Why You Need a Conversation Starting Book with Dean Jackson

Stuart: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the book more show. I'm Stuart Bell and today Dean and I got to catch up with the studio. I'm going to talk about why it is you need a conversation starting book. There's some great insights in this one. Over the last week or so I watched three people talk at conferences about using a book to build your business. But they were all talking in the traditional publishing sense. And we know that the cost of that, the overheads of going that route, it's just unnecessary for 98% of business owners. It's expensive. It takes far too long when the real benefit for most of us, the job of work of the book is to get that start in a conversation with people who are most likely to become clients in the future. Great insights here. We really dive deep into all of the benefits of a book without getting caught up in the waste of that traditional publishing route. So remember, you can check out the show notes and watch the video to this one at Bookmore show. And with that, let's get to it. It's that time. It goes fast.

Dean Jackson: Yes.

Stuart: So today I thought we would talk about what you and I think is the job of work of a book because over the last couple of weeks, I mean we were at the house a couple of days ago watching one of the live streams and people were talking about books way more in the traditional sense, in the bestseller sense, in the multi tens of thousands of dollars a month of work sense where there's definitely a purpose for that, a job of work. But that's really not the use case that we're talking about the majority.

Dean Jackson: So it's funny because just yesterday I was on a zoom meeting with a gentleman who had, you know, spent tens of thousands of dollars writing a book with a ghostwriter and getting it all edited and laid out and you know, 250 page like traditional, bigger than a standard book, beautiful, you know, full color dust cover version or whatever. And told me that he had now you had 3,000 of them in a warehouse. Could we use some of that content

Stuart: for Christmas presents for friends and family paperweights or.

Dean Jackson: I use books like this as a nice lift for my laptop. A laptop lift. But I just, I'm such a big believer in the use of getting the information out, like getting, using it to gather the audience and then it's so much, I think better to spread out the content over a period of time to the people who are attracted to the initial message of the COVID like that. That's the way that's the Path we went down. Like he's got what I think would be the most valuable thing for him is thinking about doing some lead generation.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And then converting each of the chapters in the book into something that we could run postcard or you know, information for. Turn each one into a lead generator but then fulfill. Give somebody the full version. Right, exactly. And highlight that.

Stuart: Yeah. This idea of funnels and campaigns versus build it and they will come. It's such a broader opportunity to attract the people who are attracted to those six, seven, eight different chapters and then use it over the long run rather than. I mean, he's got the book already, but in terms of thinking about creating one using those action steps or things that resonate to bring people into the world. Then there's a smaller piece that advances the conversation, but the long tail of the engagement with people over the longer period, just the short run, the opportunity to use the exist, the additional stuff rather in that funnel. We get people a lot of times who come saying, hey, I've been doing the same presentation for five years, I've got it down, I've got it recorded. There's a great recorded version. I just want to use that. And we. I can't think of the last time we did one of those. Because it always turns into more problems than just recording something fit for purpose.

Dean Jackson: Yeah.

Stuart: But definitely don't not use that content, but just use it outside of the book. The book is. Its job of purpose is to start the conversation.

Dean Jackson: Yeah.

Stuart: Not to convert in the pages. Few people read it.

Dean Jackson: Right.

Stuart: The overhead of doing full traditional version, both the time and expense and the delay. Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And the, you know, then you've got them and they're more expensive to print and they're a bigger commitment, you know, printing wise. So inventorying them. You get so much time to get to the point where you've actually got the book in your hand and then going out. Now there's a lot of good things that can come from writing a perennial. Like writing a category defining book.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: Because we were talking about. You were talking about lives. What we were live streaming was the Joe Polish the Genius Network annual event. And in that room there's a lot of people who have written New York Times bestselling books and are, you know, known for that. But they've got reach, they've got an audience like that. So when they write a book, it automatically catapults that. Yes, exactly. As opposed to. I think what people think about that is that. Well, if I have. They're looking at correlation as Causation, that they're looking that, well, that guy's rich and famous and he's got a New York Times bestselling book. Ergo, if I have a book and it gets to the top of the New York Times, then I too will be rich and famous, even though I'm neither right now. And so it's, you know, it's not cheap to get a book to be on the New York Times. You know, first of all, it's just the fact of writing the book itself is going to be, you know, probably in the 30 to $100,000 is what. Yeah, those, the people who are doing that are doing that in just creating the book. And then a year, probably in reality of time to, to get that, to get that going. And there's a place for it, if you are already an established idea in the marketplace, you know, but I just feel like we've uncovered a shortcut, fast pass to get the psychological hack that you're looking for by realizing that the triggering mechanism of the title of a book is what does the job of work that you're hiring the book to do. If you're in a point where you don't have a big audience, you're hoping to gather an audience. And then that's the lowest. I was thinking, I was just writing in my journal about this, like some of the reliable, repeatable models that I've developed, you know, and if I had anything that that would be the fastest path that I would take for, for any market. If I were going into any market, I would look at, I would take all the profit activators I'd look at Profit Act 1, select a single target market. So I'd zone in on who is that person I'm trying to reach. Then I would think to myself, okay, what are the hopes and aspirations of those people? What are the thoughts, the questions that they've got, the things they're pursuing, the problems that they have? I'd create this whole word palette, that

Stuart: avatar of where they are and what their thinking is, trying to intersect the

Dean Jackson: same place, observing them, getting all of those, identifying do I have visible prospects or invisible prospects? And if I've got invisible prospects, then where are they in? Where are they hidden? If they're fish, what pond are they in? You know, this kind of thing. And then I would look to create a title of a book that would definitely be compelling to that audience. And I would write the minimum size book that would do the job of work to get that as long as I can have a book that has that title, 95% of the job saying 95. I'm being generous with the 5 because I believe that 100% of what they're responding to is the title. And the fact that it's a book and you've delivered a message to the right audience that's compelling. Right. We were talking about Dr. Mielke at breakfast this morning, and that idea of a book about plantar fasciitis, that's a small book. If you put the plantar fasciitis solution that, that to the people who have

Stuart: that problem, it's jumping off the page too.

Dean Jackson: And they don't know or care that it's 250 pages or 50 pages, it doesn't matter.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: The job of work is just to get people to say, I want that.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: Then, you know, when the money, rather than spending the money to write the definitive work, plantar fasciitis, or whatever your topic is, to spend the money on gathering the audience, knowing that if we can identify a thousand people who have a recognized, acknowledged interest in the plantar fasciitis solution or the adult acne solution or the, you know, Longboat Key beachfront condo report or the 90 minute book, any of those things, we get a thousand of those people and then nurture our relationship with those people for over the next 100 weeks that so many of them are going to do something. It's like such a. So for $5,000, we can turn that into $155,000 or more in that period.

Stuart: Because in that oval funnel is doing its job of work of collecting the interested parties up front. And then the longer tale of engagement is done with all of the other things around it.

Dean Jackson: Yeah.

Stuart: But the book is amplifying that message and starting the relationship off.

Dean Jackson: Yeah.

Stuart: From a place of giving useful information.

Dean Jackson: Yeah.

Stuart: And the, the minimum viable book that you were talking about, the minimum viable content is just that, the starting point that makes the people who opt in feel like they've been delivered the answer they've expected. They're not feeling that they' bait and switched into something else. They've got value from it. But the clear understanding that there's way more of the picture, way more of the journey over here. And here's each little step, here's the next step. Yeah.

Dean Jackson: That once somebody's in there, what's the next thing? Now that we're looking, I'm just kind of going all the way through the eight profit activators, select a single target market, compel them to raise their Hand. That's the only job of work of profit activator 2 is to get somebody to raise their hand. Now we're in profit activator 3. If we can get a thousand people in that pool that we're nurturing over 100 weeks, not the next hundred minutes, the hundred weeks, two years.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: That half of them are going to do something in that category. Right. Yeah, it just, it was so funny because before you walked in here, I was recording a podcast with a real estate agent in Guelph and we talked about. He's been doing. Generating leads for about a year now.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And intermittently following up with people. Took a little fell off on sending the weekly emails that we recommend. Then he sent a nine word email to them, hey, are you still looking for a house in Guelph? And he got eight or 10 people who replaced a lot of responses, but he got eight or ten people responding back saying, oh, we bought a house. Hey, thanks for all your help. Right. And so he fell off in doing it and missed out on that. That opportunity.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And then profit activator 4 making an offer that's going to make it super easy for people to get started.

Stuart: Right.

Dean Jackson: Just take the next step. So that formula, that's been, you know, tried and proven and I could deploy it quickly.

Stuart: Yeah, that's the thing. The speed to market and the opportunity cost of doing something longer and less defined. We get people all the time talking about that long tail who joined the nine word, the nine minute book list years, and I mean six or seven years ago.

Dean Jackson: How much does our signature book cost now?

Stuart: What are $2,000.

Dean Jackson: $2,000 for the signature and 90 minute book, the fast version, and people who want to get a narrative version, we can do 3000 to turn it into a more narrative thing, which I, you know, I'm a big. If I were doing it, this is what I say to people all the time, is that I would start with the narrative version. And I know I'm an advocate for it. And this is how I know that most people who, you know, we own a company that does it, the 90 minute book company that creates these 90 minute books that are driven by a book called the 90 Minute Book. Right. That people opt in to get.

Stuart: And yeah, we're not going somewhere else to write.

Dean Jackson: Right. We don't have a big. It's not a 252 page hardcover dust jacket book. It's a 90 minute. It's the exact thing that we're showing people how to do.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And that is a You know, that's been millions of dollars from a 90 minute, 50 or 60 page book.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: That is a transcript of a targeted interview that I did with Susan Austin explaining the concept of the 90 minute book. And it's done in that format.

Stuart: We intentionally characters format. Right.

Dean Jackson: But divided into the chapters and the things. And people say, oh, I want to get. I want to do a narrative book. And they don't believe that when I say that's what I would do. A 90 minute book is a perfect example of the signature one. And that's how I know that probably 75% of the people who do a 90 minute book with us have never read the 90 minute book. No, they opt in for it. They get it, they see it in their hand.

Stuart: I was the COVID of it, which most people have seen. The COVID of it is an orange cover. I was on the phone with someone last week. He was convinced that the thing that brought them to us working with us was that little blue book. I mean people don't remember the details. I think even we talk about readership rates often.

Dean Jackson: Well, it may have been somebody who. Because I have a blue covered book that looks like the 90 minute book called the 50 Minute Marketing Sprint.

Stuart: Right. And email mastery as well. It was definitely the 90 minute book. Definitely got it wrong. But they may have seen the other ones as well and just confusing which one it was. But that point on people want the outcome.

Dean Jackson: Yes.

Stuart: For the job of work of these books that we're writing, we're not writing them for people to be entertained. The product isn't the book. The product is the conversation, the people. For them, the outcome is the thing that they're interested in. Not being entertained by the words. And that minimum starts that gives them the value that leads to other conversations. And that conversation might take six years to mature as we get with some of the book clients. But the opportunity cost of not doing it. I was just recording a podcast before I came across here for a financial advisor that we've worked with and they've now got a huge program that really came from the second book. So the first book they wrote was single target market. Very dialed in. The second book they wrote was then came from the first. It was almost like a framework book. The first book was Bill Bloom. So first book yacht is guide to early retirement. Very specifically targeted at that group of people who he enjoyed working with. The second book, retire as you desire is the framework that kind of came from conversations of the first. Yeah. And now retirees you desire is a big platform that they've got, that really is the model that they hang all of their work off. And it wasn't until this was three years later, maybe the second one came out. So we were joking and saying for people listening to that show, wanting to get started, well, the best time was 10 years ago. But the second best time is today and having something that gets in front of those people. Because just as you were saying with the realtor, the opportunity cost of engaging with people later and saying, oh, that's great. Yeah, I just happened to do that thing that you're talking about a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, that fast. To market the job of work. The minimum effective amount, that's the big difference.

Dean Jackson: But that's what I look at is literally for $2,500 in less than 30 days, you could have a book and have your first 100 leads. Right. If we say that we can generally we look to get. Depending on how narrowly focused they are, we're looking in that $5 range, plus or minus as the.

Stuart: Yeah, that's supposed to be about average.

Dean Jackson: Right. The cost to get those leads. And I look them as a bundle of 100 people that if you look at that 100 people, it costs $500 to generate 100 leads. And if we were to look at them in 100 weeks and it's a certainty that some number are going to have bought or purchased whatever solution or whatever the idea is the category. So if you think about Bill Bloom, if they're a financial advisor, that out of 100 people that opt in for that retire as you desire book today, that if we fast forward 2 years, 100 weeks, how many of those people will have sought out or engaged in an advisory relationship? Yeah, so many.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: It's crazy.

Stuart: And when you tie it down to time based things as well. So again, we deal with a lot of financial advisors and it's somewhat my background. So those examples always stick to mind. But when you think about the time based thing as people what to do at 62 retirement ready, all of those people passing that threshold in those same 100 weeks.

Dean Jackson: Yeah. 10,000 people a day just in the United states are turning 65 right now. And that's going to be true for the next 11 years. Right. So we've got that momentum going there. And I would say like picking a market like that, you know, that's how Lee Iacocca got rich twice. Right. With the Mustang for the 18 year olds, the lead baby boomers were 18, looking for inexpensive of good looking, fast, sporty cars and then 20 years later the 38 year old lead baby boomers are looking for minivan and he created the minivan for Chrysler and that became a big hit for the next 20 years. And he was looking at. Now that same baby boom group now are turning 65. Right. Almost half of them are through already have turned 65. But you look ahead and you start thinking okay, we still got 10 or 11 years of 10,000 people a day turning 65. It's like such a great. And they've got all the money.

Stuart: Right.

Dean Jackson: That's the biggest thing.

Stuart: Right.

Dean Jackson: If you look at it, it's like such a.

Stuart: That's the pool of people who have got the disposable or the requirement to

Dean Jackson: do things as they income accumulated assets. Right?

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. It's such a. The whole idea of having beneficial constraints which is one of the book blueprint scorecard mindsets. This idea of those kind of internal constraints on meaning that you get it done so reducing the scope to be the most valuable but minimal effective dose but then also putting time based scopes around it that the clock's ticking. I was just with my brother at the weekend. So I'm 47, he's 40. His girlfriend's five years younger than that. So we were talking about kids. So our youngest is 13 and Phil's youngest is 6 and Phil's girlfriend was talking about that age and we worked out that the age difference between the two of us is the same age difference from when Lucy and I got together in the youngest age that Arbery was to now. And that time disappeared I think in a kind of.

Dean Jackson: So I had this conversation with the financial advisor yesterday who I was doing some illustration showing him that 62 to 67 year old as that as a target audience right now that's the most likely time where people are going to elect Social Security. They're either 62 or 67 or going to wait their 70. But in that range he was thinking that his as far as a target audience he was interested in going to 55. You know, thinking we expand the audience, you get more people. But I said that the 55 year olds are going to have a completely different set of emotional needs right now than the 65 year olds. And it's exactly the difference between talking to a newborn mother, the mother with toddlers with young preschool kids and a parent of teenagers who are getting ready to go to college. Yeah, right. That's the. That's has dramatic the difference right in the financial needs and advice that you would give to a 55 year old versus a 65 year old and the fact that we can focus and narrow your target market, that I think 55

Stuart: is a good, is a good bit different.

Dean Jackson: You know, what you don't hear anymore, I don't see it anymore. But when financial, when the financial advisory business was getting started, the target group, the message that was being talked about in the, in the 80s and 90s was this idea of Freedom 55. Do you remember ever seeing or hearing that? That was the thing was to these 35 year old, 40 year old people that getting them investing now with an eye to early retirement, even in the

Stuart: UK that was the same age, same deal.

Dean Jackson: I hear that as much. It's not the prevalent message now.

Stuart: It's going back to work as a greeter at Walmart at 75.

Dean Jackson: But that's the truth, right? That has really.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. And knowing that and understanding it and not only knowing your audience and what you can do for them, but knowing where they are and what messages they're hearing so how you can intersect at that point, that's the, a very clear opportunity point. So regardless of what, you know, almost it's what they're hearing because this is the top of the funnel, this is the first point of a long conversation and yeah, that minimum effective dose around that point. Yeah, that's the difference.

Dean Jackson: So what do you think? Where's the. I mean, yeah, I think my advice for people on that is, you know, narrow your focus and you know, create. Because I think for that same thing, that's what I would be looking at is if you've got a $5,000 war chest that you're trying to maximize there, that's exactly what I would do is a signature book, just the minimum. You can upgrade it or do, add more to it or do things.

Stuart: Because we're not, it's not.

Dean Jackson: Yeah, that's what I mean. We're not tapping them out on stone tablets. You can update it as you go and add to it, but it's not going to make any difference in the job of work of profit activator 2 which is to gather the prospects.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: And as you're adding these, you know, I would look at definitely setting up a hundred week, you know, 100 week process of maintaining the relationship with them and just monitoring that, you know, like. So you look at, you know, if you get, you could get a thousand of them for three to $5,000, $6,000 if you, whatever the number is.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: To get a thousand prospects.

Stuart: Yeah. Who have self selected as interested. It's not just a thousand random eyeballs, it's the people who have opted in.

Dean Jackson: Right. And you start to realize what an asset that is. We were doing the math on. There's established norms like in the financial advisory business especially, you know, it's an assets under management kind of approach. For most of these companies, if they're fiduciary advisors, fee only, they're generally charging one to one and a quarter percent per year for management of the money. You know, a million dollars of assets under management is a $10,000 annual fee and they stay for years and years. But if we took it, established it at five years, be, you know, 100. Yeah. 100 people with a million dollars is a 100 million assets under management, which would be a million dollars a year over the five years is a $5 million enterprise value value over that lifetime value over the five years, which it'd be more but 5,005 million. And if you were to buy that, the enterprise value of that is a. There's. The general rule of thumb is about three times gross revenue. So an advisory firm with 100 million under management would have a value of $3 million. That would be about what somebody would pay for that book of business. So you've automatically created a $3 million asset that you could exit at any time. Or if you were going to buy it. That's why you can buy it. You could buy instantly $100 million under management by buying an advisory firm with $100 million of assets under management. And there's your. And you'd pay the $3 million for it and you'd amortize it over a period of time or you could create it. Right. And you start to think if you can, if you had a way to gather people who are 60 to 67 years old who have one to $3 million investable assets and they live within a 10 mile radius of your office. There's thousands of them in every market. I mean we just did the math. Even sitting at the cafe where we go in the mornings, I was showing Austin the advisor there that within 12 mile radius of the cafe which gets them all of Winter Haven, There were like 2500 people who are married homeowners with 1 to 3 million dollars investable assets. 62 to 67 years old.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: So you think about that. You're surrounded, you're sitting. We've been calling them. Yeah. $1 billion oil well.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: That you're sitting right. Literally right underneath your feet.

Stuart: Yeah.

Dean Jackson: There's $1 billion of potential assets under management. If you take a thousand people with a million dollars, that's all it takes. Right. And if you've got a way to get those people to raise their hand.

Stuart: That's the thing. It's underestimating what's on the doorstep and the size of the total prize or oil well and just having a way of tapping it and not thinking that you need to be Exxon and huge refineries everywhere, but just a prospector out with a drill. And for you individually, well, at least to begin with, That's. That's all you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dean Jackson: Well, this is a story about a man named Poor Mountaineer.

Stuart: Barely kept that we did get in the uk. Snl, we never got. But the Clampets, that was a big day.

Dean Jackson: He was shooting at some crude from the ground. Come. A bubbling crude. That's right. So there you go. Black gold.

Stuart: So the lesson is go watch the Beverly Hillbillies and then come to 90 Minute Books and yes, get your oil well sorted.

Dean Jackson: Well, I'm excited. I can't say it enough. It's frustrating even to think and see all this opportunity that people have. Yeah. All right.

Stuart: Thank you. Till next time.

Dean Jackson: Okay, thanks.