Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast we have a great show for you.
It's September, a new school year here in Florida. I always love to think of my time as an academic year, and before I get started, it's great to look back over the summer.
This year I again got to go to London, Amsterdam, and Toronto, and while in Amsterdam for our 4th annual Breakthrough Blueprint event with my good friend Elko de Boer, one of the things that we do is record our Periodic Podcast. It's a kind of 'year in marketing' review for both of us.
We talked about a lot of the things that we've done over the last 12 months, compare notes, reflect on our successes, and talk about what we see for the future.
It's a delightful episode to listen to, and it's a nice thing to set the scene on my marketing world view as I look forward to November this year when I go to Australia and do the same thing with James Schramko.
I always love talking with Eelco, and this is a great episode with lots of ideas for the year ahead.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 160
Eelco: Mr. Jackson in the building.
Dean: In the house.
Eelco: In the house.
Dean: What do you call this now?
Eelco: The cave.
Dean: The cave. This is great. You know I always envy your Virgin Megastore sign.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Since the first time I laid eyes on it.
Eelco: Let me see if we get the remote control. I don't know if we have it.
Dean: The video.
Eelco: Can you put it on?
Dean: Turn on the sign?
Eelco: Yeah, of course.
Dean: I would have that thing on all the time.
Eelco: Yeah, we should.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: You know the story behind, right?
Dean: I do, because I was immediately drawn to it, the first time I walked into your old man cave, when we did the first event. It was just like a center.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Because I've got really good feelings about the Virgin Megastore, because that's where I used to go and write stuff. One of the greatest things like, I mean, millions of dollars from writing the very first money making website in the Virgin Megastore.
Eelco: Did you write the Stop Your Divorce in the Virgin Megastore?
Dean: Mm-mm (negative).
Eelco: Okay.
Dean: I did write money making websites there. Yeah, and so many other things.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I mean, just that's the place.
Eelco: Have you ever written sales pages handwritten or always?
Dean: Always handwritten.
Eelco: Wow.
Dean: Yeah. Never anything bought.
Eelco: Really?
Dean: Yeah. There's something about the hand. This is the big insight of the last year. This is what I like about doing about this periodic podcast is the reflection on what's happening, the evolution. Now, my whole thing, everything that I'm really geared to trying to do is get it so that all I do is talk.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: When I realized that that's really the very best thing, it's really been a big change for me.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I think last year, we talked about the ... I must have talked about the new method, the multiplied oral output.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Just talking, doing the podcasts and having them transcribed. Having a writer who takes and creates those emails, every ...
Eelco: That's so good man.
Dean: ... every three times a week. I don't write any of those anymore.
Eelco: That's been a big game changer.
Dean: It has been, because it goes out ... Even while I'm traveling and I'm here. It's like they're going out. People, they look at me shocked when I say that I don't write any of them.
Eelco: Nothing. It's really your voice.
Dean: It is my voice, because I ... I said everything in there.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That goes a long way.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Really, the truth of that is that the fastest bandwidth way to get something from your mind into a digital format is through your mouth. There's nothing faster and so we get a way that just suck your thoughts out through your mouth is the fastest way.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: When it get out in your mouth, when you get it out by talking it, and then transcribe it now it's digital and somebody can take it and edit it, and make it print for all kinds of different uses for it.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: To spend any amount of time, I try and really get to the point where I'm not doing anything that requires opposable thumbs.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. That makes a big difference.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: When I was talking about that, trying to get to the point where everything I'm doing is talking, I do the Joy of Procrastination podcast with Dan Sullivan. That whole idea, there's zero procrastination in talking. Joe Polish and I were having ... we spent a day with Ben Hardy, who's number one writer on media and he wrote the book Willpower Doesn't Work. He's working on his new book, but he's struggling a little bit writing. We were joking but I said, "You know what I never get? Talkers block."
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: You never get talkers block.
Eelco: No.
Dean: You get writers block when you're sitting down and trying to wiggle into doing something.
Eelco: Yeah, that's true. That's why the nine-word email book concept is such a great concept.
Dean: That's it. When I realized that was the way ... I mean that five years now, maybe something like that.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. That was how I was writing books was talking and then getting them transcribed and edited it into a book. By the way that's not ... I mean Gary Vaynerchuk, every book he's ever written has been that way. A lot of authors, any of these celebrities that are writing ...
Eelco: Richard Branson didn't write his own book.
Dean: They're not writing.
Eelco: Kiyosaki is not writing his books.
Dean: Nobody is writing, they're talking and a ghostwriter is turning that into written stuff. I can't recommend it enough, but people don't realize that it's okay to just do the talking.
Eelco: Yeah. It's about the idea, about the concept, about the words, it's not about writing.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: It is about writing, but somebody else is probably better at writing.
Dean: Right. It's about being an author and that's the distinction is not having to write getting your way of being an author that you can be ... have the authorship of an idea. The authority of it that it's your idea and you created it without having to actually write it.
Eelco: Yeah. What do you think of Amsterdam? How's Amsterdam treating you?
Dean: I love it. It's the fourth time to Amsterdam. I love the city. It's such a cool place.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Nice vibes.
Eelco: Yeah. What's the difference with my groups, because every year we do the breakthrough blueprints and the other groups? You do it by yourself or?
Dean: Funny, there are some differences. I think that first of all, there's more introverts, it seems like a definite thing. That may be partly language things that they're ... because we're doing it in English and so being expressive or whatever in English maybe a different thing, but very, very thoughtful and very holistically approaching their business and their life, which is the most attractive to me.
There's a lot more questions about lifestyle stuff than hard driving so much like scaling, growing big businesses. I love that. That really resonates me.
Eelco: Yeah. That's good.
Dean: What do you think you've been ...
Eelco: I've been to London once.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah. I think it's more new for the Dutch audience.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eelco:Like the whole idea of really doing the nine-word emails and the super signature and really ... I think it's more new for Dutch people. Also, I think a big difference as well is that most of the people that come to your other events, they 100% know you.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: They show up because they're on your list and they've been following you. With this group, not everybody knows you. For a lot of them, it's like a surprise, like, "Who is this guy?"
Dean: Who is this guy? What's Eelco's doing? Eelco says it's going ...
Eelco: Yeah. Because people talk about you it's ... Because they've been to the other events and it's a real thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: For someone, it's like they get in ...
Dean: Or Skyping in or Zooming in ...
Eelco: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: ... one of your bigger events.
Eelco:Yeah. I think that's probably a difference as well.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Like the other groups, they might be a little bit more advanced with your material.
Dean: That's true. Yeah. I never thought of it like that, but that's true.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Speaking about super signatures ...
Eelco: Are we going to talk about this? Are we really going to talk about this?
Dean: I mean you brought it up.
Eelco: That's true.
Dean: Four years later. Five years.
Eelco: You're going to embarrass me on the periodical test?
Dean: No, I'm not going to embarrass you, I'm just going to give ... I'm opening it up to conversation and we'll see whatever you want to do with it.
Eelco: Yeah, man. That's why it didn't work. Yeah. When did we start the super signature? Do you know when it was? I think January or something?
Speaker: February.
Eelco: February. Six months ago, because I made this ... I reflected on my email behavior and I'm training people on email marketing, like for a long time. In January I did a challenge. It's called the Internet Fasting Challenge. It was an online challenge where we got thousands of people join. It's the first challenge I ever did.
Dolly, our friends, she's the queen of challenges. She built her whole business on challenges. She followed my challenge, seeing what I was doing. We ended the challenge with a webinar. On the webinar, I close for my program. It's called Master Moves. It was great. We had a five X investment, return on investments. All the ad spend we get five X within a week, so that was great. I was all happy about the challenge.
Then, I had a meeting with Dolly. She's like, "Can I be honest?" I was like, "Sure. Sure." "Your email behavior it kind of sucks." I was like, "What do you mean?" "You're pushing and pressuring people into ... because you have the webinar and everybody had to attend the webinar, like really blasting for the webinar."
Of course, in firsthand, I was like, "Yeah, come on I'm the email guy. You're not going to tell me that my email suck." I was like, "Let me check," because we had a lot of unsubscribes during that challenge, like you get 5,000 people on the list and then a week later you got like 1,500 unsubscribes or whatever. I never really checked the unsubscribes, but now I saw that. I'm like, "This is interesting."
Then, I check like, let me go back like one or two years and check all the emails I ever sent. I'm a relax guy. If you look at my Instagram post look good, I'm very inspirational. When you listen to my podcast it's relax and valuable. You look at my videos, it's good. Everything is good. My webinars, they are masterpieces. My program is amazing. My emails like I'm just this peer pressuring guy like pressure, pressure, pressure.
I just check my emails for the last two years and I got really ashamed. I was like wow. Then, I notice like this is the biggest business leak that I have. Everything is on point or pretty good, at least pretty good. This was a big leak. I was just this different persona by email. I don't know when I started that, but in the last two years like 80 or 90% of the emails they were all with one reason that's just to get a click.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: A click to whatever. Then, I realized like, "Man, this is hurting my business and I don't want to be that guy." Then, I was like, maybe after four years of listening to you, I'll try the super signature thing. What we used to do and what we still do, we do a lot of webinars. That's our main way of doing business. We send an email for a webinar is what we use to do.
Now, what we do is we provide value so it could be ... Yeah, go figure. It could be like 12 sentences, could be three sentences, could be whatever. Then, the super signature PS, these are four ways I can help you with your business.
Dean: Yeah, whenever you're ready.
Eelco: Yeah. In the PS, we promote the webinars. Now, we have less people on the webinars, but it's consistent.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: I don't need to send out solo emails for a webinar for example.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: Now, we get people on the webinars who actually really want to be on the webinar, because they saw the value thing and then the CEO. I rotate a lot of PSs now. We rotate for two weeks and we could talk about that as well. One of the PS say, "Hey, I'm doing a webinar. We got two different webinars." Two different PSs. One other PS is, it's not even a PS, but it's four ways. One is my podcast, one is my next event, and one is my YouTube channel.
It is been really consistent. It just really works. Every week it works. We see way more consistency in the business and we actually get people who are really happy with receiving the emails.
Dean: Yeah, that is the best part.
Eelco: Which is something we never had obviously, because I was this pressuring guy. This has been a big game changer. Yeah. We applied the super signature and guess what? It works.
Dean: Guess what.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Four years later. That's the best. I mean, it's amazing to me how well it works and how consistently ... Because now, it's like I've been doing it for so long just the consistent thing. My big breakthrough around lead conversion this year has been the realization that we're really pursuing is we're pursuing now. As soon as I really understood and I understand it now in the deeper, more profound way that the only two timeframes there are is now and not now.
That it's okay if it's not now for someone. It doesn't matter whether it's not now on its way to 90 days or nine months. It doesn't matter, if it's not now it's just not now. Really shifting the mindset about your list and list building into a mindset of building an asset.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That the asset is the number of people who you have regular communication with. The bigger that that number is where they are paying attention to you and reading your valuable emails, that the odds are overtime that at some point it's going to be now and you're going to be there.
This whole idea that I've got a definition for BRAND now that's been new and this is pretty exciting, because we hear it all the time. You got to build the BRAND. You got to establish a BRAND, but nobody can really explain what a BRAND is. I decided on an acronym for BRAND, like B-R-A-N-D, that the one that fits for me is what we're trying to ... and establish is the right word. We're trying to establish like get it rooted in there, a BRAND which is a Buying Reflex Affecting Now Decisions.
If you have established a brand in somebody's mind that the moment that they're faced with a now decision, their reflex is to think of you, that's when you've done your job. People talk about that like Coca-Cola has the big global worldwide brand that if somebody says to you, "Would you like a drink?" Or, if you're at a restaurant and they say, "What to drink?" that the buying reflex is ...
Eelco: Coke.
Dean: Of a Coke.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Right. They've done that to billions of people all over the world. They have the widest distribution of any brand globally, which is really interesting like in deepest most remote parts of the world you can get Coca-Cola.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: The distribution of that. Establishing that brand, it seems daunting or overwhelming like they say, "How are you going to unseat the winner, like the leader in the category and stuff?" When you realize that, the only value of a brand is that it's established in the mind of one individual.
You don't have to, and it's impossible to think, that you're going to unseat a market leader at the scale that they are overall. You have one at a time, you have an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of individuals as many as you can reach and establish that brand in.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: There's something to that. You go to a local market, I don't know whether this works in Amsterdam or in the Netherlands, that in the US is a big thing now as microbrews, like breweries that are ...
Eelco: Yeah, we have them.
Dean: You have microbrews. If you go to a particular town ...
Eelco: Yeah, we have many of them here in Amsterdam.
Dean: Yeah. You go there and you may go in a pub or go into a restaurant and somebody might order that brand of microbrew, because they've established a buying reflex in that group of people, right? Whereas, all the way on the other side of the country, in that non-local market they may not even have heard of that brand, right?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's really about figuring out where you ... What the scope of what you're trying to accomplish and establishing it for one person at a time and whatever scale you can afford. When you're establishing that brand, you got to think about how many people can I afford to establish that brand 100% of the way.
It all made sense when I heard Roy Williams, a big radio advertising guy talk years ago about the choice in radio is that do you want to convince 100% of the people 10% of the way? Or, do you want to convince 10% of the people 100% of the way.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Talk about reach or frequency. Often, people want to reach as many people as they can with their message, when the reality is that you're better off to constrain to a smaller group of people and convince them 100% of the way make that your choice.
It's fun. That's really where this super signature of understanding now versus not now, that if every day we take all of your prospects, we take 100 prospects that you've generated today. I think, we've talked about this in earlier podcast that our ideal come from is that the guiding thought that we have is that half of the people that inquire today are going to do something in the category, in whatever they've inquired, in the next two days. Only 15% of them are going to do with it in the first 90 days. It means five times more people are going to do something 90 days or more.
If we're running ads to bring people to a webinar and then hammering them, hammering them to get them to come on that webinar now, without the regard for that maybe they're a little bit later down the road. You end up chasing them away like you're saying with your unsubscribes because they're not ready. It's not now. Now is not the time.
To have that mindset that we're going to allow people to be on your list, allow people to move at their own time. I had this visual of taking ... If we're going to line up, like imagine visualizing a line, a row of LED lights, okay, that are stacked on top of each other. There's 100 LED lights in a row going from the bottom to the top.
That each day, you get to flip the switch on that light row and see that everybody who's ready now will turn green, that the light thing will turn green. If you flip the switch and there's three people that are green and ready to go right now. Then, each day, you get to flip that switch and see who's ready today. If you were to do that every day for two years, that you could flip that switch and you would see that 50 out of those 100 will have bought something regarding whatever it is that they inquired about.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's a fun thing where even if you ... That's why you get people into this mindset of doing, at the very least, a weekly email and then you're sending that super signature once a week saying, "Whenever you're ready, here's four ways we can help you." It's the equivalent of flipping the switch and the ones that are ready can reach out to you.
Eelco: Yeah, man, it's so much better. I get people reposting my emails in social and all ... that stuff never happens.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: Now people are waiting for the email. Every Sunday we have seven weekly wisdoms. That's our theme that we do every week and then we send two or three emails, which is sometimes short sentence, sometimes good email.
Dean: I like it.
Eelco: Yeah, it's good. What is that? We have a two-week variation of all the super signatures. We have 14 different super signatures.
Dean: Why do you have to make it so complicated?
Eelco: No. It took me like an hour or two hours to make. That mixes it up as well.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: It's good. It's nice.
Dean:That's a good one. I'm super excited that you're on the super signature train now.
Eelco: My dude and I would email one day.
Dean: Hey, wait a second.
Eelco: A couple years.
Dean: Yeah. Once it got you reunited with your best friend from ...
Eelco: That wasn't funny.
Dean: That was a funny story. I'm super excited about that as a thing that this whole lead conversion idea of how, not now and establishing a brand as your buying reflex that's really what the thing is.
I don't know whether I shared this. It probably was about a year ago now that I had somebody in my real estate group, in one of the forums, posted up a question. They said, "Does anybody know where I can get a carpet replace today? Because we have a closing tomorrow and we need to get it replaced. The painters just spilled paint all over the carpet and it's ruined."
What I realized what happened, I tell people was both startling and amazing at the same time. Because my mind, without even thinking about it, reflexively, that's really how this works. My mind started singing the empire flooring jingle from the commercial that have been running for over 20 years smuggled into my brain waiting for me to be trigged by somebody saying same day carpet. I started 800-588-2300 Empire. I felt like a passenger. I felt like I wasn't in control of my brain just then that that happened against my will. I couldn't have stopped that if I wanted to.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I never thought of it until that moment.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I thought, "Man, now you get it." That opened up, I see all these other people who are doing the same thing. All these attorneys on the TV that are trying to get me to remember that with their, "Hurt in a car call William Mattar." Safe light auto repair for the replacement glass and all these people that are establishing this brand in my mind.
Eelco: Yeah. That's cool.
Dean: There's something to it.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's just amazing how our brains work.
Eelco: Yeah. For me last year, since the last episode, what I really fell in love with is I call it creating marketing masterpieces.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: The way I do it is now mostly with a video and webinars. I just really take the time to really work on something that is just the best work that I can make. If you make it once, then it can work for you forever.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: I created two pieces last year, one took me a couple of months to create. It's a four-hour video. I tested this 18 months ago. I created a video, it took me also a long time to create it.
Dean: You serve that out to people at one shot?
Eelco: No.
Dean: They watch one four-hour thing?
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: That's what I mean.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: When they go to watch it, it's four hours?
Eelco: Yeah. The first call to action is after 75 minutes.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: With my first video, I remember when I created it. A lot of slides and I really put a lot of work in. I wasn't sure if it's going to work. I recorded a video but I don't record a video in once. I record at two-hour video in 15 times. I'm not going to redo it 15 time, it's 15 pieces. Then, I'll have - edit the video.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Because if you talk for two hours, your voice get ... yeah.
Dean: Your voice gets ...
Eelco: You need a good energy in the video.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: We made it. We created the video. Then, I had Sobos edit the video. When he was done, he looked at me, he almost said, in disappointment like, "I'm sorry but the video is two hours and eight minutes." I was like, "Fuck, two hours and eight minutes is way too long. This is not going to work. I'm probably going to annoy people."
We launched the video and it was the highest converting video and the most profitable week that I ever had in my life. I was like, "Wow, this actually works." Not just that, a lot of people were talking about the video because they really enjoyed watching the video, because it's just my best work and really captivating and valuable and gave a lot of people great insight. Even friends then, one of my best friends from back in the days, he's not entrepreneurial but he's on my list.
He clicks the video, he was replacing his tires at a tire center and he couldn't stop watching the video. I was like, "Wow, I'm on to something." It was the best week of the business ever. Then, I really, last year, I really took a lot of time, literally months to create a better version of that video. That's a four-hour video. Yeah, it's working. It's working consistently.
I remember when I launched that video, I was having dinner with a friend and we were talking about it. I was like" Yeah, right now at this moment, I'm having the best sales conversation that I could ever create with hundreds of people at this moment." That combined with the super signature, it's just such a great thing because the super signature is super low key.
Dean: They can go, we'll start that journey at any time, because one of your signature items is watch this epic video.
Eelco: Yes.
Dean: You call it a video or webinar?
Eelco: I call it a marketing masterpiece.
Dean: Marketing masterpiece.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Great.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: How do you not want to see what a marketing masterpiece looks like?
Eelco: Exactly. Yeah. When we launched it, we launched it as a webinar. We didn't say it's a webinar, we said, "Now, there's a live viewing party of the marketing masterpiece." People wanted to see the marketing masterpiece. You can build a story around the video. Yeah, it took me months to create and I went to Bucharest to finish the video and didn't work.
Dean: Yeah. You went to the wrong place.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: The Four Seasons, the wrong Four Seasons, right, you made a reservation in Budapest and you went to Bucharest.
Eelco: Stop laughing.
Dean: That's funny though.
Eelco: I wanted to go to a Four Seasons in Europe.
Dean: Yeah. The Budapest one is beautiful.
Eelco: Yeah. I went there with my wife, that was six months ago. I wanted to go earlier. I went online and Four Seasons Europe, Budapest. Okay, cool, let me book a ticket to Budapest. Then, I went to book a ticket. I went to book that hotel in Bucharest. I was like, "Where's the Four Seasons in Bucharest?" I was like, because I just bought a ticket to Bucharest.
I was like, "Screw it, man, I bought a ticket to Bucharest instead of Budapest." I went to Bucharest to finish the video. To create that.
Dean: At the Holiday Inn?
Eelco: It think it was a high end. It was okay, but I wasn't the Four Season Budapest. I didn't finish the video there. Yeah, I built this whole story around the video. It's working now and it's working two years, three years, four years. We're going to translate in English and it's going to built ...
Dean: Still waiting.
Eelco: Yeah. I know.
Dean: Is it all slides or some live action, all slides and?
Eelco: I think there's two or three live actions and you're included in one of them.
Dean: Great. Yeah.
Eelco: There's like a one-minute clip of you where you talk about the whole Stop Your Divorce thing. It's all slides. Actually, I never told this, but the four-hour video is 3800 slides. Yeah. It's 10 slides per minute. Every six seconds is a new slide. It's funny because when I tell people that, they go, "It will never work."
Dean: Right.
Eelco: I told my father-in-law, because he's fascinated about how ... the way I do business. Daniela, my wife, tells him, "He just launched a video and did this, this and this." He loves it when I'm making money. He's just like, "That's fun. Yeah."
Dean: My baby girl is going to be okay.
Eelco: Exactly. Exactly. My wife explained like, "Yeah, this PowerPoint with these many thousand slides." He'll be like, "Yeah, that will not work." It worked. I got home and he was there. I was like, "One thing about the video, you should remove the slides because PowerPoint doesn't work. Because I remember," he's from corporate business. "I remember when we have PowerPoints, people were sleeping after 40 minutes. Plus, people's attention span can never be longer than 40 minutes."
I asked him, "Have you ever been to a movie and do you fall asleep after 40 minutes? Or ... "
Dean: People binge watch.
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: They binge watch all the time.
Eelco: Yeah. It's these assumptions we all have about certain things. I created a video pure by instinct, gut feeling, knowledge from the best obviously. This is just captivating. This will work. We got off. Now, I have two, I have a four hour and a five-hour 15-minute version. They're all just really ...
Dean: Do you say that in the super signature, watch this four-hour -.
Eelco: No. No.
Dean: It's all one video, so they go and they start and they're going to bookmark their spot and come back and watch the whole thing, yeah.
Eelco: It's really a thing. I was at gym and there was a guy that come up to me and he showed me all the screenshot he made from the video, because he was like, "Yeah, there's so much knowledge in the video. It really does something to people." That's been a big game changer for my business to really create one piece. One piece that can work for years instead of a thousand small pieces.
Just one piece and that will drive the business. Which it forces you to really think deeply about what you're going to say and how you're going to say it and what aren't you going to say and how could you make it in a way that it could survive years and year and years. I'm not talking about Facebook ads in the video. It's super ...
Dean: That's exactly the context is what doesn't change.
Eelco: Yeah. Exactly. It's 100% timeless and the offer is timeless. When I look at business, it's been a huge game changer. Most people will never do it. That's why it's competitive because ... and I'm a good marketer. Me as a good marketer spending months on one piece and ...
Dean: I know it's against like that as the ... it's on a speed content creator, right?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: For me to be thinking about creating something epic like that, which I am, that I shared with you. That when I go from here, I'm heading back to Toronto and I'll be there for a month. That's my intention as well. I'm there creating something that I shared with you, getting this series of an epic video that's really putting in the effort to put something together.
Eelco: Yeah. It's so good when you really make something where you're really proud of as a marketer. Man, this is really, really good.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: If that's the intention, it's going to survive time. Yeah.
Dean: There's something about that, because we're definitely ... we reward as a society things that are ... that take time and effort. That's funny, it's like that movies or art, works of art. That's really the whole thing.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I look at somebody like Quentin Tarantino, as an example, somebody like that as an artist in a way that he's got ... he's going to do 10 movies. This one coming up is his 9th movie. Yeah. I wonder how that's going to play out. Looking back at its catalog, it's kind of that will stand the test of time for a long time, all his movies are timeless.
Eelco: Yeah. I had a conversation with Dolly about it last week about content inspiration. It's so easy to create a lot of content nowadays. You can post two, three, four, posts a day on Instagram. You can put on a new YouTube video every day and all that stuff. Or, you can really do the Tarantino way. What you create has to be 10 out of 10. It has to be amazing.
If you do that, even if you would send out one email a month, but it's the most amazing valuable email. It's funny, I got an email from John Reese a couple of weeks ago, and it was like this 20-page email. I'm like, "Yeah. The guy doesn't send off five emails a week or daily email."
Dean: It's like, when you get an email from him ...
Eelco: It's interesting.
Dean: ... event.
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I was thinking like imagine like having an Instagram page where you post once a month but it's like the most amazing thing ever.
Dean: I was just withdrawn in Miami, just the day before I saw you in Miami actually. We spent two days together, like non-stop. Yeah. It's funny that you got an email from him.
Eelco: It's the same thing with the million-dollar launch in 2005 I think it was when he launched the Traffic Secrets. That was a marketing masterpiece. The whole thing was perfectly orchestrated.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: That's why it was a million-dollar launch. It was no have stuff. The sales page was amazing. Everything was good. The product was really great. It was really well orchestrated. It's good. I'm falling more in love with really orchestrating great stuff.
Dean: That makes sense.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. There's a thing about content. You talked a little bit about things being timely. I like contexts that are timeless.
Eelco: That's what I meant by the way.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: There's a show in, I'm sure you have part of it here too. In the US, the longest running show, news-type show, on television is 60 Minutes. They've had the same format for 50 years. That was every Sunday night at 7:00, you can count on it, tick, tick, tick, tick, 60 minutes. Three 20-minute or 15-minute to 20-minute segments about the three most fascinating timeless things that are ... or timely things that are going on. The context ...
Eelco: Is timeless, yeah.
Dean: ... of Sunday night, the three most fascinating things that are going on right now, that is timeless. There's something about that that we're always ... knowing the difference between the things that were going to be, that are going to continue for 25 years as a benchmark, the framework kind of thing.
Eelco: What's the idea of the name 60 Minutes, I never got that.
Dean: That's how long the show is.
Eelco: No.
Dean: What do you mean?
Eelco: I think it's like 20 minutes, right?
Dean: No. The show is 60 minutes.
Eelco: Yeah, oh, it is.
Dean: The show is 60 minutes long, and in that is three 20-minute segments or 15, whatever with commercials, 15 to 17-minute segments.
Eelco: Because we don't have it here. When I watched it online, I was like, "Yeah, but this whole show is like 15 or 17 minutes? Why it's called 60 Minutes?"
Dean: Right. Oh gosh, because they show the individual segment on thing. Yeah, that's what 60 Minutes is that in 60 minutes, it's a deep dive into the things that are going on right now.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, so they might do something about Iran right now and whatever is happening or whatever is going on in the news.
Eelco: What's one of the best movies you watched last year?
Dean: Last year? What is one of the best movies I've seen. I'll tell you what is overtaking my mind as you said the best movies is I'm excited to see right now to see today, hopefully, this Yesterday movie. Have you seen the concept of it?
It's a Danny Boyle movie. This guy is a musician who's struggling in the UK. He's about to give up. Then, as he's driving home from one of his gigs, he gets hit by a bus and at the exact moment, the lights or the power, or something happens all over the world. That when he wakes up out of his coma that nobody remembers the Beatles. Everything about the Beatles has been wiped off the face of the earth.
He's the only one that remembers. His girlfriend buys him a guitar and they're at a picnic and he's playing Yesterday. They're all sitting around the table and going, "That's the most beautiful song I've ever heard. When did you write that one?" They think he wrote it, right? It's so funny because he's the only one that remembers. He goes along to have this amazing career. The premise for that movie had me right at the beginning, because that's a unique concept.
Eelco: You think it's going to be exposed?
Dean: Yeah, of course, I think. That's the big thing at the end I think is that the things that looks like Paul and Ringo kind of show up, perhaps, I don't know. They don't tell you. It's just the premise of the thing that he becomes. What would that be like if you were the only person in the world that remembers The Beatles. The funny thing, what they say, "That's the most beautiful song I've ever heard." The girl's friends go, "It's not Coldplay. It's not Fix You."
Eelco: Yeah. When we watched a movie in Toronto a couple of weeks ago, before they showed the movie, they showed this clip about all The Beatles pieces in all the different movies, you remember?
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Maybe it was a pre-frame for the movie.
Dean: That could have been.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. What did we see in Toronto?
Eelco: Booksmart.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: It's Booksmart, right?
Dean: That's right, Booksmart.
Eelco: That was fun.
Dean: Which was cute. That was well done too.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Then, I saw that. I saw a movie in Toronto called the Echo Canyon which was a documentary about the music scene in Laurel Canyon in the '60s and '70s when everybody moved there. All these bands that was like the epicenter of the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills and Nash and Neil Young and all these The Mamas and The Papas. All these bands that came through there. It was really, really well done.
Eelco: Yeah. Have you seen Finding Sugar Man?
Dean: Yes, that's old but I loved it too.
Eelco: Yeah. People are going to hate me for this, but I just searched for it and there's now ... there's this article about the whole movie why they framed him in a completely different way. The guy who actually created the movie, he committed suicide because a lot of it wasn't really true. Sugar Man now, he's an addict for a long time, heroin addict. It's super bad story. The movie, it was ...
Dean: It's a feel good story.
Eelco: Exactly, yeah. I haven't watched the movie. I wanted to watch the movie but it's not ... it's funny, a lot of movies that were on Netflix are not on Netflix anymore like Superman, Chef Gordon is not on Netflix anymore.
Dean: Really?
Eelco: Yeah. In here in Holland, which is ...
Dean: That's funny.
Eelco: We should go to Chef Gordon again.
Dean: Yes, that was awesome.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I like chef.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That movie was fantastic.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. I like everything about him, just so ...
Eelco: You have the same vibe in a way. Yeah.
Dean: Maybe that's why I resonate with it so much, it's just not ... He's crystal clear. He's just got a great life. I mean, that's the funny thing. How long has he been in that house in Hawaii? Since the '70s, right? It's like you go there and aside from being on the ocean and this amazing location and stuff, but it's a fairly modest house but ...
Eelco: If it didn't have the history it wouldn't be that special. It's a great house.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: But, yeah.
Dean: Just the fact that the consistency of it that he's been there all that time, that that became the action central for Maui for everybody who's coming through there but what a great ... I learned so many lessons from that movie.
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah.
Dean: Coupons.
Eelco: Coupons, yeah.
Dean: Love and relationship. Equity.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Something about it. Have you heard from him or done anything?
Eelco: By email. We have some email exchange.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: Then Danny, his friend, he came visit us also last year here. We went to buy an bitterballen.
Dean: Wow, nice.
Eelco: He wants to build this bitterballen empire.
Dean: A bitterballen empire in the U.S.?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's funny.
Eelco: He sees this franchise and we went to the Foodhallen, it's something here in Amsterdam where they have a really good bitterballen so we should go.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Joe Polish has built a nice relationship with Alice Cooper.
Eelco: Yeah, and with Danny as well.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That could be a fun thing. We talked about doing a live interview with Shep and Alice-
Eelco: Alice, great.
Dean: ... at the ...
Eelco: Annual?
Dean: ... annual event.
Eelco: That would be great.
Dean: Something like that.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, that would be awesome.
Eelco: Yeah. Who's somebody that you would love to meet?
Dean: Max Martin.
Eelco: Oh, he's the producer?
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, for sure. That's number one-
Eelco: He's from Sweden?
Dean: ... on my list. Yeah, Sweden. Max Martin, Rick Rubin.
Eelco: Rick Rubin. Well, I was just thinking about Rick Rubin. I was talking about you have the same vibe as Shep, sort of. Then I'll say like, "Well, you definitely have the same vibe Rick Ruben."
Dean: I was this close to having dinner with Rick Rubin a few years ago because my friend, Neil Strauss, is good friends with Rick Rubin, sees them all the time every day in Malibu. Neil has said that same thing to me that we have the same energy, that same thing. He had arranged that we were going to have sushi at Katsuya with Rick one night. I think he was working with Aerosmith at the time and they were working on stuff late and it didn't work out but I had invited Tim Ferriss to come to the dinner. I said to Tim or to Neil I said, "Listen, I know Tim Ferriss really wants to meet you but he'd love to meet Rick. Can I invite Tim?"
Tim was up in San Francisco. I called him and I said, "Get on the plane and come down and let's have dinner with Rick Rubin and Neil Strauss," because he never met Neil. I'm like Shep that can do and give relationship equity kind of stuff.
Tim came down but it didn't work out that we got to meet Rick but he got to meet Neil and they've become really good friends because of that. I feel like a nice matchmaker there.
Eelco: I think that both guys would have liked Rubin.
Dean: Yes, exactly because he's gotten to know him through Neil.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, so it's like ...
Eelco: Interesting story as well how he recreated his health.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. It is pretty interesting. Yeah, from resetting his whole hormonal thing, getting out first thing in the morning and getting sun on your body. It's an interesting thing but those two are on my list. Yeah, Max Martin and Rick.
It's funny how I look at that as to why I'm so attracted to the what you might call behind the scenes kind of guys like that. I don't look at it like that so much as I look at it as their idea guys, really. That that's really the thing. That's what I look at what I am. We're sharing with you yesterday this idea of the scale ready algorithm. Those are words that I've really come to put on what I create, where if I can figure out how ... Like a direct response campaign that will get a result, once I crack the code on that, that that's ready to now roll that there's a difference between scaling something and getting something scale-ready. That's my goal.
My joy is to crack the code and get something scale-ready. I don't have any interest in scaling anything because there's absolutely nothing about scaling that appeals to me. I mean the rewards of scaling are appealing to me but in terms of the disciplined execution of a scale-ready algorithm is what scaling is about and where I'm more drawn is to the discovering the scale-ready algorithm. That's why I'm so attracted to somebody like Max Martin or Rick Rubin who can be a catalyst with an artist who is then going to take that scale-ready algorithm, a song is a scale-ready algorithm, and they're going to take and run with it.
I just love the fact that if you take all the top people who've written number one songs in the world, the list goes; Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Max Martin. Nobody would be able to pick Max Martin out of a lineup. He's a 50-year old Swedish guy living in Sweden and Beverly Hills that just is in the studio cranking out the hits and as soon as he's done with one, he's back in the studio. I just love that. He did with Katy Perry, he's written well basically all the songs that hear on the radio over the last 20 years.
Eelco: Right.
Dean: When he did, Katy Perry had five number ones on one album. She toured on that for three years and you look at the Taylor Swift, all of her number ones that she's had, have been Max Martin songs and her whole thing is two years of the cycle of the world tour. Meanwhile, he's back in the studio working with Justin Timberlake or working with Pink or whoever, Ariana Grande and making more songs. I find that that joyful. That is the kind of thing where you get the stay in your bliss, you know?
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's good.
Dean: Yeah. That's it. I think it's a lot of that is the permission. I think a saying with Dan Sullivan that we all have clues as to what your unique ability is, what the thing is that you're maybe better than anybody at or that you feel you're best at, and I think that the clue that you're on the right track is when it feels like, "Well, I can't possibly just get paid to do this." That feels like that's the right thing. That's the clue that you're on the right track.
Eelco: Yeah. Look at Joe with Genius Network. He thought of Genius Network, he would have done it for free but somebody advised, "No, no. You should charge 25k so you could get good people and they're committed." "Okay, let's do it," but he would do it for free.
Dean: Yeah, and he did for years. We used to have these great meetings and just office.
Eelco: Yeah. When did you get into 25K?
Dean: I've been there since before 25K. It's like the whole thing, we used to do ... In the '90s, we would do these mastermind meetings with all the guys that were doing info publishing. That was the hot new thing back then so all of us were not getting together as anything other than peers, sharing the ideas of the stuff we were discovering and working on, sharing ideas and critiquing, copy and helping brainstorm and stuff with everybody. That would be what we would do.
Robin Robins is the first one who suggested that ... He was thinking about putting a paid group together and, yeah, he did it. That was, I think, 25 people the first and then kept growing from there, and now it's up hundreds. It's taken on a life of its own but there's a thing where Joe, it's not coming to learn from Joe. Joe's curating and connecting people to this Genius Network. It's a great thing. It's right in his go zone, you know?
Eelco: That's great.
Dean: He hasn't seen this yet but I did this as a surprise for him. We did a podcast called the Magic Rapport Formula.
Eelco: Yeah, I remember.
Dean: You do?
Eelco: Back in the days.
Dean: Yeah. I had shared with you my new capability here, my unicorn that does the visual notes series, the how to do that episode for us. We've got all the visual notes from that episode all done. I'm going to give that to Joe.
There's actually another example. This girl, Lacy, who does these notes. There's a perfect example that when we were talking about the things that she does, one of them is she takes amazing visual notes with drawings and illustrations and just perfect like summary capsules notes. She came to Breakthrough Blueprint as the marketing director for a company that I worked with. I was just amazed that her note-taking ability. It was great. Anyway when I reconnected with her to do some stuff for me, it was funny how her words about the visual note-taking, one of the things that ... My ears perked up when you said that because, "If I could just do that that would be my dream come true, is just the do visual notes."
You can't believe that that's something that somebody would pay you for and it's funny how you avoid looking for opportunities to really do the thing that you would do for free because you think that can't be it. Even that, for a lot of years, I kept thinking to myself that it can't just be the ideas, you got to actually do the-
Eelco: Do, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, and do it and scale stuff. But it's have no interest in that.
Eelco: No, no. No, I told you next week or not this week when we do the Breakthrough Blueprint, there will be a girl on a hill maybe. Again, her notetaking capabilities, it's unbelievable. You're going to love it.
Dean: Better than these.
Eelco: I don't know if they're better but different.
Dean: They have a note off.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. But same thing?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Really grasping the idea and then within minutes, creating a great image. For us as creators, we love that.
Dean: I love it.
Eelco: It's the best present you can get when somebody does something with your idea and make something of it.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's the value, again, of creating content. Of creating content that is audio that you've got ... That's a derivative of the audio. It wasn't for this, it wasn't for this audio then we wouldn't have that as an opportunity.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah, so good.
Dean: I like it so I think Joe's going to love this.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's funny. Talk to me about your biggest insight throughout the year.
Eelco: Yeah. One of them was really making marketing masterpieces. There was a big one. I think that was the biggest one that really focus on one thing while you know like, "Okay, this is going to change everything. It's going to work for years."
Also one big insight was taking more time off to work on that and to take the time to think and digest. That's been a big one. It's so easy to go, go, go and to be busy. Also I did a lot of internet fasting this year so I was offline for a long period of time. It's such a game-changer. It's just really being off all the impulses.
Dean: Yes. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that because looking at you, you've melted away certainly since the last I saw. In addition to the internet fasting, it looks like you were doing some intermittent fasting or some selective fasting.
Eelco: Yeah, it's funny.
Dean: Let's talk a little bit about that because we had a conversation about it a year ago and here you are.
Eelco: Yeah. I think a year ago in like two weeks something like that because I remember when we did the Breakthrough Blueprint last year, I just started ... Something clicked in my mind because I was 130 kilos which is like 290 pounds or something I think? I was just heavy and tired and wasn't in a good place. Then halfway June last year, I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, "Why can't I get to sleep like? What's wrong?" Because my life is great; good family, good friends, business is doing great. I'm feeling good. My life is really good but I'm not feeling good.
I got this insight that, "Okay. It's probably a physical thing like I'm physically out of balance and that's why I can't sleep." That was the first thought then the second thought was, and it got triggered by Joel Weldon, also from Genius Network. At one of the Genius Network events he started sharing about 40 years ago, there was a guy on a plane sitting next to him who was almost harassing him like, "Yeah, you're unhealthy and you're drinking Coke, and you're eating steak. Why do you think you're tired?"
Dean: He said that to Joel?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Joel was overweight and-
Eelco: Yeah, he was overweight, he was tired. He just came from a speaking gig, exhausted. That was a moment for Joel and he explains it as in, "I always thought two plus two equals five," that was the moment something clicked and I noticed, "Okay. That's not true. Two plus two equals four." Once you see that two plus two equal four, you can't unsee it. You can't-
Dean: What do you mean by that? Reality you mean that-
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: ... once you really saw the reality is-
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. He shared that he didn't had sugar for the last 40 years or something-
Dean: Wow.
Eelco: ... and he haven't drunk anything else but water for the last 40 years.
Dean: Really?
Eelco: Yeah. The whole group was like, "Wow! Really?"
Dean: Yeah, that seems-
Eelco: When I tell people what I did or what I'm doing they'll be like, "Yeah. Well, you can't sustain it," or, "It's going to be tough," or whatever but when Joel shared it, I saw the results.
Dean: Because he's fit.
Eelco: The guy's 78 or whatever and he's doing water skiing a couple times a week and he's speaking everywhere. He's not just fit but radiant.
Dean: Fit as a fiddle.
Eelco: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: You could say, yes.
Eelco: I saw the accumulation of 40 years no nothing else with water. I was like, "That's interesting," but that was two years ago and sometimes you get an insight but it doesn't really click?
Dean: Right.
Eelco: A year ago while I was awake first thought was like, "Why can't I sleep?" Second thought was, "What would happen if for the rest of my life, I would never eat sugar anymore. What would happen if for the rest of my life, I won't eat any bread and I would just drink water?" I made this rule for myself-
Dean:That ain't living.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. That's what we thought. I made this rule, "What if I would have the big six?" The big six for me is meat, fish, chicken, veggies, nuts and eggs, "If I would just have that for the rest of my life, what would happen?"
Dean: The big six.
Eelco: Yeah. I was thinking like-
Dean: I'm going to write that down because that's some-
Eelco: It's easy.
Dean: ... profound wisdom right there. That's a wisdom bomb. Yeah, we need a little audio bumper here. Wisdom bomb coming at you. The Big Six.
Eelco: That's the big six. It's a good title for a book; The Big Six Diet.
Dean: The Big Six Diet.
Eelco: It's just a keto but also call it a big six. I envision like, "How would I feel in like a week?" Oh, probabl;y horrible because my body will scream like, "Give me some sugar or give me some carbs."
How would I feel in a month? Well probably pretty good already. How would I feel in a year? How would I feel in two years? Then I started envisioning myself getting older and older and seeing my kids and my grandkids. I was like, "Wow! If I would just do this, if I would commit to this for the rest of my life; my whole life will change." I just made the commitment like ...
Dean: The cascading. You saw all that ...
Eelco: Yeah. I made the commitment; in my life, I will never have sugar anymore.
Dean: Wow!
Eelco: In my life, I'll never have certain types of foods that I was addicted to. Yeah, I just made that commitment and ... I made a commitment to get healthier a million times before. Every day, every day I made the commitment like, "Today I'm going to get healthier," or, "tomorrow-
Dean: Today is the day.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Dean: No, tomorrow. Starting on Monday-
Eelco: yeah, yeah. Now I'm going to eat-
Dean: Starting on Monday.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: That's the other thing that you realized, there's only now or not now.
Eelco: True. True.
Dean: Anytime, no matter what Monday, beginning of the month, next week, any of that stuff, it's a very clever way that our present Eelco tries to trick future Eelco.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's just really the decision like, "Okay. Never again," instead of once in a while because I'll know if I'll have a doughnut right now, I'll be 60 pounds heavier in two months.
Dean: The big six diet; 1. Meat, 2. Fish, 3. Veggies-
Eelco: Chicken.
Dean: Chicken, chicken. 4. Veggies, 5. Fruit?
Eelco: No fruit.
Dean: You're mad at fruit.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: Yeah, you're mad at fruit.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Five is nuts?
Eelco: Yup.
Dean: Number six is eggs?
Eelco: Yup.
Dean: The Big Six: meat, fish, chicken, veggies, nuts and eggs, and no fruit.
Eelco: No fruit.
Dean: You sure about the fruit?
Eelco: Yup.
Dean: You're mad at fruit.
Eelco: I'm not mad at fruit but I'm addicted. I know that then because-
Dean: It's a gateway to Krispy Kremes.
Eelco: Yeah, it is. A lot of health the experts would tell me like, "Yeah, but you need some fruit ,"or, "you should have some dairy," or whatever like whatever it is but for me, I made the decision I want to have the foods that are not stimulating me and fruit, I know I would eat a lot of bananas and apples and oranges because it's sugar. There's sugar in it. Fruits is not bad but what it does to me, I'm just addicted to the whole feeling of the highs of, for example, sugar or the saturating effect when you have a coffee-
Dean: Just so I'm on the clear, no fruit?
Eelco: No fruit. Zero.
Dean: No fruit.
Eelco: Yeah. Yeah. I know that stuff.
Dean: I know that's a bad ...
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. I'll have some supplements to ...
Dean: Well, that changes everything. What kind of supplements? It's all chemicals.
Eelco: Yeah. Magnesium, multi and fish oil. That's what I take.
I went from, let's say when it comes to health, last year I was a tree out of 10, I think. Two out of 10, three out of 10 now. I'm at 7.5 out of 10. There's some improvements to make but I'm not worried about that. I lost almost all of my excessive weight and-
Dean: Yeah, 50 pounds you say.
Eelco: Yeah, 55 pounds.
Dean: You look like a preteen Swedish boy.
Eelco: Exactly.
Dean: I mean, that's ...
Eelco: In the whole year, no struggle. No pain. No discipline. No ... I just don't see it anymore. It's just not there anymore. I am zero ... I could, for example, be super hungry and there's chocolate or chips or all the things that are ... It's not even an option. It's the whole 100% idea.
Dean: What about the incidentals sugar in some of the ...
Eelco: It happens.
Dean: ... sauces or something with meat or-
Eelco: It happens. It happens.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: If it's there, it's there but I won't order it.
Dean: `I got you.
Eelco: I've had plenty of sugar probably last year. I will eat a lot of chicken wings.
Dean: Yeah, that's-
Eelco: I'll order chicken wings and there's chili sauce or whatever. Well, it's filled with sugar but whatever. I'll order spare ribs and the barbecue sauce and stuff. I wouldn't order the barbecue sauce but if it's on top, I'll just eat it but it's just like ... Yeah, I don't even think about that.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: Or when you have, for example ... We had breakfast this morning and I eat a lot of eggs yes, and when they have the scrambled eggs I know this is not pure scrambled eggs. There's probably cheese or whatever in it because it's different. It's moisture and I'm that anal about it. I might become that anal about it in the future but right now, it's no.
Dean: It's working right now.
Eelco: Yeah. I'm 39 next week and ... Or no, in two days-
Dean: That's a damn hill.
Eelco: ... and from 'till my 38th birthday, I was struggling with food. From my 38th birthday to now, no more struggles. That's been the biggest game-changer. It's a silent struggle. It's a silent addiction. A lot of people suffer from it.
Joel's been a drug addict for a long time. If you would tell Joe like, "You know what? You got to enjoy life a little bit, man, just do one snort of cocaine a month-"
Dean: Yeah. Just one-
Eelco: Just one.
Dean: Just a little bit. It's your birthday.
Eelco: Do a micro dose.
Dean: It's your birthday.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Just enjoy it.
Dean: Come on! You're going to make me do this on my own?
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. You're smart, man.
Dean: You're not going to have a-
Eelco: You're a successful entrepreneur, your smart man.
Dean: Have a birthday bump with me?
Eelco: Yeah. I know like, "Yeah, I'm just-" I didn't know that in the beginning but after a month, two months I'm like, "Yeah, I'm just addicted."
Dean: Sugar addict.
Eelco: Yeah. I'm addition to-
Dean: Sugar. Food.
Eelco: Yeah, food that gives a certain feeling and that's why I don't do the fruits because I know the fruit gives me a certain feeling. When it gives a certain feeling, I'm like, "I'm getting addicted to it." Same with coffee, for example. I think coffee is fine. I think coffee is not bad for you. It actually has a lot of health benefits but I knew I'm craving coffee because it gives me a certain feeling so I cut out the coffee as well. It's just that I just want to get off of the whole addicted feeling towards certain foods and that's been the big game-changer, not feeling dependent any more on food. That's been a ... Of course, lost a lot of weight. I think I lost most of the weight in four months and after that, it was really slow but no more-
Dean: Stabilized, yeah.
Eelco: Yeah, no more information, sleep much better.
Dean: You just feel better all of it.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: I'm comfortable on stage now. I feel better ideas, not anxious anymore. It's just different. If we talk about game changed from past year and here and I remember with Breakthrough Group last year, I had a big bottle like what I have right here, a green smoothie. This is my power drink. This just gives me everything. But something already clicked-
Dean: Did someone make that here for you or do you-
Eelco: No, my wife just brought it.
Dean: She brought it here?
Eelco: Yeah. Something clicked last year around June 14th and we had the Breakthrough Group in two, three weeks after. I was in the middle of the first couple weeks here, the detoxing?
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: But I was drinking the shakes but I'm still 300 pounds or 290 but because it clicked, I already felt healthy. I already knew like, "I'm going to get healthy." That's also something that I envisioned like, "What will this do to my body?" I wasn't thinking about losing weight, I was thinking about how can I restore all the organs and the liver and the gut and all that stuff. When you connect with that, you think differently about food as well.
That was on my mind the first couple of months as well. I've lost that thought the last couple of months so I want to get back to that like really almost meditating on what happens when you put certain foods in your body and what happens to like-
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah. I feel a 7.5 out of 10 and the goal for the next year, because now I see the value of a year like what a year can do, I'm like, "Yeah, if I can get to an eight or a nine out of 10 next year, that will be dope. That'll be cool."
I saw this great post from a Charles Poliquin who passed last year or maybe this year, and it was about advice, that most advice is good for most people but some advice is horrible for great people or certain people. For me, if the advice you get when it comes to health it's always, "Yeah, you need balance. You need to enjoy once in a while," everything with moderation, all that stuff. For me that's the worst advice ever. I think for 90% of people, could be great advice, good advice. For me is the worst advice ever.
Dean: That's funny because the popular wisdom of having a cheat day.
Eelco: Oh, man.
Dean: Just have your cheat day. What's happening there?
Eelco: It'll destroy my life again.
Dean: It's interesting. It's like JJ virgin. She says, "That's like saying to an alcoholic that's after your first six days of being sober and-
Eelco: Get drunk.
Dean: Yeah, "go ahead and reward yourself with a-
Eelco: It's so true.
Dean: ... cheat day. Go on a bender for a Saturday night."
Eelco: It's so true.
Dean: Then, "You can start right back on Sunday."
Eelco: Yeah, that's so true. I don't know, man. I think it will work for a short period of time but you can't sustain it. If you do a cheat day every week or even every two-
Dean: Then you start to think ... I know exactly what happens because you start to think ... This is why one of the things we talked about over the course of the year here, this idea of 100% is easier than then 99% and-
Eelco: It's the best quote ever.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: I live by that quote right now.
Dean: That's really the thing because as soon as you allow room for that ... If you have a cheat day or a cheat meal that if you allow Saturday night blow out do pizza or whatever else, and then by Monday you're back and you're on track and you have nothing really happened, you're like, "Okay, yeah. That's great. See? I can handle that. Nothing happened there." Then you're looking forward to Saturday as your cheat day instead of this cheap meal and - cheat day, that should be fine.
Eelco: Then they go on a holiday for two weeks and-
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: ... the home on the holiday-
Dean: - just on Wednesday, hump day, I'll add a little something on hump day that should be fine," then you're negotiating and slowly it's wedge in its way.,
Eelco: The next thing you know you'll be having sex with a goat.
Dean: That's one, two, three and you're having sex with a goat.
Eelco: That's what Joe Polish said when we were neck around, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want some chips or not? Next thing you know you'll be having sex with a goat." I'm like, "Yeah, it's so true."
Dean: That's pretty funny.
Eelco: Yeah, so the 100%-
Dean: - funny.
Eelco: Yeah. The 100% idea, that's the whole thing. There's a devil and what are you going to do? You're going to let him get in? Yeah, let's get him in and he'll destroy everything. I just don't let the devil in any more. Yeah, I just know this is this is for life. This is for life and it's not a big deal. People make it a big deal and for the first three months, I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell anybody that I was going to go forever.
People started noticing after a couple of months like, "Hey, you look better and you're losing weight, and you're drinking the smoothies and stuff," but I was eating healthy, I was always aware of eating healthy. I just messed up every day so I drank my smoothies or had my steak or whatever but I just messed up every day or most of the days. It wasn't knowledge because I knew exactly what I had to do. I didn't tell anybody and oftentimes when you go do something like that, people say like, "Yeah. You need to tell other people. You need accountability partners." all that stuff. For some people that might work as well; for me, it was more powerful to keep it to myself. I didn't tell my wife. I told nobody.
Until 100, 120 days or whatever and I started sharing with people.
Dean: You're on your way.
Eelco: Yeah. It's been a big game-changer and for me, I also feel that this is something that I spoke about ... I did a big event last weekends, two days ago. This is also a topic that I spoke about, not the weight loss but the whole idea of a 100% like, "What's the one thing that if you could fix that in your life, would be the domino effect for so many other things. If you could identify that one thing and make the decision, 'Okay. Never again.'"
There's one guy who stood up and he's like, "Yeah, I want to eat healthy as well and I'm drinking too much." Like three or four things so I said, "Yeah, good luck. It's not going to work. You're not going to end stop this and this and this and this and this." He wanted to get a little healthier, eat better and stop the drinking. I was like, "How much do you drink?"
"Well, not that often. A couple of times a week and but from zero to one, that's a big leap but from one to eight, it's easy. One to eight beers." I told him. Well we spoke about it and I was like, "What would happen if you forget about the food for next year, forget about it, just do what you want to do but just skip the drinking. What will happen?"
He was like, "Yeah."
"Well and in the year, you'll be a different person." It might not be a huge game changer but it will a game changer.
Dean: Right.
Eelco: I was like, "Okay, but also what would be tough? Let's not kid ourselves here, also be real like what's going to be tough?"
"Well, social pressure."
"Okay. Ask yourself the question, could you handle that social pressure? Are you stronger than, yes or no? If the answer is yes, well go ahead, stop the drinking." Also, "What would happen if you stopped drinking for the rest of your life?" because that's the whole thing, we stop drinking for a month or we make the commitment, "Okay. Next six months, I'm going to stop drinking or whatever." But then again you keep the door open for the devil and just don't let it in. Never again. Just never open it again and that's the whole ...
I feel that I would love to help people with this as well in the future and again, not just about food but the whole concept 100% and for life.
Dean: What's been the hardest thing for you?
Eelco: Nothing.
Dean: Nothing's been hard about it?
Eelco: Nothing.
Dean: What were the things that were the biggest triggers for you? What kind of strategy did you use to get through that first 100 days, whatever that was?
Eelco: Yeah. For me it was the first 30 days.
Dean: Okay, 30 days.
Eelco: Yeah, I was 290 pounds and unhealthy. When you're like that, I think you need 30, 40 days to go through it. I knew, "Okay. I'm going to change forever so," and I also decided it's going to be easy but I also knew that it's going to be hard in the first couple of weeks because your body ... It's just a physical thing. I really made the conscious decision, "Everything that's going to happen in the next 30 days, it's a physical thing. Don't listen to yourself because you're going to lie to yourself."
All the thoughts that you will get in the next 30 days day, not all of them, but most of them they're just not true because your body is lying through you right now because it's detoxing. What I did, I made the decision to walk every day. If I'm really tired like super tired, I'll sleep during ... Because I had my dip everyday around to 2:00, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. to 1:00 to at 3:00 p.m. that's when I get the dip so I got super tired. I did one of the two things all right went walk for a walk, just fresh air or I went for a nap, or I just survived. I was like, "Okay. It's just another day," because you got to go through these first 20, 30 days and acknowledging like, "Yeah, physically it's going to be tough."
That was every day to dip. Then in the first two weeks, every night, every other night I couldn't sleep so one night I could sleep and the other night, I couldn't sleep which is messing with you as well big time but I saw this as a journey. I was like. "Okay. I can't sleep. Why can't I sleep?" That's how I found out about the smoothies. I couldn't sleep. Why can't I sleep? I went to Google sleep combined with no carbs and no sugar. I'm not an expert but what I saw is that when you cut out sugars and carbs and all stuff completely, when you go keto, the body doesn't produce as much serotonin. if it doesn't produce as much serotonin, it doesn't make melatonin-
Dean: That sounds -
Eelco: When you don't create melatonin, you can't sleep.
Dean: ... uptake ... Yeah.
Eelco: I was like, "Okay. Let's look at this whole journey and let's going to learn from this, okay?" Then I was like, "Which foods increase serotonin?" I found a couple of seeds. I found spinach, like all these things and went to the supermarket super tired because I didn't sleep. I went to the supermarket, bought all that stuff, created a smoothie and I've been drinking that smoothie ever since because-
Dean: At night?
Eelco: No, during the day.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: It's a healthy smoothie. It's spinach, and broccoli, and cucumber, protein, cacao powder and so chia seed, pumpkin seed, two other seeds I think, avocado. It increases serotonin which increases melatonin which made me sleep. Literally, two days after I started drinking the smoothie, I started sleeping. I was like, "Wow!"
Dean: Wow!
Eelco: Yeah. That helps.
Dean: Yes.
Eelco: I just saw it as a journey.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: In the first 20, 30 days, yeah physically it was hard but mentally I was like, Y'all, this supposed to happen."
Dean: Do you a system for the eating part? Do you at home, do you eat out, do you-
Eelco: Everything. I've been traveling.
Dean: All of it?
Eelco: I think for the last 12 months, I've been traveling for five months total. This morning, I had a big breakfast. I ate eggs, I had bacon, I had sausage, I had nuts, I had seeds. I have all that stuff. I ate more steak than I ever have in my life. I eat asparagus, I eat chicken wings ... Just those six things and I have no system. The only system is those six things.
Dean: You can get them on basically any menu.
Eelco: Yeah. I mean, all menus like-
Dean: No matter where you go-
Eelco: Every restaurant has or chicken or fish or meat-
Dean: If they have a food, they don't have ... Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: You need meat, fish, chicken, veggies, nuts or eggs. If they don't have that, what are they doing?
Eelco: Yeah, exactly. I eat hamburgers, I eat all that stuff. I think the first 10 months I ate a lot of meat and now I feel like I need to cut down a little bit on the meat and now I eat more fish but it's-
Dean: That's funny. There's a restaurant in the U.S. called Arby's and they're a meat restaurant like McDonald's alternative kind of thing but Arby's but they're advertising statement like this, "We have the meat." Like it's the meat place. Everybody's talking about going to a plant-based diet or a plant-based vegetable diet. Well, they're coming out with meat-based vegetables so they have carrots that are made from meat.
Eelco: That's so funny.
Dean: Meat based vegetables, it's so they're ... Talk about knowing your audience though, right? They're exactly the kind of person who's not going to ... They're not going to get sucked into a plant-based vegetable diet.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Meat-based vegetables.
Eelco: Yeah. Also, I never count calories.
Dean: No, you don't worry about that, you just-
Eelco: No, zero.
Dean: Zero. Either you're hungry or you're-
Eelco: Yeah. Again, I'm eating-
Dean: I guess because you're doing all those things and you don't feel bloated, you don't feel in the combinations of the vegetables. What about like potatoes and ...
Eelco: No.
Dean: See, now that's a vegetable though. You get that in there and-
Eelco: It's a carb.
Dean: Ah, but you didn’t mention that, that ...
Eelco: Yeah. No, no vegetables.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: Yeah. Sorry, no vegetables. No potatoes.
Dean: No potatoes.
Eelco: Of course, we do vegetables but it's my personal rule and no one eats carbs.
Dean: Rice?
Eelco: Nope.
Dean: No rice.
Eelco: Nope.
Dean: No. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eelco: No pasta, no carbs. Of course, there's carbs and spinach and stuff but you get the carbs and you're -, no.
Dean: You know, your boy, -, is a potato lover.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: He's a potatoes-only kind of guy. That's his big ...
Eelco: Yeah. I think potatoes are great. I think that-
Dean: That's what Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller when he lost a hundred and something pounds. I spoke at now Dan Kennedy's super conference and Penn Jillette was speaking there and I had never met him but I saw him at this event, it was the first time, but I don't seen him on TV and it was right on the heels. He had just literally lost £120 or something but he did it, started out just potatoes.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Nothing but potatoes. The thing was more importantly than that there's any magic about potatoes was breaking the addiction to food that you realize, "Okay, we're just doing a reset pattern here."
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. Again, I'm not anti-certain foods. I'm like my wife is eating yogurt with her I'm like, "Yeah, well I'm not eating it but I'm not saying that's bad for you but for me, I cut it out."
Dean: Yeah, how do you ... I mean, with the kids and the house? There's bound to be Oreos or some ...
Eelco: No problem. I can literally-
Dean: Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Eelco: The moment I made the decision, I don't see it anymore. We know-
Dean: Isn't it funny how we don't ... Yeah, it doesn't require any discipline to not eat rocks?
Eelco: No, exactly.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: We don't even register that as food and take any discipline to not eat this bottle or if this was full of windshield wiper fluid, I would feel no compulsion to drink it.
Eelco: We went to Italy a couple weeks after I made the decision and it was an all-inclusive hotel, high-end and-
Dean: Pasta.
Eelco: ... the buffets and then the dessert. It was like the most beautiful thing you ever saw but I didn't see it. It wasn't on my radar. It's not that I didn't see it but I had zero cravings or it's just not an option. You just don't do it.
Dean: That's awesome.
Eelco: Yeah. It's the whole 100% effort for the rest of your life. It set me free. Again, this works for anything. This works for food, this works for internet addiction, this works for anything. If you're addicted to porn or whatever, like yeah, you can do it once a week or just never do it again.
Dean: Same.
Eelco: Yeah, with everything.
Dean: Cheat day.
Eelco: Yeah, cheat day, yeah.
Dean: Saturday.
Eelco: It's with everything. I never thought about it that way until I thought about it that way and it changed everything. I've had people come up to me who stopped drinking, stopped smoking and I never ... I don't know how to stop smoking. I never smoked in my life but because they heard the story they go, "Okay, yeah. Well, this is what it is."
Dean: It's interesting because Tony Robbins also said that, "Change is instant."
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, because-
Eelco: Which I never really believe. I was like, "Yeah." You know?
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Until I experienced it. I was like, "Wow! Okay."
Dean: The change is instant in the moment that you decide, that's it.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah. You have to decide for yourself because I talked about this at my event. I told them like, "Don't decide right now. You're now high on this event. You're like, "Oh, yeah. I can do this."
Understand this idea and do it whenever you're ready. When you're ready, make the decision but when it's extrinsic it's not going to work. It's got to be your decision and make the decision whenever you're ready. You can do it now or in two months, three months, five months, whatever, but make the decision to never again, if you're addicted, if you know like, "I'm addicted. Okay. Never again."
You think you'll miss out on so much stuff, you miss out on nothing. It's the same if you go off, I don't know, Facebook or whatever. You're like. "Yeah, yeah . I'm missing out a lot."
No. You figure out, after a couple of days, not really. You get your best friends or in your phone or-
Dean: Yeah. Look at that, that's something that I've been observing a lot lately is just the frequency of stuff, realizing that back 25 years ago the we only ... The frequency of stuff was getting the mail once a day and you'd see the news or whatever, the newspapers and the magazines and stuff that was your outlet or your intake to stuff.
I just recently read that, and we did the calculations on it, that in every hour or every minute of every day right now, there are 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube right now. Every minute.
Eelco: Three hundred hours?
Dean: Three hundred hour a minute.
Eelco: Okay. Maybe even more.
Dean: Times 60 ... Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Eighteen thousand hours per hour-
Eelco: I think more.
Dean: ... times 24, 432,000 hours of video divided by a 2000-hour work year; 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. It would take you 216 full work weeks non-stop to watch one day's worth of video that's posted up on YouTube. You start to realize we're beyond the point where we can keep up. There's no hope or keeping up.
Eelco: No, impossible.
Dean: I think we're getting ... But we're still trying. That's why there's novelty and there's new, we're constantly ... There's new stuff. Facebook goes to great lengths to make sure that there's novelty. That you're getting the dopamine it's like the slot machines. When you press your updates and, "Let's see, are there new people?" New updates going on here." It's a fresh squirt to dopamine and you keep coming back and you keep recycling.
Eelco: Yeah, man.
Dean: Yeah. To artificially put yourself in a position where it only comes once a day, it's like pushing the pause button.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: It's like this-
Eelco: It slows down time.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: You get so much more time.
Dean: What do you do with all your time now? You used to check the phone, constantly ... How often were you checking stuff or being on consuming mode?
Eelco: Well, if I had access all the time. The first second you get bored, you check your phone. You don't like ... I was never bored anymore.
Dean: Then two hours later?
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Eelco: Just consistently yeah. Whenever there is a moment, you check it. It's almost impossible not to check it. That's ...
Dean: That is really interesting, that our minds ... I think I was sharing with you that that's one realization, that our brains use 100% of our time.
Eelco: All the time, yeah.
Dean: Our attention is engaged 100% of the time that we're awake and we're afraid of not being engaged in something. I was mentioning, I've started ... When I get in the car turning it ... Not turning on the radio or a podcast or anything, and just driving to 10 minutes to Starbucks with nothing.
Eelco: How much more information do we need to do what we need to do?
Dean: There simple swaps though like that. I think that, as an exercise of swapping out listening to podcasts or listening to the radio for just listening to your thoughts, and then instead of watching another episode of Shark Tank on reruns, let's take that hour and have an episode of Think Tank yourself.
That's such an amazing thing. I consciously, in my schedule, set aside three or four sessions a week of just-
Eelco: Thinking.
Dean: ... thinking.
Eelco: Yeah, man.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: That's it.
Dean: Label that for a 50-minute focus fund. Fifty-minute timeframe.
Eelco: I did an interview with a Keith Cunningham last week, two weeks ago.
Dean: Yeah. I didn't realize but he's big on thinking talk.
Eelco: His book, it has over 700 thinking time questions.
Dean: Okay. That's great. I love that.
Eelco: He build this whole business and everything around thinking time.
Dean: Yeah, I love it.
Eelco: Yeah, it's great. It's really great.
Dean: That's great. I need to read it then.
Eelco: Yeah. It's his book; The Road Less Stupid is one of the best books ever.
Dean: That's great.
Eelco: I ordered 100 copies.
Dean: Oh, really? Wow!
Eelco: Yeah, so good. I think he's one of the best business thinkers of all time and one of the best business teachers as well.
Dean: Where does he live?
Eelco: Austin.
Dean: He's in Texas? Okay.
Eelco: Yeah. He was at the Genius Network the last time. He'll be at the annual event as well.
Dean: Yeah. Oh, that's great.
Eelco: Yeah. No, he's extraordinary. Extraordinary.
Dean: Yeah. Now did he come to Tony Robbins business mastery? Is that-
Eelco: Yeah, he teaches at the Business Mastery.
Dean: Okay. Great. That same guy. Got it.
Eelco: Oh, we got him? Great, nice. I got a message that they were stalled. It's simple but ...
Speaker: They were at the neighbors.
Eelco: Nice.
Dean: Look at this, you manifested them.
Eelco: Yeah, we just ... Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Yeah, I was at Business Mastery five years ago and he was talking about accounting, which is the most boring topic ever but in four hours things really, really help. Thanks. Supposed she's getting scared scary with a knife.
Dean: Yeah, exactly. Over there.
Eelco: Yup. He teach accounting for four hours and there are people in the audience who were accountants and they said, "Yeah, we've been studying this topic for four years and I learned more in these four hours than in four years."
Dean: Wow!
Eelco: Yeah, the guy us brilliant. I went to his 4-day MBA a couple years ago in Austin. He's just super prolific and great teacher, so much wisdom and all based from real experience.
Dean: Right on.
Eelco: One of the secrets that he never talks about almost never talks about is that the whole book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, is based on him.
Dean: He's the rich dad.
Eelco: He's the rich dad, yeah.
Dean: Wow.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah.
Dean: That's interesting.
Eelco: Yeah, yeah. One of the best thinkers I know.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Nice.
Dean: He doesn't seem to be old enough to be Kiyosaki's rich dad.
Eelco: I think he's in the 70's.
Dean: Okay.
Eelco: Yeah. Here, you get a signed copy.
Dean: Wow! Look at that.
Eelco: Here you are. Look at the thinking time. Just pull out one thinking time question.
Dean: One thinking time question?
Eelco: Random.
Dean: Let's have a thinking time question.
Eelco: We'll answer it.
Dean: "Advice from the Chairman of the Board," okay. I just scroll to thinking time?
Eelco: Yeah, the question.
Dean: Okay. "Where are we relying on the story and not the facts?" I'll read there and we'll pick one.
"Where are we relying on the story and not the facts? What solution have we created that is not working because we don't have the skill set, experience or bandwidth to successfully execute?" That's a good one. "What are the opportunities in front of me require additional knowledge or new skills?"
I see. There's hundreds of questions. This-
Eelco: Over 700 yeah. Every question, you could think about it for 30 minutes to 50 minutes.
Dean: "What decisions have I been postponing in the irrational hope that the problem will somehow resolve itself?"
Eelco: Yeah. It's so good. If you didn't ask that question to yourself-
Dean: Okay. You should honestly ask yourself that question.
Eelco: ... and think about it for 20, 30 minutes, imagine the wisdom you come up with. It's really good. It's a great book.
Dean: I love it. Well, thank you. This is awesome.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: I like ...
Eelco: Yeah, he autographed all of them.
Dean: ... the discipline of thinking time. It's a great but I've already got the Thinking Time so that would be good to have the thinking question. I like that.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: The Road Less Stupid.
Eelco: Yeah, cool man. Any last words of wisdom?
Dean: Let's see. It's so funny. How have we been talking because we could keep talking forever. This is ...
Eelco: I think for a while.
Dean: Yeah, it's funny.
Eelco: Let me check.
Dean: We're going Joe Rogan style here.
Eelco: Ninety minutes.
Dean: Wow!
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Well, there we go.
Eelco: Something like that.
Dean: Well, that would be ... I'm sure we'll do another session but that's all good stuff. I love to catch up.
Eelco: We could increase the periodic podcast to a quarterly podcast or whatever but I'll stick to this one.
Dean: We could.
Eelco: Bonus episodes.
Dean: Yeah, or we'll do bonus episodes while we're here but we only record them in the time that they're here.
Eelco: Yeah, exactly.
Dean: That's funny.
Eelco: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah, because we can about some more stuff or maybe we got some special guests-
Eelco: Yeah, that's a good idea too.
Dean: Right? That would be a good thing.
Eelco: Yeah. Cool man.
Dean: Okay. Let's get some meat or fish-
Eelco: Or chicken.
Dean: ... or chicken, yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Eelco: Let's do it.
Dean: But none of that sugar.
Eelco: No, no, no.
Dean: Okay. There we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, go deeper in how the profit activators can apply to your business; two things you can do. Right now, you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book and you can listen to the back episodes, of course if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talked about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA Process, you can download a book and a score card and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there.
That's it for this week. Have a great week and we'll be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.