This week on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're continuing the conversation I had with my good friend James Schramko.
Last week we focused on what was happening with James on that side of the planet; this week, I bring James up to speed on everything I've been doing.
It was a great conversation, including piggybacking business models, measuring success, and... how to start a makeup business!
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 218
Dean: Mr. Schramko.
James: Hi Dean, how you doing?
Dean: I'm good. We're back.
James: We're back. Funny thing happened when I was processing the first part of our recording.
Dean: What happened?
James: I noticed they allocate the file size based on who does most of the talking.
Dean: What does that mean?
James: I'm embarrassed to say I did a lot of talking last time. The file size was a lot bigger on my side. It's basically time for us to find out what's been going on with Dean, because James did a lot of talking in episode seven. This will be part six of 25 for us on SuperFastBusiness, it will be episode 817. It's actually, the last one we did was the longest we've been between episodes and this is now the shortest we've been between episodes.
Dean: There we go.
James: What's going on in your life behind the scenes?
Dean: Well, I feel good that we got caught up on the last episode. It leaves the hole that all that... To go from every year we've been spoiled spending not much time together, lots of time to talk and then all of a sudden it feels like we hadn't even gotten halfway through breakfast on day one. It had been you doing all the talking.
James: That's right.
Dean: I'm happy to talk about the big things, because it's been over a year now since I've been in Australia. Probably 15 months I think or so, so much has happened. I'm an observer of all of these things and that's really been... I look and see what we can take away from what's happening right now. You tell me if I've shared any of these things with you, but one of the most noteworthy things that's happened, that's accessible for everybody is that Kylie Jenner became a billionaire in the time since we were last together. She did it in a way that is completely accessible to anybody and it's a pretty interesting story.
But first of all, is Kylie Jenner as popular in Australia as the Kardashians are in the US, or the awareness of it? What's your awareness level of the Kardashians?
James: I think the popular radio stations, all the lightweight daily conversation stuff, they're aware of that things.
Dean: They're all popular.
James: Yeah, but I would say I'm more outside of that world. I'm not someone who watches television or listens to radio as maybe you don't so much.
I've got to be careful answering this one, but half of all of Australia. I'm going to say we know who she is, but I would say in general... It's funny, because we've got our own B grade, C grade level celebrities in Australia. They will be famous people in Australia, who no one in America would know.
Dean: That's what I mean.
James: But our world is a little bit localized. And then, there's these big time, huge Americans out there that we're aware of, but we're not as enamored with celebrity here, as Americans seem to be. Just because some Xboxer endorses a griller, doesn't mean it's going to be good for us to buy. We're very skeptical.
Dean: I get it. Okay, perfect. Well, here, the Kardashians are big and I think in most of the English speaking world they're well known. She started a cosmetics line and sold 51% of the company to Coty, who's a big makeup manufacturer cosmetics company. She sold 51% of the company to them for $600 million, which means that her other half of the business, which she owns, is worth another 600 0000. Forbes Magazine put her on the cover of Forbes as a youngest self-made... There's a lot of - around that self-made billionaire. But, the way that she did it is where the lesson is.
I'm seeing it happen in lots of cases now, this whole collaboration era that we're moving into. She basically, she has a team of seven people, seven full-time employees is her side of the business. She does none of the manufacturing, she does none of the distribution, none of the packaging, the customer service, the eCommerce, none of that. She doesn't do any of the actual running of the business, but she is the creative force behind it. Her vision for what she wants to do, lip kits and the colors and naming the colors and collaborating on what the packaging is going to look like, all that kind of stuff. And then, spreading the word. She's got 150 million social media followers, so she's got access to an amazing audience. How she started out was literally three, four years ago and it's all happened very quickly. She wanted to do some lip kits.
She's been known for her lips and she wanted to do some lip kit cosmetics. In America, and I think in Australia and all over the world, when people get an entrepreneurial idea, their first idea is to think, well how do I do that? This is a very [inaudible 00:07:16] illustration here that she... Most entrepreneurs figure out, well how do I make lip kits? You would look for stuff that says, here's how to make your favorite cosmetics at home if you get the petroleum and you get the this and the coloring and the chemicals, whatever you need, you can mix it up at home. And most people would bootstrap like that, they would set up a kitchen factory and start-
James: - the local council stores or the community fair.
Dean: Yes, exactly. And then, they recruit their family and their friends to start helping them package it up and take it around. All that bootstrapping, figuring everything out from the ground up. Kylie had some friends who were the millennial children of a guy who started one of the biggest cosmetic manufacturing companies in the world, they're based in Los Angeles. There's probably only five or six companies that make all of the cosmetics, no matter what brand they are. There's all [inaudible 00:08:36] manufacturers that make the stuff. And they decided that they could help Kylie out with this by using some of the excess capacity in their parents' factory. They made these limited edition of her lip kit and then took it online and basically broke the internet the day she launched her lip kit. And then it became a thing. She was using the launch model in a way. She announced a new drop and then everything would sell out in minutes and she parlayed all that into starting her own line. And the children of this Spatz Labs, I'm telling the names of all of these things because if you're inclined to look through all of this as an observer, the stories are fascinating to see how it all came out.
They started their own factory, now called Seed Labs and what they do is, essentially they provide manufacturing for influencers and anybody who wants to create a cosmetics line. They've created their own brand as well, called ColourPop, which is very popular in the US. But they've got a 200 000 square foot facility where they do every single element from the ground up. From coming up with the ideas, making the formulations, making the packaging, making the tool and dye that make the manufacturing process. They make it all under one roof. They package it, they ship it, they run the eCommerce. They've basically taken all of the supply chain margins and bundled them under one place so they could do it very profitably and very quickly.
They're able to have an influencer with an idea for a cosmetics line go from idea to shipping in five days, which is fantastic. Now, you start to think about, because I've been observing this when I found that there's a formula at work here that we can apply, that I think is the formula for Cloudlandia, that's the formula for our migration there because the gravity is different in Cloudlandia. I call it the VCR formula and it's vision plus capabilities, multiplied by reach. That's the formula that we all have access to. Vision is ideas, formulas, recipes, algorithms, anything that's your vision for something. Capabilities would be the execution element of it, factories, equipment, manufacturing, distribution, all of those things that are on the mainland to make things actually happen. Reach is your ability to get that final message to the market through your own audience or money, you could buy reach as well. As long as you've got those three elements, you've got access to a success.
It's really an interesting thing to see it now unfolding in all these other examples. Do you know who MrBeast is?
James: A YouTuber.
Dean: Yes. The YouTuber. He's got 50 -
James: Planting forests.
Dean: Yes. This guy, that's exactly the guy. Jimmy Donaldson, he's one of the biggest YouTubers, 50 plus million subscribers. He just, on December 19th, opened 300 MrBeast Burger restaurants in the United States on one day. But he doesn't own a single restaurant, not a single property. What he did was, he had a vision, but he wanted to create MrBeast Burger restaurant. They conceptualized the menu, what are we going to serve at MrBeast Burger? What's the burger going to look like? What's the recipe? What's the seasons we're going to use? What kind of french fries? What kind of chicken tender sandwich are we going to have? What kind of buns are we going to have? All of the soft things, all of the vision for what this is. And then he partnered with independent restaurants with excess capacity in their kitchens that could prepare his menu and ship it out the backdoor with Deliveroo, the US equivalent and get that into people's hands, without ever having to open a single restaurant. And basically broke the internet.
Because if you look at it now, he's got the vision for what he wanted to do, the capabilities came from a, he partnered with a company called Virtual Dining Concepts. This guy, Robert Earl, was the founder in the 90s of Planet Hollywood, the celebrity restaurant. He had experience with this draw of celebrities in the success of a restaurant and he owns now, many different restaurant concepts including Buca di Beppo which is one of the big chains in the US. A lot of these excess capacity kitchens are his own kitchens for his restaurants that are underperforming because during COVID, they have been limited in accessibility of people coming into the restaurant. They've been picking up some with curbside and delivery, but they still have excess capacity. Now, to seamlessly offer the MrBeast menu with MrBeast doing all of the reach elements of it, of promoting it, they just do the fulfillment of when the order comes in, they prepare the food and send it out the back door.
These kind of collaborations are happening, they're accelerating what's happening. Guy Fieri, is another popular celebrity chef here in the US. He's about to open 100 Flavortown restaurants all over the united states and on their way to 1000 of them by the end of the year. You put this in perspective of it took McDonald's, after they really started getting their stride, started franchising, it took them six years to get to 300 restaurants and MrBeast did it in one day with none of the expense of opening a single restaurant.
James: I hear you. I've certainly seen some research showing a comparison of the number of restaurants versus actual profit. And they compared KFC, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Subway and they found that more restaurants does not equal better. That's something to be mindful of.
Dean: In what way? More restaurants does not mean better for who?
James: The one who had the most restaurants, is not the most profitable. I'm saying it's like a growth vanity metric for tech startups that bigger isn't better. That's just a side note. I'm thinking as you talk about this, it sounds similar to what I'm doing on a smaller scale where I partnered with a software as a service business where I've got the distribution and the customer and the business model, strategy and the coaching support, but I'm not going to go and build the tool. I found the best tool and his partner, and he's not going to go and build out the marketing and get customers. It just makes sense to have strategic alliances, joint ventures, revenues shares or co-found businesses or whatever. I'm wondering, how have you translated these observations into the Dean Jackson empire?
Dean: Well, I've been observing this whole [inaudible 00:18:46]. This is how I fit it into is that really fits that way. I look at 90 minute books as a perfect example of that, of one thing where if I looked at it, that I had the vision for an easy way for people to write books that can grow their business, - books and I've got the algorithm for it, the recipe, here's the process of what you do and started a company that does it. That is a capability that is something that now, I'm not involved in the business of it in terms of the operation of it. But it's my business and I am a catalyst for steering people to it for being on the reach side, bringing an audience to it. I'm straddling that capability with my vision for it, because it wouldn't exist if I didn't have the vision for it and I've got the reach of an audience of people who like the message of how do I grow my business. That's certainly one tool there.
James: Plug the book URL.
Dean: 90minutebooks.com, that's the website. You look at those things, what I'm really finding exciting about is that having that awareness, that formula, gives people permission to stay in your lane, to really amplify the thing that you have the best idea for. If you've got capabilities, viewing your capacity and specifically your excess capacity, as an asset that you can deploy on behalf of other people, that creates amazing opportunities.
James: Yes, if you're good at the thing you do. There's a lot of parallels, I think, from the industry I came from where Mercedes Benz, for example, would get electrics from Bosch. They would get tires from Pirelli or Michelin. There's some really interesting subtleties to that too. Mercedes Benz wasn't going to go and manufacture tires, that's not their core. Better to just partner up with people who have been in the game for a while. But they did maintain two or three different tire suppliers, which gave them the ability to bargain and it gave them some coverage against supplier shortages et cetera. I thought that was interesting.
Dean: Yes. There's never been a better time to be a visionary in this equation. I've been saying this, in the best sense of the word, every capability that we could possibly need has been commoditized. I mean that in the good sense of the word, meaning available for sale, that you can buy or access any capability that you need. There's never been a better time to just assemble the pieces of something.
James: I think that probably has spawned a big industry in the drop shipping world.
Dean: That's certainly part of it. - There's a capability that Amazon gives you the capability to have access to a global market and a world class fulfillment system. It requires vision to see what there's a market for and you got to have reach to get to it, or even just by tapping into... Because Amazon has both capabilities and reach.
James: It does. It makes me wonder if thy get a strong - and the people start going down that path, does it remove choice from the consumer and over time, is it a bad thing? Or does it provide opportunities for people who want to be independent of that system. I'm thinking of companies like Vollebak, who make really high end, interesting clothing. They're doing their own thing and you're not going to find that stuff on Amazon.
Dean: You have to be unique and only available in one place. I notice and I've heard the thing about Amazon is that if you have a category and you start selling a lot of something that they could make, - absolutely, because they've got access to their audience and their poll positions and their featured products and their stuff and they do that a lot.
James: Doing validation testing on their own dime, for them just to - the winners.
Dean: That's what it is, absolutely.
James: It would be quite a lot like you or I, seeing all the clients we see and observing what the winners look like and that's the sort of business we're going to go into, or partner with because it's already been validated.
Dean: Yes. Let me tell you something, James. One thing I like to say. This it a little - is that you should always own the racecourse. That's what I say.
James: That sounds like great advice. The word that comes to mind here is vertical integration. It's a concept, I think, every one of our listeners should be familiar with and that is basically chopping out the middle management, it's what people tend to do. If they have a Western style agency, they might discover this happens with some of their key employees. Their key employees might vertigrate their employer. Sometimes they leave the business and next thing you know, their courting your prospects and providing a service without you involved at a bigger margin to them or at a lower price to the consumer. It's a really valuable thing to think about it. The big question is often how far should I extend my own ownership of this versus partner.
For me, things like software is an easy decision because I found having my own software is very difficult, it's not my passion, it's well suited to somebody other than me. I'm not going to go into that space in that capacity. A partnership is just so much easier and more logical. But then, there's other things where big companies decide whether they do something in-house or get a contractor. That's where they have to make the decision. I'm thinking for someone listening to this episode, they may want to recognize that often their competition is someone on the cusp of deciding is it a who or a how?
Dean: Yes. That's really interesting. I don't know when it's happening, but I just heard that LinkedIn is going to offer a marketplace now, where just like Upwork or Fiverr sort of thing, I think that will be the top level. Where if you look at Fiverr as getting the lowest end stuff done, getting Upwork - middle range and then LinkedIn. The implication would be that you would have a marketplace for executive level talent as well. You start to see now, boy, all of the... Especially now that everybody is used to the fact that we can all work remotely. Everybody, the world, we're fine. Everybody can work from home.
James: We can? I've heard it's just a bit of a fad.
Dean: Yeah. Isn't that interesting though.
James: I went to get a coffee at the local coffee shop the other day, Dean, on the corner. A lady said to me, "Do you work from home?", because it was 11:00 in the morning on a weekday. I said, "Yep, since 2008" and she said, "Wow." I think she's now discovering her new audience of people who are working from home that didn't usually work from home.
Also, on a side note, and no one else will understand what I'm saying here, they have been removing the planter box that we've been keeping progress on down in Manly.
Dean: They have? They gave up on it.
James: Gave up on it. Sometimes, you've just got to recognize things aren't going to grow or do what they're supposed to do and you just have to kill it off.
Dean: They would have been beautiful.
James: They would have been beautiful if -.
Dean: Living walls.
James: Living with wall with plants, it's now living wall with paint. Dead wall with paint. More to the point, when I go into Manly Village, I do learn what's changed and where things are up to, but man, the retail space gets devastated. Every time I go down there, it's like I'm in a different village. There's a whole new set of people, spinning the roulette wheel to have a crack at making their business survive. Whether it's weeks, months or years, often they disappear, only the core is there. I would have to say, what a market test. If you could set up and maintain a store down in the Manly Corso, which I believe is some of the most expensive shopfront real estate in Australia. If you can survive for five years plus, then that is a business model worth paying attention to.
Dean: Hungry Jack.
James: Hungry Jacks is still there.
Dean: Of course, they are, yes.
James: But so is their more local competitive, Benbry -. No, not Ben and Jerry's, that's still there. Starbucks are still there, much to the displeasure of most locals. They had a spin on it though. This is the spin, that's owned by Australians, its franchise is owned by local Australians.
Dean: Oh, well that makes it okay.
James: And it's catering for the tourists who really expect to have a Starbucks there at Manly.
Dean: Yeah, that changes everything.
James: It does. Because it's owned by local Australians, it's okay. There is a burger store there that's in competition the major chains that has survived and it's got a really clever system and they've got another branch -.
Dean: How about Jellyfish?
James: Jellyfish is still there, but no surprise to you, both the shops on the other side changed at least three times since you were here last.
Dean: Wow. That's crazy.
James: Jellyfish now has a little hut at the front of the store where they serve takeaways from. They finally stopped making you walk through the shop to order at the counter and you can access it with ease. But there's a lovely Greek restaurant beside it, I hope that sticks around and then there's another restaurant on the other side. It's amazing. It's the 80/20 and then these other two just shuffle.
Dean: Yeah. Amazing. Is Deliveroo the big one?
James: Massive.
Dean: Are there others? Uber Eats as well?
James: Here is, there's Uber Eats.
Dean: - in that market -.
James: Not so many. It's really only two I think. Deliveroo's the King Kong and then there's Uber Eats. I don't know if we have Panda Express or whatever. I think we've really only got the main player. What has been interesting though, Dean, is some of the shops that staunchly resisted having Deliveroo before COVID are now urging and encouraging you to go and get. It's like they've surrendered their control. - just got to Deliveroo and order. That's the only way they're getting the pipeline now. Only one company on Deliveroo that I consider as research for my kids, not for me, but when I ordered a Domino's Pizza, it says that your order will be delivered by Domino's, you won't see updates. Domino's have got enough clout that they can say to Deliveroo, look, we'll accept your orders, but we're going to deliver it ourselves. We're not going to update your app. That's very interesting to me because lots of little players won't have that leverage.
Dean: Yeah, well Domino's has really done an amazing job, when they made the shift to... They viewed themselves as an eCommerce business, not a pizza restaurant. That was a big shift, because in the United States, one thing they did which was brilliant, was they opened up 150 000 hotspots. Meaning, wherever you are, they will deliver the pizza to you. You open the app, and let's say that the bench between The Pantry and the surf school or whatever, somewhere there is a spot that would be a pizza hotspot that you could order from the app if you're at the beach. You could order it on the app and have it delivered to the hotspot, wherever you are.
James: That's clever.
Dean: It's fascinating.
James: Pokemon zone right there. - was very clever, tying those in with shops, trying to get them to buy a Pokemon monster.
Dean: Yes.
James: Deliveroo's clever in that you can drop a pin. The thing that really interested me as well is the difference between when you used to call up a shop and order takeaway. In the old days, you would go and get it or sometimes they deliver it to you, but it would be rarer. But then it's okay, I could be actually overseas, I could be with Dean Jackson in Florida on the couch and I can order a meal for my kid at home to be delivered from my phone. But at the same time, I can also flick on my current location at the hotel in Florida and have Deliveroo bring me a meal there. That is pretty wild when you think of it.
Dean: Yes. Life's getting better. Cloudlandia is a good thing. There's so much opportunity. It's such an amazing time to be alive right now.
James: It is a very interesting time, no doubt about that. I was reading a list of the top billionaires last year. They all increased their wealth. There's more billionaires and the top ones increased their wealth. Not everyone's had a struggle.
Dean: If your aspiration is to be a billionaire, it's never been easier either.
James: I actually don't think I will be a billionaire. Even just being a decamillionaire would be fine, that would be enough. I wonder, how do billionaires become such a talked about pinup or poster aspiration? Why is that when almost everyone's not going to be a billionaire? Let's be honest about it. There's only 6000 billionaires or something in the whole world.
Dean: Listen, that was the big realization that I had 21 years ago.
James: You all right there, buddy?
Dean: Yeah. I swallowed -. I, 21 years ago, went through the exercise of I know I'm being successful when, where I've gone through that exercise with so many people and nobody has ever said, I know I'm being successful when I become a billionaire or when I have any amount of money. Nobody's ever said an amount that is how they would define success. It's an interesting thing. I use success and happiness, that's what we're really looking for. If you're really looking for a life, that's what the purpose of the business is for, is to support or fund the life that you really want. I don't know a single billionaire that I would want to be, that I would trade places with in any way.
I look at Mark Zuckerberg in the Congressional hearings and I look at these things. I'm like, there's not minute of Mark Zuckerberg's day that I would want to be in.
James: I'm not sure if he's a billionaire, but that Jon Butcher from Lifebook seems like he's closer to having a good life.
Dean: Yes. I know of lots of people who have $100 million or more that do have great lives like that.
James: Well, I know people who are happy and unhappy at all different income levels.
Dean: Yeah, but most of them that I do know at that level have exited into that and now they have great lives. - on their way to that, that has great-.
James: I think this is an important discussion. As I was taught by a multimillionaire client of mine, there's this inescapable phase of having to crawl over broken glass to get to that. There's no question in my life, I had to go out and chop timber and build a fire before I enjoyed my cozy log cabin life. I had to put in a massive amount of effort and strain and stress and wear and tear to get through that to be where I'm at now. What about you?
Dean: Right. I have avoided a lot of that at some levels in that I started out with a really healthy sense of purpose and knowing that I was going to keep my lifestyle below my means. I was leading with revenue and that's been, I think, a good thing for me because I never got into a situation where I escalated my lifestyle that requires me to continually to make more and more money early on.
James: I'm not going to say it's an excuse, but I think that the absolute definitive moment for me was at the age of 23, discovering that there will be an extra one of us nine months from then, when I'm 24. That just changed the dynamic of everything for me.
Dean: I never had any kids.
James: A long slog. I'll also say, I do not think that I would have the life that I have now if I didn't have kids. I feel that everything that happened, had to happen. I'm just lucky I landed on my feet in a way and of course, we win the lottery. I'm not underestimating how much of an advantage it is what country you're born, what color you're born, what parents you're born to. There's a lucky dip there that I did well with.
Dean: Yeah. And you're also blessed with the, you're an INTJ, which is in the Myers-Briggs world. You're wired for figuring that out and you've got that determination.
James: Yeah. Again, it's what genes we're born with makes a difference. As a parent, when you find out about other parents who have had kids who didn't make it, it's like you just think, that is heartbreaking. It's totally outside their control. It seems unfair. It's just luck of the draw or whatever. But I was having this thought the other day, and this might sound silly as I say it but I just think I'll say it anyway. I was just thinking, if we knew we only had one year to live or whatever, I wonder how much we would change what we do? For example, most of us save up superannuation or I think you call it 401, let's call it retirement savings. Most of us have built in a discipline of some delayed gratification or we're doing things today for our future self. You and I talked about that. I wonder how we would change the mix, then I extrapolated on this concept of, if we knew we were going to die or whatever. And then I thought, oh my God, we are going to die. We're all going to die. And then I saw this scammer got hauled for a $1.3 billion scheme or something. He was an Instagrammer.
In his Instagram he's wearing all these fancy clothes and he's got his cars that he buys and watches and things. In one of his one liners with his millions of fans, he wrote, dress well every single day of your life. He said something like, don't save stuff for a good occasion, every day is a good occasion. Even though he's a scamming hustler, the point's still quite interesting. The funny thing is, I'm wearing a nicer shirt today, even though this is a non video episode. Just that one concept of me stringing two things together, thinking something and then seeing something, it just reminded me... Oh, and also, my wife said, "Stop wearing that daggy shirt", and perhaps the most important one. I'll just wear a plain blue t-shirt on most of my podcast and I think she saw a video playback of my guest who was Rand Fishkin, and he was wearing a nice lumberjack shirt up there in Seattle. She said, "You should dress nicer on your podcasts."
Anyway, all these ideas together, you're just going to optimize things a little more, why not use some of the nice things we have a little more. What's your take on that?
Dean: Well, it's an interesting thought because I, again, I realize no matter what, we are going to die. It's probably not going to be today, and that's good, but it might be tomorrow and it doesn't matter if it's tomorrow or 50 years from now, that day is coming. We don't know when it is, that's the great mystery of it all. You have to live accordingly. But one of the exercises that I've been doing is a thought conversational exercise with people, is just exploring the idea of what would happen in your life right now? Just chronologically. If I were to wire $100 million into your bank account right now, what chronologically, how would that impact your life right now, going forward, what would be the impact of that?
James: It's a great exercise.
Dean: Would that be the end of SuperFastBusiness?
James: Definitely.
Dean: Definitely, yes.
James: No doubt about it. All I would do is surf, chat to friends watch Netflix, read books, spend time with my kids. Basically, what' we're talking about here is probably percentage changes because if you go back to our previous episode, I've already wiggled my weight down about 15 hours of actual scheduled calls. I already surf every day. Would it mean that I could surf every day? That would be no difference, I would definitely surf every day, but I'll probably surf twice a day if I had 100 million in the account. I think I would make that addition. I think I would also work on my living environment. I spend a lot of time in my houses, let's say. I'm interested in that, I'd be guided by what I naturally do. I recently bought two coffee table books from my local surf dealer called, Surf Shacks. It's basically a pictorial book of different people's surfing houses, but of them, bit about their house, bit about their equipment. Mostly it's pictures of equipment. It's an inspiring journal to look through and be guided about, for me, what will my visualizations about life look like?
I'm very close to where I want to be, but I would say, there is no way I would be doing coaching or this podcast or any of the joint ventures I do if I had $100 million, because that would see me out for the rest of eternity in terms of financial need and it would see me with a routine that I would be happy to sustain. What about you? I know as a fact, you would still get on calls and do chats with people because that's what you do. I would do that too, but I may not do it in a formal structure or feel the need to publish it.
Dean: Right. The interesting thing is that you get to the sense that I'm sure you would be more inclined to do more angel investing or more investing type of things.
James: Definitely, I would invest in -. would not change, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over not having to bother with it. And also, I would make sure that every single person in my team, absolutely looked after. Even if I have them onboard to potter around stuff, but I would make sure I find them all fantastic place to work and give them a big bonus. As they're editing this, they're probably smiling thinking, well, at least he's got my back. It wouldn't be a selfish endeavor. I think it would just enable me to lean more into just being even more organic and less strategic about stuff.
Dean: Do you know Naval Ravikant?
James: Yes, I've just been reading his book and I like his Twitter feed.
Dean: Oh, okay. What a great guy.
James: What a great guy.
Dean: Yeah. He showed up on my radar, I saw him on the Joe Rogan podcast and he's a very thoughtful guy. He did a tweet storm that was all about how to get rich, basically. He said on Joe Rogan that we all are basically looking for three things. We want to be rich, we want to be happy, we want to be healthy. Those are the three great pursuits that we have. He said of the three, money, getting rich, is one you can win. There's an end to it. Like you said, if you had $100 million you've won the money game.
James: I think I'm actually being bravely honest and transparent saying, I'll just switch it off. I'm not pretending that this is my 100% passion. I think he's just described the cascading waterfall of how things would roll -. It's all about happiness and health after that.
Dean: Yes. That's it and that's an interesting thing. As I look at my approach to, that I know I'm being successful in my approach to the day to day of it, is to realize that we can only spend today. And I may as well be crystal clear on what are the elements that would make up my day. How am I experiencing being successful on the day? That's been such a guide post for me. I don't know whether it's been a thing that... You and I would say we have very comfortable lives and we've done well in business and we've got multimillion dollar businesses and - successful, in definition. There's always then people that you know that have exited companies or sold things and have big chunks of money that they've gotten all at once, that is a different pursuit maybe than what you and I've been pursuing.
James: It's all about the pursuit. What do you choose to peruse. I think that's what makes these chats interesting because you and I, I think we are cutting a different path to the majority, which I'm entirely happy with.
Dean: Yes. Well, that's the thing, I have a great life and it's only in the comparison that I see any sense of, if I'm thinking, should I have done that? Should I have-
James: Should you have started a makeup line?
Dean: Yeah, should I have started a makeup line or should I have really scaled something that I look at?
James: It's a natural thing to do. We talk about it, don't compare or whatever, but it is natural. And I can't help but just curiously observe, how's that apply to me? We're selfish at the core. How does that apply to me? What's my takeaway from that? To a constant tuning of the machine. We talked about this before, in the previous episode, our schedules. Tuning that schedule and being disciplined about it, even though every cell in our body replaces over time and every habit can be replaced and every thought. I'm happy to bump a thought out and add a new one in and change the way I think about things.
Dean: You're absolutely right. That's what I was looking at is thinking through and I have to check myself with my thinking sometimes. I'm shining a light on it and seeing am I harboring a limiting belief on somethings? If I say that to get to $100 million, my mind would initially think well, that would be a lot of work and you have to crawl through broken glass, like what you just described there. That's the element of it. That would require that I have a big... That takes a lot of people and I would have to work a lot more than what I'm doing now. It would be more corporate kind of world.
And then I started asking myself, okay, is that true? Is there anybody who has $100 million who has not gone through that path? And then I started thinking, JK Rowling. I was sitting in my office here in Winter Haven, and I bought several years ago the box set-
James: - I thought you're in Four Seasons Valhalla.
Dean: That's been my world right now, but I happen to be over in my office. I don't think you've ever gone over there. Did I show you the building? No?
James: Yes, you took me to your office with the fireplace. I've seen everything there is to see. I've even been to the local bicycle shop and the nice coffee shop. - I would say you took me around, but it would be more accurate to say your Tesla took me around and you were in it.
Dean: Right.
James: I've even been to the local airfield and mosquito catchment place.
Dean: That's right. I was writing this in my journal as I think a lot about things like this. I was thinking I had bought a box set of the Harry Potter books, because I was in a bookstore and I was reading a magazine that said that JK Rowling had just become a billionaire and that she was the wealthiest self-made woman in the UK and whatever. I was sitting there and on an - in the bookstore there was a box set of the Harry Potter books, of all of them. I thought to myself, looking at the article, looking at that, and I realized in that moment that JK Rowling has become a billionaire on a path from her mind, through her hand through a pencil, onto a piece of paper. That was the path to a billion dollars for her.
That's an interesting thing. Think about James Patterson, there's lots of people who are writers who have taken that path, or people who write movies. There's a lot of creative people who have made lots of money without building a big organization, without scaling - things.
James: - can do it with royalties, authors can do it.
Dean: That's it -.
James: Massive build up to that though, the challenges she had.
Dean: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Crawling through broken glass, like you said.
James: Oh, big time. Her mum passed away, she had divorced. I think she was inspired by a delayed train.
Dean: Writing in a coffee shop.
James: I think we have quite a lot of Harry Potter paraphernalia here. You and I've had this discussion, but I may be married to one of the greatest fans on the planet. Even my daughter knows all the characters.
Dean: Wow, well, you'll have to bring everybody and go to Harry Potter world here.
James: We will and we've already been to the Harry Potter filming studio in the UK. We take this seriously.
Dean: Yeah. This is great.
James: You had a stuffed toy that created some toy envy.
Dean: Oh, yeah, which one did I have that you really liked? I forgot.
James: It was on the couch and I took a picture of it and my wife wanted me to stuff it in my bag and bring it home.
Dean: That's great.
James: But anyway.
Well, I think we're at time, again. I like how the series is unfolding. We've still got a number of episodes left in the tank.
Dean: Yes. Absolutely.
James: We nominated 25 as our projected target and we've just recorded number eight, we're a third of the way through.
Dean: I like it. I'm wondering when I'll see you next.
James: Okay, let's take odds on that. I'm going to say, I don't think you'll be allowed here until later in the year, which is your usual time if you were to come. I would say it would be either the end of 2021 or it would be the end of 2022.
Dean: That's what I think.
James: Depending on which country. I think the end of 2022 is the 85% and end of 2021 is a 15%.
Dean: Yes, I think that's true. Pipe dream.
James: Yeah.
Dean: We should do this more often -.
James: As often as you want. I'm putting this up episode 813 and the other one we had was 810, we're just going to roll through, let's just keep adding to the pile. There's plenty more discussions. Let's go and see what happens in your life and what happens in my life over the next short period and then catch up again.
Dean: Absolutely, I'd love that.
James: Thank you so much, Dean. By the way, where do people go and find out about you? You're doing email mastery. We definitely should mention that.
Dean: Oh, yeah. That's been so much great stuff. We didn't even talk about branding and the power of the pursuit of now. We jut look at the clock and we're always over the stop, but again, in the big scope of things, we would just be wrapping up breakfast right now of our normal two week - with each other. This is two hours in, we would just be leaving The Pantry now. But yeah, email mastery, for sure. There's so much great stuff happening in the pursuit of conversational conversions and I do a program at emailmastery.com. It's been such a great thing that I've enjoyed, just seeing all the wins. I was just emailing with -, or texting with - some email secrets - some amazing results. I've been working with my franchise clients, they're using conversational conversion for amazing results, it's my favorite thing that I do.
James: Yep. That is epic. What's the website?
Dean: The website is emailmastery.com. It starts with a book that people can download as the transcripts of three episodes of the [inaudible 01:06:24] of marketing podcast, where we outline the core of these email conversion principles. But that's how people start in my world, is just getting in my email world and we take it from there.
James: Awesome, we'll put a link to that in our show notes.
Dean: I appreciate it.
James: Great to catch up, Dean.
Dean: Yes. Awesome. Thanks, James.
And there we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, you want to go deeper in how the eight 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. You can download a book and a score card and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com. 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.
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.