MBA2461 Extended Interview: Allan Dib – How to Get Bigger Results with Less Marketing

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $1BA show, the place to be to build a business you want with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm and today's episode is a special extended interview episode. Today we have best selling author Alan Dibb and he'll be teaching you how to get bigger results with less marketing. Alan Dibb is a founder of Lean Marketing showing you you can do more with less marketing. You can make more of an impact, get more leads, get more sales without being an obnoxious, annoying marketer. Also in our conversation we will get into how Alan became so successful as an entrepreneur and author. His first book, the One Page Marketing Plan has over 10,000 reviews on Amazon and the Huffington Post called it one of the ten best marketing books. We also get into why Write a Book, how to Write a Book and his unique take on publishing. If you want better, bigger results with your marketing, let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Alan Dibb has been a good friend of mine for the last couple of years. He's one of those quiet but highly successful people. He doesn't make a lot of fuss, but he knows how to run a great business. In fact, he's built, he's scaled, he's exited. Two technology companies One of which was named one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in the country. So Alan is not one of those authors that writes about business but wasn't in the trenches, didn't get his hands dirty, wasn't in the mud. He's one of us. I mentioned the one page marketing plan, his book, his first book, and how it was a huge success and continues to be a success. Because how simple he makes your marketing plan, he makes the complicated very attainable. Recently he just released a brand new book that I'm so excited about, is called Lean Marketing. And that's really what he's all about. How to get the most out of your marketing, how to do enough to get stellar results without being annoying, without being scammy, without being somebody that you don't want to receive emails from. In the discussion that I had with Alan that I'm going to share with you in a moment, we get into a lot of different things. About entrepreneurship, about getting started, about simplifying your business, about the publishing industry, the secrets of Amazon Publishing. It should be on Kindle Unlimited. We get into what is lean marketing and how you can actually do less to make more with your business, with your marketing. It's an incredibly thoughtful conversation that you're really going to enjoy. But don't worry, I'll be back to wrap up the episode, tell you what your next steps are so that you can actually implement what we talk about in today's discussion. But for now, we're going to jump right into that conversation with Alan Dibb. Alan Dib, great to have you on the podcast. You had you before as a guest teacher, but we're going to go a little bit more in depth with this extended conversation, with this extended interview. So I'm really excited to speak to you today about a lot of things, but I want to start a little bit with who you are as a person. Alan, how did you you get into entrepreneurship in the first place? Like, what was your influences growing up? Did you have an uncle or something that taught you the ropes, like rich dad, poor dad or something like that? Tell me a little bit about, like, what was your first exposure to business?

I wish. So, I mean, I grew up in an immigrant family, so pretty similar background to yourself. So you're from Egypt, I was from Syria. So both from the Middle east and immigrant parents and not an entrepreneurial bone in their body. Every business my dad ever tried did not go well. And so, you know, my dad had his health challenges as well. But look, I did it through trial and Error. And really my first business was in the IT space. And I had what, you know, in the E myth Michael Gerber calls an entrepreneurial seizure. Meaning, hey, you're working for this idiot boss and you think, hey, I could do this. I've got the technical skills. That's all it takes, right, is being good at the technical thing. And so I had that entrepreneurial seizure and started my first business in it. And little did I know that was going to be a decade long journey in really learning and understanding business. So that was where I first started my training ground in business.

How old were you? Around that.

I was in my 20s. I had just gotten married, so I was about 23 years old. My net worth was about $300. So I felt pretty wealthy at the time.

I love it.

Hey, you could have a negative net worth.

That's true. It could be worse.

It could be a lot worse. But yeah, I made all sorts of big mouth promises to my wife. Hey, that was my best sales pitch ever. I'm like, babe, marry me. You're going to have a life of ease and comfort and wealth and travel and all of that. So I did my very best sales pitch. So I had to make good on my promise. So I started my first business. It was in the IT space. Like I said, I thought being good at the technical stuff that you had to do was all that you needed to be successful. That was a long, frustrating experience. It was what I call expensive experience. I learned all the stuff that you really need to know in business. Sales, marketing, copywriting, all of those things over a period of about 10 years. I ended up growing that business. We grew to be a national business. We sold out. I sold it for more money than I'd ever seen in my life. I immediately took that and then I started another business in the telecommunications space. And that was certainly a learning experience as well. That business grew really quickly. We grew from zero to being in the top 100 fastest growing companies in the country in four years. But it really taught me the importance of selecting the business that you're going in. Because that was a business. It felt like we were operating within a mafia. Within, like a gang of thieves in that business.

Yes, sure.

Very, very challenging. I exited that. I helped the company that bought us out go public. And then I'm doing what I'm doing now, which is helping business owners and entrepreneurs really develop their own marketing capability.

You've been doing this for over 20 years, right?

I have.

Why keep going? What kept you going? Obviously those first few years were Hard trying to fulfill those promises to your wife. But this is a question I'd like to ask because many of our listeners are in that grind right now. The first few years of entrepreneurship where they don't see much daylight and it's tough. What kept you going? Why not just go back to a job?

Well, I'd love to say an answer like passion or something fueled me, but really it was desperation. I needed to. I needed to make money. I needed to become successful. And one of the things I learned early on is, look, I'm definitely not the smartest guy in the room. I'm definitely not the hardest working guy in the room. But what I thought and what I saw is no one's going to outlast me. So if it takes 10 years, I will stick to this thing for 10 years. If it takes whatever amount of time it takes, that's what it's going to take. And so kind of the turtle and the hare, so sort of thing. So I'm the turtle. I'm not, like I said, I'm not the fastest, I'm not the hardest working, I'm not the smartest, but I will outlast.

So, yeah, often being stubborn pays off in business.

Yeah.

Just refusing to kind of maybe admit defeat. And I say that in a positive way because I look at my own journey, I look at the journeys of friends of ours, and I look at, you know, why wouldn't they just give up? And something about it is this. You call it tenacity, you can call it gray, call whatever, but sometimes it's just like, don't tell me what to do. I will do this. You know, like kind of, kind of that almost defiance of keeping it alive, keep it going. I know that was my case. I was struggling in New York and barely paying rent and, you know, trying to make it happen. And I think there was something inside me just like, I know this is horrible right now. I know that this is not the dream life. But I. This is an unexplainable feeling of like, there's something on this other side, you know? And did you experience that? And did you find something on the other side?

I did. So like I said, a lot of people talk about, look, follow your passion, find your passion. And that's awesome. One of the things I think we can agree on is in business, we need some kind of fuel. And if passion is your fuel, wonderful, awesome. But for a lot of people, and, you know, a lot of my work involves helping entrepreneurs get unstuck. And often they come and they're like, look, how do I find my passion? Or how do I find my why? And I'm like, don't worry about that. Sometimes your fuel burns dirty and sometimes your fuel is desperation, sometimes it's revenge. You know, the people who told you that you'd amount to nothing or that you couldn't do it or whatever. And you know, I came from an immigrant family and you know, there was very little praise, but there was a lot of, I wouldn't say fear, but it's like, look, you're either going to become successful in a doctor or lawyer or something like that, or you're going to collect garbage. There was no in between, right? And so there was a lot of that real pushing. You've got to get into a good school, you've got to go to a university, you've got to finish a degree, you've got to do all of that stuff. And, and the other thing that I will say, and I think not enough people acknowledge this is the role that luck had to play. Look, by almost any measure you'd have to conclude that life is rigged in my favor. I was born in Syria, I ended up in Australia. I was not a very bright student. I ended up in one of the top schools in the country for free. Right. I did a bit of university, but I dropped out. So there's so many areas where luck had a role to play, but also. So creating a surface area for luck was an important part of it as well.

I love that surface area for luck. Just creating opportunities for yourself to have opportunities. I definitely resonate with the fact that my parents are immigrants, came from Egypt to the States and there's just this expectation. We sacrifice so much so that you can have a better life, so you can do this. You gotta do something with that sacrifice. And there's an expectation within yourself. And I feel like that's part of my luck. I feel very lucky that I grew up in that environment because I get asked this question all the time on stages, in interviews, you know, how do you stay motivated? It's like, I don't have to stay motivated. What are you talking about? Like, you know, I easily could have been in a country where bombs are falling on my head. What are you talking about? Like this. I'm lucky that I get to do what I want. I get the get the privilege of fighting for a great business and working hard and you know, like honest work, hard working job or career is really a blessing from where my family came from. Like if you get that opportunity, you made it already, you know. So I think perspective plays a lot of a big role in it. And this is why I think travel is so important. When you, when you're an entrepreneur, if you want to impact the world, you got to know what the world is like.

Yes.

Do you find yourself trying to gain new perspectives? Obviously as an author you're trying to get new ideas, you're trying to impact the world through your books. How do you do that? How do you gain those new perspectives?

I think you're 100% right. Travel really does open your eyes up. The first time I went to Fiji, you land at the airport, then you're driving through all of these slum looking neighborhoods and you get to this resort which looks like this paradise. It's bittersweet. Yeah, I love being in this paradise resort. But you know that this is really a fake little island created for tourists. And most of the people, including the people who are working at the resort, are in almost poverty. So you're 100% right. Travel really does open those things up. The other thing that I think is incredibly important is what you consume, who you associate with. All of your future ideas are downstream from what you consume today. So if you're consuming the new news and all this negativity and all this clickbait content and all of that sort of stuff, that's going to be part of what your future ideas come from. So I heard Seth Godin say books come from books, and I couldn't agree more. So when you're. All your future ideas will come from what you're consuming today. So it's very important to curate that. I often remind myself that behavior is contagious. We're told that you're the average of the five people that you hang around with and that, you know, behavior is contagious. If your friends are all overweight, very likely you're going to be too. If your friends are all killers in terms of business, in terms of goals and all of that, most likely you will be too. And so behavior is so contagious and behavior extends to content and ideas and all of the things that we take in. So I'm very, very careful about that. In the IT industry, there's a acronym called gigo. Garbage in, garbage out. I think about that a lot.

That's huge. As you know, I built webinar Ninja for a decade and sold it recently. And that is so true when it comes to code and it comes to clean code. And you're just asking for trouble when you input the wrong things or you basically half ass it. Hey Fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app you can choose.

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Just bring your number. $30 first month at $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days. I have so many questions for you when it comes to being an author, writing books, that whole process. Your first book, the one Page Marketing Plan. First of all, congrats. It's an incredible book. Over 10,000 reviews on Amazon. I read it personally, I found it not only a great book to read, to know how to market, but a great example of how to take a concept, simplify it and offer it in a book form. And I think the best authors do this. I went on this study on some of the best books that are out there. All the New York Times best sellers. Look at atomic habits. What makes this book so special? There's like three key ideas really. The 1% rule and put your shoes out that you run. There's a lot of great other stuff, small little things in there, but it's really just. Just making a very complicated. When I say complicated, it's a big idea in somebody's head, maybe hard to absorb and making it really simple. And you do that brilliantly. When it comes to marketing, taking a marketing plan, people think, oh marketing, there's ads and there's funnels and there's lead generation, all this other stuff. And you're saying, no, it doesn't have to be that complicated. It could be a simple one page plan. Walk me through what was the genesis of the idea of this book? How did you start putting pen to paper? What's the process look like for you as an author?

Yeah, so the genesis of the idea was when I started my marketing consulting business. One of the things I wanted my clients to do was to put together a marketing plan. Because that's something that had helped me in the past to really get clarity around what do I need to do next. I'm kind of from an engineering background. I'm very process driven. So I, you know, in my head this kind of creative marketing inspiration stuff just did not compute. I'm like, okay, what's step one? What's step two? What's step three? And there was almost nothing out there that I could find. You know, I tended. Like I said, I spent about 10 years in my first business trying to figure out marketing, trying to figure out business. And literally, I'll tell you how clueless I was. The very first time I ran an ad, I remember it was a print ad and I must have spent about $2,000 on it. And I'm like, you know, next day I'm sitting by the phone, I'm like, this is going to be ringing off the hook. I can't wait for this to go. And 9am comes and I'm checking to make sure I've got a dial tone. This is in the days of landlines. And I'm like, okay, it hasn't rung yet, but 10:00am, 11:00am midday, no calls. And I'm like, what is going on? And you know, I thought at the time that I know where I've gone wrong. I haven't made the logo big enough on the ad. So I reran the ad with the logo bigger. And so, I mean, I was completely clueless. So like I said, I spent 10 years really learning marketing. And I attended every conference, I attended every seminar, I had mentors, I read books and I got little snippets of ideas and content and concepts that were really, really powerful. But there was nothing that I could find at the time, at least that took me from zero to really having a good solid understanding of marketing. And so that's where I came up with the idea of a one page marketing plan. So I wanted my clients to put together a marketing plan and I got all sorts of pushback too hard, don't know where to start, need to hire a consultant, all of that sort of stuff. And so what I did is I created a one page marketing plan process. It worked so well. And so it was a process that worked for my clients long before it was a book. So I got it out in book form much later and it was ahead, as you say. So we're not quite at a million copies sold, but I think we'll get there this year.

That's incredible. A million copies. My God, that's ridiculous. People don't realize how hard it is to sell 10,000 copies. 10,000 copies is seen as okay. Now you have a bestseller, a book that actually has impacted a good enough people. But a million, that's impressive, man. You should be super proud of that. I mean, you got your new book coming out. We'll talk about that in a moment. But just that you could die happy man now.

I will die a happy man regardless. I love it. But I want to double click on something that you said. I've spent a lot of time really looking at what makes a best selling book. Because I'm in the book business, I care about that a lot. And of all the things that I've seen, it's a big idea. And you even said those words, it's a big idea. For example, you look at some of the best selling books of all time. Like for example, the seven habits of Highly Effective people. There's a big idea.

Wow.

There are seven habits that make a highly effective person. Wow. I want that. There's that. I want that. There's for example, rich dad, Poor dad, what the rich teach their children that the poor don't and that cash flow quadrant. So there's a big idea there. Think and grow rich. The four hour work week. These are all things that hey, you see that and you say, hey, that's a big idea. And I want that. And so that's really core to writing a best selling book. I could have written the exact same book, but if it was called Marketing 101 and it didn't have that big idea that you could have a marketing plan in one page, I don't think it would have been 10% as successful even with the same exact content. So that's where I would start with a big idea. And a big idea even trumps good writing. Like there are some books that have a big idea and they're written terribly. Like they're boring or they're written in academic language or almost incomprehensible, but the big idea is so good that it just trumps all of that stuff. So to me, that is the key starting point, the big idea. What's the big idea that's going to make people say, hey, I want that?

That's so important for those who are listening. People will pick up a book just for one idea, just for one mind shift that they need to experience. I want to double click on something that you mentioned that I've seen with Other businesses, other entrepreneurs. People don't realize how much R and D you get out of a service based business, running an agency, running a service based business, serving clients. You learn so much about the problems, the needs, the wants of your customers that turn into incredible digital products, whether it's a book or a course or training or something like that. I saw this done really well by Patrick Campbell over at ProfitWell before he sold ProfitWell for $200 million. But he Their business models, they had a free SaaS product which was like business metrics, but then their moneymaker was the services that help people with pricing, help expand their expansion, revenue, all that kind of stuff. And they would work with their clients, but then through working with their clients, they did all this research and they published this research and then they turned those into YouTube videos and channels and all that great data that they got from their clients, they were able to share with an audience. And people love to see statistics and how they rank up against the industry and all that kind of stuff. So I love the fact that you had this business that was putting food on the table, but also was putting food on your creative table and being able to say, well, how can I package this as something like a book to help not only my clients, but people that are not my clients, or get me new clients through the content. Huge, huge one.

Yeah. I mean, it's what we call the useful byproduct of your business. You can think of it like the sawdust from the. Someone decided, hey, we're creating furniture, but people actually want to buy the sawdust. And that residue that comes off your business can be a hugely valuable asset. And massive businesses have been built as a result of that. One of the best known examples of that is Amazon aws. Right. Built this big infrastructure of servers, databases and storage and all of that sort of thing to run their own business. But they realized, hang on, every online business needs this stuff. And this has become one of their most profitable business units.

This is such a recurring story. Instagram, the filter thing was just a little feature and then it became the whole reason why people use Instagram. Slack was just an internal tool they used to build another app that didn't work out, but then they sold Slack, which is crazy. But yeah, I love the fact that as an entrepreneur you have to keep your intents open. You got to kind of look at how could this actually help. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that they struggle to create a lead magnet or something or a way to attract new email subscribers. You probably have an SOP or some sort of procedure or template that you use in your own business that maybe your clients or your potential audience would be interested in just getting access to that. That's something that's so simple to create because you already have it and you just pop it in Google Drive or something like, I love it. I gotta ask you about your publishing and your hybrid publishing model. We talked about this personally on a chat a few months ago because I was so curious about this because you're one of the best selling authors I've seen with this model. Most people that sell this number of books are traditionally published, but you have a bit of a hybrid. Talk me through that and share that with the audience.

So when I created the first edition of the book, I was completely self published. And the book looked very handmade, like I'd gotten someone on fiverr to do the COVID and the typesetting was kind of okay or whatever. But when I came to do the second edition of the book, I was kind of looking at two paths. One is traditional publisher. And I'd gotten a traditional publishing deal because the first edition, if you read some of the very early reviews of the book, you'll see stuff like, great book, but I wish he had gotten an editor or whatever, or lots of spelling and grammar mistakes and all of that. And you know, I just shipped that book really, really fast because I just wanted to get it out there, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten done. So engineer mentality.

Yeah, engineer mentality. Get it out there. Yeah, that's it.

That's it. I think. Is it Marc Andreessen who says you should be embarrassed by the first version of your product and you know, or your tool? Yes, exactly. That was the first edition. It was kind of very handmade, very self published and all of that. And it did okay. But then I was sort of at the crossroads. Where do I go with a traditional publisher or do I continue self publishing? And then I came across kind of a hybrid approach and really a traditional publisher. Almost the only benefit that you get is first of all that they'll do a lot of the professional typesetting, the COVID design, all of that sort of thing, but also the distribution. So they're probably the two major things that a traditional publisher gives you. A lot of people think that they'll do the marketing for you, that they'll promote it, they'll do press releases, all of that. That is not true at all anymore. Unless you're maybe, I don't know, some celebrity or some massive thing that's kind of a sure thing. But certainly for a first, something like that, maybe then. And I had that discussion with the traditional publisher. They offered me the deal, they said, this is what we're going to do. And basically they gave me the timeline. It was going to be like a year to produce it and a year when I couldn't have the book available. And the book started to bring in leads and be really the backbone of the business. So that was one thing. Then they're like, and it's really going to be up to you to promote it and all of that. And you're all the royalty structure that they outlined, which was just dismal. Right. So you get a tiny fraction of the royalties. And I'm like, no. So I obviously declined that deal. So I went for a hybrid approach. I work with a company called Page 2 at the moment. So that's a model where you pay for the production of the book. So meaning I pay them a fee for service, to produce the COVID professionally, to typesetter, professionally, to help me edit it, to do all of those sort of things. So it looks as good as a traditionally published book, if not better. But I've got kind of the advantage of I still own the rights, I can do whatever I want. That was the other thing that was restrictive with a traditional publisher. Like they don't like you putting like opt in links and things like that. I think they're a bit more open to that these days. But they don't like really kind of out of the box ideas in terms of the book. They want it because it's one of a hundred books to them. They don't really care, you know, one of a hundred books that they're releasing that month or that year or whatever else. So it's not a big deal to them. So for them the model is, you know, one out of every thousand will be hit and that that will cover the cost of all the others. So to me, obviously that's, that's not what I wanted. So. Yeah. And so that hybrid approach also got me distribution, bookstore distribution and getting into publishers and things like that. So really it gave me the two things that I cared about most and it gave me the most control where I could. Where I'm directing with Kindle, I'm direct with Audible, but for the paperback, they help me get distribution into bookstores and the whole book industry.

So when I order a book on Amazon, a physical book, like a paperback, do they print and send it out?

Yes, it's not print on it was initially print on demand, the very first edition, but we now offset print them. So we do usually print runs of 20,000 copies or so at a time. And then you've got to ship them and warehouse them and all of that. So it goes to Macmillan for warehousing and shipping and distribution to all of the different bookstores.

Okay, excellent. I love this model because I'm a big believer in ownership in business. And here in publishing, I could see how owning the rights, owning the lion's share of the profits or the sales that you get from the book, because people traditionally publish. They could sell a million copies. I know some authors that sell a million copies and they don't make a lot of money. They barely make a dollar on a book. And you might think, oh, that's a million dollars. That's over time. Authors have to pay editors, they got to pay promotion. There's a lot of fees involved. And yes, I know traditional publishing, you might benefit from the proposal structure or maybe you'll benefit from taking it seriously for that kind of person that needs that kind of motivation. But at the end of the day, the reason why I was so curious about your model is because more and more, it's just becoming ego more and more. It's just like they just want a traditional publisher so that they can be able to maybe hit a list or maybe, I don't know, you know, just say they've been published by Penguin or whatever it might be. And if that's not your jam, and hopefully it isn't, that's their driving force to write a book. You're just trying to get your message out. You're trying to grow your business. You're trying to. You become a thought leader in your area. Then this is a really interesting thing to look into. I would highly recommend, just as for selfish reasons, Alan is like, maybe put together a course on this. Maybe put together a live workshop or something. Because I think there will be a lot of people that are interested in it.

I'm thinking about it. I'm releasing a new podcast shortly and one of the episodes is how to create, monetize and publish a Best seller. So that's one of the episodes I've already recorded. And so there'll be a training there.

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Cannot be combined with any other offer single item at regular price. Just to piggyback off the book the one Page Marketing Plan your first book I noticed that you're on Kindle Unlimited. Tell us a little bit about why you chose to do that and what are the advantages. What are some things you have to.

Look One of the things that you're going to have to decide both for audio and for digital the digital version of your book is whether you're going to go exclusive with Amazon or not. So it's called Kindle Select. It's for Kindle and for Audible, they've got a royalty structure, so for Audible, if you're exclusive to them, they'll give you 40% of the royalties. If you have standard distribution, meaning you you're not exclusive to Audible, they'll only pay you 25% with Kindle. If you enroll into Kindle select, you can only sell the digital version of your book on Kindle. Now that sounds restrictive, but it comes with a lot of benefits, meaning they will promote your book. Often when there is a promotion like Prime Day or whatever, you'll often be highlighted in some of their best of lists and things like that. Also, you'll get paid for people who borrow the book and just read it. So you get paid by by reads of your book. Kind of like streams of your like if you had an album or Spotify. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So similar kind of model. So there's a lot of those advantages. The other thing that I saw was that if I'm only in one marketplace, that's going to push me up in the best seller list versus if I diluted across multiple marketplaces. Now, now realistically, there are a couple of other digital marketplaces and I don't want to say anything bad about them, but really the big dog in the Room, the one who's got 90 plus percent of the market share is Amazon. So given that they are the player in digital books, there was almost no point in being on the other platforms and losing those benefits and also diluting myself across those multiple platforms. As far as I could see, Kindle is really the major game in terms of digital books. That's where I decided to play and I think that's been a good choice.

Do you find that being on Kindle Limited gives you a little bit more exposure or gives you a chance for people to taste what Alan is all about and even maybe help you get a couple more reviews than you normally would? Or does it not make a difference?

It does, yeah. I think it totally makes a difference because you're included in different promotions, people can borrow your book if they're on prime or whatever, all of that sort of stuff. And really I see the digital version of the book as kind of almost like a free trial even when you buy it. I think I priced it at something like $2.99 or whatever the minimum is just to get the 70% royalty. Not because I'm going to make so much money from the digital version of the book, but it introduces people into my world, into my ecosystem. People will opt in on my email list, list very often people will say, hey, I first got your book on Kindle, but I bought the paperback for my friend. I listened to the audio version while I'm in the gym and all of that. I think it creates people, it introduces people into our ecosystem.

Yeah. And that's exactly what I do. I am on Kindle Unlimited. If I read a book I love, I'm like, I gotta have this on my bookshelf and I order it immediately. So it's definitely a great way to kind of almost get double sales. I don't know if that makes sense. Obviously it's like a stream, it's not a sale. But that's great insight. I always wondered about that because I know that some books choose to be on unlimited, some don't, all that kind of stuff. But I like the game where you get to get a little bit more exposure and you see it as more of an opt in and at the same time you have other books like Lean Marketing that's coming out now that gives them a chance to take a look at what else you have have in store.

And yeah, it's an introduction into our world because I mean our business is far beyond just the book. Right? The book is an introduction into the world. It's Kind of into our world and it's a taster. But once people opt in on our email list, they see some of our programs, all of that sort of stuff. Really, when you look, When I look at the revenue of our business, yes, book is a nice chunk, but it's very minuscule chunk of the total revenue of the business. So really we use it as a kind of self liquidating offer where the costs of promoting the book and creating the book and all of that sort of printing and all of that is offset by the royalty that come in.

I'm glad that you brought that up because a lot of people don't realize all these great authors that you read, yes, they write books and that's kind of their jam, but that's not really their business. The book is something they really dedicate. Even somebody who is prolific, like, like Ryan Holiday, who writes a book every year or something, he has a whole business model behind this. Helping sports teams, helping corporates, helping people with his coaching and his programs and his memberships and all kind of stuff. You do the same with Lean Marketing, which is your new rebranded business from Success Wise. And you have programs, you have ways for people to take things beyond the book, which is interesting because the book is usually where people start and then people want a little bit more, or they're like, maybe I can do this. And then you get your guidance through your products, which I want to touch on in a moment. But I first want to get into this big box I got in my office. I got this huge box, guys, if you want to take a look at it, check out my Instagram. And I open it up and I'm like, there's all this confetti inside. I'm like, what's happening here? And I'm like, I get in there and I'm like, oh, it's Alan's book. I'm gonna go grab it right now. He gave me this really cool bookshelf too, which allows the book to lean, which I like.

Bookshelf, nice.

Yeah. So Lean Marketing, your latest book, we got the pleasure. I say we, me, Nicole and 25 other people at an event that I ran called Oscon. It was a fundraiser for a bike rider that I'm doing in a couple weeks in Thailand to raise money for the kids in Thailand. But Lean Marketing, you talked a little bit about this at the event.

Yes.

As soon as you started talking about it, I was like, this is exactly my type of marketing. I love this because you said something that really resonated and it was how would you market to your grandmother? Would you bombard them with tripwires and all this terminology that you hear in Internet marketing? It's just like. It's just embarrassing, really. And bombarding them with an email a day and handing them over with an offer and then a counteroffer, then how would you treat somebody that you actually love and care and respect? And that was kind of. I would say the vibe or the premise of the idea of lean marketing is like, how can you be more effective with your marketing, do less marketing, but do better than you're doing right now? I want to pull back a little bit and hear from you and understand, where did the idea for this book come from? Why are you on this mission to help people start thinking about changing the methodology, the philosophy when it comes to marketing and move closer to lean marketing?

Yeah. I'll start with why I wrote this book. I recently got asked, why did you write this book? I think it was Seth Godin who said this, but he said, I only write a book when I've got no other choice. Meaning I'm definitely not like Ryan Holiday, where I pump out a book every year. I'm very jealous of people who are amazing like that, who can just. Mike Michalowicz, Ryan Holiday. They just pump out book after book. I mean, they pump out books faster than I can read them. Right. So I don't know how they do it, but I really resonated with that because over the last few years, we've seen every podcast you listen to, every book you read, it's just more, more, more. So more things on your to do list, more things to do. You want to get better results, you've got to spend more with your agency. Everything that you read tells you to do more marketing. And when I looked at some of the best marketers in the world, and I would include you in that, the list of things that they don't do is far bigger than the list of things that they do. You know, so you're not on TikTok. You've just kind of started on Instagram. You're not really on Twitter or a million platforms. You're not doing the million funnels and tripwires and all of this sort of stuff. The best marketers in the world are doing a few small things, but they do them very, very well. They do them very, very consistently. They do them over time. And so where I got the idea for Lean Market marketing is about four years ago. Was it four years ago? It was 2019. I was invited to speak at a conference in Mexico, and it was put on by the automotive industry. And in the automotive industry, there's been a movement called Lean that's been incredibly impactful. It started in Japan and really started with Toyota. It used to be called the Toyota production system. And so Lean is basically a way to do more with less. Less human effort, less equipment, less time, less space, while providing the customer. Exactly. Or as close to what the company wants. So, you know, sometimes you've heard about like, just in time manufacturing. So where we're. We're producing something that someone orders today, kind of like print on demand. Like if you print on demand, a book that's kind of just in time. So you pressed order on Amazon, then somewhere in a printer, the thing prints and then gets shipped out to you and all of that sort of thing. It's great because there's very, very little waste when you print a book if it doesn't sell or if bookstores return it or whatever, the books actually get pulped. And so there's so much waste. And so I thought we really need this in the marketing space because we keep getting told to do more. We see so much waste. In fact, there's a. There's a phrase in marketing. Half the money I spend is wasted. I just don't know which half. And so this would never be something that you would hear in manufacturing. There's no manufacturer in the world that says half of our raw materials are wasted. We just don't know which half. It just doesn't happen. They operate often at a six sigma level, which means that there's 3.4 defects per million opportunities. So they figured out how to remove waste and create much more efficiency in the manufacturing process. Going back to this conference I was speaking at In 2019, I kept hearing the word lean, Lean manufacturing, lean, thinking lean this and that. And I'm like, what the heck is all this Lean? And so I'm a bit of an obsessive personality. And I kind of really went down that rabbit hole of lean and really figuring it out and then thinking, hey, why is lean. Why are we not applying some of these Lean principles to marketing? Why aren't we reducing waste? Why aren't we making things more efficient? And then when I looked at some of the best marketers in the world, the list of things they were doing was far, far less than the things that they weren't doing. And also, they were creating massive, massive value, massive goodwill with what they do. So you recently went through a business sale, and over and above the tangible assets that you sold. So for example, plant equipment and all of that, your account and would have written a line item on your balance sheet called goodwill. So goodwill was something that got crystallized when you sold that business, but goodwill was something that you generated over a long period of time with your customer base. So goodwill is a tangible asset when the business gets sold, but it's not so tangible before that, before accounting standards, you can't really put goodwill until you've sold a business or, or transferred ownership or whatever. So when I looked at some of the output of some of the best markets, they were creating massive goodwill with the things that they were doing, whether it was a podcast, whether it was a book, whether it was a YouTube channel, whatever it was. And it was creating a lot of positive externality. So externality is a term that economists use meaning kind of the side effects of an economic activity. So, so if I've got a factory and it pumps pollution into the sky, that's an externality. And most externalities are negative, kind of like that pollution. Like you're creating this pollution in the neighborhood, but you're getting wealthy because you're manufacturing products. But you can have positive externalities. For example, one of my neighbors has a beautiful garden, and their garden is their green thumbs. They maintain it. They spend all day in the garden. When I look over my balcony, I'll look into that garden and I get joy from that. And that didn't have a cost to me. So that's a positive externality. I want the kind of marketing that we do to have positive externalities. And all the best lean marketers, they create content that has a positive externality. Like 99% of people listening to this podcast will never pay you any money. It's just creating a positive externality in your Life. But the 1% who do, or the 1% who interact with your sponsors or advertisers or whatever, they're the ones who generate all of the revenue. So despite the fact that the vast majority of people who read my book, who listen to your podcast, who view MrBeast's podcast YouTube channel, will never buy, it's still creating a positive externality in their lives. And so that's a very, very efficient way to do marketing.

This is such a great concept in so many ways. I recently was in Japan and I went on a factory tour of Yamaha pianos and how they're created. It takes three years to create a grand piano, by the way. I couldn't believe it. But when I taking the factory tour, first of all, all the stations to create this piano, they're all together, there's not like these separate places. And they do this on purpose because they want everybody to understand their role in creating the piano and the dependencies and people depending on you and all that kind of stuff. But you really do see the efficiencies. You start to see, wow, they really are a well oiled machine. There's one station that I remember the most, which was there's a man that's actually setting the chords inside the piano, right? And in order for them to do this efficiently without ruining the piano and, and making sure everything is done properly, they have this really strong fan blowing in this guy's face. And I'm like, what's going on? Why are they doing this? And they're like, we have to regulate his temperature to make sure he doesn't sweat, because if he sweats, it's going to drop into the actual grand piano where the chords are and it's going to really mess this round. Even a drop of sweat can mess with the sound, the hearkening of the sound inside when the piano's played. And I was like, you only learn that through so much refinement and repetition. And a piano that. Why does this piano sound different? Oh, what happened here? What's that stain? What happened? You know, like, and I love this idea of going deep on something, really focusing. And you're totally correct. You know, this podcast will celebrate 10 years in August. And I really hesitated doing any other medium because I really wanted to do well here and I wanted to give myself a chance, chance to get better, to become as good as possible. I don't want to say a master, but I'm on the path of mastery to become a better podcaster. If you don't do that, I find a lot of entrepreneurs, they scatter themselves. They want to do services, they want to sell a course, they want to market. Those are just products. But then they want to market on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook and X and they want to make sure that they're on stages, but they also want to make sure they always sell a book. But then they want to want to also do webinars. And it's just like, you just can't be great at everything, you know? So now, 10 years in, we're really selective before we say yes to something. Like, we're thinking about starting a YouTube channel. Like, okay, what does that involve? How long is that going to take? And I don't want to start a YouTube channel. So I have Mediocre success. I want to do something so I have an opportunity to be highly successful over the next three, four, five, 10 years. So this is a concept that needs to be taught very early on because this is a habit. I find that as an entrepreneur you build these habits and you become this kind of entrepreneur. Everybody's a different kind of entrepreneur, but you become a person that is a jack of all trades. Rather than being a specialist or rather being somebody who understands your time, your attention, your skills are limited. You need to focus on. Tell me a little bit about what are the first steps for somebody who wants to adopt this methodology, wants to be more of a lean marketer, recognizes some of the things that they're doing wrong. What are the first steps for them to take?

There are nine principles of lean marketing that I outlined in the book. But I want to highlight something that you said. Lean principle number two is all about integration, which is embed marketing through your entire product life cycle and customer journey. So you mentioned something that when you were at that Yamaha factory, that the whole team was working together on that one product. Now this was a very unusual thing before lean manufacturing. In mass manufacturing, you have an assembly line and you know, you've got one guy who screws the thing in, you've got the next guy who assembles it, you've got the next guy who staples it, you've got the next guy who does whatever. And they're all very siloed. We have a production department, we have a marketing department, we have this department. And they're all very siloed because Henry Ford conceived of that as a very efficient way to create things at a large scale. And it is. But after the Second World War, Japan was in a terrible state. All of their industries were devastated. They had, you know, very few natural resources and they were trying to devise a way that they could be competitive in manufacturing because they just couldn't compete with the mass manufacturing approach. They didn't have the equipment, they didn't have the natural resources, the energy, all of that sort of thing. And that's where Lean really came from. Lean was all about how do we create things just in time, how do we work together as a team to make sure that everything works really, really well and taking that into the marketing approach. So. So, for example, you'll notice in both my books, not just lean marketing, but in the one page marketing plan, I talk about a lot of things that people say have nothing to do with marketing. Things like creating a world class experience, creating referrals up Selling all of those sorts of things, increasing customer lifetime value. They're things that happen post sale. A lot of people are like, this is not really marketing. You're talking about customer service. You're talking about all of this, those sorts of things. But if people looked forward to speaking to your sales team, would that give you a better conversion rate? If your customer service team was really helpful, would that increase your customer lifetime value? We could spend a whole podcast just on lifetime value. Because that is literally the most important metric when it comes to marketing. It informs everything that happens post sale. For the most part, that happens long after the sale is made. Yet it's such an important marketing metric. So a lot of what we're doing in lean marketing is integrating the whole marketing throughout the whole life cycle into customer service, into sales, into pre sales, into figuring out, does anyone actually want this product? Or not figuring out product market fit. So marketing is not something that's done after the fact. Traditionally, the manufacturing teams created the product, or the product development teams come up with a prototype, then we've manufactured it, and then finally it falls to the marketing team to figure out, okay, how do we sell this stuff? Often that's when people find there's not actually a market that really wants to pay for this, or this doesn't really solve a need that anyone is really demanding. And so that's where a lot of products go wrong. So lean marketing principle two is really integrating marketing throughout the whole product life cycle. And marketing being involved from product development right through to delivery right through customer service, right through the whole entire organization, incredibly important. That's a key principle of lean marketing.

Yeah. I always think about these experiences that we all have as consumers that we can't help but tell other people about, whether it's flying a great airline or going to a really good restaurant. Like, you just feel compelled. I gotta tell my friends about. Have you been to this new Italian place that's on the corner?

Yeah.

So good. You should try the. You know, the antipasti is so good. And you're not on commission. You're not, you know, but people want to be involved or want to be associated with quality, with a great experience. And in a lot of ways, your whole life gets a whole lot easier when your product is superior. A lot of people don't realize that. They want to get scrappy in the beginning, which is important. You got to just have an MVP and get things going. But at a certain point, you have to say, how do I become the market leader in this? How do I Make sure that my product, my service, my whatever is way better than what people are expecting. I really appreciate that. You really drilled that home in the book.

It's not just a superior product, it's also a mindset. So a very early mentor of mine had this mantra that it was customers for life, meaning that we're not going to be short term in our thinking. So if we. And I've had customers, I've been lucky enough to have customers that followed me from my first business to my second business to my third business. And they've gotten to the stage where, where they're like, look, whatever you're doing, I know you're going to take care of me. I'm going to buy from you. Think about how efficient that is from a customer acquisition point of view, from a lifetime value point of view. There's someone who will follow you from business to business who will buy whatever you've got offering because you've taken care of them in the past and they trust that you'll do so in the future. Versus thinking, okay, we've got to close this month's quarters. This is our target. Let's do whatever. Let's do email blast. Let's do whatever we need to do to close those sales. That's so inefficient because you're burning so much goodwill. Remember, goodwill is something that literally an accountant will put on a balance sheet. It's not a tangible asset before you sell a business, but it certainly makes up the vast majority of your wealth. While once you sell a business totally.

And the acquirer gets to benefit that goodwill, even past the sale, because you're going to continue to do other things, it's a huge value. A lot of people that hear this are like, yeah, thanks, Alan. This makes a lot of sense in some way, but why would somebody want to continue to work with me? They already bought one product. And a lot of people, they forget what it's like to be a consumer, but when it comes to to themselves and selling their products or services, they forget. Like, a good example is like, if you're obsessed with somebody, if you love what they do, like say, for example, you're obsessed with Jerry Seinfeld. You love his comedy. If Jerry Seinfeld came out with an online course on how to become a great stand up comedian, you're gonna take it even if you don't want to be a stand up comedian. I want more Jerry Seinfeld. That's really what it's all about. It's like, I want more of this person. I want to connect with them. I. I'm sure you've heard of Michael Port. He's an author who wrote the book Book Yourself Solid. And he's a public speaking coach. I know him as a friend. I've been coached by him and his team for public speaking and voice lessons and all kinds of stuff. But I've been around his business and seen people that have signed up for his courses and his programs that are not cheap. His programs are like 15 grand. And. And really they keep coming back because they just love Michael. They just love Amy, who's his wife and business partner. They just love their vibe. And they're just like, how can I get more exposure to this person? At some level, I know it sounds strange at some level, but people will just want to be around greatness and they'll pay for it. And that's the ultimate level, I think. Obviously, people pay for VIP access to rock concerts and things like that so they can be close to their idols and things like that. So this is a real thing that you're talking about. This is a real thing where people want to get closer and closer to you and are willing to pay for it and continue to pay for it if you can deliver consistently. How do you deliver consistently, though?

You deliver consistently by, first of all, creating a wow experience. But like I said, also starting with that mindset of what would I do if I was creating this customer for life, Meaning, and this person is someone I want to buy from me forever and be someone who refers people to me over a long period of time. Someone who's a raving fan. So what we want to do is we want to create raving fans in our business, because suboptimal clients, they're the worst. They're people who complain the most, always want to speak to the CEO, always refunds or complaints or. Or something's not good enough. There's a segment of people who are just like that most of the time. They're the people who pay the least as well. One of the things in my first business, I realized was that the customers who paid us the least were the loudest and always paid late. We always had to follow them up. They were always insisting on speaking to the CEO or whatever. The customers who paid us the most at the top end, they were paying us about $10,000 a month for their telecommunications services. We never heard from them. They just paid their bill automatically. And that was it. It was the $500 a month clients that we had to chase. Hey, Gary, how's it going? You're two doors open.

Gary's always late.

Yeah, we're going to have to cut off your phone lines if you don't pay your bill or whatever. And you know, that was something that was a real revelation to me because, you know, it's kind of counterintuitive. So it really starts with selecting your target market. Who and, and that's why the first square of the one page marketing plan is your target market is because who you work with, the target market that you work with is going to inform everything else that you do. It's going to inform the message, it's going to inform the media how we nurture them, how we deliver a world class experience, how we ask for referrals. That's going to matter very, very much. Where a lot of people start, they're like a butcher, baker, candlestick maker, doctor, lawyer, whatever. And they're like, you know what, everyone can benefit from my services. And it feels really counterintuitive. Every fiber in your being is going to want you to widen the net, you know, because it feels like if I widen the net, more people will be attracted to me, more people will buy from me. And I mean even me with what I know, and I've written two books on this, I'm still tempted to widen the net. Sometimes I'm like, you know what, we should do this for this, whatever. Or you see something peripheral that's working or whatever. But you've got to resist that with every fiber of your being. You've got to be like, look, these are the people we're actively going after and these are the people that our stuff is optimal for. They get an amazing result, they refer you business to us, they love what we do. So really starting with your target market, who are your most optimal clients that are going to get the most benefit from what you do, who are going to pay you a lot for what you do, who are fun to work with because again, we went into business for fun, freedom, flexibility. We don't want to hate Mondays, we want to look forward to Mondays. You don't want to be like, oh my God, I have to work with this client on Monday. That's something incredibly important. Really starts with that target market and that product market fit for that target market.

Totally. You touched on the point of the more premium your product or service becomes, the easier clients become. I love this example because we all can relate to it. If you've ever been to a major city and you walk by a Louis Vuitton store, there's a line outside the Louis Vuitton store. Why? Because do they have like some sort of. Is it packed in there and there's some sort of fire regulation? No, there's only like five or six people in the store. But they want to create the sense of it's special to be inside. Only a certain number of people can be served there and you're going to get VIP treatment. So. So the likelihood of somebody waiting in line, finally it's their turn, it's time to go in. The likelihood of one of them not buying anything is very low. Two, the likelihood even if they just buy a wallet or something, the likelihood of them being obnoxious and rude, where there's like, I better be on my best behavior, I'm going to get kicked out. There's a whole line behind me. Right. So if you put yourself in a context that you can relate to or something you've witnessed, you start to realize, oh, how can I create that, that Louis Vuitton experience in my own business, whether it's online or offline? And you start thinking, okay, maybe I need to increase my prices. Maybe I need to target a market that really can appreciate the value I'm giving. You don't have to do this once and done. You can have tiers, you can have the free thing and you can have the low cost thing, then the significantly premium thing. But I love the fact that you highlighted that because that's one of the things we've experienced, especially in the SaaS world, because in the SaaS world there's a lot of different levels of plans and usership and all that kind of stuff. Our customer support team, I would say 70% of all their time was on the lowest plan. People that are on the lowest plan that maybe used it once a month or maybe once every three months or something like that. And I'm not going to badmouth them in any way. They're fantastic people. But the stakes are so high for them, it's got to be perfect. So the expectations are super high. But somebody who has been doing this for a while, or $100, $200, $300, $1,000 a month doesn't really break the bank for their business. They're like, okay, that's fine, we'll work it out. Or it doesn't do what I want, but okay, I'll figure out another way to do this. They're not as demanding because the stakes are not so high. Do you find the same in your own business?

Yeah, 100%. I don't know if you've seen that meme? I think I saw it on Twitter, I've seen it on Instagram. It's a $500 client. Look, I'm trusting you. I really need you to deliver results. $50,000 client, wire transfer cent. Thank you. That's been very much the case. The other thing, from a sale sales perspective, it almost takes the same effort to sell something for $500 as it does for $50,000. Right. But $50,000, I can afford to create an amazing customer experience. I can be super intentional about onboarding. I can have a customer success person. I can take them through a whole process. At $500, I'm going to have to scrimp and save and figure out how I can squeeze the line drop of profit out of this client. So charging very little is going to be detrimental to your ability to deliver a world class experience. Also, what I found is the most competition is in that middle space. Not everyone wants to be the cheapest and I don't recommend that as a strategy unless you've got some very special cost advantage in your supply chain or whatever. In that case, case that may work like a Walmart or a Costco where they just buy in such huge massive volumes that nobody else can compete in that space. But the least competition is really at the extreme ends. At the low extreme and at the high extreme, the most competition, the red ocean, is in the middle. Everyone's fighting for that middle portion. But the high end, that's a massive open opportunity.

Totally. It's not as crowded for sure. This has been great. I love speaking to you, Alan. I think you've added so much value to our audience and the show. But before we wrap up, I want to ask, just on a personal level, what is something from your own personal philosophy in life, a belief, a practice that has helped you in your business and beyond?

A question that I've been focusing on a lot over the last few years. I sort of, I talk about this in the book a little bit, but a few years ago I kind of had my midlife crisis. If you had seen me a few years ago, I was very overweight, I was physically weak. It was after my dad died and I started thinking about this question. I think I heard it from Tim Ferriss, might have been someone else or maybe Derek Sivers, I can't remember. But the question is, what are you optimizing for? What do you optimize this business for? So like if I'm optimizing for fund freedom, flexibility, that's a different Strategy versus if I'm optimizing for revenue and exit, or if I'm optimizing for value or whatever. So I've come to the conclusion, and I really think about this a lot. I call it the Goldilocks Zone. It's what is the maximum sort of optimal level of whatever it is? I'm thinking about whether it's revenue, whether it's profit, whether it's. Whether it's lifestyle, whether it's time or whatever. So you don't want to have not enough money. And having heaps and heaps of money is also kind of can be a pain in the butt. There's a lot of responsibility, there's a lot of people at your door. There's security risks and all of that. So what's that Goldilocks Zone in terms of wealth, in terms of fun, in terms of freedom, in terms of time that you spend working and all of that sort of thing. So that question revolves in my mind all the time. What am I optimizing for? I'm launching a new podcast. What am I optimizing for? I write a new book. What am I optimizing for? I'm launching a new business. What am I optimizing for? And to me, it's that Goldilocks zone. Finding that zone where it's not the minimum effective dose and it's not the maximum you could possibly shoot for the moon, but what's that zone where you get the maximum bang for buck? Because like all things in life, there's kind of that law of diminishing returns. You get to a certain level of wealth and more wealth is nice or whatever, but it doesn't really change your life that much. Maybe your toys get a little bit bigger or more fancy or whatever, but that's about it. But there's a level where it makes a massive difference. Like going from being poor to being moderately wealthy makes a massive difference, whereas doubling from there to doesn't double your net happiness. So that's what I think about a lot.

I love that. It reminds me of this tweet I saw about Mark Zuckerberg versus Tom Anderson, who started MySpace. And Mark Zuckerberg is this huge success. Meta is like a behemoth of a company, multi, multi, multi billionaire guy right now. But his life, if you look at Mark Zuckerberg, he's like the other side of the spectrum in terms of world success. And I would say wealth and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, he's got to testify in front of Congress. Everybody doesn't like him, you know, he's getting criticized every time he opens his mouth. You know, he's got security on him 24 7. You know, he can't be himself in public, Right? And then you look at Tom Anderson, who, for all, you know, intensive purposes, people thought, oh, what a failure. He sold MySpace and multimillionaire. Still, you know, still, you know, living a very good life. His Instagram is filled with travel pics and fun and no one even knows him, no one even recognizes him on the street. Maybe he found that Goldilocks Zone where maybe he won at the end, at the end of the day, yes. He's not Facebook. He didn't win the social media war. But on a personal level, he's doing pretty well, 100%.

I've come to the conclusion it obviously depends where you live and there's different cost of living in different parts of the world. But I think that Goldilocks Zone in terms of wealth is somewhere between 5 and 50 million net worth. And I think you can do, do pretty much anything that you want at that level of wealth, but you don't have a lot of the pain that comes with it. And you can order from the left side of the menu. An unexpected bill is not a problem. You just don't think about it, but you don't have a lot of the pain associated with it. A lot of the responsibility, all the people coming to you, all the security or like you said, all of that sort of stuff. I think about, what's that goal, this lock zone, for building muscle, for exercise, for time off. Like, how much time should I work? Should I work 80 hours a week or should I work four hours a week? What's that? Goldilocks Zone. I look for that in all parts of life.

I'm going to take that on. I'm going to definitely write that down on my whiteboard to remind myself to look for the Goldilocks Zone. I like it. Alan, thanks so much, man. It's been great chatting with you, spending time with you. I'm sure we're going to see each other in person soon. But thank you so much for offering so much value to our audience. As I'll mention later on in the episode as well, Lean Marketing is a book that you want to pick up. If you haven't picked up his first book, a one page marketing plan, pick that up as well. With Lean Marketing, just add it to your cart because it's worth it. I always say that books are something that you should just give yourself a blank check on. You're never going to go wrong buying a book. The value you get from a book that's less than $20, $25, whatever it might be, is going to pay back dividends. I mean, it's a lunch for crying out loud. So I highly recommend you check it out. Alan's really thoughtful guy, but most of all is able to kind of take complex ideas, make them simple, make them actionable. Alan, you're the man. Appreciate it.

Thanks so much, Emma.

I absolutely loved this conversation. Alan is incredible. He's thoughtful, he's down to earth, and he knows his stuff. I highly recommend you pick up his book Lean Marketing and you can pick it up@leanmarketing.com, amazing URL. By the way, I have the book. I can't wait to go through it cover to cover a few times. You might hear me on this podcast talk about it because of the impact it's made on my business. You should also check out all the other things that Alan is up to. The book is just one part of the equation, as you heard in the discussion. If you want to take things beyond if you want to take the next steps, go to leanmarketing.com he's got free resources on how to score your business marketing and more, as well as some programs he offers you may be interested in. Alan, thanks so much for your time and for creating great, great information, great knowledge through the one page marketing plan through Lean Marketing. I loved every moment of our discussion that wraps up today's episode. Guys, if you love what you hear, if you appreciate what you just listened to, the best way to say thanks is to hit subscribe to follow the podcast on your favorite podcast app right now, whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts, hit follow so you could tell the algorithm, hey, this show is pretty great. By doing that, by just pressing a single button, by tapping on your screen, you help our show in an incredible way that allows us to grow so that we can continue to provide practical business lessons and discussions like today. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things that Alan Dibb taught me is to really think about what you're about to do before you do it. This is something I just learned from him by being his friend and spending time with him is that he's somebody that, you know, likes to measure twice and then cut once. And sometimes as eager entrepreneurs, we just want to get started and do it and we don't really allow ourselves to plan or to organize our thoughts and just think, what is the best way to attack this so that I don't have to waste energy, I don't have to waste time. If you're the kind of person that just goes and does things and figures things out, you might want to lean on that a little bit. Lean on. What I learned is that, hey, take a step back. Maybe you write a few notes in your notebook, plan the order of operations and then execute. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood.

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