Blog
Insights on marketing strategy, the 8 Profit Activators, and what actually works.
The dividends of JOY
My friend Stacey Hurley used to have apple crisp and Trivial Pursuit parties. She would make this legendary apple crisp, invite everyone over to her beautifu...
Your JOY calendar
I’ve always liked putting things into two-hour blocks. A movie fits into a two-hour block. So does an afternoon reading by the fire in a beautiful hotel lobb...
The JOY list
One of the things that made me smile as I looked back through journal number six from 1997 was a page that started with this prompt: “Let’s make a list of al...
The smartest offer
There’s a wonderful question you can ask your clients: “What would you definitely buy from me if I were smart enough to offer it?” I wish I could remember wh...
No new customers allowed
What would happen if a law were suddenly passed that said you were no longer allowed to get any new customers? You couldn’t advertise. You couldn’t generate ...
Magic and machinery
When something feels effortless, there’s usually a lot happening behind the scenes. Think about a wonderful restaurant experience. You make a reservation. Yo...
Leave keys at valet
I remember an episode of Hotel Impossible that contained a wonderful little marketing lesson. The host, Anthony Melchiorri, would visit struggling hotels and...
Write the review first
What would you love for someone to say after they’ve worked with you? Not the polite review. Not “Dean was very professional and did a great job.” I mean the...
Which horse would you buy?
Every commercial transaction comes down to a proposed exchange. I’ll do this for you… And you’ll give me this amount of money. The interesting part is where ...
Mystery creates a vacuum
Imagine you walked into Starbucks and discovered that everyone inside had inquired about doing business with you. They’d visited your website. Requested info...
There are no dead leads
A yacht brokerage in Fort Lauderdale had a an actual paper file labeled: “Dead Leads.” Inside were the names of people who had inquired about buying a yacht ...
Want to see a magic trick?
Want to see a magic trick? I’m going to show you how to do it…and then you’re going to get to do it yourself. 😊 It starts by gathering up everybody who has ...
Just the next step
When someone raises their hand, there’s a good chance their next few desires are completely predictable. Let’s say someone downloads a copy of: “How to Sell ...
Whenever you’re ready
People are going to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, on their own timeframe. Even if they tell you otherwise. That’s one of the most useful ...
Would you like a cookie?
If I invited you into my house, sat you down in the living room, and said… “I’m really happy you’re here. If you’re hungry or thirsty, there’s lots of stuff ...
The 5-Star Prospect Detector
Imagine you have 100 new prospects standing in front of you. Some of them are going to buy what you sell. Some will do it this week. Some will do it six mont...
“What are you thinking of doing?”
“What are you thinking of doing?” Those may be six of the most valuable words you can say to a new prospect. Let’s imagine someone has just downloaded your b...
The first 100 hours
When a new prospect raises their hand, most businesses do one of two things. They pounce… Or they disappear. The pouncers immediately start trying to make th...
100 leads. 100 weeks.
One of the most important things I’ve learned about lead generation is this: Never judge leads one at a time. One person is unpredictable. They may buy tomor...
My secret delight
I have a secret delight. I love finding the leads someone else has given up on. Here’s what happens… A realtor starts running our ads offering the “Sell Your...
The abandoned goldmine
Most businesses don’t have a lead-generation problem. They have a lead-abandonment problem. Back in 1997, when I was learning how to generate leads, I came a...
The $30 million inevitabilty
Imagine a neighborhood where 2,000 homes were built within the same three-year period. Each one has a shingle roof. And those roofs are now approaching their...
Somebody is next
There are just over 2,000 lakefront homes in Winter Haven. And every year, somewhere between 80 and 100 of those homes will sell. We don’t know exactly which...
Where to shine your light
Most marketing shines the spotlight in one of two places. The first is on the business: “I’m the number-one lakefront realtor.” “I’ve sold more homes than an...
Compelling before convincing
One of the most important distinctions in marketing is separating compelling from convincing. Most people try to make one ad do both. They want it to get som...
An unfair head start
Imagine you could travel back in time two years… But before you left, you were given a list of everyone who was going to have an outdoor wedding during the n...
The same pill in a different box
A friend of mine from Canada used to come down to Florida to play golf. Whenever he visited, he would stock up on Excedrin Migraine because they didn’t sell ...
Don’t just participate. Dominate.
There are certain words that change the way you think simply by saying them. Here are three of them: Plan to dominate. I first came across those words in The...
Clarity beats convenience
One of the biggest mistakes people make in business is choosing a broad description of who they serve. “Central Florida home buyers and sellers.” “Small busi...
Magician-free magic
There’s a test for a scalable idea that I wish I had understood much earlier: If your idea only works when you do it, you don’t have a scalable idea yet. You...
Anatomy of a million dollar idea
Looking back through 30 years of journals, one of my greatest joys is seeing the first appearance of an idea that I know is eventually going to make millions...
Chicken finger dreams
I’ve been listening to the Founders podcast lately, and one of the stories that really stuck with me is Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Cane’s. Todd had ...
Six-pack abs as a service
I think I may have stumbled onto the perfect description of what everybody wants. Imagine hiring a personal trainer who says: “I’ll do the sit-ups. You get t...
If I could mail letters for a penny
I remember thinking about how lucky the old-school advertising guys were. Claude Hopkins. Albert Lasker. John E. Kennedy. Back in the early 1900s, they could...
NEWSFLASH: People are lazy
Years ago, Jerry Ballinger said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: “People don’t do what they could do.” At the time, I was creating elaborate market...
The problem with seeing the future
I’ve realized that visionaries have a strange relationship with time. We can see the completed thing so clearly that, in our minds, it already exists. That’s...
Make your own show
If you grew up in Toronto in the late ’90s, you may remember Lucy Zilio. She had a television show called Tuned In with Lucy Zilio. These weren’t traditional...
Old school. New tools.
I’ve been looking through my journals from 30 years ago and realizing something: These are the good old days. Right now. Back then, we had all kinds of guerr...
Five cent business cards
Thirty years ago, one of my favorite marketing tools was a little yellow business card. You could get a thousand of them printed for about $50. Five cents ea...
Chocolate + Peanut Butter
Looking at something I created in 1997 this morning, I could see everybody who helped me create it. Even though none of them were actually involved. It was m...
How to actually finish your ideas
There’s something very satisfying about being able to hold an old idea in your hands. I had one of those moments this morning. I was going through my journal...
The far actionable future
I like thinking in 90-day increments. I think of 90 days as the far actionable future. A year is interesting to think about. Five years can be fun to imagine...
The next 100 minutes
One of the most comforting things I’ve learned is that time moves at the speed of reality. 60 minutes per hour. That’s it. Our minds don’t work that way, of ...
Getting in front of a wave
There’s a simple question that could change the way you think about marketing: When are your prospects most likely to act? In real estate, there’s a predicta...
Zero to 20% market share
Here’s a marketing experiment that worked. In 1997 we picked a neighborhood of about 2,000 homes where Julie had sold exactly zero houses in the previous 12 ...
Maybe
One of the biggest mistakes in marketing is giving people only two choices: Buy now. Or disappear. I was reminded of this going through Cash Copy by Jeffrey ...
The train leaves at 1pm
One of the most powerful forces in marketing is scarcity. And one of the most abused. Robert Cialdini taught me years ago that we’re wired to want things mor...
Six weapons of influence
There are some books you read. And then there are books that become part of the way you think. Robert Cialdini’s Influence is one of those books for me. It’s...
Throw your hat over the fence
I’ve noticed something looking back through these old journals. So many of the things that became important in my business started as an intuition. A little ...
How high is high?
In 2006, I read an article about a guy named Gamal Aziz. He had just taken over as GM of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, and he had an interesting way of looking...
Fast acting and simple
One of the most valuable ideas I learned from Dan Kennedy in 1997 was something he called intensification. Instead of sending someone one message and hoping ...
Message. Market. Media.
In 1997, I met Dan Kennedy for the first time. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting Dan, you know what a lovable, approachable, huggable kind of guy he...
Freedom to say no
In 1997, I wrote a page in my journal called: Rules for Good Listings. I had ten of them. Geographic limits. The house had to be at least neutral in conditio...
25 headlines
One of the things I’ve done for more than 30 years is write headlines. Thousands of them. I was looking through my journals from 1997 this morning and found ...
Billboards work. Even behind trees.
I was driving down the highway recently and saw a billboard partially obscured by some trees. The headline said: Billboards work. And underneath: Even behind...
I buy your gold
I grew up in Toronto, and there was a guy everybody knew. Russell Oliver. He became famous…and very rich…with four words: I buy your gold. That was it. He bl...
The long game
One of the ways I started my real estate career was calling people in my neighborhood. But I wasn’t calling to ask if they wanted to sell their house. I call...
Preparing your case
What if you prepared your marketing the way an attorney prepares a case? In 1997, I was studying Gerry Spence’s How to Argue and Win Every Time, and I can se...
Horse for sale. (Details inside)
Sometimes the easiest way to sell a horse is with a sign that says: HORSE FOR SALE. I learned this lesson in 1997 from a woman who lived between my condo and...
The speed of reality
I had a realization going through my old journals this morning: Time moves at the speed of reality. Our minds don’t. You can sit with a journal and imagine a...
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