Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we're talking with Jill Harrington from just outside of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Several years ago, she wrote a book called The Lupus Recovery Diet. It was very successful, and she's helped lots of people. Her passion is really spreading the word and helping people adopt a whole food, plant-based diet nutrition program.

We had a really great conversation about the target audience of people who need and want to reverse heart disease. She has a great program that can help people, so my question was, "What would you do? What's the result you can get for people?"

We had a whole conversation around it not being just about the information, but about the execution, and the implementation of that information. Then, rather than looking to reach everyone, we narrowed the focus to her local area, and you'll see how the conversation unfolded to think about a pilot project to prototype, before duplicating her programs all over the country.

You're going to enjoy this episode, especially if you have something that could be packaged as a program to get a result, delivered in a localized market.

 

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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 090

Dean: Jill Harrington.

Jill: Good morning Dean Jackson.

Dean: Good morning to you. Well I've been looking forward to this.

Jill: Well, great, so have I. I've been listening to two podcasts a day and reading DNA Breakthrough again and again.

Dean: My oh my, okay.

Jill: I am looking forward to your calm, smooth voice that takes all this jumble in my head and makes some sense out of it.

Dean: I love it.

Jill: I'm very appreciative to be here.

Dean: I'm excited that you're here. So this is kind of cool because you and I have had some conversations in our email mastery program.

Jill: Right.

Dean: And so this is a chance for us to kind of really focus on something just for you here. So I think normally I don't know anything about what somebody's up to when we start one of these podcasts. So it would be a good thing for you to kind of give some background and then what you want to focus on today.

Jill: Okay. Back in '95, I wrote a book called The Lupus Recovery Diet. Wasn't a writer. I totally endorse your 90 minute because it took me three years to write it. But in the meantime, I was living in San Francisco, internet marketing where internet was just big. And so I learned about direct response marketing, internet marketing. So while I dragged my feet on writing the book, I learned a lot about marketing. So I ended up promoting it initially or releasing it as an ebook just because I wasn't sure if anyone would want it. So used Google pay per click, I'll never forget, put it up one night, 9:00 o'clock, next morning 5:00 am I had two orders.

Dean: That's awesome, isn't it?

Jill: Oh my gosh.

Dean: What year was this? What year was this?

Jill: Excuse me. Not '95, 2004, end of 2004.

Dean: 2004, yeah, that is so great.

Jill: Right.

Dean: I mean I remember that whole, I remember that I did in 1998, I wrote an ebook with a marriage counselor called Stop Your Divorce. And I still, I remember putting that up online and getting the first sales and then literally we've had sales every day for 20 years on that book. It's such an amazing thing.

Jill: Now, that's interesting. Do you still advertise it on pay per click?

Dean: No. Not on pay per click. I mean when we started out on pay per click, I could get the word divorce and all these things for 10 cents because I was literally one of the first books, one of the first eBooks that wasn't about how to make money selling eBooks. It was a real book about a real thing. And that was really what got me started into then teaching people about marketing, because I had had this whole situation with that book. So I did a class called How to Write, Publish, and Sell a Money Making eBook around 2000 or 2001.

And so we had her in that class and we worked on her book How to Make Every Man Want You. And then that was her whole introduction into internet marketing and then out of that same model, my friend Eben Pagan we did his book, Double Your Dating. And that turned into an amazing empire. But those days of being able to get 10 cent clicks and sell a 79 dollar ebook at a profit, pay per click, are gone. But we still, we have such a great organic reach on that that it's still out there and sells every day.

Jill: Great. Yeah. I didn't keep my organic-

Dean: I love it.

Jill: My organic reach up. It sold for many years. And still, I'll get a couple sales a week or something.

Dean: But you know what? You've got, your profit activity number one, select a single target market.

Jill: Correct.

Dean: And your book's recovery diet and what a great title. I mean it does what it says right there.

Jill: Here's the problem that I found with that target market. I overcame Lupus so that's why I wrote that book. But many people with Lupus are so sick, a lot of them aren't working, don't have much money or are too sick to even do anything about it. And I felt a little uncomfortable guiding many people other than just the pure food preparation.

So on the one hand, I was excited because it was targeted and therefore we're able to reach the people but didn't really see, looking back now, look at Forks Over Knives, and you're the perfect person to talk to about this, because I know, one thing, somehow you know everything about every topic. But I know that you know about plant based type of things because we've had brief discussions on that. So looking back now, I probably should have gone ahead and done an online culinary skills course of plant based cooking course. And then it sort of expanded to other markets. But instead, I kept trying to make that one work.

So here I'd say in the last year or so, I decided that I would try some local classes and workshops. I thought that I was just kind of over the online thing, it was changing so much. And you would understand Facebook and then they would change the next day so I'm like okay forget the online stuff, I'm just gonna do something local. So I'm focusing on what that target market should be. And like you, by the way, I'm very much like you. We probably have the same Colby index. I didn't actually do mine, but I read it, in that I mean I have an idea a minute. And I have friends who will call me and say, "Okay, I've got this problem." And so they'll describe their whole thing and it's easy for me to just cut in and say this is what you do. Not so easy for myself. But easy for other people.

Dean: Right. Right.

Jill: Or companies. I have one marketing client, a couple of business clients and he'll just, we just have a standing every other week call where he'll call and talk about what marketing stuff is going on and I'll say, "This, this, this." And off he goes and does it. It's wonderful. I give him homework. He does it. I don't have to do it. And so I've got this, the first target market potential I came up with was people with heart disease. So high blood pressure, cholesterol, because that is scientifically proven, a plant based diet has been shown in studies and there are many, many books on it, that it does work. It is very effective.

That's something that I-

Dean: Reversing, yeah, that's the word they would use.

Jill: Pretty confidently.

Dean: Reversing it. Right?

Jill: Correct.

Dean: Yeah. Okay. And that's so, maybe we had talked about Joel Kahn, Dr. Joel Kahn who wrote a book, which I loved, the title is Dead Executives Don't Get Bonuses.

Jill: That's great.

Dean: Which was really targeted to-

Jill: That's great.

Dean: Yeah. To these high risk, the thing, right in the profile, guys in their fifties, hard charging executives who have put career first, career first, not taken care of their health and then reach a point where now they really need to get some perspective on it, you know? So that's awesome. So certainly there's-

Jill: Well, that's just one of them though.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean when you look at it, and that's why I would start with this. Let's begin with the end in mind. Right? So whenever I'm looking at it, I look at profit activator five which is the dream come true. Yeah. What would be a dream come true experience that you could provide for somebody? What's the result? What's the thing that you could do if you were only going to get paid if they get this result, what would be the result that you know with certainty that you can deliver?

Jill: Okay. And here's the ironic thing in this segment is I have two answers to that. The first answer of their dream come true would be I give them a pill and they can continue to eat and drink and do anything they want and they're cured. Okay? So that's what they really want.

Dean: Yes.

Jill: The other answer is what would I do if I only got paid based on results, I would probably have them in a live in environment for seven to 10 days where everything is done for them. They're taught how to eat, get to taste the food, have dieticians talk to them, have an MD who oversees them, so by the time they leave, they've seen something results, they've seen their blood pressure drop. They've seen their cholesterol drop even in that short period of time. They found out this food doesn't taste so bad, met other people who are doing it.

So for example, there are already a few like those in existence, Dr. McDougal has a program he's done for years, very successful. His is not a live in.

Dean: Well, did you read Change or Die? It's a wonderful book.

Jill: Is that Ornish?

Dean: No. He didn't write the book. But he was featured in the book and the book is not per se just about health. It's about this idea of change. And one of the things that they take the premise of the book and this is going to be really relevant to our conversation here, that the premise of the book is if your life depended on it, could you make a change? And the odds are, just based on all the evidence, the odds are no. That you can't make a change, right? That's the reality of what we're dealing with here. And in order to prove that, they took different situations where it literally is life or death whether you make a change.

And one of them is cardiac patients who have just had bypass surgery, that you look at it right there, that they've come to the point where they've had a heart attack. They've had a bypass. Their doctor tells them, you got to change or you're going to die basically, that's the thing. And they look at those things and one year later, one year after bypass surgery, some crazy number, like 80 plus percent of people have not made any lifestyle changes in the way that they live their life. They're back to exactly what they were doing that got them there. And in fact, some of them viewed the bypass as their free pass of I got a whole new thing. It took me 20 years to clog up my arteries last time and I've got 20 more years to go now.

And so what Dean did was he went to Mutual of Omaha I think it was or one of the insurance agencies and got them to agree to give him a group of people to run through a program that bypass surgeries cost about 100,000 dollars on average, what it was back when that book was written. And his program was like 36,000 dollars or something per patient to run somebody through. And the idea was that they would take people who were eligible for bypass surgery that the insurance would have paid for and divert them into this program and see what happened.

So he took a class, a group of people and the first thing they did is they sequestered them for 30 days into a program where they controlled every calorie that went in their body. They did all of the things like they did talking about it, education, they did meditation, they did yoga. They did a holistic, total view of the change, right? For 30 days. And I'm going from memory. It's been a long time, so forgive me, I'm close but I may be not exactly on. But the average outcome that they had was a 28 pound weight loss in that period of time, a reduction in their cholesterol, all the markers of their blood work certainly improved. People who had angina that were having six angina attacks a day basically were reduced by 93%. Yeah. So it was really kind of a magical outcome.

And then at the end of 30 days, they sent them home but they gave them at home access to a personal trainer, to yoga classes, to talk, group therapy. And a nutritionist. So they had all of that access for a year.

Jill: And how was the access provided? Like they had to come back to them? It wasn't on the phone or anything?

Dean: No. It was in their environment, at home, they had access to these things, a personal trainer to all these things. Okay. And for one year. And then they studied again at three years, something like 77% of the people who went through that program had maintained the lifestyle changes that they made in the program. Because they got them through all of the phases of the actual change. You know? Where it was, what he says, if you're gonna make change, the thing to do is to make radical sweeping change instantly rather than gradual trying harder change, because you're gonna change, you may as well change it 100% right now and like pulling off the bandaid thing right now.

Because that's what happens is that gets you immediate results compared to where the pain is not that much greater than the withdrawal or the suffering of making this sweeping good for you change that is going to have the bigger impact than making gradual change where you're slowly eliminating stuff enough that it bothers you that you're eliminating stuff but you're not making enough change to make it, the results are not good enough to make it dramatic.

And so that was really kind of fascinating to me. Because I think we're entering a point where we as a society in America anyway are certainly becoming more educated that whole foods, plant based diets are better than the standard American diet, you know?

Jill: Right. And it has changed a lot, yeah. Well, a lot of people don't admit it. But enough are starting to see it. Yeah. Apparently like 38 years ago, there was one vegetarian cookbook. And now you can't even count them. Yeah.

And I got to tell you this real quick when you're talking about the immediate change, that's what it took for me. Because I had been educated that this whole foods, plant based diet would work, blah, blah, I would live. I listened to cassette tapes for like a year. But I gave up the things it was easy to give up. Meat, I didn't care about that. Cheese, I kept eating. Diet Coke, blah, blah.

Finally, it got bad enough, I heard enough, that I decided to do a water only fast which is what these same doctors promoted.

Dean: How long did you do that for?

Jill: So I flew out to California. 14 days.

Dean: Wow.

Jill: And by the time I got there, because I had to fly across the country, take a cab, whatever. By the time I got there, I couldn't even walk through the front door.

Dean: You were hungry.

Jill: No. I was still eating. They had to eat raw foods for three days before. No. I was not hungry. I didn't even care if I lived to tell you the truth.

Dean: Oh, man.

Jill: I felt, I was in so much pain. I had no energy, fell into bed, just didn't even care. I wasn't hungry at all because I was so sick. By the third day, I'm like, oh my God, I feel good. By the seventh day, no joint pain. I've had joint pain for three years. None, none. It was easy to continue to 14. Now different things happened. Like I get a sore throat, my sinuses would stuff up, it was just the body clearing stuff out.

So that's when, so it took me there years to hear it and experiment with it. But that, I then came home a believer. Then it was easy to stick with it. And that fasting, that effect, that's my back end product in my book is that fasting center. They've had six or 700 people go who've read my book.

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill: It's my back end product but I don't make any money from it.

Dean: All right. Imagine if you had a fasting center, yeah.

Jill: Yeah. Exactly. So which is a complicated thing to have. So it has been replicated and so the guy who runs it who wants to do some studies to publish and that kind of thing. So but that totally ties into what you're saying here. And that's what McDougal does, too, basically, it's a 10 day ... And people are totally docu, what's the word? They're on board before they even go there because he's got so many books and recipes and somebody probably told them about it.

Dean: Right.

Jill: And then Ornish, now I don't know if you know this Dean, Ornish has started something, I don't know how recent it is. But I live in the tide water kind of area and Dean, Ornish now sells a program to medical professionals. So Syntera Hospital here which is a large hospital system, I have no idea how much it costs, my guess is a lot. And they have to send their team up to San Francisco and they're trained for either a week or two weeks, go through the whole program. And so now they offer a 12 week, it's the Ornish program, but it's 12 weeks twice a week for, is it 12? That doesn't sound right but I guess it's right.

Two times a week for 12 weeks and it's four hours, one hour of exercise, one hour of relaxation and yoga, one hour of lunch and learn, and one hour of kind of group support and therapy kind of thing. 10,000 dollars. Yeah.

Dean: And how long is it?

Jill: 12 weeks.

Dean: 12 weeks, yeah.

Jill: But it's not in house. So it would be interesting to see, it's probably as close as he could get without locking people up for three days. And that's one thing before we even heard about that is I was thinking maybe a workshop or classes and then have people become part of a weekly thing where every week, they come to a two hour lunch, dinner, where they get a little more education and are fed again, taught how to make things. So it's not the same as a live in, and then it provides something continuity too. Not different people all the time.

Dean: Yeah. I just, I look at it and so if we're going and describing that then, the outcome that you could deliver for somebody, how would describe it? What would be the result?

Jill: Oh, the outcome? You don't die.

Dean: Okay. So no dying. That's good.

Jill: You don't die. No dying. You feel fantastic. You lose weight. You have more energy than you've had in years. And your blood pressure either reduces or normalizes, your cholesterol gets to the level ... I hesitate a little bit, because most people, you get it down ... because it takes your cholesterol level under 150 to not have a heart attack or a stroke where most people think 200. And that's just, 200 is normal level but people have heart attacks and strokes all the time there.

So there would be markers that you could measure and the one that my brother always tells me that most people care about anyway and that's losing weight, effortless weight. You could still eat lots of food and feel full. But by cutting out oil and saturated fat and whatever. So that's the thing. See with the autoimmune, the results aren't as predictive because so many people are at different levels, some with their kidney involved or whatever.

But with heart disease, it's pretty predictable, just depending on the amount of damage they already have in their arteries.

Dean: And so would your suggestions or protocol be any different with somebody with diabetes versus heart disease for instance?

Jill: Only a tiny bit. Really no. The food is the same but there'd be a little bit more guidance up front because a lot of diabetics think that it's just because of, or not just diabetics, doctors, think it's because of the sugar is the problem, but it's actually the fat that gets in the muscles that prevents the insulin from being able to deposit the sugar into, which is what you run on, the glucose into the cell. So once you stop eating fat, added fats, oils, saturated fats, the body within a fairly short period of time starts eating up that fat that's in the muscles, clears it out, and so then they'll discover, oh I can eat carbs. Carbs aren't the problem. It's the fat that was preventing the cells.

So just in the beginning it would take a little more guidance to adjust their insulin levels and things happen quickly. But the protocol really would be the same.

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. So when you look at it, you look at those two things, are there any other Lupus for sure was the interesting thing about those ones is that they're diagnosis based. Somebody, yeah, that somebody has been diagnosed with Lupus and it's been a mystery up until they've gotten that diagnosis. And heart disease not really. It's like, yeah, you almost can't be surprised by that in a way, right? Because we've seen this coming kind of thing, same with diabetes and same with I mean you look at almost like lung cancer in most cases, right?

It's people who smoke their whole lives and then get diagnosed with lung cancer and it's surprising.

Jill: Right. Exactly. But you'd be surprised. The conversations I've had over the past, gosh, because I went total vegan in '95. So what is that? I don't know. A lot of years. So I've had a lot of conversations over the years. And most people with heart disease will tell me that it's their genetics, that what they eating doesn't have anything to do with it.

Dean: I've just got those bad genes.

Jill: Right. My dad early.

Dean: My granddaddy, yeah, my granddaddy has it.

Jill: Right. So I hear what you're saying but it's still a little bit, not a little bit, it's still, it gets back to how desperate do you feel?

Dean: Yeah. I think that's really what this thing is, right? Is that there's some amount of it that is, they're waiting until I'm getting away with it kind of a way. Yeah.

Jill: And with heart attacks, by the way, 50% of them are sudden with no warning. So for people who say, I'll make changes once it happens. Uh oh, it you're in the 50%, you're not going to have a second chance. So you're not going to see your grandkids grow up, you just retired, all that working you did.

Dean: Yeah. Do you know Kevin Smith is?

Jill: No.

Dean: He's a movie director.

Jill: Oh, okay. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: And he just had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago.

Jill: I did see that.

Dean: He had lost, already, lost 85 pounds over the last 18 months from cutting out sugar and exercising and stuff. And then had the heart attack. And it's kind of like wow-

Jill: Was he on a ketogenic diet?

Dean: I don't know what he's done, but he's now vegan now, which I guess that's the thing.

Jill: Great.

Dean: Okay. So if the case then that you can take somebody, Jill, where do you live? I've forgotten where you live.

Jill: Right. I live near Williamsburg, Virginia, which is near Richmond, Virginia. But the only ... I hesitate because the only hesitation is because I'm here because my family is close by but this is not necessarily ... I'd really rather live in a resort place where I can ride my bike, tennis, and golf, and the beach.

Dean: I get it.

Jill: So part of me hesitates too much about doing, but you got to start where you are. I would love it to be transportable or whatever, go down there to Florida with you.

Dean: Perfect. Perfect.

Jill: But Richmond is a large enough area. There's actually a heart surgeon in Richmond who is vegan and I know there, because I was thinking I might put a cardiologist on the team.

Dean: Well that's really what I was going to say is you think about who are the people who are most likely here, it would be really great if you have this outcome that you can create for somebody and you can package it in a way that it is prescribable almost. I'm going to prescribe this for you whether it's 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or whatever it is. How long would you envision a program with somebody?

Jill: Are we locking them up or are we?

Dean: I mean, you're so funny.

Jill: Locking them up is a much bigger commitment. And see we laugh about that because I've been in the fasting center a few times and subsequent times, I was hungry, actually, for the first three days and hunger goes away. So it's a big joke there about people pay us to look them up and not feed them. But of course that's a bigger commitment is having a facility.

Dean: It's so funny, Joe Polish and I just did a podcast yesterday with Benjamin Hardy who just wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work. And one of the things that he's talking about in the book is that environment kind of trumps everything. Environment is really what shapes everything. And I don't think there's anybody that would deny if we took you and locked you up like you said and controlled every calorie that went in your body and got you up and moving and doing all the things, if you were kind of forced into it, that it would be inevitable that you have an improvement over 30 days or 60 days or 90 days or even seven days.

And so that premise of helping that happen, anything that you can do that would sort of facilitate that the protocol being followed would be a win.

Jill: Right.

Dean: It just feels like that's the biggest thing.

Jill: Right. Exactly. Because I will tell you that people, they'll say, "Well, how about this?" Because again over the years since the book has been out, people didn't like to put their credit cards online back then and they would call to order and sometimes I'd end up talking to them for an hour. So it would be, "How about just a little of this? And how about just a little of that?" And it's all those things that add up. Right. And so it's really no oil and that means no oil.

Dean: There's an amazing difference between being 100% committed to something and 98% committed to something.

Jill: Right. Right.

Dean: That it's always that 2% is going to require 98% of the willpower.

Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: That's really the thing. I said to Ben, I read the book on the way up to Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. I got an advanced copy. It's out now though, it's out wherever books are sold, Willpower Doesn't Work, Benjamin Hardy. But right in the first couple of pages, it says to be frank, willpower is for people who haven't decided what they actually want in their lives. If you're required to exert willpower to do something, there's an obvious internal conflict. And that's really interesting for some people the why is not big enough or the why hasn't overtaken their internal desire for whatever the alternative is.

Jill: Right.

Dean: But all of that can even be trumped by environment, by really establishing the right environment. I just, I wonder, I look three steps ahead of all of this Jill, and I think that as the education is coming, I think people know what to do and want to do it. But it gets lost in the execution of it. And I think that the big wins, the real transformations in this, are going to come in making it more convenient to eat healthfully than not.

Jill: Correct.

Dean: I mentioned to Ben, there was an article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago called The Tyranny of Convenience and it basically talks about how convenience is the most underrated power in the world. It really dictates everything. It rules everything that we do, that even overcoming our preferences or our other desires, I would share with Ben, I've been surrounding in my environment with fruit. And with healthy food choices that I would have to trip over them to go make another choice and that it's just easier to eat the fruit than it is to go and get something that's not fruit. That I would have to get up out of my, I would have to go out of the house because I've cleared it out of that. So it's not in the environment and what is in the environment is an immediate solution to the craving or the desire for something.

Jill: Right. Right.

Dean: Yeah.

Jill: Yeah. That's the same concept as being locked up and that's to have someone come in your house and clear anything out, which when you have children can be hard to do, because as healthy as I eat, if somebody puts a bowl of potato chips, salted potato chips.

Dean: Oh, man. I know.

Jill: It takes a lot not to eat them. So if they're in my house, I'm going to eat them. So they just never come in.

Dean: Right.

Jill: But you asked me ideal for me, I guess, again, the idea was to lock them up. But at the moment, I don't think that's very practical. I mean just because I'm going to build a base and whatever first. So I would say probably do a class that's maybe a weekend class, of course that might be too much for some people in the beginning. It's that cross between what do I want to do with them and what do they want?

Dean: I do.

Jill: In the Cleveland Clinic.

Dean: I don't know him.

Jill: You know of him, yeah, because what he did years ago is he went to a cardiologist and said, "I want to try something, give me some people that can't have any more stints and there's nothing else you can do for them." And so I'm not sure he did an education first, but he and his wife had them to their house every week for a potluck and I'm sure he would do some education and they all stuck with it. And again, they'd been told to prepare themselves for death. So they did have a pretty big why.

And a few people that left the program did die and everyone who stayed with the program not only lived but eventually they saw that was one of the first times that they saw actual reversal of the artery damage, that the body can heal it. Once you get out of its way.

Dean: Wow. Isn't that amazing?

Jill: So that's why I came up with that weekly thing for two reasons, one for the ideal business for me is you're not coming up with new people every time, but that stick with them, plus it's fun to see them get better and now they start coming, loving the food instead of you have to force it on them. So the question would be what to do up front, now there's another group that I just love, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, do you know them?

Dean: I do not.

Jill: Neil Bernard, Dr. Neil Bernard?

Dean: Oh, did he write the book How Not to Die or is that-?

Jill: No. That's Michael Gregor.

Dean: Oh, okay, there we go.

Jill: No. Neil Bernard helped, they got animal testing at a medical school, took them 20 years to do it, but then combined with that, they promote a plant based diet for health and they've opened a clinic not too long ago up in Washington, DC and I learned the other day what their model is. So they come in and talk with a doctor, the doctor sees them for about 15 minutes, shows them a little chart on what the problem is with diabetes and then turns them over to a nutritionist who works with them for about an hour to talk to them about their favorite foods and comes up with a menu plan for them.

And then because they're a non-profit, they then can come back every week free to a lunch and learn. So that's their continued support there. That's kind of another model. So I like the model of continuing to grow a committee, because see that also, I'm not very socially popular because people don't know what to feed me, because I'm not even just regular vegan. Because of the autoimmune stuff, no oil, no wheat. I'm fun but I'm not fun to feed.

Dean: Right.

Jill: So I don't get asked out a lot. And so this could become the social support and fun, too, we could have outdoor events and kayaking trips, all kinds of things where the food is all food that they can eat and maybe dinner party, dances, it could be all kinds of fun stuff that people of like mind. So the biggest question is how much would it take up front?

Dean: What's the popular of Williamsburg?

Jill: Williamsburg is pretty small. But we probably ought to talk Richmond, because Richmond is about I think it's about a million.

Dean: Oh, wow, okay. How big is Williamsburg, just for?

Jill: Williamsburg, if I had to guess, because I've only moved down to this area recently. I actually live in Gloster which is a little county nearby. But Williamsburg is probably 35,000 people. Newport News is near there and that's bigger and then Virginia Beach and Norfolk are on the other side of the tunnel, but since Synetera's already got that program down there, I would think I would stay in an area where they're not.

Dean: I'm just thinking about the small ... How I always think, is I think in the small units and think what that would look like to syndicate kind of thing. So I look at it where if I take the minimum viable market, like if you say Williamsburg is 35,000, I'm sure there are plenty of people in Williamsburg that would love to lose weight and reverse heart disease.

Jill: Exactly. The other good people about Williamsburg is a lot of retirees move there. A lot of retirees who have some money, there's some nice retirement communities and nice housing developments and I think my message to them would be, "Hey, get healthier than your kids. You don't want to die now that you've done all this work and everything, now it's time to feel young again." So actually, you're right. I shouldn't dismiss Williamsburg. It's probably an excellent market.

Dean: Yeah. Because now you can, now you look back on this as the Williamsburg experiment and that's really what it is what if all of a sudden you were able to make Williamsburg there lowest incidence of heart disease in the country.

Jill: Wow. Wow.

Dean: You start to think about that as a mission, you know? That you become that thing and you're biting off enough that you can have an impact. And that's really, I think that's an important piece, that it becomes affordable. How big, do you have a list right now, do you have a way that you communicate to people how many-

Jill: I don't locally, but here's what the plan is and that's to go out and do talks at places that have lists and have them promote the talk and then build the list from there. I've got a list still, probably still active probably about 1,000 who actually would talk to me, respond back from the Lupus thing but they're all across the country, around the world.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah. So I kind of think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said it took you three years to write your first book and the answer would be a 90 minute book that has a title that is the manifesto for what we're talking about, you know? To really think about that and think about it from the other way, from both sides. Think about it of spreading the book through Williamsburg and then doing the talk from there, right? Rather than, because it's easier to get people to say, "I want that book," than it is to say, "I want the information and I have to," did you listen to the episode with Malten? They did the stem cell?

Jill: Yes.

Dean: Things and so we talked about him doing a book as the lead as opposed to the workshops and he shared with me that it was a big difference maker because when you have the book to gather your audience, the only thing that has to be true for them is that they are attracted to the information that you're offering. They don't have to be attracted to the information and available next Tuesday and willing to come to a workshop, right? It's like they just have to want what your promise is. And there's nothing like a book to trigger that. And so I look at it that either you took three years to write the book and my question was I bet you could have explained what was in the book to them in an hour, right?

I mean that's really the thing. That's what we look at is what would be, we're just packaging up the message that you would share with somebody if you had an hour of their undivided attention.  That's really what it is. That's really, mm-hmm (affirmative). So that's the way that we focus on that. And I'm going through it right now with I've just launched a new book for our real estate agent division called Listing Agent Lifestyle.

Jill: Oh, yeah.

Dean: Yeah. And that's something that is very attractive to the real estate community because they want to be listing agents and they're not used to hearing life style associated with the real estate business. Typically, it's usually considered to be counter to having a life.

Jill: Right.

Dean: So when they see I can be a listing agent and have a nice lifestyle, that's attractive, right? So I'm gathering up all of those people and then following it up with a podcast every week, right, in profit activator three. So I look at your opportunity here to just kind of think about Williamsburg as the test case kind of thing here for it and to really kind of just look at it as if that's your whole universe right now and that the goal is to identify people who are ideal candidates for what you're proposing and then start a case study program or start a pilot project with the intention of documenting everything that you're doing and creating it in a way that it can be duplicated in Newport News and it can be duplicated in Richmond.

Because I think that the idea of just a generalized information based program is really going to not be as effective as something that combines that education which can all be done from Williamsburg with some local support kind of thing.

Jill: Right. Right.

Dean: Where there's a local community of service producers who are there to support this protocol for people, all the way from people who ... and giving people the opportunity to whatever needs to be done that they can come in and do those things. Two years ago, I had someone come and stay with me for 30 days. And they prepared everything. It was all raw vegan, basically.

Jill: Wow.

Dean: And it was the most amazing thing because it was, the only thing I had to do was go from my mouth backwards. It was like the only thing I had to do was put what was prepared for me into my mouth. I didn't have to make the decision on what that was going to be. I didn't have to go and source it or prepare it or plan it or any of that stuff. And it was really amazing because I ended up in that 30 days, I think it was 34 days or something like that, I lost 28 pounds.

Jill: Wow.

Dean: Yeah. I mean felt great and yeah it was-

Jill: Did you like the food?

Dean: Yeah. I mean it was evidence that ... The two things I had to get over, first of all, I'm in a world where I know so many people in this health world, right, that are on my speed dial all the bestselling health authors that you know that I have access to, right? And now them. And if I got them all in one room, it would be a first fight, almost? None of them agree with what any of the others say, right? It goes all the way from one of the raw vegan on one side to the keto or paleo on the other. And the world that I'm in is primarily paleo is the thing and now keto is the new buzzword. It's the new thing.

Jill: Then they'll become my clients once they do that for a while to lose weight, then they're going to have a heart attack, then they're going to have to come to my classes and learn non-keto.

Dean: Right. There's the thing. And I love these guys, but I mean if you hear Joel Kahn talking about how he just finds it completely crazy to put butter in your coffee as that's a health thing. And I mean but Dave Asberry, Bulletproof Coffee, I love Dave. And so all these things.

But what I looked at is the one common intersection of all of them, there's nobody that argues that whole, plant based foods should be eliminated from your diet, right? It's all, they're looking at that one thing, that's the core that crosses over basically for all of them and then they're just on other extremes that some of them are saying you should eliminate all the fat and the others are saying you should eliminate all the carbs and it's kind of an interesting thing that nobody says you need to take it easy on the broccoli.

So what I had to overcome with the raw vegan program was just the volume of fruit, the volume of fruit that we could eat. We're always thinking, "Well, that will raise your blood sugar," or whatever which you find out that well that kind of natural fruit sugar is different than Twinkies sugar. And so overcoming that and the salads which normally would be a little more difficult, because of course in the salad world, everybody is, oh, you got to take it easy on the dressing, easy on that. But she would make these dressings that were raw vegan dressings mixed up in there Vitamix that were I think it was Vitamix or Blendtec, whatever the fancy blender is, I have one of those now. And she'd mix up tomato and pepper and whatever, all these things that were completely natural and you could slather the salad in those and it was really tasty.

Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: So it was really interesting how that protocol of being able to just have it done went such a long way, you know?

Jill: It's funny, no go ahead.

Dean: I was thinking about how in Williamsburg, you could support people in that level almost like building up this little syndicate of people who are all-

Jill: Provide different services-

Dean: Supporting each other, if you had a, yeah, is there an independent grocer that you get on the team? You're overcoming all the obstacles to what's the official gym of this, where am I gonna go do yoga? Where am I going to learn about meditation? Where am I going to buy the produce and the groceries? And is there an advocate that can help you? Are there shopping hours that we're going to have, you're going to go shopping with somebody who can meet you at the grocery store on Saturday morning or whatever and help do the meal prep for a period of time or is there somebody who can juice for you? Or get all of the stuff?

You just start to think, thinking about it's not going to be, you're not at this stage testing the efficacy of your program. What you're doing is you're trying to make it follow able, trying to increase and systemize the use of it, the implementation.

Jill: Yeah. That word you used before, convenient, right?

Dean: Yeah. I would definitely, you would be, it would be great for you to read that article. It's in the New York Times, if you just did a Google search on the tyranny of convenience.

Jill: Okay.

Dean: It was just a couple of weeks ago, but it will really open your eyes to how true it actually is. And I think if you could focus on how to make that convenient, how to make it so that it's easy to do.

Jill: Right. Right. I know it would require a lot of thought but just off the top of your head, you said individual people, because that's what I wasn't quite sure, do the people just pay them directly or are they subcontractors for me?

Dean: Well I think that here's the thing is that this is what it's about. This is what the working on the protocol, working on the program is about is to figure out first, I would bet that right now, you have 100% confidence that if we delivered somebody to you and they followed your protocol, like you said if you could lock them up and do it, that you would beyond any shadow of a doubt create an outcome for them.

And so when I look at that and you start to say, "Okay, that's just impractical. That's not going to be able to be the thing." When you look at it, what are the absolute must dos, right, that have to happen in order for this to work out? And how can we work backwards from what would it take to make this happen? Is there a way that you could, in terms of, could somebody show up at their house twice a week or something with some delivery of something that is going to support them in all of this? When you look at all of the things that it would take to execute your program, and if you get it down to a standardized week sort of thing, that that's probably what you're looking for, right? It's for seven days, that there's enough variety in that that you could loop back around and do it again, right, for seven days.

You're not going to get to where it needs to be this day. And maybe it's three days. Maybe it's 72 hour.

Jill: And one thought just popped into my head, possibly go talk to some of these senior living places, and I don't mean nursing homes or whatever, but senior living, who already have kitchens and staff and whatever, see if any of them are interested in doing this as a project with me because it would bring attention to their facility. I don't know if they want people to live longer. Let's see. As long as they're paying them, I guess they do, you know what I'm saying? So at that facility, now, there's no heart disease or whatever.

Dean: That would be amazing, right?

Jill: And they already have a gym and that kind of stuff, yeah.

Dean: Yeah. Can you imagine if somebody builds themselves as the place where you come to get younger?

Jill: Whoa. I think we just hit it here.

Dean: Yeah. I mean that's kind of a cool thin, right? And there's the thing where if you look at it, this is why I'm saying to package a protocol that can serve a localized community because the real thing is it's going to require intervention. You need to be able to focus not on the education as much as the environment that supports using the education, you know? You just feel bad for people in places where they learn and they read and they know but then they're just not in a supportive environment in their community that would support them in doing that, right? But if you make it that and then you think about that protocol, you're absolutely right that if you start thinking what if we partnered with an active adult community that you had a pod or a plug in that you could put in there that makes it super easy for people to take advantage of something.

And that little execution model, that algorithm, that operating system is something that you could install as a feature or an offering of any sort of active adult community.

Jill: Right. All over.

Dean: Yeah. And then if you're so ... literally people could use that thing where it becomes the Williamsburg Project, no I mean, you know? There's no reason it can't be Williamsburg's got the advantage of being nationally recognized, right?

Jill: True, true.

Dean: It's a name brand. But like South Beach Diet, the Williamsburg Protocol, that that kind of thing then could be licensable to active adult communities.

Jill: Right. I love that. What I really love about it is someone else would be doing all the hands on preparation and all that.

Dean: Yeah. Then you get to be the head of all of this live from Williamsburg, here's the thing, and people make a pilgrimage to Williamsburg to learn the program and spread it to their active adult community, you know?

Jill: Right. And I get to move to my resort area that has a senior living place and they can come down there and learn it.

Dean: Why just one? You could travel around to the greatest active adult communities.

Jill: Oh, my God. I love this Dean.

Dean: What a cool idea that is, actually.

Jill: Yeah. I love it. And like I say, we got a bunch of them. I'm going to get their names and go talk to them. I just got to find an MD who would go along with all this this I think. I would like to have someone talk to them in the beginning. I know there's one. He's 72, 73, still a practicing cardiologist up in Richmond, maybe I can talk him to coming down to Williamsburg once a month or something or whatever.

Dean: Maybe that's it. But you start to think about this Williamsburg and what would it take to get a result for people, how could you create that Williamsburg is the most supportive environment in the country for reversing heart disease and growing younger? You know?

Jill: And it's very interesting to see but on the one hand, it's a great place, too, because like I said, I haven't been there very long but it's small enough that pretty much people know everybody. Everybody knows everybody. It's not 100 dry cleaners or anything.

Dean: And word will spread.

Jill: Yeah.

Dean: Right. And there's probably an independent grocer who would love to be involved in that.

Jill: I just saw a brand new one is opening, Earth Fair, I think it's called, which is a heat foods store that I've never heard of. I've got to look them up. Yeah.

Dean: I think this whole thing, it's really coming in, it's almost like thinking about the Geek Squad, you know what that is?

Jill: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dean: It's almost like this, that you're ... No, I'm just saying, that you're-

Jill: I want one of those cars, yeah, side of the car.

Dean: You’re perfecting what this local health squad kind of thing could look like, you know? That that becomes the prototype for what this could be nationally.

Jill: Yes. Yep. I'm picturing a bug in the shape of a heart or something, a Volkswagen with a big old heart on it.

Dean: Pretty good, right?

Jill: I'll pull up to your doorstep and save your heart.

Dean: Yeah.

Jill: I'd love it.

Dean: What do you think?

Jill: Oh, I'm in.

Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jill: I can see it and I mean it makes me grin from ear to ear versus oh my gosh how am I going to do it? Because for that 10 to 12 years where I was working on the book and the website, it was on all my own. I'm really tired of just working on my own.

Dean: Yeah. you want to get in and out.

Jill: ... other people involved in this.

Dean: That's the thing is getting involved knowing that you're in there, that makes a big difference, you know? I like it.

Jill: Right.

Dean: I like it a lot.

Jill: I do, too. You're amazing. I know you hear it all the time, but you are.

Dean: It never gets old.

Jill: The things that get out of your brain are fabulous. What's that?

Dean: I said it never grows old, though.

Jill: Good.

Dean: That's funny. Well, Jill, I-

Jill: All right, well I'm going to-

Dean: I loved the conversation.

Jill: Thank you.

Dean: I mean I'm excited. I would love to have you right here in my community. It would be fantastic. So let's make Winter the second one that we can implement.

Jill: Exactly. We'll start it next January when it gets cold, I'll be right down.

Dean: Perfect. I love it.

Jill: All right. Well you know I'll stay in touch because I talk to you every other week.

Dean: That's exactly right. All right. Thank you, Jill.

Jill: All right. Thank you. I'm getting to work.

Dean: Okay, bye.

Jill: All right, bye, bye.

Dean: And there we have it. I thought that was a great conversation. I loved towards the end when we really hit on it here that once you have a packaged up result getting protocol with some implementation assistance attached to it, you really have something that now that becomes your scale ready algorithm. And you've heard me use those words before and no matter what, if you're going to scale anything, it has to start with a one unit, one way to get a result for people. And so if you are in any kind of a situation where you have something that can help a very specific person get a result and you have an aspiration to spread that, that's really the focus that we want to take is getting your prototype ready, right? Getting the one unit of it ready to go.

And when you have that, that then becomes the ability to now take that and scale it. And it can happen very quickly but it's worth investing the time to get that algorithm right and then scaling. And you heard even in the conversation it's so nice when you can get your hands involved in something, right, where you can get on the ground, get into it with somebody, actually see the results and document everything as it's happening.

So let me know if that's something that you have, because I always like to explore those and that would be a perfect thing to talk about on an episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers which you can be part of if you just go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can click on the be a guest link and that will let me know that you would like to be a guest and we can talk about your business.

If you want to see where your business stacks up with the eight profit activators that we talk about, I have a simple score card for you at profitactivatorscore.com and you can go through online just takes a couple of minutes to go through the eight questions, find the statement that best matches where you are on that and the statement that indicates where you would like to be in that. And it will give you insight into where the opportunity is and where the strengths are of your business right now. It kind of gives you a roadmap to run on and when you go to profitactivatorscore.com, you can download a copy of our Breakthrough DNA book and the companion book that goes with the scorecard.

So it's a nice place to start, profitacvitatorscore.com. That's it for this week and I will talk to you next time.