Episode 369: Lean Marketing with Allan Dib

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, founder and CEO of Blueprint OS and the host of the Above the Business podcast. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest, Mr. Allan Dib. He's a serial entrepreneur, the founder of Lean Marketing, and the bestselling author of The One Page Marketing Plan. He came on the podcast, uh, just a couple years ago, and I encourage you— we're going to link below the episode that we did with him, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode first so you can get the context of the One Page Marketing Plan, and then come back and listen to this episode as we talk about his new book that was just released, Lean Marketing. Without further ado, let's get into it. Allan Dib, welcome back to the Above the Business podcast.

Hey Bradley, happy to be on.

Well, we will save the— we usually do the background and origin story, but since you've come on, uh, previous time, we'll link below. We encourage people to go back and listen to the podcast that I did with you, which was really around your first book, The One Page Marketing Plan, a book that has, has really been a catalyst for me about learning marketing. And so we'll link people back to that one. I encourage people to go back and listen to that, to that episode. But your recent— your new book just came out about a month ago, has done incredibly well. Lean Marketing. Tell us about where the genesis of this book come from? When did you start working on it, etc.? What was kind of in you that you felt like you needed to get out here?

Yeah, so the, the origin of it is probably in 2019. I was speaking at a conference, it was in Mexico, it was a bunch of automotive, it was an automotive industry conference, and I had the Spanish version of my book. The One Page Marketing Plan had just come out and everybody at the conference had a copy. And, uh, when the one fellow came up to me and he said, you know what, I you really consider your book to be lean marketing? And that's the first time I'd heard that phrase. And, you know, I kept hearing at that conference lean, lean this, lean that, Lean Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, lean, uh, systems, and all of that sort of thing. And, you know, I really didn't know much about it. I'd heard the phrase once or twice before, but I never really knew much about it. But, uh, I kind of went down that rabbit hole, and I saw what a massive impact lean methodology had had in various industries, particularly manufacturing. And this was an automotive manufacturing conference, so there were many people there who were either interested or doing or converting to, to Lean methodology in their manufacturing. So that got me really interested. And a lot of what I saw that was applied to manufacturing, I thought, wow, imagine we had this in the marketing space, you know, because Lean is all about doing more with less, less equipment, less time, less effort, and most importantly, less waste. So, and when I look at what's happening in the marketing space, uh, and this is the timing of this book, is no accident. When I have a look, everything and everyone, you go on a podcast, you read a book, whatever they're telling you to do, more, more, more. And, um, you know, I think, uh, I think that's a message that's gotten a little bit old, and I think that's not as effective as it used to be. You know, marketing sales used to be a numbers game. You called 100 people, or you bothered 100 people, or interrupted 100 people, and maybe you hope that one, or, or, you know, a fraction of one would respond, and then you'd, you'd burn goodwill with the other 99. And I think that's something that doesn't really work as well as it once did. It's very wasteful, it's very time intensive, it's very Uh, it takes a lot of resources, and so I think there's a better way. And so when I looked into lean methodology, I thought, wow, a lot of this can really be applied to marketing and make marketing a lot more efficient, a lot more effective, and you end up doing a lot less marketing. And, and when I looked at some of the most best and most sophisticated marketers in the world, their marketing is lean. They don't do a lot, a thousand different things. They do a few things really, really well, but they're things that really move the needle. And so that's really what I wanted to capture and crystallize in lean marketing.

You know, there is a— I shared this on the last episode, but it was really about, I don't know, 6 years ago that I even really began to lean into, and I didn't really mean that to be a pun, but lean into understanding marketing. I really felt like I had a deeper understanding of sales. I did not at all regarding Marketing, and truly I mentioned it on that podcast too, but your book, your first book, One Page Marketing Plan, was a big, was a big asset to me in beginning to kind of put together and actually what a marketing plan should look like.

Yeah.

Do you think that it— for me, when I go back and I think through my first years in business, I really looked at marketing as like, to your point, spaghetti on a wall. I just did a bunch of things. I didn't do anything with any intent. I didn't measure. I just was like, oh, that's a good idea, somebody else is doing it, I'll do that too. And it was— I, I no idea what I was doing. It was just all over the place.

That's, that's so common. And, you know, uh, I call it random acts of marketing. People, oh, let's do SEO today, tomorrow let's do some pay-per-click, uh, then the next TikTok or the whatever social media thing. And, and by the way, none of those things are bad, uh, they're all good things to do, but we want to be intentional. We want to figure out really the, the core essentials before we start building out these things. So it's kind of— I liken it to if we're building a house one of the first things that we want to do is sit down with the architect, put together the blueprint. Where's the lounge room going to go? Which way is the house going to be oriented? Where's the swimming pool going to be? All of that sort of, sort of stuff before we start building. Like, if we just start randomly building, we're just going to end up with a big mess. And similarly, most people do that with their marketing. So marketing, to get it right, it's, it's going to take some complexity. And if you're doing anything of any kind of reasonable complexity, you want to have a plan. You know, if you're flying a plane, you need a flight plan. If you, uh, want to get fit, you need a fitness plan. If you're getting treated medically, you need a medical treatment plan. So anything that— where the stakes are high, where you need the outcome to really work well, you want to make sure that you have some sort of plan.

I want to dive into the elements of the book itself and the things that I've been able to read and take away, but how does your first book and this book work together?

Yeah, I really see them very highly complementary. So I made them to be standalone so that you can read one book or the other book and you still get a lot of value. But together, I feel like they're one plus one equals three. So the first book is very much about strategy, getting really super clear about your marketing strategy, getting your plan together in a really simple and easy to understand way. So the value of a plan is you've now got clarity, but more importantly than that, it being a one-page marketing plan, it's very easy to share, it's very easy to update. So for example, you're working with your web developer or your pay-per-click person or whatever, you can share your marketing plan that— and you're going to become their favorite client because almost no one will come to them with clarity around who their target market is, with clarity around their message, clarity around their media and nurturing strategy. And that's going to make your relationship both with your team and any external vendors that you use with your marketing so much more productive because now you're all going to be on the same page. Literally, um, and you're all going to be working, working from the, from the same plan and be very, very clear about your target market, your messaging, all of that sort of stuff. So the One Page Marketing Plan will really get you there. It'll get you clarity. You'll have a good idea about your strategy, where you want to go. Lean marketing is all about implementing that plan. So how do we implement that plan with maximum leverage? So, and the whole promise behind lean marketing is that you're going to be able to do less marketing but get bigger results. And so that implies leverage. So I talk about 3 major leverage points in the book, and we can, we can kind of go into them in a moment. But really, that's, that's, uh, really the core of lean marketing is how do we take that plan, implement it with high leverage, and get really, really good results by actually doing less stuff.

You know, some language that I would love for you to share with me, kind of how you see it, because I think Sometimes words get used interchangeably and that's okay. And then words get used and it's— it gets confusing. So I'll give you one. I've been hearing recently people tout, you know, if you're less than $1 million in top line revenue, you need to have one marketing channel. And then when you get to $1 million, you can add on other channels. I'm not necessarily— you can certainly give me your opinion if you agree with that, per se. But what do you— what do people even mean by marketing channels?

Yeah, I think traditionally what people mean by marketing channels is, for example, like if your Facebook ads are working really well, that's, that might be considered a channel. Or if you've got YouTube going really well, that, that'd be another channel. Or if you, you got cold email going, that, that would be another channel. I think most businesses will find, as you mentioned, under a million, you will have probably one dominant channel that's working really, really well. And absolutely, I recommend that you really double down on that, make that work really, really well. But one is a dangerous number in business, not just in marketing, but in business, you know. So one key person in your business who's got all the knowledge, or, you know, one marketing channel that's working for you and you've got nothing else, or one key salesperson who makes all the sales. So that's a dangerous number in business. We need some redundancy. And, you know, as a lot of people found out, having only one channel, when the rules change or the rug gets pulled under you, massive, massive problems. So a lot of people have felt that with Google, with Facebook, with whatever. There's some change in rules and you have no control over that. You know, someone at, you know, one of these major content networks decides they don't like your type of content or whatever, and you either get, um, your account banned or shadow banned or deprioritized or whatever. So while most businesses will have one dominant channel, you do want to start building up other channels that, that work for you. So there is definitely, when you're under a million, you are pretty under-resourced. So splitting your focus multiple ways. So I wouldn't go for 10 different channels, but I would aim for at least maybe 2 or 3. And yes, absolutely double down on whatever's working, but let's, let's put some resource into channels that will bring future revenue, future traffic, future leads. That's my view.

I love that. I think I can totally personally get behind that because to your point, if that one is working, yes, there's a, there's elements of simplicity in that. Yes. But then what happens if it stops working? You don't have any other backup plans and it could just shut. So I really like that. The way you laid out the book, I really like this— some language again, uh, foundations, and then you use in the next sections force multipliers. And I, I have been using— I found myself the last just 3 months using the word forcing function, uh, quite a bit. And so I really like the, the, the term force multiplier. Why don't you go through the kind of the, the structure of the book and what do you mean by force multipliers?

Yeah, so So Foundations is the reason I put the Foundations section in the book is because the other stuff won't work very well unless you've got your foundations right. It's kind of like going back to that blueprint analogy. You know, if we just start building a house without a blueprint, we're just kind of winging it. We're like, I think, I think let's put the lounge room there and I think let's dig over there for, for, you know, and we're not, we're not following any kind of plan. We don't have any structure. Then no matter how good a builder you are, it's just not going to work. So similarly, a lot of what we're doing in marketing is amplifying. We're amplifying a message to a particular target market. We're communicating a value proposition. Now, the problem with amplification is if your message is really bad, we're just amplifying a bad message. It's like if you're a bad singer and we give you a great microphone and a great amplifier, Well, now you're just a loud bad singer, right? Which makes things worse, not better, right? So similarly, a lot of people, they get excited about marketing. They're like, great, let's crank up our ads, let's crank up our spend, let's do lots of campaigns. And then when we look at what they've got, we're like, this is not a message that is worth amplifying. This is not a message that people are really connecting with already. So a lot of what we cover in Foundations is What are you really selling? Who are you really selling to? So some of the basic stuff that you really need to have— I use the terminology product-market fit, which is common in the tech industry, but even outside of the tech industry, it's like we've got a fit between our product and our market, and people actually want what we've got. Now, if we've got that foundation in place, great. Now's the time to amplify and look at the other 4 small multipliers. So the 3 force multipliers that I talk in the book— talk about in the book— and they're split up in the 3 major sections of the book. The first one is tools. So tools help us do more with less. They really help amplify our force, our efforts. So if you think about a, you know, literal tool— let's say I want to break down a brick wall— well, I might be able to break it down with my bare hands, but it's going to take a long time, it's going to be very painful, it's going to be very hard to do. Uh, with a sledgehammer, I could do that in a few minutes, right? So the right tools can really help us multiply our inputs, the force of our inputs. So similarly, in marketing, uh, there are many tools that can help us do stuff in a fraction of the time and get massive, a lot more impact. So a core tool for almost every business will be a CRM system. Now we've got powerful AI tools that help you do a lot more with a lot less. So there are tools that'll help us get a lot more impact than we're putting in in. The second force multiplier I talk about is assets. Assets is what really separates the, the rich from the poor. What you'll find if you study wealth, most wealthy people earn not from labor, but they earn from assets. So the income that their assets generate. For example, if you own a property, if you own real estate, you can earn dividend, you can earn rental income. If you own stocks, you can earn dividend income, and so on. So there's Nothing wrong with earning from labor. Everybody starts somewhere. The only problem is labor is not scalable. It's not saleable and it's not easy. It stops when you stop, basically. So if you don't have marketing assets, so exactly the same applies to marketing assets. So if you own marketing assets, you can generate new lead flow, new revenue, new opportunities. The same as owning financial assets. In the absence of marketing assets, you're going to have to compensate with labor, things like cold calling, outreach, spending a lot of money on ads to cold audiences and things like that. And that does work, but like I said, it's, it's very labor-intensive. It costs a lot and your return may not be as good as if you had powerful assets. So for example, I'm on, on this podcast now for a second time because of marketing assets I've got out there in the form of my books, right? And every single day because of my marketing assets, I get either invited to speak at a conference or someone wants to join one of our programs or you know, countless opportunities come my way because of marketing assets that I've got out there. Now, if I hadn't had that, I'd have to replace that with manual labor, with outreach, with cold calling, with cold emailing, with all of that sort of stuff. And like I said, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a good part of a marketing infrastructure. But if you're completely reliant on that, then it's not scalable, it's not saleable, and it stops when you stop. So that's a problem there. So that's the second force multiplier, that's assets. And finally, there's processes. Processes are the things that you do daily, weekly, monthly. And I think of it like, to use another financial analogy, like compound interest. You know, in the beginning when you're, when you're earning compound interest, it feels like almost nothing, like nothing's happening, but the curve just goes up steeply over time. And so similarly, the daily, weekly, monthly stuff that you do in your marketing that compounds over time. The problem is a lot of entrepreneurs are not the right person to do their marketing daily, weekly, monthly, because as entrepreneurs we tend to be very easily distracted. We've got a lot of things going on. Marketing is one of 10 hats we're wearing. We also get bored very easily. So, so if it was up to me to get all the marketing processes done in my business, it just wouldn't get done. And that's the case for most entrepreneurs. So, uh, you've generally got to staff appropriately, at least have a marketing coordinator who— somebody who wakes up in the morning and thinks, all right, what are we going to do from a marketing perspective today? Uh, who are we going to reach out to? What, what are we gonna— what are we gonna do? So most businesses, if you talk to the business owner, you would agree that sending out the email newsletter twice a week is a good idea, but very, very few businesses actually end up doing it. So, uh, so Putting in those marketing processes that are going to compound over time, that's a massive leverage point as well. So they're the 3 major force multipliers I talk about in the, in the book, which is tools, assets, and processes.

You know, I've heard, um, a few years ago that income follows assets. I've loved that moniker, that maxim, um, and I never thought about digital assets in the business, whether it's a recruiting system template that we use every time about, uh, that becomes an asset in the business. Clearly your books have become incredible assets that's, you know, for your company. And I love the idea of compounding interest as the analogy within processes because they do compound upon one another. You know, in the US, we're in an interesting year. We're in an election year. And there's— we're also at a place where we can't really see around the corner. So we don't really know. And it feels like we've been in that uncertainty for a period of time. What do you— how do you feel about where marketing is going maybe over the next couple years? Not leaning out super far because I think that's impossible, nobody has a crystal ball, but where do you see marketing, um, changing, uh, maybe even what's staying the same the next 12 to 24 months?

Yeah, so I, I write in the book that the stuff in the book is mostly stuff that's going to stay the same. So we know that it's going to be a good idea to get your product market fit right. That's always going to stay the same. We know it's going to be a good idea to use tools that really help you get leverage. We know it's a good idea to build marketing assets. That's gonna, that's gonna be something that, that becomes more important rather than less important. Um, we know that processes are going to be key to your success. So the vast majority of stuff I cover in the book is stuff that's going to stay the same for the next year, for the next 10 years, for the next 100 years. Now what is going to change is obviously the role of tech, what's happening in technology, what's happening with AI, all of those sorts of things. And none of those things, in my opinion, are things to fear. Mostly they're going to make us more productive. It's kind of like combine harvesters, you know, they made farming so much more productive. You used to need You needed tons of people to farm a farm. Now you only need a handful of people because you've got these machines that do a lot of the heavy lifting, do a lot of the labor that made food a lot cheaper, allowed it to be distributed much further and to more people. So similarly, I see these tools are going to make us a lot more productive. So we're going to see companies that are doing millions and millions of dollars in revenue, maybe even we might get to a billion-dollar company that's really run by maybe one or two people. We're gonna see a lot of gains in productivity. I think that's still a little bit further ahead, but I think all of these technical factors that people have relied on, so, you know, gaming the system with SEO tricks, with pay-per-click marketing and all of that, we've already seen that they're declining in their effectiveness because the AI systems, the content networks, all of those systems are getting better at detecting that. They're kind of discounting all of that. So it used to be the case that, you know, if we exchanged backlinks, that would help both of us or whatever. Now the systems are smart enough to know, all right, you backlink to him and he backlinked to you, so we're just going to cancel those out. And so obviously it gets a lot more sophisticated with social media and all of that sort of stuff. So the stuff that's really going to matter is the content. The stuff that's really going to matter is the value that you deliver. So the technical trickery, that's, that's going to decline in value and decline in its effectiveness. And the core value proposition that you provide and your brand, your, both your personal brand and your business brand, that's going to increase in importance. So you used to be able to do these arbitrage and, uh, you know, pay a dollar for a click and then make a dollar fifty on the back end and these scammy kind of funnels and things like that. I think that's going to massively decline in effectiveness, and we've already seen a decline in effectiveness. And you know, real value, real goodwill, real brand equity is going to be so much more important.

I'm going to attempt to ask this question the best way that I can. It seems like not, not, not because of just political, the political landscape at all. There's, there is so much content that there's a trust the aspect of trust has gone down. And so people are a little weary, more so to say, I don't know about, I don't know about Alan. I haven't checked Alan out. I'm going to have to look Alan up. I'm going to see, read his book. I might do this before I decide to join one of Alan's programs, etc. And it seems like that that's increasing. And to your point, it's making people and businesses who do marketing have to be really good at what they do, have to be much more clear about what they do, and have to be willing to see that people are not 0 to 100. They're like, they're on a spectrum. Don't you agree?

I fully agree. So there's a— I talk about this in the book where there are some people who are slightly aware, more aware, very, very aware, and they're in different stages of the buying cycle. So someone who's very aware, is kind of, uh, really hot to buy. They're basically looking for a deal, ready. They know what they want, they know the value. Then there's people who are unaware, who really have no idea about the value you bring and no idea why they would ever want it or buy it. So there are different strategies for different levels of awareness. And as you say, you can think of it as a spectrum from 1 to 100 or, or 1 to 10 or whatever scale you want to use. But there are different strategies for different levels of awareness as well. So where someone doesn't even know who you are, doesn't know you exist, versus someone who loves what you do, sees the value, is ready to buy, and they just kind of need a little bit of a push or a deal or whatever. So, um, there are, there are different strategies for depending on where someone is in the, in the funnel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I think that that's where I just, uh, a few years ago was introduced to the top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel of, of where they kind of are and knowing kind of what do. Yeah, that makes sense. What was this process like writing this book compared to your first book for you?

Um, I mean, both, both books I found really hard. I mean, uh, writing a book, no sensible person would do it, is my opinion. But, um, but, uh, yeah, look, I, I did, I did enjoy it, but it was 2 years of pretty grueling work. So I, I spent a lot of time, uh, you know, getting this right because for me it's a 10-year project. A book is not something I do in launch week and then I move on to the next project. It's really something that I want to stand the test of time. I put a lot of thought into it. I put a lot of time, a lot of money into it. I want this to be something that has a lasting impact. So the One Page Marketing Plan, where we've sold almost a million copies, so, and impacted so many entrepreneurs, literally every single day. Uh, I get emails from people who've read that say that it's changed their perspective on marketing or business. And so I really wanted to carry on that legacy with the, with the new book and help people implement marketing in a big way.

Yeah. Um, well, as I mentioned a couple times already, your first book, uh, did, and this was great. I was really excited to be able to have you to come on the podcast to be able to talk about, uh, this one. I want to go back to this one key question though, because I think this is I think this is key and I don't think it's, it's worth kind of skipping over this whole less is more. And this idea, I've got a very specific example that we were working on, no joke, the last 24 hours as a team. And it leads to on our website some things that we were doing. We were adding assets, okay? We were adding digital assets, lead magnets basically. And then it got to a point to where that page It's just got too much on it. It's just got too much on it. To your point, like it was drowning in complexity, too many things to opt into, etc. And so it brings to this point of like, you know, you really have to work hard to do less. Like it's an intentional thing to do less versus if we just default, it's going to default to complexity and too many things and spaghetti on the wall. Why, why do you think that that is?

Well, it's— you're exactly right about that. And that's one of the reasons why it took so long to write the book, because when you're trying— you know, when I look at, uh, what's hardest about writing a book is not necessarily the writing, um, it's a lot of times is the editing, the cutting, what stuff is non-essential that we can cut. And when I look at the— I did a word count on the, the document, like I, I would cut stuff out of the book. I cut chapters, I cut paragraphs, I cut the pieces. It ended up being longer than the actual book. It was, I think the book is about 80,000 or maybe 75,000 words, and what I cut was 120,000 words, right? So I spent so much time on editing. In fact, I probably spent more time on editing than writing because that's really, you know, I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase, you know, if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter, right? Because it's easy to vomit things out onto the page, it's so much harder to distill it into a paragraph or a sentence or whatever and still make the meaning, uh, work. So if you think about an analogy from the tech world, uh, signal-to-noise ratio. So if your Wi-Fi or your cell phone is bad, it's because there's a lot of noise going on in the radio environment. Maybe there's too many other cell phones or Wi-Fi devices, or maybe there's some source of interference or whatever. But once you take those away, you get a lot more signal through. So you get a stronger signal, your message connects with a cell tower or Wi-Fi router or whatever. And I think of words the exact same way. If you have too many words, your message just gets lost and confused. I don't know if you've ever read any books and you're like, I just can't follow any of this. These paragraphs are so long, the words that they use are so complicated. And so I wanted the exact opposite with my book. I wanted short sentences, understandable words, easy-to-follow paragraphs. So a lot of what, what I spent time on was simplifying. How do I make this simpler and simpler and simpler? Because as authors— and you know, everybody's an author, whether you're writing an ad or whether you're creating a podcast or with any type of content— we may spend a lot of time on our, on our content, but someone may spend only a few seconds reading a headline, and you need them to get the sense of of what it is that you're talking about, the, the message. So being able to distill something down in a few words or a sentence or whatever and still convey the meaning, uh, it's, it's massively impactful and very hard to do as well.

Oh, it is. You know, um, actually, um, have been working on effectively some courses, basically lining up, laying out all of our, the, the content that we have and the forcing function that it's had on me to organize that content, cut the content out that just is like, well, yeah, that's true, but that just doesn't need to go in there right now because it overwaters it down. And what I did initially is I just threw everything on there because, you know, nobody could see it except for me. I threw it all on there and I was like, oh my gosh, this is way too much. I got to start cutting this out. So that was really impactful for me, which leads me to my question. What was the biggest insight that you had personally doing what it is that you just talked about in writing this book, like the editing process? What was something maybe that was a deepening of an understanding about marketing that you did not see or wouldn't have noticed until you actually wrote the book?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's something I sort of instinctively knew, but I, it really came to the fore when when working on the book, because I had finished the book, you know, in terms of the words, maybe 9 or 10, maybe even 12 months before release. But then those following 6 months were very much about cutting. It's like, and seeing every word on the page as noise, right? So if I have too much noise, my signal is not going to come through. So it really making each paragraph work for itself. And, you know, there would be times when, you know, I mean, I spent large blocks of time writing, and there'd be sometimes I spent 3 or 4 hours and I'd done one paragraph. Like, it was just getting the, the right word, the right sense, the right, uh, things. And, uh, you know, at the time it felt like a waste of time. It's like, God, you know, I've just spent 4 hours and I've done literally one paragraph. Whereas other times you I'd knock out 5,000 words. So, uh, and it's not because, you know, sometimes I had inspiration or sometimes I didn't, you know. I mean, sometimes you do have flow or whatever, but as you get to completion, you realize that it's nowhere near complete. Once you finish writing, you're about 40% finished when you finish writing. Um, the, the magic is in the editing. So really seeing every additional word as potential noise that's going to dilute your message. So that to me was something that I, I really had at the forefront of my mind when I was writing this book. And, and I think I got it to a stage where it's simple enough and where it's understandable enough and when— where there's not enough fluff, you know, so many times I don't know about you, but I've read a book and I'm like, this could have been a blog post, you know, it was just full of filler and fluff and, you know, just repeated the same thing 5 different ways. Um, and it could have been a 600-word blog post. I wanted the complete opposite with that, with my book. I wanted someone to feel like every chapter earned its keep, every paragraph was valuable. So, um, and I don't know if I got there yet or not, but I'll let the readers, um, decide on that. But, uh, that was my aim anyway.

Yeah, no, that's great. No, you're, you're so right about that. I mean, there are so many books that you read the first couple chapters and you think, man, this is a really good book, this is excellent, and then the rest of the book is basically just the same repeat of, of what the first couple of where it's like, oh gosh, I could have totally just read the first couple of chapters and it would have been a blog post. Um, and, and then there, you know, there's books, um, I think Patrick Lencioni and the way that he writes his fables, I think he does an incredible job. But I have to tell you, I, I think that your first book and, um, I think this book, I, I think that this book for me personally, from what I've read, which I'm about probably 40, uh, through this book, um, has been as good as that one was. I, I think this one was, was a click forward for you. I think it was incredibly well written. I think you can tell and pick up on the intentionality of every single word. And the intent is to help somebody to be able to say like, hey, you're not just doing marketing to marketing's sake. And I was definitely one of those people that was just like, you know, marketing is just one of those things that you got to do. And so I'll just do all the things that everybody says to do. And I wish, I wish you'd have wrote this book a few years ago when I picked it up, but I would have saved a lot more money than I did before. But Alan, it's been great having you on. People want to connect with you, your team, and of course pick up the book. Where would you point them to? To?

Yeah, so my website is Lean Marketing. You can grab the One Page Marketing Plan Canvas and all the book resources there. The book is wherever books are sold, obviously Amazon. It's very popular on audio format as well on audible.com. So, um, so yeah, and I'd love to connect with everybody.

Awesome, Alan, appreciate you, man.

Thank you so much.

That was great. Hopefully that was a good, uh, that was good experience for you. Good, it was good. Nice talking to Oh, very nice. Very nice. Um, okay, so I think it's going— coming out. Uh, let me just give you a date just if you want to share with your team whenever it's, it's, it's coming out. Uh, let's see, I've got the date here. June 24th. So 3 weeks or so from now. Alan, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

Thanks, Bradley. My pleasure.

Okay, have a good day. Bye.

You too.

Well, I really enjoyed that episode with Alan. He has a depth of knowledge about marketing that not many people that we've had on the podcast has. I mean, somebody that's gone that deep into a subject that admittedly has so many different moving pieces, and from SEO and pay-per-click and social and email marketing and text message marketing and cold outreach, there's just so many different ways to begin to look at marketing, I do encourage you to go and pick up his first book, One Page Marketing Plan, and then go and read this book, Lean Marketing. I'm about 30, 40% or so through this book, and I've already picked up on some things that, that gives me some great insight there, a depth and nuance on some things that I think that we can do better. So check him out. Go to leanmarketing.com and obviously pick up his book. A couple of the things that stood out to me, I really loved the idea again it's kind of a relearning, so to speak, about product market fit, signal versus noise, the levels of awareness. Those are things, you know, just has somebody never heard of you, did they know you really well? The levels of awareness, signal versus noise, product market fit, tools, assets, and processes were some of the things that really stood out to me. And want to give a shout out to our podcast sponsors. Club Capital, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach B Consulting, and Today App. If you want to be able to hire some of the best people, you got to have a bench. I was just actually talking with some of our members today about this very thing, and they had a good situation. They had somebody that had left, but because they had built a bench, they worked with all the Autopilot Recruiting, they took what would have normally been a 2-month gap in having a position filled in their organization to down to 2 weeks. And that is because of Autopilot Recruiting. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. Autopilotrecruiting.com. If you're an insurance agency owner and want to know what is working now, not what things worked in the past, but what is working now, there's none better than Coach P. Go to coachpconsulting.com. Coachpconsulting.com. Twice a week, not just you, but your team are going to be able to hear from David and his team with what, what things that they are doing and what is working. Now let him know that you heard about him on the Above the Business podcast. You know, financials is one of those things that until you begin to kind of understand that every action that you have in business ultimately matters, has its impact down to your financials. You'll begin to actually can make some decisions with your financials that can help you to grow revenue and to become more profitable. And let's be real, take home more money yourself. Book a no-obligation demo. Go to club.capital. Alan talked about tech in the episode itself, and you know, tech in the software that we use is really one of those tools. He mentions tools, assets, and processes. Well, one of the tools that you could really consider putting in the arsenal for you if you're an insurance agency owner is TodayApp Pro. Go to todayapppro.com. TodayAppPro.com. Hey, if you'd like to connect with me and learn about kind of what we do at Blueprint OS, we help you to design, build, and ultimately install an operating system so your business runs like a well-oiled machine and is less dependent upon you. Go to blueprintos.com/assets. You'll see a number of free tools and downloads that you can use that we use with our members. Go to blueprint mikegilliam@mikegilliam.com/assets. Art of One, till next episode, lead well.