In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business landscape, efficiency, and productivity have become paramount for success. As a business owner or entrepreneur, you may often face the challenge of juggling numerous tasks and responsibilities, often leading to burnout and diminished results.
As the owner of your business, you need to be doing the work that only you can do – and nothing else. By harnessing the potential of technology and leveraging external expertise, you can streamline your operations, enhance productivity, and achieve greater profitability.
In this episode, we talk about Achieving Extraordinary Success: Mastering Strategic Shifts in Life and Business with Dean Jackson.
As a seasoned entrepreneur, Dean shares his unique insights on how to strategically optimise your business and life, to drive growth and improve overall performance, including “The Self Milking Cow” and “High ROI Oil Wells” strategies.
We also talk about how micro-niching can be beneficial. Dividing a business into separate micro-niche entities is not a one-size-fits-all solution but rather a strategic decision that should be carefully evaluated based on the specific goals and circumstances of the organization. By doing so, businesses can harness numerous benefits and unlock new avenues for growth and development.
This episode will have you considering many different aspects to optimize your business and life, and to take your growth to the next level.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL FIND OUT…
- How pivotable thinking has influenced other marketers (04:30)
- The concept of oil wells – what is this business model? (06:35)
- How to set up your business so you only work in your zone of genius (09:05)
- The concept of self-milking cows – how to create a business that will work best for you (11:11)
- Find the “through line” in your business to strategically make more money (14:11)
- The secret to helping clients become better at what they do (16:15)
- The P&G business model to building your offers (23:50)
- Plan to dominate vs. plan to gamble (25:05)
- The importance of a clear target market for your business (28:07)
- How to make your home feel like you’re travelling (33:53)
- The benefits of having a house manager (36:06)
- Hiring a personal assistant – is it worth it? (42:23)
- Dean’s ultimate advice to business owners who want big results (44:40)
- ChatGPT – Dean shares some insightful stats on this tool (49:17)
QUOTES
“We think the most valuable thing in the business is us, but it’s not. Find an opportunity, and then create a system or a process.” -Dean Jackson
“There’s a difference in energy that comes from a plan to dominate versus a plan just to try it out.” -Dean Jackson
Get In Touch With Dean Jackson
Website: https://deanjackson.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thatdeanjackson
ABOUT DEAN JACKSON
Dean is a renowned marketing expert who has helped thousands of entrepreneurs increase their profits. Since 2001, he has advocated engaging potential clients through money-making e-books. Dean’s success led him to relaunch the strategy in 2013 and co-found 90-Minute Books with Stuart in 2015. Their company offers an exceptional marketing tool for substantial business growth. Dean’s expertise has empowered countless individuals to achieve remarkable entrepreneurial success.
TRANSCRIPTION (AI-Generated and may contain inaccuracies)
Dean Jackson (00:00):
If you’ve got a business where you’re in the results economy and your ability to produce results is going to produce more money. The best place to start is to get yourself out of queued up from the any operation in your business that does not absolutely require you.
Carl Taylor (00:33):
Hey, everyone, and welcome to Entrepreneurs Rising. Today we have what I’m really excited about today’s episode because we have a great guest, Dean Jackson, Dean, just say, hey, for anyone who’s listening and watching,
Carl Taylor (00:49):
I’ve known Dean Now, a couple of years. Actually, Dean, I was just chatting to my fiancee last night and I was trying to remember, we saw a movie after your event in Sydney, we went and saw a movie at the Opera House, the other cinema near the Opera House. Can you remember at all what that movie was? I know you see alignment?
Dean Jackson (01:07):
I do. And that’s I know, I can bet that we had the Choc top. Can we do that? Yeah. Ever favorite place there? I cannot remember the movies specifically
Carl Taylor (01:22):
that we remember maybe being a boy. I don’t know if it was a Bond movie, or maybe I didn’t? Because it would have been around 2017 18?
Dean Jackson (01:30):
I don’t know. Maybe? Yeah. Yeah.
Carl Taylor (01:33):
Anyways, I know. So let’s start. Let’s start with a really tricky question and give you the full intro favorite movie of all time?
Dean Jackson (01:40):
Oh, that’s a really good question. I love movies. Like, I like Pulp Fiction. That kind of movie. I like Quentin Tarantino. I like independent movies. I like Kevin Smith. Movie I love Chasing Amy was a great movie. I like Robert Rodriguez movies. And I’m a big fan now of the Blum house movies, all the Jason Blum. They’ve gotten bought from Hollywood that while they did movies, like God, get out was one of the movies that they did. Yes, yes, they’ve got a really neat model. And we can maybe talk about some of the lessons behind what they do. But I’m a big fan of that whole Hollywood model. The whole movie model was just so very entrepreneurial to me.
Carl Taylor (02:25):
I love that and yes, we will definitely unpack that. So, listeners if you do not know who Dean’s let me give you a little bio that I asked ChatGPT to write a poem about the job so here we go. All right, in mountains, right. In marketing’s realm, a legend stands tall dane jackson a name that echoes through the hole with genius so grand and thoughts that inspire he forged new paths, igniting the fire the nine word email a Marvel he built a tool so concise, cutting through guilt, transforming the game with each word he’d shared inventive and bold a market a rare his podcast a gym, more cheese, less whiskers on guide for those seeking success, not mere risk as with lessons so rich and insights so wise, he captured the minds opened their eyes, a deep thinker, his wisdom, profound strategies devised success could be found. So let us salute this remarkable sage Dean Jackson, the legend defining an age.
Dean Jackson (03:27):
Right, put them on the payroll that’s saying now this is good. Yeah.
Carl Taylor (03:34):
I mean, there’s there’s so much true that I heard a rumor. And I don’t know if it’s true. So please confirm or deny if you don’t want to, were you also the inventor of the squeeze page.
Dean Jackson (03:44):
That’s an interesting thing. So I was inventor of the idea of using a single purpose page where all the only option is that you can leave your name and email address, I did not name it, the squeeze page. So that was Jonathan Mizel named the squeeze page. And there’s whole, you know, the whole We’re buddies of we go back, there’s always that friendly thing of, you know, the legend of the squeeze page that he gets either some that you named, but that was a big, I did that in 1997. As a, you know, realizing that the thing that I really wanted more than anything, the thing that matters, or mattered to me at the time people were coming to the landing page was that they leave their name and their email address. And what I found was that at the time, you could have a box for people to join your newsletter. There was a way to collect emails off of page, but what I did is instead of making it one of the elements of your landing page with 10 other things that people could click on, I made it the only thing that you could do so I took this idea of the cover of Cosmo magazine or you know that they have all these compelling headlines on the front. But you have to get the magazine to get the article kind of thing. So I did that same thing, instead of saying, I wouldn’t have compelling headlines, and then that would say, instead of click here, it would say free inside, or more inside, or you know, and then you would get down to the bottom, and it would have a get free instant access, leave your name and your email. And that the moment that I did that the rate of people leaving their name and email skyrocketed, because it’s the only option. And that’s been true. You know, it’s still use that model guides decades later rhetoric. Right, and a lot of people use it. Yeah,
Carl Taylor (05:52):
I love that. So you what I love most about the story, you just told that, apart from showing just how long you’ve been in this game and thinking about and tweaking and how, how pivotable your thinking has been in influencing other markets is how you look to other industries, like you even talking about when you’re saying you love Hollywood than just then you were talking about when you were thinking about the cover of the Cosmopolitan magazine. And I guess the thing I’ve always enjoyed about listening to you or just chatting with you, is you don’t just go okay, I’m in this box or the marketing world. And here’s what we do. You’re constantly looking at what’s happening in these other industries. What are other people doing and you’re inspired by their entrepreneurial ism. And one of the concepts that I would really love to cover on today’s episode, is this concept of oil wells. I’ve always to be honest, man, I’ve always liked your model. I’m a reluctant coach, you always say we both good friends, we talk to you more. He’s got an amazing business. And numerous times, I’m like, do I want to do these business? No, I don’t, you know, when I look at a model that I kind of go, you know, whose would I like to be more like, it’s always been? I like the way Dean does it. You’ve got these concept of oil wells, you have you show up and you have these great conversations. So I think this is an important concept for people in business who are looking to build their business to a point that it doesn’t necessarily need them day to day. And ideally, they want to move up to maybe an investor level. But there’s also I know, we’re gonna like coaches, in listening to this too, who are maybe haven’t don’t even know what your model is. I just love oil concepts. So let’s chat a bit about that. And how did that come about? Explain what it is?
Dean Jackson (07:28):
Well, so part of that is, you know, think about once you get something going like once you find a, you know, a sort of field and oil field, where do you got the opportunity to, you know, drill for oil there, once you set up an oil well, it continually pumps it continually serves and works. So everything that there’s that concept of not just thinking about, like event based thing where you’re sporadic, or you know, you’re doing a launch, or you’re doing something else, or you’re doing something, I look to think how can we create something that’s going to have some enduring cadence to it, that you’re going to run it perpetually, that it’s something that is, you know, fruitful and profitable. And, you know, taking that approach of setting up multiple oil wells, so that you can, you know, keep things building on top of it, rather than just going around to do one thing, and then do another thing and then do another another thing that’s been the model that I’ve always looked to do is how can we set up a cadence of things that continually recur? You know,
Carl Taylor (08:47):
and I’ve noticed that I wouldn’t say necessarily majority, but a large portion of your oil wells, you’ve done in partnership with avoidance, which, you know, obviously, that means that Dean’s hands don’t have to be in there TINKERING AWAY. How did you come? Like, is that just like, you’re wired that way of how do I do not the least
Dean Jackson (09:10):
wired that way in that I have zero executive function? That’s really I add, and the flavor of add that I have is executive function disorder. So I I’m not an operator, I can’t get myself to do that. But I can, and this is all just recently discovered. Russell Barkley, the Dr. Add doctor and he talked about this idea of executive function disorder, which is really what I have. And in order to make things work, you have to have external scaffolding. And he basically said you’ve got the Add brain is different like most most of your brains, you have two parts. You got the Knowing art, and you have the doing art. And then most brains, you transfer the knowing for the doing. And in the Add brain, that connection is fractured. So you can know everything, but you won’t do it, you won’t do the, you know, disciplines taking recurring action. So everything has to happen in the now. And if I look at how without even knowing that, the way that I’ve set up the things that don’t oil wells are a reliable way to work around, not having executive function, or I’ve got enough, I can get something set up, and then get to the point where other people can do all of the things that are required to keep that well pump to keep it going. And I just do the things that are synchronous and scheduled and can only be done by me. And that’s really where a that’s where this whole idea of the self milking cow came from? Let’s
Carl Taylor (11:09):
that’s a great idea. Let’s share that. Yeah,
Dean Jackson (11:12):
yeah, most of the frustrations that entrepreneurs have is because they’re trying to be a self milking cow. They’re trying to make the milk and pasteurize it and package it and take it to market and send out the invoices and sweep up the barn. They’re trying to do everything. And when you realize that as a cow, you have a special talent that you can do something that others can’t do, and you can make the milk. And in a dairy operation, the best thing you could do is to be surrounded by farmers who can do everything except make the milk, right? And so you look at that and you think about I look at everything that I do. And we used to we draw what we call the milk line, and identify where is the line beyond which I have no business doing anything, or I’m not adding anything to it. So one of the things that drives all of the things that we do is podcasting. I do podcasts. And the thing that makes podcasts work for me is that they’re synchronous, and scheduled. And they involve other people. That’s external scaffolding to make sure that something happens, right. So they show up on my calendar, I don’t look the guests, I don’t do anything like that they show up on the calendar, and doing the podcast by video now other studio close to my house here. And so I roll in a record on Thursday mornings, 10 o’clock till noon, and I roll in at 10 minutes to 10. And I sit down at the table, the mics are there, the lights are there. While I’m is there, the producer to do everything in studio is all set, I talk for an hour. And then we have the next guests and I talk for an hour. And then I walk out the door. And I don’t have anything else to do with it. So everything about the podcast is only to gather the milk on my side. Because now that I’ve digitized this content, this milk, my ideas, my words, it’s my insight that is the milk of what we’re doing in this podcast. The fact that you know, setting up cameras, doing all of the editing, arranging for the guests, getting it transcribed, turning that into articles, or emails that we send out three times a week, all of those things can be done and are done by farmers allowing me to just be the cow. So I’m just the cow out wandering the fields coming up with my ideas, observed observations, comparisons, whatever insights talking to people, and then I come in and mill and then we pasteurize the Take it all to market. And so that cadence of consistently doing those locking sessions fuels me sending three emails a week that have our super signature at the bottom of every email that directs people to be a guest on the podcast. Try our profit activator scorecard, join my email Mastery program or working with me, one on one, and so that cadence of three times a week All getting driven by me just sitting down for two hours a week to do. Podcasts is a great driver of everything.
Carl Taylor (15:10):
I love that. And here’s a question I have for you. Is the design of the milk production process? Is the cow design that or did the farmers just
Dean Jackson (15:18):
designed it? I mean, that’s certainly, I think that there’s part of it. So what we do now, you know, in a lot of ways, we have clients that we work with those people who work with me one on one, or I’m doing deeper collaborations with, we set up the infrastructure. So I’ve set up a farm, basically, that allows other people to be me in that. So a lot of times, coaches, experts, doctors, practitioners, anybody who’s got information that they want to share, but they don’t want to be marketers or be content created the got the content, we just set it up so that we do the milking sessions with them, we bring them into the milking shed, and then we can create everything from them. So I’ve got a whole team of people that we provide foreign services for collaborators.
Carl Taylor (16:14):
And I love that. And again, that goes back to what we were talking about with, you know, you create, what I’ve noticed is you could often create these things for you, or maybe for a client, and then that you see the opportunity, and you turn that into an oil well, that continues to pump and run without you. We assume and you get to that day,
Dean Jackson (16:33):
you know, the minute book? Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s exactly what happened with 90 minute book.com. That that was a more that was a model that I was using to create books and create, you know, information, products that I was recording, and transcribing and editing and, you know, turning those things in, and I was sharing that with people, I was doing it, but I was observing that they’re not doing it, they’re having a problem setting everything up. And so I just started offering to do it for people. And we started a whole company. So now you know, 90 minute books, that calm is a whole separate company, that’s all we do is help people write books. And I’m not involved in the process in any way in terms of the I’m not a cog in the executor machine. But I’m certainly a facilitator and an ambassador, and I get people excited about writing the book, and helping them brainstorm what the best title for the book as I’m demonstrating why small books are a good thing to do. And then when they’re ready, whenever you’re ready. Here’s how we can help you get your book out and publish them. Yes, 90 minutes of your time.
Carl Taylor (17:59):
And that was our store members when I came to your event. And you’re sitting there. Obviously, whenever I attend an event, I’m sure many people listening maybe when I attend an event, I’m both there as a guest looking to learn. And I’m also there looking to learn it, the miticide of how it’s done, or what’s happening, you’re looking for opportunities to understand. So I’m there as a student of the content, and I’m a student of the process and the facilitation itself. And one of the things that I liked about your model was people, we came into the room, and you just talk with us and walk us through your stuff, and share ideas. And it’s where like, you know, the ideas are popping, and we’re getting so much value, and then you’re setting up. And I don’t know whether you’re consciously doing this, or whether it’s just kind of a nature of you. Either way, it’s incredible. Because you’re setting up these opportunities that like Well, one of the best things you can do is have a book, one of the best ways of getting a name and email is offer them a book. And you know, we’ve got this service over at 90 minute books.com, where we can get your book written in 90 minutes. So you’re delivering this great value, and then you’re constantly seeding all your oil wells, you’re kind of going cool. So I’ve got this again. So by the end of the event, myself and many others, were all ready to buy everything, all your little oil wells, anything you’ve got were like, I want it, I want it, do I need it now I don’t know. But like, we know about it, we want it and it’s you built all this trust by creating this value. And what I but here’s the thing I always I really loved and admired is that your your requirement was to show up and just do what you love, which was to share and help us in the room. And then everything else if we chose to engage with that you weren’t involved in that process. And I’m a big huge proponent as business owners. I think the biggest fallacy that so many business owners when we get into businesses that we think that the value in our business is us. We think the most valuable thing in the business is us but it’s not. It’s if you can find an opportunity create a system or a process and then do employ the team of farmers like going to your analogy, the wealthiest person of the farmer is the person who owns the farm, not necessarily what people doing the bits and pieces, right. And what you’re talking about there is you want to own a whole bunch of farms and oil wells and have the team and technology in place to process it. So, like I said to you, I’ve always, I’ve always admired your model of how you, you show up and just be teaching your value. But then you have these side oils. And so guys, if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, how do I apply this in my life? Well, think about your current business, maybe your current business can be tweaked and become an oil, well, then you can do something else. Or maybe there’s functions inside of your business, that can be oil weld out that right now, I still don’t worry too much of you. And then look for those opportunities to do the self milking cow. Firstly, do you have anything else you want to add to that? Before I take
Dean Jackson (20:56):
this is great, like in your own business, part of it is observing, like everything, it feels like there’s a lot of different oil wells. But overall, the overarching thing of if we call it Dean Jackson, umbrella hair of the world with a farm, the lead cow in this thing, that there is a through line for all of that. And everything that we do, our internal sort of frame is that we help entrepreneurs make more money. That’s what we do. So everything that we do, is connected to that through line. And what that means by that is we’re not educating, and I’m talking about direct influence on making more money. So we’re never, we’re not an education company, about teaching technical tools, we don’t do education on, you know, how to set up a WordPress site, or how to, you know, build a landing page or any of those things. It’s not about that it’s about strategically helping people with tools and things that can make them more money. And so just by observing people, if all the things that I’m teaching are involve, well generate leads, right? So you got to get leads to that’s part of the process of making more money. So how do you get more leads? Well, a book is a great idea for getting more leads. But now that you got a book, now you need a landing page, and autoresponders and all of those things. So that led to creating Go Go clients, that is the all the tools that I use in my life, and I’m just I’m the Lead cow. In all of this. I’m helping people I’m showing, by example, the kinds of things how you can build a embraced your divinity and build a business that supports you, as a cow to do just making the milk, you know, yes. And so these are all the tools that I use to do it. So that’s why I create it, but then set it up in a way that other people can do the same thing. So all the landing pages used.
Carl Taylor (23:19):
I’m curious, I’m curious to like the reason, because as you said, there is a through line across all of the different oil wells you have. But you’ve made I’m assuming a conscious decision to have them as these separate brands, these separate products, as opposed to just bring it all under one big groups of like wishes. This is our company and this is this few services or it’s all bundled like when you sign up, you get a book, you get this software, you get this, we teach you how to do that email, talk us through that. Why do you go on that path. Rather than putting it all together?
Dean Jackson (23:48):
I use the Procter and Gamble model of you know, Procter and Gamble’s the big global company. And they have 23 individual billion dollar brands that are all serving individual things, and they all stand alone. They’re all pillars, but it allows them to focus exclusively on the one thing, they all have to stand on their own. They’re not just like, well, this division is lagging, but it’s being propped up by this other one. It’s all they’re all independently driving to be the most successful, individual business outside of just their role in being, you know, part of the collective kind of thing. And so that’s, that’s what I try and get people to do is think that way of, you know, the way Procter and Gamble there’s a great book called the p&g 99 and it was written by a former p&g executive as he outline the 99 principles that they use for growth. And one of the things that’s really that really stood out for me number one was plan to dominate. And and I thought, you know, that’s an really interesting set of words, right? Like, you almost you can’t say those words, planning to dominate. Without changing your physiology, right? It’s, there’s a difference than energy that comes from a plan to dominate versus a plan that, well, let’s try this out, or let’s dabble in this, let’s see what kind of we have, we can do the laundry detergent category, right? Then the second was to build the very best product from the clients perspective. So you’re building the very best thing. And so I’ve used the example, if you’re looking at Procter and Gamble, even in the laundry detergent category, they’ve got five individual brands that do over a billion dollars. And they all seemingly serve very different markets, even though it seems like laundry detergent would be one category. And some companies just have an entry in it and try and get some of that laundry detergent market share. But they look at it that they look at each of the attributes of why somebody would be buy laundry detergent, or what their desires would be. And they plan to dominate that individual category. So for instance, if you want to get your clothes as white as possible, you’re going to use tide. And if you want to get out tough stains, you’re going to use era. And if you want them to just smell great, there’s sunlight. And if you’re single, or you just want to not ruin your laundry, you gotta throw it all in and use all temperature cheer. And so those are all viable, thriving brands, because they’re serving a very specific niche, you know, that’s the way that I look at it, if you can at all, it makes sense to have individual things because it promotes thriving.
Carl Taylor (27:10):
No, I, you know, I see I sit here listening to you say that, and I think about my business automation agency, right. And when we do graphic design, we do video editing, we now do AI copywriting, we do marketing automation set ups, like we constantly added more to it. And there’s so many times over the years. And I’d be like, sure I split this out and make its own separate little business, I should work on building this new function and unbundling it in because it makes sense to the client to have it all together. But would I be better off to separate it. So it’s really, it’s really true there. It can sometimes a conundrum of the best for the client, but also, it would stand on its own two legs as a separate thing to do. Anyway, I’m gonna get myself out of that, because I could get caught in my own head thinking about my own business. Right about that later. But yeah, I think this is a really important conversation to have, you know, as entrepreneurs, you talked about very specific brands with a specific purpose, a very clear target market. I know you’re really big on that, right, it’s get really clear on the target market, and have that one thing for them. And I think if I remember correctly, I think I remember you saying once that it’s not even necessarily. If you’ve got a product that serves multiple markets, it doesn’t mean that you can’t, your whole business doesn’t serve those markets about the messaging that you go out to the market with. And so you want to just make that clear target market, leading them. Even if you’ve got the same product selling the different markets, you’re just using your messaging and the clarity for that. Anything you want to add to that. Yeah, I
Dean Jackson (28:41):
mean, that’s perfect. There’s a great example in the UK, there’s a commercial photographer, and they have a website called we shoot bottles.com. And if you think about that, that if you’re a commercial photographer, here, your choice is you want to cast your net as wide as possible and let people know the whole laundry list of all of the types of photography that you do. We do packaging and bottles and catalogs, and, you know, corporate shoots all of those things, so that people in the market for a commercial photographer will see that that yeah, they do this and put you in the running and maybe select you to do the job for them. But if you take something like a very specific attribute if your target market is all of the companies that package something in a bottle, and you build the best solution for them, in the end, create a website called we shoot bottles.com and all you see are beautifully photographed the bottles. You’re going to appear like the perfect exact solution that I need to Make my bottle look beautiful, right? Even though you’re a regular commercial photographer, and you also happen to have a website called we shoot cans.com, which does the same thing. But in things that look like cans, and it’s all the same, there’s, do you know who Tyler Perry is? Yeah. Okay, so Tyler Perry has a big studio in Atlanta, Georgia here. And he built a 10,000 square foot mansion, in the studio or on the studio grounds. And he built for different facades to it, so that from the front, one side, it looks like a modern home. From the other side, it looks like a Mediterranean home. From the other side, it looks like colonial, and from the other side, it looks like the entrance to the White House. And so he can have all these different facades, all going into the same 10,000 square foot studio space that now you can decorate or organize to be whatever you need. So I look at it the same way that if you’re a commercial photographer, it would be great to have four different facades for people who have products in bottles, people who have products in boxes, people who have products in cans, clothing, you start looking at making yourself and positioning yourself as the only and best solution for that particular segment of the market. Because people if your product comes into a model, you don’t care about boxes are care about and right, you’re looking for the best solution for you. And so I always make the distinction before people that our, you know, profit activator, one that I talked about is selecting a single target market. And by that I mean you’re doing the selected. Most people are so cautious, they don’t want to narrow because that their fear is that somebody who packages something in a can, might not select them. Right. And then instead of trying to be selected, which is passive and hopeful, we’re being progressive and looking, we’re doing the selecting, we select a single target market. That’s where we look.
Carl Taylor (32:37):
Right, I like that, again, that’s one of those key distinctions is of the mindset of, you know, we will I’m sure if you’re listening to this, you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve heard the idea of like the riches are in the niches or pick your niche, your for the others versus the Americans niche niche niche, you know that having a single target market is a better and easier to market for does. But it’s the mindset there. You’re selecting versus waiting to be selected early. It’s those little little subtle things. And I highly encourage you if this is the first time you’re hearing from Dean, and you heard him just talk about his profit activator one, bite activated two, etc. I’m not gonna spend too much time on what’s going on that in this episode, but I do encourage you to go and check that out. So the best place to find that Dean, where do they find? Where’s your oil? Well, for that
Dean Jackson (33:27):
the best place for everything is Dean jackson.com. That’s what he’s talking about a lot of stuff. So everything that I did, that’s kind of like the preamble just shows you all the our whole catalog thing.
Carl Taylor (33:43):
I love that. I love that. All right. All right. I would love to change a little bit of tack, but it’s not complete shift. Now let’s talk a little bit more about home life. Because we talked about in business live, you know, being the cow this and you don’t want to be the self milking cow you want the farmers around you. But I know that you also talk about this idea of when we travel, we go to hotels and life is great. And my partner and I we talk about this regularly we go we literally just got back from Tokyo, Japan recently, we came home going like how do we make home more like travel? Because it’s just amazing. And I know this is something you talk about, like I didn’t get this idea from my own head. I was like deep talks about this. Let’s talk about so let’s talk about it right now. Yeah.
Dean Jackson (34:24):
Perfect. So I’m coming to you live from the Four Seasons Valhalla. And that’s the Winter Haven, Florida. And that’s our whole approach there. You know, I this is from conversations with Dan Sullivan said one time that he and Babs his wife, don’t they don’t want to do any more at home than they would do if they were living at the Four Seasons. And so I really, you know, adopted that as a real lifestyle. You know that that’s a really great thing for you to start thinking about what wouldn’t be like what would happen if the Four Seasons took over your home. So the neighborhood that I live in is called Valhalla. And so we call it lovingly The Four Seasons Valhalla, we’ve got a four season Baja logo, we’ve got coffee cups, everything, if you come as a guest, we’ve got robes with the Four Seasons Valhalla and the whole thing, we really embrace it. Yeah. And that means, you know, so that’s God look at it, that all of the things that you know, that are required to run a household are kind of are done by other people. And it was set up systematically so that everything you know, happens and gets maintained. And it’s just such a relaxing thing, you know, I’m sitting, you can’t see it right now. But we recently just had a flood, my water heater burst. So we’re normally have my Zoom Room. But we’re everything’s torn up where to replace the carpet in the hardwood and the whole staff. So I’m sitting in my dining room right now. But the fact that having somebody who can just manage that whole process is so you know, I’ve had some home services people and I was sharing, the articulation that I really tried to set up or would love to set up is if somebody’s going to do this as a business or set something up for that. The articulation is that I want to live in my house, like I’m a guest at your house. That’s really the thing, like if you’re a guest at somebody’s house, you don’t even think about any of this stuff, right? So I think anybody that I present that to, when you look at your own home, it would just love to have a situation where a responsible adult is in complete charge of your house, they do all of the maintenance, all of the stuff. If anything ever goes wrong, and there’s a leak or you notice something’s loose, or this needs to be replaced, you just tell them and everything is taken care of, you know, that’s what you’re looking for.
Carl Taylor (37:12):
And so let’s talk a little bit more like logistics. If someone’s like, cool, that sounds amazing. How do I apply that into my life? Like, I know, I’ve got some friends were looking at doing it ourselves. We’ve got some friends, do they have a house manager come in? For like, two or three days a week? Is yours? Yeah, more than that? Or is it just two or three days a
Dean Jackson (37:29):
week? Full time. But yeah, full time. But the thing, I’ll tell you how I started with it, because this is a great place for anybody to start. When I first moved to Florida, I just moved from Toronto, I had a condo here. And I set up this reset button is what I call that where every Monday that Mandy would come and clean the condo, she would take my clothes to the Washington fold, she would go to the grocery store stocked my refrigerator for the week of all of the things that I wanted, she put the clothes back away, she would put fill up the car with gas, wash the car, do all of those things. So it’s like push the reset button on everything that needed to be maintained every week. And I didn’t have to do any, you know, and that was such a great beginning into it right that you start with that, that if you could just make a list. Imagine how much stuff could be done if you didn’t have to, you know, if it was just automated, and every week you do that. Now there’s so many things. Like when I started out, you start thinking about vignettes. And you start thinking about where are the scenarios that I would love to have these things and you start paying attention to that, you know, like I had on my bedside table, I was going to bed sometimes I would get in bed and get ready to go to him would take melatonin or something. And if I didn’t have water, then I had to get up out of bed and go get water and stuff and I realized and this is just where we started calling the tolerations that’s a thing that you just kind of tolerate and then so I made a house start looking for how can we eliminate these things. And I had Courtney is the the girl who was doing all of our stuff had her set up the middle drawer of my or the bottom drawer of our my bedside table to be a bottom list water bottle thing you know the splits the small water bottle things Yeah, at hotels. So we just had the bottom drawer is perpetually full of water so I never run out of water water you know and that’s so you start eliminate you start replacing handling those tolerations with systems, right. And now there’s so much easier to do a lot of these things. I mean, any of the, we had before any of the delivery delivery or Uber Eats, or any of those things were available, I had Courtney go to all of the restaurants that we went to get some takeout menus. And we had a binder that had, you know, the inserted things of all of the menus of the restaurants had one at the house, one at the office. So now every restaurant in town was delivery. Because all we’d have to do is look at the menu and say that’s what we ought to have and then coordinate go and get it that so we delivery things, but now select your that is easy, you know, it’s just lifestyle design, like that is a really good I used to create, I would always have what I would call make my life better day. And I would make a thing on Mondays where I would be constantly looking for what can I do today to make my life better? Or what can I do to calamity proof my life. So you had a conscious proactive effort on 50 things a year, trying to improve your life make your life better or calamity proof meaning prepare for something that could be a calamity if it happened. But if you just take a few minutes to get prepared for it, it could solve a lot of problems.
Carl Taylor (41:29):
Yeah, I love this and the idea of starting firstly, having that day in initially where you go, Okay, what how do I make life better? Or what are some calamities that could happen? What could I put in place, or people system processes to put that in place because we do that many of us do that in our businesses already. We’ve learned to do that. But we don’t always think to do that, in our personal lives. Like we’ll be more open to hiring someone to work in our business than we will to hire someone to come in and clean the house or mow the lawn or look after the pool or whatever it is, you know, and they where I live now. And we’ve got quite a large house now and some of our pool we’ve got a got like we’ve got a pool man who comes up in the pool, we got a gardener who takes care of the garden because I’m allergic to grass cuttings physically, but also mentally and emotionally, I do not have any injuries. Right? When we’ve got to clean out who comes we haven’t gone down the path of the house manager. But I’m really keen to do that. I like what you said about starting with this kind of reset. And then the idea from there you thought of more ideas, because I’m sure we can all relate to this when you first hire, whether it’s a virtual assistant, whether it’s a someone local or full time in your business. Usually the conversation I hear people come up with oh, I don’t know if I’m ready, like what would I give the I’ve got enough to give this. But once you hire them, you usually very quickly start to go, I’ve got more I can give you I can give you this, I can give you this and absolutely,
Dean Jackson (42:50):
yeah, I agree. It’s now that that freedom is there, you start to realize, you know, it’s so great.
Carl Taylor (42:59):
And I can see that happening with the home side of things that once you start, you start to go, oh, what else? What else? What else can I do this and do like we have, we don’t have someone to regulate. But every now and then you know we’ve got a young baby, every now and then the laundry gets piled up. So we put a job out on air Tasker, which is similar to TaskRabbit in the US, and just say, hey, like someone come over and fold the laundry and put it away for us very soon. Thanks. So you can go if you’re listening to this and going well, I don’t know if I’ve either got the money or enough stuff to have someone come in every single week, three days or full time like what, as you as Dean was alluding to, we now live in a world where so much of this can be just on demand when you need it. You can just post a job just for this week to do that one time modelled on take care have
Dean Jackson (43:45):
never been there’s never been a better time. You can literally tap into anything on demand any capability to be any resource anything you need to make it any like gold good. delivered right to your doorstep. And at the most tomorrow, you know, that’s so great.
Carl Taylor (44:03):
It’s incredible. It’s incredible. So I want us to start wrapping this up because this has been firstly, do thank you so much for your time and your sage wisdom as the poll have said at the start good. It’s good conversation. Like I guess if based on all of this, if you were sitting down with someone who’s going like I’m doing okay, my businesses, my business is doing fairly well. I’ve got a good consistent cash flow. You know, I think I’ve nailed my niche enough. Like I’ve kind of got this marketing thing happening. I’ve got cashflow, but I want to step back even more from what my business does. Like I’ve got good money, but I’m still involved in the business more than I want. What would be your number one tip, and you can go more than that. But like if there was one thing you would say to them, to really get them thinking differently, what would it be?
Dean Jackson (44:47):
You know, I think it really comes down to the whole overriding philosophy of it is Who not how that’s really the great thing. There’s a great book I coined that phrase the who not how Dan Solomon, and then Hardy wrote a great book called, who knows how that’s all about that concept of thinking, of eliminating yourself from having to figure anything out or to any, the reason that we procrastinate anything is because we’re trying to figure out how to do something. And at that some stage, when you get to a point where you kind of know what you know, you know, what you want to know, you know, the things that you need to know. But there’s, when you come to a thing of hearing about doing something, you’re at a crossroads. If you go down this path of, well, how do I do this, that takes up all these units of time to research and figure out how to do it. And then you still have to invest further time to do it. And probably poorly and slowly, the first time you do it, before you ever get to done, where as you clearly identify what you want. This is what it really comes down to, is being able to articulate what you want, and finding out who who knows how to do it. Because if you find somebody who knows how to do it, and can do it as a service, or do it as a gig or as anything on there, you immediately go to done as soon as you employ who you’ve saved all of that time. So the illusion of saving money, by doing it yourself is, you know, you’re not really doing that if you’ve got a business where you’re in the results economy and your ability to produce results is going to produce more money, that’s the best place to start is to get yourself out of hewed as we say hewed out from the any operation in your business that does not absolutely require you. Yeah. And so looking at that we call it do it like the milk wine, like looking at a process looking at everything that you do every process that you’re part of, and looking for, where does my contribution? What’s the minimum contribution, the most effective thing that I could do in this? That’s why I talked about, you know, podcast as the perfect example of that, that, you know, my involvement the Best, the Only essential thing that I do is talking. Yes, like the way we’re right now. And this is where we do the dial talk done. Podcasts is the idea that I showed up here, right before we get on to go live. And I’m sharing right now we’re creating this podcast, but I’m not going to be the one that now takes it down and edits it puts it on to the thing, and I hope you’re not going
Carl Taylor (48:12):
definitely not the one doing it.
Dean Jackson (48:15):
You’re got a whole team of farmers who are going to take that. So I think if people just if you start with, if you’re at all concerned that that you know completely automating or outsourcing or doing your home life sounds like an extravagance, then let’s start with your business and create the maximum credit surplus of income. So that you now feel like you’ve got the you’ve improved the business so that you can now take some of that and free up your time. You know,
Carl Taylor (48:55):
I love that. And that’s very wise. And yeah, I can tell you right now, I would not be doing a podcast if I was the person who had to do anything more than after this is done. Like I take the recording, I put it in a Google Drive. And that’s my job done. Even the social media posting like to promote it. Yeah, I’m not involved in that. So yeah, I fully. I’m curious, we’ll wrap on this in a moment. But AI has just kind of exploded on the scene. It’s been around for a long time. But do you see a tool like chat GPT? Do you consider it a who or would you consider a who be someone who knows how to use charging?
Dean Jackson (49:29):
Exactly because there’s this sort people going down the rabbit hole of their anytime you got your hands on the machine, doing the stuff as you’re learning? How do I use chat? GPT How do I use these products? How do I do this? You’re investing all that time and experimenting is it’s always there. I put a hoo between me and the technology. I’d rather be able to just articulate what I’m looking for and have somebody else Know how to use chat GPT to create it. And I just wonder, you know, like, I look at where we’re at right now, the thing that that concerns me about it is that it’s largely a boon in content creation, that’s kind of the first use cases of it that people, you know, Kindle is being flooded with books that are written by Jay Z, right. And people are showing you how to create faceless YouTube channels that you can create video content with the thing, why did the research just a little while ago, to see that there are or there were at the time was during this four and a half million hours a day uploaded to YouTube of videos. And we consume five and a half million hours a day of video collectively. But people don’t realize that that’s of the entire YouTube library, right. So if it’s going up every day, by four and a half million, which by the way, would take you 432 years to consume linearly. So you’re adding by four and a half million, one and a half million, four and a half million, four and a half million. And the percentage of content that’s being consumed on a daily basis as a percentage of all of the content is going down, down, down, down down. Because it’s faced with the speed of reality, which is 60 minutes per hour, that our eye holes and air holes, can’t take in any more than 60 minutes per hour. And so all of this new content, this huge amount of stuff. To what end is my question, where are we going with that? Because we can’t improve our ability to we can’t consume more of it. Maybe incrementally better, or more time. But still, I think when you really look at it is to what end? Are we deploying these tools? You know, how can you use it to create a result for people?
Carl Taylor (52:28):
I’ve even seen some people now like there’s like a an app for your iPhone, I’m sure it’s on Android to where you can start replying to someone’s like a keyboard addition. And you can start replying to someone said like, the video I saw was someone was like inviting them on a date. And the person responds in the chat. They go, No, I’m busy. And then they click the little GPT button, which then sends that to chat GPT to write out a form of reply that all they have to do is click, click Yes. And then send. So they just say No, I’m busy. And then chat GPT writes is really polite response saying thank you so much for the invitation. I’m not really looking to date right now, something like that is what said, and I think about your Gmail is adding that to their functions. I think about this world we’re going to get in where it’s really going to be aI chatting to AI, we’re gonna have all these lovely long email conversations that have been slightly written. But every one on each end is literally just putting in a one sentence reply and then letting the the AI write the rest of us like why don’t we just go back to the ones such as reply? Yes,
Dean Jackson (53:28):
exactly. I’m worded email again. Triumphant
Carl Taylor (53:31):
child. That’s right. Yeah. Well, we could probably go on a whole the rabbit hole on that. I’m mindful of time. So thank you so much for coming on. This is this has been amazing. Great conversation. always love chatting with you, man. So we mentioned already, if you want to find out more about Dean in any of the amazing things he has, and I do encourage you to check out his podcasts. He’s got lots of them. But the more cheese less whiskers is like, I believe the most focused one. I’m sure you got other ones going on with someone I enjoy listening to or seeing the little recap email about and also just going through a whole bunch of his funnels. If you get a chance to go to one of theories. Are you running breakthrough events live?
Dean Jackson (54:10):
Yeah, I’m gonna do one in Florida next month. So I
Carl Taylor (54:15):
think that if you get a chance to get head, head over to one of those breakthrough events, I highly recommend doing that as well. So Dean jackson.com, it’ll be in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review. Share it with a friend. If there’s someone if there was one thing that pot and someone came into your mind, it was a friend and it was a family member. Maybe it was a team member. And you’re like, they need to hear this. But and the little Share button on whatever platform you’re listening to this and send it over to them and say check it out. Data will help me it’ll help Dean but also help your friends so make sure you get it in their inbox wherever that is. If you liked the episode, share it with your friends, share it on social and leave us a review. You can do that on your favorite podcasting episode platform. Whether that be Spotify Whether that be Apple iTunes or whatever you’re using, leave that review. Thank you so much. Until next time, I’ll keep up the journey. Any last remarks thing?
Dean Jackson (55:09):
That was great. Thanks, Carl. It’s been great.
Carl Taylor Outro (55:10):
You’ve been listening to Entrepreneurs Rising. Thank you, dear listener for tuning in. I appreciate your time and look forward to connecting in future episodes. If you would like show notes or any resources from today’s episode, you can find them at rising.show rising.show. You can find a show notes for this episode and all other episodes as well as links to socials and or the ability to reach out and connect with me make your suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep up the journey.
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