Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we have a great conversation with my friend Eelco de Boer.
Now I first met Eelco several years ago when he came to a Breakthrough Blueprint event I was doing in London, and since then we've become great friends. We do a joint event together in Amsterdam every July now, and he is just a genius. I just love everything he's about. We’re philosophically, completely align on everything marketing and lifestyle, and taking a lifestyle approach to using our business to support our ideal lifestyle.
This time we met, we decided to start a podcast of our annual get together, and this conversation is one of those. We recorded at Eelco’s… I hesitate to call it an office because it's really more of a creative space than anything, but we had a great conversation, just to catch up and share all the things that are going on, and what our observations are about marketing today.
The idea is, this will be a series that goes for 25 years as we're committed to doing our event in Amsterdam every year. So, much like I do with James Schramko when I go to Australia, this is a great kind of ‘check in’ with people who are aligned, in another part of the world, observing the marketing environment.
I love that we get to talk about and share our common love of marketing, business, entrepreneurship, lifestyle, and I think you're gonna really enjoy this conversation.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 111
Dean: Eelco de Boer
Eelco: What's the name of this podcast?
Dean: This is the Periodic Podcast. How's that?
Eelco: That's a great title.
Dean: The Periodic Podcast.
Eelco: It's a really compelling title.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: What's up, man? How's life? How's things?
Dean: This is my third trip to Amsterdam now.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Third one.
Eelco: Third one.
Dean: We finally got around to putting a podcast together.
Eelco: Yeah, amazing.
Dean: That's something.
Eelco: Yeah. We never recorded a podcast together.
Dean: It's shocking to me that we haven't.
Eelco: Yeah, we did I Love Marketing, but it was like four years ago.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: And we didn't know each other then, I think. No.
Dean: We didn't. That's how we met, was doing the podcast.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Or was that, you came to London first?
Eelco: I think that's where we met, at the podcast. Then, I came to London I think.
Dean: Yes. Now I've been here three times, three years to Amsterdam.
Eelco: That's good. Yeah.
Dean: I love it. I thank you for organizing the weather.
Eelco: Yeah, well that's what I always do. Every year when you come over, I just get it done. But also a little bit of self-indulging, because tomorrow's my birthday.
Dean: I say Periodic Podcast because this is year three of 25 of our Eelco birthday week celebration extravaganza.
Eelco: Exactly.
Dean: That we've put into place three years ago.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Always, your birthday July 3rd.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Our event will always be July 4th, 5th, and 6th, no matter what days of the week that is.
Eelco: No. Even if it's Christmas.
Dean: Even if it's Christmas. Wait a second, no that'll never happen. That's good.
Eelco: You think?
Dean: But it could be on a Sunday.
Eelco: That's true.
Dean: It could start on a Saturday, Sunday, Monday is what it could be.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Whatever it's going to be, it's going to be.
Eelco: It doesn't matter.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: It could be Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
Dean: Yes, that's right, whatever the 4th, 5th, and 6th is.
Eelco: Exactly. Yeah, man. What are we going to do?
Dean: What have you been working on? I'm excited to catch up. It's funny. I've gone to Australia five times. This is my fifth year in a row going to Sydney. James Schramko is in Australia, and we do a behind the scenes podcast, and we have recorded three of 25 episodes of that podcast.
Eelco: That's good.
Dean: It's always good to kind of recalibrate, think about what's happened over the year, and kind of we get a best of greatest hits, kind of what we've been working on.
Eelco: It's so great that you have this business model and this lifestyle where you go over the world, like Australia, and Europe, and just help people. It's such an amazing model.
Dean: I really love that life. Now I've been, so the event that we do, it's a three-day event, and it's six years I've been doing it now. The last month was six years. It all came from a conversation with Dan Sullivan, who started Strategic Coach in Toronto. We were having a conversation, and he was talking about Unique Ability. The thing that is what your unique thing is. The way he was articulating it then, it was the first time I'd heard him say that was the thing that would keep you motivated and fascinated for the next 25 years.
Immediately, I thought, you know what I really love? Is I really love applying the 8 Profit Activators to all kinds of different businesses, and I like doing it in a small group, one conversation where you can see the whites of everybody's eyes, and in an intimate kind of setting. I just never get tired of that, because it's never the same twice. Loosely, it's like playing golf, in a way. Golf there's rules, and there are 18 holes, but even if you play the same golf course every day, you never have the same game twice. It's that same way.
I set up this routine, this rhythm. I do nine of these events a year. I do mostly in Florida, in Orlando. Then this year I did one in San Diego with JJ Virgin. Then, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, and Sydney, and those are like the staples of the schedule. It just is such a nice kind of checking in throughout the year. I like having those kind of stable things. I'm really attracted to things that have longevity. I think one of those things that has a really undervalued business purpose and life purpose is having that constancy.
Eelco: Totally. Totally.
Dean: There's a show in the States. I don't know whether it goes all over the world, but it's called 60 Minutes. Do you get 60 Minutes?
Eelco: I saw it online, but it's not on TV.
Dean: Not in Europe. Okay. It's a longest running news show on television in the United States. It's 50 years this year.
Eelco: But it's not 60 minutes.
Dean: But it is 60 minutes.
Eelco: It's not 60 minutes, right?
Dean: What do you mean?
Eelco: I thought it was like 15 minutes.
Dean: No, no. It's 60 minutes. The show is 60 minutes long.
Eelco: It's a news show, right?
Dean: No, no, no, no. It's not a new show. It's been on the air for 50 years.
Eelco: No, I mean a news show.
Dean: Oh, news.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what they do is the same format for all those years. Every Sunday night at seven o'clock the show comes on. It always starts out with this ticking clock. So it's like tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: So they've anchored in the minds of everything. I look at it as almost like the official transition from the weekend to getting ready for the week kind of thing. You know?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: The format that they have is they have three stories per show. They're about 20 minutes, 15 minutes each segment.
Eelco: That's what I thought, because I saw some 15-minute segment. So I was like, "Hey."
Dean: Yes, okay, so that's right. It's three 15-minute segments with the little segues in between and stuff, but they basically pick the most fascinating things that are going on in the news, and take a deeper look at them, and profile people, and things like that. That kind of format has not gotten old or not gotten stale in 50 years, because it's predicated around sharing the most fascinating things that are going on in the week. I look at that the 8 Profit Activators are universally present. They're a context. It was valid 30 years ago. It's going to be valid 30 years from now, but what changes is all the opportunities that we have to apply them. It's cool just to see how they fit for all these different businesses.
Eelco: Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of Tony Robbins with his UPW and Date With Destiny.
Dean: Yes. That's almost 30 years.
Eelco: Yeah. It's crazy. I think he did 100, or 200 UPWs, and 100 Date With Destinies. The thing is with those events is like it's the same structure every time, but it's different people, and the interventions are always different, because it's a different person that you're communicating with. I went to Date With Destiny twice, and for me it feels like, it's like you're in a cinema with like 2,000 people, and everybody's watching a movie, but nobody knows how it's going to end. That's really cool. Yeah, man. It's a great business model. It's fun.
Dean: I literally got off the phone with Dan. We had that conversation, and immediately called the hotel in Florida in celebration. Booked the boardroom, and then sent out an email and invited the first group.
Eelco: That's so cool.
Dean: Six weeks later, the first one, and then have been doing them ever since.
Eelco: That's cool.
Dean: I love that. I encourage people. I've had so many people that that's become a model for them. We've had people do ... In most cases, if you've got a list, if you've got people who are in your business that like you, and there's a way that you could add value in a small group with a high price point for something, there's a group of people that would love to do that. People just, they don't realize how much people value personal attention and an intimate environment like that.
Eelco: That's the whole thing. We're sitting here because I went to your small event in London.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Otherwise, we would never ... Maybe at another event we would connect or whatever, but sitting three days in a room with somebody that you have respect for, or look up to, or admire, or whatever, it has so much value. The same thing now with a good friend of mine, Dottie. I did a three-day event in Miami last year, and she signed up for it. There are eight people from Holland who came to Miami.
Dean: I love that. I love that. Going international.
Eelco: Yeah, with Dutch people.
Dean: Yeah. Heads up. Why can't we get some people from Miami to come to Holland?
Eelco: Yeah. But we became best friends, and now we have a podcast. Things happen during those three-day events with 8 to 12 or 8 to 16 people.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: It's just something special. It beats bigger events.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Or even one-on-one, because you're just connecting with a small group, and it's great. Plus the price point makes it interesting, because it's not necessarily like who's in the room, but also who's not in the room. It's a great model in so many ways.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: What do you do when there's like two signups? Or did you never have that problem?
Dean: No, I've never had that, which is great. But we've had through occasionally, like I think there have been a couple of times where we've had eight people, but we started out with maybe 10 and somebody had to drop out.
Eelco: Yeah, or cancel, or whatever.
Dean: Something like that. But I'm really of the mind that it's going to be a great event for those eight people.
Eelco: That's it.
Dean: It's like whatever it is, it is. The thing is now, going around that I find that a lot of times it's people coming back again, and again. I just did an event in London. Half the people there were people who'd been to another event. One guy's been to every one of them.
Eelco: Tomorrow as well, like half of the people came from last year.
Dean: Yes. Exactly.
Eelco: The first time we did it in Amsterdam we had I think seven or eight people.
Dean: That's right.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Last year we had 17 people sold out within nine months in advance.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: I just put a Facebook post and then boom within 48 hours we had 17 people sign up.
Dean: Yeah. That's great.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I love it. It's going to be exciting to see, and catch up, and hear what the success stories are. You weren't in London. We have this lady, Alinka, who she helps authors write books. We came up with an idea for her, like she likes to work with entrepreneurs. She doesn't like to. She wanted to. She thought she would like to work with entrepreneurs, leaders, and so we came up with an idea for her that involved a specific niche in the business market, and we came up with a whole plan for her to reach out to those people and do a compilation book where they were a part of a ... She was doing a chapter from them, and then from that was able to invite the people who were doing the chapter book to do a full book with her.
Like, "Wow, you've got a great story. Have you thought about writing a book?" She's got, I forget how many now, but 10 books that are under process." She's charging people, it's $30,000 to do a book with her, but she's go, we set it up so that the way it goes now is she's got an annuity, because that specific niche that we chose is constantly renewing, so she can go back to a new crop this year, and she's already raised her goal now to do 20 books. All she really has to do, because we figured out the algorithm, all she has to do is send twice as many on the front end, and it'll be a sure thing, which is great.
Eelco: Yeah, that's cool.
Dean: I love to hear those kind of stories. You know?
Eelco: Yeah. You've been in the game for a long time.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: So you have a lot of stories.
Dean: Yes, that is true.
Eelco: Yeah, it's so cool. You started selling in 1999 or '96? What was it?
Dean: I started as a real estate agent in 1988.
Eelco: But I mean online.
Dean: Online.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Whenever '98 was when things were starting to really get interesting, like everybody was sort of coming online, where it was sort of a bigger consumer market now. I wrote a book with a marriage counselor called Stop Your Divorce. That was just like the perfect timing that it was just starting where you could do, there were bulletin boards, and doing classified ads and things online, but it was right at the time when search engines were starting to become really viable. Then, there was a search engine called GoTo, that was the first pay-per-click search engine where you could bid for keywords.
That model was really revolutionary, because that way you could bid for placement. You didn't have to do all the SEO or anything like that, and figure it all out. It was just a clean marketplace for it. You bid, and if you're the top bidder for that word, you get to be the top thing. I did that, and the book was called Stop Your Divorce. I was able to bid on all the words. Divorce, all these things we're getting them for 10 cents per click. We were selling the book for $79, which now we've sold over $5 million worth of one book.
Eelco: Yeah, that's crazy.
Dean: All that time. It's kind of crazy. Still going today.
Eelco: It's eBook or book?
Dean: It's both. eBook and a physical book. It's an eBook for $79. We'll send you the physical one for $99. 20% of people choose the physical, just for data, for interest’s sake, it's about 20% will pay the $20 extra for the print.
Eelco: That's so great, man. Selling something for almost 20 years, the same product.
Dean: Everything's been, we learned from that is that then I showed my friend Eben Pagan that model of selling the eBooks, and really encouraged him and helped him to get his first book was called Double Your Dating. We got that online, and then he went and built a big empire around that. Same with Marie Forleo. I helped her with her first book. Her first book was called Make Every Man Want You. It was a book of how to make yourself so amazing, you hardly keep from dating yourself.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That was her kind of entry into the online marketing world. It's fun to see how, because really in the beginning there were not many books that were, aside from how to make money selling eBooks, like I really had a book that was doing something good in the world kind of thing.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Then, all of this online. I had been primarily involved in the real estate business, helping realtors grow their business. We got a real good foundation in that offline, and then as everything transitioned to online, we were really able to kind of lead the way and help realtors get online. It's amazing how, it's a good metaphor for so many businesses when you see what's happening right now. Like I just started a new podcast for the realtors called Listing Agent Lifestyle. I was looking back this year, 2018, is 30 years that I've been in real estate now. I was looking back and thinking about all the things that have changed over those 30 years.
When I got my real estate license, I was 22 years old. I just turned 52 now. So, 22 years old, and state-of-the-art technology was the fax machine that we had just gotten in the office. It was one of those thermal paper fax machines, so a big roll of paper, so when the faxes would come, they would just continue to roll, and it would fall down, and you had to go and get the paper, and the photocopy it real quick before all the ink faded.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It was like a race to do that. Then, the plain paper fax came, and that just changed the game. I was looking at that, and I was thinking about all the things that technology has changed about real estate. Like back then, if you were buying a home, the only way that you could get information was by talking to a real estate agent, because they had all a monopoly on the information. We had the multiple listing system, and they had these catalogs that were printed every two weeks with all of the properties, and it was like this sacred book that everybody, that was the bible as far as the real estate information went.
Now, you fast forward 30 years, and every piece of information about every property, the minute it comes on the market, even before it comes on the market, is available. You find out how much it sold for. There's no shortage of information that's available, right?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Now, what is really interesting is I started looking for parallels, like what kind of things have also undergone change over 30 years, and I was thinking about how golf. Like, golf has really changed over 30 years because of technology. Back in 1990, the leading driving distance on the PGA tour, like how far they hit the ball, was 289 years. That was like a long way. 30 years later, and the longest drive is 337 now. It's like the driving distance has improved because of technology with the golf ball, and technology with the drivers themselves, aerodynamics, and using digital imaging and all this stuff to get the most efficient transfer of power.
But, here's the thing. What I looked at also is that the fundamental thing that golf is about, which is scoring has changed by less than one quarter of one stroke in that same period. We're driving the ball so much further, and yet the scores have only come down less than a quarter of one shot. The same thing with real estate, that all this technology, we're able to expose properties to millions of people, billions. Everybody on the internet. But, the things that matter, the days on the market, and the percentage of asking price that people get, the money have not changed.
Eelco: No.
Dean: Yeah, they're fundamentally the same. I think that part of that realization is to understand that there are some things that you can't digitize. You can't digitize the last 100 feet of a real estate transaction, because it's a negotiation between two, at least, completely irrational people who are negotiating the market value of the only property like this one in the world right now. It's weird that that's the truth, right?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: All that technology can't help your golf game if you can't put, and do the things that require skill. Skill is always going to win. I think there's a lesson in that is to figure out what's the thing that is going to be disrupted or embraced. Where is technology going to aid this, but where is the thing in your business that technology's not going to help? Where's the thing that requires the actual skill?
Eelco: I think for business, and the business that we own it's really creating an amazing offer.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's one thing that like technology could never replace that.
Dean: Yes. When you really look at it, that online the internet stuff is really just a...
Eelco: It's a tool.
Dean: It's just a delivery device. That's why I say all the 8 Profit Activators worked 30 years ago. It's just that the distribution methods that we had, like to get a message in front of somebody, if you wanted to communicate it was really either in a magazine or a newspaper, in direct mail, or on TV or radio. That was it. Billboards. Print, physical media was the only way that you had to communicate to people.
Eelco: Yeah. I heard you say a couple of times a lot of people asked what's going to change, but hardly anybody asked what's not going to change.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Eelco: That's the core of your focus, on what's not going to change, you don't really need to worry, I think.
Dean: I think you're absolutely right, yeah, that that's the thing. I think this whole ... I've been having these great conversations with Dan. I don't know if you've heard this. I do a podcast with Dan called The Joy of Procrastination. So we've been talking about this. I'm calling it this migration of society from the mainland to Cloudlandia. That word definitely, we are all the way in the cloud right now. That is our primary world right now. I mean, you look at the standard posture of our society is this looking at our phone, and that's really pretty amazing.
Eelco: Yeah. How do you keep your focus? Because it's so easy to be distracted on like Instagram, and emails, and sales, and email, and everything.
Dean: Yeah. Who says I do?
Eelco: Yeah, well that's one thing.
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Eelco: Well, if you focus, how do you-
Dean: No, I get it. I think having that healthy awareness of it. Like, I think what was a real catalyst moment for me was I had a friend who, we were coming over to my house. We were going to watch a documentary. This guy, Dick, he's 69 years old now. Wow, it doesn't seem possible. 69 years old. He came over. We got all settled, and we're about to watch the movie, and he realized he was doing the old, in his pockets, like looking for his phone. He realized he hadn't brought his phone, or he didn't have his phone with him. This was like this moment of panic almost in a way, right?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Like he was all set to go home and get his phone, because we were going to watch this movie which was two hours.
Eelco: I can imagine.
Dean: He only lives like six minutes away by car, but still you're going to take 12 minutes to run back, get your phone, to come back to make it through a two-hour movie, or a three-hour evening without your oxygen tank is what I call it now.
Eelco: And he's 69.
Dean: He's 69, and it's like, that's only happened in the last 10 or 12 years.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I remember sitting with him at the café when he was going through this whole process of choosing to get on board with the iPhone, because he had just a regular phone, old school guy, ran a whole mortgage company. They were all, back in the day and stuff, paper files and everything. Really, you see it now. I'm just seeing all this evidence that we are completely immersed in this. I look at all the ways that this remote control here, our iPhone makes our life easier. From everything to how I got over here today. It's like, I don't have to leave the cloud.
Eelco: No.
Dean: I can stay right here on my phone. I can say, here I am, and within five minutes I can have a car anywhere in the world at my feet to take me wherever I want to go. I get in. He let me out literally right outside the door three paces, I knock on the door, and here we are. I didn't have to pay. There's no friction, right? It's like everything is so wired to keep us in the cloud. I think there's some real business opportunities in that on the mainland that are going to become from this.
Eelco: What are you thinking?
Dean: I just think I've started to kind of pay attention and look at, what things can only be done on the mainland? Like most of us, our heads are completely in Cloudlandia, until we need to like get a sandwich, or poop. That's really where the rest of the time is completely engulfed in there. I think that it used to be in physical goods or in anything, they were trying to solve what they called the last mile problem.
Now we've solved the last mile problem. You can basically anywhere in the world have any product made, delivered to your doorstep at the latest tomorrow. That, I think is really getting to a point where now the big opportunities are going to be in the last hundred feet. Somebody meeting people at the door and taking it the rest of the way. Like I think having these transition, these tech and app enablers that make it an enhanced experience. Like...
Eelco: Shoving the food in your mouth.
Dean: Not necessarily shoving the food in your mouth, but preparing the food. You see these things now, like there are companies that are becoming very popular in the states. I don't know whether they've made it over here, but they will send like prepared meals, like not prepared, portioned meals that are cook-ready. That you just cook them and-
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. HelloFresh.
Dean: HelloFresh. Exactly. That's exactly what I was thinking. I think that there's going to be an opportunity for HelloFresh assistants, HelloFresh facilitators that are going to really, they can take the food from there, from the doorstep, and come and ...
Eelco: Cook it in your house.
Dean: Cook it in your house and prepare it for you, so that you don't have to think. All these things, I pay attention, and I read a lot, and I kind of scan everything. There was an article in the New York Times called The Tyranny of Convenience.
Eelco: You sent it to me.
Dean: I did, because it was so well written, and it was so well written that you see what's happening now. Convenience, in their estimation, is the most underrated power in our world. That that's the thing that drives everything, convenience. When you look at it it's like, you see everything is going in that direction. Now, our choices and our ability, the friction to get whatever we want, now that we can basically watch any TV or video content that we want, whenever we want, on whatever screen we want. It was so funny in the article, because it said it almost seems silly, and a little bit undignified to have to be in front of the TV at a particular time for a show to come on. It seems a little undignified.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's really so funny.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: The days of like opting out of it are almost over. It's very, like they're saying, to not be on a smartphone, and not be a card carrying citizen of Cloudlandia requires some really extra measures. It almost seems a little bit eccentric to not be part of this, you know?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: You start to see that, that that's going to be the big divide I think is the things that are mainland and the things that are Cloudlandia.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I'm not sure what the answers are, but just I think that awareness and seeing it, there's opportunities there. Like all these Uber drivers in some way are mainland jobs that are cloud enabled. They're getting dispatched from Cloudlandia. It's almost like if you imagine all these things with the wires like connected to their cars, coming down from the cloud, everything in the cloud is, it's a multiplier. Everything is ultimate convenience there.
Eelco: Yeah, man, so many opportunities.
Dean: It's exciting.
Eelco: Yeah, it's totally exciting.
Dean: What kinds of things do you guys use? Like I realize how many things are completely handled by my phone now.
Eelco: Yeah. I think it's sort of the same. Let me check. Uber, obviously.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: The social media channels, like Instagram, everything. Apple Watch.
Dean: Do you use your Apple Watch? Yeah.
Eelco: I use it for my sleep.
Dean: Fitbit.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: My Fitbit is dead right now. See? I'm not getting credit for all these steps. You have a Fitbit?
Eelco: No, but you came by Uber, so that's like three steps.
Dean: Yeah. Well, you don't know what I did before I got here.
Eelco: I think I do.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: Just the usual. What we have here, but I think it's in the States as well. Do you have Foodora?
Dean: What is it?
Eelco: They deliver food on a bike.
Dean: Wow.
Eelco: Uber Eats.
Dean: Okay, interesting.
Eelco: Over here they-
Dean: Foodora is what it's called.
Eelco: Yeah. Deliveroo, or Foodora. If you order something, so there's an app with all the restaurants. It's like Uber Eats.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Uber Eats does it by bike as well, right?
Dean: I love it. Yeah.
Eelco: Okay, so nothing new. It's sort of the same.
Dean: Uber Eats, there are all kinds of those. That's a fascinating story, because here's an opportunity alone. There is something that showed up on my radar last year called ghost restaurants. Have you heard that term?
Eelco: I think I heard you about it.
Dean: Maybe I told you about it, because it's fascinating to me. This is a venture funded group in New York and Chicago. They have started, the headline that I read was Nine Restaurants, One Kitchen, No Dining Room. What happened is that this group started nine different restaurant brands-
Eelco: Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah. That's so smart.
Dean: That they operate out of one kitchen.
Eelco: That's so smart.
Dean: With no dining room. They only exist-
Eelco: So smart.
Dean: On Grubhub and Seamless, which are the two big food delivery services. Cut out all the ... They're only in Cloudlandia. That's they're opening up like-
Eelco: It makes me want to open restaurants.
Dean: Exactly. That's the thing.
Eelco: If you do it like specific products, like hotdogs.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: It's just not like broad, but super specific.
Dean: Yes. Yes.
Eelco: That's great.
Dean: That's what they did, is they got it just like that. Imagine if you're a chicken wing store, and you've got 100 different kinds of chicken wings that you could have, because all it is is the same base chicken wing, with different spices and rubs or whatever.
Eelco: Yeah, that's such a great idea. I thought about that. Like a couple of times. It's such a great idea.
Dean: It really is, so now they can start a new brand for $25,000 instead of two and a half million dollars, or $250,000, the bare bones.
Eelco: You don't even need the bikes, because it's all-
Dean: No, because the delivery service is going to-
Eelco: Uber Eats. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, so that's it. They gook out all these things.
Eelco: It's such a good idea.
Dean: Where this all fits, like I really am excited about the way that it's like these micro compartmentalizations that we can all cooperate and provide something, you can tap into.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Like anybody could start a restaurant like that, and have the same footing on any of the things.
Eelco: So great.
Dean: It's so many efficiencies in that, because the kitchens don't have to be attached to dining rooms in high rent locations with good traffic. They can be in the middle of the city, in a lower floor, on a basement commissary kitchen, which this one happens to be. You get that. They just make all the food in one place, and then stage it with the packaging from that brand, whatever the brand is, and then the delivery guys come and pick it up, and there you go. It's just so great. I look at those things as opportunities for how we can put things together where you can literally, like creativity is at a premium right now, and it's going to be rewarded more than any other thing in the future.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Because, the ability to execute on creativity, it's execution that's becoming the commodity now.
Eelco: True, true. That's interesting. That's super interesting.
Dean: Yeah, because it's always been, I don't know how it feels here, but where people would always have this argument about ideas versus execution. We'd almost fetishize the value of execution, and hustling, and grinding, and getting it done. But that only goes so far, and I always say to people if you look at it that an idea, that's what they'll say, an idea that's not executed is worthless. That's true. I'll give you that. But, let's take that we are executing the idea, and you can execute it flawlessly, we'll go all the way. You can flawlessly execute something. Well, the only thing that can improve flawless execution is executing a better idea. That really shows the trump value of ... It's funny now you say trump, the trump card as a bridge thing, but the top value of ideas. That ideas win.
Eelco: Yeah, especially in these times, it's so easy for us to just do a lot of things. Like, for example with Instagram, you can place like, so you get the normal posts, and you get the stories. A lot of us, we post stories all day long like, "Oh, I'm here. I'm here. I'm doing this. I'm doing this." In a year we could post maybe 1,000 stories, or maybe even more.
For us to create so much micro content, it sounds good, it gives you this immediate endorphin rush, you do something and you get a like, or a comment, or whatever. But to really sit down and work for 100 or 200 hours on one project, on the best idea that you have, it could make such a big impact if you really focus on something that's amazing. That's the best idea that as you say is being flawlessly executed. That can win from 1,000 or 5,000, or 10,000 stories on your Instagram page.
Dean: Putting in just a little bit extra.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Eelco: The tough thing, or the challenge is shut down all the distractions, and focus on one thing, and make something amazing. That's the challenge. Like, really make a masterpiece. That's what I try to teach the people who follow my courses and my trainings. It's like, "Make your marketing your masterpiece." Really sit down and make a masterpiece." Everybody's looking like, "Oh, how do I? What software do we use? What's the next big thing?" But really sit down and make a masterpiece, and a masterpiece like 20 years ago you wrote a sales letter for Stop Your Divorce. That was a masterpiece.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That was a masterpiece. It took you probably a couple of weeks or whatever to create the offer, and still today you're making sales.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: If you would not be as focused in those times and do whatever, you wouldn't win.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: That's also super underrated, the power of attention, the power of focus, the power to create one amazing thing that can run for years.
Dean: Yeah, there's something to that. That's something that, this is where we are. Have you read Deep Work by Cal Newport?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, so you're looking at this thing, and I think that he's absolutely spot-on that we're in a world that both values things that require deep work, that require long-term consistent effort, and your best work, and we're equally in a society that fights against that at every turn.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That almost makes that impossible.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's really where Cloudlandia is against that. Cloudlandia is not for focusing.
Eelco: No.
Dean: All that happens in the mainland. It's really now, like I look at what's happened in the last 20 years, just from being from online, and I've likened it to if we say that we're like ... It's almost like the regular society is like Atlantis now. It's like the lost city of Atlantis. It's completely under water, and we were going along on the mainland in 1997, 1998, where this wave started like lapping up on our feet. All of these, America Online used to send out discs to everybody. They were blanketing the country with them trying to get people online. We all got online, and then it's started out as a slight distraction from our real world orientation. We were mainland focused, and this internet was a distraction from that.
Now, 20 years later, you track it all the way up that as things became easier to access online, like you see music, and you see movies, and YouTube, and now everything, all that stuff that goes with it, and social media. When the smart phone came, when the iPhone came, that immediately put the water over our heads, and we are completely like submersed now. That's why I call our iPhone, it's like we can't kind of go down to the mainland without your oxygen tank, you know?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It almost feels ... What's the right word? It almost feels irresponsible.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: As a parent, you might be thinking it would be irresponsible for me to go out without my phone. You wouldn't dream of it. You've got two, and one just for family and stuff like that, but it would be weird, and you'd feel strangely naked to not have the phone.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's weird to ride that line of balancing it for what's valuable, and also then guarding against what it's done.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: How's your experiments going? Because I know you really embraced some measures to keep yourself in mainland?
Eelco: For me, the best way for me to stay calm and keep focused, and also stay present with people around me is like this, well people can't see it, but I have my iPhone here, and I've got my dumb phone.
Dean: Dumb phone. I love that.
Eelco: My smart, and my Nokia. In the iPhone, I can't call with this thing, so it has no sim card. It's just for podcasting, for recording podcasts, for making notes, pictures, videos, everything. When I go outside, I have no internet connection, which for me is not a problem.
Dean: Okay, so you don't have data plan.
Eelco: No. Nothing. When I go outside-
Dean: So you have to be in WiFi.
Eelco: Yeah. So now, we're at the office, my office, but this WiFi from my phone doesn't work at my house, so I can't access the WiFi at the house.
Dean: That's a good idea.
Eelco: So at my house when I want to be online, I go on my MacBook. It's different. A phone, it's something you grab anytime. When I'm sitting with my wife, or my children, you can be on your phone and you shouldn't even be embarrassed. It's just normal. But if you're sitting next to your wife, and you grab your MacBook, and you're with your MacBook in your lap, you don't do that stuff.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: On my iPhone, I can only access it in WiFi, so at the office, not at my house. My Nokia, my dumb phone, it just has my sim card, and I can call with it, and some people text me, old school text. Not WhatsApp.
Dean: No.
Eelco: This for me-
Dean: That's the like, you're serious about texting them when you've got to like-
Eelco: Yeah, it takes like an hour.
Dean: L-L-L.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, exactly.
Eelco: This, it's such a simple measure to change this, but it changes everything for me. It makes me a different person. For me, there's a big difference between doing it or not doing it. So, when I go for a walk for an hour or two hours, I'm literally just walking with myself. Of course, I'm using my iPhone for music, and podcasts, and book, and all that stuff, but people can't reach me by the internet. They can always call me, because I have my dumb phone with me. If there's a problem, they can call me, and I'll pick up the phone. It's a simple hack, and there are a few workarounds, but if it's done, there's no problem.
It's funny, because you actually appreciate internet more when you do it. Because, when I haven't been online for like three hours, if I've been walking or whatever, and then you go online it's like, "Ah, cool. I've got these messages."
Dean: Yeah, I'm always amazed. Like you realize how little actually you miss.
Eelco: Nothing. Nothing.
Dean: Like when you're up. It's like very little that you miss, if you haven't checked for a few hours. I find that when I'm flying over here.
Eelco: Even months sometimes.
Dean: Months. Wow!
Eelco: Well, for example, Facebook, I don't have my password for my Facebook profile. I gave it to people that I trust, and if I want to be on Facebook, I need to ask them to login for me. So, I haven't been on Facebook for like, I don't know, four months or something. We do a lot of marketing on Facebook. That's on our page.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: But sometimes once every couple of months I'm like, "Oh, let me login to Facebook, and let me check what's going on." Literally, after 30 minutes of looking, "Ah, I'm done, man." I just go through the texts, and go through the timeline, and check some messages and whatever and just like after 30 minutes, and literally after four months, 30 minutes, done. But same thing with Facebook. It's so addictive, man. It's so easy to just ... Because, it's so amazingly built. Like every time you refresh, there's new fresh content for you.
Dean: Yeah. I know.
Eelco: It's never old. It's never old.
Dean: I did the math. Like I was looking at the thing. I've been thinking about, like the way we mostly access Facebook with our phones, I think that's really the things. I've found that on the ads and stuff that I've been doing, like the feedback or the stats show you that the majority of people are looking on their phone. We're all ready right now. In the U.S., the ratio is every fifth like scroll is an ad, so we're at like 20% of your newsfeed is advertising.
Eelco: The money they make.
Dean: Sponsored.
Eelco: The money they make.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's crazy.
Dean: So you think, wow. But everything changes. I think that that's, I really do believe we've got like a few good years of the low price, because it's ridiculously low priced now compared to direct mail, or compared to TV, or radio.
Eelco: There are more and more advertisers and less content.
Dean: That's what I'm saying is you see it inching up now. Like I've seen it because the difference between three years ago and now is pretty dramatic.
Eelco: Yeah, it's like 300% or whatever.
Dean: Yeah, I think so, but even that, that 300% it was really a good deal then. It's still a really good deal now. But I think three years from now we're going to be pining away.
Eelco: I agree.
Dean: For, remember the days when we'd get-
Eelco: Opt-ins for three euros.
Dean: Opt-ins for three dollars. I would take every single one you could get.
Eelco: Now we're complaining like, "Yeah, they used to be like one buck."
Dean: But that's exactly-
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's the thing now. One of the big things I've been trying to get people to take is to think about their marketing spend as a capital investment.
Eelco: That's it. That's it.
Dean: Rather than an expense.
Eelco: That's it.
Dean: And know that it's, rather than like an expense based approach to try and like recoup the spend, get your earnings per click up in that first 30 days or whatever is to look at it that I just know that over the next five years, it's going to be better to have 1,000 $3 opt-ins on your list than it would to have $3,000 almost anywhere else.
Eelco: Yeah, and a lot of people are looking like, "Where should we invest? In what companies should we invest? Which stocks?" If you've got like 100,000 you want to invest, buy 30,000 opt-ins.
Dean: Yes, I agree.
Eelco: As in, that's 400,000 bucks.
Dean: 100% I agree.
Eelco: And get 30,000 new people on your list, and build a relationship, and if you have a good business.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Like, how often do you have sales from people that signed up for your list seven years ago, or 12 years ago.
Dean: It's funny you say seven years, because I just came from London last week. Artur was there, and the event, and he came, he's been listening to I Love Marketing for seven years. Said, "I've listened almost from the beginning." He said, "The other last couple of years, I've wanted to come and the dates haven't worked out," but there he was, seven years later, and Artur's there because every week he gets all my emails.
Eelco: That's it. That's it.
Dean: And they never leave.
Eelco: No.
Dean: I just look at that. It's like so much. There's so much value in that. There's no metering of it. Like right now, and for the foreseeable future, I can't imagine how it'll change email wise. Still sending emails to people is still I think the very best communication. We talk about well texting gets even higher rates, but you're not connecting. You're not bonding and sending value through texting. I think email is still where we get a lot of that good stuff.
Eelco: I do think there's a lot of opportunity with for example WhatsApp.
Dean: Yes, I agree with that, but for a specific purpose thing. It's not as, not the same as like ... I don't think I would accept ... I'm just thinking it through as I go here. Is there any example of people who are ... Like, I send out three emails a week, and they're all really valuable.
Eelco: Yeah. You can't do that WhatsApp.
Dean: Articles.
Eelco: No, you don't do it.
Dean: That's what I'm saying is I don't think you would do that on WhatsApp.
Eelco: But it's funny, because I've been thinking about WhatsApp a lot, and so one of my insights a couple of months ago was like what if we would ... Because in Europe, everybody uses WhatsApp. I don't know anybody who doesn't have WhatsApp in Holland. I thought like, what if we would see WhatsApp as a social media channel, and provide content, and provide good value, but also apply your teachings. Imagine then I would WhatsApp message-
Dean: Yeah, that's where I think it can work. We integrate texting into a communication sequence.
Eelco: It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: But, as a response mechanism. We're not conveying information. Texting and WhatsApp, here's the difference, is they're truly two-way communications. There's an urgency and a timeliness about it, so I think you want to revere that, be sort of respectful of that.
Eelco: Yeah, but it also depends on how you market it. If you say like, "Hey, give us your number, and we will send you cool things every day on your WhatsApp." It's different as in, "Hey, can I get your number," and then you start spamming them.
Dean: But most of the things. I think that if they're going to do that, that it almost warrants having your own app with push notifications, because then you're showing up on the same screen. I don't know.
Eelco: Yeah. I thought about it. Like, for example audio messages on WhatsApp. That's so easy to do, and I don't know. I think it's a big opportunity, but we haven't done anything with it yet.
Dean: Just paying attention. We were talking last night about the Amazon, about Alexa, and Alexa Skills, and how that's really going to be a big thing coming forward.
Eelco: Yeah. Also good investment is create amazing content.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Take time to create amazing content. That's what I like about podcasting. With podcasting, it's forever.
Dean: Now you're speaking my language.
Eelco: Yeah, you record a podcast, and it's there, and it's different compared to video, Facebook, Instagram. It sort of disappears. But with podcasting, people ... Like, so I have my Dutch podcast, and I think I've got like 130 episodes. Like two weeks ago, there was this guy, and he stumbled on my podcast, and he started with one, and he listened 130 episodes in like a week or two weeks.
Dean: Yeah, we're a binge society.
Eelco: Yeah. It's like, "Wow, this guy didn't know me, and now he listened to 130 of my rants."
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: And now he really knows me.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: And like trust, everything.
Dean: I think that goes a long way.
Eelco: That doesn't really happen with video, or any other platforms. Podcasting is, it's super interesting, and it's really building ...
Dean: I think podcasting you get the purest form of attention, because what you get is you get the full attention of the mind. Whereas, if somebody's watching a video, you're holding them hostage in a way. Their body has to be there too. But if they're doing that, then what you don't get is, if they're doing that when I'm watching videos often, if you're required that, I'll often be visually surfing on other things, unless the video requires ... Unless there's something to be offered visually. But what we're doing right now like this, if this was a video of just us talking like this, that's not adding any value to it.
Eelco: No.
Dean: It's like a lower level of attention in a way. But where the audio, when people are driving, or walking, or whatever, I think that's a really interesting.
Eelco: Yeah, and you build a sequence. I think I made over 1,000 YouTube videos in my career, but the last 980 videos, they're lost. It's not like, eh. But my podcast, that's something I'm proud of. That's part of my legacy.
Dean: Yeah, that's a footprint. I've got 340 something I Love Marketing podcasts, and just passed 100 on my More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, and had maybe 150 Marketing Monday podcasts before. You think of all of those hours of stuff. But what I've been really the most excited about is I've been calling experimenting and doing something that I call the MOO method, Multiplied Oral Output. I think that part of the value of the podcasting is as a medium for capturing and digitizing your ideas, your thoughts, there's no faster bandwidth way to get stuff out of your head into a digital format than through your mouth.
Eelco: So true.
Dean: Faster than typing. Faster than anything else until we can figure out how to just hook a hose up to your brain, and transfer the thoughts without you having to even say them. But, with that said, once you've done that, the life of that audio now has so many multiplied uses. The podcast, for certain, but then the transcript of that fuels emails, blog posts, Twitter, social media things. Something for everyone. It's like you get this big Christmas ham, and you can carve it all up in different ways, and this goes to the great memes. You create infographics. You can create derivatives. You can create illustrated videos that go with it, all from that audio, that oral output. It's just like, man that's ... And you create books from that.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Like Tim Ferriss's last two books all straight from the podcast.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: It's so simple, man. Now with the iPhone, the audio is amazing. Like when you record on your iPhone, it's this really great quality.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Even when you're in a car driving, it's still great quality.
Dean: You think about Cloudlandia. It's so amazing when you think about what comes with your citizenship to Cloudlandia. Your iPhone is your passport to Cloudlandia, your citizenship. What comes with it? Imagine if you, 100 years ago, you arrive in America, and you get your citizenship, and along with it you get a television station, and a radio station, and a newspaper, and you get a mail service that you can mail to every other citizen of Cloudlandia for free, as long as they know you. It's just, it's ridiculous. You have a fleet of cars stationed ... I tell people that all the time. I joke I keep a fleet of cars just stationed around the world.
Eelco: Yeah, and thousands of restaurants, private restaurants.
Dean: Exactly. It's so funny when you think about how great life is. Do you know what it would've taken even just to get to Amsterdam once in my lifetime 100 years ago?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I would've had to come across on a boat.
Eelco: That shit cray.
Dean: That shit cray. That's exactly right. I would not have been coming every year. I like comfort. Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah. So, last year this time, a little earlier we were at Chuck Gordon.
Dean: Yes, very exciting.
Eelco: In Maui.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: What did you get out of it?
Dean: It was so nice to see him in his environment, because we saw it in the movie, and we see the-
Eelco: The pre-game show.
Dean: Yeah, we're sitting there right in the same house that's there, and he's just like that in real life. Just a super guy, and I mean even ... You think about it though, there are even the people that were there with us, Chuck's friends that were there, everybody, it's just like instant connection.
Eelco: Instant friends. Yeah. They came to Amsterdam as well.
Dean: Yeah. Very nice.
Eelco: Yeah. That was beautiful. That's just cool, man. Like, that's what I like about life, like really meeting amazing people, and having great conversations, and good food.
Dean: Yeah, well that's the thing is the world is smaller for sure.
Eelco: Yeah, it's so small. Yeah.
Dean: Now than it's ever been.
Eelco: We went to Curacao like last month or two months ago for two weeks with the family, and we brought some friends. Then, I had two weeks in the states scheduled, as you know, like we had an appointment. I went to the states. I was in Miami for two days and I was like, "Man, I'm not feeling it right now. I just want to be in Amsterdam. I just want to be with the family, and get to work, and go to the gym again." That evening, I was back on a plane, like it's nothing. It's so simple. It's not a big deal.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's the thing, a lot of things that happen, they're not a big deal anymore.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: Like you can miss a flight, or your car can be broken down, or all that stuff, and it's not a big deal, because there's solutions for all of that stuff. Yeah, we're really, really spoiled.
Dean: I think that that's a skill set that we have to really get, is get to the point where we're able to be better at articulating what we want. What is a big thing now. I've been using this service called Get Magic. I was in Toronto, and Questlove had his new book. I showed it to you. The book had come out a couple weeks ago, and it was just released. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I'm sitting at a café in Yorkville, in Toronto, where I was telling you ... You were on your way to come and spend 10 days or whatever there before you decided to go back to Amsterdam.
I was sitting in a café there, and the biggest book store in Canada is maybe half a mile from there, like not very far, a nice walk. But I thought, you know what, I'm having such a nice time just sitting here at this café, and I knew Saturday the bookstore would be busy and stuff, so I texted Magic and I say, "Can you call ahead to the bookstore, to the Indigo Bookstore? Can you reserve two copies of Questlove's book for me, and pay for it in advance, so I can just go in and pick it up, and I'll go in to pick it up."
Then I just sat there at the café for another 30 minutes, and then get the text back in 15 minutes and say, "Okay, I set everything up for you. You just go see Aziz when you get there.
Eelco: That's Text Magic?
Dean: Get Magic.
Eelco: Get Magic. I think we have a similar service here that's called uBUTLER. It's like your personal butler. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Perfect. Right.
Eelco: Yeah, it does everything for you.
Dean: That kind of thing. Like, I've used them for anything like that. Like, where you start to really realize, like to capture all of those moments. I think you realize that time is time. There's not kind of distinction between personal and business time kind of thing, or people feel like they're much more inclined to use services for business stuff, but not for personal stuff, or it seems decadent, or it seems-
Eelco: Yeah, that's funny.
Dean: Yeah, but I look at it just those thing, just all those little things saved ... Like, first of all, I know for certain that they had the books, so I didn't walk over there and not find it. I didn't have to wait. I didn't have to go search for it and then wait in line and all that stuff, so it was nice to have that little done. I do that same thing, I want to go to a movie, and they have reserved sitting and stuff, so they'll book movie tickets, and just zap them to your phone. Because, it removes all the friction from deciding that you want something to actually making it happen. It removes all the friction when you can just articulate what it is.
I think that as AI has really come in, and things like Alexa get better, and start to really learn you, and know your preferences, and that combination of maybe human and like texting. I never talk to anybody from Magic. It's all texting. It's like this magic wish button. You know?
Eelco: Yeah. It's also, for example, if you want to send the book to a friend, or flowers to somebody or whatever, it's just one text.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: They look up the address and everything. It's like literally in three minutes you can send seven books to seven different people, and it's done.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: But do it yourself, even on Amazon or whatever, it's a hassle. It's like 20 minutes.
Dean: Exactly.
Eelco: Now it's just an idea, and a couple seconds later it's done.
Dean: I often send, talking about my Lillian, is my assistant. I'll often, like if I see something online that I want, or I see a Facebook ad, or I see some kind of something that I decide that I want, and I don't want to go through the process of like ordering it, I'll just take a quick screw cap, and text the picture to Lillian and say, "Can you get that for me?" I'll do the same thing with hotels, or any of the travel stuff. "This is what I want. Book that."
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's like, this snapping that picture settles the matter. I don't have to do anything else.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: You know?
Eelco: Yeah. Cool, man. So what are you excited for for the next three days?
Dean: I'm very excited to see both what the new people have going on, but I'm really excited to see what's been happening with the people who are here last year, and then with Azmat, who was here two years ago, to see what's been happening.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's always fun to see the evolution of it.
Eelco: True.
Dean: See the results that people are getting.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I love that.
Eelco: In closing, I think I know, but what are you most excited about right now?
Dean: I'm most excited about just, I'm in a good place right now. We were sharing that this Multiplied Oral Output, the MOO method, just really doing where I'm in a situation, where the thing that I do is talk. It's stunning actually how much free time you have when you really get down to the essence of what it is that you do, and don't get caught up in doing anything other than that. It's just like, it took a little while to kind of get over the sort of ... I don't know what the right word is. Not guilt, but not just awareness of I feel like I should be doing more, but it's really like I'm doing less, but we're doing more. It's kind of a ... That's a great joy.
Eelco: I like that. The thing with that, because when I think about that, if I could just run my business by just talking, that would be amazing.
Dean: That's it. That's possible.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: What else do you possibly do?
Eelco: My only thing with that is like copywriting, for example, creating an offer. But even that you can do it, like you can outsource it. You can have discussions with somebody.
Dean: See, that's the thing is we get arrogant that we think that-
Eelco: Exactly.
Dean: We're the only ones that can write copy.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I think that yeah we're starting to see that there are people, if you have the right conversation, that you can guide the concept of the copy, and guide the message, and what it's going to actually be, and then just coach it out, without having to write. I just realized, man I don't like to sit down and right.
Eelco: Me neither. I hate it.
Dean: But I could talk all day.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's interesting.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: If you can really have somebody who ...
Dean: It's just who to have the conversations with.
Eelco: That's true.
Dean: That's really what it is.
Eelco: That's true.
Dean: I'll say to people it's like finding, my big shift has been, I have to kind of remember where we started talking about things, but like thinking always who and not how. That's such a big difference. You're really only two or three whos away from total freedom in your life.
Eelco: Yeah. That's true.
Dean: If you have the right who, they're going to figure out all the how, and all that stuff.
Eelco: Yeah. Even with big offers or whatever, it's just if you have somebody who, if you can brainstorm with them.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah, it's true. It's true.
Dean: I don't mind writing short conversational emails, and that's really the thing is I've really sort of, we're in a great spot right now where we can compartmentalize all of the things. I call it, in our 8 Profit Activators, profit activator three is educate and motivate, so all of that stuff, all the bulk of everything, that's where it's carrying all the weight is in that, where after somebody listens to you for 100 episodes of rants like that, they know what you're all about. They know you. They like you. They trust you. That now all you need to say is, "Hey, I'm doing this thing. Would you like to join us?"
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: You don't have to write the long copy to take somebody from cold all the way through. That's another value of building a list, and really getting to know them. Investing in bonding with them, because at any given time, you've got people who have risen to the top, that they're ready now for whatever. They're already convinced that you can help them.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: You just need to make the offer that's going to get them to say, "Yeah, I would love that."
Eelco: Yeah, that's cool. Cool, man. I look forward to the next three days.
Dean: Yes, me too.
Eelco: Next podcast is going to be in a year?
Dean: A year. That's right. Won't that be great?
Eelco: Yeah. Let's do that.
Dean: That's right.
Eelco: Cool, man. Thanks for coming.
Dean: Okay, thanks man. There we have it. Another great episode. I love those kind of conversations. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, James Schramko and I are going to record a very similar conversation that we have been doing every year for five years now. This is my fifth time in Australia, and the great thing I really was reflecting tonight with James, we were talking about this model of getting together with people. I'm here doing a Breakthrough Blueprint, and we'll have 12, 13, 14 people here in Sydney, and we'll spend three days just completely focused on applying the 8 Profit Activators to their business.
What's really exciting is coming back again and again to the same place, and getting to see different people return with amazing success stories, and also meeting people for the first time who tell me the success stories of what they were able to do just on things that we've shared from the podcasts. I always loved that. But I do love these events. I've got two more arranged for this year in Orlando, in October and December. It would be super great if you wanted to join us. If you want to get all the details about it, you can just send me an email, dean@deanjackson.com, and put Orlando in the subject line, and I'll get you all the details about the event.
If you want to just continue the conversation here, you can go to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com. You can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and if you want to see how the 8 Profit Activators are working in your business right now, and get some insight on that, go to profitactivatorscore.com, and try our online profit activator scorecard. It'll give you some insight into how the 8 Profit Activators are either growing or slowing your business right now. You'll get some insight into where the big opportunities are for you. That's it for this week. Have a great week, and I will talk to you next time.