Last year, for obvious reasons, I didn't get to visit Australia for my annual Breakthrough Blueprint, and a two weeks' stay in Manly.
So, this week I’m catching up with my good friend James Schramko to compare our work routines, what our daily schedule looks like, how we’re dealing with the changes of the last year , and what our plans look like for the future.
It’s always great to see what’s on the other side of the planet!
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 217
Dean: Mr. Schramko.
James: Hello. How are you?
Dean: I'm good. How are you?
James: I'm great.
Dean: I was just thinking as I was waiting for you to arrive that this may be the longest period of no face-to face in our friendship here since I came to-
James: My site?
Dean: Yes, since started coming to Australia. It's been an odd year.
James: Yeah, it's been over a year. So, how's life?
Dean: I'll tell you what. There's a lot of the same. A little delightful. What I've observed in your world is getting to some less moving parts and a life you really love to live just on the days, right?
James: It's so true. It's like a positive Groundhog Day.
Dean: That's the word I've been using. Groundhog Day. That's exactly right.
James: We often arrive at the same idea independently, which I can think of three such occasions. One was just then. The other one was when I mentioned to you at my place in Manly once. I'm more of a self-milking cow. In terms of when I had a pretty small team, I didn't have someone doing the core role that I do, so I just did it myself, and the one before that at a conference many, many years ago, I did a presentation on before, during, and after, and I called it the BDA method, and then years later, you popularized before, during, and after. I discovered it that you'd been using it as well. So, I just deleted my domain and didn't attempt to run with any development of that concept because you had a, as per usual, a better version of it.
Same as as your who, not how, is a better version of how I was thinking about one layer back in my business.
Dean: One layer back.
James: So, like one layer back from... I want to be a layer back from the email system. I want to be a layer back from the-
Dean: Oh, yeah. That's a great way of thinking about it.
James: ... Website. So, when I'm operating my business in Slack, I'm just one layer back from all the tools because people say, "What tool do you guys use to make videos?" I don't know. I'm one layer back from it.
Dean: Right. I like that. I'm two layers back I guess then because-
James: I'd say you are. These two things go together. Yeah, two layers back. The people who don't have a mobile phone or an office or do anything in their business. Actually, they've reached the highest level, which is investor. They've gone from the person doing the work, the employee to business owner, which is often just a fancy way of saying, "I'm still the employee, but now I have more control of what I'm working on." Then they go to, I guess, an owner/founder. They're a little bit in it, and then they might go to the investor level. They own this thing, but they do virtually nothing in it.
Dean: I remember I got that. Of course, that's Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrants that he talks about.
James: I've never been through it, but it makes sense.
Dean: Oh, okay. Yeah, it is, and he does it as a quadrant though. So, on the left side is the employee and then self-employed, but then when you cross that line, now you're a business owner where you own the business, but you're still involved in it, and then the other quadrant is investor where you're just financially involved but not involved in any of the activities of it. - business owner.
James: So, actually, it was like -. I almost certainly learned that from him, from Rich Dad Poor Dad. I'm pretty sure I read that in about, I'm going to say, mid '90s. So, it's such a long time ago, and it triggered me buying my first property, that book.
Dean: Is that right?
James: Yeah.
Dean: Wow.
James: No, I rented it for quite a while and purchased assets that I leased out. It was quite counter-intuitive back then. Everyone in Australia, of course, wants to own a home, and now I very much like living in my own home. I will never rent again. I don't care if it's not the most tax effective way or I'm not going to get as rich -. The fact that no one's going to tell me that I have to move out because they want to sell it or they're going to send someone around to inspect the place, that is peace of mind. That is worth a lot more than they-
Dean: Exactly, yeah. That's the thing.
James: I've taken it to the next level. I want multiple places that I can reside in.
Dean: You got two right now?
James: Few more than that, but not that I'm going to mention it on the podcast.
Dean: No. I know what you mean. Yeah, no I meant-
James: That's the level of monarchy in a way. That's what kings do. You've got your holiday house. I do have another place nearby, which part of my family is residing in as well.
Dean: Right. That's what I was talking about, yeah.
James: Of course, I live in the Philippines normally for at least three months a year and set up over there, and I like that and just expanding that little portfolio I think the peace of mind that comes from that comes back through into the way you operate, the projects you work on, the choices you make, and they seem to have a positive effect. I just remember those rental years as being such a compromise that I've never slept as well at night as I am now, which is saying something, and you know how you're saying at the beginning of this episode, which for me, will be 810. It is the repeating things every day. The thing I love repeating the most is my daily surf.
Dean: Oh, wow. Yeah.
James: I was so into it then. I'm making GoPro clips now. I've dialed all my equipment. I'm 80-20, the 80-20, and I've got my equipment down to the top four that I could have and get rid of the rest, and-
Dean: Wow.
James: ... in the last seven years, I think I've cycled through over 100 boards, like I've been on a voracious learning curve, and now I'm getting the technique dialed, but here's the amazing thing. My lower back pain has disappeared. My neck mobility is the best it's ever been.
Dean: What do you contribute that to?
James: Surfing every single day.
Dean: By surfing? Okay, yeah.
James: I'm paddling around four or five kilometers now every day-
Dean: Oh, wow.
James: ... because normally in a year when I'm traveling a lot, it breaks the pattern. I'll miss a day when I'm flying or I miss a day, or I'll miss a couple of weeks if I'm land locked in Manila, or I'm at Kevin's conference for a week. I'm not going to get in the water, and then I have to start again, but I've seen what happens now when I can start something and continue. I've surfed more times this year than there have been days.
Dean: That's great. I love that. Yeah, that's perfect.
James: When you hit that level of [crosstalk 00:08:44]. Basically, I'm entering a zone that I've never been in before for my competency and ability. I've been out there in 8, 9, 10-foot waves.
Dean: Wow.
James: For the first time in my life, I've been able to take off on steeper more hollow waves and grab the rail and shoot, get longer waves, faster waves. I'm able to ride my equipment better. It was never possible-
Dean: Because you're getting towards your 10,000 hours, yeah.
James: And I feel like there's a lot further I can go with it as well.
Dean: That's the sport you can do for a lifetime really, isn't it? Where you see all these guys in-
James: You'll never - even though you have to say that. It's such a challenging thing, but I guess what I'm saying is what other people would call a negative, there's such amazing pockets of joy available if you look for them. Well, what about you? What's your biggest-
Dean: I was just going to say so much... It's so good to talk to you by the way.
James: You too -.
Dean: Yeah, because I'm used to having luxurious, like long... We have an interesting relationship in that we don't often talk regularly in between when we're together. It's not like we're talking every week kind of thing. We see each other on Facebook and we message every once in a while, but in the midst of that, but then when I come to Australia for two weeks, we've got full immersion for two weeks.
James: Yeah, -.
Dean: Yeah, and a deep immersion where we have amazing conversations. We have amazing times together, and you're a good friend, and I love being around you because I think the last time I saw you was November of 2019. That was the last time I was there because I didn't get to go at all last year. So, so much to catch up on.
James: That is a huge gap. Our audience have been asking for this too. They've said, "Love another update," that one of their favorite series on my podcast. We've been at it for a while too when you look back in the entry books.
Dean: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, we did. We started it impromptu on the drive. You were driving me to the airport and we decided to record on the drive. So, we had about an hour. Let me make a mental checklist of some of the things that we want to talk about because let's talk about our schedules, what we've landed on in this because it gave us the opportunity, I think, to create our ideal Groundhog Day, right? I've seen that that's been something for me I feel really good about where I've landed schedule-wise, and that's one of the great joys of being an entrepreneur and being in complete control of your schedule to get to the point where you can shift everything to match what you really want.
So, where I've landed is I have different things that I like to do during the days, and I've shifted my schedule to clear every morning. I don't have anything on my calendar before 1:00 PM in the afternoon. So, that's just a given. It's that, and then on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from one o'clock till six o'clock are wide open for Lillian to... We want to maximize whatever I need to do that's synchronous and scheduled, needs to fit like a Jenga or like... What's that? Like a Tetris.
James: Yep. Jenga works all right for that.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. I was thinking about Tetris where things are coming and it's evolving. You've got to fit them into the slots that you have kind of thing. So, all of that, everything that's synchronous and scheduled fits in that one o'clock to six o'clock time zone, and if needed, then I'll add something at 6:00, or in our case here, this is 7:30 right now in the evening because that overlaps our times for you in Australia, and that was an outlier.
James: Yeah, that's a good story behind that too.
Dean: Yeah, it's an outlier. You'd have to-
James: You've got to edit them occasionally.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right, but overall that schedule has been really great because what I really love is to have the mornings for thinking and journaling and brainstorming and scheming and outlining and doing all the things that I need or want to do and just having all the things stacked into those zones because I find there's a high cost of switching. If you're trying to spread out appointments throughout the day, like there's nothing for me worse than having just little... having an hour here and then having a two-hour break and then an hour with something else and then another hour off, and that kind of thing is I don't do well with that. I prefer to let's do what we're doing in that time. So far so good on that. I really am enjoying it.
James: Yeah, so I've been chipping away at that routine for many years as well. Obviously, our back story is I was very much inspired by your rules. We've talked about this in previous episodes, and I had it stuck to my filing cabinet. It was one of the earlier conflicts in a way because when I first learned about lifestyle design, I still had a job, and I learned it from some property and accounting expert. This is when I started on Google AdWords back in about 2005 or '04. I got a coupon for Google AdWords. I was still at the dealership, went to this conference, and they talked about how they part their week. They have Tuesdays for client days and Wednesdays for blow ups. Well, I'm in one of the most reactive places on the planet, a motor dealership, like you literally cannot control who's going to walk in the door in the next five seconds. Your marketing is designed to get people coming in seven days a week, so it's such a reactive world.
Dean: And somebody's got to be on deck, right? That minute when they walk in.
James: I used to make the rosters. You had to have two people on deck at all times. I had two floor desks and two telephone people rostered on at all times, and you had to have a backup for each of them, and there was 21 sales people. So, I had to rotate floor shifts, phone shifts and somehow managed their three days off for fortnight, cover for sick leave, backups, et cetera. It was a logistical nightmare. Anyway, I went from that having my own job and my concept of then was that having my own business meant I could do whatever I want whenever I want, but I didn't really understand at that time how much routine and discipline actually sets you free until I was in the coffee shop. Remember that little coffee shop that used to be behind my place in Manly?
Dean: I do. Yeah, over by the surf shop.
James: Yeah, with the very reluctant salesman?
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
James: I'd be sitting there and drinking coffee, and I'd notice the floorboards down the middle of the shop are worn, and when I'm drinking my coffee. It's like still brand new varnish, and that helped me realize there's this delineation between the high traffic area and then the comfort zone where I can sit to the side and enjoy, and it makes me sound weird, right? It's like that guy in A Beautiful Mind watching a leaf or videoing a leaf - bar.
Dean: Right.
James: I'm not a nutter. I tell you, but I did start to understand by having time on that automatically created time off because you can't have one without the other, really. If it's all a mishmash, it's just a mess like it's the coffee shop. If they cut a new path every time, it's going to be chaos. So, you delineate this is the time on. This is the time off. So, where my routine is at now it's quite similar to yours although I think because of my geographic region, it's not going to be very practical for me to start after one because of the U.S. market. I would miss them pretty much all together.
So, I take Fridays, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off from any scheduled calls, and I really try to stick to that even to the point where when I first heard about you from Brad Fallon, and he said, "There's this guy. He's the guy behind Eben Pagan. He's the guy behind Marie Forleo. He's the guy behind John Reese. If you could meet with this guy, it will change your life," and I said, "I guess his name is Dean. He's in Florida," and I said, "Do you think you could help me connect with this guy?" He goes, "I would. Would you be prepared to fly over there and meet with him even if it's just for half an hour in a coffee shop?" I said, "Make it happen. I'll do it." This was back probably 2009 or '10-
Dean: '06? Okay, maybe.
James: Maybe '08. It was some time. It was quite some time ago. Anyway, so I was prepared to travel across the world to spend 30 minutes to meet you, right? That was me back then. Lately, last week, when we were organizing this call, you suggested maybe we do it on a Saturday, and I said, "I'd rather not take the call on a Saturday. If we could do it on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, my time, whatever. That's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday for you. That would be awesome," and you said, "What a relief because I was going out of my way just for you, and I would rather do it those times too," and it was like basically I learned a lot from that interaction. I learned firstly I've changed. My value on time and the connections that I've got now have changed from the old me.
So, we've gone from strangers to friends. I've gone from dropping anything and doing anything to really fortifying that routine because that's the discipline that actually gives me a good life, and you and I were.... We would have both done it, but we managed to find a way to do it where we didn't have to compromise, and you were just being outrageously generous and flexible where because it was me, but you've got your solid routine. So, so many lessons in that, but my routine now is I do one call on Tuesday. So, my work week starts at 9:00 AM on Tuesday morning, and for me, 9:00 AM is a bit of a relax... because sometimes I used to take calls at 7:30 or 8:00 AM because that's my North America time zone, and it starts at 9:00. I do one call for an hour, and then I'm free until 6:00 PM. I do one call at 6:00, and I do one call at 8:00. That is my Tuesday every week. SilverCircle/SuperFastBusiness intensive call, Tuesday morning, Tuesday night.
I used to do three calls. If you went back seven or eight years ago, three calls, but I managed to find out two work better. If I do a call at 9:00 and 8:00, then it's like I've had a whole day in between. I could surf, sleep, eat, watch, travel, whatever. It doesn't make much difference. By the time it comes around, I would have to look at my notes about this morning's call, and the six o'clock is with a partner. It's my number one customer/partner relationship. That is the single most profitable activity I do, and I block it up to an hour, but it never takes an hour every week for that because it's so valuable, and then I do a couple of calls on Wednesday morning, sometimes Wednesday afternoon, but generally not at all.
So, I've been leaning into taking Wednesdays off, bar a couple of calls in the morning, and then Thursday, that's where I hit it hard in the morning, and then I have a light finish. So, I have two or three calls on Thursday morning, and I'm okay with that. I might go from 9:00 until 11:00, and then I have on Thursday... This is where my week finishes. I have one recurring call at two o'clock, which is a high-value client, and then I have a 2:30 because it's only 30 minutes, right?
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
James: And then a 2:30 team meeting. That's our team meeting every week, 2:30. It takes 12 minutes, and that's it. I'm off until nine o'clock the next Tuesday, no scheduled calls. Now, does it mean I don't work? No. I still answer my forum post every day, but I do that in my own time. I go to my forum when I want to go to my forum, and this is weird but on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, it's quite typical for me to not log in until about 10 o'clock at night, and I might do 30 minutes, and I know it's weird, but I typically go to bed at 11:00 or 12:00. I usually start work no earlier than 9:00. So, I've got plenty of time in the morning to have coffee or go for an early surf if I want, but almost always I surf during the middle of the day, and I surf during the middle of the day mostly because that's when everyone's at work, and it could be a very different experience if I go after work or early morning.
It's crazy, but it's like peak hour. At 6:30 in the morning, it's like peak hour [crosstalk 00:25:00] middle of the day. It'll be like-
Dean: - there. Right.
James: It's how active are people in my area at sunrise. Everyone's out the door in Australia.
Dean: Right, and the boardwalk or the... I don't know what you call it. The beach walk there in Manly.
James: Esplanade.
Dean: Esplanade is just packed with runners and skateboarders and just walkers.
James: There's boot camps.
Dean: Yeah, and yoga on the beach, and there's-
James: Volleyball.
Dean: It's all happening in the morning. You're absolutely right, but it's healthy lifestyle kind of environment, and hey, you've got a new neighbor now too, right? Taki's moved in right around the corner from you.
James: Yeah, he is literally... I could almost throw a tennis ball to his house from my house.
Dean: Yeah, -.
James: Yeah, we meet a couple of times at the local coffee shop. There is a new shop now on my corner.
Dean: A new coffee shop in your corner?
James: Yeah. So, it's a very easy commute. It takes one minute to walk to there.
Dean: Oh, wow.
James: We do catch up from time to time because we're so close, and of course, he's not traveling, and that was-
Dean: Nice.
James: ... something that made it harder. I think he traveled a lot more than I did and I travel a lot.
Dean: Well, he's recuperating now. Have you seen him since he messed up his ankle or whatever?
James: Yeah, that sucks, and it's a tough time of the year to have a breakage when it's summer. This is the ultimate time of the year for me from now, from late February through to I'm going to say my birthday in May. It's the perfect time because there isn't the summer crowd so much. The water is still super warm, and the waves are good, and it's like that's the time to be a good local. Then, of course, it gets a little bit cooler. Cool for us, not for you, but for us for a few months, but the best thing, you get the bonus. You get the big waves in winter. Winter's when the good waves come, but there is a silver lining in that cloud.
Dean: So, what does your business portfolio looked like?
James: Yeah, I've made changes there.
Dean: I was just going to say I want to hear... Yeah, tell me.
James: When the pandemic came, I spent a bit of energy thinking about forecasting. I felt a responsibility to do that because I have a portfolio of, let's say, 500 customers I work with in various capacities, and I bought a book called Superforecasting or something to that effect. I hooked into various information sources. I've got really good connections in anything from medical. So, I knew for example before the border was going to close that it was going to close and I hooked into people who really very carefully study trends and markets and so forth, and I wanted to try and as accurately as possible plot my way through the year. Also, I was very early to get supplies.
We didn't run out of food or toilet paper or anything like that. So, I was taking a cautious approach because I've lived through a couple of recessions before firstly when I was a kid and secondly when I moved from my job to my own business was when there was that financial crisis last time. So, I've been planning for this, built my business to be as robust as possible. I'm paid by multiple people in different markets and so forth, but what I did want to do was create a safety net for people who are going to be reactive and start cutting. You know people. Sometimes they just start trimming expenses and going into shutdown mode.
Dean: Yeah, right. Yep.
James: So, I created two brand new businesses actually in... Well, I'm going to say it's probably April or May I started, and by the way, my event in March, like literally on the last day of my event, the 13th of March is when America just switched off borders.
Dean: I remember. Yeah, I was sitting right in my living room watching President Trump shutting down European travel, and I had an event coming up at the end of the month that I had people coming from Brussels and someone coming from London who were going to be at the event in Orlando. So, I knew, "Boy, we got to do something."
James: Well, literally, by the second day of my two-day event, probably a quarter of the people in the room was supposed to be quarantining from then on. It was all starting to get real. So, I could not have possibly run my event even one day later. That was game over. So, I had already decided prior to COVID and prior to this event that I'd rather probably just do it virtually, anyway, for a while, and then now virtual's too common, so I won't do that. But anyway, I created a new brand called SuperFastResults, which was a reactivation of my original-
Dean: Great. Nice. I like that a lot.
James: Superfast Business Forum used to be called SuperFastResults in 2009 when it started, but it was a partnership, and the backstory on that is I ran it for four years, and I ended up not being able to make the partnership equitable. It was a 50-50 split, but I was doing a lot of the work. I was getting all the customers, like 99.9% of the customers, and I was serving most of the customers like 75% of it, and I tried to readjust the percentage and there was no real progress there, and then I offered to buy out, and I offered a very generous sum, and it was, "No, I'm just happy with how it is," reaction. So, in the end, I started a new business. I called it Fast Web Formula, and within three months, pretty much everyone just went to the new one and the old one, got switched off, and then I rebranded Superfast Business.
So, come along here in 2020, I really liked that brand. I liked the domain. So, I set it up again. I set up a $10 per month subscription where people can ask me questions and get an answer. I also framed it as they can ask my team, and they'll get an answer from a qualified person. It's not me. The brand is not me and the answers don't have to be me. I wanted to make it scalable and it was just a simple concept of saying like, "I don't want to pay newsletter where they pay me $10 a month and I send them out tips every week. That's work." I just want a private Facebook wall where they can just ask a question and get an answer because they're going in these groups. I've seen groups with 40,000 people, and they ask questions and they get the dumbest answers ever.
You need to have a controlled environment where A, you get a good answer, and B, if someone's answer is a stupid answer, it can just be deleted. I wanted quality control, and I want it to be private. I want it to work from an app, and since I'm a huge advocate of the platform 10XPRO, I wanted a working case study, proof of concept, something my clients can replicate, and I'm pleased to say it worked really well. My customers love it. They don't leave it. They join it. It's become a front door where people can start with me and see if they want it, and I've had several people go from that product up to Superfast Business. My best example of that is a guy called Matt Dippl, an amazing German biohacker. He started on that program and he got such a success with that that he could reinvest in Superfast Business.
So, that was one pathway. That was one use case. Another one was the inevitable Superfast Business customer who wants to exit. So, now we have this soft landing for them. Hey, it doesn't have to be goodbye forever. Why don't you come along to SuperFastResults and you can still ask your questions and get answers and it's just 10 bucks a month until you're ready to come back?
Dean: Oh, nice.
James: And guess what? It's a downsell product in place, and-
Dean: Perfect.
James: ... it's a soft landing and they don't have to leave or disconnect. They can just switch plans, and then the other use case is... I think there's one other one that I'm thinking of. It's where they buy an individual product. So, for the first time in a long time, I set up individual products. I used to have individual products like Traffic Grab or On The Right Course, but it's a lot of work. You know, new domain, new website, a lot of admins, a lot of hassle. Segmentation gets complicated really fast, but hey, now, I've got SuperFastResults. This is like my personal Udemy type site where I can just put multiple courses on there.
So, I just added products and then I added free opt-in, so I've got a 30-day work-less, make-more-in-30-day challenge. It's free. You join up every day for 30 days. I send you one tip on how you can work less or make more. By the end of 30 days, you'll have improved your effective hourly rate. I've got a free lifestyle design course. So, if you love what we're talking about before about schedules and stuff, it's my discoveries of how I get a lot more from a lot less. Okay, so that was good, and then I've got these courses, and most of them I sell for $9. So, a lot of them have come from my Superfast Business monthly training. We do a training every month. I've got about 80 of them, and I've picked the ones that are useful for the general public that people could do one time.
I've got my LifeSheet System, how I organize my digital brain. I've got how to sell on the phone. I've got the autoresponder card abandonment sequence that will just stuff money into your account. You'd like that for email, right?
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
James: So, I put these individual products and then I hired a copywriter to create the product descriptions and to write me an email sequence that moves people from the one-time product into the recurring product, and then it moves people from the recurring product to the bigger recurring product. So, one way I was able to track it is I put a coupon. There's a little bit of a hack, but let's say someone buys a $9 product on SuperFastResults. They will get offered a coupon for Superfast Business, which is $99 a month. They'll get a $70 off coupon. So, you can spend $9 to get $70 worth of coupon to redeem Superfast Business for $29 for the first month. So, for less than a dollar a day, they can actually access every single one of my products, all my recordings, and every post the members have ever made.
So, that I've seen that the number of coupons redeemed is phenomenal, and my average lifetime customer value is somewhere around $3,000. So, then the goal is, how do I just feed this new website? I started Facebook ads for the first time ever.
Dean: Wow.
James: Now, I've got small campaigns just feeding the work that made more funnel and so forth. So, what I'm seeing is I have basically got this whole new level that comes underneath the product I have. The technique is putting an entry level underneath the layer that I've already got, which is usually not the first thing I'd recommend anyone do. Everyone always starts with the first low ticket and tries to build on top. I've started with... In this case, I'm adding a lower layer to an already existing media, but I would say generally people should start with the higher-ticket product because you have less volume to make it work, and that's how I created my job. I got two customers.
Dean: Free at the front time, high in the back.
James: Yeah, build the top and then build under it is what I would suggest. I only needed two customers at $5,500 each to quit my job when I already had my affiliate income coming in and I had my info products. So, I was able to match my income. So then what I did is I'm having a look at my other end of the business, like the top end of town is my revenue shares, and I had 11 of them and through the year, I worked closely with them, and some of them started to really start to shine, and of course, some credit to you because you and I talked in one of our long in-depth conversations like walking along the course. So, I think we bought frozen yogurt at the time, and we're talking about how revenue share deal contracts work and what percentages and what you look for. Remember that discussion?
Dean: Yep, I do because we have some learning.
James: We've both had learning. So, they teach you a lot. I've started to 80-20 my rev shares and in January of this year, I dropped two rev shares, and I found out there was one thing that we're missing that the others had that caused them to not succeed and that was the ability to execute on all my genius ideas and great advice. If you can't get that idea into motion, it's not going to work for us. So, I dropped two because they weren't performing at a level that I need them to perform at. I then took the top four and get this. This blows my mind. The top one revenue share deal, it pays me about the same as half of all of Superfast Business. If I stack the top four together, they pay me more than what Superfast business earns.
Dean: Wow.
James: Four rev shares pays me more than 400-plus members and answering all those forum posts and making a training every month. It's mind-blowing, right?
Dean: Right, yeah.
James: So, what I did in about September, October is I turned off SilverCircle coaching for new customers. So, at that time, it was $5,000 for the first month and then 3,000 per month after, and I'm able to get customers. I can get customers for that program. I have no trouble selling it. Customers are very happy. A few things happened. Because I'm not taking one or two customers a month, I freed up I think it was five hours per week. These are estimates, rough numbers. So, five hours per week of direct consulting at a fixed rate because I know that I could spend that same hour with the rev share partner, and I can make multiples of that 3,000 per month. Second thing that happened is nobody and not one SilverCircle member who's already in the program has left.
So, I've got this core base of I'm going to say 16 or 17 SilverCircle members who's still on the old program. I left them in there. I still have my roster. Every three weeks I chat to them one-on-one, and they're happy. They love it. I love it. I've been working with some of these people in some cases for over 10 years, but many of them for five or six. So, I've got my core base. So, then this turns my attention back to Superfast Business, and I've got two levels, a $99 level and a 599 level, and the question I always get is what's the difference between the 599? The difference is the personal private coaching with me, and if they take an annual plan of five grand, then they get the one-to-one diagnostic process with me on Skype face-to-face, but then I had this weekly call for SilverCircle that I'm not going to need anymore. You know the Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon?
Dean: Yeah.
James: I was like, "What am I going to do with that? Do I stop it?" Because most of my existing SilverCircle clients have moved on to one to one. So, it's slowly morphed into one to one. I'll blame Tom Breeze because he said, "I don't want to come to group calls, but could we just chat every two or three weeks?" I said, "Yeah, okay," and then I moved everyone, and the success rate of that is just phenomenal. They can still come to the group calls and some do, but most don't. I've got this call, and I thought, "I'm going to give this to Superfast Business intensive level members who are paying 599 a month." So, I just logged in. I said, "Good news. You can come to weekly group call."
So, apart from the forum and the membership and the group calls, we do with the rest of the members twice a month, and the private coaching, you can come to a group call every week, and we'll go through our three-part framework and you will get results. So, what happened then then is they come and I get 7 or 8, 9, 10 on these calls in the morning and the afternoon, and retention on that program, it just dramatically changed. Instead of people coming in and sticking around five or six months, they don't leave. I've only had one person leave since I gave that option, that level.
Dean: Wow.
James: It is the glue of all glues. It's a massive value for them actually. They're pretty much getting what people paid three grand a month for for 599 a month if you want to think about of it in terms of value.
Dean: Wow. Right, right.
James: Big lessons here from me and for them. So, in summary... I know this was very long-winded, and I promise you, you can tell me all about what you've changed because I'm sure it's funny.
Dean: No. This is fine for me.
James: I added a layer below my existing layer that is highly leveraged that I could then drive scale with paid ads and build my list. My list is growing. I then trimmed the high burn, high-energy, high-paid work from SilverCircle and because I had a core, and then I turned up the heat on my rev shares. I dropped the bottom two. I took the top four and I put them in what I call a 64-4 group. So I've created my own little super hyper club of just four people, and that's where I put most of my energy.
Dean: Oh, really? Wow.
James: Then I just massively churn the value on Superfast Business for all members, and what does it mean? I'm working 15 hours a week now instead of 20. My income has gone up. My profit's gone up. My enjoyment has gone up of what I'm doing, and my list is actually positively growing, and we're just doing our core, like what feeds the whole machine is still pretty much two podcasts a week. One social media video per day, and now a little dribble of Facebook ads, which we're going to figure out and turn up a bit, and in the meantime, I'm just working on a couple of books, which when I drop them into the mix, they'll be pretty leveraged as well and deliver me the right sort of customers, and I've still got work to do. I know I can find leverage. I'd really like one day to have rev shares go so well that I could sell Superfast Business.
So, I think my next stage is to take myself off the website and to readjust the promise of coaching to be... I want it to the point where in two to three years from now, someone could go to that website and not know who I am. That would be my right state of modification, and it'll be a hard challenge for me to do, but I can do it I think, and that's really because then I would create an asset I can sell. I can't sell Superfast Business at the moment-
Dean: Because you need it right now. Right.
James: ... and it is still the most work but it's also very rewarding. I mean, gosh, it's been going since the beginning of 2009 in effect, and it's the community. I love the community as well, but one day, I'll just go, and this is a side note. While all this mess was going on with the world, I really took that opportunity to teach myself more about investing because it's the unwritten chapter is, okay, you've got some money. Can I make my money make more than I can myself and I've been able to do okay with that in the last year. Especially since April, from April to now, I've really had a huge education in different investing methods.
Dean: Did all your education point you to either Tesla or Bitcoin?
James: I'm definitely Bitcoin. I've done very well with Bitcoin.
Dean: I bet, yeah.
James: I have, yes, very, very well with Bitcoin, and I was able to... You call it 401K, but we call it superannuation. I got a hold of my superannuation and I started making some investments there in April when all the big banks dipped in Australia. [inaudible 00:47:50]. So, that's pretty much doubled.
Dean: Wow.
James: That's a good year and it can double your cash reserves.
Dean: Yes, exactly.
James: But I also pay attention to currency rates because I collect in U.S. dollars and I live in Australia. I've got opportunities to decide which currency I want to keep that money in. So, by just switching currencies, you can have a massive transfer difference on a large sum, but yeah, and I hope so, of course, interestingly, they say property has gone up about 17 to 30% depending on which suburbs. Obviously, averages are very misleading.
Dean: Wow, wow, wow.
James: Yeah, people are sick of living in their house. They've been at home for a year. They want to move. My property buying expert tells me he's seeing more divorces than he's ever seen in his life. I reckon the Stop Your Divorce book might be ready for a rerun because he had four last week in the rich suburb of Mosman because they're not going overseas. They're not going on work, things and stuff.
Dean: Wow.
James: Now, they have to spend all this time with someone and they realize their relationship wasn't as good as they thought it was or not what they wanted. So, very interesting time, but I got to say from my perspective, this last year of spending every day with my little girl, watching her go from one to two.
Dean: Yes, I saw the picture of her on the beach. It was just adorable.
James: Every day, Tracy and I are walking and cooking, and we just have the best little family unit you can ever imagine-
Dean: Oh, so great.
James: ... and that's been the gift of COVID. It has got rid of my sore back. It's enhanced my surfing. It gave me challenges to change my business model. By the way, and this is very important to point out. My customers have done particularly well, and that's everything for me. It's great that I've gone fine and no one really gives a shit, I imagine, but my customers, apart from the one who's been in the trade show industry, which was a tough gig, and he's still with me, which is another lesson I learned. Having six months or annual billing can save you from people making panic decisions and save themselves. It's coming good now. The trade show market's turning up again now. People are booking events, and he's going to be fine, but if you have monthly-only billing, the first thing you'll notice is a blip. When there's a blip, it'll be reactive-
Dean: - to pull the plug instead of looking at it as an asset if they've looked at it-
James: Yeah, my most finicky nervous type customers just immediately pulled the pin and only a tiny small fraction, like 3% or something, it was barely a ripple, but most importantly, my customers have done well. Clearly, a lot of them are online. Almost all of them are online, and a lot of them have been subscribing to the beat of the drum. I want to say over and over and over again, own the race course, and we just saw Facebook switch off news in Australia last week.
Dean: That was something.
James: When the tech digital giant controls the government, then you know we're in a different zone. So, I've podcasted about that too, but I've been pretty selfish with my rant here. I'd love to hear what you've been up to.
Dean: It's been so great to hear everything. I love the fact that you adapted and everything's joyful, and say the pattern, when I was sitting here on March 13th, when European travel was cut off, and I had an event the two weeks from then and knew that that wasn't going to happen, I immediately went into action of getting my Zoom studio built out in my house here and made the decision I was going to do it by Zoom. So, pivoted. I had people do that and it was a wonderful, delightful thing. I had people from Brussels to California to Bangkok and London, the ones out where... all on in the same Zoom boardroom because the events I do, as you know, are 10 or 12 people in a boardroom, and that is perfectly suited for Zoom.
So, I switched all of the events to Zoom, and actually with a little bit of adaptation, I switched the event to do... I do two different events now. I do my Breakthrough Blueprint event, which is the one that I've done live everywhere, but I do that over two days now. Plus people get a 90-minute one-on-one card that they can use after the event. So, I found that was really a great combination. So, we do two days of the regular event and then people can use the one-on-one time to get clarity questions answered, check in, whatever they need help on. So, that's been a great thing. I did all the same number of events that I normally do and then I added a... I do a lead conversion workshop where we just focus on from the opt-in forward from the opt-in to the shopping cart, that segment, and we do that over three separate Tuesday afternoon sessions. We do three hours from three o'clock to six o'clock for three Tuesdays spaced out with a week in between, and that format has been wonderful so we can take action and get results in between the sessions, which is I love that about it.
We've had some amazing things happen. So, I'm really enjoying these virtual... I'm really enjoying the Zoom events like that. That's been a big shift for me, and of course, I've spoken at a lot of events that way too, you know?
James: Yeah, I think you are perfectly designed for this virtual... Well, I was thinking of anyone I know. You are one of the people who are ready to just plug in when it's ready. When you can, you're ready to plug in. Was that a conversation we had once before? Just plug me into... What did you call it?
Dean: I don't remember.
James: Cloudlandia?
Dean: Oh, plug me into Cloudlandia. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's right. Yeah, that's-
James: Yeah, you're ready to roll.
Dean: I'm ready to roll. So, where that opens up great opportunities because I like contributing and I like being a guest at somebody's event, but I don't like to travel to get to them or anything like that. So, now that I can just Zoom in and be there and contribute and then be done that it goes a long way with me. It's like I'm enjoying Cloudlandia.
James: This reminds me of something. After doing 80 or 90 training months in a row, I was ready to let someone else have a go and with in the absence of having Superfast Business live, which was a great opportunity to bring my audience together. The community aspect's wonderful, but it also was where I collected content to put into my membership. I thought, "Why don't I just manage both of these situations by having guests contribute to monthly training for a while?" I've brought in outside guests to deliver high-grade content for my members. It's customized for my audience. I'm there as well. I'm the audience's delegate, but they're also there asking questions.
So, we've manned the chat. It's not one of those... I'm not getting people to come along and just pitch, right? Which is what a lot of other memberships try. It's as if they would be speaking at Superfast Business Live, but I'm spacing it out over a year so it's easier for the audience to consume. It's tailor-made and customized for the moment, and I'm hand-picking experts who have skills that we need in our community or I'm aware of from my coaching, and I don't have to plan and prepare and deliver it, which I'm loving. So, that was a big win. I'd love to formally invite you to deliver a training with me for Superfast Business members at some point on email mastery.
Dean: Hey, there we go-
James: Now, of course, they're going to find out about your programs and stuff, which I heavily recommend because it's not a stretch to say that almost every single marketer that I am aware of is using Dean techniques whether they know they were yours or not, and that's everything from capturing an email address, yes, you heard that right, to putting a little sales pitch underneath the P.S. in the super signature, sending a form of an authentic or variation/butchered version of a nine-word email. That has been bastardized beyond belief.
Dean: Oh, yeah, for sure.
James: Any kind of email that says, "Hey, are you still interested in such and such?" It went a long way from the, "Do you take party bookings" type thing, you know?
Dean: Du-du birthdays. Yeah.
James: Yeah, du-du birthdays to the... Then there's the, "Are you still interested in that luxury yacht through... " There's a couple of people out there just really abuse this technique and think they know what it is, which is even worse, but yeah. If you use any of those, that's Dean's. If you talk about who, not how, if you talk about more cheese, less whiskers, these are all things that stem from your evil hatchery, the evil scheme hatchery. So, yes, if you ever want to pop in, I would love to make that happen.
Dean: Yeah, no. Let's do that. You know what? I was thinking about for you, as you were describing that, you're thinking about the investor mindset that you've built up Superfast Business and SuperFastResults. You've built those into something that doesn't have your name on it, right?
James: Yeah, on day one on purpose.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, but you-
James: And SilverCircle.
Dean: Yeah. Imagine now you start to think about why does... You've got an opportunity to perhaps do something like a Netflix or a Spotify or something where you could curate the best leading training in whatever needs to be trained and have a investor position in that.
James: I head it. I don't need to go. I bought the domain learnstream.com-
Dean: Wow.
James: ... from auction and my idea was to have a Udemy/Netflix channel, another contributor. I ended up selling that domain for a large sum to someone who had the same idea, and I called myself on not having executed on it by then, and then SuperFastResults, I've always liked that domain. It's broad enough to cover any kind of topic, but it also speaks to getting a result, and that's obviously in marketing terms. We should be focusing a lot on the result someone gets rather than the process, and I like the domain. That's why I wanted to bring it back. It was time to bring it back out and put it up there, and I think it has... At the moment, I even have had some people contribute content, but I haven't published it there. I've just kept it to my training.
Here's one little goal I could do is I could bring over, like find the 80-20 of my 90 recordings. Let's say there's, I don't know, 20 of them. Bring them across. Then I start a new forum there or two levels of forum and then eventually I could migrate Superfast Business across to SuperFastResults where there would be the core forum and then there would be a package that they get all the programs. So, it's that's the ultimate destination that could be configured in many ways, and yes, I could have a expert's bundle. So, there are definitely people out there doing that. I think Justin does this with his sites. You've got Tom Breeze who's doing stuff with an Ad Buyers Club. I hope that's wildly successful. I do like the idea that I need to step further away from the front line and really one of my mentors showed me this. He showed me.
It was cool, but I had the sales rep come into me. It was a brand new seller. I hired this guy who ran an ad, interviewed him, hired him, trained him for two weeks, put him out on the showroom floor, and then one day, he comes running to my office. He gets this guy out there. He's really cagey. He just asked me to leave him alone. I hope I didn't offend him, and I said, "Show me." The guy looked out, and I said, "Okay, yeah, just leave him alone." He goes, "Who is that guy?" I said, "He owns this place."
Dean: But leave him alone. That's funny, yeah.
James: This guy, he was just having a coffee in the coffee shop, and my little rookie sales cadet, he's going up to him and said, "Is someone looking after you?"
Dean: He like, "Coffee's for customers, sir."
James: He said something along the lines of, "Buzz off." He felt obliged to come and report this to me, but that was a real lesson in that investment. This guy did not have an office. There were two partners. One of them had an office. He had this classic ivory tower up on the glass, looking down, observing. Micro Orwellian scrutiny happening there, and then the other one, no office. He barely used a mobile phone. He didn't have a computer, didn't do email, and he would just drop in and drop out at random times, sometimes disappear for months on end, which is what happened here.
Dean: I love that, yeah.
James: The lesson there for me was, "Wow. You could have this whole thing and then not be grinding it out." So, I think that's an evolution, but for me, revenue share deals were the fastest way to access that. I am nowhere near the front of brand on any of those rev shares, and I'm only now consciously ramping into one of them in that capacity because it's just so successful, and it's going to help it leverage a lot more if I do that, but I'm really happy to do that because I don't have to do any of the hiring training, fulfillment or any of that. All I have to do is lend personality. So, on that line, this is very important. I activated one of my other domains that I've been sitting on for a long time called james.co.
Dean: Oh, wow. That's a great one.
James: I think we're in the era now where it probably pays to build some influence or authority around your personal brand even if you lend it to your other brand like Elon Musk does to Tesla or his solar business so forth. So, I've been so late to that party. I'm not an extrovert. I'm not comfortable chit chatting on social, asking people dumb questions like what superhero would you be or whatever. That's not me. I do feel that with a couple of books coming out, I need a place for that to be the home, the masthead, and I want those books to feed the businesses, and I would be happy to sell some of my business, but I'm even more than happy to build other people's businesses for a small slice of the action, and even when they sell, and it is the plan to sell some of them.
I get a little payout based on the way that the contract is written, and I'm happy. I've got a royalty outcome that's not James dependent to a large extent and that's why I think what I did last year was brave to switch off a perfectly good $3,000 per month business model per customer. I probably cut nine to $12,000 a month of income to say, "No, I'm going to focus my energy elsewhere," and I've done this repeatedly in my career. So, this is a big takeaway if you listen to this. Sometimes, you got to let go of the vine in the jungle to swing to the next vine if you want to make it in the next stage of the journey. So, comfort is the enemy of growth. That's really the phrase that comes to mind, and I gave up something, but when I donated that same call slot to Superfast Business intensive members, I actually picked up that income within the month, and it hasn't stopped.
It's just growing. So, I just still find it fascinating. I can still work less and make more, and I haven't found the limit and just the plans we have spitball today, and I'm very, very interested in what you say because you're very smart. I think you're right. I do think you're right. It's time to move more to that investor level.
Dean: That you could be the curator of the content for Superfast Business. I think that's such a great opportunity. Yeah, I mean, you look at Joe Polish who is two months now into a one-year sabbatical, and Genius Network is continuing to run and thrive really without him because it's really a platform for the members to share because that's where the content is coming from, right? To bring in experts at the top levels of everything but also from within Genius Network there's a lot of really smart people. So, it's creating the environment that Joe's really been a host of. It's never been he's the guru in the equation.
James: Although he's got an incredible personal brand, and-
Dean: Yeah, for sure.
James: The first time I've ever heard of Joe Polish was at Yannick Silva's Underground 4 event, 2008, and Yannick called him out from the audience a few times as an authority. At the time, this is going to make you laugh, he was talking about the flip camera. He was running around this conference with a flip camera and it was the greatest discovery ever, and no one else was using flip cameras then, and he was like "I get this. I think this is the future," and Yannick called him out, and he pointed out how good this thing is and how... I think it was in reference to a Gary Vee presentation or video. I can't remember now. It was so long ago. I can't remember whether Gary was actually there or Yannick showed us a video of Gary, but in any case, he was right. He called it. A video is going to be the way forward. So, well done, Joe.
Dean: That's great. I mean, I'm excited for you for that. That's really good. That's a clear path. What I'm curious about that we haven't talked about is your book. So, how long has Work Less, Make More been out in the world now? How long?
James: Going to say it's about three or four years.
Dean: No, it can't be that long. That's not true.
James: I'll look it up on Amazon just because that's easy to do, and we'll see. There's big opportunities for that. It came out in... It can't have come out before 2018. Let's have a look here. It says here... How do I even tell... Okay. The 10th of December 2017.
Dean: Okay, so wow. Okay, so that's really-
James: That's been a good little performer, that book. I only sell it on Amazon, paperback, Kindle and Audible.
Dean: So, tell me what you can share about that. How that's going.
James: So, looking up the bookshelf here, it reports on sales. Every single month, it just tips money into my account. It still sells every day the whole time. I'm just going to look at... I have to look at it in all time.
Dean: That's great. Self-published it, which is great.
James: Yeah, so I could basically keep whatever Amazon sends for that, but I'm also getting some distribution paid copies. I noticed people bulk orders coming through. So, some shops are stocking it, which... I mean, that would be the massive ego play, wouldn't it? To be able to hop off an airplane and see your book on the shelf.
Dean: Yeah, yeah.
James: And you often talk about the difference between a book that sells and a book that's good for your ego. If I was much smarter... and I found some real efficiencies. One thing that was annoying me was I send a copy of the book to everyone who joined Superfast Business, and at one point, I had semi-automation. The email system would send me an email as a task with the details of the person, and I would actually get the book sent in bulk here, stick it in an envelope, taken to the post office, and I'm like, "Screw that." I couldn't convince my kid to do it. So, now I've sent the email to my team member in Philippines, and she logs in and orders it for me on Amazon and sends it straight.
So, now that I've figured that out, I think I'm ready to do a book funnel with my 10XPRO site. SuperFastResults could more than easily have a book funnel where I'm actually giving away or selling the PDF, upselling the Audible, upselling the print copy and bundling it with other things. Getting more people exposed to that coupon I really feel like would be a huge growth thing for me as I talk out loud and I'm coaching myself here. I'm not using the book as well as I could, but it certainly has paid for itself and more. It's given me fantastic opportunities to speak on shows and in podcasts and be invited to events. It's given me a guiding principle for what it is that I actually do, which I always struggle to figure out how do I help people, but I'd say more than anything I am helping people work less and make more, and there's finally a bit of a movement against hustle and grind, which is good, and it is a good conversion tool.
A lot of people read the book and then join my membership. When I ask them, "Why did you join?" They say, " I read your book. Loved it. I want more." So, it has been very useful, and Amazon have been doing a good job of promoting, and I have run some Amazon ads to sell even more of it. Since they're such a big player, I think it's nice to play on that platform, and if I lost it all, if they didn't want to sell it or whatever, fine, but it's also collected a lot of good reviews. So, it was important to me that people actually like the book, and I wanted a good book, and I've now had through the help of Kelly, she's written with me the next book, I'll say for me, like I gave her the entire presentation and manuscript of all my material, and she's now formatted and turned it into a proper book.
So, that's another one in the pipe, and I've also got another book coming, which is much more your type of book, which is How to Do Profitable Memberships, and that is drafted, and they're tuning up the chapters. I'm getting help on that book. That one is more or less a facsimile of my course that's at SuperFastResults, and it's by far the number one selling course on SuperFastResults. I think it's currently 99 bucks.
Dean: Wow.
James: It's a proper course that teaches people memberships, and it's a perfect foil for my partnership in 10XPRO because it drives people into the best possible tool they can use to parlay their dreams into reality. I'm a huge fan of that platform, so I needed to put things in front of it. There's a recurring theme in this episode. What have you got and what can you put in front of it? That's my book experience. We have 318 ratings on Amazon and 85% of them are five star and 8% of them are four stars. So, that means there's only 2% one star, 2% two star, 3% three star. One of the one stars I read... I don't read the reviews by the way because I'm just going to get annoyed, but one of them said that the pages fell out. So, Amazon fulfills this book and they let me down with that. I've never heard of any-
Dean: That's a problem.
James: Having that problem, but there's not much I can do. I offered in the comments like, "Please let me know where I can send you a new copy," you know?
Dean: Oh, yeah, yeah. So, Amazon's printing and fulfilling? You're using their service?
James: Yeah, yep. It's all on KDP, and my assistant can go and log in and order author copies and send them to anyone from that system, and it's been good. I don't have a garage full of books. In fact, I think I've probably got three in my entire household, and the Kindle sells. The Audible sells. People rent the Kindle. It's on that program because I'm exclusive with them, so I'm able to rent them out, the normalized pages, and all that stuff, and I don't have any language translations or whatever, and the thing that I put in front of that recently was my Work Less, Make More in 30 day challenge, and people liked that. That was a minimum viable product. I actually recorded 30 videos in one sitting, took maybe 40 minutes. I gave them to my team. They put them all into 10XPRO. They loaded up 30 emails.
Dean: What was the context? 30 days -.
James: You get one little email each day. You get one little video each day, which when you take action on that tip, and literally, there's a bite size of a bite size. They're so small.
Dean: I got you.
James: You do one thing and after 30 days, I asked you to measure your effective hourly rate in the beginning and at the end. Then you should see an improvement. You will have done something in those 30 days to justify the time investment. Even though it's free, obviously, you have to open and read the emails, but what it does do, it helps people stick into my email system. It familiarizes people with some of my other products and the platform that I'm using to send it and it gets them a result. They can, as you would say, this is another one, another Dean, this Project Cyrus. It's how can you help someone get a result in advance of them paying you a single cent and what's their dream desired outcome that they would like to have? I think for most of my audience, they would like to make more money and work less.
I came up with this concept with my friend Corey Basaraba. He looked at all my stuff because sometimes it's good to get other eyes on stuff, and he said, "I think what's missing is just something to introduce people and bring them that we can buy ads for and scale," and we've been running ads and watching them go through the machine, and they do return on ad spend eventually. I think about 45 to 60 days, somewhere in that zone, we're making it back, so it's time to turn it up now.
Dean: That's awesome. So, it's free to come in. Are you sending traffic right to the free trial or...
James: Yeah. It's not a trial. It's straight to the page.
Dean: ... it's free?
James: It's just SuperFastResults.com/30. I think that's where we put it. They go to that and Facebook let us run those ads, which was nice, and people opt in for it, and then they get a little bite-sized email every day. They also can consume this in their app. If they log into the membership over the time, it drips one per day over time. They'll end up with 30. So, they can actually go in and look at it, but we did a lot of things on a completely separate level. I know 30 days is an incredibly long time for a challenge, right? Don't do that unless you have a reason. It should normally be three days or five days. It should be one more thing. This is very counterintuitive, but I got to teach... My team got to learn 10XPRO. They got to build a working model of a drip course, which was our first one of those because there's different ways you can structure content.
It got me to find a Facebook ad rep who can help me. It got us to build our email list. There's just a lot of things that it allowed us to conquer at a minimum effort.
Dean: Yes, I love it. That's awesome.
James: I think what comes next for this one is I film more lifestyle videos. I replace the videos that are there with me out and about or me doing an example of something in the moment. So, basically more story telling, more production value would be the next logical step for this one.
Dean: Well, this is great.
James: I haven't really talked about you very much, Dean. I'm a bit concerned about that.
Dean: Well, look at this. I just realized what time it is too, but I'm lost in the conversation because this would be nothing-
James: Should we come back and do the next episode on Dean's changes because-
Dean: We could. Yeah, we could do that because I'm feeling like this is just the kind of conversation we would have had halfway through breakfast at the pantry right now, you know?
James: Well, I know. This is good. It's good. This is part seven of our 25 part series. So, I propose we have part eight to talk about Dean's changes.
Dean: Okay, let's do that. Yeah, I'm happy to do that.
James: And preferably not on a weekend.
Dean: No, I would say this is a good time. I keep these clear so this would be fun, good time to do. Let me look at my calendar. We'll do it right here while everybody can listen in live as we select-
James: Live scheduling.
Dean: ... live scheduling, but I think we could do same time next week if you want, if that works for you.
James: Oh, yeah, I can do 30 minutes later than we started today next week, or I can do this similar time as we started the week after.
Dean: I mean, later is good.
James: Or if you like to do early, I can do on your Tuesday the 9th. I can do significantly earlier if you've got spot there.
Dean: No, this is fine. You know what? Let's do half an hour later on next Wednesday on the 3rd.
James: This is the best. Thank you.
Dean: Yeah, this is going to be great. This is good. Well, I feel a little bit caught up. I forgot we were recording the podcast there for...
James: Well, hopefully, you're okay we publish this, and then we will-
Dean: Yeah, we will. It'll be great.
James: ... catch up with what is going on in your world next time.
Dean: Yeah, this is great. This is funny because I'm coming... I mentioned about the virtual events. Part of the fun thing now is instead of coming to Australia or going to Amsterdam, I'm doing events that are timezone-friendly for those things so I can accomplish, like most of the things, Nobody from Australia can come to one of my events in the regular U.S. business hours where I've been doing them. So, I'm doing one that's going to be evenings my time, like go from 6:00 PM until midnight my time, which is mornings for everybody in Australia and Singapore and places like that. So, it's fun. Stay right where we are and everybody gets to participate. It's cool.
James: Yeah, that is awesome. Okay, well, thank you.
Dean: Yeah, this is great. So good to catch up, and I'll be here next week, same time.
James: Well, see you next time. Yeah, thanks, Dean. This is behind the scenes with Dean and James. That's part seven of 25 and there's more coming.
Dean: There's more coming. I'll talk to you soon.
James: See you.
Dean: Bye.
And there we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation and go deeper in how the profit activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes. Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying, all of the eight profit activators are part of the breakthrough DNA process, and you can download a book and a score card and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com, and that's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. So, that's it for this week. Have a great week, and we'll be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.