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:

If You Have Great Ideas But Struggle to Execute Them, Watch This Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Wrapping up journal number five. My first year of journaling, spring of 1997, about to start number six.

And looking back through it, there are a couple of things I wish I'd known then.

Because the ideas in here were good. Fully formed. And most of them never got past the first stage.

My friend Joe Polish describes it as running a relay race where you carry the baton to the first handoff... and then go back and get another one. And another. Until there's a pile of batons sitting at the first stage and nobody has run the second leg.

That's this journal.

Here's the one staring at me this morning. Coastal Condo Guides.

A drawing of the whole coast of Florida, with a guide for every condo market on it.

And I'd already proven the model. The Guide to Halton Hills worked. Toronto and Beyond worked. Take a contextual wrapper, put a duplicatable model underneath it, and it works in the next market too.

St. Louis and Beyond. Nashville and Beyond. It absolutely could have worked.

So why didn't it.

Because of the way I set it up, the other person had to do the work.

And I've spent thirty years now cajoling people, supporting people, encouraging people, handing them every tool they could possibly need to do the work.

Here's what thirty years of that taught me.

People don't do what they could do. But they definitely do what they will do.

If I could go back, I'd take that same idea and build it the other way around.

We do the situps. You get the six pack.

That's the universally dream come true offer. Everybody wants the six pack. Almost nobody wants the situps.

And the remarkable thing is how much easier it is to actually deliver that now. The companies who have figured it out are thriving. In every category.

The other thing I know now that I didn't know then is that people are different.

Gino Wickman's whole Rocket Fuel idea. Visionaries and integrators. If you're a visionary, you need somebody who can make things happen.

Working Genius says the same thing another way. Wonder. Invention. Discernment. Galvanizing. Enablement. Tenacity. Different people bring different ones.

I didn't understand the real value of a team in 1997. I thought the idea was the thing.

What's amazing to me is how much of the context is still exactly true.

Everybody spends all their money on seven things. Home. Cars. Food. Health. Kids. Money. And me. Every budget is made up of those, and every business sits underneath one of them.

That was true in that journal, and it's true this morning.

But here's the part I had backwards.

You can't think from the top down. It all starts at the bottom and grows up.

As a visionary you see the completed thing. And then going and doing the individual things it takes to get there almost feels like living in the past... because you've already been to the future and you know what it looks like.

That's the reality of it, though. The completed thing doesn't arrive. It gets built.

And if anybody knows how to time travel, let me know.

Here's your nudge for today.

Go and find the idea in your own notebook that never got past the first stage.

Then ask the honest question about it. Does this need somebody else to do the work?

If it does, that's not an execution problem. That's a design problem, and you can fix a design problem from right where you're sitting.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/082-if-you-have-great-ideas-but-struggle-to-execute-them-watch-this/

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

How to Stay in Front of Your Customers Without Spending More Money Aug 23, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Still on the old school plays that work better today.

Yesterday it was the cheap stuff. Lead generation business cards falling out of a hole in your pocket. Yellow flyers on every bulletin board I could find. Somebody wrote in about windshields.

All of it doing the same job. Low cost distribution, because low cost distribution was all we had.

And now Meta will hand that exact same digital flyer to exactly the person you want it in front of, for less than it would cost you to print it.

Bottomless.

But there's a second half to this one, and it's the half people skip.

Here's what I was really doing back then with the Guide to Halton Hills, and the Toronto and Beyond Guide.

The print ad ran. People called the recorded message, or faxed the request form in, or mailed it.

And then every two weeks, I mailed them every new home that had come on the market. For as long as they wanted it.

I wasn't calling it educating and motivating at the time. That's exactly what it was.

Those people had raised their hand and said I'm interested in Halton Hills. So I stayed in front of them, and I bonded with them, and I was still there whenever they got ready.

The only tool I had for that was the mail.

I remember reading about Claude Hopkins and Albert Lasker and that whole crowd in the twenties, mailing letters for a penny.

And thinking to myself... if I could mail letters for a penny, I'd be rich.

Now we can mail infinitely. For zero.

Straight to one person, with their name on it, and they can hit reply and talk back to you.

That would have sounded like science fiction to me in 1997. And it's sitting there unused in most businesses.

Then there's Lucy Zillio.

If you grew up in Toronto you know the name. Tuned In With Lucy Zillio.

Thirty and sixty second blocks, dropped in between the evening programming on Omni and City TV.

Remnant space. The inventory the stations hadn't managed to sell to a real advertiser.

And what she did with it was spotlight local business owners. Being on her show gave them the scaffolding. Her credibility, handed over to them.

She'd become an influencer. Nobody was calling it that yet.

It would be so easy to be the Lucy Zillio of your market right now. Make the show. Feature the businesses.

And think about where you'd point it.

Everybody spends all their money on seven things. Their home. Their car. Their food. Their health. Their money. Their kids. And themselves.

Pick one of those, become the advocate for the people in it, and you've built yourself a trust based distribution network.

That's the pattern running through all of this.

The foundational ideas from back then still work. The tools just got free.

So pay attention to the old school stuff, and take advantage of what we've got now.

And here's your nudge for today.

Find the people who raised their hand once and then never heard from you again.

Staying in front of them used to cost me a stamp every two weeks. It costs you nothing.

Start there.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/081-how-to-stay-in-front-of-your-customers-without-spending-more-money/

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

These Old School Marketing Plays Actually Work Better Today Aug 22, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Still in the 1997 journals. And here's what struck me this morning, going back through them.

These are the good old days.

Not those ones. These ones. Today.

Because I'm looking at page after page of playbooks I was running back then. Guerrilla marketing, we called it. All of it built around the tools we happened to have.

And underneath every single one of them, the same two jobs.

Get somebody's attention. Then get a message in front of them.

That's marketing. That was it then and it's still it now.

Back in 1997 the message lived on a recorded message line. One minute, three minutes, whatever it took. Their undivided, immersive attention the whole time it played.

So the whole game was getting eyeballs and pointing them at that recording.

Here's one I ran constantly.

Lead generation business cards. The cheap ones. Thin paper, black ink on yellow. A thousand of them for about fifty dollars.

Five cents a card.

And what I used to tell people was... get a stack every morning, put them in your pocket, put a hole in your pocket, and let them fall wherever you go.

You're moving through your day, and everywhere you go there are people.

Then the flyers. Same yellow paper, same black ink, up on every bulletin board I could find. Supermarket. Library. Coffee shop. Restaurants.

I treated those boards like a vending route. My cousin worked it with me.

Take-one tabs along the bottom edge. The headline, and the recorded message number.

Georgetown. Three bedroom homes. Zero down payment. Free recorded message.

And a photo of the kind of house you'd be getting.

Somebody walks past that, thinks wait, you can get a home like that with nothing down?... and calls to find out how.

There's Julie's Guide to Winter Haven. Free 1997 guide to Winter Haven real estate.

And here's Russell Oliver's card. I buy your jewelry on the front. I pay top dollar for your gold, diamonds and jewelry on the back.

That was the whole thing. A nickel of paper doing all the work.

But here's the realization I had, sitting there with those pages open.

This might be the greatest time there has ever been to be an old school marketer.

Because everything I just described, Meta and Instagram will now do for me. Better, and cheaper.

A static ad is a digital business card. A digital flyer. Same job, same amount of information.

And it costs less than a nickel to put in front of somebody.

Except now I'm not letting them fall out of my pocket and hoping.

I can say fifteen mile radius. This age. Men only, or women only. This job title. These interests.

Exactly the people I want.

And any small business can afford it. Five dollars a day. A hundred dollar test. It scales down as far as you need it to.

Meanwhile the skill that makes the whole thing work is the one that's never going out of style.

Three or four words that say exactly what you do.

Lovely homes, zero down payment. I buy your jewelry. Stop your divorce.

Write the headline. Give one call to action. You're in business.

So here's how I'd hone it.

Take an index card, or a business card, and make yourself work inside those edges.

What's the one image? What's the headline? What are the few words that get somebody to take one single action... learn more, download, get the details?

That's the whole play. And there are infinite ways to apply it.

There's a second idea that goes right alongside this one, and I want to set it up properly, so I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

No better time to be alive as a marketer than right now.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take what you're selling and fit it on a business card. One image, one headline, one action.

If it doesn't fit on the card, it isn't clear yet.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/080-these-old-school-marketing-plays-actually-work-better-today/

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

News Flash: People Are Lazy. Here’s How to Build Your Business Around It. Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

I'm live at Honeycomb this morning, for their fifth anniversary. Cortado. Eggs and bacon. Journal open on the table.

That's the whole pattern, by the way. I come here, I pick up the journal, I look through it, and I find the insight.

Still 1997. Coming up on the end of my first year of journaling.

Yesterday I showed you the Today's Homeowner kit. The whole elaborate system, laid out step by step so anybody could run it.

And going back through it, something Jerry Ballinger said to me landed differently than it did at the time.

People don't do what they could do.

I didn't have enough experience yet to hear that as a pattern. I do now.

Think about what I was handing people. They could photograph every house style in their neighborhood. They could assemble the guide. They could run the ad. They could send out the information.

They could do all of it. I did it, and it worked.

But they don't.

And thirty years of getting results for people, and through people, later... that's still my quietest disappointment.

Jerry didn't leave it there, though. He gave me the ladder.

If you're in the coaching or information business, he said, you can't build around what people could do. You have to step down to what they're likely to do.

And if you really want to lock it in, you step down one more. What will they do?

That last one is the interesting one.

Dan Sullivan and I do a podcast every Sunday, Welcome to Cloudlandia, and Dan has a three question test for anything he wants to get done.

First question. Is there any way I can get this result without doing anything?

That's his first choice. And look how neatly that lines up with what people will do... because if there's a way to get the result without doing anything, that's the thing they'd pick.

If the answer is no, second question. What's the least I could do to get this outcome?

And then the third. Is there a who who can do my least?

Which puts him right back at getting the thing without having to do it himself.

That's all of us. We want the result. We don't want the work.

Here's the part that surprises people.

Everybody's guarded about their ideas. Frightened somebody's going to steal them.

Nobody's stealing your idea.

And if they take a run at it, they'll only ever execute the surface of it. I know this because I spend my days trying to get people who are paying me for my ideas to actually execute my ideas.

So take the postcard.

What somebody could do is build the whole coalition. Treat their clients as advocates. Take the entire home under management, the entire life under management, everything that comes with living in Winter Haven rather than just buying a house here.

That takes a rare person. I've dealt with tens of thousands of people, so I can tell you how rare.

But what will they do?

They'll identify the 150 people already in their world. The people who know them, like them, trust them.

And then they'll make one decision.

Send the world's most interesting postcard to those 150 people every month. We write it. Interesting facts on the front, and on the back a note built specifically to orchestrate referrals.

One decision. These are my 150 people, and yes, send it every month. We prepare the whole thing once, and it goes out.

No thinking required.

And the outcome we're actually after is their return on relationship. That the people who already know them do more business with them and introduce them to others.

The bare minimum way to get that... the least you could do... is send the postcard automatically. So nobody in your world is ever more than thirty days from having your contact information physically in their hand.

That's the shift I can see happening across these journal pages.

It starts as look at this cool thing I did, and here's exactly how to do it yourself.

And it becomes here's the toned down version, and we'll help you with most of it.

And the things that work best of all are the ones where it's just... get out of the way, let me do it for you.

The way we articulate it now is the winner.

It's like working with a personal trainer, except we do the sit-ups and you get the six-pack.

That's what everybody dreams of. We do the hard work. You get the benefit.

So if you're starting down the path of getting your ideas executed through other people, that's the thirty years of lessons compressed.

People will do what people are willing to do. Which is nothing, ideally, with the result arriving anyway.

Accommodate that, and it's a great journey.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take the thing you're asking people to do... and ask yourself honestly whether that's what they could do, or what they will do.

Then build the second one.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/079-news-flash-people-are-lazy-heres-how-to-build-your-business-around-it/

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

How to Actually Finish the Ideas You Start Aug 20, 2026

Show notes

Good morning from Winter Haven.

Day sixty three, and not one rainy morning yet. I'm not going to jinx it.

And I've got the tickle trunk out today, so you know something good is coming.

Still 1997. About halfway through the year.

And going back through these pages I keep running into projects I'd forgotten I was proud of.

Here's today's one. The Today's Homeowner After Sales Service Kit.

Remember yesterday, when I laughed at my 1997 self wanting a laser printer that would run 11 by 17 pages?

This is what it was for.

Here's how it started.

I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa, and in the lounge there was a magazine I'd never seen before. Today's Homeowner.

I started leafing through it. Decks. Landscaping. Home improvement projects. All of it genuinely useful.

And my first thought wasn't that's a nice magazine. It was, that's a tool.

That would be a great thing for a realtor to give their clients every single month.

By the time we landed in Ottawa I had the whole thing worked out.

Send the magazine along with your newsletter. Do it in partnership with local businesses who want to reach homeowners anyway. And put a directory in it, so when somebody sees a deck they like, there's a local deck builder right there to call.

This was before I had the words for the Before Unit, the During Unit and the After Unit. But the seven step process was already there, all the way through to nurturing lifetime relationships. The eighth one, orchestrating referrals, came later.

Then Monday came, and I did the part most people skip.

I tracked down Today's Homeowner in New York City and I called them.

I don't know what gave me the audacity. But I got a great conversation out of it, and we came away able to buy the magazines in bulk at 87 cents an issue. On a three dollar cover.

And then I went and actually built the thing.

Here's everything you need to get started right now.

Step one, prepare your database in advance.

Step two, mail a letter to your clients announcing their gift subscription. And there's the letter, already written for them.

Step three, select client centered local businesses to partner with, and give your clients a value added bonus every month.

There's the service sheet. If you like what you saw in the magazine, here's where to get it locally. With room for their business cards.

There's the letter you could send those businesses to explain what you were doing.

And there's the sales letter we used to introduce the whole idea to our members.

I had it laid out for everybody.

And looking at it now, I can see exactly who taught me what.

Jerry Ballinger is all over the layout. Eben and I have the same skill set because we got to intern at the feet of a legend.

Jeffrey Lant is in the words. I don't think of Cash Copy as a marketing book. It's a book about being crystal clear, in the service of creating an outcome for somebody.

And Robin Williams. Not the actor. The designer, who wrote The Non-Designer's Design Book.

Contrast. Repetition. Alignment. Proximity.

The same headline size sitting in the same spot on every page. Everything lined up with something else. The things that belong together, grouped together.

I still notice when they're missing. When something's willy nilly on a page, that's what my eye is telling me.

But here's the real reason I pulled this one out.

It was a lot of work. And it got finished.

One idea. One project. Taken all the way through to something I can hold up thirty years later.

That's rarer than having the idea in the first place.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take the idea you keep circling back to... and describe what the finished version of it would actually look like sitting in your hands.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/078-how-to-actually-finish-the-ideas-you-start/

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

How to Find Clarity on What Matters When EVERYTHING Feels Urgent (In 5 Minutes) Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Here we are at the end of journal number five. Still 1997.

And going back through these pages, I realized something about what my journals are actually for.

They're a focusing tool.

I used to run what I called five by five sessions. Five questions. Five minutes. Five things listed underneath each one.

You can point it at the long term or the short term. But where it really earns its keep is in the middle of an overwhelming week.

Too much going on. Everything competing for the front of the line.

Because here's what our minds do in that state. We time travel.

We project forward and get anxious about something that hasn't happened yet. Or we go back and ruminate on something that already did, and drag the meaning of it into today.

And the most comforting thing I know is this.

In the moment, time moves at the speed of reality.

You've heard me say it. Time moves at the pace of sixty minutes per hour.

You would be amazed how long one minute is if you sit quietly and watch the second hand sweep all the way round to the top. Just breathe and watch it.

I saw Rick Rubin being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes recently.

Before they started, Rick suggested they take two minutes to get centered. Just to arrive in the moment.

That's exactly how I come into one of these sessions.

So set your environment up. Take the distractions away. And then, before you write a single thing, be still for a minute.

Then start listing.

What are the five most pressing things I'm putting off, or worried about, or feeling the pressure of?

Just naming them does something. Getting them out of your head and onto the page makes them feel more manageable straight away.

And then I get granular about when they actually land.

Look down the list and ask what's really happening in the next 100 hours. Sometimes the thing taking up all the room in your head has no consequence at all in the next 100 hours.

Then go further in. The next 100 minutes.

That's the immediate present. That's the part you genuinely control.

So what's the most important thing you could do in the next 100 minutes?

Even when something is due by the end of the day, taking five minutes... or fifty... to get your thinking right first is an advantage, not a delay.

Lincoln said if he had four hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend the first three sharpening the axe.

Same thing here.

Now, once the fog has lifted, I use the same tool to plan.

These were the questions I was asking myself at the end of that journal. All of them pointed at the next 90 days. The far actionable future.

What five habits would improve my performance most dramatically in the next 90 days?

What five things have I been putting off that would clear my mind if I just got them done?

What tools or technology would improve my production capability?

I laughed at my own answers to that one. In 1997 I wanted a laser printer that would run 11 by 17 pages, so I could fold my own magazine sized booklets and lay out full page tabloid ads exactly the way they should look. A color scanner was on there too.

What are the five most important projects I could be working on?

What five things would I like to do just for fun?

And what would I like to learn in depth?

You can make a serious dent in something in 90 days if you take it on as a priority and go full immersion on it. That might be ChatGPT or Claude today. Or how to run Meta ads. Whatever the thing is that would have the biggest impact on you.

Answer those and you can't help but come away with clarity.

Because having it on paper, and confirming it, is a completely different thing to carrying it around in your head.

It's amazing how much insight our minds already have... and how much of it comes out the moment you give it somewhere to go.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Set a timer for five minutes and list the five things pressing on you hardest right now.

Then mark the ones with a real consequence in the next 100 hours... and decide what you're doing with the next 100 minutes.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/077-how-to-find-clarity-on-what-matters-when-everything-feels-urgent-in-5-minutes/

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

How To Get The Most People to Buy Now AND Later Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

Back in the good book today. Cash Copy, by Jeffrey Lant.

And this time it's egregious error number thirteen.

You don't give the moderately interested prospect an invitation to stay in touch, so you can do what it takes to sell him.

Now, everybody wants the magic ad.

Run it today, get the call, make the sale this weekend.

When I was working with realtors that was the whole ask. Run the ad, somebody goes out looking at houses on Saturday, buys one on Sunday.

And if a prospect was ninety days out? That was their long term follow up.

But think about everybody who sees your ad.

They all land somewhere on a spectrum.

Right at the top... I need this now, I've been waiting for somebody to offer it to me, I can't wait to get going.

Right at the bottom... I would never buy this in a million years. Especially from you.

And almost everybody is somewhere in the middle.

Jeffrey says it better than I can.

Every day my mail is flooded with marketing offers. Most are single offers. Buy this, they say.

I may have the problem this marketer says he can solve. I may be interested in it.

But I have an enormous number of days where I feel comfortable enough that I don't want to make any changes, despite my need to do so.

Days when I've got other things on my mind. Or I don't really have the money for this worthy objective, or don't want to spend it this way.

And the offer doesn't allow for any of that. It doesn't allow for a maybe. It doesn't allow for not right now.

It just says buy. And if I'm not in the mood or not able, there's nothing I can do but not buy.

Sit with that one for a second.

If your marketing sends everybody to a VSL, or a $7 offer, or a webinar, or a call on your calendar... you are only talking to the people who are ready today.

Everybody else just quietly leaves.

Now, most people who do something about this do something weak.

Join our mailing list to stay in touch.

That's not an invitation. Nobody sees themselves in it.

Jeffrey's rule is to be crystal clear. Never say check here and return this coupon to stay on our mailing list.

Instead, right after the hard offer, add a box with words like these.

Jeffrey, I'm not ready to take action now to start getting a 20% yearly return on my investments... but I would like to hear from you again when you've got the facts on another investment like this.

I know this is a good return. Keep me in mind the next time you can get it for me.

Look at how specific that is.

Because the only message that gets conveyed is the one carried by the words you choose while you've got somebody's attention.

And the easier you make it for a person to find themselves in your words, the more of them will raise a hand.

I've been doing a version of this for thirty years.

One line at the end of a recorded message. Tell me a little about the homes you're most interested in, and I'll send you the ones just like them that are available right now.

That changed the responses immediately.

Because it gave people something true to say about themselves.

And here's the part I keep coming back to.

This isn't a soft sell approach. It's a leadership approach.

You know they have a problem. You know what that problem is costing them. You've got evidence you know how to solve it. And you've got the solution.

So your job is to take people by the hand and lead them, overtly, in the direction they should go... for the situation they're actually in right now.

For some of them that situation is right now.

And for the rest of them it will be later. They just need somebody to still be there when it is.

Not all leads are equal.

Stop spending everything on the people who are ready today, and start identifying the ones who'll tell you they're interested but a little bit later.

Then have an orchestrated way to educate and motivate them until they are.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take your best performing offer and write the second box underneath it.

The one somebody who isn't ready today could honestly tick... and then decide what you'd actually send them next.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/076-how-to-get-the-most-people-to-buy-now-and-later/

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

How to Show Up Right When People Are Ready to Buy Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

Good morning. Happy Monday.

Journal number five. Still 1997.

And today's page is one of my favorites, because I get to show you the whole arc of it. An idea that starts near the front of a journal and is finished before the end of the same journal.

I went into my tickle trunk and pulled out exactly what came off this page.

Two things came together to make it work.

The first was on a page of its own. I was going deep on one question. Why would somebody sell their house?

Not the answer an agent would give. The actual conversation going on in the mind of the person who's about to do it.

The second was Dan Kennedy. I'd heard him talk about intensification. Instead of mailing one time, you mail multiple times.

And then I added the part that made it mine. Timing.

Here in Florida, and in most of the country, the market runs on a double hump.

Start in January and there aren't many homes selling. Then March, April, May, a peak. A little dip over the summer. Another mini peak in October.

So if you already know when the activity is going to happen... why not work backwards from there and get in front of the wave before it arrives?

Eight postcards. One neighborhood. Mailed once a week for eight weeks, starting right around now, in August of 1997.

Tiny yellow ones. A quarter of an 8 1/2 by 11.

And on each one, one of the headlines that came off that first page. The things already going on in their minds.

Here's what to do now if you're going to sell your house in the next six months.

Here's how to find out what homes in any neighborhood are really selling for.

Here's what it really costs to buy a bigger home. Hint, it's less than you may think.

Sell your house in as little as 24 hours, and laugh to yourself at how easy it was.

I started looking for the buyer for your house 180 days ago.

Here's a guaranteed way to sell your house in less than 60 days.

Every one of them offering the same two things. A free copy of my book, How to Sell Your House for Top Dollar Fast. And a free recorded message.

And on the address side, find out how much your house is worth, free, over the phone.

Remember where we are. No internet. No website to send anybody to. No QR code to scan, which are two of the most useful things we've got right now.

And no Zillow either. Nobody could look any of this up for themselves.

Which is exactly why the offer worked. They wanted the information and had no way to get it. So offering it scratched the itch right where it itched.

Now, the neighborhood.

Starter homes. About 2,000 of them. First time buyers coming in, and people moving up to something bigger going out. A transitional neighborhood.

And Julie, in the twelve months before we started, had sold zero homes in it. None. No footprint there at all.

From the end of August to the end of the year, she got five of the 25 listings that came up.

Zero to a 20% market share, in a neighborhood she'd never done anything in.

Just by being in front of people right at the moment they were starting to think about it.

And this transfers to anything.

Think about the timing of what people actually do in your business. Then lag back from it and send at least three sequenced mailings into the run up.

Not one. Three.

I think you'll be delighted at how much headway you can make in a market you've had no activity in before.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Pick the month your best prospects are most likely to be ready. Then count backwards three touches... and work out what you'd want sitting in front of them, starting now.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/075-how-to-show-up-right-when-people-are-ready-to-buy/

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

How to Use the "6 Weapons of Influence" to Sell Anything Fast Aug 16, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

I'm not sure there's a book I've read more, or applied more, than Robert Cialdini's Influence.

Studying social psychology, led there by Cialdini, is probably the deepest study I've ever done. All-time top five, easily.

But that's not really the part I want to talk about.

When a book lands on me like that, I don't just read it.

I break it down into a mental model. Then I build a worksheet in my journal and apply that model to whatever I'm working on at the time.

I've done dozens of those over thirty years.

And here's one, sitting in journal number five, from 1997.

How to use the six weapons of influence to sell your house for top dollar fast.

I was deep in real estate then. But you could just as easily write... to sell anything fast.

So let's walk them.

Reciprocity.

That sense we all carry that if you do me a favor, I owe you one.

And the way you trigger it is simple. You go first.

Joe Polish has a little book called Life Gives to the Giver, and a big one called What's in It for Them. Both pointing at the same thing.

Here's how we used it.

I need to sell these six Muskoka home sites in the next thirty days, and I'm willing to sell them for 33% below their current appraised value.

That's leading with a concession. I'm going first.

Liking.

We're more influenced by people we like.

So be an actual human being. Tell people who you really are.

That's why the ad opened the way it did. I'm Don Naylor, and we've been developing property in Muskoka for over thirty years.

Or on the townhouse... my wife and I have always wanted to live in the country, and we found our dream home.

A real situation, told by a real person. That's what makes somebody like you.

Scarcity.

People want what they can't have. We're wired to react to anything in diminishing supply.

So we'd get everybody out to the lots at the same time. Two o'clock. And we'd say up front that the home would be sold on Sunday night.

Now, a word of caution on this one.

Cialdini calls it smuggling in scarcity. I don't know how long we can hold this price. Better get in now, we might take it down.

That's arbitrary. That's trying to scare somebody into moving. And people can feel it.

Real scarcity is a different animal. Real scarcity is a decision that genuinely can't wait... and if you miss it, you miss it.

Authority.

People look for credibility before they decide anything.

Don had been running 33% off blowout sale ads all summer. No luck at all.

And I think I know why. 33% off of what?

Off whatever number you decided to put on it in the first place?

So we got the lots appraised.

An official appraisal is a stamp of officialness. It comes from outside of you. And now 33% below the current appraised value actually means something.

That one came from putting Cialdini together with Gerry Spence, How to Argue and Win Every Time. The power of telling the truth.

Commitment and consistency.

Once we start down a path, we want to keep going in a way that stays consistent with it.

It's why the most reliable thing we run, for almost anything... ebikes, fences, houses... is a catalog offer.

Somebody asking for the catalog has outwardly expressed an interest.

And it sends a message to their own subconscious. I asked for this. This must be important to me.

Social proof.

We look around at other people to check we're on the right track.

So you pull up to the lots at two o'clock, and there are cars everywhere and people already walking the property.

You take your cue from that. This must be worth something.

And it feeds straight back into the scarcity. Now you could actually lose it.

Six weapons, all firing at once, inside one story, from the very first line of the ad.

A perfect storm of influence... and every bit of it was engineered on a page in a journal before it ever went out into the real world.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

Take whatever you're selling right now and write the six weapons down the page, one per line.

Then fill in how you're using each one... and be honest about the ones that come back blank.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/074-how-to-use-the-6-weapons-of-influence-to-sell-anything-fast/

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

How Taking Action On Your Intuition Actually Pays Off Aug 15, 2026

Show notes

Good morning.

I was looking at today's journal page. Number five, and we're still in 1997.

And there it is at the top of the page. Today's Homeowner.

Which got me thinking about how many of the things I've done started out as nothing more than an intuition.

A curiosity. A little pull toward something.

The only difference between the ones that turned into something and the ones that didn't... is that I pursued them.

Here's one from just before Today's Homeowner.

I read somewhere that public access cable was mandated to provide airtime to the community.

That's it. That's the whole seed.

At the time I was running ads and filling a room at the library in Halton Hills, doing a home buyer workshop for first time buyers.

And I thought, what if I could do that on television?

So I called.

Sometimes the best thing you can do with an intuition is throw your hat over the fence. Make the call. Talk to somebody.

I called Halton Cable and told them what I wanted to do. A 30 minute special on buying your first home.

He said that sounds like a really good idea.

They had a studio. Cameramen. A whole professional broadcast center sitting there waiting.

So I built it. Thirty minutes, adapted straight from the live workshop. I called it Six Steps to Home Ownership.

And I modeled it on the infomercials that were everywhere in the late 80s and early 90s.

At the ten minute mark I'd stop and say, don't worry about taking notes. I've got the whole thing in a workbook for you right here.

Call this number for a free recorded message and I'll send you the Six Steps to Home Ownership booklet.

The only money I spent was $500 on the editing.

A friend of mine wrote the theme song. Shout out Tim Alberts.

And it ran twice a month for a year. First and third Thursday.

As a lead in to Must See TV. Seinfeld. Cheers. That era.

Every single time it aired, people called for the book.

Now here's the part I really want you to have.

I made sure to book a listing appointment on the Thursdays my show was on.

The show came on at 7:30.

So I'd be sitting in somebody's house. They'd walk me around, we'd sit down, we'd start talking about marketing their home.

And I'd say, can we go into the TV room for a minute?

While I'm in here talking to you about selling your house, I'm also out there looking for the buyer for it. I've already been looking.

And we'd turn on the television. And there I am.

Standing in their living room, and up on their screen at the same time.

You should have seen their faces.

Then I'd call the line and let them listen to the recordings. Real people, asking for the booklet.

Over a hundred of them by that point. That's the pool we're working with.

And I'd show them the Guide to Halton Hills, and how I'd already been looking for their buyer for 180 days.

I never lost a listing on a first or third Thursday. Not one.

The second year, I made a deal with a pizza company. Anybody in the apartment complexes who ordered a pizza got a video of Six Steps to Home Ownership delivered along with it.

Same asset. Working again.

And that's the whole pattern.

An intuition, followed through, turned into something you can use over and over.

It's a funny thing to look back on at a time when there was no YouTube. No way for a normal person to get a video in front of anybody.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about Today's Homeowner itself, which came from a magazine I happened to see on a flight from Toronto to Ottawa.

I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?

And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.

Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.

So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.

Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.

And here's your nudge for today.

What's the intuition you've been carrying around and haven't acted on?

Make the call. Just the one call... and throw your hat over the fence.

Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/073-how-taking-action-on-your-intuition-actually-pays-off/

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