SPI 839: Less Marketing for More Profit with Allan Dib

SPI 839: Less Marketing for More Profit with Allan Dib

Allan Dib: The best marketers in the world did only a few things. They did one or two things that really moved the needle. And that’s what lean marketing is all about. It’s how can we do less but get a much bigger result? So how can we do a few things but get a massive impact rather than spread our focus on a thousand different things and really make a no progress on any. So again, it’s about simplifying marketing, but it’s simplifying marketing implementation.

Pat Flynn: I recently had the pleasure of meeting our guest today when I went to an author’s retreat in Nashville. And I remember seeing his book. I didn’t know who the author was, but when I finally got to meet him, we just connected immediately. I didn’t know that he was actually a fan of the SPI podcast and what we do here.

And he is the author of a book called The One Page Marketing Plan. You might’ve heard of that. It is and still continues to be a bestseller. It has over 10,000 reviews on Amazon, which is actually quite wild. But he has a new book called Lean Marketing, more leads, more profit, less marketing. And I love that.

I’m all about the lean for sure. Lean Learning is my book coming out next year. And I wanted to have Allan come on the show to talk about just his philosophy in business. It very much aligns with mine and doing the minimal amount of work to just get some results, but rather the most important work, the highest leverage stuff that you can do to move the needle forward.

And so if you’re a beginner or even if you are an advanced marketer, this is definitely for you. Allan Dib, so let’s check him out. Here he is. Allan Dib, author of the new book, Lean Marketing, more leads, more profit, less marketing. Here we go.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he believes everyone in the future will have at least one side hustle, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Allan, welcome to SPI. Thanks for being here, my friend.

Allan Dib: Hey, Pat. It’s a pleasure to be on. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: I’m honored that you’re on. You know, you have written some of the most widely read books that I’ve seen everywhere and when I saw and got to meet you in Nashville recently at an author’s retreat, I made the connections like, Oh, you wrote those books.

No shot. Like they are so, so good. And I’m excited to dive deeper into those concepts. How did you write such a bestselling book? I mean, for those of you who don’t know the one page marketing plan, I mean, I’m looking at the Amazon page right now, Allan, it has over 10,000 ratings, that’s like top percent of books in all of Amazon.

Allan Dib: Look, I’m, I’m very honored with all the people who’ve read it, all the people who reach out to me, all the people whose lives it’s changed, but really I’m not from a marketing background. I’m not even from a business background. I started my, my life as a dead broke IT gig. I had an IT business and. I tried to figure out how to get clients in the door.

And certainly at the time, there’s nothing that I could find that would easily take me from, Hey, you know, zero about marketing, which is what I knew to being able to get a client in the door, which is what I needed. And so, long story short, I spent maybe 10 years trying to really learn and understand marketing.

I followed all the people that you probably followed, Pat, I hired consultants, I read every book, I did all the stuff, I went to seminars, all of the things that probably a lot of people in the audience are doing, you know, I’ve got little bits of value from everything. You know, there, there were, an idea I got from here, another idea I got from there, someone said something that really resonated with me or whatever.

And so I started putting the pieces over, like I said, over a period of 10 years of trial and error and mostly error, to be honest, you know, it worked really well. I grew that business. It became a national business. I ended up exiting it for more money than I’d ever seen in my life. So that really started my entrepreneurial journey.

And so when it came to consulting and when it came to sharing my knowledge, I wrote the book that I wish I had when I was first learning marketing. I think that’s why it’s resonated with a lot of people because, you know, I’ve been in the spot where a lot of people are, where they need this book, where they need to understand just the fundamentals, just basics of marketing. You know, how do we select a niche? How do we get people attracted to what it is, what we’re doing? How do we convert them? And so on. So that’s kind of the short story.

Pat Flynn: You know, there’s a few themes with not just this book, but your newer book, Lean Marketing, which was funny because when we chatted, I was like, Oh, well, my upcoming book is Lean Learning, your Lean Marketing, which is great.

I think we all need to be leaner in all different kinds of ways, but there’s a theme related to your books about not doing the random things, but just doing the things that will work because we, for whatever reason are trying too many things and here’s all that you need. Why do you think most of us marketers try all the random things and get so overwhelmed by all the different things that seemingly work for everybody else out there?

Allan Dib: Yeah. Yeah. Look, it’s very seductive to follow the bright, shiny object to look at the, what’s the tool that Pat’s using to do the podcast editing or whatever, or what’s the funnel or what’s the hack or what’s the SEO trick or, or whatever. When in reality, one of the quotes that I really think about, whenever I’m trying something new, whenever I’m trying to get to the next level with something is a Charlie Munger said, take a simple idea and take it seriously. And so what that means is if you’re trying to get in shape, just do the simple movements. So, for example, if you saw me a few years ago, I was very overweight.

I was weak, all of that sort of stuff. Now, over the last four years. I’ve been doing basically three simple movements. I’ve been doing a deadlift. I’ve been doing a squat. I’ve been doing bench presses. And now I would probably be, I suspect, somewhere in the top 5 percent of people who are fit and strong and doing really well.

Right? So I didn’t have to do a lot of crazy stuff to get fit, to get strong, to do all of that sort of thing. Similar in business. You know, people look at You know, what’s the funnel tool that I need? What’s the web hosting that I need? What’s the all of that sort of stuff? And I’m not saying those things are not important.

Those things definitely have their place. And it’s part of the tactical implementation of things. But really, if we took a simple idea and took it seriously, like your origin story, Pat, Hey, I got laid off from my architect job. I’m going to help people pass architect exams. That’s a simple idea. You took it seriously and you took it seriously for a long enough time and you’re doing what you’re doing now.

And so that’s really the philosophy that I take with marketing with everything else is how can we simplify this? What’s the simple idea here? So yes, there is definitely nuance. Yes, we can go into the details and things like that, but really when it comes to marketing, we need to select a target market, we need to create something that’s attractive to them, we need to communicate it in a way that’s attractive to them and we need to convert those leads.

So it’s kind of simple ideas and then I help people really execute some of those simple ideas and understand them either through my books or through our marketing accelerator and those sorts of things. So really thinking about how can we simplify this? How can we make this easy? How can we like literally in the one page marketing plan early on in the book, I define what is marketing because again, there’s a lot of confusion around that.

And some people think advertising is marketing or kind of shouting your message on different platforms and all of that is marketing. But we really define, Hey, what is marketing? And so. Really, it’s just taking a simple idea and take it seriously and take it seriously for a long enough time.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I agree with that for sure.

Before we move on, since you brought it up, what is the definition of marketing according to Allan Dibb?

Allan Dib: So I’ve got a little story which I’ve got in the, in the book. I won’t read it out, but essentially it’s finding your ideal target customer and delivering a value for them. So what’s your strategy to get your ideal customer to know you, to like you and to trust you?

That’s it. That’s what marketing is.

Pat Flynn: How do you get people to know you in? Today’s world there’s a million different platforms in ways that you could potentially get in front of people. What’s your method for filtering down to the one platform or one way to do that?

Allan Dib: I don’t worry too much about, so again, for example, I was talking to someone, I launched a podcast maybe three months ago or so.

And someone said, Oh, you’re late to the game. And I’m like, podcasting is only 15 years old or something like that. I wrote a book and the medium of books is what? 700 years old. So that wasn’t too late. So really when, when we simplify things, there’s really three modalities. There’s the written form.

There’s audio, which is podcasts, which podcast is really just the new evolution of radio, right? And then there’s video, YouTube or whatever. And again, YouTube is essentially TV nowadays, right? So there’s really three modalities that we might do anything in. So there’s text, there’s audio, there’s video.

Where do you get started? Start with the modality that you are most comfortable with. In because you’ll have a section of your audience that are readers, there’ll be a part of your audience that are listeners. There’ll be a part of your audience that like watching and consuming video. So if you enjoy creating video and you know that you could easily do that for the next five to 10 years consistently, do that. If, for example, myself, video and audio, it’s hard to lift for me. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it, but for me, writing is my kind of home modality. It’s the modality that I love the most. It’s something that I know that I can do now and for the next 10 years. And so there’s a good section of my audience who are readers.

And so I wrote books. I write LinkedIn posts. I write Twitter threads, all of those sorts of things. That’s my core modality. Now I’m adding other modalities now that I’ve done very well in that modality. Yes, I’m doing podcasts. Yes, I’m doing videos, all of those sorts of things, but that’s not where I started.

So basically choose one single platform. And start either writing or speaking or being on video and create content for your people. So the first step really in the one page marketing plan is selecting your target market. So figure out who your people are. So don’t worry about the product, don’t worry about the problem.

Don’t worry about all of those sorts of things. First of all, figure out who do you want to serve? Who are your people? You know, so for myself, small business entrepreneurs are my people. And mainly it’s because I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to be up at 3 AM worrying about, am I going to make payroll?

Am I going to be in business next month? All of those sorts of things. So I can speak from that with authority and I can speak to that with knowledge. So a lot of times. And I heard this from Rory Vaden, who we hung out with for a couple of days. He said, serve the person that you once were, right? So that’s a really, really powerful position to be in because you don’t have to do a lot of figuring out, you know, what does this person respond to?

What’s the psychology, all of that sort of thing. You know, you were in that position. You were that person. person. So it’s really, really easy to enter that conversation that’s going on in their mind. So I think that’s a great starting point is figure out the modality you want to work in and then figure out who your people are.

So start there.

Pat Flynn: Shout out to Rory Vaden. He was on the podcast not too long ago and he had a very, very profound quote, which was, we often hear, start with why, because of Simon Sinek and you know, to know why is important. But if you are especially a personal brand or working solo, like knowing your who is really important.

You should start with who. Because your who is actually for most people also your why. Because like you said it is often a younger version or earlier version of yourself. And like you said, you know how to talk, you know, what makes them tick because you were once that person too. I did that with the architecture thing I was once somebody studying for all those exams and I remembered how painful it was.

So when I got laid off guess who I thought about? The person I was not too long ago. It made it a lot easier. Picking a platform, picking a modality, great. How do we know what value actually means to those people? I think we often hear that word value thrown around quite often now that it just almost doesn’t have meaning anymore.

Because what is value? What is valuable for an audience today? Because in the past, when I started in 08, what was once valuable was just the information because nobody had ever shared it before. And I’m writing about this in my book. Back in the day, like I remember when I was a kid, do you remember those encyclopedia Britannicas that everybody had in their, or not everybody, but if you, you know, those costs thousands of dollars and it kind of portrayed a level of power because you had knowledge in those books.

Now it’s not as valuable because everybody just has access to it, all of our phones now. So it’s not just the information that you’re sharing alone that is value. What is actually considered valuable to a target audience that we find who we want to serve today.

Allan Dib: So there’s four things that I really think about when I think about value.

So you’re a hundred percent right. We can’t add to Google and Wikipedia and the internet and all of that for information, right? Almost all the world’s information is there. Sometimes it’s in an easily accessible and well put together form. Sometimes it’s not. And the reason people buy courses and things like that is because, you know, it’s a neatly packaged piece of information, same with books, same with all of those sorts of things.

So I’ve seen some of the criticisms of my book, you know, some of the criticisms are, Hey, it’s too simple. Hey, this information is all freely available. And those criticisms are a hundred percent valid and a hundred percent right. But it’s valuable to put it together in a simple, easy to understand package.

That’s portable that you can give to anyone and say here, read this. This is how you’ll figure out marketing from, from scratch versus here’s a hundred different links to different websites and YouTube channels and all of that sort of thing. So coming back to your question, what increases or decreases the value of something that you do.

So I think about four things. The first is time. Will it help me reduce the amount of time that it takes to figure this thing out or do something or whatever. So a very simple way to add value to anything is just to say, I’ll help you do it faster. Or I’ll do it for you faster or whatever. That’s such a simple thing.

So, Hey, we can do this in half the time or a third of the time or whatever. That is massively valuable. If a vendor comes to me and says, Hey, I’ll help you get it done faster. I am much, much more happy to, to pay them more. No problem at all. The second lever is effort. Will this help me do this easier? So can you help me get stronger, fitter, smarter, whatever it is with less effort.

You know, so can you help me essentially eliminate a lot of the trial and error, all of the stuff that would have taken me maybe a lot of time, or maybe I would have done it wrong and had some bad downside happen or whatever. So that’s the second lever is effort. The third is risk. So can you help me do this with less risk?

So again, if I’m going to do trial and error or whatever it is. And I’m going to stuff things up and it’s going to have a bad downside or whatever. It’s going to take me a long time or whatever else, then that’s a problem too. And the fourth lever that I think about is negative side effects. So can you help me get to where I want to go without the negative side effects?

So again, I use fitness as an analogy because all of us can understand that, right? So we’ve all been in a situation where we maybe want to get fitter or get stronger or whatever, right? So can you help me get to my dream body or whatever without getting rid of my favorite foods, right? So that would be a negative side effect.

If I never had to touch one of my favorite foods again, that would be a negative side effect. So I kind of want to avoid that. So can you help me do it in less time? Can you help reduce the amount of effort that it takes to, to do whatever I need to do? Can you reduce the risk and can you reduce the negative side effects?

So there are four value levers that I think about, and you can apply those to almost any kind of business, anything that you’re doing, you can say, Hey, I’m going to help you do it with less time or less effort or less risk or fewer side effects.

Pat Flynn: That is the best answer to this question I’ve ever heard.

Thank you for that. We’re going to, that’s cool. We’re going to clip that one and probably share that out. Thank you for that, Allan. That, that was wonderful.

The equivalent of what you’d mentioned earlier, a deadlift, a squat and chest presses, right? Bench presses for an entrepreneur are, you said, choosing that niche, understanding who it is that you’re serving, creating something that would allow them to see that you have value to offer, which we just talked about, and then also converting them.

This is where I think many people who care so much about their audience that they know who they’re serving, they know what they want to serve them with and what would be valuable, they just. They’re not proficient with how to do that online. How does one become proficient and learn the ropes of the conversion part of this?

Because you could say all the great things, but if nobody’s converting, you’re not actually running a business. You’re losing money without revenue coming in. You can no longer serve and stay up and running. How do you learn to convert?

Allan Dib: That’s exactly right. So a lot of people too, and I’ve seen a lot of sales training.

I’ve gone through a lot of sales training. I’ve hired sales trainers, all of that sort of thing. Look, they’re a. A lot of intricacies in terms of scripts and things that you can do and all of that. But here’s what it comes down to. Fundamentally, I don’t believe that you can convince someone to buy something that they don’t want to buy, or if you can, you can maybe do it in a kind of scammy, pushy way, a way that’s not going to make you feel good.

It’s going to create a lot of refunds. It’s going to create all of that sort of stuff. So here’s the way that I think, and the way that I teach my clients. If you think about it visually, like, so I’m holding up a copy of the one page marketing plan here, but it’s essentially nine squares and the sixth square talks about sales conversion.

So before that sixth square, there are five other squares. So I’ll, I’ll read them out. The first is selecting your target market. The second is the message to your target market. The third is the media that you’re going to reach. That target market with the fourth is lead capture and the fifth is lead nurturing.

So if we just stop there, if we think about, okay, I’m going to find a target market that I want to serve and maybe it’s your past self. So maybe, like we said earlier, maybe you were an architecture in architecture, you got. laid off from your job. And now you’re going to help other people pass architecture exams.

So now you can go to step two, you can create messaging. You’ve been in their shoes. You know what it feels like to be, you know, the night before the exam, you’re not sure are you going to pass all of that sort of thing. So you know what that feels like, you know, why they want to pass that exam, you know, all the things that are at stake.

So you can write pretty compelling messaging now. If you know where your people are and you know, you probably do, they might be on LinkedIn or, you know, some other platform or whatever. So, you know, the media that you’re going to use to reach them. So then we’re going to nurture them, you know, we’re going to capture those leads and we’re going to nurture them.

Now, if you’ve done those five things, right. Meaning, Hey, you’ve selected a target market. That’s got a real problem. You’ve, Created messaging that really resonates with them. That, you know, is entering that conversation that’s going on in their mind. You’ve nurtured them. You’ve talked to them about what’s happening in their lives, how you can help them, all of those sorts of things.

I didn’t think you’re going to need to do anything crazy to convince them to buy. You’re going to be, you know, essentially showing up and saying, Here’s my thing. You know, we’ve, we’ve been in this conversation for a while. I’ve helped you get a result in advance. I’ve shown you some of the things that you can do to, to get from point A to point B from a worse place to a better place.

And essentially here’s my thing. And if you buy this thing, you might either do it in less time. Less effort or with less risk or with fewer side effects. And if you don’t want to buy it, no problem. That’s, that’s fine to continue reading my free stuff or continue trying to figure it out. No problem either.

So I don’t believe in high pressure sales and all of that sort of thing. I think. At best, it leads to you feeling bad, them feeling bad, refunds, complaints, bad reviews, all of those sorts of things. So my very best close, I don’t do sales anymore, but when I was doing sales within my business, I would essentially be on a call with the prospect.

And I would ask probing questions. I would think of myself like a doctor. So a doctor would say, okay, Pat, what brings you in today? And you’d say, well, my knee hurts today. Okay. Well, when did that start happening? Well, that started happening two weeks ago. Okay. Well, what happened there? And then I might examine you and you, you might, I might say, all right, well, what happens when I twist it this way?

Oh, wow. It hurts when I, when you twist it left. So after examining you, after asking some probing questions, after understanding that I might prescribe a treatment and then it would be totally up to you whether you take that treatment or not. And so my very best close after probing questions was, well, Pat, where do you think we should go from here?

And nine times out of 10, if the person was a good fit and they’d been nurtured well, and they’d gone through my process, I’d say, well, look, I want to know more about your program, tell me more how do I buy from you? How do I join, join your program? So that’s my, approach to sales is really being a doctor who diagnoses an issue and then helping that person get a result in less time, less effort, less risk, or less side effects.

Pat Flynn: I love that. I’ve used the medical analogy before when I’ve taught people sales to mainly on the side of being confident in what you have to sell. If you know that you have a cure for some metaphorical disease, you would go out there and help people. And a lot of people struggle with that even though they know they have something that’s helpful.

So selling feels hard, but if you know that this can serve them, then it’s going to be a lot easier. But I love how you framed it in terms of leading up to that point where you’re literally just having a conversation so you can understand more. And if it so happens that your product, your service, your program is the prescribed manner to solve that problem, then awesome.

And then it’s up to them. And you know, if you have knee pain and your doctor who you trust is like, Hey, this would help you with your knee pain. 10 times out of 10, you’re probably going to want to get rid of that pain if it’s that painful. I love that. And that leads me to, how do we trust this doctor?

How do we begin to, because I think people default in a way to doubt online, especially when somebody’s trying to sell them something. I love how you broke it down to, you’re trying to help and you’re this doctor analogy, because I think a lot of us Especially over the years with movies and things like that shows there’s this glorification of the sales process.

It’s like aggressive and it’s cool to be aggressive, but it feels not great, but it’s fun to watch and there’s even creators in the entrepreneurial space who, you know, dramatize a lot of this stuff to for the sake of views and whatnot. And it is interesting, but you don’t have to be like that. And I love the simplification of this. It’s not sexy, but it’s real. And I love that. But how do we instill trust in those who are thinking about buying from us? Oftentimes that is a reason why people don’t buy. They’re not sure if this is going to work. They don’t know us that well. You had mentioned the know, like, and trust. We got the know part, the like and trust part.

How do we add some protein powder and creatine to this workout analogy of sales that we’re doing?

Allan Dib: So a lot of times a good way to think about how do we get somewhere is to think about the inverse. So let me put a question back to you, Pat, what would make you instantly not trust someone? What are some things that you would be indicate as well. This, this person seems a little bit sketchy. I don’t really trust them, like especially online. I mean, you would have seen, seen it all, right?

Pat Flynn: So I have seen it all, you know, Lamborghinis and mansions in front of a sales pitch. Of course, if I heard from other people or there were conversations out there and on social about how negative an experience a person had reviews from others immediately make me wonder if this is not for me.

Allan Dib: Yeah, those are all exactly right. And a lot of times. Again, going back to the doctor analogy is beware the doctor that gives you a prescription before they’ve even had a diagnosis. I mean, if you walked into the doctor’s office and you barely opened your mouth and he said, here’s your prescription, you’d be like, hang on, wait.

I haven’t even told you what, what’s wrong, what’s going on. So someone who’s kind of just pitching you straight away. Like I got an email from, I mean, I get pitched all the time. All the time and you know most of the time it’s just some generic copy and pasted crap that they’ve sent to a thousand other people versus sometimes someone will take a lot of effort they will personalize it sometimes I’ll even send a personalized loom video and they’re shining a light on something that’s a problem in my life so they might be saying hey I checked out your website I noticed that there’s this XYZ issue because of that’s something that actually we can help you with.

And in fact, if you want to jump on a call, I can elaborate a little bit more on it. Now I may take them up on that or not, but they’ve certainly got my attention versus someone who’s got that some spammy crap, which I know that they’ve just sent to everybody. It’s generic. It doesn’t create any value.

It’s always take, it’s taking, it’s like, Hey, we offer whatever SEO services or we offer this, that, or, or the other. And I know that they’ve just copied and pasted that stuff. You know, it’s completely generic. So. When you think about what’s going to create trust with people. So if you’re doing outreach, it would be personalized outreach.

You know, I’m not a massive fan of cold outreach, but I think it has its place, especially if you’re just starting out, sometimes just reaching out and adding a little bit of value to someone’s life and shining a light on something that may be going on. So I’d like to use the website analogy. We all know it’s a good idea to capture leads on your website.

So, you know, whether you use something like. ConvertKit, which I know you’re a fan of, Patt, or some other platform or whatever. We know it’s a good idea if you run a website to capture leads. Now, I don’t know what percentage of websites would have lead capture, but I would suspect it’s pretty low. It’s somewhere, you know, if I was to take a guess, maybe 10 percent of websites capture leads.

So that creates some, you know, big market in whatever industry you’re in, maybe medical industry, maybe physical therapists or whatever. So you could reach out to someone with a personalized Loom video and say, Hey Pat, came across your website. I love the branding. Your messaging is really on point and I love what you do.

I noticed though that you don’t capture leads on your website and here’s why it’s really important. And I’d be more than happy to send you a free video or guide, or even jump on a call and show you how that would massively increase the, the amount of lead flow that you’d have in your business or whatever else, right?

So I’m just making something up on the spot right here, but that’s far, far different than a generic spammed message that’s just sent on LinkedIn or via email or whatever. And you’re going to be in the spam inbox with everybody else. So can you make something personalized for someone. Can you make something that’s related to what they do so that they can see you’re actually adding value rather than taking so someone who gives rather than someone who just immediately takes and wants to take from you?

That’s another indicator of trust. So can you be that person? So if we were to kind of switch this to kind of content creation, which is a great way to start to get on the radar of people. There are a few different content creator archetypes. There’s the expert, right? There’s people like you, Pat, who are an expert who like, Hey, this is how you do it. This is how you start a podcast. This is how you build a community. This is how you create a course or whatever else. Then there’s people who curate. So I think of them as the curators. So they’re like, look, I didn’t create this stuff, but here’s kind of the best of, you know, and you think of different institutions and media and things like that, like, like the news is essentially curation, right?

So this happened there, or that there’s a story about this or that museums are an example of curation. So curators add a lot of value. Then there’s people who are like interviewers. People who, who will interview people who are interesting to your target market. So when I think of interviewers, I think about Oprah, Tim Ferriss or something like that.

Yeah. So they interview interesting people that you, you might be on a understand. Now you might say, I’m none of those things. I’m not a, I’m not really a curator. I’m not an expert. I’m not an interviewer. Well, another really good format is an amateur on a journey. You’re like, Hey, I’m an amateur and I’m going to go on this journey.

And you can. Follow along on that journey, and that is a super interesting content creator archetype. It’s really interesting to watch someone’s journey on their way to mastery. So especially if you are interested, you’re like, and it’s very encouraging. It’s like, oh, well if Pat can do it, well, I can do it too.

So there are a few different ways that I think about creating trust and creating content on whatever platform that you think about.

Pat Flynn: I love that Allan. That last one, amateur on a journey, reminds me of a friend of mine, his name is Adam Baker. He once had a website called Man vs. Debt, and he was teaching people how to get out of debt.

Yeah. But he was not an expert because he was massively in debt. But he was showing people how he was getting out of it while it was happening. And he was showing people how he would sell his crap in his house, and how he would help save money on taxes, and all this other stuff to help him eventually get out of debt.

and he eventually ended up doing that and then selling the website, which was really cool. And all the while building this massive trust. So on the surface, you’re like, how would somebody who’s trying to get out of debt, trust somebody who is also in debt? Well, it’s because of the way that they’re just like the viewer.

They it’s like, you know, instead of the expert or the person on the podium at a university speaking to you, it’s almost like the person next to you. Who’s just a few steps ahead. I will trust that person as well because they’re in it with me in a way. So I really love that, that positioning.

Allan Dib: And they feel a lot more accessible as well.

It’s like, Oh, wow. It’s, you know, he did it or she did it and you know, I can do it too. And it’s very relatable. It’s, it’s great content. And a lot of people who are really huge now started as that amateur on a journey. I mentioned Tim Ferriss. He was like here, I’m going to learn how to do all of these skills and you can follow along or Mr. Beast, you can go and see Mr. Beast’s first few videos. is where he’s shooting it on a webcam. He doesn’t know what he’s doing to now. He’s, you know, like literally the biggest YouTuber and on the planet, Justin Bieber again, uploaded some song on YouTube or whatever. So you can morph from one creative to a, to another type.

You can start as the amateur on a journey and you might be able to get mastery and you become the expert or the interviewer or whatever else.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, John Lee Dumas is an example of the interviewer who by association with those people who he was able to interview became an expert and, you know, had jumped around some of those categories as well.

So that’s great. You know who else I don’t trust? I don’t trust going back to the medical analogy, the doctor who’s telling me how to get better but he himself is. Not fit and it’s smoking. And so it’s like, okay, you’re saying all this stuff, but you’re not doing it yourself Can you tell me about how to make sure?

That we are portraying our best selves to our audience and building that personal trust. How personal do we need to be? In order to make a connection, because I think a lot of people are also scared to do that. It’s not about me. I don’t want to talk about myself. Or they might not think that what they have to share is personal enough, or they feel like they have to be too vulnerable.

Maybe they don’t want to share everything. How do you bAllance that? Because I know people connect with other people and I think that’s important.

Allan Dib: Yeah, look, so I think of what we do as marketers as really so if you want to be friends with someone or, you know, one to one, so you’re going to have conversations, you’re going to have experiences together, you’re going to do all of that.

And our mutual friend, Todd Herman, we talked about this, I think when we got together in Nashville, he talks about imposter syndrome, right? So if you claim to be something that you’re not, you’re an imposter. And so a lot of people worry about being an imposter and all of that. In my experience, I’ve found that people who worry about being an imposter usually aren’t.

Real imposters never worry about imposter syndrome. It’s, you know, it’s genuine people who usually worry about imposter syndrome. So my simple advice is just be yourself. You know, the best way to become a friend to somebody is just, just be yourself. And if they don’t like you, great, you connect together.

If they don’t like you or your personalities clash or whatever, no problem. We’re not here to force anybody to like you or follow you or whatever else. And here’s the thing about selecting your target market, which is literally the first step in the marketing process or a marketing strategy is figuring out.

Who are our people? Now, that implies that there are some people who are not going to be our people. In fact, probably the vast majority of people are not going to be our people. So if we say, look, these are our people, you know, let’s say, for example, we want to target architects who are currently studying for their final exam.

Now that excludes a lot of people, and that is totally 100 percent okay. Because if we select our target market, that means we’re deselecting a much larger audience. A lot of people are worried about that. They’re worried about, you know, well, what if someone doesn’t like me? What if we’re too polarizing?

What if I’m too vulnerable? Whatever your people will like what you do. And the amazing thing is, I mean, pre internet that might’ve been a problem because you might be in a small town and there’s just not that many people. Okay. On the internet, there’s what, I don’t know, 6 billion plus people. Guaranteed, no matter how weird you are, what weird niche you’re in, and all of that sort of thing, there’s guaranteed to be thousands of people who are into what you’re into, right?

I kind of made a little joke on LinkedIn the other day because I came across some people fighting over, they were arguing on Reddit about a fountain pen ink. And they were saying, Hey, this new version of the ink is not the same as the old version. And I kind of make it made a bit of a joke saying I didn’t realize there was a fountain pen community.

And then all these people came out, including someone on my team going, no, we’re in, we’re, we’re in the fountain pen community. I care about whether the slight tinge of purple is different or whatever. So there are communities, no matter how weird or how niche or whatever that are into what you’re into.

So there are people online right now arguing about the color purple from a fountain pen ink that made by a particular manufacturer. So it’s so cool. I mean, and I mean, you’ve seen that yourself with your Pokemon community. Again, I know nothing about that or whatever, but I’m certain there’s people who argue about it.

Pokemon card or what type of character is on every day, every day. Exactly. So whatever you’re into, whatever, no matter how weird or how nice you think it is or whatever, there’s highly likely to be thousands of other people who care about it as much as you do, or maybe even more than you do.

Pat Flynn: This is super encouraging, Allan.

Thank you so much for this. I think it’s going to provide a lot of inspo for people who are listening. And I highly recommend everybody check out the one page marketing plan. Tell us a little bit about lean marketing before we finish up here. What’s the difference between your Lean Marketing book and One Page Marketing Plan.

Allan Dib: Yeah. So the One Page Marketing Plan is all about strategy. So kind of, if we were to use a house analogy, we would start with a blueprint. So you probably wouldn’t start building a house, digging foundations, laying bricks, doing all of that sort of stuff until you had a blueprint. So we want to figure out, okay, we want the lounge room here.

We want the swimming pool there. We’re going to build. Whatever, right? So we start by putting together the blueprint. So the One Page Marketing Plan is all about putting together a blueprint for your marketing. So figuring out who your people are, what kind of message is going to resonate, all that sort of thing.

Lean Marketing is all about implementation. And the reason. It’s all about lean is because a lot of times less is more, you know, you’ve seen this, no doubt. And I’ve, I’ve certainly seen this where people just create a lot of complexity about marketing implementation and, you know, it can be complex, but really what I found was that the best marketers in the world did only a few things. They didn’t do a thousand different things. They did a few things. So they did one or two things that really moved the needle. And that’s what Lean Marketing is all about It’s How can we do less but get a much bigger result? So how can we do a few things but get a massive impact rather than spread our focus on a thousand different things and really make a No progress on any.

So again, it’s about simplifying marketing, but it’s simplifying marketing implementation. And, you know, in it, I talk about how to do less, but actually get a bigger result. We do that with tools. We do that with assets. We do that with processes. And so I kind of elaborate on that in the book, but really it’s about how do I get a bigger result by doing less stuff and actually implement the marketing.

Pat Flynn: It’s my kind of jam. Thank you. Where can people go and check out lean marketing?

Allan Dib: So Lean Marketing, I’m at LeanMarketing.com. You can grab the one page marketing plan canvas for free there. The book is available on Kindle and paperback on audible. It’s very popular on audio. So I can grab all my stuff there.

Pat Flynn: Nice. Do you read your own audio books? I don’t actually. You don’t? You have a great voice. You should totally do it.

Allan Dib: I don’t know. I feel like there’s a reason there’s professional voice actors. And if someone’s going to listen to something for six to eight hours, they want someone who’s professional. But I don’t know.

That might be my insecurity poking out.

Pat Flynn: All right. Your next book, I’m going to try to convince you to read yourself because this has been such a pleasure, Allan. I appreciate you so much and all that you’ve done and the friendship that you and I have together means a lot to me. So thank you so much. And look forward to all that you have going on, man.

Congrats on everything and hope to talk soon.

Allan Dib: Pat, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Mr. Allan Dibb, just such a kind hearted soul. I mean, you weren’t able to probably see him while listening to this, but if you could, he had just a smile on his face the whole time, just so much enjoys these conversations as much as I do and I’m happy that you were able to listen in today And if you would like to check out his books, he’s got to The One Page Marketing Plan, which is huge I mean just an all star book from 2016 and all the principles in there still matter so much today his new book Lean Marketing more leads more profit less marketing, definitely check it out. Allan, you are the best. Thank you for being here. And also thank you for having me on your show for those of you listening you there is a chance that you can check out that episode, episode 16 of Lean Marketing Podcast. You can find it at LeanMarketing.com and LeanMarketing.com/podcast. I’m episode 16 there, and that was a super fun conversation.

So check it out. Thank you so much. And I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Have a good one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!