Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we have a very special podcast! This is episode 5 of 25 in a series that I've been recording over the last five years with my good friend James Schramko.
James, you may know is the owner of SuperFastBusiness.com, he lives in Australia, and every year, when I've gone there to do my Breakthrough Blueprint events, we've made this pact to record one podcast a year for the next 25 years. We're five years into this 25 year, 'Periodic Podcast'.
I love this context where we get to check in one year apart. I'm always there the same time of the year and we get to talk and share behind the scenes stuff about what's been going on over the last year for both of us. We always have really great conversations, and we're very similar philosophically in the way we approach a lifestyle business.
James has a new book called Work Less, Make More, this year. It fits perfectly with the philosophy, so we had chance to talk about that. We had a great conversation. You'll really enjoy this episode.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com
More about James: SuperFastBusiness.com
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
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 114
Dean: James Schramko, hello.
James: This is episode five of 25. Welcome to SuperFastBusiness. I'm James Schramko, your host and today's special guest, of course is Dean Jackson.
Dean: Wow, episode five of 25.
James: We're getting there.
Dean: We must be closing in. Has there been a more frequent guest on the SuperFastBusiness podcast than me?
James: There has. I think Clay Collins.
Dean: Okay.
James: I came across Clay when he had a video player that would skin YouTube videos. It's called Lead … Oh, gosh. This is a while back before he had Lead Pages, he had Lead Player.
Dean: Oh, really?
James: It would play a video, and you could then pop an opt-in. I thought this guy is clever.
Dean: I vaguely remember something like that.
James: Yeah. He used to record little videos underneath his staircase.
Dean: Okay.
James: He had a show, a marketing show, and then it turns into Lead Pages.
Dean: Okay.
James: He went off on to this rocket ship journey, and I just kept documenting the journey as we went through. I've now started doing the same thing with some other entrepreneurs, but the great strategy with that one was spotting talent early, and going through the journey. I remember introducing him to Ezra Firestone at T&C in San Francisco. We went across the road to a bar, and after the first beer, Ezra confessed to me that he doesn't even drink beer, he was just being social and polite.
Dean: That's the best.
James: Clay came and spoke at SuperFastBusiness live in Manly, and just watching his success, they got some serious funding. I think something like $65 million.
Dean: That's awesome.
James: Now, he seems to be into cryptos.
Dean: How did he do?
James: A couple of other guests have had a few shows, but I think if we stayed the course, 25 will be the most.
Dean: I think this is great, and I love the longevity of it.
James: Yeah, starting with the end in mind.
Dean: Yeah. I'm back in Manly. We've been spending the week together here.
James: We should set the scene … That's the beauty of an audio program, you might hear cars driving past. You can probably feel the chilling cold of winter. We're in a circa 3$.9 million estate here, down here in Manly which doesn't really get you as many houses you might gave expected. Is that right, Dean?
Dean: We were joking about it, this man, a man, yes. It's great location.
James: Good location.
Dean: Anywhere in Manly is just beautiful but the house is older. I guess nothing has central heat or air, and it's just right now, this week has been a little bit cold, so you notice it a little more, but, yes, little rustic. Not rustic. What's the right word for it?
James: Ancient? Maybe aging?
Dean: It's an older house.
James: It's probably historically protected. It would be one of the earlier little cottages. It's got thin glass. Typically, houses in Australia, we're not geared for super cold. I mean, it's 16 degrees Celsius. I mean, not sure what that translates to in Fahrenheit.
Dean: I was thinking two of the years that I've come have been particularly chilly. This is one of the chilly ones because it's been rainy or overcast.
James: It has been overcast the whole tome.
Dean: We've discovered some new restaurants, because over in this side of town.
James: You've basically picked one of the south side of Manly, southeast, so you're getting a different range of food outlets.
Dean: It's been delightful.
James: In the time since you came last, I moved just a little bit up the hill, but my entire ecosystem has transformed.
Dean: Right. You were right in the heart of Manly.
James: I'd walk in to the village every day. Now, we drive every day somewhere. That's also opened up my surfing range because instead of walking across the road every day, we'll drive to the right for the right conditions. We call it surf safari. We go every day for surf safari, and grab a coffee. We make a bit of adventure from it, but it is amazing how just a small shift in geography, you can have a completely different life.
Dean: Well, this is what I really love about traveling. This is part of the thing what I love about … I'm setting up a very nice little life routine here of these places that I go to, again, and again like between Toronto, and London, and Amsterdam, and here, at least going those places on an annual basis, we've got established routine of going there. I'm really enjoying getting those little slices of life because it's a very different life in each of those places.
James: I think if you're doing that on repeat, and I'm the example for me would be going to the Philippines, three times a year for the last seven or eight years. That's part of my world map in my head. When I get off the plane, I know exactly where I am, in the airport. I know where to get the pickup, I know the roads. I mean, I have a house there. I'm fully becoming naturalized. My world picture includes that, and your world picture, you have this familiarity with London, and Canada, and Amsterdam, and Sydney.
Dean: Yeah, and I love that. I really love its equity. The equity that I have is I've spent probably over the course of the last five years. I've probably spent 10 weeks or so here, and so that's … Now, I have a sense of like belonging. I know that where I know that when we arrive, we go to the pantry. It's funny that you live here, but yet the time that you go to the pantry is when I come. It's a year or once a year thing.
James: It takes the outsider sometimes to look at your own locality with different eyes. I think as much as it's important to travel somewhere else for your own education, it's good to have travelers come into your patch. It's like when we were talking about the average house in Manly being over $2 million, and you said, “The place we're in, I can't even see it being worth a million dollars,” and I said, “I think it would be probably worth close to four.” That's when you realized if you're living in America, you can get a lot of house for a little amount of money same with cars.
Dean: I'd love to pick my house up, and move it over here because …
James: Then sell it?
Dean: Yeah. It's cheaper.
James: I mean, it used to frustrate me a little bit when I started online because when I see those people bragging about their things like they get their Lamborghini, or whatever. I'm thinking, they can buy a Lamborghini for the same price as I can buy an AMG Mercedes. It's like the currency just turns into their favorite. I think if you're in that US market, it's almost impossible not to have a reasonable quality of life of you have a reasonable income because the money goes a lot further.
Dean: Yes. I think just observing the people here, and I have the great treat of being here this time to see something that's very rare is the changing of leadership.
James: Yeah, that's right.
Dean: I arrived to an impending vote of no confidence in the government so I got to witness the voting day change of leadership which has been, how many prime ministers? About seven prime ministers in the last… Or six prime ministers in the last seven years or something.
James: Here, you don't have to do much to get flipped.
Dean: Right, you're out. I have no confidence in you.
James: It seems over there, you can do just about anything, and people love you.
Dean: Although Jessie told me that Madame Tussauds said they're not going to recognize any more Australian Prime Ministers. It's getting out of hand.
James: I remember asking you if you slept well and you said you were too concerned about …
Dean: Of the government.
James: The government.
Dean: I have no confidence.
James: The funny thing is when I went to a party on Saturday night, someone made a joke about the new prime minister, and the person is standing beside me said, “Who's that?”
Dean: Who's that? Exactly.
James: That's our prime minister who just got voted in yesterday.
Dean: That's so funny.
James: I don't think most people would even know who it is. It's not such a dominating headline.
Dean: That's so funny.
James: Do you think it's boring having the last all you have because I think, one thing when you look at, at your routine is. One highlight is that it doesn't change much.
Dean: I think it's an interesting philosophical question because I crave longevity like that. I think there's something to that, but I also love novelty. My favorite thing is to establish a context with longevity, that allows novelty to overlay on top of it. What I look at, we were talking about this last night on the ferry that the idea of… My idea of the eight profit activators is a universal context that is a long-term thing. If you back test it 30 years, they were there, and present. If you forward, go 30 years, they're still going to be there but what's constantly changing is the ways that you can apply that.
I'm drawn to this idea of mastery and there's something … We saw a movie last night about Ruth Bade Ginsburg who is, for our international listeners, is a US Supreme Court Justice. The way that the justice system works in the US is it's a big honor to be appointed. It's a presidential appointment to the Supreme Court and it's a lifetime appointment. The justices very rarely changes. There's nine of them, and when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed, she was early 60s and now she's 84 years old, still on there, still vital, still an amazing presence, and has spent her whole life forwarding equality, particularly among women.
In a way, its equality but it reminded me of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, that movie about the sushi guy who spent his whole life just mastering sushi. There's something peaceful about that. There's something like I love that. I love that kind of thing.
James: If I'm relating to this, the thing that I'm most interested in is surfing, and any time spent surfing to me is pure bliss. I don't track the time or the ROI on it at all. I think it fits into that classification of flow which is the … It's where the circles of discipline meets surrender. It's the overlapping area where you have the discipline to commit to it, and do it on a daily basis and to direct a lot of thought and energy to it, and at the same, you let go of learning about it, dominating or taking over. You just let go of that side of it, and when you're in it, you're just doing it.
Dean: There are forces who'd be present. You can only do it in the present. It's all of your attention.
James: You have to paddle into the wave yourself.
Dean: Yes.
James: What you do next determines what happens.
Dean: Yeah, and you can't multitask.
James: It's very hard. If you get distracted or you're in a conversation with someone or you're thinking about something else, Mother Nature tends to slap you a bit.
Dean: Pay attention.
James: There are so many lessons and metaphors in that, but it has become a core and I think it is looking at the app which tracks how many days I've spent surfing. It really does add up all the waves all the time but I'm not counting.
Dean: Are you on a streak?
James: Yeah.
Dean: You are?
James: Not quite.
Dean: Of consecutive days?
James: Not quite. There are people who have done it for 40 years. However, at five years in now, I'm becoming I'm becoming a little bit pickier on optimized experience. I don't know if we've talked about this before but I have a friend who's a Forex trader and a professor of psychology who was my surfing buddy but he picks the surfing opportunities like he would Forex markets.
Dean: Oh.
James: He will optimize it unless it's the right direction or the win, or size, or time it won't happen.
Dean: That's interesting.
James: He's really 80/20'ing this, whereas when you begin, you'll just take any opportunity, but I'm becoming more selective and I will sit out if it's just too small and I'm not going to develop my experience anymore. It's always an underlying target. Right now, I'm in the lead up to my Maldives trip, so I'm working on fitness so that I can capitalize on three surfs a day for a week, and also tuning my equipment, selecting which trade that I would take.
I've had an elimination contest running. I have a rack in my house that used to accommodate six, and I've expanded it to eight, and I keep the rest downstairs in a walkup. From that, I take detailed notes in a spreadsheet and I've been able to eliminate and eliminate. Now, I've selected three and in the lead up now, just like at athlete at the Olympics, so mostly just surf those three and get as comfortable as I can on them so that when I'm there.
Dean: You take three surf boards to the Maldives?
James: Yeah. It's like a golf club set. You have the putter and the driver. It's big waves or small waves.
Dean: Got you.
James: Whether you're feeling really fit and refines or whether you feel a bit tired, you can go at something that's a bit easier or lazier. With those three, I'll have myself covered.
Dean: There you go. You can use each one every day.
James: Well, that's the thing. It's such a lesson there. I found the last time I went for two weeks, I rode one, at least. Of the 27 surfs, I think I've surfed at 16 times.
Dean: Wow.
James: Then the other two much less, so it's like the 80/20. There will be one that stands out and it'll get the lion's share. Then you have to decide the opportunity cost, do I rotate and become reasonably good on each or do I have the absolute maximum prime experience on the very best, that suits the conditions at the time.
Dean: You brought up the 80/20. What's your further … You've had more insights into the 80/20, I'm sure over the last year since we talked.
James: I have. We're talking about my routine and life. I've been able to … I play this game. It's like how leveraged and how good can I get things running, and I've retreated from doing a lot of the things that I used to do and I have the least business models running right now in the simplest scenario. Ever since I made that chapter in my book which was the 64:4.
Dean: Yeah, describe that because I was just looking at that, the chart.
James: When I was reading 80/20, Koch talks about being fractal, and that means that you can apply it to itself, so if you zoom in, it still applies to the portion. I started doing calculations and I thought what if you 80/20 the 20? If the 20 is getting you 80%, what's the 80/20 of the 20, and that comes down to the 64:4. What it means, is that 64% of your results are coming from a near 4% of your actions or activities, or if you've got a wardrobe of t-shirts, if you're normal like not doing the Steve Jobs thing, or the Dean Jackson thing where you wear the same thing every day.
In a normal person's wardrobe, there's probably a t-shirt or a pair of jeans or some shoes that are just getting worn two-thirds of the time that one item. I just think it is phenomenal that almost two-thirds of your results come from just 4%. In other words, the common complaint that I see from the type of people who I coach is overload, overwhelmed, confusion, frustration, fear of missing out, constant pressure but almost all of the things that I worry about could just be dropped, and forgotten about.
My whole role is not what can I add or what a missing out that we need to introduce, what extra things do you have to do. Instead it's what can we just remove, and have no negative downside. That leaves us the things that need to stay, and when that's all you do, then it's so much simpler. I'm getting huge … And I don't mean to borrow this phrase, breakthroughs. I'll probably pick a different word. I'm seeing extremely good results where I just help people simplify, and say, I just want you to do this. You do this really well in your material.
You talked about one thing, one target market, one product for that target market. That's something that I am helping people with is remove it. I just see how does this apply to my life, and I've been letting go of stuff, letting go of activities, letting go of physical things. I even went through a surfboard rationalization as well. When I move, I let go of about 12 boards, just to slim them down. I went and looked at my spreadsheet, and I figure out which are the ones that I'm likely to ever ride again or need. It's a good karma to put them back into circulation rather than horde them in your garage, let someone else ride them, and get the stoke and the joy.
Dean: That's awesome. I've been aware of that, and looking at it in my own, I mean, it seems like I was sharing with you that things are just getting simpler, and simpler, and simpler for me as I really realize, and get down to the core things, and to really see how much is driven from the really core activities which is talking, and I look, if you go to the root thing is essentially I record one podcast a week which goes out without fail, and from that comes three emails a week that deliver content from the podcast that we talked about, all including my super signature that invite people to whatever I've got going on, and it's just so amazing how simple that is.
James: Well, let's talk about what are the three…
Dean: Sorry.
James: That's all right. We'll get you a nice warm place next time. What are the three emails you pull from the one podcast?
Dean: Yeah. The first, so I mail on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. Podcast goes out on Sunday. Part of my rationale for choosing that day too.
James: 60 Minutes?
Dean: Yeah, it's all part of it. 60 Minutes this year, the TV show is celebrating its 50th year. That has been such a staple of the way things go, that forever, Sunday night at 7:00 pm, you would cure the count, the tick, tick, tick, tick. That is the signal. I count that as the official transition from the weekend, to the week ahead, that that seems like the time where now everything … You're all settled. Everything is there. It's all downhill from there. You peaked on the weekend.
Now, it's like this is the one down. You're going to then get everything organized, get ready for bed, and then you're going to wake-up Monday and the new week is off. I just love the consistency of that context. We're going to do a show on Sunday night, and we're going to do three 20 minute segments on the most fascinating things that are relevant right now. That's a cool thing. The podcast comes up on Sunday, and with it comes the announcement email, so the Sunday email is always about here's the new podcast, and then the Tuesday, Thursday emails are all derived from things that I've said on not necessarily this week's podcast, but through previous podcast.
I have a writer who takes the transcripts, and calls out three to 500-word gems that we can … That gets sent every week, and the great news is, and perhaps the secret of it is that I don't write a word of it. I talk for the podcast, and that's it. I don't schedule the podcast. I don't do anything. It's all this self-fulfilling loop because each episode of the podcast or each email that goes out, encourages people to be a guest on More Cheese Less Whiskers, so we've got these non-stop backlog of people who want to be guests who've told us a little bit about their business, so Lillian is able to just reach out to them, and slot the times that I've already chosen.
I record on a Friday usually, and I do two episodes, so that will be my Friday. I'll record one at 10:00 and one at noon, and then we'll go to the movies, and hangout, and have the rest of the day, but just to know that that's what's happening on that day, and to have not had a thought in the world about who I'm going to have on, and how am I going to organize this, and how am I going to record this, and how … I mean, I literally … I use a voice command to call in to the conference center, and I dial, and I talk, and then I'm done.
As soon as I hang up, everything else falls into place, and it's so just relaxing. I think about it, so we were saying how little I could do if that was all I did. If you'd just take the 80/20, if you took out the podcast driving the breakthrough blueprint events, and email mastery, and 90-minute books, I mean, there's just so much.
James: The podcast has been driving my basically for years, and through that 80/20 process, I removed the affiliate program. I don't really do paid ads. What I have is that weekly podcast that, again, I just drag the media into a file, and the team takeover. They probably should syndicate it on social media. They send in our broadcast which has the bullets. We've been doing that for a long time and that leads people to opt-in for content upgrades or join my waiting list.
The waiting list moves people into the membership which is really there's only two primary solutions, people are going to find now which is SuperFastBusiness membership or Silver Circle membership. They'll find them from my homepage quickly. I do wanna ask you about super signature in case someone listening to this doesn't know what that means.
Dean: I've just coined that phrase, super signature for the inclusion in every email of the opportunity for people to take the next step. My format for the emails is all content. The content article, three to 500 words. Then a PS that will be something timely and topical, something like, I'm coming to Sydney for a breakthrough blueprint, and to say instructing people if they'd like to join us to send, just reply and put Sydney in the subject line. Then the super signature is below all that, and it always starts up plus whenever you're ready, there are four ways I can help you draw your business.
James: You have someone else managing your emails?
Dean: Yeah. I don't do any of it.
James: Do you do any email at all?
Dean: I do, but I have two people manning my inbox, so most of the stuff gets addressed but then I get sort of digest of the ones that are outliers that require my attention or anything that I might like to see.
James: How did you receive that communication?
Dean: I have a separate email, so my dean@deanjackson email is my universal email. It's the one I give to everybody to know that somebody is going to see that. I encourage people to email us there. Then I have another email address that is just for me that is not a public email address that my team and anybody that I'm communicating with, or friends or clients, or whatever. That only bypasses the reception and comes straight to me. That email is how I get notification of the things that I need.
We have been experimenting with using a “if this, then that” for it with sending the … We have a star system that we use Gmail, like enterprise Gmail. We use that star system so we could set up “if this, then that” of every day at 6:00 pm send me a digest of all of the emails that have a yellow question mark or a yellow exclamation point, and that can happen automatically. I get that as the what happens.
James: In our world, we have…
Dean: I'm still terrible at replying to emails anyway.
James: This is the thing. As you get more opportunities coming at you, it seems to happen when you poke your head above the line. We have support at superfastbusiness.com and that drives in to help scout which is a very email like experience for the customer with the benefit that anyone in our team can log in to that central place. If my team needs me to respond because it's unique to me, and they can't answer it, then we'll help channel in Slack. Then I can answer it in slack.
Dean: I've got a lot of them in the Slack channel.
James: See, I just use …
Dean: My team uses Slack and I don't.
James: My team doesn't man my inbox, so that's our public way for people to deal with us. I don't log in to WordPress. I'm one layer back from all those things. I'm pretty sure we talked about that the last time we chatted or the time before that. Super signature, it's great.
Dean: Yeah, it's next steps, and it's almost leading to something, some way that you could help, so one that is always on there is the “be a guest” on the podcast. It's always the top one, be a guest. That's the easiest way that I can help somebody right away.
James: What's the selection criterion that happens behind the scenes?
Dean: Well, there's a section where people tell us about their situation, about the business. We're usually very good at scribing what they're going through, but because the podcast is not an expert podcast where we're looking how we weed people out that we know that they're not, a right fit for the show if they start out with I've done this, and this, and this. Your listeners will get a lot out of this.
James: That's cheese talk.
Dean: Yeah. All I'm looking for, the whole model for the podcast is that we're going to spend the whole hour focusing on your business, and applying the eight-profit activators to your business. That's what it's all about. It's not about interviewing an expert about their new book or anything like that. That was something that I wanted to have a very useful podcast.
James: It's one of the filters for us too. I really don't people on the show who are trying to be on righteous. Every day we get these outrageous emails.
Dean: I want people who are trying to be on it, but not trying to be on it to get to the audience in a way. The way the podcast, I look at it is that they were sending it up that it's not as if it's a podcast, it's a conversation between me and them, and about their business.
James: It's good, because it's very instructive for your audience, and my prime filter for this podcast is it has to be useful for the audience. That's why I noticed in the podcasting world, some of the people who have big distribution numbers, they now charge three-and-a-half thousand dollars per guest, for the guest to come on the podcast.
Dean: Oh, wow. I haven't heard of anybody doing that.
James: It's happening.
Dean: Really?
James: I think that tells me that the podcast doesn't really care about the end user so much. Now, it's become a product and it's commercialized. I mean, we don't run ads on this show either because I don't think that's nice for the listener.
Dean: No.
James: I am able to monetize this podcast by people naturally feeling I might be able to help them. It is interesting watching it but I think that's when you cross the line from being interested in the end user, to being interested in yourself.
Dean: That's the thing. It was never about monetizing the podcast, it's about gathering the right people in the right conversation, and then whenever they're ready. It's something magical about the words too, whenever you're ready.
James: One thing I know about you, Dean is that you do because you … Interesting conversations. You are genuinely interested in having a discussion, bouncing ideas back and forth. What ideas are you excited about at the moment?
Dean: That's a great question because there's so many things that I'm seeing like the two big things that I'm really giving a lot of thought to are this appearance, full and total migration of us as a society to the cloud, and I'm fascinated by that. I'm seeing now everything, all the evidence that comes around that, I'm seeing … What I mean, by that is that if you go all the way back, I've had these conversations. I have a great podcast with Dan Sullivan called The Joy of Procrastination, and we have really great, just conversations about stuff.
If you go back to 1997, in the United States, the internet was just starting to make waves. AOL, America Online was blanketing the country, delivering floppy disks and CDs to people's homes to get everybody online. It was all about the migration to just getting online, and in the beginning it was mostly about email, and the chat groups, and things like that, that you could connect with people. It was a nice distraction from the real world. As it has become more, and more prevalent, as we've gotten deeper, and deeper.
I think that 2006, 2007 when Facebook, and YouTube, and all of these things became all the real modern internet that we're talking about is 10 years old that we have slowly … Smartphones was the big shift on that. Now, we are reaching a point where in surveys, some crazy number like 78% of people across all age groups surveyed about how often they're online, answer almost always as their quantity of time that they're online. Almost always online. You think that that's…
James: The average American is watching six hours of video per day.
Dean: That's really…
James: That's quite a lot.
Dean: When you think about screen watching, that that thing you start to see all these converging things that are happening right now, like that idea, that we're all online, and we want to be there. That's where we want to be and that's what allows things like Uber to be so popular where something like, the things that are winning online are the things that are the bridges kind of between our home in Cloudlandia and our needs on the mainland.
Our physical meet robot is still here on the mainland. We're physically still here, but everything about the way we coordinate things is happening up in the Cloudlandia, and when you look at that, there was a great article in New York Times called the Tyranny of convenience, and it was laying out how the proposition was that convenience is the most underestimated power of anything that it drives everything that we do even when our preference would be something else, convenience will weigh.
If people say they prefer to brew their own coffee, but it's just convenient to get coffee at Starbucks. That's what we end up doing. It's saying how convenience is always ratcheting forwards like we never go back. Once you've had a taste of something being more convenient, you can't go back. The way the article is written is just beautiful because they talk about how when once you've had an experience of washing your clothes in a washing machine, compared to hand-washing them.
James: You're not going down to the river.
Dean: You would never go back down to the river. Right, exactly.
James: I talk about this on the race course. This is where the convenience trap, I call it, where they make it so easy for you to put your content on their platform. You could be tricked into not having your own platform, or like in my case, and your case, you have a website. I have a website. At least they can't take that or tell me how it's going to operate in the long-term, or my email. It's just hard work.
Dean: That's exactly right.
James: That's where I think a little bit of inconvenience is still good for you, and I think the daily surf, it's inconvenient to get into a wet suit, and walk down in winter down to the water which is a bit cold when you first get in. The joy and experience that comes from that.
Dean: We have to fight gravity. You have to fight.
James: Resistance.
Dean: An upstream to do these things like that. You look at kids now that e-sports is overtaking by a long shot, and you think about this gaming.
James: I do.
Dean: Gaming is a business as a business is five times bigger than the movie. The entire movie industry, the gaming industry is five times bigger than that, and it's largely invisible.
James: It taps into so many psychological factors that are ultra-addictive. I think the research that I've seen now shows that the skill that the kids are missing that we had is resilience. They have very little resilience. There's no ability to overcome the smallest resistance because they've had this convenience from the day they were born.
Dean: I think that that's something. I mean, that whole … In that article, they've talked about once you've experienced streaming television or content online, the whole thought of having to be in front of your TV at a certain time, seems silly and a little bit undignified. It just seems a little bit undignified that I'm being forced to be in front of my TV at 9:00.
James: Look at the attendance rates on live webinars versus how many people expect a replay, or an on-demand. I heard an ad on the radio when I was driving the other day, and they said you can download the radio app, so that you can listen to your favorite station when you're out fishing or doing other things.
Dean: That's amazing.
James: They're fighting, and losing a battle there.
Dean: Yeah.
James: The people like you and I can sit here with a phone and record a podcast, and publish it on platforms.
Dean: That's the thing. Our ability to curate our own listening, that our own … You start to realize, man, there's just so much. There's no end. We're never going to catch up in terms of there's so much more content yet even though more, and more, and more, we have this bounty of options, of content to watch. This is what's amazing. If you think about Cloudlandia as a place, if you migrated, you buy into this, and your smartphone is your passport to it that your entry into Cloudlandia with your data plan or your Wi-Fi is that you have your own television station, and you have your own printing press that you can be … It's a complete level playing field.
All the smart TVs right now are just ancillary screens to our mobile devices that you just flick your finger, and what you're watching screen is now you're just watching it on bigger screen. There's absolutely no difference in the viewing area that you have access to, and competition from that you're dealing with Netflix now. I mean, in terms of if you want somebody to watch your video content, you've got to.
James: In the large companies, Apple, Amazon, YouTube, they're all buying content. They're paying for content to capture that.
Dean: Amazing, right?
James: I really think, this is going to be the asbestos or nicotine of the future.
Dean: Say what you mean by that?
James: I mean, that I think this is a massive scourge on society.
Dean: Well, I don't know that.
James: Like Ready Player One.
Dean: I want to see that movie. I know the general point.
James: Basically, the in-person live version.
Dean: I definitely see it.
James: …opting out of living to go online.
Dean: That's where most of us functionally have already done that. Teenagers are already there.
James: I understand that's happening, but I don't think it's good for people.
Dean: Okay. That's another question then. That's another thing that it's definitely against the norm. There's a perfect example. I have a good friend and he just happens to be 69 years old. This was a guy that I just remember coming kicking and screaming into the smart phone world in 2006, getting the first iPhone. That was a big thing. My flip phone is fine. Why do I need my email, and all that stuff?
Here's a guy. We were going to watch something on Netflix. He comes over my house. He lives literally about a seven-minute drive, door to door to my house. We get all settled. We had some grapes, and all the stuff you get settled. Right before we were about to start the movie, he's looking, patting himself, looking for his phone, realizing that, "Oh, I left my phone at home." Now, he was going to go back home to get his phone.
James: Because he got separation anxiety.
Dean: That is exactly it. It's an oxygen tank, but he went out to the car, and it was in the car, but just that thing, that level, that low level panic, have you ever tried to leave your house without your phone? Even if you have the intention.
James: This is my point, exactly. I do it every single day. I'm fed up with Facebook. I'm not interested in Twitter. I've been using our services since they came in the beginning and I'm not a regular person as are you and I'm saying if I'm getting to the point now where I'm over it, I think normal people would be there in five to seven years from now, but I do think the research will come out, there will be more of a groundswell around how bad this is for you as a human. I do leave my phone at home when I go out to a café. I do go down to the surf and spend a few hours analoging.
Dean: Off the grid.
James: Off the grid, and I think that is most healthy, adjusted thing.
Dean: You really have to build that in, and it requires…
James: It's discipline.
Dean: Yes.
James: And I don't think an average person… Firstly, I don't think they're aware of the situation and secondly, they may lack the ability to control it. My whole point is I think if you …
Dean: Our brains, this is how we're so wired into it. What I was saying was when I tried to leave the house without the phone, your brain is saying to yourself, “We're convinced that it's almost irresponsible to leave the house without your phone, because what if something goes wrong? What if I need to reach somebody?”
James: It's exactly what I was talking about. That discipline of going hardcore, old school …
Dean: I just had a friend who…
James: I'm sagging away from the trap of getting lulled into this boots and all.
Dean: I had a friend who just came back from a four or five-day silent retreat, and this is just in the US. He went for a period of time where there's no talking, no communicating, no screens, nothing. You get a journal, you bring a journal. You can read the physical books. No electronics, no anything like that. Just the thought of it. Just that connection, that deep level what you get from it.
James: Surely that is a sign, right?
Dean: The words that he was using to describe it because it's something.
James: The author talks about that in the book 10% Happier about how difficult it was.
Dean: Right.
James: I think you only detox if you're doing something wrong in the first place. If you had a healthy diet, you don't need to detox. I have a healthy relationship with technology, you don't need to detox.
Dean: He was texting me after coming out of it. He says, “I was blown away again,” because he's done this before, “By how connected it feels when you're truly disconnected.”
James: That's right.
Dean: Which is a really interesting thing. He said, “No masks or labels to shade the light within,” and I got so much work done, good work, idea work, the stuff that flows when there aren't any distractions. I know you know what I'm talking about. You feel it when you're in the lab sometimes. Imagine shutting yourself for 72 hours, good left at your door, no phone or tablet, and just you, and the white board, and your mole skin. I've never done it. I've never done a silent retreat like that but I'm intrigued by it.
James: I've done a couple of weeks in Maldives where my phone broke. I don't take a laptop. It was great. This is what I'm talking about. I would highly prescribe somehow to have analog time on a daily basis. When my wife and I went to Queensland recently to speak at an event, and we went to the breakfast every morning, the guy was offering me the paper, and I said, “No, thanks.”
Dean: I love a paper.
James: Well, the next day, he offered me, and I said, “No, thanks.” By the third day, he said, “Oh, that's right. You two actually talk to each other.” We don't have the paper or the phone. My wife and I, when we go to have a meal, we actually don't use the phone. She likes to get angry if I have the phone, and then I'm trained out of it.
Dean: Wow.
James: It's so much better when you can go somewhere and actually talk to someone.
Dean: It's something, right?
James: It's what used to happen in the old days.
Dean: Yeah. I look at that, and we've been fortunate that you're at the age too where you have a recollection of pre-internet.
James: BMX bikes until the lights go on out of the house.
Dean: I think that that, just recognizing the macro trend of everybody migrating to the cloud, and you're seeing how that's happening that every possible thing that is going to be more convenient to live through the apps is a win. I look at the things. I observe and put them in the categories like my Starbucks app is a wonderful thing that I set it up. You've got it. As I'm arriving, push the button for my order, walk in Starbucks, go to the counter and pick up my drink.
James: You're basically saying just, “Plug me in now. I'm done.”
Dean: I'm saying listen. I'm saying that I see the value of access to these things. I've been all over the world basically this year if you think about three corners of the earth. In London, in Amsterdam, in here and Toronto and all over the United States that I often tell people … Like they say, “Can you come meet me over here, or whatever, if I'm going to talk to you? Come on. Let's meet over here.” I always tell people, “Of course.” I keep a whole fleet of cars on standby all over the world just in case I might need one.
There's something magical about the fact that no matter where I am, wherever I go in the world, and I imagine it's almost like this everywhere now, that I can have a car at my feet in a maximum of three to five minutes. When I say at my feet, I mean to the closest possible place from where I'm sitting, that I can just keep my head in the cloud, the screen and I only have to look up enough to just open the door, and get in. Then when I get out, I look up enough to know that I'm here, and I get out, and I close the door, and I keep on going. That convenience, that little removal of friction, of paying for something. The same thing with the Starbucks app. It's like getting coffee like a diplomat. You walk in. You skip the line. There's some …
James: A part of that makes me a bit sad. I think …
Dean: I think you can …
James: I think a life without friction is like what's the point?
Dean: I don't know. Gary Vaynerchuk said this the other day that we romanticize the past but only the first level, the last level past. Nobody is romanticizing the previous what we're romanticizing as nobody is romanticizing this previous generation. It's just the transition. If you look at it from the coffee like getting your Starbucks, coffee with your app that you can just walk right in, and pick up the coffee, and not have to pay.
James: Firstly, it's tragic that you have to drink Starbucks.
Dean: I understand. The whole thing combined with what was your option before.
James: That's the thing. I don't mind a bit of stoic. I make my own coffee, but I also buy coffee out. Of course I take a reusable cup where possible these days, but I don't know. I think for me frictionless isn't the goal. If it is the goal, the cloud is going to be very seductive.
Dean: It is.
James: I don't mind some stoic stuff. I don't mind grinding beans and making coffee. I don't mind walking somewhere.
Dean: I got it, but that's because you like to feel you're better than people.
James: Not really at all. I know he's joking there, folks, just by the way. I don't think so. I think I'm connected with the sense that we're shifting, and I'm not sure I like it. Not that I'm resisting to change. I do like using PayLite to pay for things. I think that makes sense because coins are just annoying.
Dean: It is, absolutely.
James: Someone is missing out. This is the point. I imagine the tips have gone off. Forget about tips since the coins have gone. It's pretty hard on service stuff, and now that we have … We're pushing a button, and the food comes to our door.
Dean: You just had that happen right here now.
James: Yes, but eventually you won't be able to go and sit in the place, and eat it because they can't afford to exist after their 40% margins cut.
Dean: I'm sharing with you that there's something that's fascinating to me is this concept of ghost restaurants, that there's a brand in the US of group in New York, and Chicago that started nine different restaurant brands that they operate out of the same commissary kitchen, and so they run out of the Forbes, or Fast Company article was nine restaurants, one kitchen, no dining room because they don't have a physical location that you can go in and eat at the only place they exist is on Grubhub and Seamless.
Which is Cloudlandia? They only exist on services like Deliveroo, or Grubhub or Seamless, well, there are these transitional things. It's largely positioning services for the mainland because the only place that those deliveries services operate is on the mainland, and it's this whole thing that there is a real distinction between, “Are you going to be part of the Cloudlandia economy, or are you going to be part of the mainland economy?”
James: That's what I'm saying. I know where we got our lunch from today, they embraced delivery on there. They've actually set up a satellite place now to deal with that. They have to or they will be out of business. You don't have to walk around Manly and see a lot of empty shops because Cloudlandia is dominating retail as you know.
Dean: Yes. I mean, there's a…
James: In fact some of the retails are their own worst enemy. You go into a shop now, and ask for something, they say, “Oh, you have to check on our website for that.”
Dean: Anything you need to check on physical goods, in the US anyway is going to be Amazon. That's where people are going to go. They're delivering everything. That's the other thing is that when you look at what we're part of now is that any physical good, can be delivered to my door step, at the very latest tomorrow morning. At the very latest. That's really, I think progress.
James: They used to do that with milk and bread.
Dean: Yeah.
James: Right to your door.
Dean: That's where we're coming back to.
James: It’s made out of food that wasn't contaminated.
Dean: That's where we're coming back to now is that the whole idea of that level of service again, because I think that economically, the people who choose to embrace Cloudlandia and participate in the Cloudlandia economy are going to fare far better in the long run than people who are sticking on the mainland.
James: Both of us, basically.
Dean: Right. I think our understanding that, and being able to have the best of both worlds where you can take part in the Cloudlandia economy by organizing people in the mainland.
James: I think that's why there's a good place for live events, those sort of things that people crave the more. I'm running an event next year because my audience have been very vocal asking for it. They want it, they miss it, and that's nice, because my whole business exists in Cloudlandia, and these live events are just one thing. Apart from the Maldives mastermind which is the stuff. That's nirvana. The live event component is still super valid. I guess my whole point is just watch out for the technology, and make sure you're not unconsciously moving into an area that is hard to get out of later.
I say this with context. I've got four kids. The oldest being 22, the youngest being 16. I'm seeing the youngest ones experience with online interaction has become past a point where I would say is fair and reasonable and I've seen what can happen if you just get too hooked into that. I'm saying the extreme example, and I think we should pull up a few steps prior to that level.
Dean: That balancing thing like the thing that it's the irony of the things that get rewarded even in Cloudlandia, the consumption of things that take long effort outside of that that you think about.
James: Same things as poker machines and the casinos. 15 times until you get a payoff, and need team work collaboration. It's still moving while you're not there. You're missing out. There are hidden surprises. Did I ask what the second thing you're interested in is?
Dean: The second thing?
James: You said there was two things, and one was the cloud.
Dean: The other thing is the ability to, on a broader scale for collaboration, that the … I've been really watching what's been going on with Kylie Jenner as one example of that, and Kylie Jenner has just now past a billion dollars. She's a billionaire in a very short period of time less than three years. Starting with a capital investment of her own money, she spent $250,000 to start her venture, and has turned that into a billion dollar net worth, but the great thing is that she only has five full-time employees and seven part-time.
When you look at this, that she's got $350 million in sales last year with five employees, and seven part-time, that's she collaborating with partners who can do all of the other part. She has a manufacturing and distribution partner who make her lip kits, and distribute them, package and distribute them. She's partnered with Shopify for all of the eCommerce, her website, all of that stuff to do with that. Her mom's management company runs the business side of the thing, and she just has the creative team where she's the ideas.
I think that there's never been a better time, and it's only getting better for people who are true creators. If you really thought about it, if we thought about it, if our objective was to create a business that could do a million dollars a year without any employees, without anything, just with partnering with other people, that there are all of the components of it, you could orchestrate putting all these together because you can essentially outsource everything now.
James: I mean, a simple way is just to have 10 revenue share deals, making 10 grand a month where you're just using your IP intellect. That's a one person business, which is what I'm building on the side. I'm about 40% there, and I think that's a clever business, but I think people like Peter Drucker were doing that in the ‘60s selling his brand and being the world's best management consultant in his living room.
Dean: I don't know how he was doing it. I don't know anything about him.
James: He just had people come out to his house, and he'd sit opposite them, and ask them compelling questions. They'd come up with answers, and discover things, and he was probably the best at it. He really was the founder of the Knowledge Worker which is almost what you're talking about where he said in the future, traditional education would crumble and we would be able to get paid for our knowledge wherever we are.
Dean: This is it exactly. He's saying that, and here we are.
James: In the ‘60s.
Dean: I wonder if there's a good documentary about it. I'd love to see it.
James: I wish there was, but I have indeed, and I would recommend buy every Drucker book, The Effective Executive and Daily Drucker. If you get the Daily Drucker, you read one chapter per day, and it's just one page. It's very easy to read and after one year, you'll have a pretty good understanding of strategy compared to the average person. He was a genius, and some of the best things that I got from him, and I got to see him present live once via satellite before he passed away was that it's more important to be effective than efficient.
That's really been a foundation. I see a lot of people trying to be efficient, but that's not the goal. In fact, I'm often questioning what the goal is. Like Eli Goldratt, who's in a similar category, he had this great saying, “Don't wish for an easy life, wish for a rich, and full life.” That's why I'm not chasing one tap convenience on my app, I want to live. I want the experience.
Dean: Yeah. There are so many things. I'm in a really like philosophical point in my life because I'm really seeing this now. I have a different vista, having turned 50. It's a different world. I have a context for why I started my business career. I'm 52 now, so I started at 22, 30 years now this November will be 30 years. I have a context for what that is. If you take this another 30 years from now, I'll be Ruth Bade Ginsburg at 82. That amount of time now forward …
James: Well, I think the things that become obvious for me at my age of 47 is health on a substantially better situation than I was five years ago. If you think about it, depending on how radical your thoughts are and where we're going, you're probably at the halfway mark. You might not be there yet if you're lucky. If you are, things like health, and relationships come in. We're in a power position when you have time, and money, but the health side of it, I'm quickly experiencing this whenever I have a health issue. It's really very important. We may not get into the cloud early enough before you can discard your bag of bones.
Dean: Right.
James: If that's the case, I think the irony here is it supports my point to get health, you need some resistance.
Dean: It's true. There's no convenient way.
James: You‘re not going to push a button.
Dean: You're absolutely right.
James: You need resistance.
Dean: That's what I'm saying is that the juxtaposition of it, right? We reward the society. We reward things that take time and a lot of effort.
James: If you were a kid, and you spent your entire time in the cloud. You're going to end up with health problems, and social interaction problems. I think it's still valuable to be able to interact in the actual world. It's like really, we spent a lot of time on this topic. We are in a crossroads in society where we have a unique window, and you're getting access to all the business visionaries, the [inaudible 01:14:10] and what have you in your travels. I'm seeing it from a family situation in observing my own withdrawal but the electron world. I spent too long on the computer 10 years ago to five years ago and I'm going the other way.
I see people like Elon Musk, and I think that's not heroic. Even Ginsburg, I mean, she'd work through until the morning and eat one meal a day [crosstalk 01:14:43]. That's sad in a way, but as long as she's happy is my caveat. As long as she's happy. I wouldn't be happy with that, but it seems like every now and then, a person has to throw their life to the wolves to give society a better go. If we're going to go to Mars someone has to give up their life for it.
Dean: I get it. You're right.
James: Interestingly Arianna Huffington wrote an open letter, to Elon Musk.
Dean: Oh, really?
James: Yeah. It's pretty much saying, “Dude, you've lost the plot. The science doesn't back what you're saying about these 120-hour weeks.”
Dean: Oh, really, right. That's an interesting thing for her to do because of her book, and stuff.
James: She's been reading the same research that I have, you need sleep.
Dean: Well, she has a great book called Thrive, and that sort of thing. That was her big realization is that. Because she was doing the same thing.
James: I know people listening to this are at the phase in their business where it's a struggle, and they're in a crossover, and it's a challenge. The message from my perspective, and I've written a whole book on this topic that you can actually pull back a bit down the track if you decide you want to. I think of strike a better balance, but for me, it's less time on the computer, and less time with the device is giving me a better quality of life.
Dean: I think that's true. That's really like when you get right down to it, this is really the thing that we're going to experience the next 25 years. Only in the tidbit of today. Your daily joy of setting up the life that you really want for that day, that the majority of days are exactly that. They're very formulaic.
James: Money will come from the cloud, and I'll be spending it on land.
Dean: Yes.
James: My goal would be that my daily surf routine isn't impacted whatsoever. No matter which lunatic is in charge of the United States, what store is selling the most eCommerce. It doesn't matter to me as long as I have financial independence, I'll be heading down for a paddle.
Dean: Yes.
James: That's my daily metric.
Dean: I love that.
James: That's the yard stick.
Dean: I like that.
James: I won't need to be going to detox anytime soon because I detox every day. I'll let it out.
Dean: You're grounding every day.
James: Grounding, yeah. If people would stop dropping glass bottles on the foot path, I'll have a better transit to the surfing. Like four glass cups on my bare feet at the moment. It keeps you humble.
Dean: It's going to be amazing to see what happens over the next 20 years as we complete this series.
James: We may reflect back on episode five. That was the big …
Dean: The awakening.
James: We're almost always in sync with philosophies but we're probably on the either side of the spectrum here without a convenience one. It's good though. It makes interesting discussion.
Dean: Absolutely.
James: Any final thoughts, Dean?
Dean: I've really enjoyed this conversations. I mean, I do. It's like such a … It doesn't seem like we joked, arrived in Manly, but I realized I haven't seen you physically in two years, but It was any … No time had passed.
James: I still feel like I know you.
Dean: Right.
James: We've had a Cloudlandia relationship.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly it.
James: That's a good supplement to have the physical and the online relationship makes it strong. I mean, going back our first meeting in Detroit was a long time ago now, and I still use the advice you taught me then. Over the years, it's been always a privilege to be able to have these conversations and to … I open a little notes pad and take a few notes. I've got a good idea that I'm going to use, and I also really enjoyed a discussion we had around about books in the marketing of said books. I think we've resolved some of our diametrically opposed view points through the process of education and debate.
Dean: A real experience, that's right.
James: That's one thing that has changed since then. We joked about it the second last time. It's taking me a while to get my book out on the slow process, but we got there. I might do some small projects as a supplement and that will be interesting.
Dean: Which is great. I think I'm such a fan, because realizing in the light of all the data, we still, our brains fundamentally are slower to adapt than our minds, and that's an interesting distinction. Our brains and our minds. Our minds are in the cloud and were there, but our brains are still, they're wired cavemen brain. That's exactly what we have, so we've got this sense of that books for a very long time will always be viewed as an authority and a valuable thing, and so they'll be desirable.
James: Even if no one even reads them.
Dean: Which they don't. That's the big news.
James: It is. I can tell from the popular highlights in Kindles, they always run out after the first chapter or so.
Dean: Isn't that interesting? Yeah, everybody gets all excited, this or that and they, “Oh, yeah,” highlight that.
James: It's like the collector mentality. I think having a lot of Kindles on your app probably makes you feel like you're covered even if you don't read them.
Dean: Which the majority don't.
James: No, and to keep in theme with this, right now, next week, I've got this and good … Truck action. Listen to that. That's a big rig.
Dean: Wow.
James: That's impressive.
Dean: This is very impressive.
James: I've got to join …
Dean: These $3.8 million windows.
James: I've got the custom joinery guys installing a full floor to ceiling bookshelf that goes for about 16 feet along my wall.
Dean: I love that.
James: I'm going to put all my books up. It'll be a fabulous backdrop for my videos. The difference being I've actually read the books, and still the best, hands down the best investment ever, physical books back in the day. I think sitting down the bean bag with a good book is still a joyful pursuit even without the tech. I think you're right. You talked about the elements that a book needs to have and it was something along the lines of a title that conveys a perfect example.
Dean: It's three things. You have a title. First of all, the first thing is got to have a book. Second thing is you got to have a title that upon reading it, the person that you want to be in conversation with says, “That's the book for me.” Then you got to have a way for them to get it. Those are the three things that matter if you're using a book as a conversation starter.
James: The way for them to get it, you're advertising to people on Facebook.
Dean: I am.
James: They put in their details and you see a PDF.
Dean: Every day.
James: Free plus shipping. What are your thoughts?
Dean: I don't think it ever feels like free. There's no free element to it.
James: That's my thought. I think it's a downright fraud.
Dean: Exactly.
James: It's not free. Let's face it free plus shipping, it's not free.
Dean: In any amount, I mean, it's certainly filters. It will lower the number of people that will take your free book compared to if it was truly free.
James: The quality of people I get coming through my book funnel, shall we call it. I hate the word. The people who buy my book for whatever it cost. I don't know how much it is. Let's say it's $19 or so. They're very good people for me to help after that because they've already invested, and it's not as many of them. However, they're fantastic.
Dean: I have no evidence that the people who buy a book with free shipping are any better long term prospects than people who accept your gift in a free book with no payment.
James: It seems also that people who have the free plus shipping models, they're often the most aggressive in the messenger box and every other medium.
Dean: Because they want to recoup that right away. That's the whole thing. That's why immediately, what drives it is the free plus shipping, and you'd pay that. While your credit card active in that same session, “But wait, this is a one-time opportunity for this $97 thing that you can do,” and that's how they pay for the advertising. It's an expense based approach.
James: When I was interviewing Scott Desgrosseilliers from Wicked Reports a few episodes back, he said the average break even point of $1.5 billion of the traffic was 45 days. It's an optimistic funnel to get the money back straight away, or it might be too hard on the prospect. You like to get someone a result before you ask them for money, don't you?
Dean: I like that. I mean, I just feel like I know that the long-term is where all the money is. Then I know that if you have a perfect example, so I was in London, doing my Breakthrough Blueprint event and there was a gentleman there from Germany who has been on my list for seven years. Never bought anything, never knew who he was, and all of a sudden, the first thing he does is he pays $5,000 to come to Breakthrough Blueprint after seven years of being on my list. Now, that happens all the time.
James: I love that. It also supports my dislike for the traditional ascension models where he's going to buy a cheap product in a slightly more expensive.
Dean: Right. I'd rather give people cheap products that are valuable.
James: This podcast, I often have members join SuperFastBusiness saying they've listen to 100 hours of my podcast.
Dean: Of course.
James: Here they are. We've gone from nothing to thousand dollars a year in a heartbeat, and a hundred hours. I wasn't there for those hundred hours.
Dean: You were doing the hundred anyway. It felt effortless.
James: That's it. One, I've help as it turns out every time I upload an episode, at least a couple thousand people listen to it in the first few days and then overtime, the episodes can get up to 10 or 15,000 downloads of that and now we're also uploading to Soundcloud, and the whole episode gets put in Facebook. I'm not so precious about where they're getting it now, but they can get it. It's free. There's no shipping.
Dean: No shipping. It's like the podcast is the perfect vehicle because audio, I think is the clearest attention that we can get because you're getting the attention while somebody is physical body is otherwise occupied. That's where the purest thing where people are driving.
James: It's the quirkiest medium. It's not as attention-demanding as videos.
Dean: That's the thing. Video requires that you have to be eyes on it and you're locked in.
James: It's more work for both parties.
Dean: That's where I think that then you truly are, you're competing with Netflix, because if I'm going to be watching a video of something, it's majority is going to be kicked back watching something for entertainment.
James: One of my recent trainings was how to drive sales with eight minutes of video per week in social media.
Dean: Nice. My video is one minute each, so it takes me eight minutes a week to record five one-minute videos which I give to the team and they put across all platforms. If you are going to video, I know that almost everybody will watch a one-minute the whole way through. You can get across one point in a minute and appeal to people's very short attention span.
James: That's great. I like that kind of thing like short …
Dean: Micro content.
James: … video.
Dean: Like your movie reviews. I was just going to say that my reviews, and my travel logs are a bit like that. They're two minutes, a long one.
James: Fresh and helpful.
Dean: Yeah.
James: Ding. Here we are episode five done.
Dean: Episode five. It's fun.
James: Making our way through this.
Dean: Yeah. It's all very exciting.
James: Until next time.
Dean: Maybe one day, you'll come to Florida.
James: Oh, I will. I've been before, but I'll go again. I was going to go soon, actually. I will go perhaps next year.
Dean: Here we go. Exchange program.
There we have it, another great episode, and you can count on another one of those episode six of 25, this same time next year after I get back from Australia. It's September right now. It's back to school, and I've got a new email mastery case study group starting this week. We're actually starting on Thursday. Today is the 15th of September, and so we're starting on Thursday. Watch your email. I'll send out some invitation for our email case study group.
Here's how you could tell if this is for you. If you've got a group of email subscribers that you're sending regular emails to whether it's 500 people or a thousand people, you've got a really amazing opportunity, and we spend some time working on specific emails that you can send to engage with those people to offer high end programs to those people, new mastermind groups to those people. We talked about some specific things that you can in your emails that will engage in a conversation with them.
We'll also talk about what to do with the leads that you're getting right now if you're generating new leads, you're getting new opt-ins. What you do in the first 24 hours of communicating with those people can set up an amazing conversion opportunity for you, and we call it conversational conversion. We've got a really great focus on that, and I've had some really great success stories in helping people wordsmith the exact emails to send to new people who are opting in, so watch your email. I'll send you some information about that. If you like to get a jump start, send me an email to dean@deanjackson.com, and just put email mastery in the subject line, and I'll get you all the details, and maybe we can work together, and create a case study from your situation. That's it for this week. Tune in next time, and I'll talk to you again.