Ep009: Jamie Smart
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Welcome to The More Cheese, the Less Whiskers podcast. This week we have a very exciting episode. We have best-selling author Jamie Smart. Jamie is the author of the books "Clarity" and "The Little Book of Clarity". He also has a new book coming out in about eight weeks and it's called "Results, Think Less, Achieve More".
One of the things that Jamie's really known for is writing very insightful books - when I say insightful, meaning there's no practice, there's no effort required for you to make a change. Once you read the book, you get the insight. Change is immediate and inevitable. I love that kind of thing about the way Jamie writes, but he's got a really cool opportunity with the largest bookseller in the UK for some special placement in their travel-related book stores in the airports and train stations and motorway stores.
We are going to spend some time today brainstorming how to maximize this opportunity. We start out with how to convert as many of the people as you can who are in the store and pick up the book, to actually buy the book, and then work backwards from there.
You'll see the over-riding strategy in how we look at this, how we select that target audience and apply it to a Profit Activator. We had a really great discussion. Lots of great ideas came out of it, and I think we'll see how they can apply to any business. A way of thinking and insight about how you apply the Profit Activators to your business. Enjoy the episode.
Links:
IloveMarketing Ep:193 - Jamie Smart
IloveMarketing Ep:194 - Jamie Smart
Books:
Clarity
Little Book of Clarity
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 009
Dean: Jamie Smart.
Jamie: Dean Jackson can you hear me okay?
Dean: Can you hear me okay, I can hear you perfectly.
Jamie: I can hear you terrifically.
Dean: This is very exciting, have you been listening to More Cheese Less Whiskers?
Jamie: I have, I haven't listened to every single one yet but-
Dean: That's okay, they'll all be there ready for you when you can.
Jamie: Exactly.
Dean: We're having a great time so we are recording right now and we're just going to hatch evil schemes for Jamie Smart for 1 hour.
Jamie: I am excited about it.
Dean: Let's introduce people to you and then talk about the evil scheme that we're going to hatch here.
Jamie: Right.
Dean: Why don't you just describe what you do, who you are and then we can talk about the opportunity that we have right now.
Jamie: Sure so I'm an author, I've written a couple of books "Clarity" and "The Little Book of Clarity." I'm a coach and I train other coaches so we are on a clarity coach training program and trainer training and that forms a big part of our business, but we also do some corporate work and that sort of thing, but my next book "Results" is due to launch in 2 months time. The interesting thing about the books is that the books go to a very broad audience and at the moment aside from the books we don't do very much to serve that audience and it occurs to me that with "Results" their is a really great opportunity which is all lining up right now which is what I wanted to use this session for. I can talk about that in a minute if you like or we can cross right into it.
Dean: Okay, yes okay.
Jamie: Yeah, so "Results" is coming out in November and the things that I've lined up is this, number one, there's a book seller in the UK. It's a primarily a UK launch that would be available internationally, the main book seller in the UK is called WHSmith-
WHSmith have chosen "Results" to be what they call their deal of the week for the week of the 10th of November. It starts with the Thursday the 10th of November and goes for a week. What this means is that in their, what's called their travel outlets which is the stores that are in airports and railway stations and coach stations and underground stations and that sort of thing, basically anywhere people are travelling. Their travel outlets will have the book at half price and on prominent display so they'll be really pushing it and the idea is during that week Smith's are going to do their best to sell thousands of copies through those source. Which is great for them and great for us.
Here is where the opportunity start lining up, The Sunday Times here in the UK, they apparently calculate their Sunday Times bestseller based on the four weeks prior to the first Sunday of the next month. Now, so it's a 4 week period basically starting on the 7th of November and going for 4 weeks and so our WHSmith's promotion falls right at the beginning of that which is terrific.
If we can sell a bunch of copies through WHSmith's and a bunch of copies through Amazon as well more widely because not everyone is going to be able to make it to a WHSmith then we could very well be lined up for a Sunday Times number one bestseller which will be wonderful for all kinds of ... It's a fun target to aim at but it could be good for all kinds of reasons. It would be good for the book, it would be good to reach more people and for more people to get exposed to the message in "Results" which is the principles behind "Clarity" and are reflected in "Results" as well. That's kind of the big prize to play for is Sunday Times number one.
The other thing is Dean, like I know that just by our book being in deal of the week in WHSmith's it's going to sell a bunch of copies. That will almost certainly be enough to get it into the charts for Sunday Times if not to number one, it will sell a bunch of copies. We've had this deal of the week, Smith's have given us this for the last ... This is the third book they've given it to me for and they're only a certain number of this slots every year so it's a good deal to get it but they want to see a really high performance on the books. Now, here's the thing "Clarity" when it ... I don't know if I'm supposed to say this numbers but I'll say them anyway.
Dean: Well it's just you and I, it's just you and I.
Jamie: Okay, so in deal of the week last time "Clarity" sold 2X approximately. This was back in 2013, "Clarity" sold 2X. "Little Book of Clarity" sold 3X or kind of 3.3X. They need "Results" to sell 5X if I want to get deal of the week again. So basically if I want to get deal of the week for my next book which I do, then I've got to do more than double what "Clarity" did and just under double what "Little Book of Clarity" did.
There's a new goal, here is the challenge Dean, I'm fairly comfortable engaging my community and getting them to click on links and buy on Amazon and all that sort of stuff but the challenge of, "Here is what I want you to do community. Go to a WHSmith store at some point on this 7 days and purchase one or two or three copies of this book half price." By the way the only people who can do that are people who are living in the UK and the only kind of store they can do that at is at a WHSmith travel shop. They're not travel stores by anyone except the people who work for them, so no one knows what one of those is.
There is a complexity which is getting my community who I mostly contact via, I'm in connection with on email spoke and answer thing to get them to move to a completely sort of to a different world in a way. To the world of a bookstore, to go and do something that isn't just click on a link. That's the challenge, that and the whole kind of launch of this I thought could be a very interesting conversation from More Cheese Less Whiskers.
Dean: Absolutely, it sounds like you got some really cool opportunity what's the subtitle of "Results" by the way?
Jamie: Think less achieve more.
Dean: I love it, that's so great. Now the thing about this opportunity the way I look at it is kind of the double opportunity in that you're going to be exposed to people that you otherwise wouldn't be exposed to with this opportunity too, right? So you got a bunch of new people there and that sort of one opportunity if I look at those people coming in to people who they pick up the book they ventured into your [inaudible 00:10:29] unit, in a way, right?
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: If we think about this as ... If we're applying a profit activators to that, the WHSmith is being the before unit for you in there but we're going to be able to assist that as well. Just to get some lay of the land, how many outlets do they have that would meet this requirements like these travel outlets so they would be at the major train stations, the airport, am I missing anything or ...?
Jamie: It'll be airports where there are probably, I'm guessing there are 20 or 30 airports in the UK, but I could be wrong I could be underestimating but I think it's about 20 or 30 airports. It will be at train stations all over the country so not just the big ones in London. I would have thought that would be hundreds of train stations and possibly coach.
Dean: Do you know that for sure or no?
Jamie: I don't know the exact number, I don't know the exact number, but that, I would expect it to be hundreds of train stations and they'll also be in lots of what I call motorway services which are the shops beside highways basically they-
Dean: That would be like rest stations and stuff.
Jamie: Exactly but they won't be deal of the week there, they'll be there later on the following week and stuff, but they'll certainly be rail stations, airports and that sort of thing. There will be hundreds of locations with this books in them.
Dean: Planes, trains and automobiles so if we say-
Jamie: There you go.
Dean: It will be interesting to know how many train stations even if we just look at the major Metropolitan ones just to kind of get the lay of the land here. I [crosstalk 00:12:37]. Uh-huh.
Jamie: I might be able to just quickly jump online and see how many train stations in the UK.
Dean: Yeah, if they have bookstores in all of those, all the airport ones. I look at them as what I'm shaping up in my mind here is our target audience. I'm looking at this our profit activator number one, in our assisted version of their efforts in the before unit. The result that they're going to get is that they're going to expose the book to thousands and thousands of people, potentially millions of people who are walking by and seeing it displayed and so there's-
Jamie: I've just got it Dean, there's 757 travel outlets so I've got an exact number which is ... It's say the 757 in airports, railway stations, motorway services, hospitals and workplaces including 181 units in international locations but deal of the week I don't think runs in the same way in the international UK locations. We got 144 airports, 121 railway stations, 119 motorway services, 126 hospitals. People get results in hospitals and so 46 in locations such as bus stations, work stations et cetera.
Dean: What was the number of train stations here?
Jamie: Train stations is 121.
Dean: 144 airports and 121 trains, okay. So you look at these as ... I'm looking at these as individual target markets here.
Jamie: Just to clarify again, so 144 are in airports but something like Heathrow Airport might have I don't know, 20 of these shops within the airport.
Dean: And the outlets, yeah and all the different terminals.
Jamie: Yeah exactly, exactly.
Dean: Which might have several too. Got you.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah exactly.
Dean: This is all very exciting as I like to get the data and kind of look this through. Now what do you suspect like so when you talk about 2X, 3X, 5X you were saying that "Clarity" and "The Little Book of Clarity" did, what do you think is going to make up the difference here. It's like how much of this are we able to affect would you think?
Jamie: I'm not sure if I understand the question here.
Dean: Like right now if you ... Did you do an orchestrated campaign to drive people to these travel outlets for "Clarity" and "The Little Book of Clarity" did you orchestrate something or are these numbers from just the result of being in those travel outlets.
Jamie: I would say that those numbers are fairly organic. I tried some things to orchestrate it but they weren't very effective, and I'll keep my voice down for this bit in case someone from Smith shows me, but I was putting more emphasis on the Amazon charts because I just didn't know how to massively effect the Smith's thing, but this time round it seems like massively effecting the Smith's thing will be such a huge win. So this call was actually an opportunity to see if we can find a way to crack it.
Dean: Okay, so here's what I would think then is that I look at the opportunity in 2 parts, some of one is all the organic stuff that's going to happen. There's an opportunity to onboard those people sort of thing at first, right?
Jamie: Sure.
Dean: Like the do something to make sure that you end up connecting with those people rather than just them buying the book and perusing it on their flight and then never going further with it right?
Jamie: Exactly.
Dean: So there is the opportunity of doing something like a free recorded message or something. It's so funny because of just having conversations with Joe Polish, Joe is coming out with a book this fall and one of the things that we were just talking about 2 days ago was putting a warning label on the cover of the book to direct people to call and listen to a free recorded message. Which there is a number of things that that kind of does but I'll kind of mention it a little bit but I want to see, have they already been delivered the books that they're going to be putting out on November 1st?
Jamie: No, no they haven't the books haven't yet been printed yet, very soon.
Dean: Okay so there is an opportunity to do something like that, like to put something on the front cover of the book to direct people to call and listen to a recorded message is a great opportunity to both introduce people to what they're going to get inside of the book to encourage them to purchase it, but also if they have purchased it to get them to take an action to now come into your world there, right? Because they're invisible buyers of the book. I know you do have some invitations for people to go to become part of your community but would you say like on a scale of one to ten how overt is the effort to get somebody to come identify themselves to you.
Jamie: We've got a few things, I'll see if I can put it on a scale of one to ten but I'm not sure if I'll be able to, so at the very beginning of the book we've got a thing that says, "Hey come and discover your clarity quotient" which is your stress score, your engagement score. It's a quick questionnaire but it'll give you your score and let you know what you can do to improve it. That's something.
Then at the end of the book depending on what kind of things they're interested in, we've got different 3 things they can sign up for. For instance, if you're a transformation professional then to get your free exponential practice score card book go to jamiesmart.com/scorecards. We've got those kind of things at the back of the book.
Then at the end of each chapter we're going to have additional materials, so audio visual materials that they can just click a link from the chapter, either you can key work with their phone or type in the URL and go straight over and consume the audios or the videos or whatever that goes with that chapter. Now, that each one of those things, any of those that they do will bring them into our conversation.
Dean: That's awesome, are you talking about that in "Results" or you did that in "Clarity?"
Jamie: We did that in "Clarity" we're doing it in "Results" as well.
Dean: Okay perfect and how did that work in "Clarity" in the past like did you get a lot of-
Jamie: We got a certain amount of people signing up through that so I would say a couple of thousand I can't remember the exact numbers but a couple of thousand. Now, the thing is each of those books has sold tens of thousands of copies so it's ...
Dean: That's what I was looking at to see is-
Jamie: ... A relatively small percentage. I would say maybe 10%, maybe 10% have come and actually both used those materials, registered an email, that sort of thing.
Dean: So there's that kind of potential opportunity even just bringing that right up on to the cover. It'd be interesting to see what you could do with that kind of an emphasis. Like I think some of the ... I love the fact that you're bringing in score cards and bringing things that are like for people who are really going deep with this. Are you done with your scorecards book or you're working on that right now?
Jamie: Literally just putting the finishing touches on it and then we're going to be hitting print hopefully by the end of next week.
Dean: Oh that's awesome, very cool. That was one opportunity that I was thinking about so we can talk a little bit more about that but then the other opportunity is in these outlets is what opportunities do we have to get people out on board here. Like get people who are in those outlets to actually go and seek out the book. There's an element of ... There's kind of like exciting in a way, how to define what this type of marketing is but I'll play you 2 stories that will kind of illustrate it and we'll see how we could coordinate something to drive people to another section of the airport, or to another section of the train station. There was a Ad company that did all the work for ... Not all the work, some work for Snapple which is an iced tea beverage here in the states, I don't whether you have it in the UK.
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: Oh you're familiar with Snapple, okay?
Jamie: I'm familiar with it, it may be from my time in the U.S.
Dean: When Snapple launched their mango flavor they contracted the Ad agency, contracted with the mango growers association to put stickers on some millions of mangoes that said, "Now available in Snapple." When you think about that as an opportunity that, talk about your complete like message to market match. Somebody who is buying an actual mango is by definition someone who would be a mango lover, right?
Jamie: Yeah. It's genius as well.
Dean: What a brilliant thing to get in front of the right people at the right time. Then there was another situation where a lingerie company was wanting to launch, take advantage of the traffic at New York fashion week but they couldn't afford to be part of New York fashion week. So they did a series of sidewalk stencils all around the venues where New York fashion week was going on that said, "From here, it looks like you could use some new underwear" and have the bamboo lingerie logo on it.
It was just like those kind of out of the box but perfectly matched type of things. It's on the radar of my awareness, but I don't know what to call that because you certainly you've got kind of a transient audience that you wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity to get in front of. If we look at the opportunity from just being in the deal of the week on the shelves is going to yield the result but if we're looking to double that result we got to do something different.
If we take that whole environment from the moment somebody arrives at the station or the airport to the time that they get out of the next one as the sort of opportunity, what are the opportunities to in that environment get this message in front of people, like other than them walking into the bookstore. Are there other opportunities and is it worth pursuing ... Does the train have a publication or a newsletter or advertising opportunity. Does the airlines do for sure, but is there something where you could run an Ad in one of the airline's magazines coinciding with that week.
Jamie: It's a really, really good point. Two things occur to me, the first thing is there is advertising on London underground. A lot of the underground stations are in railway stations, or a number of them are anyway like Liverpool street and Kings Cross and these other ones. Now, those railway stations will have bookstores, WHSmith's bookstores in them and what occurred to me that I had never thought about but I'm just typing in Steve, there'll be red cards and that sort of thing, but I can look at what the cost of it would be.
I would imagine that as web advertising becomes more and more and more effective the price of London underground advertising, at least the ones in the trains, those really big ones across the platform are pretty expensive. There may well be some opportunities in London underground, it's either on certain Tube lines or certain stations you've got some advertising that could support the books that they're going to see when they walk into the shops.
Dean: Right. If looked at that, like if you looked at the opportunity there and did kind of an 80/20 analysis. If we just looked at the airport and train station ones as almost half of the total of all the outlets that they have there's an opportunity to maybe pick the top 50 of those or something, to just see, that's kind of where my thinking goes is to think, then to think in the opposite, is is it easier to have an impact on the lower traffic points.
Jamie: Yeah it may be more cost-
Dean: Yeah it's much more difficult to have an impact in an environment like Heathrow than it would be to have an impact in Brighton or some of those, does Brighton have an airport?
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: I don't know, that's a smaller.
Jamie: I'm embarrassed to say I don't know but it probably has got one but it would be quite small.
Dean: Right exactly so you wonder, it's like that whole comes down to, I heard something about radio advertising and markets one time that the reach versus frequency, the decision is, do you want to convince a 100% of the people, 10% of the way or convince 10% of the people a 100% of the way. So you look at what the opportunity is to drive people to get those ... To get the book while they're in that environment kind of introduce it to new people.
Jamie: The thing that occurs to me is we could be quite targeted with that in terms of we just run the Ads for a week, the week that they're in there or in that sort of thing.
Dean: Right exactly.
Jamie: Like I have zero idea what advertising costs are for those things but we can find that out relatively easily. The other thing that occurred to me Dean, someone was telling me that it's now possible to activate certain Ads on people's phones only when they go into certain spaces.
Dean: Yeah geo-
Jamie: Certain Ads will come up. What's it called?
Dean: They can use geo flagging so you know when, and that was another thing I was going to talk about like doing on Snapchat and things like that, they can have filters and stuff, that geo filters that come up. That was a good point in a way of I'm not familiar with how that works, but I could imagine that that would be a ... Let's just imagine what the outcome could be if you could on a specific app or a specific media by be able to show Ads specifically when people are in a train station or in an airport.
Jamie: Yeah apparently you can. Apparently with certain spaces, yeah apparently that's possible so I'm going to find out about that.
Dean: Somebody who's listening might know about that too be good to find out, but of those 2 opportunities what's your thought about the recorded message or the opportunity within the ... Once somebody buys or you're pretty far down the path on that right now that you can't.
Jamie: No, the recorded message it may not be too late to do something I don't really have a sense yet of like how that would work so what's the idea from your perspective thing. Because it sounds like you're onto something but I'm not quite sure what it is.
Dean: When you look at it that there could be an opportunity to ... So I'll give you the perfect example. With our 90-Minute Book we were working with someone who was doing an event and they wanted to introduce the 90-Minute Book concept to the people in their community. We arranged to have for them to get a copy of the 90-Minute Book for everybody in the event. We put stickers on the books that said, "Before you open this book, call and listen to this recorded message."
It kind of stood out on the book but when people called then I got a chance to explain the context of what they're reading. I don't remember exactly the thing but what you're holding in your hand is a 90-Minute Book and this book is actually the result of a 90-Minute process. The book I'm going to explain exactly how it works and how you can write a book in 90 minutes, like you actually get, you're holding in your hands right now. That's what it looks like and kind of explaining to the people, because when you say, the 90-Minute Book they may have a different perception but when they're actually holding one in their hand, now it makes ... "Oh you mean that this is what I can create in 90 minutes."
That was a really great opportunity to kind of put a frame on how they actually look at these things, how they're looking at it. If we we're to say, what would you state to somebody, when somebody picked up the book, if you could magically animate the front cover of it and speak to them, what would you say to kind of bridge the thought that they're having just by looking at the cover and the decision of whether I should buy this book?
Jamie: I'm thinking about it and I guess the core message would be around, you have results that you want to create and the fact is, there is a way for you to create the results you want to create but it means clearing out some of the stuff that's been getting in the way. Creating something that gives people hope that let's them know that this is going to be different from other books they've read and it's going to be easier and all that sort of stuff. Sort of to say you know, in some ways I was talking to someone tonight actually, in some ways the challenge is getting people to actually believe that how it works is actually how it works because this isn't where you have to remember stuff and do affirmations and all that sort of stuff. It's like you read it and whatever insights you get that stuff is going to be working for you.
Dean: Yeah that was my takeaway, remember I did my video review of "Clarity" when I first read it. That was the thing that I loved about it is that there is no action ... You don't have to remember any mantras or do any sort of practice, once you get it you get it and that has always stuck with me.
Jamie: It's automatic implementation, automatic implementation, straight from idea to insight to execution.
Dean: Yes. I love that about that and I think exactly what you just said, is there anything that you could ... What was very impactful to me was the story that you told me when we were walking around Regent's Park, two summers ago and you were telling me about the fact that in the 1850s, where we were walking that people believed that they would carry posies around because they believed that bad odors cause disease. Once they discovered what actually cause the disease about germs, it changed what the insight that changed everything. That little story is pretty impactful because it sets the tone for the value of an insight. Is there a story that you could tell or something that would be similarly demonstrating the power of what they're about to read?
Jamie: There almost certainly is, I'm not sure off the top of my head what it is but I can ... But your question about if I could get the front cover of the book to talk to them and be animated, what would it say. The thing that occurred to me Dean the phone in the UK is a little different from phone in the U.S. which is people have to pay for all their calls and that sort of thing. My sense is, what if they could just scan something on the cover that would play them an instant video or something like that.
Dean: Yeah what do people do, like QR codes are very ... They're not really taking off in the U.S. as much as-
Jamie: They're not super ... Not lots of people use them I don't think.
Dean: Right. You wonder like how could you get something very easy for people to deploy. I think you get the idea of, I often use with the realtors one of the things that we use, is info box flyers that people can ... I use that description, imagine if somebody as soon as they came up to the sign and open up the box to get the info that you could magically pop out like a genie. That's the opportunity here and imagine that's what I'm saying about the message but how could we convey that while they're standing there.
Jamie: The other thing and I'll play with the idea and see what I can come up with it. The other thing I've been told, now this is Reese's wisdom, when people are choosing books the first thing they do is, they grab the book where the cover grabs them. If there is a cover, they grab the book then they flip it over, they read the back of it. If they like the back of it they look at the table of contents and kind if scan the table of contents, then kind of flick through the book. Typically they make the decision of whether or not to buy within like 5 or 10 second. It's very, very far.
Dean: Absolutely, I did a video while I was in Australia, I just got back from Sydney and I was talking about that very thing and how the importance of the title is in people. I use the example of books like "Think and Grow Rich" or "The Four Hour Work Week" or "Financial Peace" Dave Ramsey's book the titles, those titles it's like people taking that book as if having it in their possession is going to somehow give them the promise of what the title is.
You can imagine somebody in financial turmoil seeing that a book called "Financial Peace" and buying that book even just touching it would change their physiology. Must be a common-
Jamie: As soon as you said it, it's such a great title. It's really really good.
Dean: There's that opportunity to really ... I agree with you a 100%, I mean you look at your title, Think less achieve more, is pretty clear. That's good. The reason I was having that conversation was to think about where we could impact from 2X to 5X and part of it being for every person that bought the book the first time was "Clarity" and with "The Little Book of Clarity" you just wonder how many people held it in their hand and did what you were talking about and chose not to buy the book.
Like some percentage of the people actually bought the book, some percentage didn't. Probably a larger percentage didn't, so that was where I was wondering if you could ... If we could somehow get engagement at the site. It's almost like, I say to people, you know walking backwards if we're trying to improve that number then it would be helpful to go to walk backwards from the actual, them holding it in their hand which is the equivalent you're almost there. It's like if we're playing golf it's like having a 5-foot putt left. If we could get better at converting those 5-foot putts that could prove-
Jamie: I've used one cheeky thing which is, the NLP thing of the embedded commands. The [Erikson 00:44:26] hypnosis thing of embedded commands. On the back of the book, on the back cover every time it uses the words in any sentence the words get results, and get results now and that sort of thing comes up quiet a lot and it's bolded out. Anyone who listens to this, when you look at the back cover of the book you'll see that anywhere it says either, get results, or get results now in the context of any sentence that's bolded out. It's difficult to know how much impact that's going to have. It would be nice to do something that's more sticky than that.
Dean: Yeah exactly. That's one opportunity that I think would be valuable to kind of explore especially if that time to do something like that. This may be something where we do kind of a follow up hearing, or we kind of plant the seeds today and then kind of think that through the rest of the way. Moving backwards from that opportunity like right while they're holding it in their hand are there any supporting in store displays or opportunities or things that you could use to bring people over to pick up the book.
Jamie: Yeah, there will be a certain amount of like posters in stores and that sort of thing so big kind of advertising banners and things like that. I haven't got the details yet of exactly what's going to be available but that's certainly what we did for "Clarity."
Dean: I wonder about, because this would go out to the next thing if we could imagine flyers or lead generating business cards or postcards or something that is out from that environment in the airport but not ... For all the people who are there but haven't come into the store yet to bring them into the store to get it. Are there any sort of magic tricks that somebody could be hooked by to want to read further. So I'm thinking about like my email mastery book, the magic trick is the amazing 9 word email that revives dead leads.
I tell people that whole story, we were able to do that in full page Ads in Success magazine, have an article that explains the whole 9 word email and directs people to emailmastery.com to get the book. So if there's something or rather 2 or 3 or more things that would be similar, that could be fast action. Something that somebody could either get a result or see that that's a result that they could get.
Jamie: So do you mean that they could get by reading the cover of the book or by picking up the phone-
Dean: It could be if you think about I'm going outside now to think about the ways that we could deploy something like that with a flyer or a full page Ad or a poster or a postcard, something. What I want to get to is what's the ... Is there any message like that that we could use that would support the book. If I said to you, explain the core takeaway, the core result, the thing that's going to get me the most result in 2 minutes. What would you boil it down to, like that could be a big game changer. Like if somebody asked me, what's the best thing I can do with email if said, "Well have you been in business for more than 90 days. Do you have people who've inquired but haven't bought? Perfect let's send them this email."
I can get right to it, explain that they can get a result and completely understand that in 2 minutes. I could explain that to somebody. It's intriguing enough that ... Then there is all the other things, I mean you know all the things we do in email mastery, that's just the tip of the iceberg kind of thing.
Jamie: Yeah in terms of "Result" the thing that I could explain to someone and they could go and try for themselves that they'll get a result with ... Here's the quick one, I'm not sure if this is great or not but I'll run it past you. You probably already know but anyone who is listening and doesn't already know this, in the middle of the FedEx logo there is a white arrow.
Dean: Yeah.
Jamie: If you haven’t seen it before, if you look for it you'll find it and when you find it you’ll go, “Oh.” That feeling of oh is the feeling of insight. That’s the feeling of an insight, of a realization and at a realization or an insight is the feeling of your perception, getting more closely aligned to reality. Here is the thing you may not know is that inside that logo as well is a white arrow, there is a white spoon and the white spoon is poetically concealed in the middle of the word Fed.
Now if you go look at the FedEx Logo, you’ll find that white spoon as well and when you do you’ll go, “Oh,” again and that’s the feeling of insight. Here is the thing, the thing that gets in the way of people getting the results they want to create is that they're out of touch with reality in key areas. Out of touch with the reality of how their minds work and all that it takes to get in touch with the reality of how your mind works is one of those Ohs like when you see the FedEx Logo.
The purpose of this book is to give you lots of those Ohs in all the areas where you need them all the areas where you may have been struggling until now. If there is an area you’ve been struggling to get results, it’s because of another problem. You see through that, you are just going to get a result. That’s the magic trick, so maybe it’s actually tied to the FedEx Logo because those things are everywhere or you can’t walk down the street without seeing a FedEx in the UK. Or to create some example of that that can allow people to have that experience when they're looking at the book. Some sticker or something like that that allows someone to have it right there.
Dean: Exactly, yes, that’s it. See that’s kind of where, like I … It does match in it’s a bridge. You know like the 90-Minute Book, they're holding one in their hands but if they don’t … If they’re going to learn all of that by reading the 90-Minute Book but the sticker with the recorded message gives the opportunity to narrate that guided insight for them.
Your describing that is pretty great and that insight … There is something engaging like that, like one of the most successful Ads that we're currently running right now with a client who does reverse mortgages but for a purchase we have an Ad that has two pictures of the identical house and says, “Can you spot the $157,500 difference in these identical window haven-like fun homes.” The whole theory of getting people engaged in that and the difference is that, if you’re 62 or better, you can buy that house with 50% down and live in it forever with no mortgage payment. You could basically buy that house for half price. In that insight really frames what the power of using a reverse mortgage is, makes it practical rather than having to explain conceptually.
Jamie: The thing that's just occurred to me … Sorry go on Dean I don’t want to interrupt.
Dean: No. No.
Jamie: The thing that's just occurred to me … I used the FedEx Logo in the book. I use that analogy, “It’s on page 17.” So I could get them to open the book and turn to page 17 and for the vast majority of people don’t know about that arrow and spoon in the logo. It’s like I get them to-
Dean: I knew about the arrow, I had no idea about the spoon and I’m looking to see how I can look up the FedEx logo while we're talking here to see it.
Jamie: What I could do is I could help them to see it Right?
Dean: That inevitably that something is opening up, going to Google here, FedEx.
Jamie: I can them to turn to page 17 and I could have the recorded message or whatever, or even a sticker on the book that says, “Turn to page 17 to discover your innate … The innate capacity for insight that you already have going for you,” so that'll get them to-
Dean: Well, would you look at that spoon right there?
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: Into the E.
Jamie: It is just a cool, it's been there, it’s been part of the reality of that logo, ever since the logo was created. You’ll see every time you’ve seen the logo but your perception has only just now been adjusted to it. So now you’ve got a little bit closer to reality and so my message is that the places where people struggle are the places where they’re out of alignment with reality and your innate capacity for insight is what brings you back to it.
I could have something on the cover, maybe a sticker that says, you know whatever page it ends up, being on, “Turn to page 17 to discover and see if you can spot the missing arrow,” or something like that. Just something to get them to open the book and look at it and discover about their innate capacity for insight.
Dean: Yeah perfect. Yeah, that kind of thing would be … That’s an engagement. Like I think there's the thing if you can get people engaged in something very quickly. I think that’s going to be a cool thing.
Jamie: Cool. Cool, cool.
Dean: I think that would be awesome. Now, about the … What kind of opportunities, kind of, I’ve been crack podding since we mentioned the, “Now available in Snapple Mango stickers.” let’s kind of revisit that as maybe an opportunity to see how we could get people to do that insight.
Jamie: Yeah, the people who are already, who are already-
Dean: In that environment. I mean people who are on the train or in the airport or where could you have that kind of impact and what’s allowed or not allowed even if we’ve said … Like if we looked at it that if your life depended on it, what are the things that we could do and if you take like one location, like one of the mid-sized airports kind of thing and would have built in some … If we're going to say okay let’s say … Like what would be one of the smaller airports.
Let’s say Brighton does have an airport or whatever, with one of these that would be kind of smaller airport, smaller opportunity there, how could you … This is what I said by going granular here. Looking at that location, that one thing, what would you do if that’s the only location? How do you plan that? How could we increase the exposure right there in that situation or even in the train station from Brighton to there?
The reason that I say it like that is because, no matter what … We think about opportunities as the global, the big thing right? Like you've got an opportunity to be in 144 airport stores and we think about it, we think about the grandiosity of that idea, like in think about it on a macro level, that we've got the opportunity to be at 144 airports but the reality is their impact of it is only going to be in the airport that somebody is actually in.
Jamie: Yeah, well the-
Dean: Yeah?
Jamie: The thing that just occurred to me as I was listening to you Dean is the thing that they’ve all got in common actually and this would be true of the Brighton airport or the London city airport or whatever, they're all someone … Every single person who is going through one of those airports, one of these train stations, one of those motorway services, they're all someone who is travelling, they're trying to get somewhere. They’ve got some destination they're trying to get to.
There may be something about that … The whole travel metaphor and the whole life's a journey metaphor and the kind of … You’ve got somewhere you're going and the fact is … I’m not quite sure what the message is but it feels like there is something in there about the domain of travelling somewhere and having a destination.
Because results are all about destinations, results are all about where you’re wanting to get to and I kind of … I’m remembering a couple of things actually and there is kind of … There is a kind of a nice example of this, of sometimes when they’re advertising houses or apartment building next to busy motorways with traffic jams and that sort of thing they'll say something like, “If you lived here you’d be home by now.” Kind of thing.
Dean: Right. Exactly.
Jamie: They've come think about that, and so that’s one thing that occurred to me. Is maybe there's something about the whole travel metaphor and journey metaphor that we can tie into the book. It may take me a while to come up with, it may not come our while we're in this conversation but that would be-
Dean: Right and that's the thing I want to presence those as potentially the messages that you could convey.
Jamie: Yeah, so there is something maybe in the travel or journey metaphor that I can pull out and use and do something with that. There may be something in getting people to look at the FedEx logo and do something around that. I’m still thinking about the Snapple thing because I love that so much, “Now available in Snapple.” I mean there is certain … If I think about, go ahead.
Dean: No, I was just going to say you’re part of what I was thinking about how … If there are other ways also that you could mobilize the community, your community into a street team kind of thing, to think through this one opportunity. Like getting somebody the street team for the, for Brighton. If you’ve looked at Brighton and say, there is the opportunity there. I’ve read just recently about Zipcar. Do you know about Zipcar?
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: Okay. So they're rental ... You join as a member and then you can rent a car in your neighborhood and bring it back to that spot. It’s kind of like community sharing of the things and where I was going with that global opportunity like thinking about, “Okay we’ve got 144 airports, 121 train stations,” and that that is overwhelming in a lot of ways and the reality is that the opportunity is only in the one that somebody is going to be touched by.
Zipcar when they were first getting going, they were struggling with raising capital, trying to expand to quickly to sort of thing and they … One of the winning strategy for them was in Boston .They kind of narrowed their focus and instead of trying to saturate all of the country with this, they narrowed in on Boston and even in quadrants of Boston where they were … One of the concerns that people had about joining Zipcar was their … Here they would look on the map and see where the cars when they were concerned that there wouldn’t be a car available when they wanted to get it.
They calculated out the number of cars that it would take for people to feel confident that there are enough cars to make it work. They got, but they couldn’t afford to like saturate at that level their entire market, so they looked at one quadrant of Boston, completely got invested in enough cars to serve totally that market and then they saturated that quadrant with direct mail and advertising to get the members up in that quadrant and then part lay that over to the next quadrant and kind of took over Boston that way and then used over learning to go in to other cities.
I know we only have a one week window on this but I think our thinking process … If you take this thinking process down to the granular level of how do we impact people who are right there in Brighton as an example. It helps to kind of get those opportunities, closest to the buying opportunity and that's why I do think the cover of the book … Having somebody converting more of people who pick up the book, to actually buy the book and then walking backwards from the ones who are in the store to notice the book and the ones who are in the airport to go into the store, that’s kind of the path. Each concentric circle getting broader and broader.
Jamie: Yeah it's brilliant Dean because the idea that came to me while you were talking, I don’t know how actionable this is but it could spark other things, is that with all those … You know the thing with, I don’t know foursquare whatever people would check in as being like the mayor of their local bar or whatever. Well maybe there is a way to have like the … We’ve got all these stores and whoever the first person is who buys from the store in their area we'll give them a special thing or that sort of thing and just kind of … I almost imagined the Pokémon Go stuff that everyone is going around and trying to get.
Well, I’m imagining maybe there is some way to build something in so that, whichever store gets the most people everyone who bought their book at that store can come to a special event or there may be something we can do to … There is bound to be something we can do to go over that. That’s already given me ideas to … And it’s funny the word community really comes to me because the thing about those different stores for a lot of people it’ll either be the store that’s in their community or the store that’s on their way to work or the store that’s they are browsing when they are going on holiday.
Dean: Yeah it's part in their routine.
Jamie: Yeah part of their routine and that sort of thing, so that gives me an opportunity.
Dean: The opportunity when you’ve got … When you think about, this is going right back to profit activator number one. Thinking about the specific target market. There is the difference between the WHSmith in Paddington station where everybody is … A good portion of those people are daily commuters who are coming in there and as a hub. Or when you look at what would be sort of the more regional, not regional but more granular sort of Paddington would be a big … Would be a hub right?
Jamie: Yeah, well and there will be-
Dean: What will be kind of the end of the line or specific … Line specific ones that would be more commuters then people getting on long journey trains kind of thing.
Jamie: I would have thought that the different train stations and the different airports as well will have different characters so for instance, some of the airports will do a lot of international travel, while some of the airports will mostly be short hops. Some of the train stations will be mostly bringing people into the City of London and that sort of thing where some stations will be kind of enroute to somewhere else and that sort of thing.
Dean: So you look at that at a higher ... It’s almost like frequency, you know if you look at … If you took … Like if Paddington is a collector, and that might not have been the best example just one that I know. I imagine that people would come from Suburban London into one of these hubs to get into the city kind of thing but the people who are doing that, are doing that every day. You’d have the entire week to do something like that, right? To make an impression on those people. Whereas at Heathrow there's probably a good chance that everybody at Heathrow is only going to be in the Heathrow one time this week.
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: He only needs the one time journey.
Jamie: Yeah for the most part I think that’s true and the other thing is that all the work that we do in that first week, the better it goes, the more likely the book will still be in those stores the following week and the week after so actually all the benefit we build up from that week gets carried over to subsequent weeks. It’s a real win-win with that. Yeah, there was something else that occurred to me, what was it? Oh yeah that the people who were going for instance through Paddington as part of their daily routine, so they're doing it maybe five out of the seven days that the offer is on. Also they’ll be coming from whatever their local station was.
Dean: Right that’s from the-
Jamie: That local station might be an opportunity just to seed something and to send a message that then when they get to Paddington or Kings Cross or one of the central stations that they then go and pick up the book in the shop, so you head back to work really.
Dean: That could be maybe doing … Like if you think about what is the routine, what's actually happening if you were to look at the commuters like, I think about Holden Hills where I grew up near Toronto that that was the Go Train was a daily commute for people. There was like four or five different trains in the morning that went into Toronto and then the same number coming back at the end of the day but the same … The community of those people. One of the things that we did was we were putting, we called them ugly yellow signs at the entrance and exit of the train … The parking lot to the commuter station that people would, they would drive to the station in Georgetown and then get on the train, go to the city come back, get in their car and drive home kind of thing.
There was two main entrance and exits to the parking lot there and we would put the yellow signs that would say for, home for sales here down payment, free recorded message and the phone number and that was just a way of getting in front of that pattern. If we were to go and kind of look at that person they would be running into a Union Station in Toronto right the main one where there would be a book store but there’s lots of time that they have on their hands for that commute.
Jamie: Well, the others … Sorry go ahead.
Dean: You start to think that there’s a newspaper called 24 that was basically just a throw away … It’s a created thing just a small like eight-page daily newspaper that they would create that you could potentially have an opportunity to plant that seed for people. Because that would be the thing. People would … There was just this little coffee stand that’s it, people would grab a coffee, grab this 24 … You know something to read and get on the train. You start to think about the pattern ,the migration pattern like where do you have that opportunity? Could you-
Jamie: Well there is this one, there’s a really clear one which is there’s a thing called Metro Magazine which is a daily free newspaper that is basically in every underground station.
Dean: There you go.
Jamie: Lots of people get it because it’s free and they're left on the tubes so people are flicking through them on the tubes all the time. The thing that occurs to me, the book opens with a question and is quite a powerful question because the question is, “What’s the number one result that you believe would have the biggest positive impact in your life?”
I guarantee people who are commuters they have the answer to that question because they … A lot of people who are commuting, they don’t want to be commuting, they don’t want to be doing the job that they're doing, they don’t want to be having to travel through stinky London underground on a hot summer morning to get to that job. They're going to have an answer to that question and it's the … The prospect of the book is, “Look this book is going to show you how to achieve the answer to that question.”
Dean: There you go.
Jamie: Maybe there's something there using that question and using an Ad in the Metro newspaper or on the underground advertising itself, yeah.
Dean: Pretty neat that could be a cool that's the thinking right, that-
Jamie: Yeah, got it.
Dean: Like that process of thinking granularly like, “If I were …” You know think and for every station in Holden Hills in Georgetown the Georgetown Go Train there's also all the other communities along the way that lead into that Union Station, those people coming from all over that have that same process.
Jamie: Yeah, what we might identify is actually that there are a whole bunches of different sets of processes depending on which station or which type of station or which airport or which type of airport people are coming into or going out of. Is it people going on holiday? Then the kind of messaging would be different from the person who's grinding away on a commuter train to work each day.
Dean: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Jamie: Got it.
Dean: I think for sure lets kind of the time has flown for us here, let’s kind of reflect on what do you see as the insight here that we could apply, as we're walking backwards from somebody holding the book in their hands and converting that number?
Jamie: Well there are actually … I would say there're loads and loads of insights I've got from this, but there're three really big ones. The first one is when I came onto the call, I was thinking purely in terms of, “How can I get my community to go and get this book?” What I realized is actually there's a huge opportunity that we don't want to have a look which is the people who are right now already. The people who are in the store or who have the book in their hand or whatever. How can we maximize the likelihood of them carrying it up to the cashier just to buying it?
That to me, that in itself is a big insight and has opened up a whole field of possibility for what we can do. Then there what can we do with the book itself? What can we do peripherally to the book like in the store's space or in advertising or … And what can we think through about the journeys that the people are on? There's totally that. Then the second thing is thinking about rather than, “How can I get everyone in my community to go and buy a copy of the book,” during that week so that it's good and all that sort of stuff, rather than thinking in terms of store by store or location by location. What could we do to make that compelling to the people who are near that or who are doing something on this? If people already know … Like people who are going to be going through Heathrow that week they will already know the week before that they're going to be going through Heathrow.
They're going to be going through Heathrow, they're going to have an opportunity to hit one of those stores. What can we do to make that something fun that they're looking forward to and that they're like one of the things that happened when we did "Clarity" was it really took off on Facebook people posting pictures of themselves saying, "Bob's got Clarity,” or “James got Clarity or whatever." What could we do to either reward or incentivize or make it fun or part of everything we’re doing to get people to … Get people from our community to think through those specific stores and almost kind of target it rather than just having that.
Dean: What if, and this is going to be you may have heard Joe Polish and I talk about them, an idea like this of, what if we crowd sourced this exposure like if you had a, for your community an X prize that goes to the person who could get the most exposure in those travel outlets to outsource that idea of, how could we expose this book to … Like say it was a one prize that was like, “Expose our logo items for our prize,” where they would have people get … There was a chance they could win a $25,000 prize for getting the most exposure for their logo.
Jamie: This is a great idea, I love it. Who can do that, who-
Dean: Mobilizing your community to say to be completely transparent. This is the big opportunity I really want to take advantage of that and maybe there's surprise package or turning it into a competition in a way.
Jamie: Yeah make it a competition. The thought I had is a prize for the first team that manages to sell out their local store out of these books and so to make the prize-
Dean: That's off the store, yeah if you've got see 300 stores, get the closest one like you need somebody to kind of … That's what's called kind of what the street team, you know.
Jamie: Yeah, so maybe it's something like that because or something I don’t know. I've got to play with it and get the right feel for it but something around getting and making it fun and getting people inside it and that sort of thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Jamie: I love the idea of doing like a hero acts on it or an X prize or something like that because the reward, the prize can be compelling enough, that lots of people want to go for it but only one team is going to win it. That's the whole thing in in of itself. I love that idea, I love that idea.
Dean: It’s all related, imagine the street teams of people in the Tube, in the airports or commuters like I think that would certainly work … You could probably have the biggest impact with that on the commuter trains.
Jamie: Yeah that could be amazing, that could be amazing, I love it. I love it. What else? I've just been making tons and tons of notes. Just the whole idea of looking at people's, what's their routine and then shaping the ways to engage them with the book on that. I also love the idea of just something that gets them to open the book because to me the quickest magic trick for them to have is to see the arrow or the spoon in the logo and to realize that, oh that they have when they said that "Oh I see it."
That that's a function of your innate capacity for insight. Most people don't even realize they have that capacity and yet that capacity is the number one thing you’ve got going for you when it comes to creating a result. Because that’s where ideas come from.
Dean: Have you made the final of … Are the books printed yet for them?
Jamie: Not yet. Not yet, not printed yet.
Dean: I wonder if you could turn page 17 like imagine that page 17 is a full page Ad for the book, like it's exactly that, that you got that in mind, “Turn to page 17,” and page 17 is that interactive, like get this, that with that in mind that that's the purpose there to give somebody that insight on why they should read this … Have this book.
Jamie: Yeah, it may be, that may be possible and may not be the least … I'm right up against that in terms of layout and anything that changes pagination, they may drop the hammer on it but I can certainly play with that. Or even maybe add a page at the end or something like that that has the same effect.
Dean: There you go.
Jamie: So make-
Dean: Or right on the inside where if you can add a page on again, should add a page to the beginning maybe up.
Jamie: Yeah, or replace the front page that I've got at the … Because I've got a thing right at the beginning saying go do your Clarity question maybe the thing at the beginning is, here's your power of insight now by the book.
Dean: Okay, it's overexciting.
Jamie: Yeah, it really is, it really is. This has being great
Dean: I love it, so maybe we could have a follow up so we get closer to see the, what’s actually going to be implemented.
Jamie: Yeah that would be terrific, yeah. I definitely be interested in doing that, definitely be up for it.
Dean: Cool, so we’ve got basically two months, almost
Jamie: Yap, eight weeks and counting.
Dean: Very exciting.
Jamie: Yeah.
Dean: That was great Jamie, I really appreciate that … I mean it's cool to brainstorm and think that way. For me I think that's what it amplifies are the starting with the most likely thing, looking where the person actually is that’s why, it immediately reminded me of the Mango situation, it's who better than somebody who is actually holding a mango in their hand as an ideal client.
For us who better than somebody who’s actually in the bookstore holding the book, then going backwards and thinking through the environment so for any business thinking about how they can when they've got big opportunity is it's often just a multiple of the granular opportunity like the 144 airports is really or 121 train stations really just an amplification of one train station.
What can we do with this one train station? It seems so much more possible to dominate one train station than it does to think about it as the whole and that’s where that Zipcar idea came in like you don’t ... If you don’t with people with limited time, limited resources like pick the scale that you actually can make an impact. Rather than trying to like make a minimal impact over all of this is, “Let’s go down to what could we actually dominate and I think that’s a big, that’s a big lesson for people and then as far as mobilizing your community by having, creating an X price that makes it possible and fun to get the community involved and to leverage your dollars. If you had a X-dollar price that you probably get 10x that impact for that same price.
Jamie: I love it and I’m really excited to start putting it into action and see what we can do because its, yeah … This is going to be a lot of fun.
Dean: Awesome, okay well there we go.
Jamie: Thank you so much Dean.
Dean: Appreciate it Jamie.
There we have it another great episode. Thanks for listening in, if you want to continue the conversation and go deeper in how the Profit Activators can apply to your business. Two things you can do right now you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes of course if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly the thing that we talk about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the breakthrough DNA process. You can download a book and a score card and watch a video, all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com and that’s a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business.
That's really the way we think about breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there. Now Jamie, he has been a guest on the I love marketing podcast with Joe Polish and I, so you can go to ilovemarketing.com and listen to the episodes with Jamie Smart and I think you’ll find those very very insightful as well as picking up Jamie’s books, "Clarity” and “The Little Book of Clarity.” That’s it for this week have a great week and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.