The Remodeler Digital Playbook Podcast

Make Revenue Skyrocket: A One Page Marketing Plan with Allan Dib

• Rathna Ramakrishnan • Season 1 • Episode 7

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In this episode, Rathna Ramakrishnan interviews Alan Dibb, a marketing expert and author of 'The One Page Marketing Plan' and 'Lean Marketing'. They discuss Alan's journey from being an IT professional to a successful marketer, the importance of clarity in marketing strategies, and how to effectively target ideal clients. 

Alan shares insights on the role of AI in marketing, the significance of branding versus performance marketing, and common mistakes businesses make in their marketing efforts. 

📌 KEY MOMENTS:

- 02:59: The Journey to the One Page Marketing Plan
- 08:46: Target Market and Client Clarity
- 12:04: The Role of AI in Marketing 
- 17:57: Lean Marketing - Simplifying Marketing Efforts
- 37:49: Common Marketing Mistakes and Solutions

🌟 What You'll Learn:
- ACTIONABLE TIPS for business owners to enhance clarity in their marketing.
- INSIGHTS into Allan Dib's key to attracting clients.

🔨 Essential listening for remodeling contractors seeking to advance their digital marketing strategies.

🎧 Tune in now to transform your approach to digital marketing!

Ready to see real results from fellow General Contractors?

→ Step 1: Join our FREE Digital Dominance Club for Remodeling Contractors

→ Step 2: Follow us on Instagram

→ Step 3: Schedule a 1:1 call with Rathna now!

Let's rock your remodeling journey! 🛠️💰

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:09.587)
a very exciting marketer. I'm a huge fan girl. I've been following his work. This is Allan Dib and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person this year in Miami because I'm part of a mastermind of digital marketing agency owners which is run by this amazing mentor, George Nelson. So it was my absolute pleasure to meet Allan Dib in person on stage and listen to him present about his story

his work and I've been a long time fan of the One Page Marketing Plan. Welcome, Allan. I'm delighted to have you here.

Allan Dib (00:47.073)
Hey, Rathna. Pleasure to be on. Thank you for having me.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (00:51.18)
next

So, let's dive right in. We'll speak about, I know you're a two -time author, the Lean Marketing as well as the One Page Marketing Plan. The One Page Marketing Plan always excites me because of the fact that it's been translated into 30 languages. And I was just looking up the languages that it was translated into and I thought it was really intriguing that it was translated into Mongolian of all the languages. it's just so fantastic.

Allan Dib (01:12.568)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:21.409)
So were you super thrilled when your work was taken and translated into so many languages so it could reach millions across the world?

Allan Dib (01:30.702)
Yeah, yeah, it's very, very cool. I love hearing from people all over the world every day. So I hear from people from every conceivable country and sometimes people will send me messages in their native language, which obviously I can't read, but with Google Translate, we get there, right? yeah, chat GPT now as well for sure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:47.881)
and chat CPT.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (01:53.419)
Cool, so I know a little bit about your background, but do share with us what brought you to the One Page Marketing Plan.

Allan Dib (02:03.064)
So I was never a marketer by qualification or by trade or anything like that. I really started learning marketing because I needed a way to get clients for my IT business at the time. So I was a dead broke IT geek. I was really good at the technical part of the work, you know, all of the IT related stuff, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing with sales or marketing or how to get a client and...

That was a real struggle for me. So I spent a decade really applying myself, learning marketing, attending every conference, working with coaches, reading every book, all of those sorts of things to try and figure that out. And, you know, I did, I probably did it the long, expensive, difficult way. What I should have done is probably get a coach, have someone help me, have someone very experienced guide me. But anyway, I spent a...

A long time learning this stuff by trial and error, it completely changed my business, changed my life. I managed to grow that business. I ended up expanding nationally. I ended up selling it for more money than I'd ever seen in my life. I started another business in the telecommunications space. That business grew very rapidly over four years and then I exited that as well. And yeah, so I've continued to build and grow businesses and

In the process, a lot of people have asked me how I did it, what I did, all of that sort of thing. So that's why I started consulting and why I started the business that I do now. So my current business is Lean Marketing. So I've got an amazing team of 15 people who are in that business and we help coach and guide and mentor people to build their own marketing capabilities.

What we do is really simplify marketing, help people develop their own marketing skills and marketing capability. It's kind of the opposite of a marketing agency. We don't do this stuff for you, but we help you build your own capability.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (04:05.157)
So it looks like you've built and sold businesses, you've tried a variety of marketing methodologies and then arrived at this one -page marketing plan. when you look at the marketing...

Kennedy and the purple cow and Seth Godin and what is it that you know brought you to this you know let's just distill this whole thing into a one -page when when did you arrive at that clarity and what do you think are key things that somebody that's never heard about the one -page marketing plan could just kind of learn

Allan Dib (04:23.245)
Yeah.

Allan Dib (04:43.17)
Yeah, so I love Dan Kennedy, love Seth Godin, I think there are some incredible marketers out there with amazing information. The thing that I struggled with most though, is often when I read their books or read their material or even attend their seminars and things like that was, okay, what's my next actionable step that I need to take. So very often, they had excellent information.

but some of it was often very conceptual or theoretical. And I was very practical. Like I'm from an engineering background. I'm like, all right, well, what's step one, what's step two, what's the next thing? And often those things were missing. So the reason I put together the one page marketing plan, it's very, very actionable. It's very, very simple. Anyone without a business or marketing background can fill in a one page marketing plan. And then once you, it's going to take you through nine,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (05:27.691)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Dib (05:37.96)
steps that you need to figure out everything you need to know with your marketing. So it's going to help you get clarity because right now one of the biggest issues that people have when it comes to marketing is clarity because there is so many different things you can do. There are so many things you can spend money on, so many people you can hire, so many channels that you can reach to attract people, so many different target markets, so many different messages. And so getting clarity around what

you should be doing from a marketing perspective, it's really the first and most important step. It's kind of like an architect's blueprint. If you're gonna build a house or a building or something like that, you need to have an architect's blueprint. Otherwise, if you just start randomly building things, it's gonna be a mess. It's not gonna work. The building will collapse. So similarly, we need that architect's blueprint. Where's the swimming pool gonna go?

Where is the lounge room going to be? Which way is the building going to face all of those sorts of things? So we plan all of that. And then once we know what the plan is, then we start construction. So I think of it in a very similar way from a marketing perspective. Once we've got clarity around who our target market is, what our messaging is, what media we're going to use, how we're going to attract and convert them, how we're going to retain them, how we're going to stimulate referrals and things like that. Once we've got that plan,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (06:37.014)
Yeah.

Allan Dib (07:03.298)
then really it's a matter of just filling in the building blocks and then we have absolute clarity around what we're going to do and then we just get to work on construction.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:12.761)
Excellent. That was a fantastic way how you broke it down in remodeling contractors language. So thank you for doing that. The most common tactic that my clients tend to use when they come to start working with me is just referral marketing, word of mouth. Hey, I'm just an amazing remodeling contractor. I've built this amazing custom home kitchen, but it's not enough. I'm not able to sustain. I'm not able to hit my revenue goals. How do I double my revenue? How do I build it?

Allan Dib (07:21.046)
You

Rathna Ramakrishnan (07:42.645)
team, how do I get out of this when I'm just you know in the day doing the daily grunt work sitting in my truck managing projects and then you know the whole world of digital marketing opens up in their eyes and they feel ready to invest and grow. So a person who has

Allan Dib (07:43.96)
Hmm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:00.477)
minimal marketing experience where they have not really understood the value of digital marketing. Where do you think they should start when it comes to a marketing plan? Because all that they've done is they work hard, they get the word of mouth referrals, they get those amazing five star reviews, and here they are saying, give me a plan, let me hit the road running. And my team, we use your plan when we have clients that come on board, we write one page marketing plans for my clients.

Allan Dib (08:22.743)
Mm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (08:30.331)
we know the tactics and things that we're going to deliver on. But let's say there's a remodeling contractor that's not feeling ready to work with an agency, but would like to kind of focus on a few things on their own and apply your principles. What would you recommend that they do?

Allan Dib (08:46.648)
So, so first thing about word of mouth, think word of mouth is very powerful, it's very important, all of those sorts of things. A lot of times though, it's out of your hands. So it's nice if a referral comes your way because somebody remembered you or you did a great job and all of that sort of thing. So that's wonderful. I love that. I love when that happens. But I don't want to rely my whole business on that because you're essentially fully reliant on other people.

And you're aligned on the goodwill of other people and you're aligned on other people remembering you at the exact right time when somebody is ready to buy. So that's great. And that's wonderful. When that happens, we'll, we'll of course take that. But the one page marketing plan and lean marketing are all about an intentional approach to marketing. So how can we be intentional and have a plan that we can follow that we, that gives us absolute clarity where we know exactly what to

Now, where do we start? So the plan starts with your target market. Who are your people? Who are the people that you want to serve? A very common response to this is everybody. Hey, I'm a kitchen remodeler or I do bathrooms or whatever. Everybody's got a kitchen. Everybody's got a bathroom. Well, so everybody is my target market. And that's a problem for multiple reasons. So even though it's true that maybe everyone or many people could be your client.

There are people who are suboptimal clients, there are people who are kind of okay clients, and there are people who are amazing clients. Now, if our business starts getting a lot of suboptimal clients, it creates what I call polluted revenue. it's revenue, it's, you know, people who are always trying to squeeze you on price, people who pay late, people who are difficult to work with, people who don't really appreciate what you do and how you do it.

And then up the top, are these ideal clients who, you know, they take your suggestions, they work cooperatively with your staff, they're happy to pay you what you're worth, all of those sorts of things. So if we have too much polluted revenue in the business, your business gets sick. And so you're going to have staff that are constantly fighting fires and trying to appease customers and trying to collect money and doing all of those things.

Allan Dib (11:06.988)
and you're not going to have enough time and energy to focus on optimal clients who are the ones that really are profitable. They're the ones that you and your team love working with. They're the ones that really create a lot of energy in your business. So that's one of the issues is we want to make sure that we're not getting polluted revenue in our business, but we're getting optimal revenue business. So that's number one. But the other thing is from a marketing perspective,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:13.355)
Hmm.

Allan Dib (11:35.618)
what we want is when someone hears, reads or sees one of your ads is they say, wow, that's for me. And if you say, hey, we're all things to all people, we'll work with anyone and everyone, nobody's ever gonna do that, right? So what you want is people to say, wow, that's for me, I need that. So we had a client in the bathroom renovation space and one of their, they were very expensive with what they did, but one of their,

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:42.378)
Mm.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (11:48.544)
Right.

Allan Dib (12:04.446)
selling their key selling proposition was, we'll get your whole bathroom renovated in the space of a week, we're in and out in one week. So you're not going to have construction through all of your house for months and months and everything being a mess and all of that. Now, a certain demographic was willing to pay a significant premium for that to get it done fast. So that's, that's a unique selling proposition in their space. So they were in and out in one week and they're done now.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (12:10.817)
Mm.

Allan Dib (12:33.838)
for your clients, maybe it's not speed, maybe it's level of finish, maybe it's a unique type of design or whatever it is, but you need to find who in the whole market will really value what you do, who will pay you a lot of money for what you want, who's gonna be really, really profitable to work with. who's gonna really respect what you do, who's gonna be profitable, and finally, who's gonna be fun to work with?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:02.495)
Yep.

Allan Dib (13:03.714)
As entrepreneurs, mean, we left jobs because, you know, we couldn't stand bosses and we didn't want to work in an environment that we didn't control, that we didn't love and all of that. We want to look forward to Mondays. So if you hate your clients, I mean, that's not a good way to run a business. So that's a factor I was thinking about who would be fun to work with.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (13:24.545)
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. There's a statistic in the United States that every homeowner is likely to have either a kitchen or a bathroom, or most times a kitchen and a bathroom remodel in their lifetime. So then I think defining the target market of is it a $20 ,000 remodel or is it a $70 ,000 remodel or a $150 ,000 remodel? Who is it that you're chasing and having that clarity and then making your message to fit that ideal audience?

is critical instead of just saying, okay, I'm just gonna throw the fishing net out there and whoever catches is going to be my client. So what kind of an engineer are you?

Allan Dib (14:06.762)
I was in Network and Systems Engineer, in terms of telecommunication systems and IT.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:16.455)
and you don't miss the engineering aspect of it now that you've become a hardcore full -time architect.

Allan Dib (14:21.446)
I still play around a little bit with our home lab, look, I think you can take the technology out of the geek, but you'll never take the geek out of the technology kind of thing.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (14:34.241)
you

Very true, very true. So it might be a good segue to ask you your thoughts on AI. Jack GPT and Gemini and Zim Writer for SEO content and it's all huge and there are many contractors that are just big with content. What do you feel about AI and how do you think, you know, marketers can use whether you're running your own marketing or you're hiring somebody, how do you think, you know, do you have favorite tools?

Allan Dib (14:51.896)
with it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (15:05.944)
What do you foresee as the future? How do you think remodeling contractors can, or home services can use AI to, you know, accelerate their work or simplify their daily operations?

Allan Dib (15:15.598)
Yeah.

Allan Dib (15:18.936)
Yeah, great question. I'm really excited by it. I think it gives us the opportunity to work on the fun and exciting parts of marketing and the boring, difficult, expensive parts start to get easier and easier. So for example, we produce a podcast similar, you you're producing a podcast here. We used to have to spend hours and hours and hours of

on editing, multi -camera switching, all of that sort of thing, because it was all a manual process. When one of the video feeds would switch, then an editor had to manually switch that. Now we use an AI tool called Descript, which automatically detects, the camera switched, so I'm gonna highlight the other person. It automatically transcribes the text and all of this. So it's massively reduced the time and cost to edit a podcast.

And so I can now spend more time concentrating on creating really good content, on connecting with people like yourself, on ideas and things like that, rather than thinking, okay, I need an editor or need more staff to edit and all of that sort of thing, right? So I think of it similar to the internet in early 2000s or late 90s. It's like the internet came in.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:37.727)
You

Allan Dib (16:44.396)
and it sped up everything, right? It sped up how we did banking, sped up how we did e -commerce, it sped up everything. And I think of AI in a very similar way. I think of AI as like early 2000s internet. It's gonna speed up and reduce the cost of almost everything. And so the stuff that's gonna be left over is the stuff that we actually really love to do. So I'm super excited about it.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (16:46.561)
Mm

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:12.752)
Very cool. And remodeling is definitely one of those niches where you just cannot remove the remodeler. AI cannot replace the Tyler and the plumber and the backsplash installer. so you can use AI to run all those analysis and measurements and project deadlines, but the remodeler is here to stay. A very common question that I get asked is, what is a good percent of dollars to invest

Allan Dib (17:24.43)
Totally.

Allan Dib (17:34.508)
I agree.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (17:42.667)
in marketing? Do I base it on my revenue goals, where I want to go? Do I base it on where I am today and what I feel comfortable spending at? What is your take on it?

Allan Dib (17:57.902)
So my take is, I don't think of percentage as such. I wanna figure out a system where if I put a dollar into advertising, how do I get three or more dollars back in terms of profit? So that's how I think of it. So if you've got that system developed where you know, hey, I can spend $10 ,000 on advertising this month and I know that's gonna turn into $30 ,000 of profit next month.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (18:20.694)
Mmm.

Allan Dib (18:26.649)
Well then I will just keep cranking that system up until it breaks. Now up until you get to that point, because you're not gonna, that you may not hit that straight away, right? It takes time to kind of perfect your funnel, see what ads work, see what conversion process work. Maybe you need to tweak your offer, your copy, all of that sort of thing.

So until you get to that point, obviously you need to allocate a budget and do a lot of testing, right? So, and every business is different. Some businesses have very limited budget in which case you're gonna do a lot more labor. Whereas other businesses have more budget to play with. You might say, look, we're willing to throw $50 ,000 into some testing and see how that goes. So.

Initially, there's a bit of a risk element because you don't really know, you have to test, you have to see what the market feedback is. you know, risk is something that we're all used to as business owners. And we've managed that all our, all of our lives, you know, so there's risk in hiring staff, there's risk in starting a business, there's risk in, you know, going into a new market or whatever. And so it's just another risk that we need to

to manage as business owners, but really the idea is as quickly as possible to get that creating a return on investment so that you reliably know that if I put a dollar in, I can get $3 back in.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (19:54.753)
That's excellent. So if there was a remodeling contractor that wanted to work with your team, you'd be able to give them a pathway to go from, you know, for every dollar invested, you're gonna get a 3X return, but these are the five tactics that you're going to deploy and, you know, try the five tactics out and then keep the three that work well and do more of it till you hit those 3X numbers.

Allan Dib (20:20.91)
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's not always necessarily three X, but it could be sometimes five X, sometimes 10 X, sometimes it's whatever, but really, we want to be getting a good solid return on what we're doing, because, you know, running a business is a lot of effort and a lot of time. And, you know, we want to make sure that we're getting a good return for what we're doing. So that's exactly what my team and I do is we work with business owners to help them build their own marketing capability. So

Rathna Ramakrishnan (20:25.973)
Yeah, for sure. Minimum.

Allan Dib (20:50.414)
A lot of times it's helping them hire a marketing coordinator in their team, training and upskilling that person. Just getting the daily, weekly, monthly marketing processes done because that's how you win at the game of marketing. A lot of people feel like it's a one -off event, like we're gonna launch a new website or we're gonna launch a new campaign or whatever. That's great, nothing wrong with any of those things, but the way that you win at the game of marketing is like the daily, weekly, monthly processes. That's how we, and that's.

In reality, that's how we win at anything in life. Like if I want to get fit or if I want to get strong or whatever, if I go to the gym once, well, great, but it's probably not going to get me to where I want to go. But if I go to the gym three times a week, most likely I'm going to get good results over time. So marketing is in a similar way. And same thing with wealth. You know, if I, you know, invest in something once, well, maybe you might get lucky and have a big hit, but

most likely you're going to have to invest in maybe the S &P 500 on an ongoing basis and over time it grows in wealth and compounds and all of that and over time you'll find that you've done very very well but so marketing in a very very similar sense the compounding effect of daily weekly monthly processes in your business that's going to be what really helps you get to that next level.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (22:11.261)
Very cool.

Are you bitten by the author bug? Are you going to be writing more books because you launched your lean marketing? And I have a little bit of understanding when it comes to the concept of lean. I believe it was cars, right? And the car industry, Toyota, think, the just -in -time production and constant improvement and delivery when the customer needs it and so forth. what made you think about, I assume your engineering background and your marketing

background brought you to this very cool title of lean marketing. But why were you compelled to write a book on lean marketing? Because already your one page marketing plan is take things distill it, simplify it. Now with the lean marketing, you're further simplifying it. So what brought you to writing one more book?

Allan Dib (22:48.493)
Yeah.

Allan Dib (23:07.618)
Yeah, so the one page marketing plan was all about really getting clarity and strategy, right? So getting out like I talked earlier, our architects blueprint, right? So how do we get clarity? How do we put it together? Our blueprint around what we're going to do from a marketing perspective. And people love that. Now, lean marketing is all about it. Great. You've now got your architects blueprint. How do we build that marketing infrastructure? So how do we build all the tools?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (23:26.069)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Dib (23:36.354)
all the assets, all the processes that we need to have a marketing infrastructure that reliably gets us new leads, new clients, new revenue in the door. So that's really what lean marketing is all about. And the core concept is we can actually get bigger results by doing less marketing. So a lot of people feel like they're exhausted every day. There's a new tool, there's a new AI thing, there's a new social network, there's a new thing that they should be doing.

And what we found was that the best marketers on the planet, they do very few things. Like even myself, like I appear on podcasts, I run a podcast and I have a book and a newsletter. That's really all I do from a marketing perspective. I don't do a million different things. So I'm not on every social network. We don't do a thousand different strategies or whatever. We do a few things and that generates millions and millions.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:17.953)
you

Allan Dib (24:31.918)
dollars of revenue because we can be really super focused. We know who our client is, we know how to get them results. We need to we know how to take them through a whole process. That's where we help customers build because when you've when you've got to do 1000 different things when you've got to be on every social network and everything. First of all, it's exhausting. It's expensive because you know, you've got to be everywhere. You've got a high specialist everywhere. And often it's not very effective either because you've completely scattered your focus across

Rathna Ramakrishnan (24:49.759)
Mm

Allan Dib (25:01.582)
10 different things. So what we found is find the one or two or three things that really move the needle and let's go all in on those. So that's the way that we think about when it comes to lean marketing and from connecting with, you know, I'm connected to all the best marketers on the planet. They all do the same thing. They've got a few different things that work really, really well and they go all in on those things. So their marketing infrastructure is often very, very lean.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (25:30.817)
Mm -hmm.

One of the things you speak about is in your book, the contrast between brand and performance marketing. And it's a very common thing that I encounter when I bring on a remodeling contractor. They're so big on like, let's focus on the logo colors. Like what photo is going on the home page? Like, you how are we going to build it? All of that is critical. know, branding is critical. what is your opinion? Like what kinds of organizations should focus on branding?

Allan Dib (25:43.246)
Mm

Allan Dib (25:52.076)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (26:01.867)
there are time in the life cycle of a business when branding is so critical, and how do you compare that to what you call performance marketing?

Allan Dib (26:13.74)
Yeah, so if you'd asked me a few years ago, I would have said, you know, don't worry about branding. It's waste of time. It's for big companies and all of that sort of sort of stuff. And it kind of comes down to the definition of what branding is, because a lot of people are confused about what that is. A lot of people, when you talk about branding, they think about colors and fonts and all of that sort of stuff. And that's kind of a small part of it. But

really a very simple definition of what a brand is. It's really just the personality of a business. It's kind of like, you know, if you were talking about the personality of a person, right? So when you think about someone's personality, there are many different attributes. There's how they speak, there's who they associate with, there's what they wear. So what you wear is kind of like your colors, your fonts, all of that sort of thing. So from a business perspective is how do you...

deliver your product or service? What feeling do people get? How do, who do people associate you with? What category are you in? All of those things. And so what I've found is building a brand is a very, very powerful thing because you're able to charge a lot more than you can if you know, you're not really a well known brand, right? People will pay for something for a well known brand a lot more than they will pay for something that's just generic.

than the intrinsic value of what you do. But the best way to build that brand is not what people think where it's flashy billboards and ads and fonts and colors and all of that sort of thing. It's to sell to your ideal target market so that they're starting to get their idea of what it is. Because a brand is really, it's not in your brand, it's not in your fonts, it's not in your colors, it's not in your website. It's in the minds of your ideal customers. So someone perceiving...

you being valuable over and above the intrinsic thing that you do, that's what your brand is. That's your reputation. That's your personality. So the same as when your friends, your colleagues, your peer groups, when they, when someone asks them about your reputation or your personality, they'll say, yeah, Allan's really funny or Allan's really whatever, right? Serious or

Allan Dib (28:32.824)
whatever it happens to be, that's the perception that they've got in their mind. That's your personal brand with them. So in a similar way, your business brand is what people perceive your business to be. know, do they perceive you to be high end and luxury, or do they perceive you to be the lowest cost one, or do they perceive you to be the fast provider in your area or whatever it is. So, and for your target market, some people don't care about...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (28:50.227)
Mmm.

Allan Dib (29:01.058)
the luxury component, some people care about fast, some people don't care about fast or luxury, they care about lowest cost. So that's why we come full circle and so important to define who your target market is, because we want to build the brand that that's valuable to your target market. Like so for example, if we look at the marketplace of products in in the marketplace, Costco has a brand, right? And

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:02.849)
sure.

Allan Dib (29:29.932)
that's valuable to a lot of people. They're like, hey, if you want the lowest price, you go to Costco or whatever you buy in bulk and you get the lowest price. Others, they're like, they don't want the lowest price in bulk. They want the organic, the good stuff, the healthy option or whatever, and they go to Whole Foods, right? So both have very, very strong brands, but completely different kind of demographics and target markets.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:44.469)
right.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (29:55.179)
Very cool. Considering your lean marketing and the one page marketing plan can be applied across any business, any entrepreneur can take it and hit the road running and your business model involves working with businesses to have them create this plan. What are some common mistakes that you see that people are making when it comes to marketing, when they're trying to do it on their own without a plan in place and then they come to you and they have those aha moments of,

I should have done this.

Allan Dib (30:28.172)
Yeah, look, the most common is what I call random acts of marketing. So they're like, what do we do? Let's launch a new website, or let's do a rebrand or let's, let's try paper click marketing or whatever. So kind of throwing spaghetti on the wall and trying to trying to do random things. And you know, they do random things, something works a little bit, something looks like a waste of time and all of that sort of thing. So there's no plan. There's no it's, it's like, back to that analogy, they started building the building, but they had no blueprint.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (30:31.531)
you

Allan Dib (30:57.708)
right? They were just started randomly digging a foundation here. They laid a few bricks there. They, you know, so we ended up with a mess, right? So that's probably the most common problem. The next one is messaging. Messaging is a major challenge for most businesses. So how do you communicate the value of what you do to your most ideal audience? So a lot of people are like their message, if you go onto their website or your social media or wherever they're there.

advertising or marketing themselves. It's usually very boring. It's not, it doesn't tell me what's in it for me. So I want a message that tells me, hey, here's what you get. Here's how it makes your life better. And here's what you should do next. A lot of times it's like, you go to the about page, you go to the homepage and it's like, we are a awesome construction bathroom company in California. We've been in business since 1985.

click here to request a quote or contact or whatever, right? So there's nothing there that is motivating, is not telling anyone who is this for? How is it gonna make my life better? What should I do next? None of that. So in the absence of that, you're leaving that to the prospect to figure out what do these guys do? Are they a good fit for me? Should I contact them? What should I do next? So.

what you want to do is at every step be leading someone to what the next physical visible action that they need to take at every single step. So you need to figure out, okay, what is the purpose of my website? Is it to collect leads? Is it to create a showcase? So again, you need to, every piece of your marketing infrastructure needs to have a reason to exist. And for most people, it's just like an online brochure and it really does nothing for them. So,

For example, if you look at my website, leanmarketing .com, it will become very, very clear that the purpose of that website is for you to enter your email address. Why? Because I want you on my email list. Why do I want you on my email list? Because I'm going to send you valuable information over time on a regular basis, because I know at some stage in your life or your business, something there might connect with you and...

Allan Dib (33:18.894)
even if nothing ever connects with you, even if you never buy a thing from me and you know, a lot of people who subscribe to my email is never ever buy anything, which is totally 100 % fine with me, but I'm creating value in their lives. I'm showing up on a regular basis. Maybe they know someone who this will be valuable for maybe, maybe I get absolutely nothing out of it, but I just create a positive effect for small businesses, which is totally fine with me, but a small percentage of

Rathna Ramakrishnan (33:27.681)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Allan Dib (33:46.914)
people who subscribe to my email list, they'll buy one of our programs, they'll attend one of our seminars, they'll do one of our systems or programs or whatever else. And that's how we help people and so we can help people by building a really good brand, delivering a lot of value. And we're not doing it in a way that's spammy or we have to chase someone or cold call someone or whatever.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:00.363)
Thank

Allan Dib (34:14.338)
We have literally inbound every single day. Every single day I open my email inbox, someone's inviting me to speak, someone's inviting me on their podcast, someone wants to join one of our programs, all of those sorts of things, because we've created that goodwill by showing up every single day and figuring out what are we gonna do from a marketing perspective? How are we gonna provide value to the marketplace? How are we gonna help people elevate their businesses?

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:24.961)
Mm

Rathna Ramakrishnan (34:39.456)
Fantastic, so crystal clear messaging is indeed important and that made me think about Storybrand and Donald Miller and I saw one of your recent Instagram posts where you hung out with a bunch of really cool authors and yeah, the Storybrand methodology is what you literally broke it down right now where you have an effective messaging strategy and not just throw spaghetti on the wall and wish for some

Allan Dib (34:55.704)
Yeah.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (35:09.411)
marketing tactic to work. Share with me a little bit about your personal story. Where did you grow up? Where do you live right now? What do you do for fun when you're not working and helping other businesses?

Allan Dib (35:27.378)
Well, I mean, if you want to go right back, I was born in Syria, but that was, yeah, so I'm originally from the Middle East, we ended my, thank goodness, my parents immigrated to Australia when I was only a few years old. I went to school in Australia. I'm a university dropout, so I never completed any university studies.

and which is kind of ironic because my book is now being used for some university courses so that's pretty funny. Of course.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (36:00.881)
Wow. I have a question right there for you. How do your immigrant parents feel about the fact that you didn't wrap up your education? Because I'm from India and education, for all immigrants, it's such a big deal. You've got to go engineer, doctor, lawyer, come on, get it done, right?

Allan Dib (36:20.418)
Yes, it is.

Allan Dib (36:26.191)
It is a big deal. It is a big deal. And yes, it was a big deal. So I can tell you that for sure. So they were not happy about that. But, you know, I studied long enough to just get what I needed and I just was itching to start my business. So for me, it worked out really, really well. I'm not saying that's the path for everybody. think I don't have children, but if I had children, I would want them to get a good education. But

A good education, know, it's a university doesn't guarantee a good education, right? So if you can educate, if you can self educate often, that's a lot better. University is sort of a forcing mechanism to get you to kind of start on the path of education. It's not education in itself, but really I was pretty self motivated. I learned from books, from courses, from, you know,

seminars, all of that sort of thing. That's the way I learned. I had a very difficult time learning at school. It's just not my way of learning. And I think, I don't know, I'm not a fan of the school system generally. Yeah. So which is really a big reason why I created my own education company, right? So really what we do is, primarily an education company in the marketing space, because again, I've had people who are

Rathna Ramakrishnan (37:33.236)
True.

Allan Dib (37:49.656)
professors of marketing go through my marketing certification course, right? So, because it's very, very practical, it's very real world. A lot of what I found in university, you know, I enjoyed my time in university, but a lot of what I found was it's extremely theoretical, extremely, you know, you know, not applicable to the real world, not something that you can take away and apply to a real business. And it's really because...

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:11.455)
you

Allan Dib (38:15.454)
the point of university is to help you get a job at a large corporation doing stuff, but a lot of it was very irrelevant, very outdated. yeah, I highly believe in education, but probably not big fan of normal mainstream education.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (38:33.813)
the conventional stuff, very cool. That's actually hilarious, your story of how there are professors that are using your books today. What do you do for fun when you're not working, writing? You have amazing stage presence. I really enjoyed listening to you speak at George Nelson's event in Miami this year. What do you do for fun?

Allan Dib (38:44.623)
Yes.

Allan Dib (38:53.252)
thank you.

Allan Dib (38:56.994)
Well, I do cycling, I do weightlifting, I do hiking. So there's some of the things I do for fun right now. I'm doing my, I'm actually working on my speaking. So thank you for saying that, but I've been working with a speaking coach. I'm trying to get better and better at speaking and stage presence and all of those sorts of things. So yeah, that's where I'm going.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:21.961)
And so you mentioned you didn't have kids, so you're married, you have a wife.

Allan Dib (39:30.562)
I'm married yet, no kids. So again, another disappointment to my parents, but that's the way it goes. But I've got two lovely nephews, so I enjoy seeing them often and I treat them like my own kids.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (39:46.271)
You mentioned you had employees in the United States. Is your team all over the world?

Allan Dib (39:54.082)
Yeah, my team is all over the world, mainly in the United States, though. So I've got probably, I think, half or maybe three quarters of my team in the United States. And then I've got some people in Germany, I've got some people in South Africa, I've got some people in the Philippines, some people in Canada. So, but yeah, we've got a beautiful global team. And most of our clients and most of our team are in the United States. But yeah, I love hearing and working with people all over the world.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:23.489)
Amazing, so if there is a listener on my podcast that would like to get more information about working with you, where should they go? What would be the fastest way to get information about your services?

Allan Dib (40:33.324)
Yeah.

Allan Dib (40:37.826)
Yeah, just go to leanmarketing .com. You can download the One Page Marketing Plan canvas for free. If you'd like to get one of my books, it's the One Page Marketing Plan. And also my second book is Lean Marketing. Both are available on Amazon and they're very strong on Audible. People love listening to the books. So if you prefer to listen rather than read, go to Audible and check out the One Page Marketing Plan or Lean Marketing.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (40:56.596)
Yes!

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:05.355)
Thank you. So this was an absolute delight to hang out with you. Thank you for your time, Allan.

Allan Dib (41:14.955)
Rathna now is my pleasure.

Rathna Ramakrishnan (41:24.285)
All right. Thanks, Allan. It's uploading to the cloud. So I really appreciate you taking the time.

Allan Dib (41:28.394)
That's why I'm so good.