Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

Good morning. You clicked on this.

And you clicked because the headline said, if you're going to run an ad in the next six months, watch this.

See what just happened?

You just experienced the exact thing I want to talk about.

I'm looking back at journal number seven. It was 1997.

And this is where the whole formula started for me.

The headline context formula. The most responsive headlines I've ever written.

Here's how it works.

We had a book called How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast.

But the ad that generated the leads for it never started with the book.

It started with, if you're going to sell your house in the next six to 12 months.

Thirty years later, we still run that exact ad.

Because it draws in exactly the right people.

That's the whole job of a headline. Bring in the right person with a directive.

Not a question.

Think about the difference.

Selling your house? With a question mark. That's weak.

If you're going to sell your house in the next six to 12 months. That's a statement. That's a directive.

And you can't stop there.

Because your brain won't let you.

There's a thing called the Zeigarnik effect. Your brain can't stand an open loop.

You can't leave a mystery unsolved.

So you close the loop. If you're going to sell your house in the next six to 12 months... read this.

And now they have to read it. To find out what they're supposed to do.

We've used this everywhere.

Financial advisors. When someone's turning 62, they've got a decision to make about Social Security.

Take it now, or wait to 67, or wait to 70.

So we mailed 61 year olds who were six months from their 62nd birthday.

That's the beauty of direct mail. You pick the exact person at the exact age.

And the headline said, if you plan on collecting Social Security after... and then a date six months out.

And here's the subtle thing happening in their heads.

My whole life the story has been the same. Social Security is running out. It won't be there.

My generation never really expected to get it.

So when someone reads if you plan on collecting Social Security after September 2026... their brain fills the void.

I knew it. I knew the minute I got close it would all change.

What's going wrong? How is this going to hurt me?

So you read on.

And then we offer the Social Security benefits guide. What you're entitled to. What to do.

We never argue them into anything. We just say, if you're going to do this, you probably need to know this.

Here's the information.

We've used it a dozen ways.

If you're going to buy your first home in the next six months, read this.

One of my favorites was the Mosquito Authority.

If you or someone you know has been bitten by a mosquito in the last 30 days, read this.

Right when the CDC puts out its spring warning about mosquito borne illness.

And it looks like news. Not an ad. Just information you need.

So think about whatever your people are doing at the start of their thing.

If you're looking for a bigger house, read this.

If you're looking for a great lakefront house, read this.

A directive. An open loop. The right person leaning in.

It's been my go to for over 30 years.

So before you write your next ad... start with what your person is about to do.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/107-if-youre-going-to-run-an-ad-in-the-next-6-months-watch-this/

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Good morning. Journal 7, September of 1997.

I had dinner that night with another entry on my Mount Rushmore of mentors.

You've heard me talk about Joe Stump. About Dan Sullivan. This one is Jim Morton.

Funny thing. I met Jim Morton and Joe Stump one day apart, in the same year, back in 1993.

We've been friends ever since.

Jim was a realtor and a broker in Las Vegas. Then he trained with Floyd Wickman as one of the sweathog trainers. Then he launched Jim Morton Seminars.

And the first thing he taught me was language skills. Dialogue skills.

He'd run an 8 or 12 week program. You'd meet once a week, drill the dialogue, go implement it, come back and share.

And I remember the immediate difference. When you know exactly what to say to somebody in exactly that situation... everything changes.

His whole idea was this. The realtors who make the biggest difference are the ones who know what to say in the moment.

Dialogue skills are the lowest cost, highest return thing you can develop.

So we'd drill patterns. What to say when somebody wants you to lower your commission. When somebody wants to sell their house on their own.

Always agree with them. Take them to a safe island. Then walk them logically to the right conclusion.

Directing the language like a chess master.

And those skills are still with me to this day.

But here's the part that opened my eyes at that dinner.

Jim was in an evolution of his own.

Because when I met him, his whole life was flying from one city to the next city to the next city. Live workshops every week.

And he started asking... what if I created something I didn't have to travel all over the country for?

So he looked at what was happening in the mid 90s. Desktop publishing. Suddenly people could make their own marketing materials.

And Jim created hundreds of templates. Brochures, flyers, postcards, ads. All ready to customize.

Then he'd train people how to use them and sell the kit.

One disc. A little owner's manual. Shrink wrapped in a cereal box sized package. For $245.

To me that was the most elegant thing. A disc in a box.

But that's the power of thinking about what's actually valuable to the people you're helping. Show them everything to do, then hand them the tools that support it.

And he built a fleet. Six or nine people out doing office presentations. Highly scripted. Exactly the same every time.

Go in, do the training, sell the box, send the money back to headquarters.

That brought home the power of packaging. Of making something duplicatable.

You've heard me say what Joe Stump taught me. Custom drapes versus ready to wear.

This was ready to wear. One thing, one audience, one duplicatable process.

And that word. One thing.

Jim always personified that.

He used to tell me everything you need to know about life is in the movie City Slickers.

Remember it? The old cowboy tells Billy Crystal the secret to life is one thing.

And Billy says, what's the one thing?

And the cowboy says, that's what you've got to figure out.

Well, look at the path Jim built. Prospects Plus is now the preeminent postcard mailer for the whole real estate industry.

An empire on one thing.

We've done great joint ventures together. Getting Listings Sold, still sells today. The world's most interesting postcard, mailed to your top 150 to generate referrals.

People all over the country have mailed those for twelve years now.

So here are the two lessons.

First, find yourself a mentor. Be open to it. People who are ahead of you on the path you're on.

It's funny. Joe Stump and Jim Morton are both exactly ten years older than me. They'd already walked where I was heading. Dan Sullivan is 22 years ahead.

Second, find your one thing.

Go find yours today.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/106-the-secret-to-life-is-one-thing-evidence-inside/

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Good morning. The moment I've been waiting for is here.

We're moving into journal number seven.

And all through the earlier journals you'd see me presencing this idea of a Porsche 911. That was my dream sitting in there.

And journal seven is where it all happens.

Because this is where I met a gentleman with a really unique business.

All he did was sell 4 and 5 year old Porsche 911s. Exclusively. Ones coming off lease or on trade.

He had a private investor who gave him a half a million dollar line of credit. He paid 1% a month on it.

So he'd have eight to ten Porsches at any given time. Buy them, flip them in 30 or 40 days, make three or four thousand a car.

I went to see the place. A warehouse in an industrial plaza. One of those metal garage doors that rolls up.

And inside, wall to wall 911s.

It was like walking into a candy store. Straight out of a gangster movie.

So I asked him about advertising. How did he find the buyers?

And he said, I've tried running ads in the newspapers. Nothing happens.

Now I was fresh off playing with a model I loved. The horse for sale model.

We'd done it with loft condos in San Francisco. Selling one of something.

That's the most reliable playbook I know. It acts quickly. And it applies to almost anything.

Here's what it is.

Instead of selling the category... you sell one specific thing to the one person looking for exactly that thing.

So we ran a little classified ad.

1993 Porsche 911. Low miles, excellent condition. Zero down. Assume low monthly payments. Must be sold. 24 hour recorded message.

And we gave the number.

He'd never gotten people to call on his ads before.

One insertion. All these people calling and leaving their info about the one 911 for sale.

Because we found the one person looking for the one car.

And here's the beautiful part. The recorded message.

You have their undivided attention for a short period of time. You get to say exactly what you want.

So when they called they'd hear Steve.

Thanks for calling on my 93 Porsche 911. My specialty is finding low mileage 911s and getting them below wholesale.

Most dealers are all over the map. Cars from the 70s, 80s, 90s.

But I specialize.

I can show you how to get a 93 coupe, low miles, no down payment, payments under $500. In fact I have four cars right now.

I've written a book. How to get the best deal ever on a used 911. I'll send it to you free.

Leave your name, address and daytime phone number after the beep. Your book gets mailed today.

That was it.

Then we experimented. A second version said, I'll tell you about four cars you can see this Saturday afternoon.

And that became a weekly cadence. You find the people this week looking for the one thing.

See, the one ad gets attention. The recorded message does the talking. The book gives them a reason to raise their hand.

We did it with loft condos in San Francisco. Harborfront condos in Toronto.

And most recently with an electrician who sells generators.

Instead of get your generators here... a candid photo of a generator. One Generac whole house generator for sale. The kilowatts, the basics. Click learn more.

Leads for people looking for a generator.

So if I had a car dealership today, I'd do the same.

Find the category people are actually searching for. Minivans. SUVs. Pickups.

Have the one thing that one person is looking for. Get their attention. Then show them options.

We've even done it with franchises. Instead of selling a franchise system... we offer one business for sale in one market.

So here's the whole thing.

The horse for sale, attached to a repeatable audience, attached to a recorded message or a book they can get.

That's the win.

Let me know in the comments if this is something you could use.

And next time you go to sell the whole category... sell one of something to one person instead.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/105-copy-this-plug-play-system-to-sell-more-of-almost-anything-quickly/

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Good morning. I was in my journal today and I found a list of my top 12 books to document.

This is 1997, remember.

I've told you about some of them. Influence. The E-Myth. The Seven Habits. The One to One Future.

But this one is different. It's a book called You Squared by Price Pritchett.

I'd never heard of him. My friend Joe Stump introduced me to it.

And I've read it probably a hundred times.

This was one of the books that got me thinking bigger. Getting out of the way and letting things happen.

A couple of things stood out.

First, it's small.

I own a company right now called 90 Minute Books. And part of the genesis of it was realizing how impactful a little book can be.

Because I know how impactful this one was for me. You sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting.

And it's one of those books where you don't need to do anything. There's no seven step process.

You read it, you get the insight, and you're changed because of it.

Here's how it opens. He's telling a story.

He's sitting in a quiet room at the Millcroft Inn. A peaceful little place hidden among the pine trees, about an hour out of Toronto.

Funny thing. The Millcroft Inn was fifteen or twenty minutes from where I was living at the time.

It's late July, just past noon, and he's listening to a life or death struggle a few feet away.

There's a small fly burning out the last of its energy trying to fly through the glass of the window pane.

The whining wings tell the whole story. The fly's strategy is try harder.

But it's not working. And the struggle is part of the trap.

It's impossible for the fly to try hard enough to break through the glass. It has staked its life on raw effort and determination.

And this fly is doomed. It will die there on the windowsill.

Across the room, ten steps away, the door is open.

Ten seconds of flying time and this little creature could reach the world it's looking for. With a fraction of the effort it's wasting now.

The breakthrough is right there. It would be so easy.

So why doesn't the fly try something dramatically different?

How did it get so locked in on this one route?

What logic is there in continuing until death with more of the same?

No doubt it makes sense to the fly. And that's the idea that kills it.

Here's the line. Trying harder isn't necessarily the solution to achieving more.

Sometimes it's a big part of the problem.

If you stake your whole hope for a breakthrough on trying harder than ever... you may kill your chances.

Now think about when I first read this.

I'd just lived it.

When I started out as a realtor, I made a hundred cold calls a day. That's manual labor.

And the second you stopped, it stopped working.

Then I got introduced to direct response. To marketing.

And I figured out I could put words on a postcard, on an ad, and have people call me instead of me calling them.

My entire life changed.

And I see it everywhere now. People in real estate, in any business, trying harder and harder at the traditional, manual thing.

When there are quantum leaps sitting right there. Just from a simple shift.

But you have to be open to it. Aware there might be an easier way.

And sometimes that awareness builds its own momentum.

Go find the book. You'd really enjoy it.

And before you try harder today... look for the open door.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/104-why-trying-harder-isnt-the-answer/

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Good morning. I'm at Celebration Florida this morning.

An amazing community, built in 1996. Right next to Disney World.

It's a Walt Disney vision.

I'm here doing one of my Breakthrough Blueprint events for the next three days.

But here's the thing that got me.

There's a page in my journal about this place. I'd come here years ago to see a movie with my friend Mike Hardwick.

And when they were building Celebration, you'd walk into the welcome center. The topographical map. All the floor plans.

And they'd sit you in a room and show you a film.

Walt Disney himself, welcoming you to the community of the future.

Now this is 1996.

And your Disney historians already know... Walt Disney wasn't alive in 1996. He'd been gone about 25 years.

So sit with that.

He had the vision for this place 25 years before it happened.

That's the length of vision I'm talking about.

And it hit me how much your context changes with age.

When I wrote that journal, I was 31 years old.

So 30 years was my entire life. I had no frame of reference for it.

In high school we called 60s music the oldies. Now I think of 80s music as my jam. Like it was yesterday.

And here's what I do a lot in my journals now.

I make a list of things that are not going to change in 30 years.

Because if you're trying to prepare for what's coming... there's no way to know.

We couldn't have seen any of this.

I could not have told my younger self that I'd get in my car, tell it where I'm going, and it just drives me here. While I command music out of the air.

But that's exactly what happened this morning. My Tesla and Spotify.

I'm going to record this video and people all over the world will see it within 15 minutes.

You cannot tell what's coming.

So don't build on what's coming.

Wrap your vision around what you know won't change.

The sun still comes up. You still get 24 hours. You still need to eat and sleep and do the things you want to do.

That holds still. You can build on that.

I'm so glad I started journaling over 30 years ago. These little time capsules are an amazing exercise.

But here's the part that surprised me.

Reading them doesn't feel like 30 years ago.

What I realized is... this is today.

Every one of those entries only ever happened in a day.

And I can imagine that 30 years from now, this will still be here too.

So why not start drawing the picture now.

Here's your nudge for today.

Make the list of what won't change in 30 years.

Then build the future on top of that.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/103-why-i-plan-my-future-around-what-will-never-change/

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Do you think it's possible we're living in a simulation?

It's a funny thing to say out loud. But sit with it for a second.

I'm looking at my journal right now. Mid-1997.

And page after page after page of it is me experimenting with affirmations and visualization.

And wouldn't you know it... looking back, almost everything I wrote down came true.

I think there's really something to the idea that things get created twice.

First you imagine them. Then your subconscious quietly goes to work making them happen.

When I was growing up there was a guy in my town with a midnight blue Porsche 911.

I still remember the impact of it. That car spoke to me for some reason. The imprint never left.

So one of the affirmations on the page is exactly that. I drive a midnight blue Porsche 911.

And then the rest of them.

I work three days a week and travel once a month. My monthly income is fifty thousand dollars. I live in a great house in a gated community.

I weigh 185 pounds. I'm a scratch golfer. I'm a world class communicator. I invest my time creating incredible results.

Probably thirty pages of this journal are just those lines, said again and again.

And in between them, little vignettes. Scenes of the day I wanted.

Here's what amazes me thirty years later. The core path was already there.

I already knew the rhythm I wanted. The cadence of the day.

On the page I wake up and play nine holes in the morning. Come back and watch a little Regis and Kathie Lee.

Start working at ten. Go till about twelve thirty with no interruptions.

Which is still exactly how I do it now.

My key hours for creating are ten till noon. Those two hours are the most important thing.

And honestly, if you can just protect those two hours, so much comes out of them.

Then in the vision I get in the Porsche and drive to Barnes and Noble.

I used to love it. The comfy couches, the magazines, the coffee. Read for a couple of hours and come back.

Work till five thirty. Then go play the back nine.

Open with nine. Close with nine. The day in between.

And three day weekends. Mondays are always about making my life better.

Three focus days. Three free days. A buffer day.

That, to me, is the playbook for your own simulation.

I've talked to enough people and read enough of this to believe it. What you think about, you talk about. And what you talk about, you bring about.

You immerse yourself in the thoughts of the thing you're trying to create.

And what a fun game it is. Because you get to choose.

That's one of the great gifts of being a self-directed entrepreneur. You get to create exactly the life you want.

Dan Sullivan calls it the results economy. You're a hundred percent responsible for creating results in the world.

And there's enough evidence that just being clear on what you want, and writing it down, tilts the odds.

You're filing a flight plan. That's where you end up going.

Here's the funny part. We're eighty-something videos in, still in 1997, and we haven't even gotten to the internet yet.

Simulation theory didn't even exist yet.

But I think that's kind of what we're doing here. Living in our own simulation. So we may as well design the one we actually want.

It doesn't hurt. It's free to write it down.

And sometimes your brain quietly goes to work making it real.

So here's your nudge for today.

Write one ordinary day, hour by hour, exactly the way you'd want it.

Then watch how much of it is already inside your reach.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/102-if-were-living-in-a-simulation-this-is-the-playbook/

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Good morning.

Have you ever been to the circus?

Me neither. But I've been to the next best thing.

Somewhere around early June of 1997 I went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. The Ringling Brothers Museum.

It's an amazing old mansion right on the water. Historic, grand, very Florida. Super inspiring.

We went on the tour.

Now, the big thing in books at that moment were parables. Raving Fans. Who Moved My Cheese. Short books that made their point as a story.

And as I walked around that museum I started imagining one.

A guy comes to Sarasota for an accounting conference. He sold the trip to his wife as a working vacation, so now she's dragging him around a museum.

He's an accountant. Efficient, black and white, nuts and bolts. Does this make sense, yes or no.

He slips off to the side to take a phone call, into one of the barns where they keep the old circus equipment. And there's a mirror.

A ringmaster steps out. Dressed the part, the whole thing.

They get talking, and the accountant admits the obvious. His wife thinks this is wonderful. He thinks it's folly. He can't see the point of any of it.

So the ringmaster tells him that if you look behind the scenes, the circus is actually an extraordinary business.

And he walks him through the magic mirror, back into the height of the circus days, to show him.

I listed seven lessons from the greatest show on earth.

Number one. A free parade, daily, eleven in the morning, rain or shine.

When the circus came to town they paraded everything straight through the streets. Lions, tigers, bears, trapeze artists, all of it in open cages.

A miniature sample of everything you'd get to see. And people simply followed it to the fairground.

That's content marketing. Which is funny, because these videos go out every day at eleven in the morning.

Free parade daily. Take that however you like.

Number two. See the sideshow for ten cents more.

General admission was one low price. A quarter, maybe twenty cents.

But the sideshows were deliberately cloaked in tents, and the barkers stood outside telling you exactly what was behind the flap. The bearded lady. The fat man. The two-headed girl.

Curiosity did the rest. That's an upsell, and they were running them a hundred years ago.

Number three. Reserved seating, five cents more.

Upgrade out of general admission into the good seats in the big top. A better experience for anyone who wanted one, made very easy to say yes to.

Number four. The greatest show on earth.

In my parable this is where the accountant gets it wrong. Why three elephants when two would do? Why all this when less would serve?

He's trying to put on the same show for less money.

But they promised people the greatest show on earth. That promise means extravagance. Things you will genuinely never see anywhere else.

The modern version is Cirque du Soleil. What happens when you mix unbridled creativity with an unlimited budget.

It's the Procter and Gamble lesson again. Build the very best product, judged from the customer's side.

Number five. The show must go on.

A live performance cannot rest on one superstar. Whatever happens, the show still has to happen, so there is always somebody ready to step into any role.

In your business, if one person going down takes the whole thing down, that's the lesson.

Number six. Keep the wheels greased.

The circus moved city to city by railroad, assembling and dismantling everything in a tiny window.

And while the show was running out front, every bit of maintenance was happening behind it. Repairing, oiling, keeping the system able to move again tomorrow.

Entrepreneurs get so busy doing the show that the maintenance stops. Then something breaks, all your attention has to go there, and the show goes down with it.

Number seven. All new, never seen before.

The whole model depended on coming back to the same town next year. So there had to be something new every time, or people had already seen it.

Reading that page back, I hadn't thought about it in a very long time.

I'm going to see if I can dig out the whole terrible little book I wrote, because I was quite proud of how it came out.

I called it Step Right Up. Seven Marketing Lessons From The Greatest Show On Earth.

A free parade every day at eleven. The sideshow for ten cents more. Reserved seating for five cents more. The greatest show on earth. The show must go on. Keep the wheels greased. All new, never seen before.

You could apply those to any business and feel it immediately.

Here's your nudge for today.

Pick the one of those seven your business does worst.

Then work out what your version of it would look like on a Tuesday.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/101-how-i-funnel-hacked-the-greatest-show-on-earth/

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Good morning.

If you want to convert more leads, this is where it starts.

Here we are in journal number six, and what amazes me going through it is how much I've stacked on top of these foundations over thirty years.

But fundamentally, these pages are the core of it.

Dan Kennedy once said the person who can spend the most to get a new customer is going to be the winner.

And one of the things that lets you spend more is being able to convert more.

That's where the big opportunity is.

Back then I was starting to realize I had a hit on my hands with the seller book. How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar.

It generated leads like they were going out of style.

Here's the thing about lead generation. It's the ultimate leverage.

You just multiply. Run another ad, get more leads. Send more postcards, get more leads.

The leads aren't the problem. It takes zero extra effort to get them.

Where the effort actually lives, and where you can distinguish yourself, is converting them. That takes a human touch.

And the more you operationalize that, the more you stop thinking of it as converting leads at all.

You start thinking of it as discovering the people who were always going to buy... and then serving them so well that you'd be the only choice.

People ask me how I journal.

Always in fifty minute blocks, under a timer, so I can gather my attention in one place.

I set a guidance thought for the session and then let my mind go wherever it wants inside that.

Focused within a constraint, but with novelty to roam. That's the ADHD accommodation right there.

So, looking at these pages. This is how I built my brief for converting those leads.

It's labeled the follow-up system for the seller's guide, but it could just as easily be the follow-up system for the stop your panic attacks book.

It starts with questions.

How can I get more of the people who expressed interest in selling to want to meet me?

Notice that's the next step, not the final destination.

People ask how do I get them to buy, how do I get them to pay me. But it's a series of incremental steps, and if you focus on the next one, the one after it gets easier.

Newton's law. An object in motion stays in motion.

Once people are moving toward you, everything else kicks in. Reciprocity. Commitment and consistency. Liking you. Social proof.

Next question. What messages do I want to keep expressing to them?

This is where the research earns its keep. Think from their point of view. If you were them, what would you want to know?

Then, how long should I keep contacting these people before I take them off my list?

My answer is never.

I was guessing back then. Now I have the evidence.

Everybody who has raised their hand is an asset that yields revenue every year, and grows in value.

People come out of the blue after ten years and buy for the first time.

In our case study with Tony Kelsey on the getting listings program, we mailed postcards into one neighborhood for ten years. Over four and a half million dollars in commissions out of that neighborhood.

And we tracked when people first responded against when they actually listed.

In the tenth year, somebody who had answered the very first postcard we ever mailed, and had a newsletter every month for ten years, listed and sold their house with Tony.

As long as they're active, opening, clicking, showing signs of life, keep the relationship going.

Then my favorite question of the whole page.

How can I get them to call me, instead of me calling them?

Here's the provocation I use. What would I do if my phone only accepted incoming calls?

That forces you to work out how to show up and provide value without chasing anybody.

This isn't about pouncing on people and getting them to do what you want. It's about knowing and serving them so well you're almost unbothered.

So I listed all the questions. And on the next page, I listed the facts.

They called for a guide to selling their house for top dollar. I didn't force that. They saw an ad, decided to go to a website, entered their name, left their details after a recorded message.

They volunteered. At some level, they're interested in selling.

And I have their name, address and telephone number.

Now you start thinking like a detective. What can I learn from what I already hold?

A picture of the house. What kind of house it is. The transfer information. How long they've lived there. What it's worth.

There was no Zillow then. Now it's the first thing we do.

And the data enhancement available today, from just a name and an email, is genuinely crazy. Four hundred data points to build a picture of who this person is.

It's those detective shows with the bulletin board, the photographs and the red string running between them.

Josh and I were talking about lead generation for people who build decks. You get a name and an address, you take a satellite view of the backyard, you see the value of the house and how long they've owned it, and you can approximate their equity.

Then you sort people into likelihood buckets.

Some aren't selling in the next six to twelve months. That's probably half of them. Maybe seventy percent if you take the full year. And that's fine.

Some are. Some are buying another home locally, some aren't, some are leaving the area altogether.

On that page I circled my best client. Selling in the next six to twelve months, and buying another home right here in Polk County.

Which is also why I love transitional real estate like townhomes. First-time buyers moving in don't have a house to sell first, and people already in a townhome aren't likely to buy a detached home next.

That triangulation is a beautiful thing.

Understand all the possible paths, sort people onto one of them, and you can customize the follow-up to the path they're actually on.

That was thirty years ago.

Today we do exactly the same thing with scorecards and profiles and assessments.

Somebody downloads the book on stopping panic attacks, and we invite them to take a panic profile. Questions that sort them from the very beginning stages all the way to severe.

Because you talk very differently to someone with severe panic than to someone who just had their first one and has no idea what to expect.

That detective work, inquiring, finding out what people actually need, is the real foundation of converting as many leads as you possibly can.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the last twenty people who raised their hand, and write down everything you could find out about them without asking.

Then write the one thing you'd still need to ask.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/100-how-to-get-your-buyers-to-call-you-instead-of-chasing-them/

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

Good morning.

I had a nice flood of memories this morning, back in journal number six.

Eben Pagan and I used to do these live main events with Joe Stumpf. Big real estate seminars, all over the country.

Every month we'd do ad makeovers, things on the fly, right there in the room.

The only reason we could do that is that we had formulas. Patterns we knew would apply to whatever situation somebody handed us.

And one of them was a format for creating testimonials that actually get you business.

Here's the thing about testimonials.

Most people think about them completely the wrong way.

You graciously accept whatever people say about you. Somebody writes a nice Google review, and you hope more of them happen, and you feel good when they do.

All of it just... happens to you.

But it can be so much more than that.

Because a testimonial, done properly, is an opportunity to help somebody who is in exactly the situation your customer used to be in.

And most people genuinely want to help. They want to spare someone a problem they went through, or show them the way to something better.

So let me walk you through the formula.

Say you helped a family move out of an apartment building and into a detached home with a yard, somewhere the kids could actually play.

First sentence is a headline. It gets attention and it sets the stage.

We'd attach a photo of the twin boys out on the swing set, and the letter would open:

"Six months ago we were living in the River Lake Apartments just like you, and I never thought we would be able to own a home."

Look at what that one sentence does. It names the exact building. And it says just like you.

Then the dilemma.

"The apartment was fine while the boys were young, but as they were growing I wanted them to have somewhere safe to play outside, in our own yard. It was always a dream of ours, but we thought it just wasn't feasible."

Now they're likable, and the dilemma belongs to the reader too.

A young couple in River Lake, three or four years in, kids getting bigger, quietly longing to own a home if only they knew they could.

They're reading their own life on that page.

Then how they came to meet you.

"We got a postcard in the mail offering a report on how to buy the bigger house you've always wanted, without all the money you thought you needed. We called and got the report, and we met Julie Matthews."

Then what changed.

"Julie showed us how we could get down payment assistance and a low interest rate mortgage, and that a house was only a couple of hundred dollars more than we were already paying in rent at River Lake. We couldn't be happier."

And then the encouragement, with the way in attached to it.

"I've put in a photo of the boys playing in the backyard. If you've been thinking about getting a yard for your kids, I'd highly recommend Julie. I've included a copy of the postcard she sent us, so you can get the report too."

That's off the top of my head. I'd refine it.

But you can see the sequence.

Headline. Dilemma. How they found you. What changed. Come and do the same.

And it isn't only for houses.

I told you about helping Don Naylor sell the last of the Muskoka home sites. Telling that story properly is how you get introduced to every other developer sitting on lots they need to move.

So the real work here is the thinking.

Who is just like this person? What were they thinking before? What are the ones coming next thinking right now?

And how do you retell the story so those people feel there's hope... that there's a way out of where they are, or a way toward what they actually want.

Testimonials are so much more than a nice Google review you hope is enough.

You can orchestrate this. You can turn every single person you help into more people you get to help.

That's one of those multiplier mindsets. Profit Activators five and six.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the last customer you genuinely helped, and write their first sentence. Just the headline.

Name where they were, and say just like you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/099-google-reviews-are-killing-your-business-try-this-instead/

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

Good morning.

I keep finding a through line in these journals.

We're back in journal number six, middle of 1997, and I came across something that reminded me of what happened five years before that in my own business.

I think this one is so reliable it's still true today, and it'll keep being true.

Here's the shape of it.

You start out in business and you're the sole proprietor. You're doing all the things. You're busy.

Then you start applying marketing, and you reach a point where there's more to do than you have time to do.

But here's what's easy to miss. Most of what marketing creates is leverage.

A lot of it doesn't require you to do it yourself.

This started for me with The E-Myth. Michael Gerber, working on your business instead of in it.

Before that book I was making cold calls every day, setting the appointments, going to the appointments, doing all of it.

Then I read Tom Peters' The Pursuit of Wow.

He challenged you to make a list of everything you do... and then work out what it would take to replace yourself in each one.

Ten years later he turned that into The Professional Service Firm 50. His idea was that every department inside a business should be thought of as its own service firm, delivering an outcome, with exactly one customer.

So I went and looked at my real estate business, and it turned out almost nothing that needed doing actually depended on me doing it.

By the end I was down to the listing presentations, talking with people about selling their house, and negotiating the contracts.

A very narrow area in Halton Hills. That was the whole of it.

Now here's the part I want you to hear.

I had a cousin, a few years younger than me, still in high school.

I gave him a job. Minimum wage was about five dollars back then.

Steven would come to my office and we'd set a cadence.

He'd go and replace all the infobox flyers on my listings.

We had a route of forty or fifty bulletin boards around town, public notice flyers with a tear-off tab pointing to a recorded message. He'd refresh every one of them.

He'd replenish the take-one boxes at the cash registers of local businesses... the Guide to Halton Hills, the Six Steps to Home Ownership.

Signs to put up, he put them up. Documents to deliver, he delivered them.

Twelve to fourteen hours a week, after school.

And it completely freed me up to do the creative work of deciding what to do.

That's the real prize.

Because the great thing about being a creative thinker is that there's never a shortage of ideas about what we could do.

The trick is getting those things to actually happen.

So here's the question.

What would you do if you could count on you to do it?

We filter ourselves constantly. We don't even let the idea finish, because somewhere underneath we already know we don't want to do the work it would take.

But set it up as a recurring cadence and it's a different thing entirely.

Every single week I could have fresh flyers on all of those bulletin boards. I didn't have to do it. It just continued to work.

Now, here's what brought all this back to me.

I had an even younger cousin who'd just got his driver's license.

I told him what Steven had been doing for me in Toronto five years earlier, and we made him business cards.

They said "Let Justin Do It."

Underneath that: don't spend your time doing low-value activities.

And then the list. Delivering documents. Putting up signs. Taking pictures. Getting pictures delivered. Dropping off and picking up keys. Filling infoboxes.

All available services from Justin.

He walked into a couple of real estate offices and set up a little drop box in each one.

An intake form so people could tick off what they wanted done, and an envelope for keys or anything that needed replacing.

Every day after school he'd collect whatever was in his box and go and do all of it, charging pro-rated on the time it took.

Completely self-directed. I loved it.

But here's the thing sitting underneath it, and it's really why I'm telling you this.

He was providing a service that will never go out of style.

People want things done and can't count on themselves to do them... or it simply isn't worth their time.

They're nowhere near ready for a full-time assistant. They just need the specific things doing.

There's an opportunity sitting right there.

And it goes all the way up.

Start thinking about the highest-level things you could take off somebody's plate.

If you can predictably deliver an outcome they really want, and it saves them time on something they'd otherwise have to do themselves, that's an amazing position to be in.

Package what you do as a way for people to save time, save effort, have the thing happen push-button without them touching it.

You're on the right track.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down the three things you keep quietly deciding not to do, because you'd have to be the one to do them.

Then work out what it would cost to have somebody else do them on a cadence.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/098-what-would-you-do-if-you-could-count-on-you-to-do-it/

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