Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

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**Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson**

Dean Jackson thinks out loud about marketing, referrals, positioning, and the small ideas that quietly change how a business grows. Short, unscripted episodes. The raw thinking behind BreakthroughDNA and the 8 Profit Activators.

Latest Episodes:

How To Create Super Happy Customers Sep 03, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day nine of Profit Activator week, and we're into number five.

Yesterday was the offer. Today is what happens after somebody says yes.

Deliver a dream come true experience.

In 1997 I was calling it deliver a world-class service. The words have got better since then. The job hasn't changed.

And it splits into two things.

There's the result. The actual thing people are paying you to do.

And there's the experience. What they're touching, holding, hearing and feeling on the way to it.

Most people manage the first one carefully, and let the second one just happen to them.

So here's the exercise we used to run at the main events. It was always the most popular thing we did.

Six or eight hundred realtors in a room. We'd put some music on and give everybody a few minutes to write a letter.

Not from your own perspective. From the perspective of somebody who has just come all the way through the process of working with you.

And it had to be the most raving review anybody could possibly write about that experience.

I was reading Raving Fans around that time, and that's the whole idea of it. Not satisfied customers. Raving ones.

So imagine what that person would love to be able to say about working with you... then write it as though they already had.

What you've got now is a vision for the entire journey. From the moment your process starts to the moment it's over.

And that's the baseline you lay your storyboard on top of.

Because there are two halves to any experience.

There's the above the line half. Everything people actually see and hear and feel.

And there's the below the line half. The systems, the processes, the checklists, all the behind the scenes machinery that makes the top half possible.

Your guest only ever experiences the top half. It only ever happens because of the bottom half.

Now, the way to get at it is to think in benchmarks. An experience timeline.

I've used real estate ones for years, so let me do a restaurant instead.

It starts with the reservation. Then there's a gap of a few days.

Then arriving. Then checking in with the hostess. Then being walked to the table.

Then all those little vignettes... somebody brings the menu, somebody brings water, maybe some bread arrives.

Looking over the menu. Ordering. The wait while the food is being made. Somebody topping up the water, saying it won't be long.

The food arrives. Did everybody get the right thing.

The meal is eaten. The table gets cleared. Then it's dessert, coffee, something after dinner.

Then the check. Paying. Leaving.

That's the whole During Unit for a restaurant, and every one of those is a checkpoint.

So go back through them and ask two questions at each one.

What would be a wow here?

And what friction could happen here?

The second question is the one that pays, because friction is almost invisible from the inside.

There was a show on the Travel Channel called Hotel Impossible, with Anthony Melchiorri. A career hotelier who'd go into a struggling hotel and help them turn it around.

And every single episode started the same way. With him arriving.

Just walking up to the place and looking at it the way a guest would.

A run-down sign. A light that isn't working. Paint cracking and peeling. Shrubbery overgrown. Cigarette butts on the path up to reception.

And his read on it was always the same. This is a general manager who has checked out. They're on autopilot.

Because the number one job of a general manager is to walk the property every day and notice the things that need doing.

My favorite one was in Miami. One of those beautiful old art deco hotels on the ocean, where there's no parking out front at all.

There's a sign that says valet. So he pulls up right in front of it, and they start a timer running.

And you know this feeling. Any second now a guy in a polo shirt is going to come running round the corner. He's probably just parking somebody's car.

Twelve, thirteen minutes go by.

Eventually he gives up, pokes his head through the door and asks the receptionist whether the valet is on duty.

Oh, no. Just leave the keys with us.

Think about how many people had already had exactly that experience. Sitting out front, waiting on somebody who was never coming.

Here's how he fixed it.

A little sign rider underneath the valet sign. Leave keys at reception.

That's it. That's the entire fix.

And now nobody sits out there for thirteen minutes wondering what's supposed to happen.

It sounds like a small thing. It isn't.

Somebody arriving at a hotel has been on a plane, or driving for hours. All they want is the room, a shower, and ten minutes of not doing anything.

And the very first thing that happens to them is a frustration.

These little things are dominoes. One goes over at the front door and everything after it is being done from a deficit.

You spend the rest of the stay climbing back to zero.

So that's the work. Find the benchmarks, and at every one of them, raise the wow and remove the friction.

And the secret to all of it is experiencing it through the eyes of your guest. Not through the eyes of the person running the process.

Tomorrow we'll talk about how to enhance it.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write the ultimate scenario for your own During Unit. From the moment somebody says yes, to the moment they've got the outcome you promised them.

Then list every benchmark along the way, and put two columns beside it. Where's the wow. Where's the friction.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/092-how-to-create-super-happy-customers/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

How To Make Your Offer Irresistible Sep 02, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day eight of Profit Activator week, and we're into number four.

Yesterday was the nine-word email. Reviving everybody who ever inquired and never went ahead.

Today we present your unique service offer. That's what I was calling it back in 1997.

It's the transition into your During Unit. The moment where you frame what you're going to do for somebody, and propose the exchange.

Now, every commercial transaction in the world comes down to the same two things.

Somebody offering to sell something, or do something, or make something. And somebody willing to pay for it.

A buyer and a seller.

And the most valuable thing you can do is work out where on the spectrum your offer actually sits.

At one end... all sales final. All cash. No refunds, no exchanges. A hundred percent hedged in favor of the seller.

You see it in the sketchier corners of retail. Everything protected, on their side of the counter.

At the other end... no credit card required. Let me get you the result, and you pay me once you've got what I promised you.

I think you can guess which way acceptance runs.

The closer you get to zero risk for the buyer, the more offers get taken.

But there's a difference between risk reduction and risk reversal, and it's worth being precise about it.

Risk reduction is take it home, and if it doesn't meet your needs, we'll give you your money back.

Which is much better than all sales final. But look at what's still sitting on them.

They pay upfront. They have to trust that you'll actually give the money back. And if it doesn't work out, they have to deal with the hassle of sending it back.

It eases the mind. It doesn't remove the risk. It just moves it a little.

Jay Abraham used to tell a story about two men selling a horse.

The first one says, here's a horse. It's a good horse. Your daughter will love it. Six hundred dollars.

The second one says, we've got a wonderful horse and I think it'd be great for your daughter... but I would say that, because it's my horse.

So let's do this instead.

Send the horse home with your daughter. Let her ride it for thirty days and bond with it. I'll send enough oats and hay to feed it for the whole month.

And if at the end of the month it isn't the perfect horse for you, I'll come and pick it back up.

Which horse do you think people buy?

The one with no risk attached to it.

Any time you can go past reducing the risk and actually reverse it... take it onto yourself... it's an amazing outcome.

And here's what makes it safe to do.

If you know that in Profit Activator 5 you can deliver a dream come true experience... if you're genuinely confident you can get the result you're promising... then it's in your own best interest to get that in front of as many people as you possibly can, meeting as little resistance as you can.

People are very, very interested in outcomes.

They're not nearly as interested in taking risks.

Here's the other analogy I've been using a lot lately.

Say you're selling into a company. What most people do is go to the purchasing department.

You pitch your proposal, you hope they'll write you a purchase order, and they pay you now for something you'll deliver later.

There's always resistance there. You're competing with everybody else for the same limited pool of right-now money. Which is a strange thing to be doing when the thing you're selling is a way to make more of it.

So go around the building and knock at the receiving dock instead.

At the receiving dock you're met with open arms.

Because every single person in every company is a hundred percent authorized to bring more money into the business.

Nobody needs a sign-off for that.

Position what you do so that it's a hundred percent upside for the person you're talking to, and you meet zero resistance.

That's how you frame an offer that gets you the most outcome with the least rejection.

Tomorrow I'll go a little deeper on presenting it.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down your offer exactly as it stands, and mark where it sits on the spectrum. All sales final at one end. Pay me once you've got the result at the other.

Then ask yourself the honest question underneath it.

Are you confident enough in what you do to bet on yourself... and take that risk off them?

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/091-how-to-make-your-offer-irresistible/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

The Amazing 9-Word Email That Revives Dead Leads Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day seven of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number three.

Yesterday was about the cookies. Making the next step something that's already baked, so nobody has to go out of their way.

Today I want to show you a magic trick.

It's my favorite thing I've ever created, and you could do it this afternoon.

But first, here's why Profit Activator 3 is the one I'd pick if I had to pick one.

Most of the profit activators are in and out. We choose the target market, and we move on. We work out the offer that gets somebody to raise their hand, and they pass straight through it.

Nobody stays there.

But the moment somebody raises their hand they land in Profit Activator 3, and they stay. Sometimes for a little while. Sometimes for years.

Every one of those people has real asset value in your business.

And the biggest mistake I see is counting only the ones who are ready right now. Somebody books a call, they buy, wonderful... and quietly, everybody else is dead to you.

So let's go and revive them.

Gather up everybody who ever inquired and didn't go ahead.

Look in your phone. Your texts. Your email. The desk drawers. The notebooks you scribble in. Look in the sofa cushions.

Anybody who at some point told you they were interested, and then it didn't happen.

Now send them nine words.

Hi Josh, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?

That's the whole email. Period at the end.

Are you still planning that trip to Israel. Are you still looking for a yacht. Whatever it is you do.

Part of the magic is the word still, because it quietly says I know you were.

And part of it is what isn't in there. It's short, it's personal, and it's expecting a reply.

Here's where people ruin it.

They can't leave the mystery alone. Are you still looking for a house in Georgetown? Because if you are, here's what we can do... and if you're not, that's absolutely fine too.

Now there's nothing left to answer.

Think about the difference between standing on a table in Starbucks asking whether anybody in here is still looking for a house... and recognizing one person in the line, making eye contact, and asking them.

Everybody on your list has a one-to-one connection with you. They don't know or care that anyone else is on it.

So ask the question, and then shut up.

That silence is a vacuum. In real life, people feel compelled to fill it.

We had a client in Georgetown generating leads from people looking for a home there. Over a thousand of them.

Then her mother got cancer, and she spent eight months with her mother and ushered her through it.

When she was ready to come back to work she assumed she was starting from zero. Best part of a year with no focus on the business at all.

I asked whether she'd been in touch with any of the people who had inquired. She hadn't.

So we sent one email to all of them. Hi Josh, are you still looking for a house in Georgetown?

The replies started coming back. We're just getting started. That was a Wednesday.

She met one of them at the weekend. They bought a house on the Sunday.

She wasn't starting over at all. She just picked up where she'd left off, and carried on sending them the new homes every week.

My favorite one, though, is the yacht broker.

He'd joined a new brokerage in Fort Lauderdale, which is the yacht capital of America, and they had a file. An actual paper file, marked dead leads.

He went through it one at a time. Hi Bob, are you still looking for a yacht?

One of the replies came from a man who had a $120 million custom yacht on order, three years from delivery.

So he bought a $50 million yacht to tide him over.

From nine words, sent to a name in a folder that somebody had already given up on.

There's no harm in any of this. Somebody ghosted you, or you dropped the ball, and things fall through the cracks for everybody.

Gather them up, ask them a simple question, and you're going to win.

Then keep going. Every week, continue the dialogue. Send them the things that answer the questions standing between them and the thing they want... so you're paving the way into Profit Activator 4 and the offer.

Tomorrow we move on to Profit Activator 4.

Here's your nudge for today.

Find ten people who inquired and never went ahead, and send each of them nine words asking if they're still looking.

Then don't add a single thing to it... and see who writes back.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/090-the-amazing-9-word-email-that-revives-dead-leads/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

Convert More Leads: What To Say To Prospects So They All Convert Themselves Aug 31, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day six of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number three.

Yesterday was about finding the five-star prospects in the first hundred hours.

Today is about what you actually offer them.

And it starts with something you have to accept before any of the rest of it works.

People are going to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, on their own timeframe. Even if they tell you otherwise.

You're not going to talk anybody out of that. So the job is to work with it.

Which is why the outbound conversation is exploratory, not persuasive.

What are you thinking of doing?

Do you need something right away, or have you got time to plan?

That's really disarming, because they're braced for the opposite. They're expecting somebody to try and get them to commit to something.

Instead you're giving it room. You're making it crystal clear that whatever their timeframe is, it's okay with us.

Now here's the part you can actually engineer.

Your ideal prospect has pretty predictable next desires. Think them through ahead of time and you can build a path that lets people self-select their way down it.

Somebody downloads the how to sell your house for top dollar book.

There's a good chance the next three things on their mind are... how much am I actually going to get for it. What do we need to do to get the house ready, do we redo the kitchen, do we replace the carpets. And, we're not in a hurry, but if somebody wanted to buy it we could move our plans up.

Same with a deck catalog. What's this going to cost. What's the design going to look like. How would we finance it.

That's the thinking. Then you shine the light over their shoulder onto exactly those things... knowing all paths lead back to you.

Now, what you name the next step matters more than almost anything else here.

Because most of what we offer sounds like a commitment.

A comparative market analysis. Book an estimate and we'll come over. Get preapproved.

Every one of those asks somebody to invite a trained salesperson into their life before they're ready for one.

But if it sounds like it's already done... just the next natural step... it's an entirely different proposition.

It's much easier and more compelling to play with a deck cost calculator than it is to have a deck salesperson come to the house.

So for the people who downloaded the seller book, our three offers line up with the three things already on their mind.

Here's a pinpoint price analysis, showing what's actually happening in the market.

Or the room-by-room review book and checklist, which shows you which things get the highest return when you sell.

Or we may be able to sell your house in as little as 24 hours, without even putting it on the market, through our silent market.

Notice what those have in common. They already exist. Nobody's going out of their way. All somebody is doing is having a look.

That's just human psychology, and understanding human behavior is the number one skill in this business.

Work with the way people naturally behave and it's like riding the jetstream. Work against it and it's resistance all the way.

Here's the analogy I always come back to.

Say I invite you into my house and sit you down in the living room. And I say, hey, I'm really happy you're here. If you're hungry or thirsty there's lots of stuff in the fridge, go ahead and help yourself.

I don't know you. But I'd bet almost anything that you're not going to go and get something out of my fridge.

Nobody wants to impose. We don't want anybody going out of their way for us.

It's the same reason for the cup of tea dance. Would you like a cup of tea? Well, are you having one? Because if you're having one, I'll have one. But don't boil the kettle for me.

And that is exactly what most of us are doing with our prospects.

If there's anything at all I can help you with, please feel free to reach out. Just call or email us, we're more than happy to help.

It's obsequious. And all it really does is put the onus on them to take the initiative.

Now here's the other version.

I sit you in the living room, go into the kitchen, and come back out with a plate of cookies. I walk right up to you and say, I just baked these, would you like one?

I still don't know you. But it would be very difficult for you not to take a cookie.

Because we don't want to reject people any more than we want to impose on them. They've clearly already gone out of their way, and it would be rude not to accept.

That's the whole thing.

Being really good at lead conversion is identifying who the likely prospects are... and then making sure what they feel is your hospitality, not your sales process.

More on Profit Activator 3 tomorrow.

Here's your nudge for today.

Write down the three things your prospects are most likely thinking about next, and beside each one write what you currently offer them.

Then ask the honest question about each of those offers. Is that the fridge... or is it the cookies?

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/089-convert-more-leads-what-to-say-to-prospects-so-they-all-convert-themselves/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

How To Know Which Leads Are Actually Going To Buy Aug 30, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day five of Profit Activator week.

Yesterday we worked out what a bundle of a hundred leads is quietly worth over the next hundred weeks.

Today is about the first hundred hours.

Because here's the problem with that bundle. You can't tell, by looking at it, which of those hundred people are going to buy.

All you've got is a name, an email and a phone number. There's no information in that.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we could run them all past a sensor and the ones who are going to buy glowed bright green.

That's what the first hundred hours is for.

Not to sell anybody anything. To find out who's a five-star prospect.

Five things have to be true.

They're willing to engage in a dialogue.
They're friendly and cooperative.
They know what they want.
They know when they want it.
And they'd like us to help them.

That's a five-star prospect. All five, or it isn't one.

Now, most people run at this backwards.

They start at number five. Here's what you should buy, here's the price, and the price goes away at midnight.

They're making the prescription before they've done any diagnosis. They don't know yet whether this is even somebody they can help.

I think about it like the staged lighting at the drag races. First light comes on, then the second, then the third. You go through them in order.

So start at the top. Are they willing to engage?

I build everything as though my phone only accepts incoming calls. So mostly I'm not chasing anybody... I'm making it easy for them to start talking to me.

And when you do reach out, do it with the true intention of connecting rather than closing. You can tell in the first thirty seconds.

When we were running the beach condo price report, the whole call was this.

Hi, it's Dean Jackson. I sent you the beach condo price report. Just wanted to make sure you got it.

That's it. Everything true, nothing pushy.

Then, once they're actually talking to you, ask the most neutral thing you can think of.

What are you thinking of doing?

And then shut up.

Because what happens in the next ten seconds is the whole thing. Is what comes out of their mouth coming through a smiling face... or is it hands-off and a bit resistant?

We've literally got smiley, neutral and frowny icons in the CRM for it.

I'm a big believer that however it starts is how it ends. It doesn't get better.

Somebody who's dismissive on the first call is not going to warm up into friendly and cooperative.

But when it goes the other way, listen to what you get.

Well, we've been vacationing in Longboat Key for years. Prices look like they're starting to come down. We're getting closer to retirement... might be time for us to buy something.

Now you're into whether they know what they want. Is this permanent? Are they snowbirds? Are they going to put it on Airbnb, because that rules out a lot of buildings.

Same thing with a fence. Do you need a fence right now, or have you got some time to plan?

A tree came down on ours, it's still lying there.

Or, we're building, the house is ready in about six months.

They'll tell you. People are much happier telling you their situation than being asked to confirm yours.

And what somebody volunteers is worth more than anything you had to extract.

Only when you understand what they want, and when they want it, are you ready to say here's how I can help you get it.

That's element five. And by then you're making the offer from a relationship, not from a standing start.

Stephen Covey had it right. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

What you've got isn't interesting to anybody until you understand what they want.

So the job in the first hundred hours is to be responsive. Start the conversation, start the clock.

Don't send the download link and disappear. Don't let the leads pile up in a list somewhere while you decide what to do about them.

If half of these people are going to do something over the next hundred weeks, the only sensible thing is to find out which of them might do it now.

Tomorrow we'll talk about sorting them, and what to do with people at each stage.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the next person who raises their hand and ask them what they're thinking of doing... then say nothing at all and see what comes back.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/088-how-to-know-which-leads-are-actually-going-to-buy/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

100 Leads Are Worth More Than You Think. Here’s the Math. Aug 29, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day four of Profit Activator week, and we're into number three.

Educate and motivate your prospects to meet you.

Everything up to here has been about getting the right hand in the air. Now we've got a bundle of people who raised it, and this is the most valuable part of the whole thing.

Let me set the context first, because I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am not saying take the long view. I'm not saying ignore the people who are ready today.

If somebody's ready to go right now, that's perfect. Let's go. I want to convert people as soon as we possibly can.

What I want you to see is what you're actually holding.

Because most advertisers approach this like a slot machine.

Pull the lever. Did somebody buy? No? Wasted money. Pull it again.

And if the machine pays out before the credit card bill is due, it was a good month. If it didn't, the leads were no good.

That's the whole model. Return on ad spend, measured by Friday.

Back in 1997 I was working out how to generate these leads, and I found a study that changed the way I look at all of it.

There was a company doing inquiry handling at an enterprise level. Millions of leads a year, across every industry you can think of.

And they ran what they called did you buy surveys.

They'd take a cohort of people who inquired about something eighteen months earlier, call them up, and ask exactly one question.

Josh, you came to the home show and asked about faucets. Did you buy any faucets?

Here's what they found.

At the eighteen month mark, just over half of the people who inquired about a thing had gone and bought that thing.

More than half. People eventually buy what they raise their hand about.

But only 15% of those buyers bought inside the first 90 days.

That's the number that reorganized my thinking.

85% of the value of the leads you generate today is 90 days or more away from you.

Now, 90 days feels like forever when you've just spent the money.

I saw it most with realtors. They wanted to run an ad, have somebody call this week, go and look at a house on Saturday, and put a sign in the yard on Monday.

Then I did this for enough other businesses to realize everybody's like that. Everybody wants the right now business.

I mentioned time travel the other day. Let's go back to it.

Imagine we could leave tonight at midnight and land a hundred weeks ago, and we could carry with us the list of every person who's going to sell their house over the next two years.

Everybody loves that idea.

But look at what you'd actually be holding. The person who sold last month? The moment you land, they're still 23 months away from doing anything about it.

You'd still be waiting. You'd just be waiting with certainty.

And certainty changes everything about how you behave in the meantime.

So the question you need to answer is not are these good leads.

Good lead is an emotional phrase. What people mean by it is somebody who's ready to buy right now, and anybody who isn't feels like a disappointment.

The objective question is what happens to this bundle of a hundred people over the next hundred weeks.

The studies say over half inside eighteen months. I like to be conservative, so I stretch the window to a hundred weeks and I round the number down to 50%.

Fifty people. Go and do that math on your own number. If your thing is $10,000, work out what that bundle is quietly worth to you.

Now, about the first hundred days.

I think of it as the Van Allen belt.

If you're going to space you have to get through that band of radiation and pressure first. That's the hard part, and it takes everything you've got. But once you're through it, it's effortless. You can go all the way to Mars.

Same here. Get through the first hundred days with a bundle of a hundred people and the rest of it costs you almost nothing.

Most people never get through the belt.

One of my quiet delights is looking up the people other advertisers gave up on.

They run ads for our sell your house for top dollar book. Leads come in at $5, $7, sometimes $10. Then they start calling everybody, looking for a listing today.

Around the 90 day mark they get antsy. Nobody's listed. These leads are no good. We'll spend the money somewhere else.

There's a fellow in Texas who did exactly that. Generated 130-odd leads and walked away from them.

Real estate is public record, which is the great gift of that market, so I can just look them up on Zillow.

At the eighteen month mark, 30-something percent of the people he abandoned had listed, or sold, or have their house sitting on the market right now.

He was standing on it the whole time.

And this is why I think in bundles and never in individuals.

One person is unpredictable. There's no useful way to say what one person is going to do.

A hundred of them is arithmetic. Fifty are going to do something over the next hundred weeks. Eight of them are going to do it inside the first hundred days.

Which gives you a real goal, and a much better one than chasing everybody. Find the eight.

So phase one of Profit Activator 3 isn't a tactic at all.

It's realizing what you've got. Treating a hundred people who voluntarily told you what they're thinking about as a capital asset, not an expense you have to justify by the end of the month.

Tomorrow we'll get into what you actually do with those hundred people.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take your last hundred leads, whatever they cost you, and do the arithmetic. Fifty of them buying over the next hundred weeks, at your price.

Then look at that number and ask yourself honestly whether you've been treating those people like an asset worth that... or like a lever you pulled that didn't pay out.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/087-100-leads-are-worth-more-than-you-think-heres-the-math/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

How To Find a $1B Honey Hole of Your Best Future Customers Aug 28, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Day three of Profit Activator week, and we're still on number two.

Yesterday was the invisible half. The people you can't point at.

Today is the other half. The prospects you can actually make a list of.

Here in Winter Haven there are just over 2,000 lakefront homes. That's the whole market, and it doesn't move.

About 4% of them turn over every year. So somewhere between 80 and 100 of those homes are going to sell in the next 12 months.

And here's the part that should change how you spend your money.

Every single lakefront home that comes on the market this year is going to be one of those 2,000. It can't be anybody else.

So you don't need to get known by everybody. You need to get known by 2,000 people.

Better still, you'd love to know which 80.

Look two years out and that's 200 homes. That's a long runway. Long enough to plan to dominate.

Now, what do you actually say to those 2,000?

There are three levels, and most people never get past the first one.

Level one is shining the light on yourself.

Dean Jackson, top lakefront realtor in Winter Haven. Call Dean. Postcard after postcard where I'm the star.

You see it everywhere. Name, slogan, what we do.

Level two is shining the light on them.

Thinking of selling? Find out what your home is worth. Sell your house in 90 days guaranteed.

It's better, because at least it's about them. But it puts them on the spot.

Because if I ask what my house is worth, I've revealed myself. I'm going to end up talking to a trained salesperson. And I'm not ready for that yet.

Nobody is impulsive about something this big.

They don't wake up one morning and say let's sell the house, call the realtor.

What they're actually thinking is... this house is too big for us now. Maybe we should move out to the country. Maybe it's time to downsize.

And every one of those thoughts eventually arrives at the same question. What's my house worth?

They want to do the math quietly, in their own head, before anybody knows they're doing it.

So here's level three.

Don't shine the light on yourself. Don't shine it on them.

Shine it over their shoulder, onto the thing they were already looking for.

The August 2026 Report on Winter Haven Lakefront Home Prices.

That sounds like objective data. Everything that sold, and what it sold for.

And I'm smart enough, as a lakefront homeowner, to know that's the teacher's edition of the algebra book.

But I'm also smart enough to know that report is already written. Nobody's going out of their way for me. I'm not obligating myself to anything.

I'm just having a look.

And the moment I have a look, you've turned a visible prospect into a visible prospect with intent.

Now you're getting known, in advance, by the people most likely to do the very thing you help people do.

It works the same way anywhere there's a list.

We did this for a financial advisor. What he wanted was people heading into retirement with a couple of million dollars, trying to turn assets into income that lasts the rest of their life.

There's so much data available now. We found married homeowners, 62 to 67, living in a million dollar home, with one to two million in investable assets, conservative voters.

4,300 of them, inside a 20 mile radius of his office.

Think about what that is. A thousand people with a million dollars each is a billion dollars under management.

Most advisors are hoping to get to a hundred, a hundred and fifty million. The pool was sitting right there in a 20 mile circle.

The other way to find visible prospects is to look for inevitabilities.

Where can you see a group of people all marching toward the same outcome?

Roofs. A shingle roof lasts about 15 years. In that 13 to 16 year window, 80% of them get replaced.

When I was a realtor in Halton Hills, there were a couple of thousand homes built in a two or three year stretch. All of them arriving at the 15 year mark together.

2,000 homes needing a $15,000 roof is a $30 million pool of people who are inevitably going to buy the thing you sell.

Same with the air conditioner. Same with the furnace.

So if you're a roofer, go and find the homes that were built 11 years ago.

And then do the counterintuitive thing.

Nobody looks forward to a $15,000 roof. So don't stand at the finish line waiting for them. Show up early with a way to extend the life of the roof they've already got.

Now you've got a roof under management. And when it inevitably needs replacing, you're not a stranger with a postcard. You're the person who's been looking after it.

Here's your nudge for today.

If your prospects are visible, go and count them. The actual number.

Then write the title of the report you'd shine over their shoulder... the one they'd read without ever having to raise their hand to you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/086-how-to-find-a-1b-honey-hole-of-your-best-future-customers/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

Get More Leads: How To Choose The Words That Get You All The Leads You Need Aug 27, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Journal number six, day two.

Yesterday we selected a single target market. Today we compel those people to call you.

That's Profit Activator number two. And the whole thing rests on one distinction.

Compelling is not convincing.

We are not trying to talk anybody into anything here. We're trying to get the right person to raise their hand.

So the first question. Are your prospects visible, or invisible?

Lakefront homes in Winter Haven. The people who own one are visible. There's a list. It's fixed. I can point at every single one of them.

The people who want to buy one are invisible. They could be anywhere. Sitting in an apartment somewhere, wanting to be on the lake, and there's no evidence of it anywhere.

Same with chiropractors. There's a public list of chiropractors, so if they're your audience, they're visible.

But if you ARE a chiropractor, your prospects are invisible... because nobody publishes a list of people who twisted their back on the golf course this afternoon.

Two kinds of audience. Two completely different approaches.

For the invisible ones, Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram are the best bargain that has ever been known to man right now.

I think of them as digital postcards, dropped into somebody's digital mailbox... which is where all of their attention already is.

But you're in front of them for a split second while they scroll.

There isn't time to convince anybody of anything in a split second.

There's plenty of time to let the right person put their hand up.

Here's the example that made this click for me.

A party rental company in Toronto. Tents, generators, tables, linens, the luxury porta-potties, the whole deal.

I asked them the usual question. Who's the dream come true?

An outdoor wedding. One booking takes everything they own.

And an outdoor wedding is an invisible prospect. Nobody's wearing a badge.

So we went backwards along the timeline.

Somebody having an outdoor wedding this weekend is no use to us. Every arrangement was made months ago.

What had to happen before that? And before that?

All the way back to... we're getting married. And then, when and where.

The date and the venue come first. Everything else hangs off them.

Nobody is lying awake wondering which party rental company to use. Nobody puts a party rental flyer in their hope chest.

So we didn't offer a party rental company.

We offered a directory. 100 great places to have an outdoor wedding in Toronto.

This company had been around since the sixties. They knew every spot there was.

The leads started immediately.

And every one of them came with a head start on every other party rental company in the city, because we got there at the moment the decision was being made... not the moment somebody finally went looking for tents.

We never mentioned the party rental company in the ad. That's not what the ad is for.

That's what separating the compelling from the convincing actually looks like.

And if it feels like time travel, that's exactly right.

If I could go back two years, collect the list of everybody who's about to have an outdoor wedding, and come back here with it... the job would be easy.

We can't do that. So we do the next best thing.

We plant time capsules.

We find people at the earliest moment they express an intention, and then we've got all the time in the world to bond with them.

Directories. Catalogs. Books.

We've done a fence and gate catalog... for people who intend to get a fence.

An ebike catalog... for people planning to buy an ebike.

Books are my favorite, because the title does so much of the work.

Right now we're running one called Stop Your Panic Attacks, with a doctor who has a wonderful program for exactly that.

Anybody who wants a book called Stop Your Panic Attacks is a person who wants to stop their panic attacks.

That's the whole test. Does wanting this thing tell me what you want next?

And the arithmetic is lovely.

Two hundred and fifty dollars. Five hundred dollars. Whatever it is you put in... and what you've bought is a bundle of a hundred people who raised their hand about this exact thing.

Over the next hundred weeks, many, many of them are going to buy it.

They're going to buy it from somebody. You may as well be the one who knew first.

Tomorrow we get to Profit Activator three, which is what you do with them once the hand is up.

Here's your nudge for today.

Take the target market you picked yesterday and decide, honestly, whether they're visible or invisible.

Then write the title. Of the directory, the catalog, the report, the book.

Not a title about what you sell. A title for the thing they already want... before they know they need you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/085-get-more-leads-how-to-choose-the-words-that-get-you-all-the-leads-you-need/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

Why You Make More Money When You Stop Trying to Sell to Everyone Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Journal number six. Summer of 1997.

And this is the one I've been waiting to get to.

Because this is where the eight Profit Activators start.

I wasn't calling them that yet. There were only seven of them at this point. But the seed of the whole thing is sitting on these pages, so I'm going to break the fourth wall and call them what they became.

Here's what I'm going to ask of you this week.

Mark off this time, wherever you're watching this. One Profit Activator a day, for the next eight days.

If we do this right, it's a foundational shift in the way you approach your business.

So. Profit Activator number one.

Select a single target market.

And I always put three words in brackets after it... at a time.

Because this isn't about limiting yourself forever. It's about picking one, dominating it, and then going back and doing it again.

Now here's the biggest insight on these pages.

The broad term you use to describe who you serve is convenient for exactly one person. You.

The tri-county area. Buyers and sellers. Health services. People make up a category to describe what they do, because it feels like being specific means leaving somebody out.

And I understand the instinct. But selecting a single target market is EXACTLY about leaving people out.

Leaving everybody out except this one very specific person.

Because that person knows precisely what they want. Somebody looking for a lakefront home is not the same human being as somebody looking for an inexpensive condo.

So here's the first exercise, and it's the opposite of what you'd expect.

Make an exhaustive list of every single person you could possibly serve. Knock yourself out. Leave nobody off it.

Then we evaluate.

The question everybody jumps to is who's the most abundant. Where's all the action.

But you have to hold that up against a second question. Who's the most profitable.

Here in Winter Haven, the condos turn over at 10%. That's where all the movement is, so that's where everybody points.

The lakefront homes turn over at 4%. Less than half the action.

But the condos sell for a fifth of what the lakefront homes do... so the total yield from the slower, smaller market is far bigger.

Most abundant and most profitable are not the same list. Look at both.

Now, the riches are in the niches. You've heard it. It's not just a saying, it's arithmetic.

The best company in the world at this is Procter and Gamble. 23 individual billion dollar brands, all operating independently.

I was reading a book about them around this time, written by one of their executives, and the principle that still resonates the most with me is number one on the list.

Plan to dominate.

You almost can't say those words without changing your physiology. They never enter a market to dabble, or to pick up a little share. They go in to be the number one brand by a large margin, because the leading brand in a category carries about a 28% premium.

Which is why they don't treat laundry detergent as one market.

They have at least five billion dollar brands in that one aisle. One for getting things as white as possible. One for tough stains. One for clothes that come out smelling great. One for softness. And one for just not ruining anything you put in there.

Because nobody buying laundry detergent wants laundry detergent. They want the one thing their laundry needs.

My favorite example right now is a company called My Metal Business Card.

And guess what's at that website.

Now would you be surprised if they also had My Wooden Business Card. And My Plastic Business Card. All independent. All focused on exactly that one segment.

Because somebody who wants a metal business card feels so much more like they're in the right place when the entire website is about metal business cards.

Same thing with a Winter Haven lakefront home price report versus a Central Florida real estate report. Those are not remotely the same offer.

And it works even when the product is identical.

I have a friend from Canada who'd come down to play golf and stock up on Excedrin Migraine, because they didn't sell it up there. We went to the pharmacy one day and they were out of it.

The pharmacist said "just get the extra strength, it's the same thing."

And it IS the same thing. Same pill. Same ingredients. Same amount of caffeine.

The identical pill, in a different box, carries a 30 cent premium... because the box says the exact words somebody with a migraine is looking for.

So narrower is better. You cannot get too narrow.

Pick one target market at a time, take it all the way through the eight Profit Activators, and what you've built is a little prospect vending machine that vends exactly the kind of prospect you want.

Then go back and build another one.

Here's your nudge for today.

Make the exhaustive list. Every group of people you could serve, no filtering, nobody left off.

Then put two columns beside it. Most abundant. Most profitable.

Pick the one you'd plan to dominate... and we'll pick it up tomorrow with how you compel those people to call you.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/084-why-you-make-more-money-when-you-stop-trying-to-sell-to-everyone/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

How to Know When You Have a $1,000,000 Idea Aug 25, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Closing out journal number five this morning. Spring of 1997. About to open number six.

And the thing I love most about going back through these is spotting the very first scribble of something I now know turned into a million dollar idea.

I was tallying them up in my head over coffee. Counting them like platinum records.

At least ten of them. A couple I'd call diamond... ten million and up.

Two have already surfaced in the journals we've been through so far.

The Guide to Halton Hills was the first one. A model that gets a result without me in it, that I could hand to somebody else and install in their business.

I'm still using that idea thirty years later.

And then the first inklings of the eight Profit Activators, which is exactly where journal six picks up.

So sitting there this morning, here's the question I kept circling.

How do you actually know when you've got a big idea?

Because at the start it's only a proposition. I think this might work.

Here's the good news. You can find out for almost nothing.

You can test an idea cheaply, and you can test it quickly, and what you're testing for is simpler than people make it.

Can you get somebody to raise their hand and say, hey, I'm interested in that.

That's the first gate. That's the whole thing.

Then you bookend it. The raised hand at one end. The result they actually wanted at the other.

And everything in the middle is the marketing. Telling the stories, sharing the information, building the case that lets somebody experience the result before they've got it.

But work it out on paper first.

You have to be able to see the whole path. How you'll find the people who might be interested. How you'll educate them on what it looks like to have this. How you'll convince them you're the one who can help.

See all three of those, get it to work once, and from there it's infinitely scalable.

Now here's the second gate, and this is the one that quietly kills good ideas.

It can't depend on an extraordinary person.

If it only works when somebody remarkable is running it, you haven't got a scalable idea. You've got a job that happens to be going well.

What you're really building is a package that lets ordinary people get extraordinary results.

And once you've proven that, you're on the line.

Then... and I wish I'd learned this thirty years sooner... find somebody who'll take it and run with it.

Because the curse of being wired the way I am is that novelty is the drug. A new idea is always more exciting than carrying the old one all the way through.

I've been listening to the Founders podcast, and David Senra profiles Todd Graves, who started Raising Cane's.

The entire business is one idea. Chicken fingers for everyone.

And he has done nothing since but execute on it. The chicken finger dream, run all the way down.

That's the part I'm still learning.

Some of my ideas have been thirty-year pursuits. The seven things everybody spends their money on, and that whole advocacy idea sitting on top of it. Big, and I've only ever come at it from the top down, because there's never been an easy foothold.

I think I finally know how to get one. We'll get to that.

Journal six opens with the eight Profit Activators, and we're doing a video on each one of them.

If we're talking about million dollar ideas, that one is the crown jewel. Because it's the idea that makes other ideas.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take the idea you've been carrying around and run it at the first gate before you build any of it.

What's the cheapest, fastest thing you could put in front of people to find out whether anybody raises their hand?

Do that this week. It'll cost you less than you think, and it'll tell you more than another month of thinking about it ever will.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/083-how-to-know-when-you-have-a-1-000-000-idea/

Join me live on the next free 50-Minute Profit Finder call: 50minuteprofitfinder.com/podcast

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