use free money from the federal government to save thousands when you buy your first home.

Then the callouts. Why saving for a down payment doesn't work. How to buy a home with absolutely none of your own cash.

Same chassis I still use to this day. The book, plus the callouts underneath it.

So they call. They listen to the recorded message. And when they leave their name, we mail them the book.

I found the actual words. The whole explanation of how USDA works, pictures of homes, walking them through getting a $150,000 house with zero down.

And tucked in with it, a fax-back form for a free Market Watch newsletter. Updates on every new home that hit the market.

Remember, there was no other way to get that information. Pre realtor.com. Pre Zillow. Pre Internet.

We were giving people an experience of the thing they actually wanted.

And we sent renters little letters with real pictures of homes.

This one's dated September 1997. Thirty years ago now.

Dear Mr. Jones, I'm writing because I want you to stop paying rent and buy a home instead. You're probably paying at least $450 a month, and you could be living in a house like the one in the picture for the same or less.

Call this number and you'll hear a 24 hour recorded message that explains exactly how. No obligation. You'll be glad you called.

Signed, Julie.

And here's what gets me.

Attaching what you do to a government program. Secret information that gives people an advantage. Packaged up so you can offer it as information.

It's not just real estate. We're real estate heavy because that was my whole world back then.

But I've run the same thinking on reverse mortgages. Social Security. Medicare.

Even the ridiculous ones. A client who works with scrap metal dealers, some special IC-DISC program. I have no idea what those words mean.

But I took the same chassis and dropped it right on top. There's government money you're missing because you don't know the secret. Here's how to get it.

Learning the mechanics of this matters.

Back then people had to want it enough to pick up the phone and listen. That earned us a couple minutes. Then the booklet earned us thirty. Then the weekly update kept the relationship going.

Such a durable chassis.

And nothing has changed about the psychology.

Now we run lead ads. It shows up in the feed, one button, the form's already filled in. We get the email automatically. Almost no friction.

But lots of competition.

So you have to be genuinely valuable. Give people information worth having.

Start packing your own tickle trunk.

So you've got something exciting to pull out 30 years from now.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/110-the-internet-changed-everything-except-why-people-actually-buy/

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Good morning. Here we are again, journal number seven, 1997.

And something new shows up on the page today.

For the first time in all of these journals... the Internet.

Back then only about 17% of people in the country were online. Email was the one thing that actually worked. The one thing that delivered.

But here on the page is where a domain first enters my life. livinginwinterhaven.com.

And I can see now, looking back, that almost everything I ever built was just two or three things stitched together. What I was reading. What I was experiencing. The tools that happened to be around.

Here's what I was chewing on.

As a Realtor, only about 5% of the people in Winter Haven are going to buy or sell a home this year. Maybe 7%.

So most of the town is not your customer this year.

But they all own homes.

And they're going to need all kinds of things over the course of the year.

See the shift?

The transaction is a sliver. The relationship is the whole year.

So I started thinking about advocacy. Being the one person who helps somebody get through everything that comes with owning a home in this town.

And I mentioned the seven categories that every budget in America contains.

Home. Auto. Food. Health. Kids. Money. And me.

That's every budget. All of it.

And one of the most reliable strategic moves you can make... is to elevate yourself to leader of a category.

We saw it with the wedding guides. 101 Great Places to Have an Outdoor Wedding in Toronto. The party rental company was just one piece of it.

But take it all the way down. It's one bride and one groom, walking an 18 month process.

A venue. Flowers. Catering. A dress. A limo. A DJ.

Many, many people. One relationship guiding them through.

That's what I wanted for real estate.

Not just an advocate for the buying and selling. An advocate for living in Winter Haven.

Because it's the relationships that matter.

And think about where we are now.

Everybody's asking, do we even need Realtors? Is AI just going to sell the house?

And maybe. Maybe the individual jobs get easier.

But the collective... being the guide, having the discernment, the wisdom, piecing all the details together... that's not going anywhere.

The opposite. It gets more valuable.

Here's the thing I want all the time. I say it to the home services companies I work with.

I want to live in my house like I'm a guest in your house.

I just want to live there. And I want everything else handled.

And I'm not alone in that.

So picture one person who steps up. Almost like estate management, but for regular homeownership. Managed ownership for the people who live in your town.

That's a business all by itself. Outside the transaction entirely.

Gathering those relationships. Directing people to whatever goods, services, improvements they'll need as a homeowner. Introducing them to other people who serve the way you serve.

And it would grow the number of transactions you do too.

So I'm not giving up on this idea.

It was true 30 years ago. It's just as true today. And it's going to matter even more over the next 30.

Stop selling the transaction.

Become the person they call all year.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/109-the-real-money-is-in-the-relationship-not-the-transaction/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

Good morning. We're heating up, working our way through the journals.

Journal 7. Summer of 1997.

And what jumped out at me today was a heading I'd written to myself.

What are the tools I know, or could know, how to use?

Because here's the thing about a tool.

Once you know how to do something, it ratchets in.

It goes in the toolbox. And it stays there. Ready to draw on whenever you need it.

So I made an inventory.

And what struck me reading it back... how many of these still work today.

First on the list. Direct response display ads.

The fastest way to get in front of the right audience.

Want to reach the whole town? Georgetown had two weekly papers, Wednesday and Friday. Run an ad, everybody sees it.

Want to reach specifically interested people? A page in a targeted magazine.

And now we take all of this for granted with Meta.

Meta is the new general display advertising. Same as putting out flyers to the whole population... except now you can target exactly who you want.

Here's the beauty of a display ad. When you find one that works, you run it again and again and again.

We had the book, How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast.

In 1998 we contracted the newspaper to run the same half page ad every single week for a year. Paid it all up front. $10,000.

No changes. Same ad, fifty-two weeks.

We did $80,000 in commissions that year from people who responded.

And then another $80,000 the second year, from people who responded in the first year and sold later.

That's a display ad.

Next. Direct mail letters.

One of my favorites. You can mail a letter to an audience of one.

If you know exactly who you're trying to reach, you go directly to them.

People call direct mail old school. Postcards, letters, self-mailing booklets.

You could make a twenty page booklet, tabbed, mail it for one ounce. Eben Pagan and I would sit around dreaming up titles for those.

Classified ads. Little ads pointing to a free recorded message.

People call, leave their info, we mail the booklet, then follow up.

And the recorded message. 800 numbers.

Why did those work so well?

Immersive attention. In the moment they're listening, there's no distraction. Nothing to click. No way to skim or fast forward.

They hear it in the order you chose, at the pace you chose.

The modern equivalent is the VSL. The video sales letter. Get their attention, get them watching, let them take action right underneath.

Free books. Still my favorite thing to this day.

Using a book to say exactly what your audience would love to see.

Seminars. Getting people in a room live was the most efficient way to deliver a message on mass.

I started my homebuyer workshops as a realtor back in 1992. Ads, get people to the library, walk them through the process.

That became my six steps to home ownership show on public television.

And the model. Direct mail to a free seminar, to a paid seminar, to a coaching program.

That model built several businesses. Joe Stump, Eben, Terry Hunnefeld and me. Joe Polish did it with carpet cleaners. Dan Kennedy was action central for the whole thing.

That was information marketing. New at the time. From the early 90s to the late 90s, it was the thing.

Business reply mail. Another tool I knew how to use.

My very first postcards went to apartment complexes offering a book on how to buy your first home. A little coupon, drop it back in the mailbox.

And I'd get these stacks of cards. Because there was no website to send them to.

And here... on this page... is the first time I even mention the Internet.

In 1997, about 17% of homes had online access. That's why it isn't the whole story yet.

The one viable thing on the Internet in 1997 was email.

Websites were painful. Every pixel loaded slow, an image could take minutes.

But you could collect an email and send to a list. Autoresponders were becoming a thing.

And a sneaky one. Password protected disks.

Almost everybody had a computer. Almost nobody had the Internet.

So you'd mail a disk with the whole thing on it. A book, a course, templates. All locked.

They call in, leave the credit card, get the password. Now they unlock it.

And credit card processing itself was brand new. Figuring out how to take cards was a big deal.

That was state of the art, 1997.

And here's what hit me.

If I was limited to just those tools... I could build an empire on them alone.

They're still viable today.

So make your own inventory.

What are the tools you already know how to use? What can you deploy right now?

And then... what's the message you'll put through them?

Grab a pen and write your list today.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/108-old-marketing-tools-still-work-just-fine/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast