Special Cause of Variations

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today have a great conversation with Dean. We're going to run through what I guess is special times. So special on the podcast because we're episode 100. That definitely seems like a milestone special because of everything that's going on out in the world. So today, rather than dive into any specifics on books, we're kind of diving into the current world order and moving conversations more online than offline. So thinking about a book as a tool in your arsenal, we're often talking about kind of conversational conversions and how a book kind of starts the conversation. We're not really going into any book details today, but instead we're really looking at the difference in the world and how to best make use of the digital opportunity. We talk about necessity being the mother of invention. And really the opportunity is that people out there, your potential customers, are being forced to adopt technology that can actually make everything a lot more convenient for them. So digital technology means that you can get to more people that they can get to you remove some of the barriers to entry, both in terms of cost and time and effort. So these times are. Or where we are at the moment, it's kind of necessitating that. But we talk a lot about what we can do to make the most of that as we inevitably come out of the other side into the new normal. So great episode. Some real interesting insights, some things to think about. And then obviously, as we're talking through, think about how your book's going to tie into this and really help that conversational conversion lead to more customers at the end. So with that, I'll catch you on the other side. Mr. Bell.

Guest: Well, what are you doing here?

Stuart: What a surprise. This isn't the usual break. The joy of 100% Cloudlandia.

Guest: So you're safe and sound.

Stuart: All safe, slowly going mental. But apart from that, all sound.

Guest: This isn't much different than my normal life, actually.

Stuart: Do you know, I was talking to Betsy yesterday and saying that day to day, like, I'm in the office upstairs at the house most of the time, so that's not a problem. But as far as social distancing goes, it's often just me and Lucy here in the day or me here in the day when Lucy's at work and the kids are at school. But now there's not so much distancing because everyone's here.

Guest: Ah, gotcha.

Stuart: So that's the difference.

Guest: So I think so there's.

Stuart: Yeah. So exciting times Well, I thought today we would celebrate because this is episode 100, believe it or not. I know. That's crazy, isn't it?

Guest: Congratulations. Look at that.

Stuart: Thank you very much. I would say it's a tick in the box of consistency, but that 100 episodes is maybe over four years. So not entirely as consistent as more cheese or the joy of procrastination, but we're getting there.

Guest: 100 episodes, you go in syndication, get that big syndication money now, like Seinfeld, right?

Stuart: Yeah, that's it. We've hit that magic number.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Well, I thought today we would kind of partly celebrate that number and partly look at what the heck is going on in the world and how a book kind of ties in with the potentially new world order. I've had a few conversations this week and this is the week we've been doing a lot of Facebook lives. Obviously everyone's at home a little bit more. So we've been going through the book blueprint scorecard on Facebook lives and a number of the questions have come up there or the comments have been around. How does the book work in this new world? People still, I think, trying to think about how it fits in to how they used to do business. Whereas we've talked about it, I've talked about it with a couple of clients. This idea of now moving even more into Cloudlandia, really regardless of what happens at the end of this and being a fantastic way of starting a con, starting a conversation, making in contact, but whilst being physically distant.

Guest: Yeah. And this is, you know, I think that part of the thing is with, you know, anytime there's an acute onset cause of variation, which is really technically what this is, that there's something nobody could see coming. I've never experienced anything like it in my life. And you can't point to anything historically even unless you go, you know, all the way back to the Spanish flu, that you can't even imagine what that would have been like. But we're living in the middle of that time right now. Right. And this, I think when you look at what really, what's the reality of this situation, this is not. It's not going to. There's going to be an end to this. Right. And so you start to look at where it seems really severe right now, and it is and serious. But the measures that we're undergoing right now, like the social distancing, the self quarantining, the things that are going on here, that people are being encouraged to stay home, forced to stay home in a lot of areas and that that's really what's going to have to happen to, as they say, kind of flatten the curve. So you look at it and time feels like forever when you're in the middle of it. Right. Like in the presence of it. But if you take, like, if you zoom out just a little bit and you realize, okay, well, for one thing, today's Friday and it's been a week now. Already.

Stuart: Already, Right.

Guest: Gone by quickly. Right. Like, you realize how quickly this week went by and that just to put it in perspective, there's a low probability that we're going to be done with this in 90 days. That's a low probability. Right. It's going to be some level of disruption and something not back to normal. There'll be social distancing and caution and people only go out really when they need to kind of thing. But there'll be some closer to a sense of normalcy than there is right now, hopefully. But then there's also equally a high probability that by Labor Day that we will be much closer to back to normal than we are right now. Right. And so that there's a window of, you know, window of six months probably. And then it'll be, I think, really changed again. Everybody will be very cautious through the entire next flu season or winter. It'll be fresh on everybody's mind. And then hopefully there'll be a vaccine and treatments and we'll be back to the way people think about the flu now. And the reality is the numbers still, when you look at it, there are still more people right now dying from the regular flu than from coronavirus. Right. Like each year the number of people that die from flus and pneumonias. And so all that said, this period of time is not something that is going to blow up every business model. There's going to be periods, there's going to be most businesses that get back to some sense of normal just because they're such a required part of society. That's the business that's hurt the most right now. The ones that are being hurt the most right now are certainly restaurants and public services, like, you know, getting your hair done, getting your nails done, getting, you know, going to the gym, going to all the things that are just a part of everyday life. Those things are not going away. The desire for those things is not going away. And as soon as we get back into the normal swing, you would anticipate that those things would rebound right back, that there's a pent up demand for them, you know.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: And travel Same thing, airlines and hotels. It may slow down where I think what's going to have the bigger impact on it is that some level of non essential business travel is going to level is going to reduce now that I think that what we're learning and this is the, this is, I think the, the big shift out of this period of time is that people are, I'm calling it virtual gathering. That people are getting more comfortable and realize that virtual gathering is in a lot of ways a superior experience than in person gathering. You know, and I say that not just as an introvert but that it's practically, you know, for, for all intents and purposes you're seeing now that everybody's becoming aware of the tools that are needed to virtually gather. Right. So you're seeing on the backs of the kids being forced into homeschooling. Right. Online classing, online classes that the families, the households are being fast tracked into becoming virtual gathering enabled. Yeah, right. And as that happens, then the parents, now we have an environment in the house that is equipped for virtual gathering. The parents are going to see over the kids shoulders that oh wow, this is really possible. Kind of like being in class. And then one of the mothers is going to realize, okay, well we can't get together for our book club on Thursday night, but let's do a virtual gathering and we'll sit in our own comfy chairs and we'll drink our own wine and we'll talk about the book. You know, talk about the book. That's the real reason that we were getting together to turn wine and that is going to be okay. Evites just was saying now they're fastest growing. The number one thing that's happening now is virtual invites for virtual birthday parties, virtual showers, virtual anniversaries, virtual family dinners. You know, those things are, that's all happening. And I think that as the, you know, people get more equipped with the peripherals that make that an enjoyable experience, like you know, a nice monitor and good quality webcam and microphone speakers that make it an immersive kind of experience. Yeah, that it's gonna be a. I think this category above all other categories, I think this one has the opportunity to be the most, the most creativity is going to come out of this. I'm. My mind's on fire with all the things we can do.

Stuart: You know, I was talking to some clients in the week, financial advisors, very much in the past class based. So we were in the process of moving it slightly more virtual. Anyway, this necessity being the mother of invention has kind of really pushed that, that class thing forward to the fore now. But also down to things like the onboarding of clients. So the traditional approach was come to a class, then come into the office and we'll actually go through your numbers individually. So being able to present that online, this was the first time they did that. We were working to make sure that they' got the document set up beforehand. So knowing, kind of orchestrating that journey a little bit more. So rather than thinking oh it'd be great to show this thing and reaching down to the drawer and pulling out, thinking of that ahead of time. But even down to using things like DocuSign so that that was one of the stumbling blocks. Okay, how do we get people to sign up? But even using all of these tools that have been around for many, many years, this necessity being the mother of invention and just as you said, forcing people's hands, now that they can't procrastinate on this decision, they're being forced to do it. And then if it's evidenced as being more convenient. I agree. I think it's that level that will be the biggest change coming out of this. That non essential business travel, the non essential meetings, the just adopting the technology to be as, as effective as it can be while still having some in person stuff. But still all of that underlying 30% of stuff that doesn't need to be in person that I think is the will be the residual effect of this. And that is what I was talking to them about in terms of where they'd actually written a book a year ago and had used it sometimes, but not, not very often. So kind of taking that asset and putting it more into the fore of starting a conversation that they would have had or had been having in person. But how can they use that as the, as the kind of catalyst to start the conversation and then what are the orchestrated steps of leading to the steps they would do in person anyway but can now do online. Just really rethinking that. And I agree. I think this, this time, this lack of choice now, this necessity is really going to be the thing that is the sea change. And when it gets back to kind of air quotes normal.

Guest: Yeah. And I think that you know, people being this is a thing that's definitely going to be a time saver for people. You know, like when you think about going like you know, regular meetings, like, you know, you think about the creativity of what's going to be able to happen with after school activities and stuff. Let's just say for kids or online learning this is going to be, I think, the grand renaissance of online learning. That the. I'm serious.

Stuart: Like, it's just funny to talk of a renaissance of online learning, but I know exactly what you mean. This is the podcasts.

Guest: Yeah. That this is really going to be the opportunity for, you know, because I've been involved now in the last, you know, two weeks more Zoom conferences than I've been involved in probably up till that point. Right. And that I've experienced, you know, gatherings of 150 people that, you know, used the breakout room functionality to, you know, to break everybody off into groups of three or four people, which is effortless and very intimate, you know, very intimate that way. And, you know, sounds great. Everybody gets connected. And I think that for things like that, people are going to realize that this is a far more a superior experience to a, let's say, like a quarterly gathering of somebody, you know, that it would be far. When you look at just the time impact of it. I just did as you know, a virtual breakthrough blueprint this week. So normally a three day in person live event in a boardroom with 10 to 12 people. And I just did a virtual version of that this week. And we had people from Las Vegas and Belgium and Bangkok and it was just seamless. I mean, we were all in our own environments and I was doing, I was sharing the math. Like even doing an event here in Orlando celebration. It's about 40 minutes from my house. That the, the time impact of that. If we say that my preferred environment is to be in my bubble here at home, that I have to leave the bubble on Sunday afternoon at 4 o' clock to get to the hotel to check in and get ready for the get together on Sunday evening and then spend the three days at the event and then drive home Wednesday evening and I'm gone out of my environment for a total of 75 hours and probably $3,500 in expenses of being there. Like that's a local event. Right. Without factoring in airfare or travel or anything like that. That's just the boardroom and, and hotel room for me being there. And you start to think now the, that I can stay. I was able to this week stay in my environment, wake up, have my old, my whole morning routine, have breakfast at home, and then pop into the studio, you know, my Zoom studio that we set up in the house and I'm instantly teleported into the boardroom with people from all over the world for. And spend the day in the boardroom and then at the End of the day, we sign off and I'm magically right back in my own home environment. And so once people get experience of that, once they recognize that as a superior experience, we as a society have been quick to adopt things that prove themselves to be superior or more convenient or more enjoyable or better, and we don't go backwards. And so I look at that like, if you go all the way back to the trend, any transitional period that when we were making the transition from horse and carriage to automobiles, I'm sure there was some resistance, because that resistance is not for the superior thing that's ahead of us. It's for our main desire, which is to stop to the status quo. So everybody say, but I like my. I like my carriage and I love my sofa that, you know, just perfectly comfortable and my horse is fine. And then, you know, you start to see people zooming by you in cars, and your cars are not pooping. You know, you don't. You realize your horse poops and you've got to feed it and all this stuff, and then you get it. You know, you experience a car and you realize this is a better experience. And you don't. Nobody's pining away for the horse and carriage, just like nobody's pining away for the joy of washing their clothes by hand with washboard and hanging them out on the line. Anything like that is just nostalgia.

Stuart: Yeah. It's interesting separating out the job of work that's trying to be done from the mechanism which is doing it. So the absolute convenience of getting from A to B in a car. Absolutely. Better not to take away from the fact that there are still people that ride for pleasure and there are still plenty of horses around. I think with the technology, that's exactly the same thinking about what the job of working is that you're trying to do and separate that from the way that it's been done. So as much as possible, adopting what will be a paradigm shift for whether it's 10% or 90% or somewhere in between, still thinking about it now and positioning now for when we come out with the other side, I think that's the real opportunity today, is to just, as you're saying, not nostalgically pine for the past and wish it would go back to as it was, because it won't. It's going to be different no matter how. Whether that's a little bit different or a lot different. But how. What can we do today to try and make sure that as we come out of this curve, it's in the best possible position compared with everyone else. That's been the real interesting part.

Guest: Mm. And so I think that's going to be an amazing. I think that's going to be an amazing thing. Like you look at what you know when you. And there's going to be opportunities for people you're already seeing. I'm already seeing on TV people, you know, the bar method exercise things are now giving 25,000 free memberships where you can do online. And everybody's already adapting to that. You know. Yeah.

Stuart: That's been the real interesting thing to see all of the companies stepping up in different ways now. On one side it's kind of altruistic and just making. We're all in together, so try and make it as painless as possible. But on the other side, particularly as we kind of get a week in, two weeks in, three weeks in, there are going to be more commercial intents behind those decisions. And trying to some of that audience now, but some of the again, this is another necessity is the mother intervention type things. If this is an opportunity now, then how can this also be an opportunity in six months from now? And presenting the easy way for people to get started, which at the moment is driven through necessity. But thinking about how that translates in six months time that easy way of getting people started, not trying to hoard all the information, keeping it in. And the only way you can get started is by coming in and I'll close the door behind you until we sign on the line that started. But how can you easily transition people into that start and get people on board and enjoying the service and then monetizing it or standardizing it or turning it into something official after that, thinking about a new way of bringing people on board that as well as an opportunity now I think is a huge chance for people to rethink how they've been doing things traditionally just because of inertia or nostalgia or just the way air quotes again.

Guest: And it might open up new opportunities. Like we were. I had Ben Pogabiller on the email Mastery call yesterday and we were talking about he has a hot tub showroom. And of course people are not coming into stores. Non essential stores are being shut down kind of thing, which they'll be open back up. But it showed to him. We kind of brainstormed this idea of a virtual showroom where I said what I might consider doing if I had a retail store is just like I did with Zoom. You know, I have a custom URL Zoom with Dean where whenever I want to Meet somebody or invite somebody to a zoom meeting. That URL is a URL that when they type in, it'll prompt to. If you've got the zoom stuff, it'll direct you right into my zoom room. And I thought, you know, you can have that meeting open 24 hours a day. I thought that what I might do is have it. Have the camera, have it set up on an iPad right there in the showroom and invite people to come by the virtual showroom anytime. And when they come to, you know, hot tub. Hot Tub Tours.com that they can. I can pick up the iPad and take them on a virtual tour of the showroom, show them the different models, answer questions about it, let them shop for whatever they are looking for from their home, and then we can send it over and have it installed or whatever for them. You know, all keeping social distance away. And for anybody who's got that kind of business where people could, you know, you could have a, you know, have an advocate kind of walk you around and you can look at things and answer questions. Your personal shopper kind of thing.

Stuart: Almost like that surrogate model where people are in. In jail and then surrogates have got their body cameras walking around.

Guest: Exactly. Yeah.

Stuart: But that separating the. I think that's an interesting way of thinking about it. I hadn't particularly articulated that before.

Guest: Is that something that's really happening?

Stuart: I don't know. That was Arrested Development. Do you remember the TV show?

Guest: Okay. Okay, great. Right, right.

Stuart: Yeah. I don't know. Although I wouldn't be surprised if that was happening in.

Guest: But you and I know that, you know, because you and I have had this discussion before Corona ever came around of me, you know, getting somebody in all black with a motorcycle helmet, equipped with a iPad to go to certain conferences that I talked about that where I didn't really want to travel all the way there, but I'd like to be there, to hire somebody to be there and walk around with the iPad so that I could experience it. Yeah.

Stuart: And this idea of separating out the job of work from the way that it's delivered so I can almost. I don't know whether I've actually had this conversation or whether I've had a kind of like a parallel conversation. And it's. And it's overlaying, but hearing people saying, oh, well, that's fine, but it's too much work, or that's fine, but this time. But that the people who jump on board and it's not going to be perfect, but then neither is a People queuing up at a checkout in a real life store, you're not going to cover every option. But then stores, physical stores close or the weather's bad so people can't get to the store. There's caveats on absolutely everything, but people who jump on board and try things. There was last week there were a couple of the. Because all of the theaters and the concert halls have shut down. So the amount of musical acts that I've seen doing Instagram or Facebook live streams, kind of like behind the scenes type things or just these off the cuff, completely unproduced performances. But it's that engagement with the person, with the artist. And again, not to suggest that everyone needs to be an artist in order to do that, but just now being able to use the technology to deliver a more behind the scenes, a more personal experience, but personal scale and at a distance. Again, coming out of the back of this, I think that's going to be a significant change. And there'll be people who really adopt and embrace what's going on at the moment who will get an unfair advantage out of the. The back of this. Because that's exactly right. And it's just a. It happens to naturally gel with their personality and they can just start. Start doing this and enjoy doing it. And it's not an overhead or burden. They just get out there in front of a potential audience and then kind of claiming the territory. Because everything's up in the air a little bit now.

Guest: Yes, I agree.

Stuart: Exciting times. We are just coming up on half an hour, so appreciate the time. Episode 100. Looking forward to. Assume we're all here at 200, then

Guest: we'll special cards of variation, right?

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think we just found the show title.

Guest: I love it. Yeah.

Stuart: Cool. Okay, buddy, well, thank you. I will chat to you a little bit later and we'll catch up with you again on the show soon.

Guest: Okay, thanks. Bye.

Stuart: Cheers, buddy. Bye bye. And there we have it. Really enjoy those thoughts and the way of thinking about the current situation and the opportunities that it presents once the. This too shall end, as the saying goes. So how we can best make use of the time at the moment and kind of overcome the immediate hurdles, but also position ourselves best coming out. So a couple of takeaways that we mentioned in the show. Dean was talking about email mastery, the email mastery call from this week. If you haven't yet downloaded a copy of the email mastery book, then head over to email mastery.com and grab a copy there. This idea of conversational conversions that we talk about a lot really is expanded on in email mastery. So that would be the first thing. The second thing I mentioned that we're doing Facebook lives all this week and next week going through the book Blueprint scorecard mindsets. So if you haven't joined in with any of those, then head over to our Facebook page, which is facebook.com 90minutebooks or go to 90minutebooks.com and follow the Facebook link down in the footer. And then and we've got today's Friday. So I'm going to do the fifth mindset today. We'll wrap up the last three next week and then at the towards the end of next week, we're going to touch on some of the technologies that we use to implement a book and answer some of the questions. So really do a wrap up session at the end. So those are two great takeaways from this episode. Obviously, if you're ready to get started on a book, I really think that now is a time to as things stabilize in this sort of unusual situation, then now's the time to really dive in and get something created so you're able to make the most of it as things kind of return to like this air quotes, normal world, but the opportunity to really leverage some of the online stuff which will stick around after everyone's kind of gone back to work. So if you're ready to get started on a book, then just reach out to us at hello at 90 Minute Books or follow the get started links and we'll be here to guide you through the process and get something ready for or when everyone sticks their head back out of the house again. Okay, so with that, thanks very much for your time, guys. Really super pleased to have got to episode 100 here. It really does seem like quite a milestone. We've got a huge thank you to everyone that's been a guest on the show and the customers and the partners that we work with and the team that we work with here. So thanks again for that. Thanks again for you listening. Go wash your hands and we will catch you in the next one.