Explore every episode of the podcast Thinking Out Loud with Dean Jackson

A brand is a buying reflex affecting now decisions. You don't have to beat Coca-Cola, you just have to win the individual moment someone chooses. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/014-establishing-a-brand/

In under 90 minutes I'm live on Zoom with Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy on their new book Who Not How. Join at ilovemarketingzoom.com. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/013-who-not-how-zoom/

Naming is everything. The closer a name gets to exactly what someone's looking for, the more it sells, even when the product inside doesn't change. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/004-what-s-in-a-name/

A lunchtime sushi recommendation shows the referral formula in action, and why doing the whole thing for someone raises your status in the tribe. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/003-live-referral-field-report/

Referrals happen in conversation. Instead of asking clients to spread the word, hand them the exact words to say the moment it comes up. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/002-secret-psychology-of-referrals/

The very first episode of Thinking Out Loud, recorded live from Genius Network. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/001-thinking-out-loud-episode-one/

Lee Iacocca sold the Mustang to 18-year-old boomers, then the minivan to those same buyers at 38. Demography is an inevitability worth getting in front of. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/012-lee-iacocca-target-market/

"Ideas without execution are worthless" misses the point. You can't execute nothing, and the only thing that beats flawless execution is a better idea. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/011-ideas-versus-execution/

To experience love you have to be willing to experience pain. The heart is a muscle, and heartbreak is how it grows stronger. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/010-love-is-pain/

Convenience is the most powerful, most underrated force shaping every decision we make. Make things effortless and people will flock to you. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/009-the-tyranny-of-convenience/

There's never been a better time to be an idea person. Bundle up a high-value outcome, outsource the execution for a fraction, and pocket the difference. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/008-execution-arbitrage/

Richard Viguerie hand-wrote 12,000 donor names to own a list no one else had. In a world run by algorithms, the hard-to-gather data is the edge. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/007-specialized-data/

The man who ran the MGM Grand booked the gap between what he earned and what he could earn as a loss. That mindset changes everything. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/006-working-backwards/

A $153 diet pill outsold the $19 ones by speaking to one exact frustration. The friction stopping people is where the opportunity is. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/005-when-is-a-diet-pill-worth-153/

A 1997 journal page that turned Cialdini's six weapons of influence into a worksheet, and the ad for six Muskoka lots that fired all six at once. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/074-how-to-use-the-6-weapons-of-influence-to-sell-anything-fast/

A page in Dean's 1997 journal, one phone call to the local cable company, and the $500 TV show that meant he never lost a listing on the nights it aired. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/073-how-taking-action-on-your-intuition-actually-pays-off/

A 1997 journal spread, Jerry Ballinger's Ferrari Mind Tuneup, and why running your day like a slalom race beats wandering it like a toddler at a picnic. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/064-structure-doesnt-slow-you-down-it-lets-you-fly/

Jeffrey Lant's egregious error number twelve, written on page 172 in 1997, and a recorded call where a prospect says your own ad copy back to you. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/063-how-to-write-copy-that-leads-people-to-yes/

Still on journal four, 1997: why Max Martin's hit-song chassis and the 8 Profit Activators are the same trick, and the formula sitting underneath both. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/062-creativity-isnt-a-gift-its-a-formula/

1997, around a pool in Encinitas with Eben and Joe. The seven-step storyboard sketched that afternoon still runs my business, one profit activator heavier. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/061-the-poolside-sketch-that-still-runs-my-whole-business/

Yesterday, it's okay to want what you want. Today, how you work out what that is: Dan Sullivan's 25-year question, and a property improvement plan for life. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/060-you-cant-want-what-you-want-until-you-know-what-you-want/

February 1997, a month into Florida, and the page where thirty-year-old me listed the day he actually wanted... plus why two hours a day makes you world class. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/059-its-ok-to-want-what-you-want-heres-how-to-get-it/

A 1997 page on turning one listing into more than one transaction: the weekly seller call, the one question at the end, and why customers notice for you. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/058-how-to-get-referrals-while-youre-still-doing-the-work/

People keep asking what I do in my journal. Here are the nine prompts, off a page from 1997, that turn a blank notebook into where your ideas start. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/057-9-journal-prompts-for-thinking-through-anything/

January 1997, journal four, a page listing every business under one category... plus what I'd tell my thirty-years-ago self about finishing just one of them. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/056-think-big-start-small-keep-going/

Forty days into reading my 1996 journals out loud: the three things that compounded for thirty years, and that your 2056 self will thank you for starting. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/055-3-things-your-future-self-will-thank-you-for-starting-today/

Gamal Aziz looked at a perfectly good $4 million restaurant in the MGM Grand and asked how high is high. The answer took it to $11 million a year. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/072-how-one-idea-turned-a-4m-yr-restaurant-into-11m-yr/

Free recorded messages were the highest-response thing we had in 1996, and the hiring system in my tickle trunk shows why the same idea works as video today. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/054-do-old-school-free-recorded-messages-still-work-today/

Straight out of my tickle trunk: the 1996 postcards and free recorded messages still pulling in 2026, and why the constraints made the copy so good. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/053-good-marketing-never-gets-old-proof-inside/

Three questions Steve Kross gave me thirty years ago for when something goes wrong with a customer, and the $5,000 mistake a KFC cashier made unknowingly. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/052-how-to-know-what-to-do-when-something-goes-wrong-with-a-customer/

Page 111 of journal three: the seven-phase buyer wow cycle. A wow never happens by accident. You storyboard the journey, then build one in on purpose. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/051-wow-experiences-dont-happen-by-accident/

Nine reasons time management never works, especially for the entrepreneurial ADHD brain. All nine on one page of journal three, and they still explain my week. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/050-9-reasons-time-management-fails-your-entrepreneurial-adhd-brain/

Dan Sullivan gave me free days, focus days and buffer days in 1996. Thirty years on, it's the buffer day, the one everybody wastes, that's the power move. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/049-the-most-underrated-day-in-your-week/

I found a 1996 journal page titled “Eben’s brilliant idea number 1009”... and it’s a good reminder that the ideas you’ll never build are still worth having. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/048-some-ideas-are-worth-having-even-if-they-never-happen/

A November 1996 page from the day Eben and I interviewed the authors of The One to One Future... and eight ideas from that book still run everything I do. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/047-your-relationships-are-worth-more-than-your-marketing/

Journal number three, and a pattern is emerging: two tools I use to take an idea from a page in my journal and walk it, box by box, into the real world. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/046-how-i-get-ideas-from-my-head-to-my-journal-to-the-world/

Page 8 of journal three: the dentist ad I shrank from a full page to a business card, and tripled the response by talking only to people who needed him now. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/045-this-idea-cut-ad-spend-by-87-and-tripled-the-response/

The 1997 Dan Kennedy keynote that laid out the right message, the right market and the right media, plus the three-step campaign Dean built from it. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/071-how-to-get-new-customers-in-any-market-in-45-days/

One line I added to an old recorded message changed everything. Treat every lead like you're personally responsible for helping them get what they came for. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/044-what-happens-when-you-treat-every-lead-like-youre-responsible-for-helping-them/

Page 170 of my 1996 journal, one idea I've never let go of: stop chasing the few people ready to buy, and appoint yourself advocate for your whole category. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/043-the-more-helpful-you-become-the-less-you-have-to-sell/

Page 179 of my 1996 journal held 26 marketing ideas, all from one question at the top. Pick one a week and a single page becomes six months of marketing. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/042-how-to-get-6-months-of-marketing-ideas-for-your-business-on-one-page/

Gary Halbert's old provocation still runs everything I do: if your life depended on mailing one letter and getting a response, what would you actually do? Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/041-if-my-life-depended-on-one-letter-heres-exactly-what-id-send/

Yesterday, driving variation out of your marketing. Today I went looking for it in my own days, and found five zones where less variety buys more freedom. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/040-the-more-routine-my-life-gets-the-more-freedom-i-have/

Deming taught me in 1996 that variation is in everything. Drive it out, and your advertising behaves like a vending machine instead of a slot machine. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/039-how-to-turn-your-advertising-from-a-slot-machine-to-a-vending-machine/

Somewhere in my 1996 journal I wrote out my perfect lifestyle, and 30 years later I can't punch a single hole in it. Turns out these are the good old days. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/038-great-lifestyle-money-time-to-enjoy-it-true-success-to-me/

In 1996 it took $2,400 and weeks of work to build 24 marketing newsletters. Today that's done by lunchtime with AI, but the durable advantage hasn't changed. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/037-inside-my-1996-content-factory-vs-today/

Thirty years perfecting my schedule, and the one thing I still can't crack is doing the most important thing when there's no deadline holding me to it. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/036-i-know-exactly-what-to-do-so-why-dont-i-do-it/

I found my daily schedule on page 31 of a 1996 journal, and thirty years later I'm still running the same rhythm. Same bands of time, same protected block. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/035-i-almost-cant-believe-ive-gotten-away-with-this-daily-schedule-over-30-years/

Ten rules from a 1997 journal page for who Dean would take on as a client, and why constraints on who you work with are a multiplier, not a limiter. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/070-how-to-use-constraints-as-a-multiplier/

Page 20 of my 1996 journal listed the seven things people spend money on. Thirty years later, every one of them is still standing, and still wide open. Show notes: https://deanjackson.com/podcasts/tol/034-i-predict-these-7-business-categories-will-survive-thrive-in-the-next-30-years/