Today on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast, we have another special treat.
I've been on a whirlwind tour over the last few weeks in Toronto, Chicago, Phoenix, and recently, St Petersburg back here in Florida, where I was speaking at an event with my good friend James Schramko.
Now you may remember James from our periodic podcasts. Normally I go to Australia each year in August, and we record a special episode to catch up on the previous year in Marketing. James is an amazing entrepreneur. He has a wonderful business. He lives in a beach community just outside Sydney, where he surfs every day, and his lifestyle business allows him to do what he wants, when he wants.
We have a lot in common, and we have a lot of great conversations when we're together.
We decided to go ahead and record our podcasts now, before I go to Australia in a few weeks, and in this conversation, we talk a lot about lifestyle elements, similar to those we talk about here on the Listing Agent Lifestyle podcast.
I think you're going to enjoy this episode.
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Transcript: Listing Agent Lifestyle Ep095
Dean: Here we go! James? Here we are, doing our periodic podcasts. I believe this is five or six?
James: Yes.
Dean: Yes. It's one of those. It's five or six?
James: Out of twenty five.
Dean: Of twenty five of the periodic podcasts. And for those people who were following along they would know that this podcast normally is scheduled to take place in August, and it's already October, so they might have been thinking have they already given up after five years into their 25 year commitment but no-
James: No chance-
Dean: No chance. We had a schedule change.
James: We have. So you're actually coming to Australia in November this year?
Dean: I am.
James: A little bit warmer than usual.
Dean: Well that's the thing, I've been five times, and the first, I got spoiled, because the first time I came it was beautiful. High 60s and just sunny and nice. And the second time I came, it was a little bit cooler and I thought oh just a little cooler this year. And then the next year I came, it was kind of back up again a little bit, but still on the cool side, and then the last two years that I've come, it's just been-
James: Freezing-
Dean: Freezing and last time I was there you saw, we did the podcast in the freezing cold house-
James: In the cold house where it was almost within the limits of bare feet. And I remember you said why don't they just put a heater in and I said they probably can't afford it, said why, I said because this house would have cost a fortune, and you said well how much would this house cost? And you were off by at least a digit-
Dean: Exactly-
James: Your estimate. So here we are, it's actually much warmer-
Dean: Beautiful-
James: In Florida. And I've had the great pleasure of visiting your home which is a nice gesture, you've invited me out there to the ranch. And got to see what life's like for Dean, lovely place there. Very quiet. Idyllic. Ruralesque.
Dean: You didn't really get the whole thing. You came in the back way, and I kind of live on the edge of town, but yes, very quiet. Especially where I am, just in my development there, it's very idyllic and quiet.
James: I could see you'd get a lot of things done in that environment. Super productive zone. And setup for comfort, and I've also had John Carlton.
Dean: Yes, what a great visit. We had some fun. So John came in a day ahead, and we spent the whole day together and then you arrived the next morning.
James: It's like when you're traveling with royalty, you send them in early to reconnaissance to check out.
Dean: Your advance man.
James: Got the all clear. And I said you know guys I'm supposed to be staying at the Hilton, you said the Hilton will survive without you John said.
Dean: That's exactly right.
James: But we're here now and we've been at this event, Kevin Rogers event, Copy Chief Live, three. And it's going well.
Dean: Yes. I've been at all three.
James: Right. This is my first one. Last year was prohibited because of-
Dean: St Petersburg is abuzz. They're abuzz about-
James: They're abuzz with copywriting marketers.
Dean: The news that James Schramko is here. From the land down under.
James: I'm not the only Australian here though, there's quite a few. And it's a long way to come, but it's definitely worth it if you're interested in the sort of topics that get talked about here.
Dean: Copywriting.
James: But beyond that, there's been some themes coming through the presentations today about mindset, about how to turn that individual expertise into an actual product service and then grow and scale those businesses, to use some devices that take you beyond just writing words and seeing yourself as more than that.
Dean: And it's really cool. Todd Herman had a great talk, his alter ego in fact, it was funny because it's the most common thing that he gets is people say "Yeah I've been doing that", not thinking about it as alter ego type of things. But it's a natural thing, that we do that we don't talk about or you realize that we haven't been doing things like that. Especially you, you were even so far with the superman underneath. That was really the closest thing to really alter ego.
James: It's like I remember asking myself that question, who do I need to be to get the results I need to get, and I also remember realizing how powerful the mirror is. You look in that mirror and you can empower yourself to be whatever person you need to be, and even one of my mentors used to make me watch movies like Patton. I think he was trying to instill some in the role I had as a general manager, he wanted me to have some general Patton leadership attributes. I don't think he wanted me to slap people with their gloves, but he did want me to be feared by the enemy and that guy was unstoppable. And also, he used Rommel's tank warfare book against Rommel, on the same battlefield that he wrote the book about.
Dean: I love that.
James: That was a classic.
Dean: Oh that's the best.
James: There's so many metaphors in that movie, but one of my favorite ones is the scene where they're coming up to a village and all the troops are back to back, and he comes up in his little Jeep and he's like "What's going on?" And they're like oh there's a hold up on the bridge. He gets the Jeep to drive all the way down, they're being shot at from the other side of the river by the enemy. He flies down the outside, they get down to the bridge, and on the bridge is a donkey and a car and it won't move. So he goes up to the donkey, he shoots in the head and they push it off the bridge.
Because seriously, one donkey is holding up his whole platoon and they're getting shot at. That's the constraint, and he just eliminated the constraint and they could cross the bridge, take out the enemy. So that was probably the single most powerful metaphor in that book about theory of constraints, about not letting one bad egg cause the whole platoon to go down. So when he found an unsatisfactory employee, he would come up to me in my office and he would say James, and I'd say yeah. He'd say donkey on the bridge. And he would point, and I would have to go out and metaphorically remove the donkey.
Dean: That's hard core. Donkey on the bridge.
James: That was code for get rid of them.
Dean: Oh my goodness.
James: There was a lot of lessons in that. I would have to channel my General Patton in that moment to do something that was difficult, for the better good of the business.
Dean: That's a really interesting thing, because when you think about it now, the many roles that we play. You're a new father, but you're also an old father. And you're a new husband, newish husband. And you're a business owner, and you're a surfer-
James: I'm a new surfer, but I'm also an experienced older man.
Dean: Exactly.
James: I was at a surfing café, and some kid scrumpled up a paper bag off his meat pie, and just chucked it on the floor. And I looked at where he dropped it on the floor, and then I looked up at him, and I looked at the floor and I looked at him and then he looks at me, and I'm like "You're going to pick that up right?" He goes "Yes Dad". He had this attitude. And then he just walked out, he didn't pick it up-
Dean: Yes Dad, oh man.
James: It's like wow, it's like you have all these roles in everyday life. You have to choose which one you want to be.
Dean: It's amazing when you get to choose and actually think through who does this character need to be. And that's interesting, I like that idea a lot. I like that idea a lot.
James: Even John Carlton said today you've got to wear many hats. It's another way of saying it-
Dean: Even the copywriters talk about voices, different voice-
James: Yeah, so everyone's doing multiple personalities. Now it's become okay to talk about it.
Dean: That's it. So what's been your big developments over the last year, since the last periodic podcast, because it's a good thing to-
James: Well I've produced a human-
Dean: Yes, that's a big-
James: You know, in personal life-
Dean: Produced a human.
James: That creates quite a lot of scenarios, but one thing it made me extremely conscious of is I noticed the absence of sleep in the beginning, it's devastating in terms of the change in sleep. I was doing brain training apps, and as soon as the baby came I couldn't reach my peak scores anymore.
Dean: Really wow?
James: It makes such a difference. And then I was really fortunate, oh gosh at least I've got a good routine, and I control my schedule. I've been disciplined with my three day work week, and I was very fortunate that I've leveraged things to be able to operate with the baby. I've spent a lot of time. Up until this trip, I've not missed a single day even during the pregnancy, so that was a realization but also it made me even more want to leverage my time, so I went through some rate changes in my packaging. I simplified. I-
Dean: Not just, the rate changes you were describing to me-
James: They're significant-
Dean: You're talking about a ten times rate change, like a 10x.
James: Yeah in one program it was a 10x change, and in the other program it would have worked out at three and a half times, so I just realized my time is actually more and more valuable and I'm much more experienced, and I'm attracting better clients, I've got more data. I'm getting great results for everyone I work with, and no one says no to the pricing. So in tune with that, I actually increased the value of the offer. It's not enough just to change the rate, I changed the design and the look and feel of my-
Dean: Everything-
James: Everything. I got all the sales copy tuned up, because I got help from Bryan in a previous episode I went through how that worked, but he was able to message me better than I was and convey the value that now matched the rates. And I also added extra features to the existing members that made it really great value for them, especially anyone who was on an older rate, they get the benefit of it, but new members coming in are still getting a great deal, which is evidenced by this week alone, while I've been away, I've been away for a week and a half so far, I've actually had a record week in sales.
Dean: Perfect.
James: And as you've said, even on your presentation today, a lot of the things you're doing haven't changed from the last seven, ten years. My core thing, haven't really changed that now for three months, but it's just snowballing and compounding. And when it spikes, it's just like an extra thing. Now I have to pay a lot more tax apparently, because my income's gone up again, and I've got to up the rate that we pay on going to counteract-
Dean: Your quarterlies or-
James: Yeah, we do-
Dean: Do you pay quarterlies?
James: We do.
Dean: We have the same thing.
James: Quarterlies, and it's now significantly adjusted. It just in the last three months, just from that single cluster of changes, so it's not just one change, it's a geometric change across the board, and it's had a massive impact but I'm still the same person. I have the same or slightly less clients, but significantly more dollars per effective hour that I work, and trying to work a little less and get paid a little more. I reckon there's a book in that.
Dean: Yes. That's a good one. If only there was a book, that'd be a great book title.
James: And you know what, one thing I've noticed, it's not good to assume people know everything they're talking about here. So we'll direct listeners to Amazon or Audible to buy the book Work Less, Make More. Some people might be listening to this as the first episode that they've ever listened to of mine-
Dean: That's true-
James: And I think because we've been present for all of our episodes we presume they know everything we've ever published, and rarely that's the case. I'm interested, what's been big for you since the last time, since we recorded last?
Dean: So much. So much. Really been aware, new awareness's about time, which is funny that we're kind of in parallel paths on a lot of things and we don't talk a lot in between when we get together. We message every now and then but really it's the big annual catch ups-
James: Partly the 12 hour time difference-
Dean: Yeah exactly-
James: 10 hours difference
Dean: Yeah, yeah. But we just know that we're in tune and it's enduring. This is good to kind of document and share the things that we've learnt. Well one of the big things that's happened is this ever increasing focus on furthering the who not how model of thinking that it's better to ask who instead of how to do something, and find a who who can bring the how with them, and have been focused on that we've got a whole vocabulary around these things. Dan Sullivan, from Strategic Coach, he's really taken to this idea.
James: He published a book on it-
Dean: And he published a book about it called Who not How?-
James: So everyone would think he invented it?
Dean: But he writes on-
James: But the fact that he's got the book-
Dean: Exactly.
James: I used it on a slide of mine and I credit you, and then I saw his book and it made me question enough to ask you "Dean, who coined this term? Because Sullivan's got a book on it". And you said oh no he credits me in the book.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. And so the whole vocabulary, we keep coming up with new ways of doing this, the who-vocabulary we call it, that the idea that it's become one of the foundational things of strategic coach, where the first objective is to who yourself up from tasks that you could replace yourself with a who, and you're creating what we call a "who-ed up hour", so your freed up hours, you've got "who-ed up hours"-
James: Got you-
Dean: And so the goal is to who-up a thousand hours. So for people who are coming with a standard two thousand hour work year, and so the funny thing was, because I've been working on this for so long, and I only do the things that only I can do, and so I did the calculations that my contribution, my thing that it takes to run my business, is 417 hours of my time to run my base business.
And that includes the podcasts that I do, I do nine three day break through blueprint events, I count those as ten hour days, so 270 of those hours are doing the break through blueprint events, doing my member calls for our email mastery, and all these. This all comes down to about 417 hours, which is elegantly about 20% of a 2200 hour annual thing right? It's just serendipitous that it turned out like that.
So I've got the hours, now the idea of thinking about now I've got 1000 hours, if I think about it as an asset now, then putting a value on it, talking about looking at your effective hourly rate, the time that you're actually spending, not your billable hour-
James: No, revenue less your costs is your profit, divided by the number of hours.
Dean: Exactly. And so when you look at that, if I've got a thousand investible hours that I have, that I've got the opportunity now to think like a capital allocator, where's the best place to invest this capital that I have-
James: Right, and you can compare-
Dean: For the highest return-
James: Business vehicles, relationships with models-
Dean: Yes, exactly. And so I look at that, and had a couple of realizations about it. This is where I thought well what do I really like, what's the thing? I like working with people one on one, as you do. I think it's the most efficient and the best result getting model. I don't like trying to manage a group dynamic just to create mange a group and I realized I've done enough of those that I realized that all the real results and the breakthroughs came from working with people one on one, and I enjoy it, and I'm good at it, and got a framework to do it from.
And so I decided that what I would do with this thousand hours is I would allocate 200 hours towards doing more of that, a private coaching group, and I decided this. Was almost a year ago, now just about last thanksgiving, and so I just said okay I'm going to start a private coaching group and I'm going to do it as a consulting card, where people get an 8 hour card that they can use one hour at a time, for over eight weeks or eight months or whatever, they want to do-
James: Like a gym ten visit pack-
Dean: Absolutely, yes. Exactly.
James: Like my surfing instructor, he sold me ten surf lessons.
Dean: Just like that. Just like that. And so I thought okay, so if I do that, and I'm willing to allocate 200 hours towards that, that one of the realizations that I had was that you can't spend 1000 hours at one time, and it's a pretty profound thought, that you're the maximum. When you really look at it, you're not going to spend or invest more than ten hours. Absolutely maximum in a day on that, right?
And the thing is that as soon as I am done with today's ten, I get another ten added right onto the next day and the year. So if I think about them as a rolling 200 hours-
James: You have a replenishing stock of billable hours-
Dean: That's exactly it. So now I keep this at 200, and we keep, in my daily dashboard, I have a formula that shows the number of committed hours that I have outstanding-
James: So it's like a service desk-
Dean: And that number has to be below 200. So if it's down to 192, I can take on somebody new. If I can go down, if it goes lower, I can add on-
James: And the other thing of course, you're getting paid in advance and most people won't ever use all of them.
Dean: Well that's true. I'm noticing that some people-
James: We used to sell five hour and ten hour website development packages, it would be very rare that someone actually uses all of them.
Dean: That's interesting.
James: So you'll have some redundant hours there. It will catch up on the average, whatever that will be, in fact I still have only used six of my ten surfing lessons, it's been about two years.
Dean: So I look at that. So I've had some people who've been using them, but I look at the dashboard right now, I'm at 144-
James: So you can top up-
Dean: So I can top it up if I wanted to. And that's a fun thing, just thinking the reality of how we experience and have time at our disposal, it's the only time we can spend is today, right? There's only now, I can't spend tomorrow's time today.
James: The fun thing that comes in with time is that you can buy other people's time-
Dean: That's exactly-
James: They'll sell it to you, it's called a job, and it's also funny-
Dean: Joel calls them a behavior rental agreement. That's what a job is. A behavior rental agreement.
James: I've been approaching this at a really similar point. One of the very first activities I do when I'm coaching someone inside the task transfer. List all the tasks, then let's transfer them to someone else. That was a less elegant way of saying who not how. Your way is much more elegant, and I've also worked out what my time commitment is. I'm prepared to commit 20 to 25 hours a week for my business-
Dean: Which would put you at about 1000 to 1200 hours a year-
James: It does. It's about 1000 to 1200 a year which is where you were half that, and now you're topping up-
Dean: I'm aspiring to that.
James: The funny thing is if you work out the numbers, if you were to work out a hundred thousand dollars a month profit, and a 100 hours a month, you'll work out roughly a thousand dollars per effective hourly rate. It really helps protect you from doing very low value activities when you're working with that framework, you normalize to that. And you think no, I wouldn't do that job, it's not going to end up turning the right sort of rate, and so it's an easy decision making choice. No, that's something I shouldn't spend time on, or yes that's something I should spend time on.
Dean: That's a great thing when you do have that awareness of what that hourly rate is and you realize how much when you think about, let's use a thousand dollars an hour as a thing. If you think about even with somebody at that 50 dollars an hour, you're getting a 20x.
James: Return-
Dean: If you can in one hour give a great brief, a great articulation of a what, that's the key to equipping who is to be crystal clear at articulating the what, the outcome that you want. And if you can do that, you've got thousand hours, or that thousand dollar investment with that time, gives you a multiplier also of that 50 dollar an hour person times 20 hours.
James: Plus the other thing is when you are on, like in your case when someone’s buying your time, you're switching out of being and into their world. You've switched off your life temporarily, and you become completely beholden to them, but you're very motivated at those rates, compared to if it was 10 bucks. Your waitress at the café diner motivated at 10 bucks an hour, you care but not that much. But when you're getting paid a lot more, you care a lot more. You can really lean into it, because you're on it.
Dean: I agree. That's why the thing is, that's why I say the thing of taking that at whatever the value is on the cards, it works out to be roughly almost 2000 an hour, 1800 something an hour for those-
James: If they get used. It's going to average up.
Dean: Maybe.
James: Plus I really like that it's self-paced, because it's on them, and not you. Whereas if you have a set time and the time is exceeded, you start getting people saying oh I didn't get a chance so can I redo it again, so the timer is on and there's more pressure. So you've got a very interesting approach there.
Dean: And the whole thing is then that sets the baseline now. I look at that, that I'm willing to do those 200 hours for that, and I look at that as the minimum that I want to get for those things. So that now, on the other end of those, I can take 200 purely investible hours of speculation or result or profit sharing or those kind of hours, investing in something being paid for the results. And there's been setting up longer terms.
James: I'm curious, do you have a by product from this as well?
Dean: Do I have a by product?
James: Yeah.
Dean: Not specifically. For email mastery and things like that, I do, but for these one to one calls I record them but for their benefit only. I'm not recording them and then packaging it. Listen now I tell James how to.
James: I think that defeats a lot of the purpose of having privacy-
Dean: Exactly.
James: In my case, I always take written notes, and and I strain the written notes after the call. If there's anything I haven't already got in my life sheet, I put it into its category tab and I'll add to my database. And that is where I pull from-
Dean: What would be an example of that? Like now that I think about it, I've said some things in those conversations that I've had really great articulations of something-
James: Right, so you probably wrote them down?
Dean: Well they're all transcribed, recorded and transcribed.
James: Then you would pull all of the new bits of information out, you put them into a German note taking system that I read about from Ed Dale actually sent me. It's like a tabbed index system, imagine it's by topics and every time you get a new, let's say one of the topics is email master is the topic and then within that there's how to do a super signature, there's how to do conversational email replies, there's the nine word email. And let’s say you come up with a new thing altogether, it's like a coupon with deadline technique, right? The coupon deadline email response. Then you would go into the nearest category, and then you'd create an extra tab for that and then you'd put it in there.
So after the call you say "Oh they came up with this great idea in this call, I've just invented it, I'm going to put it in my tab database system", and now that's your body of work and over your life you can build up a brain of all your best ideas in one source. Now someone says "Oh Dean can you come to my event and talk about conversational email?" You go into your tabbed database, I use mine on a Google Doc, and you just pull out your notes which are just in the cleanest, most simple, concise form, and you can build out a slide deck, you could talk about them as a podcast, you could make a book from it. I do a new training every month in super-fast business membership, and most often they're coming from my notes that I've collected as a byproduct of doing my coaching course.
Dean: Joan Rivers had a file, folder, a wall of file folders, full of every joke written out so she could, going to speak to the farmers’ association she could pick up some-
James: I remember I used to have a speakers handbook and it had all the topics and in each topic it had some quotes on that topic, it had some bullet points about it. But this is my own life sheet that is a body of work of everything from a webinar structure to a sales letter checklist to how to sell a membership, how to do retention it's all there in bullet points, accessible on my phone. And it's built up over doing calls for the last-
Dean: And these are all archived in the-
James: Yes. There's a tab along the bottom, by number, and then there's an index at the front.
Dean: No I mean these are archived in super-fast, the business?
James: No. In silver circle there's frameworks and checklists.
Dean: I've got you.
James: Where I'll sometimes put them. There are some checklists and SOPs in super-fast business, but they usually materialize as a monthly training. So if I have a monthly training on how to sell on the telephone, it will have come from my bullet point notes in there, after-
Dean: In that training-
James: Five clients will say James I got to sell this over the phone. I'm like okay well here's what you've got to do. I pull up my life sheet, I pull up the telephone sales, and I see my notes to myself from the last 17 times I've answered this question. And so say okay Dean, this is what you do, dah dah dah. So now I'm leveraging my own training database to make my coaching much less effort. Plus if I come up with one new thing from you today I'm going to add that for next time and now I've got a whole book there on that topic.
Dean: Yes.
James: So I actually did a training called how to use the life sheet on this topic.
Dean: And have you uploaded that into any AI or machine learning?
James: I've tested it in some but my premise is that my last decade’s worth of coaching notes will have massive value when the AI can take it to the next-
Dean: Because that's what we're doing-
James: When it can be me or better-
Dean: And categorizing everything under each of the eight profit activators.
James: So you're probably doing that in a formatted way, but I also believe that it'll be valuable, so I have notes from every single individual coaching call I've ever done, and it's now electronic format so it's going to be more powerful.
Dean: Nice, I like that.
James: So it's a byproduct. Just like Vegemite comes from beer brewing, it's the yeast extract. Or the cabinets in your kitchen probably from compressed chipboard that came from offcuts when they're making furniture and stuff. Timber, compressed into particle board. So there's lots and lots of byproduct stories that are interesting.
Dean: That's awesome-
James: Even in Formula One, when they're braking they store the electronic-
Dean: My Tesla does that-
James: Yeah back into their engine.
Dean: I can show you that. So the Tesla has regenerative braking, so as I take my foot off the gas, as it's slowing down, it's regenerating back power.
James: Well I guess it can't currently make you a cappuccino but it can drive you to the coffee shop by itself.
Dean: That's the truth. That's another big development, and it's something that there's a lesson in this, so since the last, and you've been experiencing it for the last couple of days, is I got a Tesla X and it's far and away it's the most unique car that I've ever had. I've had a long string of BMWs and this is-
James: If you ever got a Fiat Jolly, that would be more-
Dean: Right exactly. Yes. But this car, there's something profound James about waking up every morning with 330 miles of potential to go, with a full battery, with a full charge.
James: It keeps topping itself up?
Dean: I'm never going to drive. I have a charger at my house. I'm never going to drive 300 miles in a day, but the thing to know that I have that potential, there's so much I keep thinking about the days, really there's no way around it, but as I reflect on time and life and the reality as I've said is that you can only spend the days, you can only spend today's time right?
Now there are some unique ways of going around it, I've been experimenting with the last, the idea of, because I like to think about an abundance of time. We're looking for managing the three dials of abundant time and daily joy and financial peace, those are the three lifestyle elements that you look to manage and so I've always been attracted to freedom, as the time freedom and that brings me joy to have that. But an abundance of time, when I think about a 16 hour day is essentially 100 10-minute blocks, have you heard that before?
James: No, never.
Dean: So it's an interesting thing, when you start to think about, as a currency, a 10 minute unit is very useful. It's not an insignificant amount of time.
James: I actually once registered a domain called snapworker.com, because I became aware that I was doing very quick small tasks, and I was much more proficient and prolific at them than any big meaty burdensome annoying frustrating big tasks. I get in, get out. Hit and run. I would do my social media in under 10 minutes. I would write a quick email in under 10 minutes.
Dean: That's what I'm saying, it's that kind of-
James: Most of the things I do are very short.
Dean: Yeah, if you start thinking about now your day as this moving guitar hero runway that it's constantly moving, that everything's coming at you, or like a Tetris game of these 10 minute blocks are coming at you and your goal's to-
James: Interesting with that Tetris thing, have you found as you've freed up time, time slows down?
Dean: Yes, absolutely, that's the point-
James: And they just come in so slow. And other people are walking around like a full Tetris screen, where they've got nothing. "I'm so busy, I'm overloaded, I'm overrun", and we've just got a little block cruising down the screen, very slowly, but we're in the same space and the same time, but the perception of it's completely different.
Dean: I have found the useful thing of I know I'm being successful when list has always led off with I know I'm being successful when I can wake up every day and say what would I like to do today? That's, to me, the ultimate freedom. And what I realized in that, trying to harmonize that or live, I found I was protecting my time for that, avoiding putting anything on my calendar. Warren Buffet likes to have nothing on his calendar right?
And so I've been experimenting with this idea of additionally asking, I know I'm being successful when, I can spend a portion of time each day saying what would I like to do tomorrow? And that is a relaxing thing, where you can it's like this thing where you're running along, you've got a passenger, there's present Dean, and then there's future Dean, and aspirational Dean. You've got these multiple parts of you and that what I realized is that now Dean wants to do only what is needed right now, he's interested in conserving energy which is again, one of the most under talked about drives that we're genetically wired to conserve energy. We're wired to eat and to avoid pain and seek pleasure and conserve energy-
James: We don't even seek, pleasure is the absence of pain. It's all about avoiding pain-
Dean: Exactly. And so present Dean only wants to wait til the last minute for everything, because and I'm talking everybody's got a present Dean. You've got a present James in there. But that's the person that wants to wait til the last minute for everything right? And then I finally figured out why books work so well as a lead generation thing, compared to a webinar, in that a webinar is a commitment that present Dean has to make. If somebody's saying you're signing up for, oh I'm not going to have any time for that. But it's like a book, you can take action now and it's almost like present Dean is buying this book for future Dean, when future Dean's going to have some time to read. Oh future Dean will like this, I'll buy this, hoping that future Dean's going to have time to-
James: It's true. I won't fill in a webinar registration, especially if it's on demand, I'm not going to sit there and watch a webinar-
Dean: That's exactly right.
James: Most people don't ever open the book, or read it.
Dean: That's absolutely the truth.
James: 50% of Kindles-
Dean: But that doesn't stop them from asking for it. And that's why I've done the 90 minute book, has been such a-
James: Because you get to get an email-
Dean: Yes. And it's done its job!
James: Yes that's the whole point.
Dean: The title, yes.
James: We've talked about this before-
Dean: You should do a book, a supplement to yours is write less, make more.
James: Well I truly agree with that. A smaller book, you were making this point recently, that very small books can have a huge impact. You had a couple of great examples.
Dean: I did, I shot a video and I used the examples of Common Sense by Thomas Payne which was the book that was the foundation in the 1700s for the founding father of the United States to base the Constitution on. And on the opposite end of that spectrum, the Communist Manifesto. Now Common Sense by Thomas Payne is 82 pages, the Communist Manifesto is just under 30 pages, but you couldn't find two bigger ideas that have been-
James: Yeah, so if someone wants 500 pages-
Dean: Ignited-
James: What could they possibly have that's a bigger idea-
Dean: That's what I say. The thing, it's like really? You're going to have a bigger idea than that? You need more than that?
James: And it's actually not about the number of pages.
Dean: No. It is about the title.
James: We talked before about setting your future self-up for a better time. It's like if you've ever got to the day that you have to travel somewhere and you're groaning oh my god why did I agree to this, you've stitched yourself up. So that's why I created decision making filters for myself.
Dean: Yes, tell me about that.
James: Well it's just a little checklist to ensure that you're not going to make your future self-have a difficult time. I actually future pace, and I think so it's now the day I have to fly to Florida and I've printed out my ticket and I've got my passport, am I feeling good about getting into the Uber, or am I feeling remorse for making this choice? And then I weigh up, what are the positives for going, what are the negatives, what else could I be doing with this same time, what could lead from the relationships or the contacts made et cetera and then what commitments do I owe, all of these things.
If the decision is yeah I'm still happy for it, then I'll roll with it. And I've gotten to this trip and rolled through it. This is my one trip to the USA this year, it's the first time away from the baby, the contacts here that I've been able to reconnect with and reestablish with have been phenomenal. The opportunities I can put forward for my business partners have been tremendous, and I'm very excited to be speaking tomorrow. I think this room is perfect for me, the people in it and the messaging that's been put forward so far. So I'm actually still had a good sleep plan and food plan, so I'm actually managing this trip particularly well.
Dean: Set some kind of land speed record at my house, 14 hours?
James: I had to stay up a little while to earn that. You can make a big difference though. Like you could ruin your trip if you countercyclical or with your sleep, not optimize it. I've managed to make it work through a bit of planning and experience and knowing what works for me. I love it.
Dean: So this whole idea of thinking ahead, and knowing that even that little thing, like to spend one 10 minute unit, one 10 minute block, out of a 100 that you have today. One 10 minute block on just asking that question, what could I do to set future Dean up? What can I do in the next 10 minutes for future Dean that he's really going to appreciate? It's really interesting.
James: Like I'd be sitting in my house and I'd be thinking god I'm so happy past James got this place. It was an effort. You've got to buy and go through a transaction and deal with people and contracts and pay money-
Dean: Thank you past James-
James: Thank you very much. I appreciate you. Then I look across to my surfboard rack, I'm like I'm so glad past James started this sport six years ago, what a legend. But then I think I'm going to go out now, I'm going to practice so that future James can have the best time in the Maldives, he'll be able to take off on the better waves, he'll know exactly what equipment to ride. I'll go and put in today's disciplinary training session. If it's a bit raining, if the swells not perfect, I'm just going to set myself up in the future.
Dean: That's perfect.
James: I think that's why we do a lot of health things. What we put in our mouth today might dictate if we're in a hospital bed 20 years from now.
Dean: And that's one of those things-
James: Would I look back and think and wish I'd done a little better-
Dean: It's absolutely one of the things that actually have permanent ramifications.
James: Big time.
Dean: Money, if you wasted time and didn't optimize your moneymaking, that's not going to kill you. If you didn't optimize your time learning or reading or doing anything that's not going to kill you. But over time, the daily decision of not surfing or-
James: Makes a significant-
Dean: Makes it now difficult that it's like that's what I realized to, is that there's no leverage in the health stuff in terms of you can't get rapid results like you can where there are multipliers kind of thing. You know? There are, but not in the same way. It's still a physical laws-
James: It's kind of hard to outsource yourself-
Dean: Well yeah, you can't outsource the pushups or the-
James: You can't just buy, you can't cheat ahead with that.
Dean: That's exactly right.
James: You can get surgery to remove chub or whatever, but if you’re eating patterns and fitness aren't there, you're still going to have underlying issues. It's kind of what I like about surfing in a way, you've got to be present for that. It develops your stoic ness. You've got to do it. You've got to paddle out. And you get yourself out there and it's big, you've got to get yourself back in. And there's no palming this one off, there's no deferring it or making someone else a scapegoat. You've got to own it.
Dean: It's really interesting, speaking of stoic is I've been reading Seneca and it's crazy to me when you read these that these were the conversations they were having in 35 BC, that they're still having the same thing. I remember I was reading letters from a Stoic and this is Seneca sending letters to his protégé, and he's talking about this idea of picking one text, one book, one master and going deep in this, as opposed to just constantly getting new things when you haven't digested the first-
James: More than applicable now-
Dean: In 35BC they're talking about this as a problem! And here we are, and it's even more-
James: Massive problem-
Dean: Of a bigger problem now. It's crazy, but that's so much.
James: That's why my mentor at the time was making me watch old movies and learn from the past. In fact that's one of the Patton things, he studied every battlefield where he was at war. What happened 800 years ago? What happened 300 years ago? What happened last year? And he could actually communicate with the previous battlers, he thought he could talk to them.
Dean: Is that right?
James: Yeah. He was almost mystical.
Dean: I'm going to have to look into him.
James: The thing that was the classic was when he was having a tank battle with Rommel and he beat him, and he said "Rommel, you fabulous bastard", and he's holding Rommel's tank warfare strategy guide, from that-
Dean: What movie is this? Where do I watch this?
James: It's called Patton.
Dean: Patton.
James: With Gregory Peck. It was an Academy Award winner, 1970 or something, and I've watched it many, many times. He also made me watch Mr. George goes to Washington, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington about filibuster, and he made me read Atlas Shrugged and all these very interesting things. Also about automotive history, that's how I realized most of it came from French, and the great tulip craze, that prevented me from getting caught up in all the cryptocurrency bullshit.
Dean: Cryptocurrency, right.
James: They're all crazy in our industry, and I said this is the tulip craze, and they thought I'm an idiot, and they all lost their money. It's kind of funny.
Dean: That is amazing.
James: Because I already knew history, and if you don't read history, you're destined to repeat it over and over again-
Dean: Isn't it funny, I was saying to somebody the other day that I was not into Western Civ in college, but now it's the thing that I'm most fascinated by, wish I'd paid more attention-
James: I didn't do history at school, but now I'm fascinated by it now. And I have a new appreciation-
Dean: You realize the value of it-
James: Yeah like I was telling John Carlton about reading my great grandfather's diaries, and he said how wonderful that is to be able to do that. But he essentially did what I do, a hundred years ago. In 1916, he was journaling, which is like blogging, and traveling around the world, buying and selling, doing geo arbitrage. That's exactly what I do.
Dean: Isn't that amazing?
James: Yeah. But he did it on boats, and it took him a long time to get places.
Dean: And you look at now. I think going into the 20s, we were talking about that, I'm very excited about that. The first proper decade of the millennium, we're going into the 20s with a fully stacked capability kit that execution now has been fully commoditized, and I'm saying commoditized in the good sense of the word, in the beneficial sense that you can buy commodities, you can buy stuff. And I point to Kylie Jenner, that's since we last talked is Kylie Jenner's a billionaire now, and she has a team of seven people, that's it. Her core team is seven people and it's who not how, because she partners with a white label to make the product, partners with a distribution company to package and fulfill, she partners with her mom's company to do the administration, she partners with Shopify for all of the e-commerce, and she and her core team just focus on the what's.
What are we going to make? What colors do we want to use? What are we going to call it? What do we want it to look like? What's our approach going to be? What's our strategy? What is the entrepreneurial opportunity question, and then the who is who can do all of this stuff, and the good news is that there's not a signal who that anything you can think of that's already been done is possible. There are people who you can tap into through your pipeline to cloudlandia, to get those executions fulfilled without you having to think about it.
I think that is going to be a really growth career opportunity, there'll be jobs in integrating ideas with cloudlandia, to be a project, the new project manager of being able to take something and integrate it with a distributor or on demand workforce. Have you read Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail?
James: I own it, but I haven't read it.
Dean: It's so good. It's really that's what he talks about is all the new capabilities, the new exponential organizations out there. Because Kylie's done that all in three years, go from zero-
James: Amazing-
Dean: Yeah, to 350 billion, or 350 million in sales. Yeah.
James: Wow. So I guess we've got to wrap up soon, get off to our official evening commitments.
Dean: I always love these, catching up. It almost feels like no time has passed-
James: No and we're synchronized, just back to usual, just bridged over many years.
Dean: Exactly.
James: And it's truly a great symbiotic relationship but in my world your stuff's just omnipresent. Everyone in my entire community's doing nine word emails-
Dean: I love to hear that-
James: Super signatures. I'm perpetuating who not how as well, in my own slide presentations, so your ideas are strong. And we were talking before, if you take a long term view in this market, that's probably wise because I was supposed to seek you out and track you down ten years ago, and I was given your name by Brad Fallon as the guy. The guy behind the people that I should talk to. I'd never heard of you before, and he said if I could arrange a catch up with him, would you fly to Florida to meet him? And I said I will.
Here we are, ten years later, and we're in Florida, catching up. Finally ticked that box of an in Florida meetup with Dean Jackson, but we've filled a lot of ground in the meantime.
Dean: That's it. It's nice, because we're going to get another meetup in just a couple of weeks.
James: Yeah, I think we should do another episode.
Dean: Yeah, while we're in Manly.
James: Take advantage of the opportunity. That's now James committing future James and future Dean to an episode, but I think they'll get there and think that was a good idea-
Dean: They're going to be thankful-
James: Yeah they will-
Dean: That we did that-
James: Because we're taking advantage of the ability to increase the frequency-
Dean: I love it, I love it.
James: Always a pleasure Dean.
Dean: Awesome. Thanks. And there we have it, another great episode, and if you'd like to continue the conversation, you can go to ListingAgentLifestyle.com, you can download a copy of the listing agent lifestyle book, the manifesto that shares everything that we're talking about here, and you can be a guest on the show if you'd like to talk about how we can build a listing agent lifestyle plan for your business. Just click on the be a guest link at ListingAgentLifestyle.com.
And if you'd like to join our community of people who are applying, all of things we talk about in the listing agent lifestyle, come on over to GoGoAgent.com, it's where we've got all the programs, all the tools, everything you need to get listings, to multiply your listings, to get referrals, convert leads and to find buyers, and you can get a free, truly free, no credit card required trial for 30 days at GoGoAgent.com. So come on over, and I will see you there.