How to Actually Finish the Ideas You Start
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A magazine spotted in an airport lounge became a finished, printed kit for By Referral Only members. One idea, carried all the way to something you can hold.
Good morning from Winter Haven.
Day sixty three, and not one rainy morning yet. I'm not going to jinx it.
And I've got the tickle trunk out today, so you know something good is coming.
Still 1997. About halfway through the year.
And going back through these pages I keep running into projects I'd forgotten I was proud of.
Here's today's one. The Today's Homeowner After Sales Service Kit.
Remember yesterday, when I laughed at my 1997 self wanting a laser printer that would run 11 by 17 pages?
This is what it was for.
Here's how it started.
I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa, and in the lounge there was a magazine I'd never seen before. Today's Homeowner.
I started leafing through it. Decks. Landscaping. Home improvement projects. All of it genuinely useful.
And my first thought wasn't that's a nice magazine. It was, that's a tool.
That would be a great thing for a realtor to give their clients every single month.
By the time we landed in Ottawa I had the whole thing worked out.
Send the magazine along with your newsletter. Do it in partnership with local businesses who want to reach homeowners anyway. And put a directory in it, so when somebody sees a deck they like, there's a local deck builder right there to call.
This was before I had the words for the Before Unit, the During Unit and the After Unit. But the seven step process was already there, all the way through to nurturing lifetime relationships. The eighth one, orchestrating referrals, came later.
Then Monday came, and I did the part most people skip.
I tracked down Today's Homeowner in New York City and I called them.
I don't know what gave me the audacity. But I got a great conversation out of it, and we came away able to buy the magazines in bulk at 87 cents an issue. On a three dollar cover.
And then I went and actually built the thing.
Here's everything you need to get started right now.
Step one, prepare your database in advance.
Step two, mail a letter to your clients announcing their gift subscription. And there's the letter, already written for them.
Step three, select client centered local businesses to partner with, and give your clients a value added bonus every month.
There's the service sheet. If you like what you saw in the magazine, here's where to get it locally. With room for their business cards.
There's the letter you could send those businesses to explain what you were doing.
And there's the sales letter we used to introduce the whole idea to our members.
I had it laid out for everybody.
And looking at it now, I can see exactly who taught me what.
Jerry Ballinger is all over the layout. Eben and I have the same skill set because we got to intern at the feet of a legend.
Jeffrey Lant is in the words. I don't think of Cash Copy as a marketing book. It's a book about being crystal clear, in the service of creating an outcome for somebody.
And Robin Williams. Not the actor. The designer, who wrote The Non-Designer's Design Book.
Contrast. Repetition. Alignment. Proximity.
The same headline size sitting in the same spot on every page. Everything lined up with something else. The things that belong together, grouped together.
I still notice when they're missing. When something's willy nilly on a page, that's what my eye is telling me.
But here's the real reason I pulled this one out.
It was a lot of work. And it got finished.
One idea. One project. Taken all the way through to something I can hold up thirty years later.
That's rarer than having the idea in the first place.
I got a funny email from Rick the other day. Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?
And I laughed to myself, because... yes. That's exactly what I do.
Every idea I've ever had, and every dollar I've made in thirty years, went through my brain and my pen and onto a journal page before it ever went out into the real world.
So I'm running the 50-Minute Profit Finder this Friday at 1pm. Free, live on Zoom, and I'll walk you through the exercise myself.
Bring a pen and something to write on. We'll go looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your business, and probably some fruit you didn't know was there.
And here's your nudge for today.
Take the idea you keep circling back to... and describe what the finished version of it would actually look like sitting in your hands.
Transcript
Auto-generated transcript, provided as supporting material. It may contain errors, and speaker labels are occasionally mis-attributed.
Okay, good morning. It is another beautiful morning in Winter Haven, Florida. I don't want to jinx it, but this is day 63 and we've not had rain one morning. So, I don't know.
Just note that maybe it doesn't rain in Florida in the win in the uh summer in the mornings. But I've got my tickle trunk today. So, you know, there's going to be a good surprise in this episode. And I was thinking about I've noticed the patterns that are happening as I'm going through my journals.
I've been journaling almost every day for over 30 years and these are my insights from what I've learned. So, here we are almost halfway through the uh 1997 and I've noticed that there are some great reminders of of projects that I had done and one of those that I was very proud of was this today's homeowner after sales service kit. you know, we've been talking about this idea of nurturing lifetime relationships with your uh with your clients, and we had I hadn't yet come up with the words for the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, but we had the sevenstep process that goes from selecting your target market all the way to nurturing lifetime relationships. And later I would add an eighth what became the eight profit activators of orchestrating referrals.
But this is certainly one of those things. And as I'm looking through, I'm realizing I'm seeing the influence of many things in in action here. So, how this came about is I was flying from Toronto to Ottawa and I was getting on the plane and in the lounge they had a magazine that I had never seen before called Today's Homeowner. And it was a really great magazine.
And I started looking through and there's all kinds of great uh you know home improvement projects and things that were all home related. And my immediate thought was this is a great tool. This would be great for realtors to give to their clients. So, I conceived this idea on the flight from Toronto to Ottawa that what if I put together a whole kit where people could send Today's Homeowner magazine along with their newsletter and do it in partnership with other local businesses who wanted to reach uh homeowners and look through the pages of the magazine and the projects that are described in there.
have a directory where you could have a local landscaper or a local deck builder or a local whatever uh that was featured in the uh in the magazine. So by the time I got landed in Ottawa, I had kind of the whole idea fleshed out and that I was there for the weekend. But I got back on that Monday and I realized as I'm thinking about this now, that I don't know what gave me, but I had the audacity, let's call it, to call to track down Today's Homeowner magazine in New York City. They're a one of the divisions of another big publisher.
And I called them up and I just proposed my idea of what would what could we do in terms of um you know being a bulk subscription seller to help people buy 50 or 100 subscriptions uh at a time. And you know, I reached out. I got a um you know, had a great conversation and they made a really nice thing that we were able to get the magazines for 87 cents an issue with a you know $3 uh you know retail cover charge. And so I went to work putting together the concept of how as a by referral only member you could put together your after sales service kit.
And I created this whole little booklet. Remember when I was saying I needed the 11 by17 printer? That's what this was for. so that I could make in my house these uh 11 by17 booklets folded into magazines without having to go anywhere to get them.
So I looked at this. Here we go. Here's everything you need to get started right now with your buy referral only today's homeowner after sales service program. And as I'm looking through this, I'll just kind of go through some of the pages for you.
I explained the whole things. Here are some simple step-by-step instructions for using your afterale service kit. Step one, prepare your database in advance. Step two, mail a letter to your clients announcing your gift subscription.
There's the actual letter. You can partner with local business owners to bring value added bonuses with your clients each month. Now, part of this I see the co I see the combination and there was the service sheet that I was talking about. Here's where to get it.
If you like the products and services you see in the magazine, here's where you can get them locally and we'd have room for business cards and a letter that you could send to businesses to explain what you're doing. I mean, I had the whole thing laid out for everybody. And I look at this and boy, this was a lot of work to put this together, but I smile when I see it because I recognize in the pages of this the influence of Jerry Ballinger and Jeffrey Lant and bringing my own thinking into something here, right? Like what Jerry Ballinger taught me was the value of learning how to design, learning how to lay out stuff like this.
So he encouraged me and Eban and Eban's got the same skill set that I do because we sort of interned at the feet of a a legend like that. uh Jerry Ballinger and learning how to do layouts that are, you know, very easy to uh to read, very goodlooking, and using Jeffrey Lance cash copy mindset of being crystal clear. And I think about cash copy as more than just like a marketing book. I look at it as a book on crystalclear communication in the service of creating an outcome for somebody.
So being crystal clear on what to do. Step three, select client- centered local businesses to partner with in offering a value added bonus to your clients and then explain that whole thing. And uh I learned um a uh there was a great book by Robin Williams, not not Robin Williams the actor, but Robin Williams the designer called the non-designers design book. And to this day she outlines like the basic things that you need to know.
And I see these evidenced in here is contrast. The difference between the headline type and the thing the consistency of the same size headline font in the same position on every page. So that consistency is there in repetition. Alignment.
I learned that everything needs to align with something else. If I look through things and I see that people are sort of willy-nilly putting things on there or there's inconsistencies in things, I'm always reminded that that uh that alignment is an important uh part of this and proximity of how to make things apply, how to make things um group together visually. And so, man, I look at this and I just go back to such a great time. And then here, of course, here's the sales letter that we uh included for all of our members to introduce the idea to them.
So, I think about this as a big portion of what I was doing in that sort of first half of of 1997. And I look at this as, you know, evidence of focusing on one thing, one project, taking it to completion and having something to show for it. And that brings up another great lesson that tomorrow I'm going to talk about uh why people don't do what they could do. So, let's leave it at this for today and tomorrow tune in because I'm going to talk about why people don't do what they could do.
I got a funny email the other day from Rick. It says, "Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?" And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that.
That's what I do. is the funny thing. What I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business.
I'm all for it. m. I'm going to do for the first time a 50inute profitfinder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50inute exercise. Bring your pen.
Bring a notebook or piece of paper. And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there. But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So, it's free.
It's for you. m. this Friday. Just watch.
Go to What did we call the website, Josh? >> 50inut profitfinder. m.
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