This week I have my good friend Lane Bowers, who lives here in Winter Haven, Florida. We always have the greatest fun. He's got a super business. He's one of the top barefoot water ski instructors in the world, and he has a ski school here in Winter Haven. He also has all kinds of boating and barefooting equipment for his site, TheFootersEdge.com. We've had so much fun over the years and if you remember, we had a campaign selling Lane's instructional DVD that was a little bit outside of the box.
We're going to talk a little bit about that, go down memory lane, but the purpose of today is to hatch an evil scheme for a Christmas promotion that I've had for years. We've used it once before, but I want to get this out into your hands before Christmas, so that if you have a local business or a business that you have something that someone might be able to give or receive for Christmas, I think you're really going to enjoy this episode.
I'd love to hear from you, because I'd love to see all the different ways that we can implement this strategy. If you have a business that this would fit for, or you'd like to brainstorm a promotion like this, send me an e-mail to Dean@DeanJackson.com, and put "Christmas" in the subject line. It would be great to get a lot of different people trying something like this idea for this Christmas season.
Enjoy this episode, and then let me know if you'd like to do something like this for your business.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 021
Dean: Lane "Dawg" Bowers.
Lane: I'm in.
Dean: You are in. Game on. We're recording live right now. This is how it works. Welcome to the evil scheme hatchery.
Lane: I am excited. I'm super excited.
Dean: No lead up, no nothing, just hatching evil schemes right out of the gate.
Lane: Man, it was definitely-
Dean: I was thinking about it when we were talking earlier this morning, it's coming up on celebrating 20 years of hatching evil schemes with you.
Lane: That is true.
Dean: Does that seem almost impossible?
Lane: It does seem almost impossible. That is hard to believe.
Dean: It is hard to believe. I mean so far back that I remember the very first introduction and evil scheme that we hatched together was me sitting at Keith's desk in the gym and writing out on looping pages of a dot matrix printer, remember when printer paper was fed through a dot loop thing, and I think there were like four or five pages of this long like why you should stop selling stuff in your ad and just focus on giving something away, and I remember King Richard with his, that was just the worst possible idea, "How are you going to make any money giving stuff away?"
Lane: I remember reading that and just like my whole world being changed, what I thought I knew, and my eyes being opened. I remember I was so excited. I was like "This, we can do this like right now. I mean this is not something that we have to talk about Let's do it literally right now." Which led of course to that infamous response from Richard, "My plate's full."
Dean: My plate is full. That's been a catch phrase for us for years. I love it. That's funny. I am excited. We have hatched some amazing evil schemes together, starting with the How to be the Best Barefooter on Your Lake ebook to give away to people in an ad.
Lane: Exactly, exactly.
Dean: I mean craziness. What I'm excited about, and we a couple of years ago when we did the Best Christmas Ever campaign, I keep think about that and I think that now is a really good time to get something like that going again. Where do we start here? This is always a little bit more, I have to set the stage a little bit because we know the backstory. Normally when I'm doing these episodes I'm meeting people for the first time basically, and we're starting from the beginning and hatching the evil scheme, but you and I know so much about the backstory so let me just set the context a little bit here for people.
Lane I met 20 years ago now, and Lane is a barefoot water skier and, not just a barefoot water skier, he's a barefoot water skiing legend. I can think that's safe to say, but at the time when I met him Lane was one of the top barefooters in the world, was on the US barefoot ski team, has been a pioneer, really invented lots of tricks that moved things forward in barefooting, and has a ski school here in Florida where people from all over the world come to spend time to ski with Lane and improve their barefooting, and barefooting is just what it sounds like, water skiing without water skis. Lane's built a whole barefooting empire. He's the world's best market in the world's smallest niche, but he's expanded that and built it into water sports and water sports equipment and all kinds of stuff, so that's the backstory.
Lane was one of the first people, when getting email addresses was just kind of becoming fashionable, Lane bought into this whole idea. I said "Let's give people stuff and build the audience of all these people who want to barefoot water ski." So we did an ebook called How to be the Best Barefooter on Your Lake, and that has built a list of probably almost all the barefoot water skiers in the world, wouldn't you say? I mean it's pretty-
Lane: I would say pretty much if they've got a computer and an email address we probably got them.
Dean: It's been a pretty cool journey. Now, let's talk about what we can do with these people right now for Christmas, and a couple of years ago I had this idea that really Christmas is a kind of thing were people are not buying stuff for themselves, but they're getting stuck often with gifts that people are getting for them that are not really what they wanted, and if they really could get what they wanted it would be a joyous Christmas for everyone, and I think that goes for the people who are buying gifts for people too, so my idea was that if we could make it easy to kind of advocate for the other person, that it would be a cool thing, and I came up with these words of sending a mailing to somebody, to your clients, and this works if you have any kind of a retail store, or any kind of thing that sells something that somebody might be able to buy for Christmas, and if you have a big enough imagination any business that you have could do that.
The idea is to send a mailing to your clients, because here's the thing, you've got your clients, but you don't know who the person who's going to be buying them the Christmas gift is, so we decided to send a mailing to your clients because that's the name that you have, but spend it to the person in charge of making sure that Lane Bowers has the best Christmas ever, and then directing that as the addressee and putting a highlight to make sure not to be opened by Lane Bowers. Now that I think is the first step of getting something in the hands of the right person, and so I want to hatch a couple of evil schemes with this, Lane, so with that person but also to do an emailing that we could do to your clients, to the people on your list, so that we're not hoping that they're going to direct this to the, yeah we can't address an email to the person in charge of making sure Lane Bowers has the best Christmas ever, but I think when we came up with this idea a few years ago, the thing that we did was sending an email saying "I'm hooking you up for Christmas" and that was, so there's two approaches there.
Let's start with that one, Lane. Let's start with the Christmas wish book, so the idea is that we send an email to everybody one your list and say "We're hooking you up for Christmas" or "I'm hooking you up for Christmas" or something like that, and the big pieces of the idea are we're essentially saying to your client, "Lane, I know that Christmas is coming and that you're going to get a lot of gifts, but often you don't get the things that you really want, and wouldn't it be cool if we could figure out a way to get everybody who's going to get you something to get you stuff you really want, so we've made it easy for you here and I put together a Christmas wish book and a simple set of instructions for you to get out to make sure that you get exactly what you want for Christmas, so click over here and take a look what I've got for you." I think that kind of tone of the email would get somebody to go to a page, right.
Lane: Yeah, that's right.
Dean: Where they could now see either just a written page or a video, I'm saying I know for you, you could do a video, but I want to make this like a evil scheme that anybody could do.
Lane: Yeah, a lot of people probably aren't as comfortable doing videos.
Dean: Don't feel comfortable with the video, but I think for you, you'd be really comfortable doing that and you have that kind of a relationship with people, like you have people really getting, who are used to seeing you on video. That's the relationship that you have with them, so you're speaking to those people who really do want all the stuff. Now, so that's the thing, and I think even what I've learned about email now is that, back then I suggested a subject line of "I'm hooking you up for Christmas" as the subject line, and now I think that as I said that to you my latest learning about Christmas, or email subject lines, is to be more neutral and to just put "Christmas" in the subject line, because-
Lane: If you and I were having a contest of the best subject line, if I could just call up Dean Jackson on a private conversation in a contest about the best subject, if I could do that, what would be the winning line? What would be the winning subject line.
Dean: Yeah, imagine if you could do that. I think that my best guess would be "Christmas".
Lane: That's even, you can't beat a one word subject line.
Dean: Like how in the world could you not open an email just like, here's the thought behind that, is that the, I've been really like honing my email abilities here because I've set up an environment that allows me to really hatch those kind of evil schemes. I've been doing my email mastery case study program, and so I'm working with people on crafting specifically emails like this, so I've gotten to really hone my email abilities here by doing it, and what I learned, as I was thinking about all the components of emails, the subject line, what I noticed about myself is that personal emails that appear like they're only for me get the highest open rate, like I know when, knowing what I know now if I said, if I see a subject line that says "I'm hooking you up for Christmas" which is curiosity and that's kind of the thing that we would say, but it also has a tone of this is not just for you.
If you look back, if you look at the last three or five personal emails that you've gotten in your inbox, you'll notice that the ones that you get are very, very neutral. It's like they're overtly simple to just identify what it is because when you're sending a personal email to somebody, you're not concerned about trying to get them to open it, you're just putting what it is, right. I mean it's like I noticed that myself about like when I'm sending emails to Ebon or I get a personal email from Ebon or from Jeff Walker or any of these guys I know, and I get all their marketing emails come to me, but when I get one that I know is just for me, it has a different tone in it. It's kind of an interesting thing right, so I try and take that, so I think let's just go with that. That Christmas I think would be a really great subject line, it gets the idea.
Now that gets us to the point that we really want which is that the email is open, we have their attention, and now the only purpose of this email is to get them to go to the page. That's the only thing that we want, so we want to kind of set the context for that with what I said in the email. We can get this transcribed so you can go back and see the actually words that we said, but I think basically the tone of it was just that, Christmas is coming up and you're probably going to get a bunch of stuff you don't want, and people are going to stuck about what are we going to get for Lane, and I figured out a simple way to make sure that you get the stuff you want, and make it easy on everybody who's going to be buying you stuff. That kind of a simple thing, and then-
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: You tracking on that?
Lane: I'm tracking buddy. I'm sitting on the dock. I'm getting excited as if it's my Christmas.
Dean: Yeah, and then the page, and we talked a little bit about this before we recorded, but I'll set the stage again, that the idea that we did a couple of years ago, maybe and when I say a couple of years ago, it could be as many as four or five years ago. I don't even remember now. Time just melds, right.
Of the idea of putting together the Christmas wish book, and putting a PDF together that would highlight the best things, the things that somebody would really, likely want, and crossing a range of price ranges, but if we take the barefooters as your ideal there, what would be kind of, beginning with the end in mind, the things that somebody could, would probably want, or be able to get somebody to get them for Christmas? Like things from a wetsuit or you know.
Lane: Yeah, anything from a barefoot suit, I mean it really depends on the price point, but barefoot suites to handles to our DVDs.
Dean: Oh, see there you go. Yeah, the DVD, that's got to be on there. Let's make the Christmas wishlist right now. Let's just make the items here, so the instructional DVD, and that is 39.
Lane: Yep, and there's two different one's we got, yeah we've got 39.99 and we've got, that's the original two hour one that you and I had talked about when we first started doing that, and then we have another one which is just for beginner barefooters and I call it the No Fall Barefooting, so there's a second DVD, and then-
Dean: That one is, that's 39.99 too.
Lane: Yep, same thing. Then we have handles.
Dean: Yeah, handles.
Lane: Then what we call foot skis, basically skis bigger than your feet that make it a little bit easier, and then we go up to barefoot short that you wear under your barefoot suit, then a barefoot suit, then from there it kind of, it depends on, we're talking about the barefooter list here so then I mean it could go to anything from, it's get more expensive heading up from there so anything-
Dean: Let's go. Let's keep it going just because we got to have the, like I think part of it is having like the-
Lane: Dream.
Dean: You know the Neiman Marcus catalog, let's get the diamond studded foot skis, you know, yeah.
Lane: The diamond studded equipment.
Dean: The submarine. The barefooting submarine attached with the boom.
Lane: Well, from there we have the barefoot boom, and then we could go from the barefoot boom to wake board tower, which is used for barefooters, and what we call our ultimate set is kind of that'd be the top of probably sale price for anything we do, is a combination of the tower, the super fly high that mounts on the tower, that raises the rope up to 14 feet off the water, and then either the boom or we also have a tower boom that mounts to the tower, so it's kind of like the Swiss Army knife option, and that's what we call the ultimate setup, so that's basically all the our most expensive equipment all at once.
Dean: Okay. That's great, and what about the-
Lane: We could include lessons too if wanted to do that.
Dean: I was going to say is that's, what about the lessons, coming down to be with you, right?
Lane: Yeah, that's the ultimate plan.
Dean: That could from a one day, people can go from a half day to a week, right?
Lane: Yep, exactly right. I guess if we also want put it out, we could include even clinics, barefoot clinics, bring me to your site type of thing. That's the other thing, so that'd be more expensive than our more expensive stuff, the ultimate setup, but if you're including everything that would be it.
Dean: Yeah, so there you go. I mean that, Lane, that's so cool, and then I still think we should do your signature boat, but that's another story. We got on that one time, yeah.
Lane: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Okay, so that right there, that would make a really nice like Christmas wish book right there, right?
Lane: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: That would be like a, I would see that we could do that in like a 20 page PDF with, yeah, one or two pages for each of those things, big pictures, lots of, a little bit of copy, and really clear instructions on where somebody would go to buy this, plus a gift card, like that ...
Lane: Yeah, that's obviously another one.
Dean: Right, and that could be the best thing ever. What would be the, so we got 39.99 on one end and on the high end of stuff, the ultimate setup is how much?
Lane: The ultimate setup in the equipment there is, I think it comes to like $3,700, just under $3,700.
Dean: $3,700, okay. That right there is quite a range. That's awesome, so in there when you look at the-
Lane: I guess the gift card covers anything in between, right?
Dean: Well, that's what I was just going to say is how much are, what are we talking about like with the handles?
Lane: Well, for instance, handles, the least expensive one is I believe $69 going up to $129, so that's the range there for handles.
Dean: Foot skis?
Lane: The foot skis $89.
Dean: Short, the barefoot shorts that you put underneath?
Lane: $89, and the barefoot suit is 299.
Dean: Well, you've got the ultimate barefoot suit, right?
Lane: Of course.
Dean: Yeah, and then the boom is?
Lane: The boom is 499 up to, there's a good selection.
Dean: That's a boom for your boat. That's a boom for your boat.
Lane: Right, so a boom can from 499, and then because a lot of times they need one or two accessories, which are roughly $100 a piece, so average boom sale's probably $100 more than that, 599.
Dean: Yeah, but does it fit my boat, Lane?
Lane: Yes. Turn the page, click here, and I'll check. Give me your boat information. You've got to tell them that, because that was just classic.
Dean: Actually you tell them, because that'll set the stage. That's a nice, there's always a marketing solution.
Lane: Yeah, that's right, so the equipment that I sell is pretty esoteric when come to, you can't just click and say "Hey, look a boom. I like it. I want to buy it." It would be nice if you could, so I was trying to solve the problem, and of course my number one solution for any problem is to call Dean, and I said "I'm thinking of making a form where if they give me there boat year, the make of their boat, the model of their boat, that kind of information, then they'd submit it to a form, and then I would get back to them and email them, contact them by phone or whatever, and tell them which boom fits there boat." You can up with the much better idea of asking them "Does it fit your boat." Then I collect all the same information, "well just give me the year of your boat, the model of your boat, the make of your boat, the manufacturer, and click here" and so it takes them to a page and it goes "Yes, it does. It fits your boat." Which is a much simpler solution, so that just was, that was just classic. That was genius.
Dean: I love it.
Lane: The answer is, we have a boom to fit every boat. It's more complicated than that to fulfill that answer specifically, but the answer is yes it does fit your boat, and the reality is then I actually have to look up their information. Then I follow up with a personal email of the exact boom that fits their boat.
Dean: That's perfect. I love it. What would be the, if somebody wanted the lessons side, like from a half day, how much would it cost to do a half day?
Lane: If they do a half day now it's $110. A full day is $175.
Dean: $175, and they could do a week, is there a-
Lane: I don't actually give a discount anymore for a week.
Dean: It's just they just take however many days, so there we go. Somebody could give them, not-
Lane: Exactly, you took how many days you ...
Dean: This is perfect, Lane, so I think that this is really awesome. Now one thing that I noticed missing from this is my favorite two items, which would be the How to be the Best Barefooter on Your Lake book.
Lane: Yeah, that's true.
Dean: Because we have the paperback version of that book now on CreateSpace, right?
Lane: Yes we do.
Dean: That should be available for people. You could stock that up for Christmas, and SlickFeet50.
Lane: Oh, yes.
Dean: How is our SlickFeet50 stock doing?
Lane: Our stock, and just three, four days ago I actually had someone calling in who needed exactly that, the SlickFeet50, and I have since run out of the SlickFeet50 lotion, but not the complete system, well it is part of the complete system, but the actual lotion, it needs to be, we need to stock up on that, so I haven't done that in a while, but it is exciting. I need to restock the lotion.
Dean: I was going to tell the sidebar about SlickFeet50, because that's important I think.
Lane: Very important.
Dean: We were one day just laughing, as we do, and talking about how wouldn't it be cool if there was just some magic lotion that you could rub on your feet and all of the sudden you're a better barefooter, and that was in a discussion of thinking about what would be the dream come true for my ideal audience. The dream come true would be that there's this special lotion that I could just rub on my feet and magically be a better barefooter, and this was kind of in a combination conversation about John Carlton's idea of the magic versus reality meter, and the magic, the further you get out on the magic thing, the appeal goes up, and the closer you get to the reality, the reality goes down.
The reality of being a barefooter is that you've got to, that's how most people do it is a very painful slow, lots of falling, way of learning how to barefoot, and the magic would be if you could rub the lotion and automatically be a better barefooter, so the reality is if you do it with, Lane's got the greatest instructional DVD that's not just the best barefoot instructional CD or DVD but the best instructional DVD period, of anything, it goes down that level, so people were buying this, the instructional DVD for 39.99 and buying lots of them, and then what we had this idea of was coming up with this product that we laughed and laughed because we ended up calling it SlickFeet50, and it was just the most ridiculous thing, but we ended up, I was in California at a hotel and I noticed that they had private labeled toiletries. They had shampoo and condition and lotion, and I thought wow. I look of the bottom of the thing and find the company that does the packaging and found out we could get these individual bottle or this lotion, private labeled, and put our SlickFeet50 logo on it, so I had Jesse, my designer, get the logo together, and it's just beautiful, and we bought a bunch of the SlickFeet50. How many bottles did you have to buy to get the-
Lane: I don't remember. I want to say it was either 1,000 or 500. I'm not sure how many. I can't remember.
Dean: Yeah, something but they're all gone, which is great.
Lane: They're gone and I had to gently bring down this lady who was very much excited about the actually bottle, so I had to walk her down the road of reality and explain to her, and she's a very excited customer now, but it was always a very tender process of when called and demanded cases of this stuff.
Dean: We ended up make an ad, making a page, that was all about selling the SlickFeet50, and when you buy the SlickFeet50 for 39.99, you get a copy of the instructional DVD, which we were packaging as the SlickFeet50 Barefoot Success System.
Lane: The complete.
Dean: The Complete Success System, and we even set up the sales page and the instructions on all of it to feature the SlickFeet50 and the DVD comes along with it, and we gave people instructions of the exact system that they need to follow, which is to get out your credit and order your SlickFeet50 Barefoot Success System, and then we showed pictures of the UPS guy arriving at the door, and you unpacking it and putting the SlickFeet50 on your freshly cleaned feet, and then the important-
Lane: You had to elevate your feet.
Dean: Then the important instruction was that you needed to elevate your feet for at least two hours and that just happened to be the length of time of the barefoot instructional DVD, and then we even went so far as to instruct people that if you need something, call our for it. Get somebody to go and get it for you. Don't let your feet go below parallel, to keep them focused on watching this DVD, and then it was get some sleep and wake up and they're a better barefooter, which is absolutely true, because you'll be a better barefooter after watching the instructional DVD, so it was really like a fun, fun process to put that all together, and we laughed and laughed about it.
Lane: I think we had never laughed so hard. I mean that was awesome.
Dean: Now, I think that we should look at including that in this Christmas wish book, I think would be a really cool thing, but now, so here's the grand scheme, so I want to use this as like a something that anybody with any kind of retail or any kind of store that sells multiple items or multiple products that is starting with the, we've got a great little selection of products here with the DVDs, we've got the handles, the barefoot shorts, the suites, the boom, the tower, all the way up to spending lessons with you, the clinics, and gift cards in any denomination from we could have it from $50 up to $5,000, right?
Lane: Exactly, yes.
Dean: Somebody could get a $5,000 gift card. That would make all of their barefooting dreams come true.
Lane: We do need to leave it an option.
Dean: Yep, and there's the thing. I think that when you put that in there, I mean we're only kind of half joking when I was talking about the Neiman Marcus, you know the barefooting submarine or whatever, I mean part of their strategy is putting in ridiculous thing, but somebody always buys them, so I think you could have that as like setting the stage for the ultimate barefooting experience, where you come and you get all of this stuff, that's why I was talking about your boat too, all of that, but maybe next Christmas, with all the stuff from this one.
Lane: Maybe next Christmas we can get there.
Dean: Anybody could put this idea together of the things, and I want to make it like simple enough that anybody could do here, so think, Lane, if it was something where you could put together just very simple, yeah like a Christmas wish catalog that was meant for the purpose that we have, which is our instruction to your clients, to your list, to say, we'll let them in on it, right, that the idea is that we let them in on it. We send the email to them, subject line Christmas, body of the message "Hey, Christmas is coming up. You're going to get probably all these gifts you don't want. Here's how we can get you the stuff you really do want", and have them go to this page where now there's a video from you and we could show them the Christmas wish book and explain to them how this all works, that we know you want all the best barefoot stuff, and so I've put together this Christmas wish book and we've got page after page of great Christmas gift ideas from $39 all the way to $3,900, and here's what you do to make sure that you get hooked up this Christmas, is first of all, print out the Christmas wish book, then grab yourself a sharpie and a highlighter, and sit down somewhere, look page by page at this, circle the things that you really like or highlight them.
Put arrows and stars on the ones you really want, and then leave it around so that the person who's going to be buying you a Christmas gift this year can discover it and get what you really want for Christmas. That's a pretty cool like, I think that it goes in on the whole idea of we're also now getting the needs of the person who's buying the gifts met too because they don't know what to get, like the kids and the mom and the wife or the husband or whatever it is. Somebody's always struggling to think "What am I going to get them Christmas this year?"
Lane: Well, and I think there's some real angst and fear that them would get him a bad gift.
Dean: I think that too, and I think we're actually, we're saving Christmas. We're saving a lot of strife and anxiety over Christmas, Lane.
Lane: That's how we roll.
Dean: I think that's what we're doing. We're keeping families together.
Lane: Yes.
Dean: Yeah, so that idea, I think that's 80% of it right there. That would really be, I think that kind of thing, of that phase of it, of the going to the list, getting them enrolled in letting people know what their Christmas wish is, and can you imagine, can you see a page with just the, with your DVDs on it, and I mean just simple things of saying, of the having a little headline about the DVDs and the book. I would group those three together I think, the DVD and the No Fall Barefooting DVD and the book, all on one page kind of thing.
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: Then a page for handles.
Lane: Yes, yep.
Dean: Then a page for foot skis, just explaining, I mean imagine all like, I'm seeing like Helvetica bold, big headline for each of what they are and then some Helvetica copy that just describes what it is and the price of them and then you could have one page for barefoot shorts and barefoot suits.
Lane: Yep. Now, in my case I've got that catalog. Are you talking about making a whole new PDF or-
Dean: Yeah, I'm talking about making a PDF of just cycling out the, like how many different handles do you have?
Lane: Well, there are, there's probably, there's one, two, three, there's probably, I'm looking at them right now, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine handles, ten handles, but there's like three, the most popular ones, we could put the most popular ones. There's basically three of the most popular ones.
Dean: That's it. That's what I want is just the highlights. You know how, you remember Sears would send the big catalog every year, but then the Christmas wish book would come, and it was a smaller, more manageable catalog with all the, right?
Lane: Right.
Dean: That's what we're kind of looking for here, you know.
Lane: I got you.
Dean: Then of course on every page you could say, see more handles at, where do you send people for that? Do you go to thefootersedge.com or where's the?
Lane: Yep. That's what the, yeah our website thefootersedge.com, yep.
Dean: So everyone would have your big, every page would have your big phone number, would have your website, plus gift cards, have a thing that you can get gift cards.
Lane: Yeah, absolutely. On each page of each different product or you mean just-
Dean: I think so, yeah. I think you want, you can't be to overt. We got to use like e commerce best practices here.
Lane: Right, okay. I see.
Dean: Then the booms and towers. That could maybe be, the boom could be a full page, and the wake board tower, and I'm seeing like where there's big pictures of these things. That it's not just like a, you know the small catalog pictures. I'm visiting, I'm envisioning like the bigger things as highly visual.
Lane: Yeah. I'm trying to look at, my personal preference is to do that by video, but I think that having the PDF catalog might probably be the better way to do it. Yeah, I'm just kind of looking through here at everything, but yeah I mean that's, that would be exciting for them to be able to print that out and then yeah.
Dean: And leave it around.
Lane: Exactly, perfect.
Dean: Then one for the tower, all the ultimate tower setup. That could be a full page thing too.
Lane: Sure, yeah.
Dean: Then the lessons, come ski with me in person in beautiful Winter Haven, Florida, all big, nice glass water, sunny. Create that dream, you know.
Lane: Yeah. That is the dream. I think that's the thing that gets, and really for the barefooter group, the dream we want them to buy equipment, the dream is the barefooting. The dream is doing their dream trick. The dream is being able to showoff to their friends.
Dean: Yeah, and that with some shiny, happy people, testimonials like you've got. No, I mean really that's the thing right?
Lane: Right.
Dean: Oh, look at all these people who's Christmas wishes came true.
Lane: Yeah, we've got some video testimonials on our ski school page, so yeah we could use some of that.
Dean: Part of the thing, and I've done a lot of things where we take the video testimonials and transcribe them, and put them, take exerts from them, take a screen cap of them with a headline and what they said, and then have the page that directs people to thefootersedge.com/whatever where you've got all your video testimonials, you know. Here's what all these people said, and I mean if you've got, do have video testimonials for the boom, for the tower, for all the ...
Lane: We've got testimonials but not video testimonials of the equipment.
Dean: Okay, no problem.
Lane: I've got a list of them that I keep, and we've got some that rotate on our pages.
Dean: What about your hates and tee shirts and gear?
Lane: We do have the hats, which I should definitely include that, we've got lots of those. We don't have that many tee shirts. We have some tee shirts, so I'd be worried about too much of that because we're not going to have a full stock of that, tee shirt, because-
Dean: Why don't you set up now, like I mean now you don't need to stock the tee shirts. Why don't you setup like your stuff on, I don't even know the names of the sites now, but I'm sure there are places where you could just keep the artwork on the thing.
Lane: Yeah, that's what I wanted to do. I actually was meaning to research that so we can just put it on anything from yeti looking cups to sweatshirts and hats.
Dean: Yeah, all of that.
Lane: Yeah, that's what I need to do with that, because the tee shirts and that little stuff is too hard to inventory, for me anyways, so I don't like to-
Dean: You don't need to anyway now that you use like CaféPress or some place like that that there's the site where you can just link and people can print and do whatever they, whenever they want.
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: You can put it on mugs and the whole deal.
Lane: Absolutely. Yeah, that's ideally what I'd like to do it, with that stuff.
Dean: Yeah, with the SlickFeet50 mug.
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: Why not? Good looking logo.
Lane: I know.
Dean: I just laugh and laugh at that, because it really is so funny, so that I really think like, Lane, I totally see this as a incredible opportunity there for people.
Lane: I agree. I absolutely agree. I think that's doable.
Dean: I think for local businesses or product based businesses if you've got a few hundred people or local clients, people who frequent your establish or frequent your store or buy other stuff, but there's other things that they could buy, this now, phase two of this, and this is where I was thinking about I asked you earlier if you had the mailing addresses of the people who actually come and ski with you, like who have come to see you live, that those might be the people that would be worth mailing to, so my idea around this mailing is to mail an envelope or a postcard, I got to talk to my post card guys, which would be the very, will be the greatest thing, is if we could integrate a gift card right into the postcard, like a tabbed postcard that you, the outside, it's like a Christmas card sized postcard, let's say a one 8 1/2 by 11 folded in half and on the address side or the side of it it says, "Please rush to the person in charge of making sure Lane Bowers has the best Christmas ever" and your address with the "not to be opened by Lane" and then on the inside of it, so that in theory the person who's opening it is now the person who is the spouse or the loved one of the person that we mailed the post card to, right.
If you got that postcard at your house you would, so one of two things is going to happen. Either you're going to get it or Cindy's going to get it, and if Cindy sees it's addressed to the person in charge of making sure Lane has the best Christmas ever, she's going to know that's for her, and if you see it, you would hand it to her, right. That's the-
Lane: Leave it conspicuously around.
Dean: That's exactly right, or you might even peek to see what it is, and then once you saw, then you could seal it. Then we could have a little note, note to Lane, if you opened this accidentally here's what you do is stick it back together and put it in the thing, so we totally anticipate that they're going to do it anyway. That's kind of funny, actually, I love that.
Lane: That's a great idea.
Dean: Yeah, and then the one page could be about the gift card idea, like essentially saying on the page "Lane is one of our favorite clients, and I know he loves to barefoot and there's probably a lot of cool things that would make his Christmas wish come true, so two things for you. You can go here to download the, I've got some great Christmas wish ideas for you."
Maybe you could have a URL that now you're doing a video for the person who is at this page. If you're at this page it's because you are the loved one of our favorite customers and we want to make sure that you don't have to wonder about what to get them for Christmas, and so we're making it easy. If you know what they want, here's our Christmas here's our Christmas wish catalog. It's all, we've got everything from instruction DVDs all the way up to spending time with us, and if you want to make sure that they get what they really want, here's what I'll do for you. We've got a gift card that we can personalize for them in any denomination from $100 or $50 to $5,000. You just call this phone number, tell me how much you want to make the gift card for, or you can do it online, and we'll send you the gift card, so you'll have something to give them under the tree, and there's a special video that they can watch on Christmas morning or whenever.
Lane: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: I mean that's pretty exciting actually, if it's like they're, if they're coming to see you, they get the thing on Christ morning and they get to watch the video from you and they've got the gift card. That's pretty cool.
Lane: I thought it would be really cool to, even though it'd be more work, but for people who went to the level who were going to actually ski with me, to actually, literally text them or email them a video that they could text to their husband or whoever the gift on Christmas morning.
Dean: Text them on Christmas morning, that's great. Yeah, yeah.
Lane: Right.
Dean: I like this. I mean that's really pretty ... I just think like so many, I think we've laid out a really cool promotion here as a really great idea and something that somebody could get together pretty quickly, you know.
Lane: Yeah. That's exciting, excited to get to work on it.
Dean: Yeah. Now, how could we, here's the thing to is that now I take this, my challenge in life, Lane, has always been that I have such high aspirations for people, and I always have such this vision for what people could do, and now I have-
Lane: Right, now you have to settle for what they will do.
Dean: You're an enthusiastic doer and so I know that you're going to do something great because you love to actually get in there and let's do this, and now let's bring it down to the level of for anybody listening who's thinking this is a great idea, but they just wouldn't go to that length. What's the minimum effective dose of doing something like this? The minimum effective dose.
Lane: That's a great question. That's a great question, because there's definitely going to be, there's definitely be a lot of people who are going to be feeling that way.
Dean: Yeah, so what if we could trigger, so I mean the main thing is what is the asset that we have? If you've got an email list of those people, that's great, right. Now, what if there is a, the Christmas wish idea, let's just take that phase one of it where we're going to send an email to there clients, and they're going to put Christmas in the subject line, which I'm sure that everybody would, they will do that, right. They could see theirselves doing that, but now we got to make-
Lane: I think like Christmas is the bare minimal someone could do.
Dean: Right. Okay, so now what's the bare minimum that we could see somebody, what would be the nine word email equivalent of this that somebody could do to just get somebody to go to that page, so if we said "Hi, Lane. I figured out a really cool way for you to get exactly what you want for Christmas. Click here."
Lane: Yep.
Dean: Now that would be a, I figured out a really cool way for you to get what you want for Christmas, okay. That, because it's from you, and you have that relationship, you could get somebody to click here. That's going to be the minimum viable thing, so now we've already, we've taken away the creative necessary for that by baking it into the process here, right. If you're listening, we're including it right here in this podcast. Hi Lane, I figured out a really cool way for you to get exactly what you want for Christmas. I'm writing it as we speak here.
Lane: I was just going to ask because you do better when you write physically.
Dean: I'd even go with a smiley. I'd even go with a smiley face on that, and then click here, Lane. That's it. I think if I sent you, if I sent that email to you, and said "Hey Lane, I figured out a really cool way for you to get exactly what you want for Christmas this year. Click here, Dean" you'd go there.
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: Of course. Okay, so now we've got, I mean it's practically writing itself. This is practically, we're giving it as a gift to people here. Okay, now that they're on that page, what's the minimum easiest viable thing that somebody could do? What's the, and this is, when I go through this process of thinking this minimum effective dose, I think about what is the actual active ingredient right, so the actual thing, like the subject line, the whole purpose is just to get somebody to open the email, and the only purpose of this email is to get them to go to that page, and now the page is about the, what do we want? What's the outcome we want from the page? We want somebody to download the Christmas wish book, right.
Lane: Right.
Dean: The minimum thing that we need for the Christmas wish book is, well you can put that together but it would certainly be like a collection of, for somebody doing it, if you've got eight to twelve different kind of projects that somebody could be, you know, or different products that somebody could buy.
Lane: Are you talking on the page or in the download?
Dean: I'm talking about in the download, because yeah, like I mean so one option might be a video. Actually if you're comfortable with the video, that might be the fastest way to actually get to get it done. If you think about it, if I, you know how I do my movie review videos, just like holding up the camera and saying, almost like the thought of it, saying "You guys are going to love this. I figured out a really cool way to get exactly what you want for Christmas this year, and I put together a Christmas wish book with all of the best things that we have. Here's what you do, just print out this book, get yourself a Sharpie and a highlighter, print it out, circle the things that you want, and leave it around so that anybody that might be thinking about what to get you for Christmas is going to discover it, and I've made it super easy on the page. They'll know exactly where to go to get a gift card for you to make that come true. Just click on that link, download it right there, and you're good to go." That I think, that thing, would get somebody curiosity wise to print out that PDF, right.
Lane: Right.
Dean: I think we're, I'm stripping away the friction here, is the way that I'm approaching it, right. I want to make it so that it doesn't require a lot of angst and creativity, "What am I going to say? How do I need to do this?"
Lane: Right.
Dean: I think that level of thing, and if you have a print out of it, if you've printed out the PDF and if you're showing and holding it somebody, that could be a really cool thing.
Lane: You mean in the video on the page.
Dean: In the video.
Lane: Yeah, so you got, and I think even literally going to a page, circle it, look here's all I want you to do, here literally, you know what he wants. He wants a boom, right, so here look over here. Circle the boom, get to the page with the magic marker. Leave no stone unturned.
Dean: Yeah.
Lane: Sharpie in hand.
Dean: Yeah, I think that would be a pretty cool, I think that anybody could do that. You could shoot that one, no editing required, one continuous shot for three minutes, you could tell that whole story completely.
Lane: Yeah. I mean I could definitely see how video might be more angst for some people than spending all time to create the page and everything, but if you, I think a lot of your clients are very comfortable with their product and they can make a, and I think, I mean what's going to endear you to your audience more than a video, and not a perfect video, just a video.
Dean: Yes, and quick. That's there's something about it that it's not, I think part of the magic of it is that it's not highly produced and-
Lane: Definitely not script. Don't script it.
Dean: Right. No, no teleprompters. None of that.
Lane: Absolutely no scripting, teleprompters, no great lighting, just some lighting.
Dean: Just some lighting, and then the sounds good.
Lane: The sounds is good, yes. You could do it on an iPhone thing. Do it on a smartphone.
Dean: You could, absolutely do it.
Lane: This is a smartphone project.
Dean: This is a smartphone project, you're right.
Lane: This is not a crew. This is your kid holding it if you don't want to put it on a selfie stick, or a selfie stick.
Dean: Yeah. Yeah. Now how could, okay that's one thing, but what if somebody didn't want to put together a Christmas wish book, how could we make it so that they could get the point that somebody could get them a gift card? What if we combined the ideas of having the gift card, sending the mailing to the person in charge of making sure that Lane has the best Christmas ever, what if there was a way of, if all that the person had to do was put the name and the email address of the person they wanted to know about this in-
Lane: Who is the person in charge? I need the email and the name of the person in charge, and I'm going to take care of this for you.
Dean: That's exactly right. Now we're getting somewhere.
Lane: Exactly. I'm going to make this quick for you. I need the name and the email of the person who's in charge of you having the best Christmas ever. Just reply name, email. I got your back.
Dean: Yes. I mean that, that's pretty great right there, right.
Lane: Right.
Dean: I like that.
Lane: Then you have your email of your instructions, or maybe you have a little Santa's helper type of a response. Once you get, so now we've got the name of the person who's in charge of making it Bob's best Christmas ever, or in keeping with our example Lane Bowers's best Christmas ever, so now the response to that email is, that we send to them, is the steps, go right into the steps, step one or do we need to introduce and warm them up a little bit.
Dean: We need to know, yeah, but that would be the thing, right, is what we could do is if the only thing is that, if the only thing that the person in charge, the what do we call them? The Christmas gift giver.
Lane: Santa's helper.
Dean: Yep, Santa's helper. The person who, so somebody, okay my mind's racing here, so let's slow down and back it up. The first step, we're at the point where email goes out, subject line Christmas. Hey Lane, I figured out how to, let me read the exact thing. Hi Lane, I figured out a really cool way yo get exactly what you want for Christmas this year. Click here. Mission accomplished, we've got them there. Then we've got a video that just, this is our easy way for people to, just give me, leave the name and the email of the person in charge of making sure that you have the best Christmas ever, and now the thing is what do we say to that person. How do we bridge that gap, now?
Now we've got the email, which is going to be the simplest thing, and we wend them the Christmas wish catalog plus the gift card idea, right. You can get a gift card for all of this stuff. If you know what they want, then this, and maybe we could, but the idea is that the easiest thing is they're going to buy a gift card, and we're going to send them something that they can put under the tree.
Lane: Exactly.
Dean: A really nice-
Lane: A PDF printout of the gift card and then it just depends if you want to go to the next level, if someone comfortable of doing the personalized video text to them. If that's too much for some people, but I imagine a lot of people we're talking to maybe trying this out on a smaller level.
Dean: Yeah. I like this Lane.
Lane: This follows up on your whole concept of if you only had one client how would you want to talk to them?
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly right. Well, I've think we've done gone and hatched ourselves an evil scheme here.
Lane: It is. It is. I think anybody who's listening to this is, especially when you guys print it out, so it's done for you.
Dean: That's exactly it. Wow, I mean this is, I'm excited. I want to see, I want more and more people. I told you about this Sally, who's in my email mastery program, they own a ski, like a winter snow skiing shop in England. She's been around for, that's a family business. They've been in business for 50 years, and I shared that idea with her, and I think she really loved the idea and wants to do this too. I think that's, I think if I did one more kind of round of thinking this through with one more person, or maybe even a group of people, to brainstorm this best Christmas ever promotion, I think that would be a very exciting thing.
Lane: Yeah, that would be really good.
Dean: We're hatching a good-
Lane: With people who are, you got all the people who are excited about it, you got the doers who are going to run out and do it, but who are on the fence, hang in there, we got another podcast coming, and we're going to fill in the rest of the blanks.
Dean: I think this is great, and we will of course have the New Years Day debrief.
Lane: Yeah.
Dean: Of this is what happened, and then we gear up for the best spring break ever.
Lane: Exactly.
Dean: Oh, Lane. Well, I think we hatched the hell out of scheme.
Lane: The only thing that was missing was more coffee than we should consume.
Dean: That's true. I miss that.
Lane: Because that led to the hilarity.
Dean: I think you're right.
Lane: That led to a lot, a lot of your great ideas came from just the right amount of caffeine.
Dean: This fully caffeinated at the right level, that's right.
Lane: Exactly. This is awesome Dean. Thank you. This is has been, man, as always super thankful and I hope everybody listening is as excited about it as I am and looking forward to hearing the next one, and connect the dots and take some action.
Dean: Stay tuned. We may have to put out, I may have to put out two episodes this week just to keep up with this. This could be the, because this is it. Thanksgiving week is really what it's all about for this.
Lane: Right, yeah. They got time. They got things to be thankful for and this is one of them.
Dean: I love it. All right my friend.
Lane: All right, Dean. Thank you buddy. I really appreciate it.
Dean: Okay. I'll be in touch. Let's work this out this week. Okay, bye.
Lane: We got to. Bye.
Dean: There we have it. We had so much fun with that, and since then we've actually gone on and fine tuned the campaign a little bit, and I'll send you whatever we ultimately come up with. Just send me an email, dean@deanjackson.com. Put Christmas in the subject line, and we'll work this week on getting some wonderful Christmas magic happening in your business. If you'd like to continue the conversation, if this is your first episode that you're listening to, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com where you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book. That will start you on the path and we will give you updates every time we publish a new episode. I enjoyed sharing this evil scheme with you, and I can't wait to see how we can apply it to your business.