Episode 180 Transcript
Heather Porter (00:01.26)
JD, I've been following your work. I've heard your stuff for a long time. I'm really excited you're on this show. We're gonna have a good time. How are you?
John Dwyer (00:07.699)
Not too bad at all. it's interesting you say you've been following my stuff and you're actually excited for me to be on that ship. Normally it's the opposite. People say, I've been following you, I do not want to talk to you.
Heather Porter (00:17.59)
No, on the contrary, I think you're the most down to earth, say it as it is guy that's out there. Finally, it's breath of fresh air. So thank you. All right, we're going to crack into it. So I want to know straight away what are a few tangible takeaways or tips for growing a business smarter without all the hustle and grind and pulling your hair out? What are some smart tips we can use?
John Dwyer (00:39.669)
Yeah, okay. And all jokes aside, all sarcasm aside, I'm probably not the guy to ask that because I've made 101 mistakes on growing our business. But what I found, I guess, in the last 10 years when we got a little bit smarter because a few more wrinkles, was that, you know, basically, try and make sure that you are going to firstly, either employ or hang around people who say why not, not people who say why. Okay. And the mistake I made in my early career was that I hung around accountants and operational people. And every time I
Heather Porter (00:41.486)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (01:09.643)
come up with a crazy new idea and my business in those days was called the Dynamic Ideas Company. The acronym Dynamic Ideas Company was not good but...
DIC, but I didn't think about that at the time, did I? Because I'm an idiot, yeah. But throughout those times, you know, there was lots and lots of ideas. Now, whether it be scratch bingos for News Limiters papers or promotions that we put together for, you know, McDonald's, we're a direct response company. So therefore, it's all that sort of stuff. I hung around, you know, people who are operationally minded, they're left brained and there's nothing wrong with them. This is that they're traditionally not risk takers. So they go, you know, why, why, why would you do that? Why would you do this? And then, you know, luckily in my 30s, I decided to hang around crazy people and they
were much more dangerous of course because they would take risks but they say oh why not you know and you might say back in that era it was risky and today it's not the beautiful thing about the industry that we're in now that the advertising marketing industry is you can test and fix within you know 24 48 hours and you know all about that because of the nature of your business so you know my view would be test and fix okay hang around you know people who are you know why not why not do that water and as long as they're completely you know silly idea
Heather Porter (01:52.301)
Yeah
John Dwyer (02:18.899)
but hang around people who will actually work with you in terms of being a little bit nutty, and then test and fix. And the beautiful part about what you do, Heather, is that you see it every day of the week, and that is you can test on social media 10 things at a time, and you'll know whether they're to fire within a few days.
Heather Porter (02:35.756)
And do you know what I love about it too, is I always say to somebody, right, so let's come up with some ideas. Now go crazier. What's a really crazy, crazy idea that you think, no way, no way would that work. And like 50 % of the time it's that crazy one that works. So I love that you're saying that.
John Dwyer (02:47.817)
I did.
It is. Well, let me you this one. This came out of, you know, about six months ago. This guy came to one of my song and dance shows a few years ago. say song and dance as a seminar. We don't do so many seminars now. It's like there's a podcast or webinar. But anyway, he contacts me. said, look, I saw your stupid stuff a few years ago with a direct response. he said, I've got an aluminium fence business. And he said, I got it from my father who started it in the 1800s. And he said, I'm in Gosford, New South Wales. And I put out letterbox drops to all the 30 year old
because they're going to need an aluminium fence because their piling fence is falling down. And he said, I put Facebook on and nothing's working. So I said, well, let me have a look at your leaflets and let me have a look at your Facebook ads. And of course the Facebook ads were targeted towards older suburbs that had piling fences, right? And he had a picture of an aluminium fence. And then he had a boring story above that, that he got the business from his dad. He started in 1842 and all the stuff that nobody cares about. I said, it's not going to work because you're concentrating on features, the aluminium fence, not the benefits.
Heather Porter (03:42.328)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (03:49.191)
So he said, I mean, we all know what an aluminium fence looks like. So I said, would you want to get out of the way and we'll just do it for you, which he did. So we ran the ugliest back fence in Australia contest on Facebook. And we said to everyone, look, if you've got a piling fence, and we obviously geo targeted towards the older suburbs, if you were to know piling fence is falling down, you could win an aluminium fence makeover, which is his product. If you just take a photo of your crappy fence and post it to our Facebook page, guess what? He got six months with the lids in three days. We spent 500.
Heather Porter (04:04.173)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (04:19.095)
$14 I think it was on Facebook and we had to close down after three days. He couldn't keep it up because not only were they warm leads, they were red hot. They took a photo of their crappy fence and gave it to him, you know. And then that sort of was something I thought, hang on, let's have a look at that for other people. So we had a dentist say, listen, I want to sell more Invisalign braces for children. And he said, parents really will get braces for their children where they'll put it all for themselves. So we did the same thing. We now call it the Facebook contest for it. And I've come from a sweepstakes contest background doing all the bingos.
Heather Porter (04:24.184)
Brilliant.
Heather Porter (04:29.902)
Wow.
Heather Porter (04:45.741)
Yep.
John Dwyer (04:49.065)
newspapers and stuff, so it's sort of a second nature to me. So now pretty much with all of our clients, they don't do any other Facebook ad other than the Facebook contest formula. And all it is is that they give away their product or service as a prize, whether it's lawn mowing or win a month's worth of lawn mowing, someone in an apartment is not going to enter that contest. Obviously someone's going to enter that contest who is a real prospect. We're getting a thousand leads a week for 32 cents a lead. We're talking crazy. And so this guy, particular guy,
Heather Porter (05:15.266)
Brilliant. Yeah.
John Dwyer (05:18.935)
with the dentist. mean, basically, we targeted at parents with children who might have crooked teeth. So he spent $30 a day. So over a week, that's $210 on Facebook, he got just under 1000 leads in one week. Okay. And he said his girl can't ring all of them because basically the girl then rings up and says, look, you didn't win the Invisalign braces. But guess what? You obviously got a child with crooked teeth. We got a special deal this week that if you get in by Friday, we will give you this special deal, whatever that might be. And she could only get to 100 of them and had a
conversion rate and he said what am I going to do I said well we'll put the robots on so we just put our AI genie we call her and she ranked the rest of the 900 she got 16 % conversion compared to his 9 %
Heather Porter (05:51.438)
Brilliant.
Heather Porter (06:02.387)
Whoa. So this whole test and fix concept is really, really smart. this, how do you come up with these ideas when you're sitting in front of a client or business? Like, what do you, how does this, where does this come from? When you're like, I know this is going to work. Let's test this. Yeah, that is the right answer.
John Dwyer (06:15.389)
Money, alcohol, alcohol. That's it, yeah.
I know, look, and I've been asked a few times and I'm certainly not Walt Disney, but I've been asked a few times, but where does this creativity comes from? yeah, look, and I'm being serious for a second. I think it is an X factor. It's like, you know, I'm not comparing myself to, you know, what Rob Williams, but people would say, you know, where does Jim Carrey and Rob Williams, I mean, they're once in a hundred years. I'm certainly not once in a hundred years. But the thing is, is that those, those freaks come along once in a hundred years and I'm not on that platform. But the thing is that I've tried to teach, I put people on and tried
Heather Porter (06:26.23)
Where does it?
John Dwyer (06:49.655)
to teach them this creativity and unfortunately it's just part of the DNA. mean, you've either got it or not. But what you can do is that you can take this stuff and create a formula and a system about it. And so, know, what I did and, you know, people that joined my stuff, they get a big book. therefore they go through this and they just pinch anything out of that book of 300 pages of ideas that have worked. And so therefore, basically whilst they will never come up with the idea, I just give them the ideas and of course they pay a few dollars for it.
I've got to tell you a classic Heather. We lived in a little country town called Gloucester in the Hunter Valley and Gail comes home from picking the kids up from school this day because we had young kids at the time and she said, oh, she said the girl in town that runs the hairdressing salon, the only hairdressing salon in town, this was like Mayberry, it's a main street with one butcher, one baker. And she's had the hair salon for 30 years and never a competitor. And a lady came to town and opened up a hair salon opposite her and got all the men to swap across because she was charging
Heather Porter (07:21.099)
Yeah, tell me, tell me.
John Dwyer (07:49.447)
$50 for a man's haircut at the time and the shop across the road said $10 and so every man in town that I care particularly country towns They'll get a haircut of the butcher, right? So all the men went across the road to the lady that was charging $10 and Kimberly this girl's name was and she said can you ask John is JD got any of that? Wow shit that he could possibly give me. Oh, what do we do? What do we do? You know, do we go to nine dollars? So girl comes home with yet another freebie. Thanks girl. And I said, okay, let me think about it So anyway two days later, she got pretty much
Heather Porter (08:08.216)
The Welsh it.
John Dwyer (08:19.371)
all the men back within a week because we put a sandwich board outside her salon that was opposite the one that was stealing the men and the sandwich board just said we fixed ten dollar haircuts.
Heather Porter (08:31.53)
Interesting. See, that's so smart.
John Dwyer (08:32.565)
So, you know, there was no need to have a happy meal toy, although there normally is, to take people's eyes off the price. But the thing is, is that in her instance, she didn't need that. She just needed to scare the men that for $10, you're going to look like an idiot.
Heather Porter (08:37.538)
Yeah. Ooh.
Heather Porter (08:44.718)
An idiot. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about what you pay for. Get what you pay for. Now, for those of you watching with the video, you would have seen John hold up or JD hold up his amazing book, this book that he just held up. It's like amazing swipe file book. I don't want to just like skip over that. What is this this book that you held up like of all your examples? How do people get that?
John Dwyer (09:03.765)
I blame Ken and Karen for this because Heather and myself are very good friends and yeah, Ken and Karen. when I hit the seminar circuit 10 years ago and had no idea what I was doing, I was a complete moron. I had come from the corporate world where you're inside boardrooms. And then all of a sudden I was in front of small business owners who thought KPI was a new chicken chain. So I had no clue and they wouldn't even laugh at my
Heather Porter (09:22.093)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (09:28.162)
Ha ha ha
John Dwyer (09:33.671)
jokers to small business people, but no shame on them. And Karen and Ken come up to me and they said, look, we're on the seminar, so you've to write a book. And I went, I'm not writing a book. They said, well, all this stuff that you've done over the years, write a book. I said, nobody cares about that. They said, they do. You're now talking to small business owners. So they forced me to write this. And Woody, Ken Wood, forced me to write that within like a week. So anyway, I dictaphoned it. We gave it to someone to put all together. And it's called the Avalanche Leads Formula because that's what I do. And the funny part about it, this was 10 years ago, the funny part about it was that
Heather Porter (09:50.636)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (09:55.97)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Dwyer (10:03.575)
I did a webinar about six months ago and in the chat box, a guy comes up and says, oh JD, I got your book all these years ago and chapter five or six, whatever it was, has made a huge difference to my business life. And that night in bed, Gail says to me, what are you doing? I'm reading the book, I've never read it. And so therefore she said, what are you doing? I'm reading chapter six, that's pretty good stuff. Because what I had done, I dictafoned it, I gave it to the people to put together, got a proofreader to do it, I've never read it. But chapter six is very good.
Heather Porter (10:28.492)
Yes. Yes.
John Dwyer (10:33.495)
So anyway Woody then says to me, well you've written one book, you've got to do another one. I said, come on, stop, this is ridiculous. So I thought it was, well if I'm going to do another one and I'm supposedly the institute of wow, then I'd better make it a big one, so that's why this is the size of a tabloid newspaper.
Heather Porter (10:47.392)
It's huge by the way you guys, it's massive. It looks very impressive.
John Dwyer (10:50.605)
It's a leather badge, $420 a book to print by the way, so it's not cheap. know, where it's this thing here, you can print for, you $5. So what we did is we held this over as a special plus to anyone who joined the coaching program at the time. These days it's all on digital, you we've digitized it these days. But the funny part was is that when I was doing it from stage and said, look, if you join my $2,000 a month coaching program, whatever it might be, you will go home with the book. I had to get them to sign a form just as it was a piss taker.
Heather Porter (10:57.24)
Yeah, yeah.
Heather Porter (11:04.952)
Yeah.
course.
John Dwyer (11:19.639)
I said you have to sign a form because if you're in bed reading this and you go to sleep you could break a rib. I do not want you to serve me because it is pretty heavy.
Heather Porter (11:26.358)
It's huge. that's cold.
John Dwyer (11:29.333)
By the way, didn't actually create it. What's in here is 10, 15 years worth of direct response marketing concepts that worked. The ones that didn't work, I didn't put in. So therefore, throughout this, whether it's the puppy dog sale, or whether it happens to be providing an incentive to get people to buy your product, or whether it's give a minimum dollar prize away, but you only paid 20 grand to the Israel's account. All that sort of stuff is in here. And everyone who's got it actually says to me, look, it's just basically the coffee table book they refer to when they need a new idea.
Heather Porter (11:57.581)
Yeah, I can see that. And guys, we'll recap on all this where you can get you where you can pick up your own versions of all this coming up soon. So you've said something else interesting recently, and that is sort of stay in the lane way of your genius, because you said you have that X factor of what you do. I think that's really, really important right now, because there's so many people going, I need this, I need that, and I need to be this and I need to be that. What is your take on that? Like literally going, yeah, I need to learn this and then I need to learn that and then I need to learn that. What should we do if we want to get good leads in our business?
John Dwyer (12:28.789)
Look, I suffer from what you just said, to be honest with you. And again, I'll keep the human psychosom low on this point, because probably one of my downsides is that, there's too many balls in the air. If you saw what's on my desk at the moment, yellow stick-it pads, there's notes everywhere. I'm a typical creative, so therefore, they are dangerous to be around, but they're normally good fun, but they're dangerous to be around unless you can channel them into one thing. And fortunately, in the last 10 years, courtesy of just, I guess, again, a few more
Heather Porter (12:36.611)
Learning.
Heather Porter (12:45.335)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (12:59.361)
because you live and learn, I make sure that we don't go absolutely crazy with too many things. But the world that we live in, being the digital world and the AI world now, you can actually have your finger in at least a few pies because that GBT can help you really master a lot of things a lot quicker than what we used to. I'll give an example. Give an example. was three weeks ago. You know what I'd like you to say, Heather? No, no, we don't want any examples. We don't want any examples.
Heather Porter (13:20.578)
Give me example.
Heather Porter (13:27.714)
No, I really, I don't, because I've already had enough from you, JD. No, we need, we need more examples because this is what you're, you're, you're great at. So keep going.
John Dwyer (13:28.851)
Yeah, it's getting late. We've got to close up now. You've been a very interesting.
Okay, so therefore, we developed a product about, we started 18 months ago and it took longer than what we thought to get up and 18 months ago, AI receptionists were, you people's brains would explode now. It's basically a day.
Every man his dog's got an AI receptionist. We got into it and because we're not BHP, it took us a little while to build it and so therefore we partnered up with a San Francisco company that would give us the robots and then what we put together is a thing called AIgenienow.com and we're making a few dollars out of it nothing like what we thought we would because we took too long to get to market. And I wasn't practicing what I preach and that is perfection is the enemy of good enough. We had it good enough six months in but we went for another seven, eight, nine,
Heather Porter (14:05.9)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (14:24.087)
months and all of a sudden AI receptionists became a commodity. We were no longer the fancy guy on block. And so I thought to myself, shit, okay, well we've wasted all that time and money on that and we don't have the private island yet, so therefore what do we do with all of that knowledge? And I thought, hang on, let's go outbound. So what we would do is that we'd charge $297 a month for a robot to answer your phone. Normally tradies and restaurants and hairdressers are the people who can't answer their phone. So they're under a sink if they're a plumber or they're putting it in solar. This would answer their phone and of course
text the message to them and you know the game.
But we took too long to get to market. And so I thought to myself, OK, if it's a commodity now, whereby what we were selling for $3.97 a month is now $97 a month with other people who are out there, because there's a gazillion of them, what about outbound? Because we can ring 1,000 people within an hour with any one of these robots, right? And so the concept that we've come up with, which we're launching next week, so I'll let you know whether or not the following week I have a private island. And that is the real estate industry. We have a lot of real estate agents come to us over time and say, look, we want more appraisals because they get
10 appraisals and when they get 10 appraisals, two, three or four turn into a listing, right? But it's all about appraisals. And so therefore I've had real estate agents say to me over time, look, we need more appraisals. What idea have you got? I said, okay, out of every 10 appraisals, how many listings do you get? Oh, three. Well, why don't you just give out a million appraisals? They go, what? I said, instead of putting an ugly face on a leaflet and putting it their letterbox saying, please, please, we'd like us to give you a valuation or likewise online, then just give it to them. And they said, how do we do that?
got a company overseas to scrape all of the postcodes, addresses and the valuations, okay, it's not RP data, but it's something like that. And what we did is gave to the real estate agents checks, Commonwealth Bank looking checks, and had $1.4 million on it for house number two, $1.3 million for house number three. And they were to deliver it into the letterbox so that when people got home that night, they didn't have a leaflet saying, you like us to value, we valued their home. Their heads have exploded because they've just got a check in front of them for $1.4 million.
Heather Porter (16:00.238)
Brilliant.
Heather Porter (16:21.134)
Nope.
John Dwyer (16:26.423)
80 % of Australians have no idea what they're sitting on. That's the statistics as of yesterday. checked it again yesterday. 80 % of people have no idea. So the results from this with the agents that we gave it to were outstanding. We're talking like, you know, in a week 19 appraisals and some of them were getting six or seven of those turned into a listing within the week. We're talking like a stupid record. So I'm thinking well that's good. Retirement package, you know, the real estate agents will just think I'm JC and I'll have a private island within maybe a month. Guess what? What we found is
Heather Porter (16:32.383)
Interesting.
John Dwyer (16:56.343)
that real estate agents are inherently lazy. They didn't want to walk the streets or get their tasker to walk the streets for them to put number two's valuation check in number two's letterbox, number three's in number, because it had to go into their letterbox, okay? It was a check that had to go into their letterbox. They were used to putting out a leaflet to 10,000 homes and that was it.
Heather Porter (17:09.122)
Yeah, the right one. Yeah.
Heather Porter (17:13.698)
Yeah, generic.
John Dwyer (17:14.973)
So last week I thought, hang on, this is crazy. We came across lazy real estate agents and said, why don't we just take the laziness away from them? We'll get a robot to ring up a thousand homes every hour and we will tell them what their home's worth. So therefore the robot now will ring up and basically say, Heather, you are the owner of 26 Smith Street, Smithfield. We're just doing a research survey to find out what percentage of Australians know what they're sitting on. Would you like to know what you're sitting on? Nine out of 10, I can assure you, will say yes.
Heather Porter (17:41.602)
Mostly say, tell me, yeah.
John Dwyer (17:43.123)
and you go 1.42 million and they go, what? I said, well, listen, if you like, what we can do is actually give you a written confirmation of that. have an association with a local trusted real estate agent who can come in and give you a listing. So basically we're taking something that was an abject failure because they wouldn't let Vox drop the checks and turned it into something now that all we will do is package 10 appraisals together and give it to them for whatever we charge. And the reason I say that is because again, don't be too quick to throw an idea out if it doesn't work. See if you can actually, you know, maybe trick it up a
Heather Porter (17:44.962)
Yeah. Really?
John Dwyer (18:13.107)
bit and do it differently.
Heather Porter (18:14.721)
Very good. And speaking of ideas, do you think AI is going to hurt creativity or help it?
John Dwyer (18:20.469)
I think help it. I think help it. I mean, I've got a little bit I've got a little bit lazy because you know, does most of my copywriting for me now. I just have to keep on telling it no long hyphens. I did not want the long hyphen. That'll be.
Heather Porter (18:27.607)
does.
Heather Porter (18:31.581)
I know, because that's the dead giveaway. know you're like, stop with the long-term. The dash or whatever they call it. So, but with the ideas, because you are definitely an ideas guy. Do you think if somebody is not inherently creative, do you think they'll still get good ideas from AI?
John Dwyer (18:49.397)
Not all the time, in the other case, you will. But yeah, what I found is that it's an enhancement tool, not necessarily the answer. And, you know, I always say that at the end of the day, if I've got a client who gives me a good brief, there's a chance I'll have an answer for him pretty quickly. Now, whether that's an hour or a day or a week, but you know, certainly more quickly than if I have to interrogate him, Sharon Stone style and say, look, I need to get information out of you, you know. I don't know why that comes up in my head all the time. But the thing is that, you know, most of the briefs I get
Heather Porter (18:51.062)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (18:58.221)
Google.
John Dwyer (19:19.351)
on the back of a bloody bit of toilet paper. I mean, they're ridiculous. I've had one recently. The guy came on board last week. He's about 104. And it's just like pulling nails. really is trying to, I'm saying to him, give me the benefits of your product. Don't give me the features. Give me the benefits of it. And it's just a nightmare.
Heather Porter (19:37.291)
He probably couldn't. Some can't.
John Dwyer (19:38.517)
No, well, that's it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like on a Zoom call like this. I'll show you what he does. His head is there. That's all I say. Yeah, look, I think it's largely as good as the prompt. And what I found is that if I go in there and like, for example, with this idea that we have for the real estate agencies, which I think has gone half a chance, I will give it all of the potential problems. When I was the marketing guy at Woolworths,
Heather Porter (19:44.845)
His head's at the bottom of the screen.
John Dwyer (20:08.471)
a thousand years ago, they put me through a course which I hated, but it was called PPA, Potential Problem Analysis. And what that would say is that if you're opening up a shopping centre, which I was at the time in Dubbo, New South Wales, what if it rains? And I go, okay, well, we'll do this, that and the other, you know, what if it, what if there's an earthquake? And I go, come on, how far do you want to push the potential problems, you know? But it taught me to make sure that no matter what crazy idea you came up with, have a look at what the potential problems are. And, you know, when I look at ChatGPT, I will say to it, look, this is the idea, this is what
Heather Porter (20:14.327)
All right.
John Dwyer (20:38.421)
we want to do, this is how we want to do it, can you give me the potential problems, that's where it's really good, that's where it's right, but it won't come up with the idea.
Heather Porter (20:45.645)
See, that's what's interesting. I just wanted to talk to you about that for a second because you have this extreme wealth of knowledge and wisdom that many people who don't use AI don't have. And it is a shit in, shit out, right? So it's interesting you say that. It's a good tool, but it's only as good as you know what to tell it to do, for sure. I want to... Yeah.
John Dwyer (21:03.645)
And it's pretty much like a doctor, if you go to the doctor and say I'm sick, then of course he's not going to able to prescribe something. If you say I've got a sore knee, he'll go, oh you've got a gout.
Heather Porter (21:10.207)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I want to talk to you about your business. What does it do? Just answer me like casually. What does your business do? Who do you help? What's happening?
John Dwyer (21:19.401)
Yeah, look, pretty much, you know, small to medium sized businesses. mean, I used to be in the corporate world. So I was doing all of these ideas, the scratch bingoes for Murdoch's newspapers and Channel 9 we had as a client. And so therefore I was dreaming up ideas for them to get more, you know, more viewers. Like on that, on that, I had a...
Heather Porter (21:34.433)
Yeah, yeah.
John Dwyer (21:39.157)
talk only last week and it was a luncheon so was alcoholic infused and this guy is one of the big, with one of the big TV stations like a Channel 9, Channel 7 or Channel 10 right and he said we're dying I said I know you are because you are dickheads you're suffering from something worse than COVID it's called dick-editis okay and he said I said look I haven't watched free-to-air TV for probably a couple of years and I'm joking I'm in the odd occasion you might go and I said you guys are spending money on the block and all the lifestyle shows because you you think that would drive them across
you know, and with reasonable success, but overall you're losing people like crazy, right? And he said, okay, smart ass, so what's the fix? I said, mate, really, really easy. The fix for you guys is to evaluate, okay? And I know that you'll say, okay, well, you know, tell me something I don't know. I said, no, Happy Meal toy. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, we had six under 12 at one stage and we spent on Happy Meals throughout that period. I added it up, it was $7.8 billion and the kids never ate the hamburger, it was all about the
to it. So if you ask anyone, if you ask anyone what a Happy Meal costs a parent or grandparent, they probably won't tell you, well they won't get any nearer because McDonald's took our eyes off the price. And I said to him, okay, so therefore if you don't have a wow factor and most people...
Heather Porter (22:39.469)
Of course it was. Yeah, I remember that.
John Dwyer (22:56.691)
don't, then we have to come up with what we call an artificial well factor. In other words, you know, basically a direct response gift or reward of some sort that will actually take the price. And having done all the bingos over the years, I know what a cash prize is.
At the end of day, people said to me, what would you give away as a prize if it's not your product or service on Facebook? Cash, cash, cash and more cash. Now most people don't want to give that away because $50,000 cost them $50,000. Whereas if they give away travel products or whatever, they can do deals. And if you give away cash, then just go to, we deal with Lloyds of London and we can get a million dollars for around about 22 grand, 23 grand. I can get half a million dollars for about 10, 11 grand.
the big win a million dollar sweepstakes and stuff. And what happens is that people buy your product or service because they've got the chance to win a million dollars. And then you have a preliminary draw at the end of the month or two months that you run it. And that person then is invited to go online with a chocolate wheel. And on that chocolate wheel has got a hundred numbers and they choose one number. So number 62, let's say they spin the wheel. If that comes up, they win the million. If it doesn't, then they win a motor car or they win a holiday or something else. So therefore you've got the headline, the Elvis found headline of your chance.
Heather Porter (23:44.768)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (24:12.099)
to win a million dollars. And he goes, yeah, go on, you gotta be interested. I said, okay. He said, but we've got to distribute game cards all around Australia, just like you used to do with bingo cards. I said, no, you don't. Everyone's got a game card in their wallet. And he said, what do mean? I said, driver's licence. And if you pull out your driver's licence, there's a nine digit number on the corner. So all you would do is at six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, right throughout the evening, so they've got to stick with you all night, you actually flash numbers on the screen. And those numbers, if they correspond
Heather Porter (24:40.446)
Interesting.
John Dwyer (24:41.879)
with your driver's licence and you end up marking off all of your driver's licence numbers that night, you're in the draw to win a million dollars. His jaw just dropped, his jaw dropped, he went, fuck me. He said...
He said, that is mind boggling. said, yeah, yeah, I know. And he said, how do you make money out of it? I said, I can't, there's no game card. When I used to make money out of bingo, I would charge them per thousand for the scratch bingo cards. We'd produce all the bingo cards. But when you have a fertile brain like this shit, and you give them a free idea like that, nobody's gonna pay a concept fee. Nobody's gonna pay a concept. They should, they should. But that would be an absolute game changer for this TV network. And you know what, I gave it to a radio station network about a month
ago, made of mine, runs a radio station network here in Australia and his brain exploded but I haven't seen it yet, come on, so it's a funny, maybe I'm feeding strawberries to pigs.
Heather Porter (25:35.949)
Look, your brain is something else. I know you've been told this probably a zillion times over. But so so people work with you. What do they get? Like they get these books and these packs and do they get to talk to you? How does it work?
John Dwyer (25:49.203)
Yeah, no, I live on a private island and basically I'm so wealthy I just spit on people. That's what I do. I don't do any more. No, I haven't got the private island yet, courtesy of having six children. Yeah, okay.
Heather Porter (26:01.378)
I know you're working on it. You're working on it. might be next week if this real estate thing comes off.
John Dwyer (26:05.621)
Yeah, what we do now, Heather, I mean, yeah, we still have the private consultancy where, you know, people pay me two or three or $4,000 a month, depending upon what they want. And, you know, we don't have any long lock-in period. Those days, I think, are numbered because, you know, a lot of people, particularly if they're in the small to medium sized business, they want the roadmap. Okay, so we have a program, which is a couple of month program where I think we charge them somewhere between three and five grand a month, depending upon what sort of business they own, how hard I've got to work. And they come out the back of that two month program with a full
So they get a full marketing plan for their business, what they should be doing online, what they might like to consider even in this day and age offline. They get the ideas of basically the sort of incentives to use to boost their product and boost their sales. mean, real estate agents, for example, one came on yesterday. And the first thing I said to him, I said, look, I'll provide you with the marketing plan and so forth over this next month. I said, if you really want to get more appraisals tomorrow, aside from the experiment we've got happening with the robots next week, at the moment,
Heather Porter (26:41.613)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (27:05.494)
all you gotta do is put it out on Facebook and say, listen, how would you like to win the sale of your home with no commission? In other words, if you're thinking about selling in the next 12 months, I will give you the chance to win me selling your home, no commission. So you won't pay the 30 or 40 or 50 grand. Who do you think that's going to attract to enter that contest? People who are thinking about selling their home.
Heather Porter (27:24.878)
Absolutely, it's call in straight out to the target market, but in creative way.
John Dwyer (27:28.669)
So, you know, he walks away like day one with what I think would be a game changer idea for him. But what we do is that I thought, what's the easiest way for me to make more money instead of just, you know, consulting and in the consulting thing. And I know this sounds very rude, but if they're a small butcher or baker or candlestick maker, I am feeding strawberries to pigs. You know, they're just not going to be able to do this stuff. So what we thought we'd do because they don't implement is that we'd package my IP into concepts. So therefore what we do is package it into
Heather Porter (27:34.946)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (27:50.765)
No.
John Dwyer (27:58.626)
consultancy concepts where they get a Zoom call with me like this, know, maybe twice a month and they get a marketing plan. Okay, and that's all I've been done with within two months. So therefore I walk away with a nice hit and they walk away with a marketing plan that might do them forever, you know, which might be a complete change for the business. And the other things we package are the million dollar draw price promotions. We have a fuel discount promotion, which mirrors the Woolworths one. This one is the biggie. When I had a client called the Greater Building Society here in Australia, I got Seinfeld to do their ads. Okay.
Heather Porter (28:04.397)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (28:11.331)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (28:28.439)
and I've milked the daylights out of that sense. We kicked off with a program basically that they were a challenger brand and that means that if you are not the Coca-Cola of your industry then you're a challenger brand, okay? And the Greater Building Society is the 250th biggest business in Australia but they're not the Commonwealth Bank or West Bank.
Heather Porter (28:46.658)
Yeah, yeah.
John Dwyer (28:46.997)
And so I came on board. Now these guys were paying me $35k a month. So therefore, you know, they deserved as much of my time as they could get. But they said to me, listen, okay, we're a challenger brand. So what does that mean we need to do? I said, don't charge, don't market your home loans on price. Because if you're 6.2%, the Commonwealth Bank will be 6.1 % tomorrow. It'd be like a hardware store opposite Bunnings marketing on price. I mean, that's just stupidity. And these bankers, who are all pretty boring, said to me, well, what do we do? And I said, look, I'm doing some carry-in commercials on
at the moment for a travel company, they give you discount prices. Why don't you stop your 1 % honeymoon rate, which is what every bank does for the first year, give that to the travel company and they'll give you a 10 grand holiday for five. So that's what we did. We came on TV and social media and said, swap from the banks, bring your home loan across to us and you get a free holiday. $15 billion worth of extra loans in the first three years. We're talking, yeah. And this idiot, instead of charging a percentage of the increase in loans, charged a consultancy fee. I'm a moron, right?
Heather Porter (29:24.781)
Alright.
Heather Porter (29:34.613)
interesting.
John Dwyer (29:46.837)
you
So about three or four years into it, they said, look, we've scooped up all the low-lying fruit, which happens to be tradies, because building societies and credit unions tend to attract a working class. What do we do to get to White Collars, right? And I said, okay, leave it with me. And so a mate of mine was doing Billy Connolly commercials for ING at the time. And I said to him, how did you get him? And he told me, wherever he is in the world, we just fly over and do the TV commercials wherever he is and give him a million dollars. So I did the same thing with Seinfeld. It took me a little while to get to him, but eventually what we did is we hooked him up for three years where Seinfeld came on TV and said,
home and get a free holiday, it went through the stratosphere. just went... yep.
Heather Porter (30:20.642)
I remember those by the way. I love that that was you.
John Dwyer (30:23.701)
Yeah, yeah, and that was big time. And, of course, I've milked the crap out of that for the last 10 years. And I'm sure I'm sure Jerry, I'm sure Jerry's milking the crap out of the fact that he worked with me as well. But what came from that is about six months before COVID, these guys rang me up, and they're a travel company. And they said, Listen, we've got access to unsold rooms around the world, including Australia. These hotels are happy to give up their rooms for free, because they hope that whoever stays there will spend money on food and beverage. So it's a win win. Okay.
Heather Porter (30:27.886)
Well, naturally.
Heather Porter (30:32.507)
Why not, you know?
Heather Porter (30:42.262)
Okay. Yeah.
Heather Porter (30:49.944)
Of course.
John Dwyer (30:51.605)
Now I've seen every travel scam, so I turned it upside down and made sure that there was no timeshare commitments or any of that rubbish. And there wasn't. All it was was that outside of school vacations, they've got 30 % of the rooms vacant. They're happy to give them up and hoping that whoever stays there will have a massage or buy food and beverage. So this is the big one. We've been marketing this now. Obviously, we took two years off with COVID, but we've been marketing this where we say to people, listen, this voucher is worth $1,000. When you give it to someone because they buy your lawn mowing service or they buy the refrigerator or they buy your consultancy service,
Heather Porter (30:52.845)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (31:21.559)
it might be, you give this to them worth $1,000, they can go for a three night holiday anywhere in Australia or around the world. Bali is seven nights by the way, and think Fiji is five nights, so they're different. And they buy this off us for less than $50. So therefore they get a $1,000 voucher for $50. And that's what we do these days. This is called funescapes.com.au. So if you go to funescapes.com.au, you'll see all about it.
Heather Porter (31:30.573)
Amazing.
Heather Porter (31:38.85)
What is this called? What is this program called?
Heather Porter (31:46.574)
So they can essentially sign up and get these vouchers and work with you on that to give to their clients, signing bonuses, wherever they want to use them.
John Dwyer (31:52.095)
Yeah. But what we do, Heather, we package it all together. So we give them the links to the Facebook ads and the Facebook landing pages, all that sort of stuff. So they don't have to think about it. Basically it's a plug and play. And that's where our mentality went because we realised that a lot of the other stuff that we gave them, I know it sounds like I'm being silly here, but it was too sophisticated for them to implement. So what we've done now is we actually do everything for them so that they just buy the plug and play.
Heather Porter (31:59.457)
Heather Porter (32:03.224)
Brilliant.
Heather Porter (32:17.716)
smart though. And you know that because like what you said before, most people just don't have time. They don't know how to do it. They have a bit too big of a learning curve. Where do they go to learn how to work with you? You said the WOW Institute?
John Dwyer (32:29.139)
Yeah, no, just theinstituteofwow.com, so therefore, and it's not an AU because we're a huge conglomerate like Coca-Cola, so it's just a dot com. So it's theinstituteofwow.com, yeah.
Heather Porter (32:37.353)
Yup.
And there are options there to actually have conversations with you, yeah?
John Dwyer (32:44.181)
Yeah, look, if they want to have a conversation with me, just give me an email. I'm certainly happy to do that. So just john at the Institute of WoW.com. And by the way, this in America, because you're an American, so you understand this, we refer to this as holidays here. But of course, we've got the same thing happening in America. So if they're watching this in America, just go to vacationsincentive.com. So that's vacations, plural, vacationsincentive.com, and you'll see how it works there. I'll tell you how well this
Heather Porter (33:06.008)
Okay.
John Dwyer (33:14.215)
works as a happy meal toy because that's all it is, an adult happy meal toy. We have a guy down at Ocean Grove in Victoria, Australia and he's sitting opposite a vacant block of land a few years ago when he set up his hardware store. It's a home hardware store, it's a part of a chain and he thought well this is terrific, there's a lot of new homes going up around the area and guess what, that vacant block of land got bought by Bunnings and they threw up a Bunnings hardware store opposite his little hardware store.
Heather Porter (33:15.65)
Yeah, please do. Yeah.
John Dwyer (33:41.397)
So that'd be like having a little soft drink company and Coca Cola set up across the road, right? So he is scared shitless and he rings us and he said to me, JD, been at some of my shows so you knew what we did. He said, JD, I'm in deep shit. He said, I've got a 40 ton gorilla across the road. What do we do? I said, well, you can't win on price discounts. Cause if you say 10 % or 20 % off your wheelbarrows or whatever your hardware is, they're going to beat you within two seconds. That's part of the advertising will be any other bit by 10%. So I said, do this. So that's what he did. He actually says, spend a thousand dollars with me.
Heather Porter (33:45.952)
boy.
Heather Porter (34:04.355)
Yeah, yeah.
John Dwyer (34:11.381)
and you will get a free holiday. And he's been doing that now for three years. And he said to me, he even now sees that Bunnings staff, and he knows their staff from Bunnings, but they dress in casual clothing, come into his store to find out what the hell he's doing.
But he's gone through countless, countless, countless. He's one of those clients from heaven because he just reorders, reorders, reorders. I mean, we obviously look after him on the price, but he just reorders, reorders. And it's as simple as that. If you keep it simple, when I was at the Greater Building Society and the Seinfeld thing, I would be in meetings with bankers like, boy, wasn't that fun? And they'd say, JD, what we'll do is that they'll get the free holiday if they jump through these herbs. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I said, no, no, no, no, no. You go to McDonald's, you buy a happy meal, you get a toy, right?
Stick to nine words, get a home loan and get a free holiday. That's it, right? And so therefore in his instance, he took my advice, just the KISS principle, spend $1,000 with me and you get a free holiday. And if you spend $2,000, guess what? You get two holidays. $3,000, you get three holidays.
And that's the way it works. That's why, like, if you're at Woolworths now and you get the Disney toy or whatever they're playing with, because they've just copied McDonald's, I know, because I used to work Woolworths. So what they do is spend $30, you get a toy, spend $60, you get two toys. Now we're at the age group now, we've got little two and three and five-year-old grandchildren. So my wife who's married to this idiot that dreamed all this shit up, guess what? If she's going to spend $52, she spends $60 to get the second toy.
Heather Porter (35:41.911)
Of course.
John Dwyer (35:42.549)
So therefore with this, if anyone runs, and we say to them, for goodness sake, if you're paying less than $50 a voucher for every, let's say $1000 they spend, give them another voucher for God's sake. mean, you that means if you're spending less than $50 to give them something worth $1000, and they spend multiple thousands of dollars, give them more of these.
Heather Porter (35:58.18)
Yeah.
Heather Porter (36:02.413)
Where else could this work? Cause this is interesting. Have you seen it work for people that have like a membership or association to keep people in that membership?
John Dwyer (36:10.291)
Absolutely. In fact, yesterday NutriMedics lady signed up yesterday and MLMs are built for anything. The only people who I wouldn't sell it to, I had a client some years ago who rang me up just about six months ago and he said, Jody, I want to take the holiday program. I said, yeah, go on. It's a funeral business, a funeral parlour in Melbourne.
Heather Porter (36:28.961)
Okay.
John Dwyer (36:29.717)
I said, no, no, it's just not tasteful. You can't say, let me burn your relatives and I'll give you a free holiday. That's not nice, you know? But every other business and the reason that it works is two reasons. McDonald's, I know the people who came up with the Happy Meal toy. They live in Trump Tower now, right? And they're well into their 70s. But when they came up with the Happy Meal toy, were school teachers, would you believe it? They put the idea to McDonald's and it took off and now it's around the world. They said to me, the reason it worked is because the toy is produced in China for 22 cents.
Heather Porter (36:45.741)
Right.
Heather Porter (36:51.353)
Okay.
John Dwyer (36:59.771)
But if you see that toy that comes out of the Happy Meal box, it's worth about $5 in Kmart. So the secret to a good incentive is not a $50 dining voucher because they know you've just valued them at $50. It's not a movie voucher for two because they know you've valued them at $50. Where it works is when the cost is low, $50, but the perceived value is high, $1,000.
Heather Porter (37:14.552)
Yeah, yeah.
Heather Porter (37:19.853)
Way higher. Yeah.
John Dwyer (37:20.693)
That's what it works. And so therefore, to answer your question, really, we haven't had any business that wouldn't work for it. And the reason is because vacations are universally appealing to all ages and both sexes. Whereas if I walk into a menswear store and I buy a sports jacket and they give me a skateboard, I will tell them they should now see a psychiatrist. That is a stupid thing. so therefore, it's what Malemery used to call, Dan Kennedy used to call, message to market match. You've got to make sure that your incentive matches the market in this instance.
Heather Porter (37:46.818)
Yes!
John Dwyer (37:50.697)
beautiful thing with this, this matches a 20 year old or an 80 year old. Doesn't matter, everyone wants to go on a free holiday.
Heather Porter (37:56.944)
Absolutely. This is absolutely brilliant. And yes, I can see it happening or working for most people. So I'm glad you brought this up on top of, know, if people want to connect with you direct, we're going to start to wrap up and I want to ask you one more question because gosh, we could probably talk for another 30 minutes on this question. I'm sure, but let's keep it concise. Let's leave people with one good, tangible takeaway from our conversation today. If you could give people one takeaway, what would that be?
John Dwyer (38:23.657)
Well, you know, I guess I come back to where we started. Heather, I know it sounds easy to do that, but, surround yourself with the right people. And that sounds self-serving. Are you trying to get people to contact you, JD? No, no, I'm just saying that, you know, try and surround yourself with people who do say why not. Because they're the, that, I mean, I had a call this morning.
A new product that we're launching within the next two or three weeks comes from a guy called Evan, who's been a dear friend of mine. He's a bit younger than me, probably be late 40s, maybe he might just turn 50. And he used to be my techie guy behind the scenes. So I'm the sales guy that goes out and makes it happen. then, you know, I've got these other younger people behind me that, you know, make it happen. And every time they tell me it can't, I say to them, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon 50 years ago. For goodness sake, surely you can do this, you know. He contacted me about a month ago.
Heather Porter (38:59.149)
Yeah.
John Dwyer (39:13.079)
and he said, you have Windows 10? And I said, yep. And he said, okay, you do know that that's coming to an end on October the 14th. I said, yep. And I said, I hate it. And he said, so does 440 million other people, okay, around the world. Okay, they don't want to upgrade to 11 because they're to 10. But Microsoft being Microsoft, they're all assistance on October the 14th. So your Windows 10, if you have a problem with it on the day after, you might as well throw it out and go and buy another $1,500 computer because you can't do anything. So we're launching a business called Sprint.
central and it will launch in two weeks time and it will be the only one in the world, the only system in the world whereby you don't have to upgrade to Windows 11. You can swap across to us for less than $100 a year and you will have a system that runs 25 times faster than Windows 11, has all the security wrapped up. This guy's a genius by the way. This guy used to work for government departments to stop the KGB getting into the websites here in Australia. So this guy's a genius, he's up there.
guess what, that this will go nowhere without marketing. And so I said to him, okay, there will be, so our whole thing on this is doomsday. So just like the Y2K scare, we will be marketing this that October 14th, the world comes to an end if you're on Windows 10. And if you don't want the world to come to an end, then just take our 14 day free trial, because it's a freemium model, because there will be people saying, okay, you're going to be better than Microsoft. I want to test that. They'll test it within an hour. They'll see how fast this thing is.
He downloaded a PowerPoint presentation that was 242 slides and 50 of those slides were videos. So was very big PowerPoint. He pressed the button and showed me online. It downloaded in three seconds.
this thing is insane and he's a genius but of course his ingenuity he said to me JD my ingenuity is going to go nowhere if I can't market this so it won't be hard for me to put him on the Today Show in America and Good Morning America and all that sort of stuff because this is groundbreaking and the only reason I bring that up and showing off about it is because guess what I hang around crazy people.
Heather Porter (41:18.031)
It's absolutely gold, starving, huge, massive market with a built-in deadline. You couldn't even ask for anything better for a campaign.
John Dwyer (41:24.031)
You got it. On the website, the website we have the Grim Reaper and Doomsday with a countdown clock and it's counting down right now to Doomsday which is October the 14th.
Heather Porter (41:35.929)
Brilliant. And you know what they say, like attracts like, right? You like crazy people. So something about you, JD. No, in the best.
John Dwyer (41:39.369)
Yeah. But wasn't it, yeah exactly, wasn't it, it was a Jim Rowan, Heather, that said if you are the average of the five people in the world,
Heather Porter (41:47.951)
Oh yeah, my favorite quote, you're the average of five people you spend your most time with. Yeah, very important and quite valid. So thank you for.
John Dwyer (41:54.473)
The trouble is that most of the five people I hang with have all got ankle bracelets. They're crazy, but they've got ankle bracelets. I don't know what that is.
Heather Porter (41:59.643)
Okay, I don't know about that one. That's probably a whole other chat. But thank you for being here and sharing your ideas. And you're a little bit of crazy with the listeners because man, have I feel like if people could just bottle your brain, just one idea from you, a massive shift for their business and their life. So thank you.
John Dwyer (42:13.073)
Thank you.
Thank you, appreciate it, all the best.
