If you're already successfully converting leads, then the very best thing you can do is find a way to introduce more people to that process, and separate the identifying from the converting.

Today on the More Cheese, Less Whiskers Podcast we're talking with Geoff Edie from Toronto.

Geoff's company is involved in many different ways of helping Canadian’s maximize their wealth. Tax savings, investments, retirement accounts, a strategy they have for freeing up people’s RRSP.

We had a really great conversation about the front end of his business and how to get the conversation started. They've got a great model in place, inviting people to workshops followed by a ‘big summit’ where a lot of people end up becoming clients, so we talked about the best way to streamline the front end and get into conversations with as many people as we can.

Guess what my recommendation was…

 

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Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...

 

Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 088

Dean: Geoff. There we go. How are you?

Geoff: Fantastic, sir. How are you?

Dean: I am good. I am in the evil scheme hatching position and ready.

Geoff: Fantastic. So am I.

Dean: Where are you? You’re in Canada right now?

Geoff: Yeah, Toronto.

Dean: Perfect. Tell me what’s going on. I’d love to hear all the things you’re up to. It sounds like you got a pretty unique thing happening.

Geoff: Yeah, you can say that. I actually joined forces with a good friend of mine, Craig Dunkerley, back in August. Craig is the CEO of Blackthorn Group, which started as a tax and a bookkeeping firm. He’s a professional real estate investor. He started branching out into real estate investments and offering them to friends and family. I came aboard in August as a partner on the investment side. He’s got a very unique RRSP strategy where can have-

Dean: RRSP, for people in the US, is like an IRA, like a retirement account. It stands for Registered Retirement Savings Plan in Canada.

Geoff: Perfect. Absolutely. Basically, because of the structure of the investment, we’re able to pass on tax savings to our clients, and help them recoup the withholding tax when they try to withdraw that money. Typically, it’s about a 30% return just on that portion of it.

Dean: Say that another way so I understand the ramification of it.

Geoff: Basically, let’s say somebody has 50,000 sitting in an RRSP here in Canada, or if it’s in the States, it’s locked in until you’re 65. We help them access that long before they’re 65 because we don’t believe that it’s a great investment vehicle. People don’t really know the true value of it. If they’ve got 50,000 sitting in that account, they withdraw it, they’ll lose $15,000 right off the top.

Dean: Is that a combination of tax and penalty, or is that just the penalty?

Geoff: That’s the withholding tax. The government asks the banks to withhold that money. We believe it’s because they don’t trust people to save that money for them at the end of the year. On average, it’s about 30%. Sometimes it’s a little lower, sometimes it’s a little higher. That 30%, we help them get it back at the end of the year on their taxes through a system of billing and structure and passing on the savings through the LT structure to them.

When I came onboard, I recognized that, RRSPs, there’s about $800 billion locked into Canadian banks right now through the RRSP system. If we can help people get that out, that’s a huge return for them on their retirement savings, to make 30% the first year on any investment. The overall goal is really to help people with their investments and the tax strategies and to save money. I just recognized this as possibly a really good compelling offer for them to get involved with us.

Dean: How do you find people right now? What’s the process that you use?

Geoff: The company has a couple of different strategies. When I came onboard, I started one following your system. Not kind of following your system. I’m trying to copy you as much as possible. Tony Robbins says success leaves clues. I tend to follow people who are successful.

Dean: Modeling is what we call it.

Geoff: I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a fanboy, when it comes to you and Joe Polish.

Dean: That’s great.

Geoff: I absolutely love your emails. I’m doing my best to copy your structure. When we find our clients, we’ve done a couple of different things. We started a wide event once a week at our office where we market through our existing database with the company to tell them that we’re doing a financial education night once a week. We also started doing-

Dean: How big is your database right now?

Geoff: It’s a couple of thousand on that side of the company. For this part of it, our database is under 100 people still. We haven’t really found the synergy between those two systems yet. We’re trying to make them work and iron out all the kinks and working as a team. So far, those have been fairly successful. We’ve been doing it for about four months now. I think we’ve probably generated about, I don’t know, 50, 60 leads that way. It is very time consuming.

We also do a meet up once a month where we bring in guest speakers. In the past, I have spent money on Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. We will branch out to that, but following your model, I’m doing my best to not spend any money until we figure out our conversion rates and all of that stuff on the site. I pay attention. I’m coachable.

Dean: Good. I like what I’m hearing. The target audience then, is ... What is the Costa Rican connection here in this then?

Geoff: I told Lillian that Costa Rica was actually ... I’ll give you a little bit of my back story. I went through some major life changes this year and went to Costa Rica. I have friends who own a real estate brokerage down there. I was supposed to be living down there this winter, but when I was given the opportunity to work with Craig, I brought in the Costa Rican connection to it. We still do sell real estate in Costa Rico through our partners, Blue Zone Realty, but we’ve just branched out to a whole bunch of other things.

Dean: That’s not related. These are two different things. Is that right?

Geoff: Yeah, two different things under the same company.

Dean: You want to focus on the RRSP situation right now.

Geoff: Yeah. I think that’s our ... basically, it’s a way to bring them into our company. I think it’s a really compelling offer to say get your RRSPs out without paying tax. I know a lot of people are really scared of their RRSP. We can introduce them to what we do in Costa Rica and what we’re doing in Canada. We work also in Detroit and Florida.

Dean: What is it that is the outcome for people if they go ahead and do this? You mentioned you’re able to get them the 30% on the first year. Who’s the ideal person for this? Is it someone who has 50,000 minimum or what would be the best case scenario here of who you’re looking for?

Geoff: I’ve got a rough client avatar. You just sent out emails a couple of days ago about that. I’m a huge fan of that. Typically, it’s probably late 30s to early 40s woman or married couple, but with anywhere from 20 to 65,000 sitting in an RRSP. We can do more but what I’ve found is it’s usually somebody with a decent job. They’ve been putting money away for a while, but now they’re starting to worry about their retirement because they don’t see it shaping up the way they want.

Dean: What’s the message that you’ve been using to get them to come to the workshop? Is the workshop the first offer that you’re making? They’re coming from ... they don’t know you and then the reason that they identify themselves is because you’ve invited them to come to a workshop, or are you doing something else to get them to raise their hand?

Geoff: On the website, we did have a get the five-step process, but I’ve changed that to a four video process, so here are four videos on how to get your RRSP out, and then also how to stop losing money in taxes, fees and interest. From there, they get sold to ... we do three times a year, a large event, our Financial Success Summit, and a $47 commitment. They can bring a guest and we give them lunch. From there, introduce them to all of our programs. The weekly one is actually just to generate leads into that program. It’s not necessarily a step in the process once they’ve come in.

Dean: What would be the headline of the offer that gets them to come to the workshop? What’s the promise, or what’s the messaging that’s working?

Geoff: That’s a really good question. I don’t know if I’ve actually figured out the messaging 100%. We basically-

Dean: What are you using? How are they coming into your world there? You’ve mentioned the five-step process, but what was the ... what do you title the workshop or the promise of what they’re going to get?

Geoff: What we promise is the speakers and the information. I’ve built it around, there’s a life learning and legacy process to our system. The first thing we do is figure out where you’re at, where you’re losing money, and then figure what you need to know, and then we can help you start getting to the retirement stage and all of that. The promise, I guess, would be here’s what you need to know, and you can find it here.

Dean: Here’s what you need to know to get your money out of your RRSP.

Geoff: To get your money out of your RRSP to ... we have a pay less interest program, so you can get your home ... All of our offers come together on that day, from our real estate to our pay less tax program to our pay less interest program. We give them everything that we do that day.

Dean: This is not just a specialty program that you’re helping people with, but you’ve got other outcomes for them, so how to pay less taxes, how to pay...

Geoff: That’s correct. The RRSP is the sizzle.

Dean: Is that something that is appealing? Are people saying how can I do that? Are they interested in doing that? What is it that you recommend that they do, or maybe share with me a little bit about how that actually works?

Geoff: The system I’m working on and I’m ironing out kinks still is I typically have ... once they come in and start talking to us and raise their hands, I’ll fill out a client snapshot to see where they’re structured. From there, I send them to different parts of our company, whether they need an effective tax strategy and business registration, or if they’re home, if they could pay less interest on their home and their debts, or if they’re ready to start investing and create that legacy part of it, then we show them what we offer for investment.

We really want to extend the life of a client. We want to help them in every area when it comes to money. We even have affiliates in other parts where we can offer them insurance advisors or pre-construction condo experts and stuff like that. That’s where the Costa Rican thing comes in. If you’re ready to retire down south, that’s where we bring that.

Dean: Step one is, if you break it out, that you can help people save money on what they’re already spending money on in terms of their home and their taxes. You can help them free up the money that’s in their RRSP to do other things with it. That opens up the other opportunities that you have for them as well if they’re investing in Costa Rica or whatever. Does the general message, each one of those sounds unique that you could generate some interest on it alone. Is there some combination of them that you could combine?

For instance, talking about their paying less interest on their mortgage, for instance, or paying less for their house, though you don’t have the mortgage interest deduction like we have here in the States. Is that something that you’re showing people how to do, how to make their mortgage interest tax deductible or some strategy around their mortgage?

Geoff: Yeah. That program in particular is run by some affiliates of ours, Ryan Mitchell in Coach for Cash Flow. Basically, they look at the structure of everyone’s debt that comes into the program. They have a several question process that’s a part of our snapshot that just tells them how much interest they’re paying, where they’re paying it, and how much they can lower those payments every month by amalgamating all of that into a lower interest loan. They can write off some of that interest.

More importantly, they can start saving an amount of money for their retirement and cut all of their payment times down. Typically, they save somewhere between six and 10 years on payments just by restructuring the debt and where it’s sitting and how much they’re paying on it.

Dean: How do you articulate that to homeowners, or are homeowners a target audience for you?

Geoff: Yeah, absolutely. They’re a target audience. That’s part of the client avatar is they typically have a home. Not everybody we talk to has a home. It’s not always a good strategy for everybody to own a home. When I fill out the clients’ snapshot, it includes all the questions that we need for our pay less interest program, for our investments, for our tax side. Typically, I’ll fill out that snapshot. Most of the time, they need, in fact, a tax strategy. I’ll send them to Hashim, our accounting expert. They’ll come back to me, and by that time, I’ve put a game plan together for them. It’s just a little PDF presentation that shows them where we can go and different programs that may be able to save them money and shows them the difference in math and all of that stuff.

Dean: Are there some unique strategies that you’re doing tax-wise that are little known or not widely adopted or that have some kind of ... that makes total sense when you hear it kind of thing?

Geoff: Absolutely.

Dean: Can you share maybe a couple, and I can come up with and help out with the messaging of it?

Geoff: For sure. At our three times a year event, the whole morning, basically, is dedicated to paying less tax, and showing people how to register a business and take the write-offs that come along with a business. Our goal for them is to bring their taxable income down to zero with deductions. It doesn’t always happen, but that’s our goal with it, and show them a lot of people are leaving a lot of money on the table. We’re just using the existing tax laws. As long as they’ve got the intent to make money, and they’re showing progress in their business, they’re entitled to all of those write-offs. It’s a difference of a pretty significant difference, not only in money, but in time.

Typically, the average Canadian works until they’re about 33 to pay off the government if they’re living to 85 on average. That’s with income tax and all of the other stuff that goes along with it. A business owner only works about the first five years of their life to pay those taxes if they’re deducting everything that they can.

Dean: If you have a comparison ... and a lot of people, they might not think that they could start a business. What kind of businesses are you encouraging people to start, or they think you’ve got to actually make money with a business or have it be the primary thing that you’re doing. How are you saying to people to start a business? What’s the stock simplest thing that somebody could do?

Geoff: We have a number of partners that we work with in multi-level marketing. The industry has gotten a bad name over the years, but I’ve found it personally to be great for sales training and leadership. We recommend to anybody that if any of our partners have products that you’re interested in, that is a business avenue for you. It’s extremely cheap to start. It doesn’t require a lot of time. As long as you want and use the product already, it’s a good fit for you. You can build it solely and have help while you’re doing it, but it’s an easy way to get a business started and to be able to write off most of the things that you do.

One of the crazy things my business partner, Craig, he wrote off his family dog. It’s a shift in mindset because if he’s out walking in the park, people can come up to him and talk to him about the dog, and eventually he would be able to talk to them about business because that’s just the way conversations go.

Dean: He puts a logo coat on the dog or something.

Geoff: Shaves the Blackthorn logo into the side of it. It’s a shift in mindset. If you’re thinking about how you can write things off before you do them, you can now have that access to tax refunds. Something as simple as logging the mileage in your car and thinking about, “If I’m going to the grocery store, do I have a flyer up there that I can change so that my drive to the grocery store is now a write-off for my business?”

Dean: There’s lots of ... and that’s a thing that a lot of people would start with. Do you do any sort of ... I look at those as two separate things. I’m listening, and I’m hearing how you can get people ... how you can identify people that you could help and what kinds of things you could do that would get them to raise their hand. I look at from if the offer is to come to a workshop or a free lunch, it just seems like the last...

We’ve had a few now in a row, people who are using seminars as a lead generation tool. I’ve been sharing with people just the increase in response that you get by using a book as a lead generator as opposed to a workshop.

Right now, a book is something that people can consume right away. I don’t have to want the information and be available on Tuesday night, and be willing to come to a workshop. If you’ve got a message like free up the money in your RRSP, and you do it and whatever the strongest messaging in that is, that if you had a book that was titled something that conveys that message, people can respond to that without having to commit to coming to a workshop or coming to spend any time on it.

We’re all very busy. To look at something and then say, “I don’t have time for that,” or if it’s even videos as a lead generation tool are a filter. Some people are going to come to the page. If they see that it’s five videos, they’re going to feel like I don’t have time to watch those right now, so I’m not going to respond, whereas, a book we can gather. I can say, “I don’t have time to read this, but I want this information. Let me just grab this and then future me will have this as a resource to go and read. We’re so conditioned that books are valuable, and that books are for research. Whenever we’re gathering information about something, that’s one of the things that we do is figure out what books are available, what resources do I have, kind of thing.

Using the book triggers this response mechanism in our mind that is all of those value things align right away. All we really need to trigger it is we’ve got to have a book. As soon as even seeing the shape and the word, book, we immediately know that this is valuable, and we’ve got to have a title that as soon as they read it, your ideal client says, “I want that.” Then you’ve got to have a way for them to get it, which would be a landing page, an easy way for people to leave their name and their email address to get the book.

Those are the things that trigger this. The real then game becomes how do we get a title that’s going to immediately transfer the idea that is completely resonant with the person that we’re trying to attract. What’s the book that they want to do? When you’re looking at even paying zero taxes, that’s a crystal clear articulation, right?

Geoff: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Absolutely.

Dean: If you look at that, if somebody is fed up about, they’re realizing that they’re paying too much in taxes, and if you’re in Ontario and Toronto, that’s pretty high taxes compared to other areas. Everybody’s looking for that as a thing. That you get that message, if I resonate with that, pay zero taxes, how do I do that? That’s the question that they would be asking. If the next step is you’ve got to come to this lunch seminar, then I might think, I’m not available for that, or I’m not interested in that. If I can just go there, leave my name and email and get the book, that’s a very easy way for me to immediately scratch that itch that you’ve created by putting that title in front of me.

Those are pretty good words, pay zero taxes. That’s a pretty good thing. That really will open up all of those other things that you have. What we really want is somebody who is looking at those things. I would say if you look at those statement types of things, I look at it that that’s a declaration. Pay zero taxes is something that is marching orders. “Yeah, I’m going to do this. I’m going to pay zero taxes,” or write off your mortgage if that’s another set of words that you can do it or the tax deductible mortgage or the free your RRSP, where you’re saying ... if you can articulate in just a few words, something that completely resonates with your audience, now you’ve turned what we call an invisible prospect into a visible prospect. You’ve now got somebody that you can communicate with. That’s all we’re really looking for.

If we were playing that game of thinking about book titles, what would be the title of the book that would be most resonant with your ideal audience, or what do you think is, in talking with people, the most exciting message that you have of the five main ways that you teach ... that you tell people about or the five ... What are the five strategies again? We’ll see. Maybe there are some clues here.

Geoff: One is the paying less interest. One is paying less taxes. Investments, and basically ... I guess it’s taxes, fees and interest are where you lose your money. We show them how to do all of their accounting and bookkeeping, and then we put them in ... It’s basically just maximizing the value of the client throughout their life. We have all of these other partners as well, so that we have referral channels if you need insurance or you’re buying a home or you need financing. We have all of those things as well. It’s about really getting them into the funnel. From there we can develop them.

Dean: You’ve got the relationship with them. That’s why it’s even more important to start out that maybe that’s the ... maybe the pay zero taxes is the start of it, where that’s the baseline thing. Everybody’s interested in paying less taxes. Now you’ve got that opportunity to have that, the other conversations with them.

It sounds like you’re a part of what ... I talk about having, thinking about and organizing a group of people who all serve the same person but serve different needs, realizing that there are so many other financial needs that you have and you’ve got a relationship for all of the things related to money in their world, right?

Geoff: Yeah. Our biggest thing is we want to know that the clients’ professionals is communicating with each other to keep the clients’ best interest in mind.

Dean: Do you think that that might be ... If you just said that we could get people to raise their hand for a book called Pay Zero Taxes, and that that would be your ... that would be a great candidate for you. Once they’re leaning forward, you could take the conversation from there and expand it out into all the ways that you can help somebody.

Geoff: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dean: I would think that that’s the way to start the ball rolling here, is to imagine that you’ve got that as the language and then once those people raise their hand, now we’re in Profit Activators three. The thing about the book as opposed to a workshop is that the way that we look at Profit Activator two is that it’s a gateway into Profit Activator three. It’s just the transition.

As soon as somebody responds for your book, you’re done with Profit Activator two. Now you have a visible prospect that is either a five star prospect or they’re not. That’s what we need to determine. If we get 100 people to raise their hand and ask for the book, what we’re looking for now is to see who are the ones among those who are going to be our ideal client. When you look at it that out of all the things that you have, the total view of their big picture financial situation, there’s so many ways that you’re able to help them that over the lifetime of their earning and heading to retirement years, that it’s a big, big number of what the lifetime value of somebody could be worth. How do you guys make money? How’s the short-term and long-term picture of that look for you guys?

Geoff: Short-term is almost always going straight to becoming accounting clients. Most people just don’t think the way that we do when it comes to accounting. They’re usually pretty astounded with the mindset shift. From there, we show them the other programs. It depends after that as to what information we’ve uncovered between the initial snapshot and the tax consultations and which way they’re going to go. The client is the one who dictates from there. We don’t ever want to tell them this is what you should do. We show them these are the things that we do. Here’s the difference we could make. Which ones do you like? Which ones don’t you like?

On that, if they’re partners of ours, we get referral fees. If it’s part of our investments, we actually don’t take fees from our investments. We just become equity partners in the investments themselves with our clients.

Dean: What’s the, to you, the short-term and lifetime value of a client?

Geoff: Short-term, we could probably make a couple thousand off them in the first year. Lifetime, it’s really unlimited. Maybe I have a bit of a block. I don’t like to talk about them in terms of value in the first year. I like to talk about the first year, five years that we can work with them.

Dean: Perfect. Tell me about that.

Geoff: Because we do show them investments, we start right off the bat with mindset of this is not a year thing. This is five years minimum. This is how you generate returns. This is how you get ahead in life. From there, I usually give them a larger picture. One of the big things I ask them is when do you want to retire, at what age, how much money do you need, and how long do we have until we get there? I show them a clear path of how to get to that. Usually when I show them that clear path, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, it’s actually possible for me.” Then they start.

Dean: This is the thing where what you’re offering could potentially be a dream come true for people. Not many people are organizing themselves in a way that provides multi-channel help to them. Most people are just an accountant trying to get their accounting business. Most people are just a financial advisor trying to get their investment business or insurance, just trying to get their insurance business. What you’re talking about is setting up overriding advisory role where you collectively are able to have a bigger impact. You can offer that synergistic suite of services.

Geoff: When I talk with people, I assure them you’ve got a friend now. A lot of people are really scared when it comes to their money.

Dean: I like that. You’ve got this opportunity now that this is a classic example that this is a situation where it fits into the idea that people have to know you, like you and trust you. The challenge is that most of the time people are thinking about know you, like you, trust as one thing. They’re reading it as one sentence. They’ve got to know you, like you, trust you.

In the grand scheme of things, rather than looking at it as one thing, looking at is as individual destinations. Know you, period. Like you, period. Trust you, period. Each step is more valuable than the one before it. If we’ve gone from people who don’t have any idea of who you are, and we get a win by just getting them to raise their hand and ask for a book that starts the conversation, we’ve moved to now they know you and you know them. That’s a win on itself. Now everything else in Profit Activator three is about building up that like and trust.

The only thing we can focus on, you can’t infuse it all at one time. We’ve got to start with what we know, which is who we suspect our target audience is. The offer that we suspect may get them to raise their hand. These are easy things to test. I’m using the pay zero taxes as an example. That sounds like a bold claim. If it’s something that is ... if it’s happened, and there’s a viable path to it that you can demonstrate, then it’s fair game, right?

Geoff: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: It’s not misleading. It’s not anything if you’re showing how that really ... how that happens. It’s a good thing to get people to raise their hand. If we looked at it that you could see that being a good way to get people into your sphere, if you did that as online ads or print ads or postcards or unaddressed ad mail or whatever it is getting into the right hands of the right people, that that becomes a great way to start the conversation.

If you look at that, that would be a win, if you could get something that would get those people, people who that message resonates, to raise their hand, now we’ve got an opportunity to engage with them and have a conversation.

The way I look at this process is if you’ve got that book and you’re offering it to people, and they opt in for it, I look at your opt-in page as a portal to your office. You imagine that when they press, send my book, that they’re magically transported to your office, there’s a knock on your door, and they stick their head in the door saying, “Hey, I’m here about the pay zero taxes book.” How would you have that conversation with somebody? Would that be valuable if you could get 50 or 100 of those people every day to knock on your door?

Geoff: Oh, gosh, yeah. That would be incredible. We’d have to hire more staff.

Dean: There you go. How do you have that conversation? Where would you take it from there? What would you say if somebody knocked on your door, literally, and said, “I’m here about the pay zero taxes book”?

Geoff: We’d obviously give them the book.

Dean: Welcome. Welcome. Here’s the book. Here it is.

Geoff: From there, what we have done is to book a free consultation with our tax expert, which is an hour. They have to come into the office or do it over the phone from that point. If it was on the investment side, I’d fill out the snapshot with them. I don’t know if that’s the most effective way to do it at that point.

Dean: What would say in that conversation? It’s an interesting, a real thing if you were saying, if they did pop in, what would you want to know? What would you want to ... how would that conversation go? What would be the first words? You’re absolutely right. When you look at it that you have that conversation, you’d give them the book. First of all, you’d say, “Welcome. Here’s the book.”

Geoff: The first thing I’d want to know is ... Sorry. Go ahead.

Dean: No, that’s exactly ... you’re right in the right thing. Then what would you want to know?

Geoff: The first thing I’d want to know is why they want the tax strategy and what their pain point is.

Dean: Why do you want that? Would that be the question that you would ask them? Probably.

Geoff: Yeah.

Dean: Really?

Geoff: No.

Dean: They pop their head in, “I’m here about the zero taxes book.” “Why would you want that?”

Geoff: It would be more about where they want to go. I guess the reason I’d want to know why they want-

Dean: It might be more about where they are.

Geoff: Yeah, fair enough.

Dean: Are you self-employed, or do you have a job? That’s going to make a big difference. What you’re ultimately looking for are the people who have a job. You can show them how to start a business, or is it more helpful if they already have a business? The conversation would be different.

Geoff: Yeah, the conversation’s slightly different, but a lot of times they’re still not aware of all the write-offs that they’re entitled to. Both people would be great prospects for us as long as they’re interested in improving their current situation. Yeah, I guess it would be what’s ... What would that question be?

Dean: There’s the thing. Here’s the thing, I just sprung that on you, but I’m sharing with you the process of thinking about it. What I would do in those situations is I’d literally sit in my office and imagine that scenario constantly. I would look at it that if I’m running an ad that the people are going to be opting in for, I imagine that that opt-in pays, really does bring them into the office. I will visualize one person standing there saying, I’m here about whatever the book title is, and imagining in detail, how that conversation might go.

I’d take a lot of time with this. I’m not looking at it just to check some boxes and come up with the right ... just what are we going to send as the auto responder, but that knowledge, that information, that empathy, that understanding and test driving of the conversations lead to making better emails about it. That’s ultimately how we’re going to be communicating with people, by email. Even though they’re not going to be transported to my office, what I want to do is the immediate email that I send them when they download, combined with the thank you page, are exactly what would happen if they opened the door and come into the office. What do they see? What do they get?

First thing, like you said, “I’d give them the book.” You’re going to give them the book, but you wouldn’t just hand them the book and say, “Go read that. After you’ve read it, then come back.” Their odds of them actually reading it are very slim. The fact that they asked for it is more important than whether they ever read it.

You get that opportunity on the thank you page and in the email that you send to give people more information and guide them on what to do next. You may now point them to the videos that you have, the other things, now that you’ve already got the most important thing out of the way, which is turning them into a visible prospect. Now you can-

Geoff: This wouldn’t be where you’d use the nine word email, right?

Dean: Part of it. Absolutely. The way I imagine it is ... and there’s lots of different flavors of the nine word email. If I look at that as a short personal expecting a reply message, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I look at the initial message as the opportunity we have as if they’ve walked into our office or our retail store. Instead of saying, “Can I help you?” and them saying, “No thanks, I’m just looking,” we’re going to articulate in a better way the most important points that we want someone to know.

I use Jennifer Leathers as an example. You may have heard me talk about that, the furniture store, and they just sell leather sofas. When you walk into Jennifer Leathers, they don’t say, “Can I help you?” and you say, “No thanks, I’m just looking.” They say, “Welcome. Have you been to Jennifer Leathers before?” When you say, “No, I haven’t,” then you say ... they tell you the three most important things that they want you to know. They say, “Welcome. All of the sofas that you see are available in any of the leathers on the back wall. They’re all in-stock and available for immediate delivery, and they’re guaranteed for life. My name is Dean. Take a look around. If you see something you like or you have any questions, I’ll be here.”

That articulation right there let’s people know that it doesn’t matter if you don’t see a red leather loveseat in here, if that’s what you’re really looking for because all of the loveseats are available in any of the leathers. There are five shades of leather or five shades of red back there. It’s not going to be a special order because they’re all in-stock. Even if you like the thin leather, they’re guaranteed for life. It’s okay with the kids and the dog. You get that opportunity. That took literally 10 or 12 seconds to say that whole thing.

What would be the things that you would want somebody to know or to have access to if it’s the only time you get to see them? They’ve never liked you more than the moment they press that send me my book button. The thank you page and the immediate email that you send get to shape where you’re going to go with it.

Geoff: Gosh. You’re making me think so much. I just wrote down that it might be that this is the one place you can come to have a friend to help you guide all of your financial stuff. That’s a really rough idea, but that’s what you made me just think of as all of these others are available in all of the couches. You know what? These are the things that we do.

Dean: Here’s the thing is that if you were to say the initial message where, here’s the thing. The first step is paying zero taxes, but then the other things, like you listed those other ways that you’re talking about to pay zero taxes and lower your mortgage payments and to lower your interest payments and to ... those kind of things, even if you start with just those three, you’ve expanded it a little bit right now to make them aware that this is ultimately about cash flow. To what end though, so you can have more money to invest and to grow your wealth for future retirement.

It all starts with ... That’s the thing. We’re already taking it from that’s a no-brainer. We’re going to lower your taxes. We’re going to lower all of your interest. We’re going to free up the money that you have. All those kind of things, you’re setting the stage for them. Then when you send out the next day, a short nine word or a SPEAR message, we call it, short-personal-expecting a reply message, that you’re able to say the things that would guide that conversation. Now we’re looking to see are they willing to engage in a dialog.

You might say to them, “Are you self-employed or do you have a job, or do you own a business,” or what would be the right thing. None of these answers are going to come off the cuff. I’m just sharing with you the music of it. You’d spend a lot of time thinking this through and creating a word pallet. A word pallet is just sitting and thinking about all the phrases and the words, both positive and negative, that would be contextual in this situation.

You might encompass their objections. All the while, what we’re trying to do is get a clear understanding of the mindset of the person who has downloaded that book right now, including their skepticism, including their hopes, including their enthusiasm, including all the things that are both positive and negative about it, so that we can draw from that in creating the dialogs that we’re going to use, you know?

Geoff: Absolutely. I remember the first time I subscribed to one of your emails, I got the nine word email back, and I responded. I believe it was for your email mastery course. I was shocked, I didn’t expect it to come from an actual person. I was expecting it to be an auto responder. The fact that I was speaking to somebody was ... it threw me off quite a bit, actually.

Dean: That’s funny. I think that that happens. That happens when people are ... engaged like that. When you send truly personal messages to people, first of all, you’re very ... even if you do the experiment now, just looking through your in-box for the last message that was truly meant for only you, you’d be surprised at how few of the messages that you actually get are from one person to one person.

When you get one, it has a different frequency energetically. People know that. It’s immediately more engaging because something happens where you realize this seems like it’s a message only for me. This is speaking to me like one person in a way that we’re used to in a dialog format. Every time we read something, what we’re really doing is we’re hearing it in our minds. We’re not just reading the words. There’s a voice in our heads that’s reading these. We immediately feel then compelled to respond.

Geoff: It’s like getting a letter in the mail.

Dean: Something isn’t it, rare and delightful.

Geoff: Wow. I’ve got some thinking to do.

Dean: There’s the thing. The way you want to think about it is that I have no doubt, and you’ll be able to experiment, but if pay zero taxes is the message, or lower your mortgage payment or pay your house off faster or free your RRSP, you get a chance to test those as different front ends, things that are going to attract the right people. Then the dialog is really about just engaging with them and finding out if they’re five star prospects and where you want to go with that.

We just look at it that we’re looking to see, are they willing to engage in the dialog? Are they friendly and cooperative? Do they know what they want? Do they know when they want it? Would they like us to help them? When we look at those, engaging in that dialog is really ... if you ask somebody a pretty reasonable question, if you’ve just downloaded the book called Pay Zero Taxes, for you to say to somebody, “Geoff, welcome aboard. Do you own a business or are you employed?” or “Are you self-employed, or do you have a job,” or...

You may test drive different sorting questions like that where it’s easy to get somebody to respond either/or. They don’t have to think too much a about that. They might say, “No, I worked at Glaxo,” or whatever. Now you know that that person is an employee and it shapes the way that you have the conversation now. Your next question would be different than if they said, “Yeah, I own my own business.”

The whole goal is to think about how can I, in three or four steps, get to a point where, “I’m getting together with some people next Tuesday for a workshop on how to pay zero taxes. Would you like to join us?” That’s where we’re headed with this. We don’t want to give up having the workshop. We don’t want to go right into having a personal consultation with people, which might meet some resistance. We want to amplify every step along the way what we’re already doing.

Geoff: You just reordered the way things are in my brain. It’s amazing.

Dean: That’s it. That’s sometimes all it takes. Then it just is so easy to turn up the volume. Now you’ve got the scale ready algorithm. It’s inexpensive to test these things out as you’re going. You’re going to over-invest time and attention in finding the right words that resonate, but once you find them, then you can turn up the volume.

Geoff: I’m glad it’s a long weekend here in Canada. I think I’m going to stay in my apartment and just think all weekend.

Dean: That’s a great thing. That’s really what I’m talking about. You already have a great workshop. You’ve got a proven model. If I just said, “I can deliver 100 people to your workshop,” you know that you can take it from there. It sounds like where the big opportunity is just getting more people at the workshops.

That’s the win. That’s the step is, I think, the book as the lead generator, and then engaging with those people, and knowing that it’s okay if they don’t come to this workshop because you’re constantly doing workshops, right?

Geoff: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: Your Profit Activator three now becomes about what are you going to do to continue educating and motivating these people. The fact that you have a whole syndicate of people that you are surrounding yourself with, it would be a great thing to do a podcast. Maybe you do. I don’t know. Do you do a podcast?

Geoff: No, but it’s really funny because my partner and I have been talking about starting one. That’s so funny.

Dean: You can imagine that if you had a podcast, and it doesn’t have to be fancy. You look at this podcast is the simplest thing in the world. It’s just you and I talking.

Geoff: That’s what I love about it.

Dean: It’s just value from concentrate. It’s just the stuff. You’ve got the opportunity to record a podcast that then creates all the other derivatives that you can use as assets as well. All those emails that I send you are all derivative of the transcript of these podcast episodes. Something-

Geoff: You create your own info stories.

Dean: Yeah, so something that we’ve said today on this podcast is going to show up in your inbox as a three to 500 word encapsulation of one of the stories that I told you or the concepts that I shared. It’s all my words, but it’s just framed as an article. You’ve got that opportunity if you’re doing the podcast because the talking is still the fastest bandwidth way to get stuff out of your brain into a digital format by speaking and recording it. Then you’ve got the audio. Then you’ve got the transcript that you can get the derivatives from and add to. Your message isn’t going out of style.

Geoff: No.

Dean: It’s not like it’s going to be a short-term window that you have to do this. It’s like, pay zero taxes has been around since the Tea Party.

Geoff: No, that’s so much value.

Dean: I love it. That’s great. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but I see this model, I’ve seen just works so much. This is really what you’ve got. Of course, you’ll listen to this episode again and you’ll hear it more and differently because your mind is not like ... it wasn’t a mind bomb that you’re looking to think and shape your answer.

Geoff: I’ll probably listen to it a couple hundred times, but...

Dean: There you go. We do the transcript, too, so you can read that. You’re on the right path. I think you see it crystal clear.

Geoff: As you’re telling me, I’m flipping through the Profit Activator scorecards. You actually gave them to me. We met once at an I Love Marketing meet out.

Dean: Nice.

Geoff: Through Diana Santaguida. She’s a good friend of mine now. As I go through them, I’m like, “Yeah, we’ve got that one, we’ve got that one.” When you started focusing on three that is where my challenge comes from. I get short of content for the emails that I send out. If we start a podcast, that solves that problem. Obviously, number two is getting them to raise their hand. I’m speechless, actually, Dean.

Dean: That’s great. There you go.

Geoff: If anybody-

Dean: You can model that same thing. There’s a scorecard for you. That’s the thing that your clients ... The scorecard I use ... This is the thing, I use that as such a diagnostic tool. I know when people fill out the scorecard, we know exactly what the help that somebody needs is.

Geoff: It’s totally after I filled it out, it is. Number one was the lowest score on there.

Dean: Perfect.

Geoff: I can’t thank you enough.

Dean: It’s been fun. It goes fast, doesn’t it?

Geoff: Absolutely. I was really nervous when I got on here. I didn’t know what was going to happen. You’re an evil genius.

Dean: That’s funny.

Geoff: I didn’t know what the outcome would be. I’m speechless. Anybody that knows me, that’s not something that happens very often.

Dean: That’s awesome. Keep me posted. I think you got some really great opportunity there.

Geoff: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Dean. I really, really appreciate this.

Dean: You’re very welcome.

Geoff: It’s been an absolute pleasure and an honor to be an honor to be a part of More Cheese, Less Whiskers. I’ve been listening since your first podcast went out.

Dean: That’s awesome. Me too. I love it.

Geoff: Big fan. Big fan. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate.

Dean: Thanks, Geoff. Keep me posted.

Geoff: Absolutely I will. Have a great weekend.

Dean: Thanks. You too. Bye-bye.

Geoff: Take care.

Dean: There we have it. I love when a good evil scheme comes together. That was a lot of concepts that we talked about there, but I think if you’ve been listening to the episodes long enough, you know that the path of getting people to raise their hand using a book as the front end lead generator, is the highest converting thing that we have. It’s great that you’re starting to see the patterns of how the Profit Activators all work in concert.

We know that Geoff was able to take it from the workshop on, that they’re going to be able to educate people, to make offers, to help them out become lifetime clients. It was really the front end of the before unit that was the biggest opportunity. We didn’t even get into the after unit. Maybe we’ll do that on a follow-up episode once they get the front end all dialed in.

I see that again and again and again. We start to see these patterns emerge that just, sometimes, jump starting the front end can make a big difference. Of course, I share these strategies with you, but it’s important to know that I have a whole team of people standing by to help you actually implement these strategies. We talk about using books. I have a whole team of people standing by to help you actually write and publish your lead generation books at 90minutebooks.com. Check that out. We’re standing by ready to help you.

If you’d like to download a copy of the More Cheese, Less Whiskers book, you can do that at morecheeselesswhiskers.com. You can also be a guest on the show. One of the things that we talked about that’s really a great diagnostic tool for you is our Profit Activator Scorecard. You can do that online. We have an online scorecard at profitactivatorscore.com. You’ll get to see which of the 8-Profit Activators are either growing or slowing your business right now. That’s it for this week. Have a great week, and I will talk to you next time.