Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

Good morning.

Here we are at the end of journal number five. Still 1997.

And going back through these pages, I realized something about what my journals are actually for.

They're a focusing tool.

I used to run what I called five by five sessions. Five questions. Five minutes. Five things listed underneath each one.

You can point it at the long term or the short term. But where it really earns its keep is in the middle of an overwhelming week.

Too much going on. Everything competing for the front of the line.

Because here's what our minds do in that state. We time travel.

We project forward and get anxious about something that hasn't happened yet. Or we go back and ruminate on something that already did, and drag the meaning of it into today.

And the most comforting thing I know is this.

In the moment, time moves at the speed of reality.

You've heard me say it. Time moves at the pace of sixty minutes per hour.

You would be amazed how long one minute is if you sit quietly and watch the second hand sweep all the way round to the top. Just breathe and watch it.

I saw Rick Rubin being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes recently.

Before they started, Rick suggested they take two minutes to get centered. Just to arrive in the moment.

That's exactly how I come into one of these sessions.

So set your environment up. Take the distractions away. And then, before you write a single thing, be still for a minute.

Then start listing.

What are the five most pressing things I'm putting off, or worried about, or feeling the pressure of?

Just naming them does something. Getting them out of your head and onto the page makes them feel more manageable straight away.

And then I get granular about when they actually land.

Look down the list and ask what's really happening in the next 100 hours. Sometimes the thing taking up all the room in your head has no consequence at all in the next 100 hours.

Then go further in. The next 100 minutes.

That's the immediate present. That's the part you genuinely control.

So what's the most important thing you could do in the next 100 minutes?

Even when something is due by the end of the day, taking five minutes... or fifty... to get your thinking right first is an advantage, not a delay.

Lincoln said if he had four hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend the first three sharpening the axe.

Same thing here.

Now, once the fog has lifted, I use the same tool to plan.

These were the questions I was asking myself at the end of that journal. All of them pointed at the next 90 days. The far actionable future.

What five habits would improve my performance most dramatically in the next 90 days?

What five things have I been putting off that would clear my mind if I just got them done?

What tools or technology would improve my production capability?

I laughed at my own answers to that one. In 1997 I wanted a laser printer that would run 11 by 17 pages, so I could fold my own magazine sized booklets and lay out full page tabloid ads exactly the way they should look. A color scanner was on there too.

What are the five most important projects I could be working on?

What five things would I like to do just for fun?

And what would I like to learn in depth?

You can make a serious dent in something in 90 days if you take it on as a priority and go full immersion on it. That might be ChatGPT or Claude today. Or how to run Meta ads. Whatever the thing is that would have the biggest impact on you.

Answer those and you can't help but come away with clarity.

Because having it on paper, and confirming it, is a completely different thing to carrying it around in your head.

It's amazing how much insight our minds already have... and how much of it comes out the moment you give it somewhere to go.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Set a timer for five minutes and list the five things pressing on you hardest right now.

Then mark the ones with a real consequence in the next 100 hours... and decide what you're doing with the next 100 minutes.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/077-how-to-find-clarity-on-what-matters-when-everything-feels-urgent-in-5-minutes/

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

Good morning.

Back in the good book today. Cash Copy, by Jeffrey Lant.

And this time it's egregious error number thirteen.

You don't give the moderately interested prospect an invitation to stay in touch, so you can do what it takes to sell him.

Now, everybody wants the magic ad.

Run it today, get the call, make the sale this weekend.

When I was working with realtors that was the whole ask. Run the ad, somebody goes out looking at houses on Saturday, buys one on Sunday.

And if a prospect was ninety days out? That was their long term follow up.

But think about everybody who sees your ad.

They all land somewhere on a spectrum.

Right at the top... I need this now, I've been waiting for somebody to offer it to me, I can't wait to get going.

Right at the bottom... I would never buy this in a million years. Especially from you.

And almost everybody is somewhere in the middle.

Jeffrey says it better than I can.

Every day my mail is flooded with marketing offers. Most are single offers. Buy this, they say.

I may have the problem this marketer says he can solve. I may be interested in it.

But I have an enormous number of days where I feel comfortable enough that I don't want to make any changes, despite my need to do so.

Days when I've got other things on my mind. Or I don't really have the money for this worthy objective, or don't want to spend it this way.

And the offer doesn't allow for any of that. It doesn't allow for a maybe. It doesn't allow for not right now.

It just says buy. And if I'm not in the mood or not able, there's nothing I can do but not buy.

Sit with that one for a second.

If your marketing sends everybody to a VSL, or a $7 offer, or a webinar, or a call on your calendar... you are only talking to the people who are ready today.

Everybody else just quietly leaves.

Now, most people who do something about this do something weak.

Join our mailing list to stay in touch.

That's not an invitation. Nobody sees themselves in it.

Jeffrey's rule is to be crystal clear. Never say check here and return this coupon to stay on our mailing list.

Instead, right after the hard offer, add a box with words like these.

Jeffrey, I'm not ready to take action now to start getting a 20% yearly return on my investments... but I would like to hear from you again when you've got the facts on another investment like this.

I know this is a good return. Keep me in mind the next time you can get it for me.

Look at how specific that is.

Because the only message that gets conveyed is the one carried by the words you choose while you've got somebody's attention.

And the easier you make it for a person to find themselves in your words, the more of them will raise a hand.

I've been doing a version of this for thirty years.

One line at the end of a recorded message. Tell me a little about the homes you're most interested in, and I'll send you the ones just like them that are available right now.

That changed the responses immediately.

Because it gave people something true to say about themselves.

And here's the part I keep coming back to.

This isn't a soft sell approach. It's a leadership approach.

You know they have a problem. You know what that problem is costing them. You've got evidence you know how to solve it. And you've got the solution.

So your job is to take people by the hand and lead them, overtly, in the direction they should go... for the situation they're actually in right now.

For some of them that situation is right now.

And for the rest of them it will be later. They just need somebody to still be there when it is.

Not all leads are equal.

Stop spending everything on the people who are ready today, and start identifying the ones who'll tell you they're interested but a little bit later.

Then have an orchestrated way to educate and motivate them until they are.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take your best performing offer and write the second box underneath it.

The one somebody who isn't ready today could honestly tick... and then decide what you'd actually send them next.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/076-how-to-get-the-most-people-to-buy-now-and-later/

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

Good morning. Happy Monday.

Journal number five. Still 1997.

And today's page is one of my favorites, because I get to show you the whole arc of it. An idea that starts near the front of a journal and is finished before the end of the same journal.

I went into my tickle trunk and pulled out exactly what came off this page.

Two things came together to make it work.

The first was on a page of its own. I was going deep on one question. Why would somebody sell their house?

Not the answer an agent would give. The actual conversation going on in the mind of the person who's about to do it.

The second was Dan Kennedy. I'd heard him talk about intensification. Instead of mailing one time, you mail multiple times.

And then I added the part that made it mine. Timing.

Here in Florida, and in most of the country, the market runs on a double hump.

Start in January and there aren't many homes selling. Then March, April, May, a peak. A little dip over the summer. Another mini peak in October.

So if you already know when the activity is going to happen... why not work backwards from there and get in front of the wave before it arrives?

Eight postcards. One neighborhood. Mailed once a week for eight weeks, starting right around now, in August of 1997.

Tiny yellow ones. A quarter of an 8 1/2 by 11.

And on each one, one of the headlines that came off that first page. The things already going on in their minds.

Here's what to do now if you're going to sell your house in the next six months.

Here's how to find out what homes in any neighborhood are really selling for.

Here's what it really costs to buy a bigger home. Hint, it's less than you may think.

Sell your house in as little as 24 hours, and laugh to yourself at how easy it was.

I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago.

Here's a guaranteed way to sell your house in less than 60 days.

Every one of them offering the same two things. A free copy of my book, How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast. And a free recorded message.

And on the address side, find out how much your house is worth, free, over the phone.

Remember where we are. No internet. No website to send anybody to. No QR code to scan, which are two of the most useful things we've got right now.

And no Zillow either. Nobody could look any of this up for themselves.

Which is exactly why the offer worked. They wanted the information and had no way to get it. So offering it scratched the itch right where it itched.

Now, the neighborhood.

Starter homes. About 2,000 of them. First time buyers coming in, and people moving up to something bigger going out. A transitional neighborhood.

And Julie, in the twelve months before we started, had sold zero homes in it. None. No footprint there at all.

From the end of August to the end of the year, she got five of the 25 listings that came up.

Zero to a 20% market share, in a neighborhood she'd never done anything in.

Just by being in front of people right at the moment they were starting to think about it.

And this transfers to anything.

Think about the timing of what people actually do in your business. Then lag back from it and send at least three sequenced mailings into the run up.

Not one. Three.

I think you'll be delighted at how much headway you can make in a market you've had no activity in before.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Pick the month your best prospects are most likely to be ready. Then count backwards three touches... and work out what you'd want sitting in front of them, starting now.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/075-how-to-show-up-right-when-people-are-ready-to-buy/

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

Good morning.

I'm not sure there's a book I've read more, or applied more, than Robert Cialdini's Influence.

Studying social psychology, led there by Cialdini, is probably the deepest study I've ever done. All-time top five, easily.

But that's not really the part I want to talk about.

When a book lands on me like that, I don't just read it.

I break it down into a mental model. Then I build a worksheet in my journal and apply that model to whatever I'm working on at the time.

I've done dozens of those over thirty years.

And here's one, sitting in journal number five, from 1997.

How to use the six weapons of influence to sell your house for top dollar fast.

I was deep in real estate then. But you could just as easily write... to sell anything fast.

So let's walk them.

Reciprocity.

That sense we all carry that if you do me a favor, I owe you one.

And the way you trigger it is simple. You go first.

Joe Polish has a little book called Life Gives to the Giver, and a big one called What's in It for Them. Both pointing at the same thing.

Here's how we used it.

I need to sell these six Muskoka home sites in the next thirty days, and I'm willing to sell them for 33% below their current appraised value.

That's leading with a concession. I'm going first.

Liking.

We're more influenced by people we like.

So be an actual human being. Tell people who you really are.

That's why the ad opened the way it did. I'm Don Naylor, and we've been developing property in Muskoka for over thirty years.

Or on the townhouse... my wife and I have always wanted to live in the country, and we found our dream home.

A real situation, told by a real person. That's what makes somebody like you.

Scarcity.

People want what they can't have. We're wired to react to anything in diminishing supply.

So we'd get everybody out to the lots at the same time. Two o'clock. And we'd say up front that the home would be sold on Sunday night.

Now, a word of caution on this one.

Cialdini calls it smuggling in scarcity. I don't know how long we can hold this price. Better get in now, we might take it down.

That's arbitrary. That's trying to scare somebody into moving. And people can feel it.

Real scarcity is a different animal. Real scarcity is a decision that genuinely can't wait... and if you miss it, you miss it.

Authority.

People look for credibility before they decide anything.

Don had been running 33% off blowout sale ads all summer. No luck at all.

And I think I know why. 33% off of what?

Off whatever number you decided to put on it in the first place?

So we got the lots appraised.

An official appraisal is a stamp of officialness. It comes from outside of you. And now 33% below the current appraised value actually means something.

That one came from putting Cialdini together with Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time. The power of telling the truth.

Commitment and consistency.

Once we start down a path, we want to keep going in a way that stays consistent with it.

It's why the most reliable thing we run, for almost anything... ebikes, fences, houses... is a catalog offer.

Somebody asking for the catalog has outwardly expressed an interest.

And it sends a message to their own subconscious. I asked for this. This must be important to me.

Social proof.

We look around at other people to check we're on the right track.

So you pull up to the lots at two o'clock, and there are cars everywhere and people already walking the property.

You take your cue from that. This must be worth something.

And it feeds straight back into the scarcity. Now you could actually lose it.

Six weapons, all firing at once, inside one story, from the very first line of the ad.

A perfect storm of influence... and every bit of it was engineered on a page in a journal before it ever went out into the real world.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take whatever you're selling right now and write the six weapons down the page, one per line.

Then fill in how you're using each one... and be honest about the ones that come back blank.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/074-how-to-use-the-6-weapons-of-influence-to-sell-anything-fast/

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

Good morning.

I was looking at today's journal page. Number five, and we're still in 1997.

And there it is at the top of the page. Today's Homeowner.

Which got me thinking about how many of the things I've done started out as nothing more than an intuition.

A curiosity. A little pull toward something.

The only difference between the ones that turned into something and the ones that didn't... is that I pursued them.

Here's one from just before Today's Homeowner.

I read somewhere that public access cable was mandated to provide airtime to the community.

That's it. That's the whole seed.

At the time I was running ads and filling a room at the library in Halton Hills, doing a home buyer workshop for first time buyers.

And I thought, what if I could do that on television?

So I called.

Sometimes the best thing you can do with an intuition is throw your hat over the fence. Make the call. Talk to somebody.

I called Halton Cable and told them what I wanted to do. A 30 minute special on buying your first home.

He said that sounds like a really good idea.

They had a studio. Cameramen. A whole professional broadcast center sitting there waiting.

So I built it. Thirty minutes, adapted straight from the live workshop. I called it Six Steps to Home Ownership.

And I modeled it on the infomercials that were everywhere in the late 80s and early 90s.

At the ten minute mark I'd stop and say, don't worry about taking notes. I've got the whole thing in a workbook for you right here.

Call this number for a free recorded message and I'll send you the Six Steps to Home Ownership booklet.

The only money I spent was $500 on the editing.

A friend of mine wrote the theme song. Shout out Tim Alberts.

And it ran twice a month for a year. First and third Thursday.

As a lead in to Must See TV. Seinfeld. Cheers. That era.

Every single time it aired, people called for the book.

Now here's the part I really want you to have.

I made sure to book a listing appointment on the Thursdays my show was on.

The show came on at 7:30.

So I'd be sitting in somebody's house. They'd walk me around, we'd sit down, we'd start talking about marketing their home.

And I'd say, can we go into the TV room for a minute?

While I'm in here talking to you about selling your house, I'm also out there looking for the buyer for it. I've already been looking.

And we'd turn on the television. And there I am.

Standing in their living room, and up on their screen at the same time.

You should have seen their faces.

Then I'd call the line and let them listen to the recordings. Real people, asking for the booklet.

Over a hundred of them by that point. That's the pool we're working with.

And I'd show them the Guide to Halton Hills, and how I'd already been looking for their buyer for 180 days.

I never lost a listing on a first or third Thursday. Not one.

The second year, I made a deal with a pizza company. Anybody in the apartment complexes who ordered a pizza got a video of Six Steps to Home Ownership delivered along with it.

Same asset. Working again.

And that's the whole pattern.

An intuition, followed through, turned into something you can use over and over.

It's a funny thing to look back on at a time when there was no YouTube. No way for a normal person to get a video in front of anybody.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Today's Homeowner itself, which came from a magazine I happened to see on a flight from Toronto to Ottawa.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

What's the intuition you've been carrying around and haven't acted on?

Make the call. Just the one call... and throw your hat over the fence.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/073-how-taking-action-on-your-intuition-actually-pays-off/

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

Good morning.

Most of us set the same kind of goal. Constant and never ending improvement.

Twenty percent better. Slow and steady wins the race.

There's another way to think about it, and I've been carrying it around since 2006.

I read a piece about a gentleman named Gamal Aziz, in a magazine I don't think even exists anymore.

He'd just come over from the Bellagio to run the MGM Grand.

And the first thing he did was pull apart every line item in the hotel. Restaurants. Gaming. Rooms. Entertainment. Conventions.

Every category of revenue, looked at on its own.

Then he asked one question of each one.

How high is high?

Not how do we improve this. What's actually possible here?

Take the restaurants.

They had a flagship restaurant that was perfectly serviceable. Profitable. Nobody was complaining about it.

Four million dollars a year.

And the reasonable question, the one almost everybody asks, is what could we do to lift this by twenty percent.

Gamal asked the other one. And he already knew the answer.

With a celebrity chef and a real destination restaurant, that same footprint could do eight million.

Here's the part I want you to sit with.

He booked the difference as a loss.

Not as an opportunity. Not as something to get to one day. In his mind, the hotel was losing four million dollars a year by not having that restaurant.

He took it to the board. They agreed. They ripped it out.

They partnered with Michael Mina and opened NobHill in exactly the same footprint.

First year... eleven million.

He'd been aiming at eight.

Now let's do it with yours.

You've got different buy buttons. Different things people pay you money for.

Look at each one on its own, the way he looked at each line item.

And ask how high is high.

Not what's realistic. What's possible, with the same framework you're already running?

And by the way, none of this means scaling past what you actually want. You're in control here.

It's your dream. You get to create exactly the business you want.

But carry this question through every line of what you do, and I think we're going to turn up some pretty big opportunities.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take your biggest line item. Write down what it's doing now, and what it could be doing.

Then look at the gap between them... and call it what Gamal called it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/072-how-one-idea-turned-a-4m-yr-restaurant-into-11m-yr/

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

Good morning.

I was looking back through 1997 this morning, and there it is. The first time I ever met Dan Kennedy.

And if you've ever had the pleasure of meeting Dan Kennedy, you'll know what a lovable, approachable, huggable kind of guy he is.

I'm kidding, of course.

I was 30. He was maybe 41 or 42, and already a grumpy old man. In the best possible way. That's his thing.

It was a weekend retreat Terry Hunterfeld put on for his Gold Rush members, up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dan was the keynote.

Same weekend I met Joe Polish for the first time, as it happens.

A lot of history rooted in one room.

This is one of those seed moments.

I'd been studying Dan for years by then. Subscriber to the No BS newsletter, reading everything he put out.

Because in the early to mid 90s, he was what John Carlton would call action central for this new thing called the information publishing business.

There was no internet yet. Barely the start of one.

So the model was this. Pick a market. Write a full page ad. Run it in a magazine those people already read.

Get them to respond for a free report... then mail them a sequence of three things... then sell them a $697 or $897 marketing kit.

That's how Joe Polish started. Ads in a carpet cleaning magazine.

Terry was doing it. A lot of people were doing it.

And it's not far off what the Guide to Halton Hills was for me. Have people respond, then keep on educating them.

Here's what Dan gave us from the stage that weekend. Three things.

They're foundational, and they've held up for thirty years.

Number one. The right message.

That's where it starts, and it's the most important of the three.

He called it the USP. The unique selling proposition. You don't hear the term as much now.

It's the answer to one question. Why should I choose to do business with you over every and any other option that I have?

Get that right, get it so you can clearly say what you're going to do for somebody, and you've got your message.

Number two. The right market.

We don't want to broadcast your message out to everybody.

If you can carefully select the right people to receive it, that's 50% of the job. Right there.

That's exactly why the information publishing model worked so well. The ad ran in the carpet cleaner magazine. The realtor magazine. The homes magazine.

The people you can help were already gathered in one place.

And if you've got what we call visible prospects, you can simply get a list of them.

You can select them geographically. Geodemographically. Psychographically.

Fancy sounding words for something very simple. You can pick people by where they are, or by what kind of people they are.

If somebody rents, they're living in an apartment complex or a rental home in a particular part of town. That's selectable.

The clearer you can get on it, the better.

Number three. The right media.

Once you know what the offer is, and you know who's the best person to make it to, now you can choose the best way to get in front of them.

In 1997 that meant the right magazine, the right newspaper, the right classified section, or direct mail straight to the exact people you wanted.

There was a whole industry around list brokering and list selection. You could find precisely who you were looking for.

Message. Market. Media.

Then he amplified all of it with something I went away and implemented immediately.

He called it plant the seed farm.

Once you've picked the group of people you're trying to reach, here's how you get dominant market presence in 45 days. A three step letter campaign.

The way he first worked it out was something he called the Giorgio letters.

Picture a restaurant. You pick the people you'd most want to come and eat there.

And you make an offer that's specifically appealing to them. In this case, a romantic dinner for two. Wine, roses, the whole thing.

The letter arrives from Giorgio, the director of romance at Giorgio's Italian restaurant.

He invites you in, and he takes care of everything. You can prepay for all of it.

You arrive and there's the bottle of wine, the roses, the candlelit table, a beautiful meal, dessert. All handled.

And you get to be the hero.

If they don't book, letter two makes the same offer a different way.

And letter three is the one titled can this marriage be saved? Without the romance, none of the rest of it happens.

Three steps instead of one. That intensification was the whole win.

I took that idea and built a postcard campaign out of it.

Getting in front of people who were going to sell their home in a particular market area... right ahead of the time when most of the activity happens.

So instead of mailing every month for 12 months, we mailed for the 8 weeks leading into the peak.

Into the fall, when people list. And into the spring, when people list.

Same people. A fraction of the mailings. All of it landing in the weeks that decide the year.

It's fun to look back and see the seeds of everything sitting right there on the page.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Message, market, media... in that order.

Write down who you'd most want to reach, and where they're already gathered.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/071-how-to-get-new-customers-in-any-market-in-45-days/

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

Good morning.

Rules sound like a limiter.

Constraints on how you do business, on who you'll take on, on how long you'll work at something... they feel like they can only cost you.

They're the opposite.

They're one of the greatest multipliers you've got, because they quietly remove the opportunities that were never going to work out anyway.

Let me show you what I mean.

There's a page in my 1997 journal titled Rules for Good Listings.

I'd been practicing this in my own business and overlaying it on everything I was learning at the time.

Deming, on the stability of a system and taking the friction out of it.

And my own experience, which was simpler than that. When a listing didn't work out and I went back and looked at why, there was usually a pattern.

Here's the uncomfortable part.

In the back of my mind, I usually knew. Right at the start, I knew that one wasn't set up to work.

Now, before the rules, the thing that makes any of this possible.

When you've got a system that generates all the leads you need, you stop operating out of scarcity.

You've got abundance instead. And abundance means you get to be selective.

You can't set standards for who you work with until you've got more people than you need.

That's really what the lead generation is for.

So here they are. And read them as clients or customers rather than listings, because that's the whole exercise.

Number one. Geographic area limits.

In my final years selling real estate, the tighter I drew my area, the more money I made.

We could theoretically have covered Caledon and Hillsburgh and Erin and every outlying town.

Choosing to focus on Georgetown and Halton Hills was a freeing decision. I didn't have to stay on top of the inventory anywhere else.

Number two. At least neutral in condition, or willing to get there.

Some of the listings I took early on were dumps, or so packed with stuff you couldn't see the house.

When you're starting out you take them anyway, because it's a foot in the door.

Neutral just means clean and clutter free. I'm not talking about renovating. I'm talking about nobody walking in and being repelled by the work ahead of them.

Number three. Motivated to move, and in agreement.

The best situation is somebody with a job transfer who has to be in Calgary by a certain date.

Motivated, and both of them excited about going.

If one of them is driving the move and the other one really doesn't want it, the one who doesn't want it can quietly make sure it doesn't happen.

Number four. Priced within 3% of the selling price. No more.

I wanted to work with people who wanted to sell, and I wanted the house sold quickly.

The homes that sell faster and for more money are the ones priced closest to what they're actually worth.

Number five. Able to afford the move.

People have a dream of the bigger house or the place out in the country, and sometimes the math just isn't there.

If the whole thing depends on their house hitting a number, everything can fall apart very quickly.

Number six. Willing to participate.

Willing to do the things that give the house its best chance. When I showed them how to tap into the 18% of homes that sell by direct or indirect referral, they were on board.

Number seven. Listed for 90 days only.

This was a big one, and the constraint was on me as much as it was on them.

My home selling system was a system that got homes on the market and sold in under 90 days.

The temptation is to take an overpriced listing on a six month or a one year term. We'll test it at your price, and if it doesn't sell we can revisit it.

That's permission to be lazy. For both of you.

And saying you'll only take it for 90 days does something else. It tells them you mean the price you just recommended.

You've seen more homes than they have. You know what the market is doing right now, especially if you're concentrated in one area.

So when they want to test it high, being unwilling to sign for six months is the most reassuring thing you can do.

Number eight. Easy to show. Lockbox, no restrictions.

No we can't show it when we're not home. No we have to be there. No only on these days.

It needs to be available when buyers want to see it.

Number nine. A winning story.

I've told you about Jerry Spence, and the way we'd tell the story of a listing so a buyer had a reason this was the house for them.

The losing stories are the ones you hear all the time. We're not giving it away. We don't have to sell. If they want it they can pay our price. We've put a lot of money into this house.

All resistance. No power.

The winning stories sound like this. We got our dream job in Calgary and we have to be there by the end of next month. We found our dream home in the country and we need to sell this one to get it.

You'll win more if you let them feel like they're winning.

Tim and Darlene's townhouse sold for more than the asking price that way. We told people the situation, the dilemma, and what the house was worth.

Number ten. No roadblocks.

Nothing standing between where you are and getting this thing sold.

Now translate all of that into your business.

Is there a geographic constraint that would help you?

Is there a minimum standard somebody has to meet before you'll work with them?

Do all the partners or decision makers have to be on board?

Is there a budget somebody needs to have?

Is there a time frame you'd hold yourself to, out loud, in front of them?

Here's the exercise.

Take a page in your journal and write the rules that have to be true for your very best clients. The ones you get the very best outcome for.

Then use them two ways. As selection criteria... and as the thing that keeps you grounded when you're tempted.

It sounds paradoxical, winning by having constraints.

But the constraints are exactly what free you up to go as fast as you can.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

One page in your journal. Rules for good clients.

Start with the last one that didn't work out... and write down the rule that would have kept you out of it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/070-how-to-use-constraints-as-a-multiplier/

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

Good morning.

Have you ever seen one of those bus benches that says bus bench advertising works?

You can't deny it. They've got you.

You're sitting there looking at a bus bench, reading a message on a bus bench, wondering whether bus benches work.

Well. There's your answer.

I was driving just outside of town not long ago and there was a billboard half hidden behind some trees.

It said billboards work.

And underneath, even behind trees.

That was the exact thought I was having, and it answered it before I'd finished having it.

That's a headline doing its job.

Yesterday we talked about saying what you do in three or four words.

Think of the headline as the amplifier sitting on top of that.

The three or four words tell somebody what this is. The headline makes them feel like it's for them.

Stop Your Divorce. You know instantly what that is.

But the headline we actually wrote for the book was longer.

How to stop your divorce or lover's rejection, even when your situation seems hopeless and you're the only one who wants to stop it.

Look at what that little bundle of words does.

It gives clarity. It gives hope. And it gives somebody the sense that this was written for me.

That's the whole job.

I've been writing headlines in my journals for as long as I've kept journals. Pages and pages and pages of them.

Thousands, for sure.

Because 80% of the work is in the headline.

I was looking at a page from 1997 this week and some of them I still use to this day. The ones that made the cut have little check marks beside them.

Why buyers love model homes, and how to make your house show like one.

How to find out what your house is worth, for free, over the phone.

How to avoid the six most expensive mistakes smart people make when they buy or sell a home.

How a 25 cent upgrade could net you an extra $500 to $1,000 more when you sell your house.

That last one started out as a little known designer secret that could net you an extra $500 to $1,000.

The secret was a brighter, warmer light bulb. I'd seen a study showing brighter homes sell for more money.

Which is really what all of this is. Stacking the evidence. Building the case for why somebody should work with you.

Now here's the useful part.

You can take any headline that works on you and deconstruct it. Look at the pattern underneath the words.

There's a good chance it starts with how to.

How to is a great way in, because it forces a transformation into the sentence.

Then there's when to.

When to put your house on the market to get the best possible exposure.

When to book your summer cottage rental to get the best possible price. When to book a resort. When to book an airline ticket.

Same shape. Different business.

Then there's why.

Why buyers love model homes. Why most real estate advertising will never sell your house, and what to do about it.

Why kids love this, and how to get them to do that.

Anytime you can get on your prospect's side of the table, helping them do the thing they already want to do, you've got a real advantage.

And then there's the one that reaches in and takes the objection away.

How to sell your house for nothing down and still get all cash at closing.

People hear nothing down and think that means there's no money in it for me.

So the headline removes the hesitation before they've said it out loud.

Same move as the billboard behind the trees.

Headlines are everywhere, by the way.

Eban and I used to play a game with the magazines. We were probably two of the only men with a subscription to Cosmo. Cosmo, Women's Day, Homemaker...

When a new one arrived we'd each independently write every headline we could imagine off the covers. Then compare. Then look for the patterns and ways to fill them in.

The covers were the prompt. The patterns were the point.

Here's the thing to hold onto.

The headline is the minimum requirement. If you can't capture somebody's attention there, nothing else you say is going to matter.

So if I could gift you with the energy and the curiosity and the discipline to go and do this exercise, I would.

What would it take to write 25 headlines for your business? Two sheets of paper.

Not 25 good ones. 25.

The good ones only turn up after you've written down the obvious ones and got them out of the way.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Two sheets of paper. 25 headlines.

Start them with how to, when to and why... and don't judge a single one of them until all 25 are on the page.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/069-how-to-write-headlines-that-attract-your-very-best-prospects-samples-inside/

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

Good morning.

If you only had three or four words to describe exactly what you do... what would they be?

Not a tagline. Not a mission statement.

Three or four words that make exactly the right person stop.

I was looking back through a journal from April 1997 and that's the question I was chewing on.

I'd been studying copy hard that year, and Jeffrey Lant's four most important words had gotten into me. You. Get. Benefit. Now.

Once you've got that filter you start running everything through it.

And I grew up in Toronto, where a man built an entire empire on four words.

I buy your gold.

If you're from Toronto you already know I'm talking about Russell Oliver.

He blanketed the city with radio and television. Over a million dollars a year in advertising at the time.

Booming voice, South African accent, holding up cash. I'm Russell Oliver, and I buy your gold.

Your old broken gold. Your gold chains. Your gold teeth. Fourteen karat, twelve, ten. I don't care what it is. Bring it in.

He was one of the most famous people in the city. Everybody knew where to go if you had gold to sell.

Four words did that.

I called him up in 1997 because I wanted to interview him for our By Referral Only magazine.

Quick aside, because it's worth more than it looks. Having a media property is a wonderful gateway to people.

A podcast. A magazine. A recording. Anything.

That's how I met Robert Cialdini. That's how I met Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, who wrote The One to One Future.

I just called them up. Most people say yes.

Anyway. I started thinking about all the places I've used a few words like that since.

Stop Your Divorce. You know exactly what that book is the second you hear it.

Convert More Leads. Get More Leads. Money-making websites. Money-making marketing.

I had a friend, a designer on our team, who did beautiful pencil portraits. We made him little business cards with one image and one line.

Original pencil portraits. Ninety-nine dollars.

He handed those out everywhere and people called him to commission portraits. I don't know what the cards cost... whatever it was, the return on them was ridiculous.

So here's the exercise.

What's the best way to say what you do in three or four words?

Look for nouns and verbs and benefit. That's where the power is. It runs all the way through Cash Copy.

And if it takes six or seven or ten words to get there, fine. The point is the condensing, not the counting.

Now here's why it matters more than it looks.

Get those words right and people are drawn to you immediately, because they see themselves in them.

Get them wrong and it doesn't matter what you say next. Nobody's paying attention.

This is the part I'd sit with.

They don't just roll off the tongue.

It's not the first three words that come to mind when you think about your business.

It's pages and pages of work. Getting inside your prospect's head the way we did yesterday, then condensing all of it down to a laser point.

What do they really want? How few words can I say it in?

Stop your divorce. Three words, worth millions, because they speak to exactly one person.

All that thinking, and what you've got to show for it is three or four words.

That sounds like a disproportionate amount of effort.

It's completely worth it.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Write down the three or four words you'd use for what you do right now. Whatever's already in your head.

Then spend twenty minutes trying to beat them.

Nouns. Verbs. Benefit... and the one person who'd stop dead when they read it.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/068-how-to-say-what-you-do-so-clearly-it-sells-itself/

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