Lean Marketing: Do Less, Sell More
With Guest Allan Dib
While marketing is a lot of things, it's not magic. Learn the systematic approach to growing leads and selling more.
The How to Sell More Podcast
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April 2, 2025
Marketing isn’t magic.
The best marketers aren’t the most creative people in the room–they’re the systematic thinkers.
In this episode of How to Sell More, Mark Drager and guest Allan Dib dispel the myth that marketing is a mysterious, creative endeavour. As the bestselling author of Lean Marketing: More leads. More profit. Less marketing. Allan believes that anyone can learn the skills they need to become a great marketer if they take a pragmatic, step-by-step approach.
The key? Learning how to land one customer. Once you do that, you know how to predictably land two, 10, and 100 customers.
Most businesses take a backward approach to marketing and selling. They start with their product and say, “Now let’s find someone to sell this to.” You should find your market first–your people–and get to know them on an intimate level. Then you can sell to them.
Then what? Once you find your people, you need to figure out the gap between where they are and where they want to go. You’re in the business of delivering a transformation.
“Nobody knows how good you are until they buy from you. And before they buy from you, they only know how good your marketing is.” - Allan Dib
In episode 105, learn how lean marketing can help B2B companies do more with less. It’s all about focusing on what matters and forgetting the rest.
As a serial entrepreneur, Allan is known for turning complex marketing ideas into actionable frameworks. He’s successfully started, grown, and exited multiple businesses across various industries. He’s also a sought-after business coach, consultant, and public speaker. His first book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd, has been Amazon's global #1 marketing book since 2016.
Want to learn how to do less with your marketing and sell more? Listen to the full conversation now.
Connect with Allan Dib
- Connect on LinkedIn
- Get your copy of Lean Marketing
- Get your copy of The 1-Page Marketing Plan
- Learn more about Allan Dib
More About Today's Guest, Allan Dib
Allan Dib is a serial entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and bestselling author known for simplifying complex marketing ideas into actionable frameworks. His first book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan, has been Amazon's global #1 marketing book since 2016. It has impacted millions of entrepreneurs worldwide and has been translated into over 30 languages.
In his latest book, Lean Marketing, Dib expands on the concepts from his bestseller to guide entrepreneurs and marketers through a "do more with less" approach. As competition intensifies, pushing resources to their limits, he presents a clear, structured framework helping businesses of all sizes achieve bigger results with fewer resources.
Dib has successfully started, grown, and exited multiple businesses across various industries. His telecommunications company grew from startup to being recognized by Business Review Weekly (BRW) as one of Australia's fastest-growing companies in just four years, earning a spot in the coveted BRW Fast 100 list.
As a highly sought-after business coach, consultant, and public speaker, he shares his proven strategies and cutting-edge tactics with audiences worldwide.
A Transcription of The Talk
Mark Drager: Allan, your quoted saying, “No marketing equals no customers”, which of course means no sales.
But we both know, a lot of business owners, and even their sales and marketing teams, see marketing as some kind of innate talent or an overwhelming set of strategies and technologies that they have to master.
You say marketing is a skill that can be learned. If that’s the case, where should people start?
Allan Dib: Yeah, so a big part of my work is kind of dispelling this myth that marketing is this black art that some people are just blessed with and you have to be super creative.
Mark Drager: Don't tell people that, man, I run an agency. Don't tell people that it's magic. What we do.
Allan Dib: It is magic, but it's attainable magic. That's really the point. So a lot of times I remember, and I think I heard this from Seth Godin - I can't remember, but he basically said (if it was Seth or someone else, I'm not sure I'm misquoting), but said you write the best books that you write for your past self. And both of my books I really wrote for my past, clueless, geeky self, right? Because I was a tech geek, I was certainly not a marketer. I was certainly had no business bone in my body, but I was good at the tech stuff.
And I naively thought that being good at what I did, the tech stuff, all of that sort of stuff, was going to get me business success. And of course, I learned that lesson the hard, long, difficult, expensive way. So I learned over time that nobody knows how good you are until they buy from you, and before they buy from you, they only know how good your marketing is.
And so with that, I really had to go on a long journey really learning marketing, and that's what I did. And I learned along the way that it is a skill. It's a skill that you can attain, that anyone can attain. And I'm from an engineering, technical background where we take logical steps. We start with step one, then we follow the process, then we do step two, then through step three, and so that's the sort of approach I took to marketing, rather than being super creative, being kind of all of that sort of stuff.
And what I've found in my business career is that the best marketers are systematic thinkers. They're not necessarily that super creative person or whatever. Of course, having some creativity, having a bit of sparkle of that is helpful. But the best marketers by far, are the people who show up day, every day, every week, every month, and do the normal, boring processes that are predictable, that you can easily follow in a standard operating procedure. And so that was kind of my big insight, and that's what I like to help people through my work.
Mark Drager: And so how did learning this transform your approach to marketing, sales, business?
Allan Dib: It transformed my whole life. Because once you figure out how to get one customer, you now know how to get two customers, 10 customers, 100 customers, all of that sort of thing. And you go from failing and freaking out about your bills and worrying about how you're going to pay staff and all of those sorts of things, because you can get everything right in your business.
You can get the product right, you can get the branding right. You can have customers who love you and all of that. But if you don't have a way to predictably get new customers, new revenue, new leads in the door, you're screwed like there's no other way to say it.
And how many amazing products have we seen in the marketplace that just failed because they had poor marketing. And conversely, we've seen kind of mediocre products do amazingly well, and they just had excellent marketing. They knew how to get a customer. They knew basic metrics, like cost of customer acquisition, lifetime value, all of those sorts of things. And they knew how to get a message through that resonates in the marketplace. And so when I look at businesses that fail and businesses that succeed tremendously, often the biggest variable is how good they are at the marketing.
Mark Drager: It's always hard to put lipstick on a pig, and it's always hard to sell a product that doesn't have a clear differentiator, clear benefits, maybe a bad reputation, maybe doesn't do anything, maybe it doesn't work, I'm going to assume. Let's set those aside. Let's assume that all of us and all of our listeners are not trying to push bad products or bad services.
Allan Dib: Yeah, so let's even put it on a scale, right? So imagine you've got a terrible product, doesn't help anyone or whatever, but you're amazing at marketing, so we would call that essentially a scam, right? And conversely, imagine you've got an amazing product. It's just beautifully crafted. It's the best thing out there, but you totally suck at marketing. You just can't get it out there. We would call that art, right? Or art for art's sake.
So what we want to do is we want to have good marketing with good product. And when we say good product, it doesn't have to be the best product in the world. It's just got to be good at what it does. You've got to fulfill the promises that you do. And of course, if it can be remarkable, meaning that other people remark on it and refer new products to you and send people your way and tell people what an amazing product. Yeah, you know, then that absolutely helps really accelerate things as well.
Mark Drager: Now, earlier, you mentioned selling, and you also have written that selling is the best way to build a brand.
Allan Dib: Yeah.
Mark Drager: Why is that?
Allan Dib: Well, so many people are concerned about branding before they even have any traction in the marketplace, and often they'll look at bigger brands that are really successful in the market. So they might look at an Apple or a Nike or a Coca Cola or whatever, and they see the kind of things that they're doing. They've got these big, flashy billboards, big flashy ads, lots of budget, all of this sort of thing, trying to get name recognition out there. And the mistake that they're making is that these things are the result of their sales success. These are not the things that drove their sales success.
If we look at what they did in the beginning, Nike was Phil Knight literally selling shoes out of the back of the trunk of his car at athletic meetings. Coca Cola started with the guy going around to pharmacies, selling Coca Cola to pharmacies. Apple started with the two Steves going to computer trade shows and selling their single board computers. So every brand that you know, that you admire, that you love, they became really good at selling, and that's how it got their word out there. And the stuff that you see now, the big Super Bowl ads, the billboards, all of that sort of stuff, that's the result of their sales success. That's not what drove it.
Mark Drager: And is there something that you've learned along the way in terms of getting out there and selling, finding market fit, developing a tighter product, a tighter service, slowly over time, listening to customers, listening to your sales team. How do we chicken in the egg this, right? How do we get the sales without effective marketing, lead generation and sales? How do we go about this?
Allan Dib: I'm really glad you asked that. So a lot of people start with product. They're like, cool. I've got this real cool product, or this great technology or whatever, and now let's go find a market for it. Let's find someone to sell it into. And that's completely backwards.
What we want to do is we want to find a market. We want to find who are our people, who are the people that we want to serve, and we want to get to know them at an intimate level. We really want to understand what are their hopes, what are their dreams, what are their desires? And a good cheat code is to do what I've done, which is to sell to your past self, right? Because I know what it's like to start a business, to be freaking out about how am I going to make my bills? You know, where's my next client going to come from?
Being frustrated, being like, hey, my service is actually better than my competitor, but my competitor is killing me because they're just better at selling, they're better at marketing, all of those sorts of things. So when I write copy, when I speak to my audience, I'm not just making it up. I'm not going off some kind of invented avatar or whatever. I know what that feels like. I know what it's like to be there.
Now that's not always possible. Sometimes you come across a market that is a great opportunity. You see a gap in the market, and then you've got to get to know that market a little bit. You've got to do some research, really understand what are their hopes, dreams, desires.
So I've given some tips in the book on how to do that. So there's the average person might spend some time on Google, read forums, Facebook groups, all of that, and they're a great start. But one of the really cool cheat codes I found is to just attend one of their big industry conferences. In half a day, you will learn more than you would in six months of online research.
For example, I spent about half a day a couple of years ago at a pharmacy industry conference. I knew nothing about the pharmacy industry prior, but I was invited to keynote that event, and you know, I spoke to some of the folks there, I listened to some of the panel discussions. And now I know what they're freaking out about. I know what they're worried about. I know what their hopes, dreams, desires are. I know what their obstacles are.
And I could have spent six months, I could have spent a year researching that online, and maybe I would have got some of it, but to hear it from stage, because they'll usually invite the who's who of the industry to speak. There'll be panel discussions, there'll be Q and A, then at lunchtime, you'll be chatting to people in the industry, asking them about what they're doing, how they're doing, and all of that sort of thing.
And so you will learn more by speaking and listening and just osmosis than you will in tons of time in online research. So that doesn't mean online research is useless. Of course, it's great to get a holistic approach. But if I'm selling to someone who's in a market that I haven't been part of, then you need to do a lot of research really understand that market intimately, well, hopes, dreams, desires, challenges, all of those sorts of things, so that my message can really resonate with them.
Mark Drager: I think this is such an important point, and I don't want to overlook it, because it even comes down to language. So this podcast, How To Sell More at different times in the 100 plus episodes that we've done, sometimes I'm thinking in the back of my mind, how would a marketing manager approach this versus a salesperson versus an owner, operator versus a solopreneur versus a business owner, and it even comes down to the language of if I'm speaking to a business owner, probably you or your company or your team.
If it's a manager or a leader, then it's probably you and your team as well. But I don't think most people think in terms of their company. And so when we get down to a different industry or a different vertical, or when we really niche it down exactly who we're talking to, and it's so easy to just show up and prove to everyone you don't know what you're talking about.
You know what I mean, or it's just too generic, or it's just not targeted enough, or you just don't really understand the person you're speaking to. And I kind of take the philosophy, I don't know if you've heard this, maybe in personal development, but there's this philosophy where if you don't like someone or don't agree with them, you probably just don't know them well enough, because as soon as you really come to know that person and understand their situation, their background, what they think, why they think, like your heart can go out to them. And so I always think that if things are a bit too generic or they're not working, you just probably don't know enough about the person the problem or the industry. Would you agree with that?
Allan Dib: I agree with that. So often you'll see people who, you know, if you've got deep domain knowledge, it's obvious that they don't know what they're talking about. So I can't remember what it's called. It's the something effect.
Mark Drager: The Dunning Kruger effect.
Allan Dib: Not the Dunning Kruger effect. It's the effect of, I can't remember the name of the effect. I'll have to look it up. But basically, it's where you're reading a newspaper, or a news thing or whatever. And you know, there's an article about something that you know well, and you're like, this journalist doesn't know shit, like, what the hell they're talking about? Like, that's totally inaccurate. And then you turn the page, and then you're reading about something that you don't know, and you just take it at face value, like, "Oh yeah, that sounds reasonable."
Mark Drager: This is literally, I'm on a mission to try and prove to people that this is the problem with AI, because I think AI is capable of writing amazing copy, if you know what good copy is, and it writes amazing copy, if you can control it so it doesn't start introducing mistakes. But if you don't really know what great copy is, if you don't really know what you're talking about, you don't even realize how many mistakes it's introducing into everything it writes.
Mark Drager: So with the new book, Lean marketing, you wrote in the introduction that you wrote this because your original book, the one page marketing plan, page marketing plan, did very well for years, but the marketing plan was more focused on strategy, and you wanted lean marketing to focus more on tactics. And so what is lean marketing in terms of a philosophy, in terms of a framework, in terms of an approach?
Allan Dib: Yes, so the there's a few years ago, I was invited to speak at a big conference, and it was an automotive manufacturing conference. And, you know, at the time, I don't really didn't know much about automotive manufacturing. I mean, I still really don't, but I learned a lot.
Mark Drager: But you went to a conference and you heard the keynote conference.
Allan Dib: Yeah. so I was invited to speak there. It was kind of a big deal. And, you know, there anyway, I was one of the speakers. Guy, Kawasaki was another speaker, and then a fellow came up to me, and he'd read my book, and he said, You know what I consider your book to be, lean marketing. And I'd heard kind of the term Lean thrown about in the manufacturing industry for a while, but I didn't really know what it was, and at the time, I didn't think much of it, but really lean absolutely transformed manufacturing completely on its head.
You know, it used to be that you had to do mass manufacturing, huge amount of units, huge all of those sorts of things. And after the Second World War, Japan was in a terrible state. They industries were all shattered. They didn't have resources all of those sorts of things, so they couldn't compete with mass manufacturing that to find a different way. So essentially, they developed, I don't know if they particularly invented, maybe they adapted, or whatever, but anyway, they created a way to do more with less. So a lean approach, which meant less equipment, less time, less space. Things were done in a very in a very sequenced way, rather than production line. In a production line like you're just doing the one thing, one thing, one thing, and then it goes to the next person in the production line and all of that.
Whereas in Lean you have a small team and you're all responsible for the product from start to end. End. And so it makes it very easy to customize. You need a smaller team. You don't need as many big resources. You can scale up or down as you need. So it provides a lot of flexibility. And most importantly, it really helps you do more with less. You don't need a massive team. And so similarly, that sat in the back of my head when the fellow Luis he said, I consider your book Lean marketing, and then, because a lot of what we're trying to do is very much that we're trying to do more with less. We don't, in most cases, we don't have huge budgets, huge teams, all of those things that big multinational companies have, usually, where maybe we've got a marketing coordinator, maybe not even maybe we're just working with the entrepreneur or the business owner. Got a small budget. We don't have a lot of things. And a lot of the stuff that we do is very much taking a lean approach to marketing, figuring it out, how can we do more with less?
And so to do more with less, that implies leverage. It's a force multiplier. We've got to figure out, how do we multiply the force of our inputs. And so that's very much the philosophy of Lean marketing. There's nine core principles that make up lean marketing, and I outline each of those in the book. And so it's basically a way to get bigger results with less marketing.
Mark Drager: And are there certain industries, certain companies, certain points, that either startup growth, scale up, where this works better or worse for people.
Allan Dib: Look, we've worked with people from the solopreneur right to people doing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. So being lean is a huge advantage at any size business, because when you're bloated, when you've got tons of baggage. When you've got to get approval from 10 different managers and all of that, even with big institutions, that massively slows you down. It reduces the amount of creativity you can have, because now you've got committees trying to approve every ad, every piece of copy, it's got to go to legal, all of this sort of stuff. So while it can be used at every level, it's a huge advantage, especially if you're smaller, because you can be nimble, you can be light, you can do things quickly, you can make course corrections as you get better and more information.
So it's a massive advantage that you've got as a smaller business, because you are competing with people who've got all of this legacy baggage and who've got to go through all these approval levels, and nine times out of 10, they'll completely water it down, and their message will be like nothing for no one, rather than being very specific for a specific person.
Mark Drager: And so you write that lean marketers create goodwill and brand equity, and they do this by delivering first a world class customer experience. They build strong IP and they ensure that their marketing is helpful, it's entertaining and it's valuable. And I wrote a little note for myself when I was reading the book a meatloaf reference, two out of three. Ain't bad, because as I was thinking through I was as I was thinking through some of our clients, as I was thinking through some of the people we work with, even my own agency, I find that people tend to over index, either they're going to build that great customer experience and have strong IP, in which case they don't really have to have to do much marketing because they got great return, or they might have the strong IP and great marketing, but terrible customer service and their churn is terrible.
And so I'm curious if a listener is hearing this right now and thinking, okay, world class customer experience. Great. IP and I need my marketing to be helpful and entertaining and valuable. I might only have one of these three. Like, what order do we start to knock this out?
Allan Dib: I would think of it like this in the inverse. So what's marketing that you really hate? You know? So give me an example, Mark, what? What's marketing where your like, just so turned off.
Mark Drager: Organic social media, man.
Allan Dib: Okay.
Mark Drager: Organic social media. It's just like, I like that. I hate i Yeah, man, I hate it.
Allan Dib: Fair enough. I'll give you a few examples that I hate. So I hate just random cold calls on my mobile phone.
Mark Drager: Oh yeah, I didn't realize there's an option. I hate that too.
Allan Dib: I hate spam, right? So I'll give you an example. A guy and I get pitched stuff every single day. I get dozens of pictures from people who are video editors, who are audio, you know, in the book industry, all of that sort of thing. So just in the last week, I had two different people email me. One guy said, Hey, I noticed you got this book, Lean marketing. Have you ever considered doing an audio book? I'm like, Well, if you had two seconds of research, you'd say, there's an audio book edition. Another guy emails me, said, I see you're an author. Have you ever considered doing a podcast again? If you'd done two seconds of research, you'd say, I've got a podcast by the name lean marketing podcast, so it's very clear that they're just sending mass spam messages to 1000s of people and hoping that somebody responds. So I hate watching my favorite program or whatever and being interrupted by some ad that's kind of irrelevant to me.
Mark Drager: Yeah, can we talk about why Amazon Prime? That you pay for now tells you like Not only have they introduced ads, but they have this little message that comes up that says your program will not be interrupted after these brief messages.
Allan Dib: Yes, so what do we hate? We hate messages that are irrelevant, messages that are selfish, messages that interrupt so these are all kind of like pollution, right in our content ecosystem. Contrast this with things that we love, things that are relevant, things that are helpful, things that are entertaining, things that provide value in our lives.
Now, what if your marketing could be in that second category rather than the first category. So many marketers just run in a deficit because they're constantly interrupting, they're constantly spamming, they're constantly cold calling, they're doing all filling up your inbox, filling up your phone with a bunch of irrelevant, obnoxious crap, right?
Whereas what I found is some of the best marketers in the world, they're just helpful, they're just entertaining. They've got really cool content that you actually want to consume. And then sometimes they say, "Hey, and by the way, you know what, if you want to take the journey further, I've got a way for you to do that," and they do very well out of that.
So if your marketing can be actual content, if it can be things that people actually want to read, hear, listen to, that's a massive shift, because if you're doing the interruption, if you're doing that pollution style marketing, the spam and all of that, yes, maybe one in 1000 may work or whatever, but that's massively wasteful. You're going to have to expend tons and tons of resources to just get one response.
And then even once you get one response, you may only get one out of 100 who buys so you're going to create so much waste, so much bad will as well in the marketplace. Conversely, if you've got a ton of people who just love your content, really enjoy what you do, it's entertaining, it's helpful, all of those sorts of things. Now, of course, they're not all going to buy, and maybe the vast majority won't buy, but you're there creating goodwill. You're there creating brand equity.
Now that's brand building, right? So people having your personality embedded in people's mind, and then a fraction of those people will actually buy as well. So you're creating so much goodwill in the marketplace. And then the people who don't buy immediately, maybe they're not ready to buy today. Maybe they're ready in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days a year, two years, some people, I consumed their content for a year or two years before something triggered in my business or something triggered in my life.
And I'm like, "Yeah, you know what? I think I will buy their service or buy their product or whatever else." So they kind of lived rent free in my mind until I was ready to buy and so that's a completely different mindset shift, and that's really the core of Lean marketing. That's really lean marketing principle number one, which is your marketing should create value for your target market. It should be interesting. Should be valuable. It should be something that they look forward to.
It should be something that potentially you could that could be a product that you could sell, even if you don't monetize it, even if you don't charge people for what you do. From a marketing perspective, there's a possibility that you could.
Mark Drager: Listen, I drank the Kool-Aid on value-first marketing a long time ago. But many companies still operate with rigid quotas and metrics - marketing teams scrambling for MQLs while sales teams complain the leads aren't good enough.
Allan, this isn't just about creating content and hoping for some eventual organic growth, right?
Allan Dib: Well, again, I'm not at all saying that we don't want to sell. We absolutely do want to sell. That's going to be core to our revenue, and we absolutely have a sales team as well, and we have targets as well, all those sorts of things. Now the mindset shift is, and I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but if you've ever had someone sell to you, but it was just a pleasurable experience, they were helpful. They took you through a journey. There was no pressure.
They actually helped you understand maybe the product or the industry or whatever better. And often, they weren't doing all of these weird sales tricks, where you've got to do some weird close, or say, "Hey, do you want to meet to on Tuesday morning or Wednesday afternoon? Or do you want it in blue? Or do you want it in red?" Or all of this sales nonsense that's we've been taught over the decades, and that stuff really doesn't work anymore.
So if you can be genuinely helpful as a salesperson or a sales team help educate the customer a little bit more through throughout the whole journey, and really understand them at a deeper level. And you know, be honest, if your product is not a good fit, say, "You know what, I don't think you're pro we're a good fit for you right now. I think you may be better suited to working with so and so, whatever."
And we do this all the time in our sales team, we absolutely reject people that maybe we could have pushed them over the line, but it's what I call desperate money, and money kind of has an energy to it, and you don't want desperate money, because desperate money is going to be complaints, it's going to be refunds, it's going to be bad reviews, it's going to be people who it's The last throw of the dice. And if you don't deliver a miracle, they're going to be upset, or whatever.
So we're very clear in our sales process about who we're for, who we're not for, how it's going to work, what the engagement is going to be, all of that sort of thing. And sometimes it's very clear it's not a good fit. And the point is, we're never, ever trying to just pressure someone over the line, and as a result, people have come back to us. People who were maybe not a good fit six months ago come back and say, "You know what, I think we may work with you now because we're in a different position," or whatever, or maybe they've referred someone to us or whatever.
So I'm always thinking throughout my whole business, whether it's my marketing, whether it's my sales process, whether it's my customer service, am I creating goodwill? Is this something that is this how I would treat a family member? Is this how we would be just like a normal human being, rather than seeing it as closing a deal or whatever? It's weird. I don't know. I can't explain it, but it just comes back to you many times over.
Mark Drager: Can you help explain what flagship assets are? You alluded to this in the previous response where you were talking about, hey, you might end up having this stuff, this thing you might be able to actually sell down the line. But what is a flagship asset? What is flagship content, flagship experiences, flagship tools. What are these things in terms of the lean marketing world?
Allan Dib: Yeah, so a lot of what I teach in Lean marketing is to do less. If you listen to most marketers, they're telling you to do more, spend more, do more, post more often on social media, be on all the platforms, all of that sort of thing. And from what I've seen, and I get to connect and network with the best marketers on the planet. Most of them just do one or two things, but they go really deep, and they do them very, very well.
And I've been able to build a multi, multi-million dollar business really doing one or two things. So I write books, and I've only written two. I mean, there's some authors who pump out one every year, just incredible. I don't know how they do it. So I've written two books. I send an email newsletter to my list twice a week, and that's pretty much it.
I mean, I do some other things, like podcasting up here, as a guest on podcasts and things like that. But again, I wouldn't say that floods us with leads and things like that. There's some that dribble in, but really, book and email that is the absolute backbone of our business. I'm on social media. I post the occasional dog picture or whatever, but I'm not, you know, like
Mark Drager: Going to the Drive-in. No ones able to stalk you.
Allan Dib: Exactly, exactly, but I'm not posting tons of social content. I'm not, you know, got a camera following him around 24/7 like Gary V or whatever, really do one or two things that drive the vast majority of our lead flow, our sales, our revenue and all that. But I go deep, right? So my book, which I wrote, The one page marketing plan, I think, was like six years ago.
And we sell more of that book than we did in launch week, and we spend more on ads on that book, and then we've got a whole bunch of resources that come along with that. So a lot of authors, what they'll do, they'll launch a book launch week, big push. Hear it everywhere, lots of media, all of that. Three months later, they're doing nothing. They're working on the next book, or whatever. To me, a book is like a 10 year project, maybe a 20 year project.
So I will be talking about the 1-page marketing plan. I'll be talking about Lean marketing for the next 10 years, for the next 20 years, maybe. And so I go deep on that. I spend on ads. I make sure that the book is always up to date, you know, if there's any corrections or anything like that. And again, same with my email list. I've been emailing my list for like, the last 10 years, twice a week, without fail.
I've got a unique email style as well. Our emails provide a lot of value. So people love the emails, like I get. Every time we send a broadcast out, we get tons of replies saying, I love this, that, or the other, or read your book, or whatever, all of that sort of thing. So I'm focused on really two kind of things in my business, and I'm not saying those are the two things that you need to do for you.
Maybe podcast for you. Maybe social media could be organic, could be paid media, whatever else. But I go deep on one or two things, and it drives millions and millions of dollars of revenue. So you don't need to do 1000 things for you to be successful and generate a lot of leads, a lot of revenue, a lot of clients in the door. So you just want to go deep on a couple of things.
Mark Drager: So back though to the idea of the flagship asset, the experience, the tools and what have you that's been really powerful in your business. Again, why? Why so?
Allan Dib: So a flagship asset. And in fact, I'll back up. I want to talk about assets a little bit. so for example, I own some real estate, and I didn't have to do anything at all. I just wake up in the morning, have my breakfast, I have my lunch, or do my work or whatever, and over a couple of years, those assets double in value or triple in value or whatever.
So just like real estate, you can rent it out for rental income. Just like stocks, you get dividend income. So the key to wealth is really having assets and attaining assets and then having those assets grow. And because assets create income in a very similar way, in a marketing perspective, marketing assets generate lead flow, they generate revenue, they generate new clients.
Now in my business, my books, my key marketing assets. So I often get invited to podcasts exactly as I am now because of an asset that I've got out there. I get invited to speak on stage. I get invited to events. I get opportunities that I never would have got had I not had this asset in my business. Every single day, people will email me. They'll say, “hey, how do I join one of your programs or this sort of thing?” They'll join my email list all because I've got assets working in my business.
Now, for me, it's my books. As I said, it doesn't have to be a book for everyone. Maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's a white paper or a free report or a YouTube channel or something. So what's an asset, a flagship asset that you can be famous for in your niche, in among your people, that really is helpful, valuable, entertaining, that they can that they can read, listen to, or view, or whatever else, and then that's going to generate goodwill, that's going to generate lead flow, that's going to generate revenue.
So if you focus on creating marketing assets in your business, you're going to be in an unstoppable position, because that's just naturally going to create that lead flow, just like owning real estate, that's naturally going to increase your wealth as things inflate in value. Exactly the same way having marketing assets, they're going to get more valuable over time as you add more content, as you distribute them more widely, as they become better known.
Mark Drager: And for this type of content, you suggest wrapping IP around it, name it and claim it, type stuff, or just get something out there.
Allan Dib: Look, initially get something out there, but over time, you'll see what hits, and you can double down on what hits. So for example, with the book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan, the 1-page marketing plan was just a process that I used within my consulting business. Long before it was a book, I wanted clients to be able to put together a very simple marketing plan, and I got all sorts of pushback, too hard, too difficult. Don't know where to start. Need to hire a consultant. It's going to take six months. I'm like, screw this. Let's do a marketing plan on one page, you know?
So what are the key elements we need to know? We need to know, target market, messaging, media, so on and so forth. And so I sketched it out on one page, and it was and I saw that it hit. People were like, Oh, wow. Now I've got a marketing plan. I've never had one in my life, and it was easy to share, it was easy to update, all of those sorts of things I saw that got traction. Then I started speaking about one-page marketing plans, and again, I got a lot of engagement all of that.
So when I launched the book like you can never know that a book is going to be super successful or not, but I had some evidence that people liked a one page marketing plan, and so I doubled down, wrote a book, and you know, the rest is history, as they say, in a similar way, put things out there. You're going to see, you're going to get responses from the marketplace, and the marketplace will tell you, either this thing is got legs or it doesn't, and either way is fine. It's just feedback, and you can double down on the things that work and build on them. So in my case, you might see the this book that's got over a million copies sold and tons of reviews and all of that, but it just started as a little seed of an idea of solving a problem for some of my clients in and then built from there.
Mark Drager: Earlier, you mentioned your podcast. I was listening to an episode where you shared a realization you had - the idea that you can do anything, but you can't do everything.
And that's the exact line I tell myself…and something I talk to my kids a lot about too.
And I feel that actually plays into your approach of Lean Marketing. You can do anything you want, but truthfully, you only have so much time, so many resources, so much budget available…so you can't do everything. You're kind of forced to focus on the things that are going to drive the most value in your business.
Allan Dib: The biggest unlock you can have is that most success is not about addition, it's about subtraction. It's about what am I going to remove? What am I going to sacrifice? So you know, I've had a body transformation over the last three or four years. If you'd seen me three or four years ago, I was very overweight, not very well, all of that sort of thing. If I took my shirt off now, you'd be pretty impressed, right?
So, yes, I do work out. Yes, I did add things to my schedule and diet and things like that, but mostly I removed things. I removed eating processed junk food. I removed so most of success in almost any field, whether it's marketing, whether it's health, whether it's relationships, it's often just subtraction and just focus on the one or two things that actually matters and get rid of all the other crap.
So marketing is very much the same. If your focus is split on 100 different directions, you got to do Instagram, you got to do LinkedIn, and you got to do YouTube, and you got to do podcasts, and you got to do Twitter and all of this sort of stuff. You're going to be terrible at pretty much all of them and get no traction at any of them, right?
So I often say, if you want to start on a social media platform, great, choose one platform and spend the next three to five years posting daily on that platform until you get amazing at it and just get a little bit better every single day. And that's not popular advice. People don't want to hear that. You know, it's simple, but it's not easy, and it's common sense, but it's not common practice.
Mark Drager: So much of what you cover in the book. And I think what we've covered in this conversation is the idea of niching down a focus being a superpower of doing less more, and yet, in your book, you do cover a lot of stuff, like you cover a lot. It's an entire playbook. And I would highly recommend that anyone who's getting into marketing, anyone who wants to freshen up on marketing, anyone who wants to have a new way of thinking about their marketing, in a much more effective way to pick up lean marketing. What is the thing that people really get hung up on? In terms of this book? Though,
Allan Dib: Different people get hung up on different things, but I think that the big and this is something I fight every single day. As entrepreneurs, we thrive on novelty. So the new project, the new thing. I mean, if I look at my to do list, I see like 100 things that are not done and probably will never be done. But, you know.
So a lot of times we'll be working with the founder on entrepreneur, and they've got a product that does so well, you know, it's just people love it. It's easy to deliver, it's profitable, all of that sort of thing. And then they'll be working on something new, and I'm like, dude, and the new thing takes up 80% of their focus, and the old thing that's actually just working and grinding away and pumping along is just taking 20% of what's running on autopilot or their team is doing.
I'm like, "Dude, if you just focus on that thing, you're going to 10x your revenue." And I found a few strategies that have been helpful for me to kind of get past that. So one is to have a parking lot for future ideas. So it's like, okay, not now, but later. So I don't forget it's it doesn't feel like I've lost them and all of that.
Mark Drager: Want to know a trick? Write them on Post-it notes. Put them on your wall, and when the glue on the Post-it note lets go and hits the floor, you have to throw it out.
Allan Dib: That's it, exactly, right. The other thing is, really staffing your weaknesses. You know, a lot of times we get taught in school that you've just got to have all the answers. You've got to do it all of that sort of thing. In school, we were taught if if I'm really good at maths and my friend is really good at, let's say, chemistry or whatever, I can't just get my friend to do my chemistry exam for me. That's called cheating. You get kicked out, or you'll, you know, whereas in business, that's exactly what you've got to do.
You've got to say, Hey, I'm going to get my friend who's good at chemistry. He's going to do that, and I'm going to focus on the thing I'm good at. So you want to double down on your strengths. So what is your genius zone? What are the things that you're really good at? So for me, it's really writing, it's connecting, and so. And my big focus this year is speaking and podcasting as well. So really, I'm doing three things for this year. That's it, you know, and all the other things that I would love to do. And they're projects that seem really cool. They're kind of in my just for later list, someday maybe list, and I'll get to them maybe another time.
Mark Drager: But each of the things that you're focusing on in themselves are an act of synthesizing your ideas, of taking a stand on things, of putting out into the world and sharing your thinking. They are all things that put you in a credible leadership position, whether you're from the stage, whether people are as a published author, as a world-dominating podcaster. So it's interesting, though, to me, that the three areas that you focus on in themselves are actually tactics that will naturally lead to a lot more know, like and trust. Is that by design, or is that just by skill set?
Allan Dib: It's by design, and it's also by skill set, and it's also by skill set that I need to be good at. So in terms of writing, I believe I'm an excellent writer, so I'm going to double down on that skill, and I'm going to get an even become an even better writer, connecting with people. So one of the things that really created energy for me last year is attending high-level events, spending time with other authors, other high-level entrepreneurs and things like that. So that gave me ideas, that gave me inspiration, that gave me a lot of motivation. And so I'm doing that from that perspective.
And of course, it's led to opportunities. You know, I get invited on a big podcast, or I get invited to another big event, or there's JV opportunities, or whatever. So that is the success from that is kind of a side effect, but mostly I'm driven by, hey, this really gave me energy. I really enjoyed spending two days at Donald Miller's house with 2025 other amazing non-fiction authors or whatever. I'm definitely going to get on the plane and do that again this year, right? So no doubt about it, then speaking is a speaking and storytelling, I would say, really a master skill, especially in the this age, because with AI, with commoditization and automation and of everything, mostly what any of us sell is essentially a commodity.
So there's very few services or products that are really, truly unique. So what's going to be the key differentiator, the people who tell the best stories, the people who can take you on a journey and really understand you well? So my goal is to become a world-class speaker and storyteller, and that's going to help me become a better writer. That's going to be help me connect with people better, so it's going to create that virtuous cycle. So I'm tapping into some of my genius zone, but I'm also tapping into areas that I think would sharpen some of the other areas as well.
Mark Drager: Morgan Housel, I don't know if you've read his work, either the Psychology of Money or Same As Ever, but he writes, “best story wins.”
Allan Dib: Totally, totally. And conversely, I mean, I'm talking about the things that I'm going to do, but like I said, the bigger things are subtraction. Now, there was probably 50 things I had to remove from my list this year. And now, I did a time and energy audit. I looked at what drained energy last year. You know? So every year I do an annual review, and I'm like, what drained energy? What was like, oh, my God, I just do not want to do this. And this is where I've got to staff those things.
So things like admin, things like related to finance and legal and meetings and zoom meetings and all of that sort of stuff. So when I look at the stuff that drained that energy, I'm like, man, I've got to reduce that stuff or remove that stuff. And so again, I'm staffing those weaknesses. There are people in my team who love that stuff. They love bookkeeping. They love running meetings and hiring people and firing people and putting people in the right maybe not firing people, but putting people and making sure that the right people are in the right seats, doing the right things, and having performance reviews and all of that sort of stuff, that stuff, I just want to blow my brains out so I don't do it.
Mark Drager: I've been speaking with Alan Dib, who is the author of the best-selling book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan, as well as his newest book, Lean Marketing: More leads. More profit. Less marketing. Which again, I highly recommend picking up or listening to.
Alan, one final question for you as we wrap up. It's the question I love to end each podcast episode with, and we can go anywhere with it. If you gave us one tip or one piece of advice to help us sell more, what would that be?
Allan Dib: Very much what we've been talking about, focus.
Yeah. Figure out who your people are. Who are your people? Don't worry about product, don't worry about service, all of that sort of stuff. Figure out who your people are, who are the people that you want to serve. Maybe it's your past self, and then figure out what it is that they desperately want to bridge that gap between where they are now and where they want to be.
So that's the business that we're all in. We're all in the business of delivering a transformation, taking people from point A to point B, a worse condition to a better condition. And so that's really the best, most ethical way to be a marketer and to be an entrepreneur, and that's something that you can sustain long term.
