Allan Dib: Money is a tool like any tool. It can be used for good purposes and for bad purposes. And what I found is that a lot of people with high integrity have seen it maybe, maybe in childhood or whatever, but have seen it used for bad purposes. Maybe been abused with it, or have lack of it or whatever. So we really need to change some mindset around money. 

Chris Do: Hey everybody, what is up? The gentleman I have on the podcast today is someone I've been chasing for a number of years, mostly because I read his first book and many of you know it either by reference or I specifically talked about it. The One Page Marketing Plan. It is a resource, a treasure trove of information and a very simple, straightforward plan. And it literally is a one page marketing plan. So when my guest said, hey, I got another book called Lean Marketing is coming out. And I got my hands on it. And it's, it's pretty awesome. Well, without giving it all away, he is a big deal in Mexico apparently I got that far in the book. Allan, welcome to the show. Why are you a big deal in Mexico? 

Allan Dib: Chris, that's a funny story. So, uh, I was once on a, like a five week speaking tour and my last stop was speaking it in this event in Mexico, which was all about, uh, it was an automotive manufacturing event. It was in the city of Guana Harto, which is a automotive manufacturing hub, kind of like the new Detroit, I guess. And, you know, I was tired and I was, I just had it and I was hot and you know, this was my last speaking engagement. And I'm like, what in the fuck am I doing in this place? You know, I'm in the back of this car going to Mexico and long story short, and I've got some of the story in the book, but it was the most amazing event. It was like the highlight of my trip. I spoke on stage, sharing the stage with Guy Kawasaki and other amazing entrepreneurs. And I don't know what was in the air, what was in the water, what the promoters had done, but I was like a freaking celebrity there, which is very unusual for me because I've gone through life as a bestselling author, but I've maybe gotten recognized in the street, maybe five or six times. And every single time my wife is just flabbergasted. She's like, what's going on? But. At this event, I was like a fricking celebrity. I couldn't go to the bathroom without someone stopping, asking for an autograph. I had lines out the door of people with my book waiting to, for it to get signed. And I had to catch a plane back in, in like half an hour. And I'm like, guys, I've got to go. But I would walk around and people would be like, Hey, that's Allan Dib. And I'm like, I don't know what is going on. Am I the subject of a prank here or something like that? But it was kind of cool. It was cool to be a celebrity for a day. So now whenever, uh, I need to pull rank with my team or whatever, I just remind them, hey, I'm a big deal in Mexico, guys. 

Chris Do: You're talking to the big deal right now. Everybody just back up. What year is this, that this story takes place? 

Allan Dib: This was in 2019. Yeah. 

Chris Do: Okay. This is pre pandemic. 

Allan Dib: Pre pandemic. Exactly. 

Chris Do: Yeah. And have you had similar experiences like that? It's been five years. Do you go around and people like, Hey, it's Allan. It's Allan. There he is. 

Allan Dib: Hell no, like nobody knows who I am, I can very safely walk through an airport and nobody knows who the heck I am. Uh, I mean, like I said, very, very occasionally someone will recognize me or whatever. I went to a Tony Robbins event maybe about a year ago and I got recognized by about two or three people there, but that's about it. I, I'm, I'm very anonymous, uh, so yeah, that's why I was such an anomaly. I'm like, what in the heck is going on? They must have really promoted the heck out of that event. 

Chris Do: They must have. A bunch of marketing nerds there apparently. Something like that, right? 

Allan Dib: Something like that. 

Chris Do: Allan, for people who don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your backstory? 

Allan Dib: To be honest, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up, but, uh, what I tell people, I'm an author, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a marketer, I'm a tech geek. And look, objectively, by any measure, you'd have to conclude that life is rigged in my favor. So a lot of people don't acknowledge that, but the role that luck has to play in their success. A lot of times people go on, podcasts and things like that. And it's kind of the rags to rich story. You know, I was sleeping in my car or on the street and now I'm a multimillionaire and, you know, there was some magic in the middle, but I think for a lot of us, especially people living in countries like the United States and Australia, luck is such a massive factor and I've got a similar, background to yours in that my parents came to this country when I was pretty young, and I was lucky to be exposed to so many amazing opportunities as were you. And we get to do what we do right now. So my background is I was born in Syria, came to Australia when I was a few years old with my parents, they immigrated. I was a student. I was not very bright, but I ended up in one of the top schools in the country. I didn't do that well. I ended up trying many different things. I studied music in university. I studied law. I studied finance. I dropped out of all of them. I never had very, very good grades. I definitely consider myself an introvert. I know you're, you're a loud introvert. I'm definitely a quiet introvert. And so that makes a lot of what, we do as I hate to use the word it's kind of a bit cringe thought leader or whatever, but it makes it a little bit harder, but that's okay. When I got married, I got married to a wonderful woman when I was pretty young and my net worth at the time was three hundred dollars and then of course. What do you do with a three hundred dollar net worth? You start your first business. So I had, but Michael Gerber calls and entrepreneurial seizure, meaning, hey, I was working for this boss that it was an idiot. And then I became the idiot boss. I thought, hey, I know. Tech stuff. I know geek stuff. I'm an IT guy. I can do this stuff better. And so that's what I thought it to grow a business. So I grew that business and that was really my training ground for marketing. I spent 10 years in trial and error. I attended every conference. I read every book. I did everything and I got nuggets from each. You know, not to take away from anyone or anything that I learned from, and I had many wonderful mentors and I'm happy to talk about them, but I took something from each, but really there was nothing holistic that took me from zero from just a tech geek and I, a broke IT tech geek who knew nothing about marketing and not knew nothing about how to get clients in the door to really understanding business and marketing well. So I grew that business. Fortunately, I learned marketing. I learned how to use words well, and that was a key to my success. I grew that business, exited it. I became a millionaire as a result. I started another business. It was in the telecommunications space, and that was certainly a another training ground for me in business. I don't know what it is about the telecommunication industry, but it feels like a gang of thieves You're working like in a world that feels like the mafia, mafia world. Anyway, I grew that business I ended up exiting that and help the guys who bought us out list on the stock exchange and so I exited that and so now basically I work with entrepreneurs, with business owners all around the world. We help them implement marketing in their business. So we're kind of the opposite of a marketing agency. We don't do the stuff for you. We help you develop your own marketing capability because I believe that's, that's incredibly important. We can, we can go into that if you'd like. Look in truth, the list of things I'm bad at is significantly longer than the list of things I'm good at. 

Chris Do: So I'm trying to map your story in my mind because you went through a lot. There was, I don't know if this is an accurate description, but there was the season of you wandering the desert, whether it's like going to school, trying some things and then things didn't work out. You said you weren't that bright, but clearly a person who can learn on their own, who has that inner passion is, is a deep learner. It's just, you didn't fit within the box of how to learn. So you kind of figured it out on your own. I'm curious that period in which you were dabbling with, uh, things in music and law and finance. What year is this? Well, how old are you? I'm trying to map this out. 

Allan Dib: I'm not that good at math. So the year, but I was straight after school. So I graduated school when I was 18, went into university. So it was kind of my early twenties is when I sort of dabbled. I was in, in music. So I started, my parents are immigrant parents, which means, hey, you've got to be a doctor, or you've got to be a lawyer, or you've got to be something that makes a lot of money, an engineer or whatever, all of those things. So the way my parents presented it was that you're either going to be a garbage collector, or you're going to be one of these things. There was nothing in between. And so, uh, to their great, great disappointment, I went into a music degree and, you know, I started doing it. I really enjoyed it, but I don't know the, the muse sort of artist world or whatever. It just wasn't me. Like, I don't know what it was, but it just wasn't me. I really enjoyed playing my instrument and working in the music field, but it just wasn't me. A lot of my success, and like I said, I don't think I was a very bright student, but I was really good at trying to figure out what are the leverage points, what are the unfair advantages that I can get to get to the result. One thing that stuck with me, a teacher once said, and I forget his name, but he said, the front door is very, very crowded, but a lot of times getting in the side door is much easier and I've certainly found that in many, many endeavors that I've had from music to getting to schools, to study, to publishing, to business, to entrepreneurship, the side door is far, far less crowded and far, far easier to get into. 

Chris Do: And if somebody is trying to reverse engineer you and figure out your success, there's a lot of like breadcrumbs and zig zagging kind of all through space. And how did you wind up being a guy who is now known for marketing? You gathered lots of things, you wanted a simple process that you can automate and teach other people. How old are you? What is going on here? 

Allan Dib: So I'm 23 years old, I'm married, I'm making all these big mouth promises to my wife, you know, getting my wife to marry me. That was my best sales pitch ever. Like, you know, you are going to have a life of ease and it's going to be awesome. I'm going to be the best husband. And initially she said, no, she's like, get out of here, like, but I put on my best sales pitch. And then having got married at the age of 23 with a net worth of three hundred dollars. Now I had to make good on my big mouth promises. So that was how I got into entrepreneurship. And, you know, I struggled for many, many years. And one of my biggest struggles was that I equated the level of competence I had at the technical stuff I do with value. And it is valuable to be good technically at what you do. Like I was. Like dead set, I was amazing at the technical stuff. Like I reverse engineered routers when I went into the telecommunication space, I was maybe one of 15 people in the country that you could call if you wanted to build a telecommunications network from scratch. Right. And I was really, really good at the technical stuff because I reverse engineered a lot of stuff. Like I always try to figure it out how does this thing work? And starting from basic principles. So how does this router work? How does wifi work? How does networks work and all of that sort of thing. So I never attended any sort of formal schooling for that, but I learned it through reverse engineering. And so really for me, it was always looking for what's the unfair advantage. It sounds kind of maybe a little bit evil or wrong or whatever, but it's not, it's really looking for that leverage point. What's the unfair advantage I can gain in this situation to get ahead? Because a lot of what we want to do in marketing is really get that unfair advantage. It's really to get more than is allocated by just natural market forces. 

Chris Do: Well, congratulations on figuring this out and being a guy who writes checks that, or his mouth writes the check that's kind of bigger than his wallet, but you made good on it, right? You made good. It just took a little while. 

Allan Dib: I made good on it. I made good on it. It took a little while, but I made good on it. 

Chris Do: Yeah, good for you. So I want to dig into your latest book, Lean Marketing. At first I didn't understand the concept, but then once I get into it, I totally understand it. It is a phrase I think that you were introduced to, but it's kind of borrowed from lean manufacturing. And can you tell us like what lean marketing is? 

Allan Dib: So in fact, that event that you described there, the event in Mexico, it was an event where automotive, automotive manufacturers were there. And I kept hearing the word lean. So lean manufacturing, lean thinking, lean this, Lean Six Sigma and all of this sort of stuff. And I'm like, what in the hell is this lean thing everybody's talking about? And I'm kind of a bit of an obsessive personality. When I go down a rabbit hole, I usually really go deep. I've got to be careful about following my curiosity because sometimes I'll lose like three weeks, uh, just going down and trying to figure something out. And so I kind of did that with lean. I was looking into what on earth is all this lean that everyone's talking about. And so I met a fellow there by the name of Luis and he introduced himself. And then we got, we got to chatting. He became a friend and a client, but he's the president of the Lean Six Sigma Association, but in short, lean is something that's been used in the world of manufacturing, particularly in manufacturing automotive. It originated in Toyota and all this sounds really, really boring and obvious until you really dive into it. So lean is really a way to do more and more with less and less. Like, so how do we get more with doing less? And the reason manufacturers are super interested in it is because manufacturing is very resource heavy in terms of personnel, in terms of equipment, in terms of time and all of that. And so if we can have less waste and produce more, we make more profit, right? So sounds kind of really obvious, right? So what we want to do is do more with less. And so marketing is a space where there is just so much incredible waste. You know, even we've got that phrase in marketing, you know, half the money I spend is wasted, but I don't know which half. And like, when we look at a world like lean manufacturing, there's no manufacturer in the world that's going to say, you know, half of our raw materials are wasted. I just don't know which half or half of our labor is wasted. I don't know which half that just doesn't happen. They operate at a gold standard, which is the Six Sigma, which is basically 3.4 defects per million opportunities. And you know, I don't know if we'll ever get to that stage with marketing, but I think it's I want to get closer and closer to that stage because I see so much waste with marketing because typical marketing is words like it's a numbers game. We don't know how much we're spending, but we better keep spending and find out, you know, what hits it's kind of like throwing spaghetti against the wall. And if you know anything from my first book, it's like. I'm all about really creating a systemized approach to marketing. It's not about kind of doing random acts of marketing and throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks. So to me coming from an engineering background, I really never understood this kind of world where we're just going to do creative stuff and hope that something sticks. So that's really where it came from. So a lot of the things that I want to apply to marketing come from the world of lean, And lean is all about efficiency. It's all about getting a bigger result by doing less stuff. 

Chris Do: I would like to talk about what the big ideas are. Now, we understand what lean marketing is. We kind of understand your crazy background. I mean, I guess, bless immigrant parents because they put. that fear of God in you to go do something with your life. And, uh, you found your way, though not the traditional path, but you found your way. So what are some of the big ideas? And you mentioned something in here, if we could just dip into it. Something about brand marketing versus, I think you might have used the word performance marketing or something like that, and there's differences between the two? 

Allan Dib: Yeah, so in the marketing space, it's sort of, there's two kind of branches of marketing. There's kind of like brand marketing, which is sort of the stuff that you see big companies do a Coca Cola and Nike and all of this sort of stuff, which is kind of image based it's, it's designed to make you feel something. And the idea of it is with enough exposure, you'll end up buying. The other completely opposite branch of marketing is what we call direct response marketing. Some people call it performance marketing, whatever you call it, but basically the idea is that we're going to run an ad. We're going to measure who sees the ad, who clicks on the ad, who opts in, who buys, who puts the thing in that cart, who abandons the cart. We're going to measure every little thing. And we just care about that 1 percent of people that click through the other 99% we don't care. We're going to hammer those people with emails. We're going to get the conversion. And so they're kind of two different takes on marketing and really the way I think about it is both work, but one is all about creating a lot of goodwill, a lot of mindshare, taking some of the ideas and communicating them and creating feelings and things like that. The other one is really about, you know, how do we get a return on investment? As quickly as possible, how do we put a dollar in and get three dollars back out as quickly as possible? And both have their pros and cons. And, you know, if you had asked me a few years ago, I would have been firmly in the direct response marketing camp. I'm like, you know, this branding stuff is just a load of nonsense and, you know, it doesn't really work. And it's just something big companies waste a lot of money on, but I've kind of come around to the fact that there is a middle ground. There is a point where you want to create a lot of goodwill with your audience and that goodwill will convert into revenue and will convert into paying customers and will convert into people who want to do business with you. So the challenge is where do you stand in that middle ground? So for example, if I was to choose somebody who represents kind of both, kind of ends of the spectrum. And I kind of mentioned in this, in the book, Dan Kennedy is kind of the, the godfather of direct response marketing. He's like, you know, forget branding, forget logos, forget all that nonsense design and you know, everyone we've seen those direct response marketing ads and landing pages, the big red, ugly fonts, the big buy now button, the pushy sales, the, the emails that just spam you to death and all of that. And it actually does work, but you kind of want to take a shower with a, uh, steel brush afterwards. Like, it's kind of embarrassing. Like you don't want to show your friends that ad you're not proud of it. On the other end of the spectrum and someone I respect very much is Seth Godin. Right. And he talks about, look, just create remarkable stuff and people will remark on it. You know, it will spread ideas will spread, change the culture. There's some of the things that, that Seth says, and I a hundred percent agree with that, but also that could take a very long time. It's not always very effective. Sometimes merit isn't recognized for a long time. Like so many, how many artists haven't been recognized in their time? They were recognized decades after they died. And, you know, sure it's better than nothing, but you know, how about we get recognized and make some revenue while we're, while we're alive and have people. Recognize our value and, and all of that. So with lean marketing, I want to take that middle ground. I want to see, can we cut some of the waste out of brand based marketing and image based marketing? And can we take some of the ruthless street smarts of direct response marketing? And conversely, can we take some of the goodwill, and brand equity that we can generate through brand marketing and apply it to direct response marketing techniques. So the whole idea is we can do more with less. And when I look at all the most sophisticated marketers in the world, you included 

Chris, the list of things that they don't do is much bigger than the list of things that they do do. You know, because we're told every time you read a book, every time you watch, listen to a podcast or whatever, okay, I've got another thing on my to do list. Okay I've got to spend more with my advertising company. I got to do more, more, more. And what I find is that the best, most sophisticated marketers in the world actually don't do a lot of things, but they do a few things very, very well. 

Chris Do: I'm with you on this. So I love this blend. I'm not as familiar with Dan Kennedy, but for sure, I'm very familiar with Seth Godin. And you said something in, in, in the book that I think resonates with a lot of our audience. They're mostly creative people who show up for this podcast. So they're like, yeah, I mean, it's like the Pied Piper singing to the rats like, we're good. You're like, let's, let's focus on craft. Let's, uh, deliver something great for small people. a group of people who care who are going to spread the word for us. And then we're looking in the cupboards and there's not a lot to eat. So I love this idea that you're going to blend the two things. So how do we do that? What are the big ideas that you can share with us? 

Allan Dib: I love creative people. You know, I was listening to one of your YouTube videos where you talk about the two word brand thing, and I'm like 

Chris Do: Two word brand. Mm-Hmm. 

Allan Dib: Two word brand. I mean, I've been using for, for years, I've been using rebellious marketer, but I, I, I thought like if I was gonna redo it, what would I do? And I know you said the word, first word starts with the negative and then you add a modifier. And I, I thought what I create came up was with, was creative nerd. I don't know. How did I do? 

Chris Do: It's good. It needs some work, but I liked it. You're trying. Yeah. So nerd is your negative word, right? But you are a nerd, I guess. 

Allan Dib: Well, nerd used to be a negative thing, especially when, when I was a teenager and the nerd was not a compliment. Nerd is now a compliment. Now that nerds are making billions of dollars. Right. But certainly at the time, that was not a positive thing that someone would say about you. But anyway, I digress. What I've found is that creatives, people who have very, very high integrity. And because of that, they have a lot of issues with money. So one of the biggest issues, and I've, I've coached creatives in the past and I've worked with them, is they really have more hangups about money than they do about sex or anything else, right? I'm telling you, that's absolutely the case. And I don't know why that is possibly it's that they've seen money misused or there's been a lack of money. And I certainly grew up, I grew up in a family where my dad was on welfare and my mom kind of worked a little bit part time. We certainly did not have a lot of money and I had to spend a lot of time changing my mindset around money. So one of the first places I would start as a creative especially if you've got hangups about money, about charging a lot of money for what you do is work on some mindset things. So for me, I'll give you a little bit of my background because I think that will be relevant to a lot of the audience. You know, whenever my parents used to talk about money or rich people or whatever, it would almost always be accompanied with the word greedy or shady or cheating or whatever. And so I used to think, you know, rich people were like, kind of like the only exposure I had to rich people was like cartoons of Scrooge McDuck diving into a vault of gold coins. And I thought, you know, rich people were these greedy people who were shady and cheating and all of this sort of stuff. And then when I started my first business, I started to get exposed to wealthy people because people would hire me for the IT services, you know, I had, um, a client who would fly me to his chalet to set up Wi Fi or whatever. And, you know, what I had been taught about wealthy people, just, was not what I was seeing in real life. In real life I saw them to be very generous, I mean not all of them like any cross section of people but by and large I saw they were generous, they were kind they were open with how they got their success and you know I started to experience a little bit of cognitive dissonance and I remember My first book that I read about money was Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And I was reading that in secret because I didn't want my family to think, um, try to become this greedy, rich person. So I kind of was reading it in secret and it really opened my eyes up to what the leverage points are and to my mindset around money now. It's not a perfect book. There's a lot of stuff in that book that either doesn't make sense or whatever, but it, it really opened my eyes up to money and understanding the value of being either in the entrepreneur quadrant or being in the employee quadrant, the self employed, the investor quadrant. So that was kind of my start in trying to really understand money. And so here's the conclusion that I came to. So money is a tool, like any tool, it can be used for good purposes and for bad purposes. I can use a knife to harm someone, even kill someone or cook them a beautiful meal and be very hospitable. Right? So like any tool, it's something that can be used for good or can be used for bad. And what I found is that a lot of people with high integrity have seen it maybe, maybe in childhood or whatever, but have seen it used for bad purposes, maybe being abused with it or have lack of it or whatever. So we really need to change some mindset around money. So that's really where I would start. 

Chris Do: I like that you're talking about changing the inner frame about your relationship with money. I often will say something like creative people have an unhealthy relationship with money. And if you feel negative about it. And there's a good chance that you're going to self sabotage on a conscious and an unconscious level when you, when you look at how to make it, how much your time is worth and the value in which you generate in the world. And so when we can't get over that part, we're going to be stuck in this kind of cycle of like barely having enough to kind of stay alive. 

Allan Dib: Here's what I've learned is that I want to kind of double click on that point is that behavior is contagious. You know how we've been told that you're the average of the five people you spend most time with or whatever, right? That's absolutely true. Why? Because their behavior is contagious. If you hang around with people who are overweight or negative or people who are lean and strong and positive, or people who are creative, that's going to rub off on you. Behavior is contagious. So how does that affect you when it comes to money? So if you've got hangups about money, if you're like, man, who would pay 20,000 dollars for a logo, who would pay 50,000 dollars for a website? That's going to be contagious when you're on that sales call, that's going to transfer to the other person. And then they're going to be thinking, why would I pay 50,000 dollars for a website? That's insane. So behavior is contagious. And so you need to get past that mindset block because that's going to transfer on a sales call. So if you're confident, if you believe in yourself, if you think that you've got a lot of value to give, you will transfer that conviction on a sales call or to a buyer. So that's why some of that mindset is so important because it's just so contagious. And it even goes further to some of the things that you consume. If you consume the news and negativity all the time and listen to negative people and all of that sort of thing. That's basically other people's behavior transferring through to you as well. 

Chris Do: Okay. Really quick question, because I do want to get into principles in the book. Do you have siblings? 

Allan Dib: I do. I have a sister. 

Chris Do: Okay. You and your sister raised by parents who are refugees or immigrants and have a certain mindset about money. Somehow you're able to break from that orbit or that belief system. What about your sister? 

Allan Dib: No, she hasn't. She hasn't. If you saw my, my sister and me, we are like night and day. I love her to death and you know, I don't have children, but she's had a couple of nephews and so they're essentially like, like my children. So I see her very often, but our mindsets are worlds apart. And I, I really believe it is because of what I've allowed myself to be exposed to. It's the information that I take in. It's who I hang around with. It may sound very cold I don't hang around with people who are unlucky. I don't hang around with people who are negative because this stuff is contagious, like anything that this is a contagion. Like, it's funny, like when someone tells me, you know, just everything bad always happens to me and it really is true. Like that just does happen and it's contagious and it starts happening to their friends and it starts happening to their circle. And so I've been very, very careful about what I take in because the things that we consume are all upstream from our ideas, our creativity and everything like that. So all of your future things that you create, all of your future, like all of the books that I write downstream from the things that I consume, I think Seth Godin said, books come from books. So the books I read today are going to be the books I, I write in five years, ten years, twenty years time. So I'm very, very careful about what I consume, what I let take in. And I have that kind of reassessment in my life with who should I spend more time with? Who should I spend less time with? Who should I spend about the same time with? So that's something that I've got to reassess. And that's had a massive impact on my mindset. 

Chris Do: You know, I'm looking for some marketing help here. I really am. So I want to learn some new things from you. I, and I feel like in preparation for our show today, I went back to kind of look at my notes from the original book or the book that I read, The One Page Marketing Plan. And I'm like, I need to reread this a couple more times. I've read it two or three times, but my need is different today. Let's just set the stage. It's 2024, so this will date us as this episode. And in the United States, we're heading into an uncertain time, and there's a presidential election. Neither candidate are great for different reasons. I don't want to get into the politics. Inflation is relatively high, despite all the headlines saying like the stock market is doing really well regular folk don't feel that, and there's a lot of uncertainty. I just got a text message from one of my friends who's been in advertising for decades. And he just said, we were just cut, just got laid off today. And so there's some funkiness in the air. And so now more than ever, I think understanding the principles of marketing, doing less, but achieving more or using less, but in achieving more and building some of that, the goodwill that you talked about is so important right now, especially as we're preparing for whatever may come into kind of bounce out of this. So please distill some of your wisdom. 

Allan Dib: So we are heading into a time where there's going to be enormous change and with times that there have been enormous change, this is the most exciting. Like a lot of people feel like change coming along is scary and it is kind of scary, but these are the times when fortunes are made. These are the times when you've got the most opportunity when there's going to be pivots in industries. So we can talk about AI a little bit because that's going to impact creatives a lot. And so to me. This is such an exciting time. Do not believe the doomsayers. Do not believe the people who are telling you that that's it, creative services are over, you know, people are just going to use Chat GPT to write things that people are just going to use all of these tools. Do not believe that we are going to enter some of the most prosperous times in the history of the world. Like there's never been a time when a single person can create a multimillion dollar revenue business. Right. And it's because of some of these tools that are coming up. So in the book, I talk about three things that are real leverage points. So you talked about getting more by doing less. So to get more by doing less, that implies we need to do leverage. We need to use leverage. So leverage means that we put one unit of input. And we get multiple units of output. And that can be a unit of time, money, energy, whatever it is. So we put one unit in and we get more units out. So for example, if I wanted to break down a brick wall, I could try with my bare hands and maybe I could probably do it, but I'd probably have bleeding hands. It'd take a long time. It'd be very, very difficult. But if I used a leverage tool like a sledgehammer. Which amplifies the force of my inputs. I could do that easily in a few minutes. We are being armed with tools that allow us to do that. They allow us to be the conductor of the orchestra rather than somebody who is playing each individual instrument. So there is going to be a compression of people who are in the mediocre middle. Who? Yes, they're going to lose their jobs. They're going to have a hard time in business. They're going to be the ones who are massively affected. So they're the people who are just churning out mediocre copy, mediocre content, mediocre services. Absolutely. They are going to be crushed. The people who are at the top are going to be paid more and more than ever. In the last few decades the world has belonged to the lawyers, the doctors, the engineers, the people in kind of hard sciences or whatever. A lot of that is going to be very heavily affected by AI and what's coming along. And I believe the next few decades are going to be really ruled by the creatives. The people who are videographers, who are ideas people, who are design people, who are thinking, because that's going to be the main differentiator. That's going to be the thing that the creative person who comes up with an idea, who comes up with a way to present yourself, to brand yourself, to improve yourself, they are going to be the ones who rule your time is coming creatives, right? I wouldn't necessarily put myself in the class of, hey, I'm a creative because from a design perspective or whatever, I'm still pretty clunky. I definitely don't dress as hip as you, but I appreciate good design, but your time is coming. There has never ever in the history of the world, been a better opportunity for guys like you. So that's, that's the mindset I would be approaching this with. The Futur: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. 

Chris Do: Enjoying the conversation you're listening to right now? You're going to love what we have for you inside the Futur Pro Membership from live group calls with myself and vetted guest experts to over 600 hours of pro exclusive trainings and monthly networking, you'll have everything you need to fast track your growth. Check it out at futur.com/pro. 

The Futur: And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation. 

Chris Do: You said there were three things. So I heard leverage. 

Allan Dib: Yes. 

Chris Do: Is creativity one of those things or no? 

Allan Dib: So there are three major leverage points when it comes to marketing. There are tools, there are assets, and there are processes. So we talked a little bit about tools. So tools give you massive leverage. So like I gave the example, if you want to break down a brick wall, a sledgehammer is going to give you a massive leverage. Similarly with marketing tools are going to give you massive leverage, a good CRM system, AI tools that are, that are coming up, content management system, all of that. Now tools are a double edged sword because you can get faked out by tools. You know, some people think, you know, if I had Michelangelo's brush and I'd be able to paint the, the Sistine Chapel, right, which is not true. So the first leverage point is tools. The next leverage point is assets. And I love rich dad's definition of an asset. An asset is something that puts money in your pocket. Very, very similar. And a liability conversely is something that takes money out of your pocket. So that was something that I learned from Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Now, when we look at people who are wealthy, they derive most of their income from assets, not from labor. There's nothing wrong with earning from labor, but labor is not salable. It's not scale- you're like, you can't sell your job. Labor is not scalable. And when you stop the income stops, right? Whereas rich people derive most of their income from assets. Meaning if you own stocks, you can drive dividends. If you own property, you can derive rental income. The exact same thing is true from a marketing perspective. If you have marketing assets in the marketplace, then you can derive lead flow, you can do arrive revenue. You have new clients coming to you, have new opportunities to you. So what's a marketing asset? For example, for my business, my books are marketing assets, right? So the reason that you and I are speaking today is because of an asset I've got in the marketplace. Every single day I get inbound opportunities saying, can you come speak at our event? Can you be on my podcast? Can I join your program? Can you tell me about this, that, or the other, can you invest in my business, all of those sorts of things? So this happens because of assets I've got in the marketplace. So assets do for your marketing, the same thing that assets do for your finances. If you, they generate new income, new revenue. The third leverage point is processes. I often say that marketing is a process, not an event. So a lot of people treat marketing like an event. Hey, we're going to do the new website launch. We're going to do the rebrand. We're going to do the funnel that's going to solve all of our problems, right? Whereas marketing is a process. It's the boring stuff you do daily, weekly, monthly. It's the compound interest that you earn. So to use another finance example, you know, so you know, you can earn compound interest on your investments. And often the compound interest is the thing that makes you the most money. It's just being in the market for enough period of time and to reap that compound interest. So from a marketing perspective, it's the boring stuff you do. It's kind of like almost nothing I teach you is going to be something that you're like, whoa, I had never thought about that before. It's going to be like the common stuff. But you know what? Common stuff is not very common practice I've found. So a lot of what what I do is help people make common sense, common practice. So let's send an email newsletter out twice a week. Is that mind blowing? Something that you've never, ever heard before? Something that the compound interest of that is unbelievable. I was on a podcast interview just an hour ago with with another fellow and he said I've been on your mailing list for five years and I just bought your program and it's just an amazing program. I've had this such and such success so on and so forth, but like If five years ago I had said tire kicker is not ready to buy, that'd be such a missed opportunity. And every single day I have people who buy one of our programs, who were on the list for a year, for two years, for 18 months, for 90 days, for whatever. And so their revenue and they're becoming customers is a result of me and my team doing the boring stuff, sending an email newsletter twice a week, the LinkedIn posts I'm trying to do daily now. So I'm getting into that. The daily, weekly, monthly boring stuff is how you, you're going to make outsized results from a process perspective. So they're the three major marketing leverage points, tools, assets, and processes. And I outline those in the new book in, in each section. 

Chris Do: I was just thinking of some kind of analog to what you were saying. Something that a lot of people I think can understand and relate to. I have a big old fireplace that I inherited with a house that we moved into. And I'm not the normal fire starter guy, but I know you need fuel, you need oxygen, you need a little space for the carbon, uh, or the smoke carbon dioxide to go to, and we don't think we'll just set the fire and just walk away. First of all, I could burn the house down, so we don't do that, but if you don't keep stoking the fire, rearranging the elements, and feeding it a log, then it'll eventually go out. And so I think, I'm in that trap, I'll just admit it. I think of like, okay, let's, let's run some marketing thing as an event, and then we don't do it anymore. And you're telling me that that's not the right mindset to look at this. It's something that's an ongoing thing, it's a process that you do and you maintain for days, months, weeks, years, whatever. 

Allan Dib: It is a process and, and it is exciting to do new projects. Like I am the worst example of this, right? And so I'll tell you what the solution is and what solution I've come to. So Gino Wickman in his book Traction, it's a well known book in, in our space, but he talks about people who are integrators and people who are visionaries. Now visionaries. tend to be more entrepreneurial people, big picture thinkers. We're excited by the new things and novelty. And that's absolutely where I fall into. I've got this list of potential new business ideas and projects, and I add to it almost daily and realistically in my whole lifetime, I'll never get to. 10 percent of, of it novelty is just in our DNA, the boring stuff, that's the stuff that the integrators are really good at. They're people who kind of show up every day and drive the bus. They show up every day, drive it again. They show up every day, get that done. And, you know, as a visionary, you need an integrator in your business. You need somebody because you're not going to get the stuff done. If it was left up to me in my business to get all of the stuff done that we do, there's no way it would get done because I'm going to get bored of it. I'm going to move on to the next cool project. I'm going to go do the next fun thing. I don't want to do the boring, you know, copy. I don't want to do the boring HubSpot thing or whatever, or the new integration, the new form or whatever. I will blow my brains out, right? There is no way I'm going to do that. So I need my integrators who love that stuff. Like my wife, she's definitely in the integrator category, you know, she doesn't work in my business anymore, but she worked in my first business and she's like, you know, I loved doing the bookkeeping, you know, reconciling the bank statement to that. You know, she's like, oh, that just gave me joy. 

Chris Do: Bless our wives. I just put it out there. 

Allan Dib: Absolutely. 

Chris Do: Everybody listen to this. Go give your wife a kiss and buy her some flowers or something. 

Allan Dib: Totally. And that gave her joy, right? But for her, coming up with a creative idea or a solution to a problem, that's super stressful. She gets stressed out by that. So she's in the integrated category. I'm in the visionary category. And so I need my integrators in the business getting the stuff done, getting the boring stuff done. So often what I've found is the solution is to staff your weaknesses. And double down on your strengths because you can make your weaknesses slightly less weak. If you put a lot of time, money, energy, like I used to try and fit square pegs in a round hole, meaning I don't coach personally anymore. My team coaches. But when I used to coach people, I'd be like, Chris, look, you got to get the newsletter done twice a week. Right. And you'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. Allan, I'll get it done or whatever. We'll get on a call next week. How did you go, Chris? Uh, got busy. I had this fire happen. I like, uh, whatever didn't get it done. Right. And I kept trying to fit that square pig in a round hole and that's never going to happen. So what I figured was that we've got to get the right person in the right seat, the right people driving the right processes in the business, your job as a visionary is to come up with the creative stuff with the ideas with the creative solutions to problems with the design, your integrators job is to drive the bus every day and make sure we come on, it leaves on time, arrives on time, everybody's safe, everybody's good, so you need that visionary and integrator roles in your business. 

Chris Do: I think it's like, one has to have one part of your head in the clouds, and one, your feet planted on the ground. Without that, it doesn't work. Right? So it's, it's kind of like an interesting thing, and, and I totally resonate with this whole thing about my wife. She's a creative person, but she will do all the boring stuff that I, I would just throw me off a bridge, I just can't do it. I can't, it just makes me a dull person, I feel like I'm a medication or something. 

Allan Dib: Really, what I would recommend is double down on your strengths because you will make your strengths exceptional versus trying to make your weaknesses slightly less weak. 

Chris Do: So here's the thing. How do I know it's my weakness as opposed to an avoidance? Okay, so like some, some people in the creative space, they don't want to learn sales. They don't want to know how to have a conversation with a client. Like, well, that's a weakness of mine. I don't want to do that. Well, usually I'm like, um, no, I think you're avoiding something that. And I often say no one can sell you better than you can sell you. 

Allan Dib: I agree. 

Chris Do: So what are your thoughts on that? How do we know the difference? 

Allan Dib: With sales, we've been fed a lot of crazy information, and we see this on Instagram all the time. So, sales has been made out to be this thing where you're this brash, cigar chomping person who's loud and pushy and all of that sort of stuff. You know, I think of people like, uh, and not to say anything bad about them, like, like Grant Cardone, Bradley, you know, they're the loud, brash person. Now, a lot of creatives tend to be introverts, myself included. And what I've found is that that brash approach absolutely works when it gels with your real genuine personality, when you're a loud, brash person that works so well because you're just getting across your personality and that works amazingly well. Now, what we've been led to believe is that that's the only way to sell. I'm an introvert, right? And if you heard me on a sales call, I don't do sales calls much anymore. But back in the day, when I used to, you would hear the client or the prospect doing 90 percent of the talking, I would do about 10 percent of the talking. And the talking that I did. Was tell me more about that. Okay. And, um, why is that important to you? And I think of it kind of like a diagnostic approach. So beware the doctor that gives you a prescription without having done an analysis or a diagnosis of you. If you walked into a doctor and he said, here you go, here's a prescription. You're like, hang on. I haven't even told you what's wrong. You'd be very suspicious. You'd be like, what's going on. And so that's what a lot of people are doing from a sales perspective. They're like, Chris. I got the best stuff. It's the best widget. It's the, uh, like my design service is awesome, blah, blah, blah. I've done this and this is my portfolio and this is why it's so good. And all of that sort of thing, people go into solution mode way too fast. Someone will, in my experience, someone will not buy from you until they feel heard. So sometimes what I say is you want to be Spice Girls, not Vanilla Ice. Right. So Vanilla Ice is look, if there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it. Right. So that's kind of the mode that a lot of solutions people go in, but we want to be Spice Girls. We want to be, look, tell me what you want, what you really, really want. Right. So, um, what we want to do is. I want to get to really understand what the pain point is, like, what is the issue? And I recognize that someone is not going to buy until they feel heard, until they feel understood, until they know that you've got something that's going to solve their problem. I'll give you an analogy in real life. And I don't know, maybe you've had this experience. You're a married man, right? So when your wife has had a really bad, hard day, and she comes and tells you about what a terrible day she's had, and you offer her a great solution to all her problems, you're like, I know what the solution to that is, or why didn't you say that to him, or go do this. How does that work out for you? Does that work? Well, no, your wife most likely wants to be heard. You're like, oh, babe, that sounds terrible. Like, tell me more about the, like, how did that make you feel like, you know, what else happened? And then, and then what happened after that? And so, and then she feels like, oh, wow, I've been heard, right? She doesn't want a solution. She wants to, or maybe she wants a solution, but after she's been heard. Prospects are very much the same thing. Your prospects want to be heard. So if you heard me on a sales call, it would be something like, all right, Chris, so tell me about your situation. What's what's going on? What prompted you to reach out? And they're like, oh, look, I need to generate more revenue. And you're like, okay, um, so how's revenue been going over the last few years? Well, we were doing really, really well, but the pandemic hurt us and then blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth. So I'm asking probing questions and I found that's a great approach for an introverted person, for someone to do probing questions because the prospect fields heard the prospect fields understood. We now figure out what's important to them because what you're selling. It's not what you're selling. Like if you're selling design or websites or whatever, people don't want a website. People want what a website, what they think a website is going to do for them or what a logo they, what they think it's going to do for them. It's a, it's a tool or a means to an end. What they really, really want is either I don't know, more revenue, more time, more status. They want to be differentiated from their peers or whatever it is. So we want to get to the root of what it is. So my recommendation is for someone to not change their personality in sales mode. Like you don't have to become that pushy brash person. Just be yourself. Just ask probing questions. If you are that pushy brash person, great, continue doing that, that that'll work well for you. But if you're not, just be that doctor who diagnosed, okay, tell me more about that. And does it hurt here? What about when I twist it this way and how did this start and when did it start? So really understanding the person well, and then you're going to have so much more success. And then the close is super easy. This is my best close for an introverted person. So where do you think we should go from here? So, you know, the person has felt heard they've helped you've reiterated what you've told them. You've confirmed that this is their pain point and then like, okay, Chris, so what do you feel, we should go from here? Like, look, tell me about your program or how do I join your program or whatever else? That's being the most effective clothes that I've ever used. You don't have to do anything crazy. You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with. It's like, where do you think we should go from here? Low, low pressure, because if I create pressure, if I push you, what's your natural inclination going to be? 

Chris Do: We either push back or you, you turn away. 

Allan Dib: Yeah, totally. 

Chris Do: You know what, I have to say, I've read a few books on sales and I've talked to quite a few salespeople myself. I don't think I've heard that said that way before, so I love that. Where do you think we should go from here? So after this long diagnostic process, making sure the person feels heard and seen, reflecting back on them what they've communicated to you, helping them think through the problem, you don't have to say anything. You just say, where do you think we should go from here? I love that. Now I'm just curious, have you ever used that with your wife? After she's told you about her hard day and you're like, babe, where do you think we should go from here? Have you ever used that? 

Allan Dib: All the time. She knows all my tricks now. She's like, are you, are you, are you messing with me? 

Chris Do: She's wagging her finger at you like, Allan, I know what you're doing. Stop that. Stop right now. Stop it. I have to share this personal story. I used to see a family therapist to help get guidance on how to raise our children. They're going through some difficult times at that point. And I would come home, uh, and I would use some of the things that I was taught on my wife or on my children. And my wife would just give me that quick, like, rubberneck, like, Did you just go see Joan? Because you're not talking like yourself right now. And I would raise my arms up like, babe, what do you want? I go to get instruction. I'm going to do what I was instructed to do, but she goes, but you need to do it your way. I'm like, no, as a good student, I need to do it the way I was taught first. Right? So I'm going to try this after my wife tells me maybe something bad has happened to her. I'm going to like, okay, tell me more. And how did that make you feel? I'm going to conclude with that. So word of warning, everybody. If you're a happily married person, use this with caution. We're just going to warn everybody right now. We don't want to be responsible for splitting up marriages. That would be horrible. 

Allan Dib: Don't listen to Chris. Use it with abandon. This will save your marriage. Ignore what Chris is saying. Use this. It will save your marriage. Trust me. 

Chris Do: Okay. Okay. I like it. You know why I love it so much though? Because it's non aggressive, it's non violent, it's not even suggestive. It's just like it puts all the control to the other person. What a beautiful way to close. 

Allan Dib: The other thing I want to, I want to say about, I don't want to hop on sales necessarily, but the other thing that I will say from a creative perspective when it comes to sales is, just flip personas, right? Do you know how hard it is to buy creative services? Like I'm someone who buys creative services. Like we rebranded our business in January and man, I was dreading it and I was not wrong. It was a painful process, right? I was done with WordPress. I thought, all right, I need a web flow. I started shopping for web flow, web developers. It is so hard to buy creative services. Like as a creative, you think, wow, if only they would buy or whatever they want to buy, I desperately wanted one of these web developers to differentiate themselves. I desperately wanted someone to say, look, I'll do it at double the price. At double the speed. And I would have taken that deal every single time. So, you know, we'd get on a call and what would happen? We would dance around price, you know, we would talk about nonsense and I know that they're not going to deliver on time. We're going to be having all sorts of back and forth and things like that. And, and I was right. And so what I did was as a buyer, I compressed my pain, right? I know that if I say I've got three months to complete this website, but it's going to take nine months. So instead I said, look, I've got a week to complete this. I ended up firing one web developer going with another one. And I said, look, I need this done in a week and I will pay you whatever it takes, but I need this done in a week. And it took three weeks. So pretty much I triple any, any time estimate I get from a creative person. And I'm usually about right. So I managed to compress my pain from nine months to about three weeks, but it is very difficult. And I'm an affluent buyer. I'm someone who will spend a lot of money on creative services. It is very, very difficult as a buyer to buy creative services. So a lot of what your biggest wins will be, we'll be figuring out how do you make that buyer's journey easier? So how do you make it clear what you're going to offer? Because that's another thing. Like I was interviewing these webflow developers and they all said about the same thing. We're really good. Here's our portfolio. Here, here's some of our you know, work that we've done and all of this sort of stuff. And it was incredibly difficult to differentiate. And as a buyer, I was almost begging them to just show me some differentiation, showing me how you're different from the other guy. And the price differentials were ridiculous. I mean, there were, there were people who were saying it's 5,000 dollars and there were people who were saying it's 50,000 dollars. And I'm like, I don't understand what is the difference between the 50,000 dollar one and the 5,000 dollar one? And so clarity from a buyer's point of view is what am I getting? How are you different? Show me what is the roadmap going to look like? So really a lot of your wins will come from doing the common stuff uncommonly well. So how, how fast can you deliver? How will your communication be? How will you communicate with me? Will you deliver on time? Will you deliver what you say you do? So all of this stuff has nothing to do with the creative process. So my advice to creatives is look, just develop some very basic business skills so you can talk to a business buyer to understand what return on investment means, understand how to present value, understand what they are really buying, who's buying it and why are they buying it? Have some real clarity about who your ideal buyer is. Be open about price. Why not publish your price on your website or even just a range? Like, you know, I understand a website can be really, really big or, or just could be just a one page website, right? So maybe have a range. Look, our range is from 10,000 dollars to 50,000 dollars. And here's what a 10,000 dollar website looks like. Here's what a 50,000 dollar website looks like. So clarity about your message, your value, your buyer, who this is for, is this for, who's, you know, my ideal customer, so I can figure out, am I ideal for you? So there's some of the things that I would think about as a creative in the sales process. The other thing that I found incredibly helpful is a roadmap. You know, whenever you're lost, a roadmap is a godsend. You know, think of like, um, you know, if you're on a hiking trail, you know, that little map that says you are here. Right. And you wanting to go there. So great. Now I've got clarity of where we are and where we're going to go. We use a roadmap now in our sales process. We show people, okay, what we're going to do, we're first going to start working on your messaging. Then we're going to get your tech stack right. Then we're going to fix up your processes and hire the right people to execute on your daily, weekly, monthly marketing things. Right. So we show people a roadmap. A roadmap is really, really useful in the sales process to show people what's actually going to happen, but it's also really useful when people kind of end up in that little trough where they realize, okay, this is not the magic bullet that was going to solve all of my problems, but you can show them, look, you are here. So you're part of the way journey. We're still got to go do this, that, and the other. So don't quit now because we're on our way. We're in the right place. So roadmap is a really, really helpful tool that you can use in both in the sales process and in the delivery process.

Chris Do: You said a bunch of things here and you, you sparked an idea in my mind, and there's no pressure for you to respond right now, but you said like you're starting to be more consistent on LinkedIn, growing your following there, building thought leadership there. If there's something that you'd like to do with me on a LinkedIn Live Audio Event, I would love to do a series called "Frustrations of Affluent Buyers of Creative Services". And we would just sit there and list all the problems so that my community of creatives could sit there and like, I'm committing seventeen sins that Allan just mentioned. I'd love to do that. 

Allan Dib: Let's do it. I would love to do that. I would love to do that. I'm in. Because I'm, I'm telling you the people listening, I am your ideal buyer. I don't buy on price. You know, if you came to me and you said I'll double the price and I'll double the speed, I'm in. That's a deal I will do every time. Affluent buyers value time very, very highly. Meaning you said you were going to come back to me tomorrow. Trust me, I am going to be looking for that. You said you, you would deliver on time did you, or didn't you? As you get more affluent, time is the thing that you optimize for most. Like if you said to me what do you do to optimize your time? You, you would freak out like you were, you know, I heard that people kind of in legal and financial spaces and things like that track their time in 15 minute increments. And I'm like, I make more money than a lawyer or someone in finance. Why am I not tracking my time in 15 minute increments? If you looked at my Google calendar right now, you'd freak out. Like you would see from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, I track all of my time. I know exactly how my time is allocated. How much time did I spend with my wife? How much time did I spend on lunch? How much time did I spend on podcasts? How much time did I spend writing? And Google has this little feature called insights. So I can choose any period of time. I can say, all right, for the month of March, show me how much time I spent writing. And it'll say, it'll spit it out. It'll say you spent 25 hours writing or whatever else. So as you get more affluent, time becomes a huge, huge factor. So a very simple way to differentiate yourself as a creative is to say, I'm going to deliver on time and I'm going to deliver in half the time that the other guys do. That's it. You don't need to change anything else about what you do. If you can do that, an affluent buyer, that will be like catnip to them.

Chris Do: There's a bunch of things that you're talking about here. I just want to highlight for our audience who are listening right now. And this is a callback to the one page marketing plan because somewhere in there, I remember you writing something like, struggling business owners spend time to save money. Successful business people spend money to save time. Allan Dib: Totally. 

Chris Do: Allan, you were a millionaire a long time ago. You're an affluent person. You're a successful, best selling author. What you've come to realize, which is pretty much all successful people, is time is your most valuable, non renewable, perishable resource. That's it. You'll do everything you can to save your time, to buy back your time. 

Allan Dib: Everything is about time. Money is a renewable resource. We can always get more money. We can never get more time. And you know, people just treat their time like it's unlimited. Hopefully you never ever in this situation, but imagine you had a week to live. How would you value that time? Like, you know, you're going to be healthy for the next week, but at the end of the week, that's it. It's over. You would be like very selective about your time. Well, guess what? You do have an end, right? And it just happens to be that this week may not be that end, but it's still a week, right? Whether it's at the, at the end of your life or right now, if you waste that week, that's a wasted week that you will never get back. And you could argue that that week is more valuable now while you're young and healthy and everything like that versus when, when you're old and frail or sick or whatever. So a piece of your time is a piece of your life. And really that's. Money is really measured in time. Really, what's money? Money is an IOU that represents the amount of time and value that you put into something, right? So, and we swap that IOU, we say, all right, Chris, you, you delivered 50,000 dollars worth of time and value. So, here you go, here's an IOU that represents that, and you can use that to buy 50,000 dollars worth of someone else's time and value. 

Chris Do: That's a great way to think about that. Well, being mindful of your time, And now I'm all nervous, like shoot, we're like, I think 15 minutes over. I'm like, Oh my God, Allan, you're going to send me an invoice for this conversation. Now, I want to be respectful of your time. I think I can talk to you for probably eight hours. I don't say that jokingly. I really could. There's so many different topics that we can get into. And I just want to say this. Is there anything else that you want to share with us from the book? And I promise I'll finish reading it as I've read the other book many times, that I'll have a more informed perspective, but without knowing all the ins and outs of the book, is there anything else you want to leave with us? 

Allan Dib: So the thing I want to leave with you is, and it's a frustration for many people, many, not just creative people, but people who are really good at what they do in any endeavor. The frustration is that if only people knew how good I was, so they want merit to be the thing that drives success. And merit driving success, it does happen. It's kind of like be so good that they can't ignore you. But often it just takes such a long time. It's so difficult. And sometimes it never happens at all. So what we want to do is we want to elevate that merit. We want to make that merit visible. And what we do from a marketing perspective is make your merit visible, make how you do what you do visible and get people to know about it. Right? So like as an author, one of the best things that can happen to you is for you to be a best selling author, not a best writing author. And I assure you, I am not a best writing author. I am a best selling author. So I have this one liner that I can leave people with. It's the best marketer wins every time. Unfortunately, it's not the best designer. It's not the best website developer. It's not the best IT technician. It's the best marketer wins every time. And in life, you don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate. Because if you got what you deserved, then firefighters, nurses, teachers would be the highest paid people in our society. I mean, the work that they do is just so deserving of reward, but what we find is that's not the case. So really the best marketer wins every time. So your job as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and that's really the way that you need to frame yourself, regardless of what you do technically is As a marketer of what you do. So I'm a marketer of website services. I'm a marketer of logo design. I'm a marketer of graphic design or whatever else. You may not like that, but that's the reality. And that's how you're going to win. And the good news is you don't have to do sleazy marketing, you don't have to do stuff that you're not proud of. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do sales in a way that's contrary to your introverted personality, if that's what you are, I'm successful beyond my wildest dreams. And I'm an introvert. I don't do hard sales. I don't do sleazy stuff that I'm not proud of. So you don't have to do that. So you can win by just being a really good marketer and providing a lot of value in advance. And I kind of go into this in the book in quite some detail, but the best marketers provide a lot of value up front. You're creating goodwill along the way. And goodwill is a word that is used both in marketing circles, but also in accounting circles and accounting circles, goodwill, like if you sell a business and it's the amount of money that you get over and above the tangibles of the business. So if you sold a million dollars worth of plant and equipment, a million dollars worth of inventory, but you got 10 million dollars for the business, your accountant would write 8 million dollars goodwill. So goodwill is something that you generate. With good marketing. So a lot of what we want to do in our marketing is generate goodwill and we want it to affect people positively, whether they buy from us or not. You know, the vast majority of people who read my book, see my content, hear my podcast, whatever will never buy from me, but I'm totally okay with that. And I love that people will get free value from me, but a small percentage of them will buy from me and that's enough to fund an incredible lifestyle for myself, for my team, for my family, for everyone. So really, what it comes down to is the best marketer wins every time, and you don't need to be worried about having to be sleazy, pushy, salesy, all of that sort of stuff. 

Chris Do: It sounds like you've, uh, joined the dark side here, Allan, or maybe you've, you've left the dark side, the Sith, and you've gone to the Jedi Knights. Previously, direct marketing. Direct response marketing. It's all about the ROI. Convert, convert, convert, and optimize. And now you're like, you know what? Just generate goodwill. Some people will buy, some people won't, and that's totally okay. 

Allan Dib: I've got my foot in both camps. I want to generate goodwill while generating an ROI. And that's exactly what Lean Marketing is about. It's, it's like, can we do it? You know, and we can. 

Chris Do: Now I need help on the direct response marketing part because I think I do things to generate goodwill as many creative people do. And we're stumbling with the other part. I'll get into that at some other point. I want to say something here which really reminds me of something my former business coach, Cameron McLaren, told me. And it was this big reframe. He says, we're all in the same business, kid. I'm like, what business is that, Kier? He's a little bit older. And he's like, you're in the marketing and customer service business. It just so happens you make commercials for a living. It just so happens that you design logos. Or you just so happen to compelling marketing copy for people. But we're all in the same business. Because without marketing, there is no business. And if you don't take care of the customers that you have, then you won't have a business for very long. It's a short term business. 

Allan Dib: That's exactly right. And the awesome service that you deliver is a customer retention tool. Before customer retention, we need to think about customer acquisition. How do we, no one will find out how good you are, how good your design services, how good your services are until they buy from you. Before they buy from you, they only know how good your marketing is. 

Chris Do: And if you were listening to this part and you felt triggered by the parts that Allan was talking about, like freaking creatives, you make it so difficult to buy from you. You're so bad at doing the business part of it. That is probably a reminder to go reread the chapter on forming or writing or crafting an irresistible offer. What value do you provide? What language do you need to use? The whys, the upsells, the payment plans, the guarantees, all that kind of stuff. Everybody could benefit from being a little bit clearer at differentiating what they do relative to the competitors, so people like Allan can give you money. It's like that meme, they'll hold a fistful of cash and says, take my money. That's what Allan wants to do, but you make it so difficult.

Allan Dib: I desperately want to give you money. I desperately want to give you money. Just give me a reason to do it, a way to differentiate you from everyone else. Like I really want to. 

Chris Do: Okay. I'm going to tip my hat off to you for the first person ever on our podcast or any piece of content I've ever done to bring the Spice Girls and Vanilla Ice together and make it relevant. I love you for that. That was awesome. Allan, I only have one question for you now, which is Where do you think we should go from here? 

Allan Dib: From here? I think we should, uh, maybe do this again one day. I would love to be with you on LinkedIn. If you're listening and you got any value out of this, I think you're going to love this book, Lean Marketing. So a little bit of a plug, but it's a, it's a selfish plug, but I think you're going to get a lot out of it. I think it's my best work yet. 

Chris Do: I love it. And I got a lot of value from One Page Mark, The One Page Marketing Plan. And I'm already loving the parts that I've read. So I'm, I can't wait to sink my teeth into this. Before we go, how can people get in touch with you? What are the resources that you want to just tell them? Like, where do they find you on the internet? What's the best platform to find you? And where else can they go? 

Allan Dib: Sure. My book are wherever books are sold. Lean Marketing. People love listening to my books. They're on Audible and I'm at leanmarketing.com. So there you can download the one page marketing plan canvas, which is a very, very easy tool to basically get clear around who your target market is, what your message is, what media you're going to use. So, um, jump on. And you'll hear from me regularly. So I'd love to hear back from, uh, from people. We didn't talk much about email marketing. We didn't talk much about some of the mechanics, but there are powerful ways that you can create email marketing as a two way street. So that's, that's a way that we really interact with a lot of our audience. 

Chris Do: Ooh. Okay. And you also mentioned like you run a program. What is the program and how much does it cost? 

Allan Dib: Yeah. So we run a, an accelerator program. So cost ranges from 7,000 dollars a year, right through to a hundred thousand dollars a year, depending on what level you're at, what revenue you're at, what complexity you're at. So, and what intensity you need. So you'll work intensely with, one of my coaches and it's basically a year program to take you from wherever you are right now to having a real marketing infrastructure, meaning implementing the tools, assets, and processes that we talked about, because yes, they're simple concepts, but like simple concepts, there's a lot of depth to it. You know, so we said, hey, sending an email twice a week is a simple concept, but okay, what do I write in the emails? How do I get people to convert? Do I reply? How do I set it all, all that up? So we go into details with that. We run copywriting clinics, we run tech clinics, so a lot of people get a lot of value out of that. So it's essentially helping you build your marketing muscle, if I was to put it simply. So the same as a personal trainer would help you build your actual muscle will help you build your marketing muscle. 

Chris Do: Love it. Love it. Love it. Outside of Melbourne, what city do you spend the most time traveling to? 

Allan Dib: I don't travel a lot, but, um 

Chris Do: You don't? 

Allan Dib: No, I don't. Uh, I, I, in fact, one of my resolutions this year, I don't believe in necessarily New Year's Resolutions, but, I was going to travel a lot less for obligation, a lot more for fun. So I'm planning to spend a few weeks. I've got an author's event coming up in August in Nashville. So I'll be in Nashville in August. I'm going to Singapore in April. And then I think I'm going to in between that spend some time in Europe, but probably, um, I would say if anywhere, California would probably be the most time that I spend outside of Australia, because a lot of my team is there. My, the CEO who runs my business is there. And, um, I had a good time in Tahoe for a few weeks recently. 

Chris Do: Well, open invitation. If you're ever in the greater Los Angeles area, I'm based out of Pasadena. If you want to get together, I'd be happy to go meet up with you somewhere. I asked this question because we kind of have an international audience and just crazy fanatical about the guests that we have on our show. So here's what I'm going to do. We know Allan's big in Mexico. So if you spot him somewhere in California, Nashville or Singapore, I want you to flag him down and say, Allan, Allan, can we take a selfie? Let's make him world famous, everybody. Just don't harass him. Be mindful or respectful of his, his personal space, but come up to him. Come up to him, come up to that introvert nerd and say hello to him, will you? Do that for me, please, everybody. Allan, it's been a delight. It's been a delight. My goodness. I want to show the books one more time. The book that I read and I love and I recommend to everybody is the One Page Marketing Plan. I got the soft cover version. I don't know if there's hardcover version, but this one is hardcover. I just like hardcover books much better. It's lean marketing. I've been talking to Allan Dib. And I just want to make one quick reference to everybody. If you heard me or someone else referenced this thing about the circus and the difference between publicity, promotion, public relations and sales and marketing, it's a great story. The way that you break it down. It's, it's just a wonderful way to understand what marketing is. It's this giant umbrella of many different things. Allan, it's a real pleasure. Thank you very much for being on the show. Allan Dib: Great. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure speaking. My name is Allan Dib and you're listening to The Futur. 

The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Futre Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts. It will help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com and you'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and the creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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