Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we're talking with Ted Carr, who just happens to be the newly minted mayor of the Raw Vegan community in Canada and we appointed him right on the show today, so you're going to get to hear a coronation as it were.
It's really very interesting because Ted has a lot of cool stuff going on, all centered around a raw fruit festival that he organizes as part of a Canada fruit-fest.
He gathers all the raw vegans who are really into living this life, for a week of education and Merriment and they had a really successful kickoff for it this year.
Now he’s really thinking about growing the event, and how to use marketing to help with that.
We really focused on the bigger picture, and bigger opportunities he has to organize this whole community throughout the year, and not just have it all revolve around the one thing, like an annual event.
I really enjoyed this. The hour went so quick and if you're in a situation where you are looking to do big things with an identifiable community, this is the podcast for you.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 129
Dean: Ted Carr.
Ted: Hey Dean. What's going on?
Dean: There he is. Hi, I'm good. How are you?
Ted: I'm very good, man. Sorry about earlier. I thought it was PSC not ESC.
Dean: No problem. Well, here we are. I just recorded another podcast in between, so we're good.
Ted: Good for you. I love your productivity, it's great.
Dean: Awesome. I'm super excited. I want to hear all about what you're up to and see where we can hatch a plan for you here.
Ted: Dude, this is too cool, being on a call with you. I've only heard your voice talking with other people.
Dean: It's the exact thing. It's funny, isn't it? It's fun to so many different types of businesses, that's what's fun. Like yesterday I recorded a podcast with a lactation consultant who was also a Doula, and helps people with their kids, and it was really fun because I'd never even experienced that world, but to see how the thinking process of applying the eight profit activators to any business all works out in the end. We all have to go through the same process no matter what business you're in.
And that's where it's always fun to see, specifically how things apply to all kinds of different businesses. I've just, from what I've read about what you're up to, it seems like you are in another completely different kind of business. I think you'd be the first that we've talked to who does what you do. So maybe tell the Ted Carr story here. for us.
Ted: Sure man. I do a lot of things. I've been an entrepreneur for the past 10 years and ever since I was four years old, I've been trying to sell stuff. But now I've gotten to the age of 28 and I'm organizing a festival. Last year was our first year. It's a fruit festival and for those who don't know what fruit festival is, it's basically like a big health and wellness conference that goes on for multiple days. People come over, they spend the weekend or the full week there, and they get to attend lectures and seminars and workshops, all about how to get super healthy and stay healthy and happy, how to get into relationships with others and how to improve their moods, and things like this, and their diet of course.
We've got tons of different classes and things that we offer at the festival, and it's just a great place for people to come and meet other like-minded people who are also on the path of self-development, self-improvement, who are also into being-
Dean: It seems like that goes hand in hand, doesn't it? It seems like people who are pursuing health are also pursuing all kinds of other personal development things. It all goes hand in hand.
Ted: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. The unique thing about this festival that's different from other festivals is, there's no drugs or alcohol at all, but there is a lot of loud music. But the thing that really separates us is that we offer unlimited buffet of raw foods. There's no cooked food at the festival whatsoever. There's no bread, there's no milk, no butter, there's no eggs or cheese or anything cooked, there is no rice. It's just purely fruits and vegetables.
Dean: I love that.
Ted: And some people come and they get to experience a bit of a detox, a bit of a cleanse for the period of the festival. And when they first get on the raw food path, they feel like this massive energy boost, and so that becomes the drug, that is the high of the festival. So really cool.
Dean: How many people are you expecting?
Ted: Well, last year we had no idea, it was our first year. I was hoping for at least 100. I said, "If we don't get 100 people, I'm kind of embarrassed to put the festival on. I want at least 100 people." We ended up getting 212 people paying to come, with 250 people in total attendance. So this year I'm thinking, well, last year, we get 250, it is our very first year. This year I'd be very happy with 400." If we could get an additional 150 people there, that would be amazing.
However, for the industry standard, there is a bit of a fruit festival industry, there's fruit festivals around the world. Last year was the, like I said, it was our first year and it was the biggest fruit fest in its first year ever. The only other fruit best to come close had 160, 180 people many years ago. And that is now like the biggest fruit fest ever. It's called the Woodstock Fruit Festival. And that now has like 600 people going every year in New York. Yeah, the count of fruit festival last year was 212 people, this year we're hoping for 400.
Dean: You've just gone ahead and claimed Canada, the Canada Fruit Festival.
Ted: Yes sir.
Dean: I love it. Think big. Is this going to be something that you move around or are you going to do it always in the same way?
Ted: Good question. Good question. So right now, it's located in British Columbia. Beautiful location, right in the Okanogan Lake, but there's a lot of people who are in Toronto, Ontario area saying, "Hey, come over here and do one here."
Dean: You're not going to get away for a long time with calling something, the Canadian fruit festival and then hoarding it in the Okanogan Valley, you're going to have to move it from sea to shining sea if it's going to take Canadian's fruit festival.
Ted: No doubt. I'm open to having multiple, or at least moving in around. One of the hardest parts, at least for last year. Well, last year, everything was hard because it was the first time doing it. But one of the riskiest parts was like a securing the venue in time to the actual event. Booking the venue at the right price and making sure it has all the amenities that are needed-
Dean: Is it outdoors? How do you-
Ted: It's outdoors. Yeah. Our fruit festival is different from any other fruit fest as well in that it's camping only, tent site only, whereas other fruit festivals, they usually have cabins, where you can book a stand in addition to having the option of camping. Ours is strictly camping only because there's no room onboard there. There's no shelter, there's just Strictly campsite other than our kitchen, which we make all the food in. People come and camp and we spent the whole day outside. Like big like wedding tents and things like that to shelter the shade.
Dean: So what are the economics of this? Do you sell tickets and you make money putting on the festival or is it a break even? How does it all work out?
Ted: Yeah, great question. Last year, and this year is pretty much the same, we just get all the money from ticket sales. And so as soon as we start signing those first few tickets, we start taking that money and putting it into advertising to sell more tickets, Facebook ads, Instagram ads and things like that. The more tickets we sell, the more stuff we can afford to buy and grow from there. This year we applied for a government grant, I'm not sure if we got accepted or we will get accepted. I don't know when we'll hear back from them about that, but I think that was only for like 15 grand or something. So pretty small. But the other money comes strictly from ticket sales.
Dean: Okay. And how much are tickets for the festival?
Ted: They go up every month? A little bit. Right now, they are 500 bucks for the four day event, that includes all unlimited food.
Dean: Last year, the you were able to bring in, what's that, $125,000?
Ted: Last year we brought in, I think we brought in 180. I think we brought 180 last year, but we was a bit of an issue, which I'll happily tell you about here. For other festivals, people who are planning on creating a festival. We ended up selling initially close to like 350 or 380 tickets in total, and so we had like a lot of capital to work with. 380 times $500, it's a good amount of money. And so we're like, "Heck yeah, let's go out this first year, make a big impression, let's spend it on good musicians and great decoration and a nice stage and all that stuff."
We went all out, so we spent a ton of money. And then we stupidly had a big bold line of text on a website saying deadline for refunds is August 1st, the festival was like August 9th. Sure enough, you know what deadlines do, they get to take action. But this time, it worked against us and so everybody, not everybody, but hundreds of people asked for the refund in that final week. And so we saw our money go down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, and we completely we were in hole. We lost a lot of money there, we lost like 30 grand last year because of all those refunds that came in, we overspent.
So big tip for other festival organizers, if you're going to have refunds, have it way in advance, like months there-
Dean: Or just have transferable tickets.
Ted: Yes, exactly. This year, tickets are transferrable, nonrefundable, which I found out that that's industry standard for music festivals in BC.
Dean: Good. So there's lesson learned. Yeah, that's great. Now, is this the foundation of your business? How does this all fit with what you do and what you're trying to do? What are we working on here today?
Ted: What we're to do is trying to figure out how we can make the festival really pop off. How we can get those 400 people to come this year and be happy enough to refer friends again for next year and bring more friends to town for next year, for 2020.
Dean: And make a little money this year, hopefully.
Ted: Yeah, of course. Or at least break even. It's statistically, I guess you could say statistically normal, if that's what the word is, almost to lose money the first three years anytime you're starting a festival. But I think that's only because people don't apply the eight profit activators. I want to apply the eight profit activators, and at least break even. I'm thinking make money because last year we were in the plus, had we not had all those refunds come in, we would have been in the plus. So I'm thinking, let's just do what we did last year, but way better and throw in a few more activators here and there, and make some money this year for sure. That'd be great so we can put it back into the festival for 2020.
Dean: Well, that's good. It just so happens I have a lot of experience selling events. For 15 years, we did a big real estate event somewhere in the country every month for 15 years, over 200 events that we had minimum 600 to 800 people every month. And so you got to have kind of a rhythm to be doing that. But part of the real value is that this is not just an event type of thing, this is a lifestyle to people that are coming to this. It's not just a onetime thing that it's an escape from their regular life, like a normal music festival kind of thing.
It's a symposium in a lot of ways, like all a conference around this vegan and raw lifestyle, is that right?
Ted: It's a belief system for sure. Everyone that comes, they share a common belief.
Dean: An identity?
Ted: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: That's where you maybe have this opportunity that if you look at like benchmarks or peer group things that you could look at for how this works, like immediately what comes to is something like burning man where people are burners, they plan their whole year around coming to burning man. And on the Playa, it's a magical place. You can do something like that, but I think when you look at also the, if you're going to have one location, you're in the second most populous part of Canada. But it's second by a pretty large margin compared to the eastern part of Canada.
When you look at Ontario and the maritimes and come back, and all of that access if you look at like within four hours of a festival location kind of thing, if you did it in Toronto, the available population is so much bigger. So you've got that opportunity there. What are you hoping to do in the big picture with all of this? What are you really trying to accomplish? What's your vision here?
Ted: The big picture would be, my long term goal for this festival, long term meaning within the next five years, I'd like to have 1,000 people at the festival every year, and just really focus on meaning it one time a year and make it a huge success for people, and extend it to be seven days, not just four days. A full week where people can come, it's almost like a week long summer camp where people can come and just have an amazing time, 1000 people all together under one spot. And yeah, like you're saying, I thought about expanding, so having another location somewhere else, but I wouldn't want to be running that, I'd maybe be mentoring someone else or maybe managing that in some way, but not overseeing it like I am with this one completely.
Dean: That could be the part when you think about this, if you're thinking about just the festival, that's one thing, but what if you thought about it as really a movement instead of just the festival, that goes on beyond just the one week there, that you're building a community.
Ted: There's a big movement right now. There's a big raw food movement, a big raw food community. And because of that, there's festivals around the world now. There's the UK fruit festival, there's the Woodstock fruit festival, Denmark fruit fest. There's festivals all around. And then the community is really online. People are all over Instagram and YouTube together and Facebook, and it's just a massive support community for everyone who's coming into this diet and lifestyle because they're all trying to get rid of their acne or trying to lose weight or they're trying to get rid of the depression and anxiety, and this just helps them with that drastically.
Yeah, there is a movement there and the festival is like the manifestation of that.
Dean: Are there other fruits fests in Canada?
Ted: No.
Dean: And is fruit fest like a brand? Is it like somebody started a fruit fest that you're kind of parlaying off of somebody else's name or thing around it or?
Ted: No, I think the original type of fruit fest was called a raw food fest, I think, in Denmark and has been going for like 11, 12 years. They call it Danish fresh food festival. And then seven, eight years ago, my friend Michael Arnstein started the Woodstock fruit festival, and that one had like 180 people the first year, it was pretty big. And then my friend Ronnie, who teamed up with me for Canada Fruit Fest this year, he called his UK fruit fest, so we just called this one Canada Fruit Fest. There's innovation behind it that joins them altogether. That would be really cool though.
Dean: Well, you've got loosely, you know the two guys from the United States and the UK, so you've got kind of a global council for the fruit fest movement.
Ted: Emails have been exchanged between us three talking about how cool it would be if we could sell a seasons ticket, seasons pass, so people could go to all three. But then the ladies who work the customer service department and the ticket sales. We need to figure out the logistics between how do we sell one ticket, which gets people off three festivals, and make it work behind the scenes with the accounting and all that.
Dean: I got it. And it's a good idea. It's a nice thing. How big is that market in Canada, would you say? How many people are like vegan or raw or fresh.
Ted: Vegan and raw vegan are, they're similar in that they're both eating vegan food, but it's a completely different community. There's thousands and thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of vegans in Canada. I'd say hundreds of thousands of vegans in Canada, maybe even millions. In America, there's definitely millions. But the thing is about this festival, Dean, it's not just attracting local people. At the festival, we said, "Okay, let's see a show of hands. Who here is from British Columbia?" And there was like maybe 10 to 20 people there, maybe 30 tops who were from DC, everyone else is from out of province or out of the country.
Like people flew here or drove here from New York. They flew from Mexico and Argentina. It's a global thing because it's just so rare that you're going to find another raw vegan in country, people are just happy to fly over. There are so many vegans in Canada, but we mostly attract the people who want to be raw vegan or a healthy vegan, and there's plenty of people who are Vegan for ethical reasons and not for the health, then there's plenty of people who are vegan for the health and not the ethics.
Dean: If you were to estimate, is there anybody who's organizing the raw vegans of Canada?
Ted: Funny enough, there's a raw vegan in Canada, the thing is called Raw in Canada Facebook group, and we bought it out last year. We emailed the person and just message them and made them an offer and then we took over their Facebook group, but it turns out that Facebook group was kind of stale and many of the people in there just not active. So that's like the only thing we could think of because we tried to team up with something like Raw in Canada group, and that was the only one and we just bought them out.
Dean: So your positioned and posed right now to be the organization for Raw Vegans in Canada?
Ted: 100%.
Dean: There's nobody else who has that position?
Ted: No.
Dean: So I'm going to go ahead and appoint you right now to the position of the Canadian director of the raw vegan community in Canada. So if anybody asks you, you can refer to this podcast because you've just been declared that. That is to be a position from which you can really guide everything. That starts with it. You've got a crystal clear target audience of people who are already raw vegans against. But do you have a sense of this as your calling to spread raw veganism?
Ted: The mission of the Canada Fruit Fest is to accelerate the world's adoption of a healthful fruit based diet.
Dean: But what about all the sugar in fruit?
Ted: That's a whole other podcast.
Dean: There we go.
Ted: We don't necessarily expect or even desire everyone to all of a sudden started eating raw vegan. We just want more people to start incorporating a lot more fruits and vegetables into their diet. We say fruit based because, good luck trying to get your calories from Broccoli and carrots and spinach. If you're going to eat your calories, it's going to come from oranges and watermelons and bananas and things like that. So our mission is to accelerate the adoption of a healthful fruit based diet.
The purpose of the festival is really just to show people in person that's really possible. Like there's hundreds so people that come and they're all really, really healthy. We had a few people come to the festival who weren't into the diet, they just came because their spouse brought them or their parents brought them or they're passerby-ers, and they came and they were just mind blown. They were just like, "Wow, I've never seen a community like this before. How come everyone is fit and healthy and glowing? And there's no one on drugs, no one's drinking alcohol. I was having a great time and super positive and happy."
It's just really cool to see it in person, not just see YouTube or Instagram and things like that.
Dean: Perfect. Let me ask you then, how big is your platform right now? You're the mayor of Fruitville in Canada? How big is the platform that you have right now? How many people do you have to communicate to in your constituency there?
Ted: I guess my reference point there would be, I would just look at our Instagram following and, and at those are fresh followers. They've all followed us within the past maybe 10 months or so. So they're all really fresh, clearly interested in the festival and that's close to 7,000 people.
Dean: Do you have an email list?
Ted: Yeah, we have an email list as well. And that had over 10,000 people on it. I started deleting people who are completely unresponsive, not opening any emails because we are paying per email, basically. Now I think it's down to like maybe eight or 9,000 emails we have on that list. The way we got that list, I'll tell you exactly how we built it, we basically just offered a free ticket giveaway contest last year and we collected 5,000 emails from that. And then we did another contest, we said free flight to the festival contest. Made it a contest, a giveaway, "Just enter your email and we'll pick a winner." And so we collected another 5,000 there.
So these are all people who have signed up because they want something for free, but it's something for free that's related to the festival. It's not a free blender or something, it's a free ticket to the festival.
Dean: What other communication do you have with them then?
Ted: YouTube.
Dean: So you got YouTube. Do you have subscribers or?
Ted: Yeah, I have a YouTube channel that gets about 2,000 views per video. So 2,000 people are watching each video. And with the emails, it seems like maybe 2,000 people are opening each email.
Dean: You're right on track there. You've got a really good foundation there.
Ted: It' a healthy number for sure.
Dean: Yeah. How often do they hear from you? How often do you email?
Ted: It's sporadic. I wish it wasn't sporadic but it's like, it's either like twice a week for a couple of weeks or once a month for a couple of months. Closer to the festival, I don't want to 'piss them off' so early now with all these promo emails, but closer to the festival, we definitely send out a ton, like last summer in three months, we may be sent at like 30 emails or something. But I need to be way more structured with that, I think.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. You're in the right place. This is what I'm going to advocate for you here. Are all the socials matched up, identity wise? Are they all the same thing? Canada Fruit Festival or how do people find you on Instagram?
Ted: Yeah. Our username on Instagram is the same as our website, it's Canada Fruit Fest.
Dean: Canada Fruit Fest.
Ted: And our website is canadafruitfest.ca. We also own canadafruitfest.com.
Dean: So that's what people know you as. You probably need an organization around it that will open up some opportunities for you because the Canada Fruit Fest needs to be a child of a parent organization who's running the, this is the annual event of the Canada fruit. Or, what was the other site that you bought? Raw in Canada?
Ted: Raw in Canada.
Dean: How many users were in that group?
Ted: At the top of my head, I'm guessing a couple of thousand.
Dean: So you think that pretty soon that it doesn't make sense to every week be hearing from Canada Fruit Fest, but it does to have from Raw in Canada. This is the annual event of the Raw in Canada. And that way, Raw in Canada, that could be your journal or it could be your podcast. You need a vehicle, you need what I would call a profit activator three vehicle, which is the tool that you'll use to educate and motivate people, because you need to keep this going all year.
Ted: Right now, I have my own YouTube channel and my own Instagram channel, and so I'm putting out content with my face on it all the time educating and motivating people to get into fitness, get into some meditation, eat fruit. I'm talking with a whole bunch of different things. And every now and then, it also mention, "Hey, I'll see you at the Canada Fruit Fest." At the end of every video, I'm like, "All right guys, I'll see you at the Canada Fruit Fest." I see what you mean, like create like almost like a separate company if you will, or parent, whatever.
Dean: And are you interested in being the face of the brand? Do you want to be the leader of the raw vegans in Canada?
Ted: Yeah, I already am.
Dean: Okay, perfect. So there you go. Ted Carr is the top apex of this. It's very similar in my organization, then you are a personal brand, Ted Carr, and I am a personal brand, Dean Jackson. Now organizationally, my whole team, our whole organization is all aligned under our organizational purpose of, we help entrepreneurs make more money, everything that we do falls under that. Now, that means that the podcasts that I do are all under that umbrella. So it's Dean Jackson, but I've got different podcast brands. I do I Love Marketing, I've got More Cheese, Less Whiskers, I've got The Joy of Procrastination with Dan Sullivan.
I've got Listing Agent Lifestyle for our real estate entrepreneurs. So we've got specific things underneath that. Then I do events. My flagship event is my Breakthrough Blueprint event where I do nine a year all over the world. I do mostly in Florida, and then I do Toronto and London and Amsterdam and Sydney, so people can come to a live event somewhere in the world. And then I have programs that we do, communities. I have a Breakthrough Blueprint online program where people can go online and do the program that introduces the entire eight profit activator program, goes through all of them, gives them a blueprint for how to apply it to their business.
I've got our email mastery program, which is for people who are doing email marketing, who have a list or building a list, and that's a community that I do. There's an online program, and then I do live calls with people to help craft all of their emails. And then we have services and tools that we offer to people. I own a company called the 90 Minute Book, and we help people write books and we spun that off to a completely separate company, all under that Dean Jackson, We Help Entrepreneurs Make More Money umbrella.
Along with them, we have Gogoclients.com, which is all of the tools that online marketers need, like landing pages, auto responders, CRM, toll free voicemail, texting, all of that stuff. So all under that umbrella, everything that I'm doing is all leading towards that. And from that, I end up then being able to work with people in my private coaching group where I work with them one on one for an extended period of time, applying marketing to their businesses. So everything all feeds together.
Now, you've got this event, that's the foundation of it, but there's so much opportunity to serve all of those people under that umbrella, that it's important to really get the architecture of it right, so that you've got your event, which is the flagship event, but you, at the top of this, you've got so much more to say and these people who are coming to the annual event, only a fraction of them are going to be able to come. you've got the reach to 10,000 people like you said, eight or 9,000 by email, and you've had a couple of hundred of them come to the live event, but they all have needs. They all want education, they all want the same thing, and maybe they put it on their radar that, "I'm going to come to Canada Fruit Fest one day."
That, I think, will really go a long way for you, is having a weekly, at least a weekly flagship that goes up. Do you have a podcast or?
Ted: I just started a podcast actually a couple of weeks ago, it's called The Friends in Positivity Podcast.
Dean: Okay. And that could be the podcast of Raw in Canada. I think you need to think about how you're kind of mapping out the full vision of this. It's almost like Martha Stewart, was my inspiration for the architecture of how we set things up. When you say, Martha Stewart, she's a baller, she's an empire builder. There's somebody but her, how could you have a bigger category than living, Martha Stewart Living, and all of the things that make up living are about living well, design and entertainment and cooking, and all the things that are kind of the things that make up living.
And so when I look at it, my category is helping entrepreneurs make more money. So that's a very narrow thing in that the outcome of any interaction with me is that we're focused on, how is this going to make you more money. Where it's not about educating you about trends that are happening or technical information on how to use the newest tools or do the newest things. We're not an education company, it's a crystal clear purpose for everything that we do. Now, if you think about what you stand for here and your mission of helping further the raw lifestyle in Canada, all over the world, but stationed in Canada, start with where you are kind of thing.
Then that gives you a really great opportunity to now think about, well, how would we do that? What if I was in charge of all of the outlets? That you've got potentially the opportunity to have a TV station and a radio station and a newspaper and magazines. How do you, as the mayor of that world, communicate with your constituents? How do you create that? That's the way to think about it. You're creating this whole world there, your little corner of cloudladia that everybody can gather. That is not going to go away, raw veganism. It's not going away, it's not a trend, it's not something that is going to be out of fashion in 10 years or 20 years.
It's a long term thing, it's got legs. I would start by really thinking about, what are all of the things and all of the ways that you could communicate and the topics that you could communicate with people there so that everything around it when you've got your podcast and you've got your TV station, your YouTube channel, and you've got your live event, all of that working together, you've got a really great platform to work with.
Ted: I like that. I like that a lot. It's cool. Looking at it like radio station is podcast, TV is YouTube, magazine is the email you send out.
Dean: Yes. That's exactly it.
Ted: Newspaper, whatever. And then you have books, which are eBooks, and then you have the live conference, the festivals. All these different ways, it's really cool.
Dean: Online courses and everything. And when you start thinking ahead like what's happening with VR, Virtual Reality, all this stuff. There's a real estate company called EXP that's completely online broker. They're building this whole infrastructure in the cloud that they have a whole training center and world where everybody goes to and you get an Avatar, you walk around in this area and you go to the auditorium and sit in a seat for a training. Do you remember ever seeing Second Life? Do you remember that?
Ted: Second life? No.
Dean: Yes, Second life. It's a really popular, it was early before its time place where people go and you could build houses and go to the nightclub and go to all these things, like a social type of thing. But you could imagine, you could have both, your real headquarters of the annual event, but you could also have in the cloud Fruit Fest 24/7, where people can go to this, it's almost like a video or game universe where you can go in and interact with everybody, if you start thinking where this could go in 10 years kind of thing.
Ted: Oh yeah. It's super cool. One thing that's really cool though, this being our second year going into 2019, we have a ton of video footage of 2018. And so whereas in 2018, all we had was an idea and a promise, in 2019 we have footage and evidence to show for it. So when people see the videos, like I just put up a couple of videos in the past couple of days and boom, it made a couple of sales just like that. Just people see videos like, "Holy crap, it's real. And they want to go out and buy in."
Dean: That's awesome.
Ted: That would be another massive tip for anyone who wants to sell a festival. They make it as real as possible and nothing more real than video footage.
Dean: I think it feels like a Raw Canada, if that was available, that brand or name, that seems real.
Ted: Yeah. I'm not sure that will be available, but Raw in Canada, something along the lines, definitely. The one podcast I have can strictly be for my friends who I know personally. Then Canada podcast could be a podcast where I interview all the potential speakers who want to come to the festival.
Dean: That's exactly right.
Ted: And then they can teach a bunch on the podcast, may not teach but educate, share, motivate, and then say, "Hey, if you want to meet in person, see you at the Canada Fruit Fest.
Dean: Yes. That's where now you get to bring people's awareness about it without just feeling like all you're doing is promoting. When you're emailing people know.
Ted: Right. One thing we did last year that worked pretty well was we sent out those free giveaways of the ticket and the flight and collected a ton of emails and then we followed up with promotional stuff after that. But what I realized is we only followed up with promotional stuff, we didn't follow with any value.
Dean: No. That's part of the thing.
Ted: This year, I was just listening to your podcast the other day, I forget who you were talking with, I think it's about that doctor, but anxiety and depression and stuff, and you were talking about how if you can help pinpoint people's issues and you could say like, "Of course you're feeling this way." You were talking about creating like an index or something for the way you're feeling. And so I was thinking, I could spin off an idea and that would be like, this year we can do the free ticket giveaway, but instead of just collecting the name and email, we can collect their name, email, and we can have a drop down menu of like, we ask them a question like, "Hey, what are you struggling with or would want help with?
Anytime someone clicks, "I want to lose weight," They get put into a different category. We only follow up with those people, we only send them value about helping them lose weight and how they can experience great weight loss with their diet and how they can meet other people at the Fruit Festival
Dean: And that's one of the thing is, If you start thinking about the market that you want to serve, the community that you want to build is revolving around raw veganism and that there are people who are already on board with that and these are your people. And then there are also people who are curious about that or are open to hearing about that or maybe they have a specific issue that by highlighting, because there's never ending stories of people who had particular ailments or skin conditions or any number of things that just switching to raw foods immediately cleared those up.
And it's dramatic, the difference that people have both in weight loss or feelings or pain or whatever it is. So the highlight, all of those kinds of things, real people. The way that you want to think about the communication strategy here, because I don't have any doubt in this field, like we're specifically talking about your festival because that's going to take care of itself if you do these other things. This is the bigger picture of this. And all throughout, you may be able to have... Are you familiar with the TED Conference? TED.com. You may be able to play off that, have sort of FRUITFESTx type of events that happen as a one day thing all over Canada.
The whole community could maybe gather or organize meetups where you could take a tour across Canada through the early summer, all then bringing focus to, "Hop on the bus because we're going to end up in Okanagan."
Ted: That's too funny, Dean. Yeah, it starts in freaking Nova Scotia.
Dean: Well, they can't be mad at Newfoundland, you got to get on that boat.
Ted: Yeah. You're funny.
Dean: But you get the idea, right? That that's kind of the thing. If you're really going to create a movement, go all out, really think big about this, what this could be. And in order for it to be big, once you get the architecture of it right, that you've got the magazine, you've got the newspaper, you've got the radio station, you've got the TV station, and you've got all of your followers, you've got your annual event. And then you start to think and make your editorial guidelines of, what are the things that we stand for? What categories of things do we help people with? It could be recipes or things like how to do all the different variety of things you can do with raw foods, educating about the actual cooking of this.
Then there could be grassroots education about what is veganism, like how to do this vegan or raw vegan challenge. You could do things where somebody could try for seven days kind of thing. And that becomes your grassroots recruitment model, all through building that community. There's a great book that I'll recommend for you called The Purpose Driven Church, and it's by Rick Warren who built one of the first and maybe the biggest megachurch in Canada. He's the guy that wrote that book, The Purpose Driven Life. But The Purpose Driven Church is the book, the playbook basically about how he started out in Orange County and built this, the biggest megachurch. He sort of founded the megachurch idea.
Ted: All right, cool. Love that. That sounds dope.
Dean: Yeah. And that's kind of the thing where you really, I think when you've got that architecture right, I think you've got, there's no end to this. Then you also, to go into this now you, also need to start to think about what are the possible things that you could provide to these people for money? What are the economic opportunities here, aside from just the festival? And that could be courses, it could be some sort of foods themselves, or it could be cooking or tools or what are the things that, if you are a raw vegan, that you're going to buy, what are you spending money on?
Ted: I've luckily already set up a few multiple sources of income. I'm not just relying on the festival, thank God. I also have things like affiliate products, like you're saying, if you're a vegan, what are you going to eat?
Dean: Yes. Your catalog.
Ted: Yes. I have a few products that I make money from. And then I also have a 30 day raw food challenge. It's a video course. People can sign up for that. But I love your idea of the seven day freebie, what I can get people into with that. And I also host retreats throughout the year, so like you have that private mastermind group in Florida, I also offer retreats throughout the year if you're in Canada, and that works really well. It is a massive opportunity here, massive opportunity, it just requires doing it, actually doing it.
I don't know what your team structure is like, how many employees you have or whatever, but for the most part, me right now it's just me. And then I just recently hired someone to take care of all the emails, all the customers support, and all that, and a little bit of finance. But other than that, it's just me. It'd be great to have some other players, but-
Dean: Well, you start with what you can and you grow revenue, and then you start filling in where the roles will be. Certainly, if you're going to do up a podcast or several podcasts, if right now you start a podcast, you're the one that would have to do it all, because you're the only one. When I first did my first podcast, I would do all of the things, I started my first podcast in 2005, when podcasts first started, I just jumped in and had a podcast, but I would do, record the podcast and then do the editing and get it all ready, by then I already had an assistant who would do up the things, but now we've got it all the way to the point where all I do is talk.
Like in this podcast, if you show up on my schedule the day of, and I've had no interaction with you prior to this, but I'll show up at the appointed time and I'm there and you're there and we talk, and then as soon as I hang up the phone, I'm done because everything, we've set it all up from the conference service that we chose. And the way we set all that up is, as soon as we hang up the phone, that will trigger all these wheels to go into motion, to send this audio to my team who will then process the audio and take out the section where you dropped off and had to come back in, and they'll add my intro and my outro and then send it up to iTunes and it all gets transcribed.
And that goes to a writer who then from there crafts the emails that I send, I send three emails a week that all come from things that I've said on the podcasts. And there's the thing is that, that's where you have to really get smart about leveraging what you're doing. So you've got a video, you've got your YouTube channel, you've got an audience, you've got 2,000 people that listen every time you put out a video, how often do you put those out?
Ted: I alternate, but either do it once a day for a few weeks or like once a week for a few weeks. It's not consistent, but it's at least once a week.
Dean: Okay, perfect. And that's the kind of thing. So if you formalize that into a show, so it's a weekly show, and that consistency, when you stick with what you can do, consistently get on a production schedule, and weekly works. If you look at, I use 60 minutes as an example for 50 years this year, 60 minutes, 7:00 PM, Sunday night, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. It's part of the culture. That's the thing, that if you're doing that every week or whatever it is, that's really going to be a big thing.
But then if you get those transcribed, and now you could also take that audio and that could be part of your podcast, or you take that audio and you get that transcribed, maybe you take the collection of the things that you said, all the best of the things that you said in December, and that becomes a monthly journal.
Ted: I love that. Very cool.
Dean: This is the way, one way about leveraging.
Ted: One of my favorite podcasts that you were on, it's called The Milk Line, where you talked about the milk line. That was so inspiring, that podcast. I think it was on, I Love Marketing. I'm not sure but it was so powerful. I was like jaw dropped. I was like, "Are you serious? Like all you have to do is just this one thing and everything else can be taken care of." It made so much sense. It made so much sense.
Dean: And that's why when you get a context right, like if you're saying that this is a weekly show and it's every Sunday night at 7:00 PM, this goes out. So then you've got the whole everything, the machine is in place to just look at meeting that production schedule. So every Sunday night an email goes out, if every Wednesday night, your weekly flagship email goes out, if every month on the first of the month you release the new Raw in Canada Journal.
Ted: I like that.
Dean: And then you've still got the opportunities to do your Vlog and your periodic things all within that. But it's all girded by the rhythm of this consistency, this framework that's going to last you for 20 years, every week.
Ted: Do you also send out any physical products like Frank Kern does it for Inner Circle?
Dean: No, we don't have anything physical.
Ted: Nothing physical. Is there a reason behind that or you just haven't gotten around to it yet or?
Dean: It's just for all of the stuff that I've been doing has been online, we do prepare for like my email mastery course, I have a monthly field report that is like a 28 page journal that we can saddle stitch and print available for delivery. But that's the way you want to think about it, that you create, for you, when you're starting out without a big production budget, you can establish the first year, and you're at the perfect time of year too. Imagine if every month there's a Raw in Canada Journal that's a PDF right now that you could put out 12 issues over the course of the next 12 months.
And whether it's eight pages or 12 pages or 16 or 24, whatever it is, that you just look that you've got these contextual buckets that you're filling out. Then it's really just, that's documenting all the things. It's the containers to catch all the things that you're saying
Ted: And do you think you just email those out each month instead of every month, say like a free journal?
Dean: Yes.
Ted: Wow. Very cool. It's very cool.
Dean: Yeah. That way then you've got this digest of all of this other content that you're doing. And your profile, you've got great, because the content, when we talk about your radio station and your news, your TV channel, and your magazine and your newspaper, you've got all of that stuff, you're just documenting all of the things that you have going on.
Ted: Yes, exactly. And not necessarily creating anything else, we're just documenting it and repackaging it and then delivering it to people in an easy to digest way.
Dean: Yes. And then they all announce other things. So if on the second week of every month is the new seven day challenge or whatever, that everything you're steering people towards that because you've got to have a way to bring new people into this.
Ted: Yeah. This is all good stuff, man. I'm going to listen to this podcast again and take notes. What was that book again? You said it was the-
Dean: The Purpose Driven Church.
Ted: The Purpose Driven Church. Cool.
Dean: Yeah. I recommend that book to anybody that's building a community because just the lessons that are in there make so much sense.
Ted: Yeah. This is great. I expected this call to go in detail on like ways of promoting the festival in different ways, ways to-
Dean: Festival's going to promote itself, the more the awareness.
Ted: I get that, look at the bigger picture. It's like, "Oh yeah. The festival is really just part of the funnel."
Dean: Yes.
Ted: It's almost like an upsell option.
Dean: Yeah. That's exactly it, this is one piece of it.
Ted: That's really cool. I like that. Thank you so much, Dean, I-
Dean: Well, I can say that I know the mayor, head of the Canadian raw vegans, the leader. You're going to have a voice, Ted because now next thing you know you'll be up there with Justin Trudeau advocating for the raw vegan.
Ted: Are you a Canadian by any chance? Are you have a space in Canada? Do you live part-time, or?
Dean: I am. I'm a dual citizen. My mom was born in Canada, I was born in Canada. My father is from Florida, but I was born in Stephenville, Newfoundland. I was born on a US air force base in Canada. I lived there for two weeks, but I'm still 100, I'm still validated Newfie.
Ted: You're 100% legal.
Dean: Yeah. I'm 100%. I don't know what the right word is, certified Newfie. I was born on the Rock right there.
Ted: I don't know where you're going to be in August. You might be in Australia or something, right?
Dean: Yup. That's exactly right.
Ted: I've been doing my homework. If we end up doing those FRUITFESTx talks across the country and you're in one of the provinces, then it'd be cool to meet up if you're up there.
Dean: Yeah. Absolutely. Stay in touch because I think you've got something really big. There's nobody else, that's like virgin snow, you're the guy that we've already appointed to, to the position, you just need to take it and run with it.
Ted: Awesome, man. I got to update my bio.
Dean: Yeah, it's perfect.
Ted: Awesome. Well, Dean, have a great day, man. I appreciate your time. This has been an absolute dream come true. Have you seen Requiem for a Dream?
Dean: I don't think I have. No.
Ted: There's like main four main characters, but one of the main characters is this older lady named Sara Goldfarb or something, and she's like staring at the TV all day, taking those medications and she's like tripping out, hallucinating that she's going to be on TV one day and she keeps saying like, "I'm going to be on TV. I'm going to be on TV." And like that, that's the thing that is keeping her alive basically, believing she's going to be on TV one day. And so with this podcast, when I found out I was going to be on, ever since, I found it like a month or two ago, I was like, "I'm going to be on Dean's podcast."
Dean: That's so great, I love it.
Ted: "I'm going to be on More Cheese, Less Whiskers."
Dean: There you go.
Ted: And then last night, with the news to come in, I had a countdown timer on my phone, it was like one day left. Then went to bed last night and woke up this morning, it was just a dream. I just had a dream with you. And the dream, the one like you were this famous TV actor that I never knew.
Dean: Wow. That's so funny.
Ted: When I woke up, like we had just talked, but I missed the initial time and I was like, "No way. I've been waiting months for this. No way."
Dean: That's so funny. I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad we were able to reconnect here a little bit later. Awesome.
Ted: Cool. Well, thanks so much and have a good one, man. I appreciate it. Have a good one.
Dean: Thanks, Ted. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
Ted: Bye.
Dean: And there we have it. That was a really great episode. I really enjoyed that. That's going to be useful for a lot of people here. We talked a lot about the architecture of a movement and how you use all of the tools that we have available. When you think about the lessons that we got from this episode that there's nobody stopping you from appointing yourself to the position of the mayor of your particular corner of the universe that serves that audience. And once you do that, when you are the mayor, when you're the one in charge of that community, what comes with it is you get a free TV station and you get a free radio station and you get a press, and you could do a magazine and a newspaper.
And all of those things to communicate with all of your constituents, all the people that you serve and gather them and educate them, and be in constant communication with them to build and nurture a lifetime relationship with them. All of the eight profit activators apply to building a long term community. I'm super excited to see the birth of it and to see and watch it all unfold over the next several years here and the next 20 years, certainly, as it's not going to go away. If you're on the cusp of something big, let's talk about it, come on over to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com. You can click on the be a guest link and we can talk about your movement.
And if you want to see how the eight profit activators are applying to your business and how they're affecting you right now, you can go to ProfitActivatorScore.com, and do our online profit activator scorecard. You'll get a sense of how the eight profit activators are either growing or slowing your business right now. So that's it for this week. Have a great week, and I will talk to you next time.