The-Ultimate-Lead-Generation-Machine

The Ultimate Lead Generation Machine
by Dan S. Kennedy

The Narrow Path

Government does not work because it is more about royalty remaining royalty than
it is about results, so the only time it gets anything of real importance
accomplished is in moments of severe crisis, when all the royals are equally
threatened. Business works – when it works – because of an opposite operating
system. Small business works better than big business, because its leaders have
little fear of being deposed; they are the owners, a status actually higher than royals
(which is why royals despise business owners), so they can act without political
considerations. For that reason, they are often proactive instead of only reactive.
Because they deal in real rather than fictitious numbers, have a limit on debt they
can get their hands on, and eat profit, they often make intelligent and rational
decisions. Many work at defusing problems at their tiniest, in their infancy, rather
than postponing doing so as long as possible, until the monster has grown big
enough to eat them. If you stand back and observe all this, you can see what works
and what doesn’t work quite clearly, and make your personal behavioral and
business practices choices accordingly. If you will.

Felix Dennis is a Renegade Millionaire – actually worth about $500-million, which
he manufactured for himself, entirely on his own, from scratch. He is one of
Britain’s richest citizens. In his newest book, The Narrow Road, he tells more
blunt truth about what works in the making of money, more succinctly than any
other credible person I’ve ever read on the subject. I am more simpatico with his
conclusions than I am with anyone else’s. Like me but more so, Dennis is
offensive to many and frightening to many more. Truth is rarely pleasing or
reassuring, except to the very tiny number of people who prefer it to being pleased
or reassured. I suggest getting and reading this little book, but in a well-lit room,
not in gloom inhabited by scary shadows.

Unlike most authors of most success genre content, he makes no attempt to deliver
ideas that will be popular with a large audience. This mirrors my own approach as
an author, spanning, now 32 years and more than 20 published books.
(www.NoBSBooks.com), My scariest is No B.S. Ruthless Management of People
and Profits.

One very big difference between the path most are on versus The Renegade
Millionaire Way is mixed agendas vs. laser-focused dedication to what
works. The Renegade Millionaire Way is simple: find what works and use it.
(That’s what being part of a great mastermind group is all about. Why coaching is
important.) Others’ way is far more complicated. It is cluttered with: what will
people think of me? am I permitted to do this? but we’ve never done it this way.
we should do get more consensus. my peers are all rushing off to do the new thing
and I don’t want to be left behind. will this make me popular? liked? or gossiped
about? what if it sparks criticism about me on Google? Ordinary business owners
are trying to run fast through a dense forest of all these concerns, thus bumping

into trees at every turn, spending a lot of time lost and confused. Renegade
Millionaires have left that forest and are running on a clear, paved path.

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and
sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-
generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and
professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-
response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000
compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of
Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and
many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world
leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom
Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up. His popular books
have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur
Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters
published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider’s Circle, is the largest paid
subscription newsletter in its genre in the world.

Discover more about Dan Kennedy by clicking here.

Being About Something More Than Chicken

Each year, the Chick-Fil-A restaurant chain, famous for its tongue-in-cheek ads
featuring cows urging folks to “eat more chicken”, has a Cow Appreciation Day.
Customers who come in dressed up as cows eat and drink for free. Anybody
wearing anything with a cow pattern – hat, cap, shirt – gets a sandwich free. Last
year,400,000 people came in dressed up as cows. The guy who started this chain
was a bona-fide Renegade Millionaire. Even though many of their shops are in
malls, they’re all closed on Sundays nationwide, because he believes in rest and
time with family on the Sabbath. If a mall won’t let them close, they don’t go in
the mall at all. Hasn’t hurt them. In 2011, at mid-year, they were up system-wide
by about 12% in same store sales vs. prior year, the chain is growing, the company
profitable. I believe it’s the founder’s son running the show now. I saw him on
Fox-Financial, cheerfully and goofily dressed up as a cow, pitching Cow
Appreciation Day.

A lot of people let ego, often undeserved ego, stand in the way of achievement.
They envy others their wealth, but aren’t willing to totally put themselves out there
to get it for themselves. On the other hand, a lot of people operate without
underlying principles and a strong navigational system, so they are easily blown
off course. The folks running this particular company have clear, firm values. One
is that customers have fun. That’s something missing from too many businesses:
nobody’s having any fun. The experience of being a customer is, at best, ordinary;
at worst, terrible.

I like to ask business owners what their business is about. What they’re doing.
Small-thinking shopkeepers always answer in terms of core deliverables. We clean
carpets, we cut hair, we sell insurance. Slightly more sophisticated students of
marketing tend to give boilerplate marketing message answers: we help people
protect their financial futures. Executives at big dumb companies usually quote the
vaguest of mission statements. But there’s little juice in any of that. At one point,
Trump set out to change the skyline of New York City. Well, that’s something.
When you tell people that’s what we’re all about here, you can capture their
imagination. That has juice. I set out in 1975 to introduce more people to ‘success
education’ than any other person or company ever had, and I believe I’ve done
that, although I’m not quitting just yet. That has juice. And it’s navigational; you
can ask about everything you might do, is it fulfilling that purpose? It’s good to be
about something significant and inspirational. Then, when somebody asks you
what you do, and you tell them, they get that you’re about something interesting
and will want to know more about it, may be interested in helping you, or being a
part of it somehow, if only as a customer. One of the essential ingredients of the
Magnetic Marketing® that I’ve taught is creating something that is magnetic. Most
businesspeople are thinking too much about how to sell their stuff – not enough
about to make it and themselves magnetically attractive, so the selling of stuff
occurs naturally.

The Untold Stories

Behind every great entrepreneurial success story that everybody knows, there
is an untold story – and it’s usually more interesting and a lot more instructive.
They all tend to have a few common elements, though. One of which is ugly grunt
work.

Years back, I spent some time with Bob Stupak, a true Renegade marketer. He
took a one floor, slots only dump at the downtown end of the Strip and built it into
the big, tall, flashy Vegas World Hotel & Casino, now The Stratosphere – without
taking on debt, building it one floor at a time as he had the cash to do it; generating
the cash by mail-order selling of pre-paid $399 vacation packages. His full-page
ads for his Vegas World package featuring 2 nights’ lodging, meals, drinks, shows
and $1,000 of ‘house money’ to gamble with for $399 were seen everywhere:
Parade Magazine in Sunday newspapers, Playboy, TV Guide. People on certain
lists received elaborate direct-mail pieces selling the package, and over several
years, millions of those sales letters were sent. His was and remains the only Las
Vegas Strip hotel literally built by direct-response advertising. Now, the untold
story: where Bob got the two most valuable prospect lists he mailed most
aggressively to…

Every guest got a fancy welcome package, which included four full-color
postcards with a photo of Vegas World and a display of One Million Dollars In
Cash on one side. They were wrapped with a note telling guests to address them
with notes to friends back home and drop them in the specially marked mail slot in
the lobby, and Bob’d buy the stamps. He did not mention he would copy down the
names and addresses before mailing out the postcards. He did not mention that he
would soon afterward mail a letter telling these folks that they were invited to get
the same great vacation their friends had recently enjoyed for just $399, plus get a
free spin of the Million Dollar Slot Machine and be guaranteed to at least win a
diamond-like ring or a little color TV or some other nifty prize. He mailed these
prospects repetitively and persistently, and told me that he converted upwards from
20%. So, if 300 guests turned in 4 postcards, that’s 1,200 fresh prospects every
couple of days, about 15,000 fresh prospects a month for which no cost was
incurred in acquiring them but a postcard and a stamp, and how could you get
better prospects? His other method of list-building was nearly as ingenious, and
just as troublesome. Its details don’t matter, to make the point: Renegade
Millionaires go to trouble to accomplish their goals that most people won’t. That’s
the untold story of extraordinary achievement. Nothing elegant, nothing efficient
about Bob’s system. Just effective.

I am 56 years old and I imagine my perception is skewed by age, but I still don’t
think I’ve ever seen as many people in search of the mythical Easy Button at any
other time of my life. The explosive proliferation of accessible technology has
acted as gasoline on this fire. But it doesn’t change the fact of society’s money

pyramid: 1% rich at the top, 4% doing well, 15% doing okay, 80% doing poorly –
principally because the 1% are willing to do a lot more, and a lot more troublesome
stuff than the 80% are. While the 80% are hunting for Easy Buttons, the 1% are
working.



Mastering Your Inner Game

We're going to talk about the inner game of building your business. I believe that
the inner game is simply all-important. "The inner game" is a new term for a
classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every
success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the
words, "thoughts are things." Dennis Waitley has worked with U.S. astronauts and
Olympic athletes on their inner games. Author Tim Galloway explores the ideas of
his books, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner
Game of Selling.

Interestingly, there is a never-ending connection between the inner game in sport
and the inner game in business, allowing experts like Waitley, Galloway, ex-
quarterback Fran Tarkenton and golfer Arnold Palmer, among others, to step back
and forth between expounding on success techniques in the athletic and business
worlds.

In all cases, these people speak much more about attitudes than aptitudes for a
good reason. Surveys, studies and research consistently reaffirm that 85% of your
success will depend on attitudinal factors, 15% on aptitude. Yet in your formal
education and in most continuing education, the emphasis is on the opposite - 15%
on attitude, 85% on aptitude.

Certainly technical knowledge and skills are important. In your profession, you
must deliver excellence based on your staying up to date in techniques, products,
materials and ideas.

However, such excellence alone will never build a successful, growing, profitable
business. The excellence that will is an excellence created and sustained in your
own mind. This is the most difficult, least tangible aspect of building your business
that we'll ever talk about, but it is also probably the most important.

Yeah, but what is it? So what is the inner game? The way I see it, the inner game
can be broken down into four major components:

• Self esteem
• Self image
• Self confidence
• Self discipline

Quality in these four areas is a necessary foundation to personal and professional
success.

Self Esteem

Self Esteem is essentially your feelings of worth. How much success do you
deserve? How much money should you make? How much is your time worth?
Here, briefly, are seven ideas for strengthening self-esteem:

1. Establish worthwhile, meaningful goals and values.
2. Take massive action to get your own financial house in order if it isn't now.
Reduce debt, bring expenses under income, and invest every single month.
3. Give yourself recognition for each and every accomplishment.
4. Manage your time productively. Procrastination and disorganization rob
many people of their self-esteem.
5. Associate with positive-minded, happy people who encourage and motivate
you. Don't hang out with folks who are negative, unhappy, critical or
jealous.
6. Continually acquire new know-how in you profession and in the areas of
business, sales and communication.
7. Regularly invest in improving your office and home environments, tools and
equipment, wardrobe and other external things that impact on your attitudes.

Self Image

Self-image is how you see yourself; it's who you think you are. Your self-image is
controlled mostly by self-imposed limits. Very few people ever perform beyond
those self-imposed limits.

A salesman whose father never earned more than $25,000 a year in his life may
well see himself as a $25,000 a year guy. And he will subconsciously screw up the
opportunities to earn more that come his way.

In the financial area, the controversial Reverend Ike calls this a money rejection
syndrome, and I am convinced that such a thing definitely exists. One man I know,
who made over $100 million in his business in its first three years from scratch,
had gone broke in business several times before. After the three years of
remarkable success, he said, "Making $100 million is about the easiest thing I've
ever done. Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took 20 years."

Your self-image was created and is sustained through self talk, the use of
affirmations - and that is also the method you can use to alter and modify your self
image, literally as you wish.

I call the process self image goal setting, because most people who set goals set
only "to get" and "to have" goals; they fail to set "to be" goals. I encourage you to
balance your approach to goal setting by including some self-image modification.

Self Discipline

Self-Disciple, the fourth component of the inner game, is quite possibly the most
important.

Success lecturer Jim Rohn says that most people do not associate lack of discipline
with lack of success.

Most people think of failure as one earth-shattering event, such as a company
going out of business or a home being foreclosed on. This, however, Jim Rohn
says, is how failure happens.

Failure is rarely the result of some isolated event; rather, it is a consequence of a
long list of accumulated little failures, which happen as a result of too little
discipline. I agree. I find that most people understandably tend to look everywhere
but in the mirror for the sources of their failures as well as the victories.

I'm here to tell you it's not the town you're in, not your location, not the economy,
not the weather, not your competitors - it's your own discipline that makes the
difference between excellence or mediocrity, between getting by or getting rich.

It's interesting to observe professionals. I often say to my associates, "Let me
watch the professional's behavior before, during and after the seminar, and I'll
guess his annual income within a few thousand dollars." It's actually pretty easy to
do.

Jim Rohn says that discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment.

I'd encourage you to take the self-discipline challenge very seriously.

Select those areas that you know are your weakest links - timely paperwork,
punctuality, daily self-improvement study, being happy and enthusiastic first thing
in the morning, whatever your personal stumbling blocks are - and apply new,
tough, demanding disciplines to yourself in those areas.

You'll find that success in these particular areas of your day-to-day life will roll
over into greater success in all parts of you life.

For example, let's look at the ultimate game players - professional football players.
A pro ball player knows that every single moment of his on-the-job performance is
recorded on film, to be replayed and reviewed later in stop-action slow motion, for
critique by his superiors and co-workers.

If your day was filmed and reviewed, how would you feel during the replay?

Of course, the professional football players who have to put up with this sort of
thing are highly paid.

Yes, the inner game stuff is tough. If being a big success were easy, everybody
would be one. You've got to decide what you really want to be, do, have,
accomplish - and decide whether or not you're willing to adhere to the disciplines
necessary to get it.

In order to have the opportunity to accomplish virtually any goals you honestly
desire, you must accept the related responsibility for everything you get.

sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation,
from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and
published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle, is the largest paid


On Achievement, Prosperity, and Envy

Oscar Wilde said: “It is better to have a permanent income than to be
fascinating.” There’s nothing wrong with both, of course. Those who insist that
money doesn’t buy happiness are usually short on money, ignorant of means of
getting any, and selling their philosophy hard because misery loves company.
Mark Twain wrote that, actually, no one can stand prosperity – another man’s.
Money can’t buy happiness, but absence of money, endless worry about it, and
envy and resentment of those who have it most certainly buys unhappiness. There
are reasonably happy, almost poor people. I know some. But they are rare. The
lack of financial security wears a person down. I’d also note, making a great deal
of money by honest means does not guarantee unhappiness. I know quite a few 7-
figure earners and rich folks who are quite happy. And it shouldn’t just be about
personal happiness anyway – such a childish pursuit. There is some ethical
obligation for being here, to be constructive, productive and contribute, whether by
creating magnificent art, or writing an influential book, or building a company and
creating jobs, or amassing and being a good steward of wealth, or being the best
schoolteacher, nurse, cop, taxi driver or whatever you can be, and being willing to
do tasks and bear responsibilities that don’t necessarily produce happiness-as-you-
go in order to accomplish significant things. Money is not the only measurement of
such accomplishment, but it is certainly a valid measurement; money is a mirror
reflection of commercial value created. Those who resent the rich are often, truly,
resentful of their own failure to create such value. It’s not a constructive emotion,
and others’ having and expressing it ought not influence you in the least.

One of the great benefits of my work is the up-close relationships I have with
people I categorize as Renegade Millionaires, and beyond that, getting paid to be
keen observer of many others similarly striped. An interesting thing I find about
them is, compared to most, little time or thought or angst given to the question of
happiness; and compared to most, much more time and thought and energy and,
yes, angst given to achievement.

It’s easy to lose sight of the central question: are you choosing goals for
yourself that are significant and rewarding to you, and progressively achieving
them? If you went to Harvard Law School and now choose not to practice law and
instead live as an itinerant cowboy, sleeping under the stars and drinking campfire
coffee from a rusty tin cup, and you’re honestly, authentically happy about that,
more power to ya – unless you have unpaid loans and debts to family, or
institutions for your education, or other responsibilities that must be honored and
discharged. If you make millions and wish to spend much of it on wine, women
and wine, and it’s your money, and you do no harm to others, have at it. It’s
unlikely, though, that such things absent achievement and contribution will long
sustain happiness, but you’re welcome to try. The trick in it all is honesty with self.
Earl Nightingale observed, that when it’s all said and done, each person is about as
happy or unhappy as they choose to be. That’s true as far as it goes. Happiness is

amazingly subjective, but not entirelysubjective. For one person, never even
having to think about money makes for happiness. For another, with no economic
necessity, still, redeeming a coupon and getting a good deal makes them happy.
But there is fact: achievement contributes to happiness; lack of achievement
contributes to unhappiness. Envy contributes only to unhappiness. And much
criticism masks envy.

Your business is YOUR business. Never forget it. That’s the core philosophy
behind so much of my work, including books I hereby self-servingly but also
sincerely suggest you get and read: NO B.S. RUTHLESS MANAGEMENT OF
PEOPLE AND PROFITS; NO B.S. TIME MANAGEMENT FOR
ENTREPRENEURS; and NO B.S. WEALTH ATTRACTION IN THE NEW
ECONOMY. As arrogant as it is to say, they just may change your life.

So, by all means, seek out role models, inspiring examples, teachers, mentors,
advisors, experts – validated by relevant, successful opinion – and learn from and
sift and sort and consider all they have to offer. But ultimately know that The
Renegade Millionaire Way is by very definition the finding of one’s own way.



Gratitude As A Marketing Strategy

Many years ago, I took over a business with mammoth collection problems: almost
all of its customers had open accounts and paid their bills ten to sixty days late
(except those who didn't pay at all). We quickly instituted a number of corrective
measures, including tighter credit controls and policies, interests charges, a
sequence of past-due notices, and collection calls. However, we also instituted a
positive strategy. We started sending hand-signed thank you notes for prompt
payment to anybody who did pay on time...those who were almost on time...and
even late payers who responded to a past-due notice. Guess what happened? Those
customers who received thank you notes became better paying customers.

I know a Doctor who started a procedure of giving fresh, long-stemmed red roses
to his women patients who showed up for their appointment on time, or paid their
bills on time, or referred another patient. "Funny thing," he told me. "We no longer
have patients missing appointments. Our collections have improved. Referrals are
up. And, some guys are asking how they can get roses, too!

Here are a few specific ideas you might adopt, as ways of saying thank you:

• Keep customers' birthdays on file and send cards and/or mail gifts.
• Send Thanksgiving cards or letters. * Make it a habit to drop a personal
thank-you note in the mail each day, to at least one customer.
• Send a gift certificate or discount certificate to a customer who makes an
unusually large purchase.
• Host a "Customer Appreciation Event" - a Christmas party, a backyard bar-b
que.
• Have an occasional closed-to-the-public, preferred customer sale.
• Drop in personally on your best customers, with a surprise gift.

I figured it up just the other day; last year, personally and for my various
businesses combined, I signed checks for well over one million dollars, in payment
for goods and services to all sorts of people and companies. And I don't care what
anybody says - a million bucks is a lot of money. Yet, I can count on the fingers of
one hand the number of the recipients of all that money who have expressed any
gratitude in any formal kind of way. Only one of them found out and recognized
my birthday.

Just saying "thanks" is a big step ahead of the competition today.


The Power of Mastery

I am about to tell you how to add $25,000.00, $50,000.00, maybe $100,00.00 a
year to your yearly income - without spending even a penny more on advertising or
marketing.

One of my featured guest speakers at a past SuperConference was Michael Vance.
Michael worked side-by-side with Walt Disney for a number of years. As I was
listening to Mike, I made a mental note to start talking about a Walt Disney quote
about marketing that I used to use a lot.

What Walt Disney said about Marketing is:

“Do what you do so well - and so uniquely – that people can’t resist telling
others about you.”

In every field, there are “masters”. People just so darned good at what they do
that people are compelled to tell others about them.

Mike Vance is that kind of speaker, and there are darned few in that
category. Actors like Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro. The salesman I
used to buy my cars from, Bill Glazner, at Sanderson Ford in Phoenix - he puts
every other car guy I’ve ever seen to shame. There are a couple chiropractors I
know who put on such a great “report of findings” (their equivalent of the Printing
Audit) that they enjoy 100% conversions and can easily sell large dollar “pre-
pays.” There’s a shoe-shine guy at the Atlanta Airport who still rubs wax in by
hand, snaps the towel with authority, slaps the leather, makes the brush sing. And
this is important: these people are “master performers.” They are not just masters
at whatever technical thing they do, they are masters at presentation.

So, here’s a very simple, very practical question: after customer buys from you
for the first time, do they - without any prodding from you - rush to the phone, call
an associate, and tell them about the amazing buying experience they just
had? Are the first words out of their mouth to the next person they see about you?

If it is, here’s the economic impact: your need to invest money in acquiring new
customers will diminish over time as your business converts to being 100% referral
driven. This means you can take all the money you now spend on advertising,
direct mail, telemarketing, etc. and put it into your pocket instead. This means you
will have more people calling and waiting in line for you than you have time,
because each client will multiply.

“Mastery” can quite easily be worth an extra $50,000.00 to $200,000.00 or even
more to you each year you remain in this business. (Bank it all at even modest
interest and in just five years you can retire a cash millionaire.)

To get that good, you must dedicate yourself to doing so: I’ve always been
impressed with the late Yul Brenner, who performed the “King and I” a record
number of times on Broadway - and still rehearsed his lines, gestures and facial
expressions everyday, before every performance, right up until his last one. How
many times have you written out your own, complete sales script word for
word? Recorded it and listened to it on tape? Role-played it with family or
mastermind group members? Practiced in front of a mirror? Ever? This month?

Get this: I can predict your future bank balances if I know what you read, what
you listen to, what educational functions you attend, who you hang out with and
what you work on (practice) regularly. Oh, and years ago, Joe Karbo wrote this
wonderful ad headline: are you too busy making a living to make a fortune? Are
you?

Discover how you can sneak into the closed door meeting and eavesdrop on the
free-wheeling, no holds barred discussions of arguably the most elite and
extraordinary group of marketing and moneymaking "masters" ever assembled in
one place, at one time.



The Truth about Quitting

My father told me that the reason doctors whack babies on the ass immediately
after they are born is to communicate a fundamental truth they need to know to
survive: outside the womb, life is tough. (Do doctors still do this? I don’t know. I’d
guess not; today, it’d be viewed as infant abuse and threatening to the tiny soul’s
fragile self-esteem, like, say, playing dodge ball and keeping score a bit later in
life. But in 1954, the year of my birth, the Doc at Deaconess Hospital in Cleveland,
Ohio delivered that whack.)

Everybody is presented with countless opportunities to quit. We stumble into
places far most hostile than we anticipated – my daughter’s full term in the Peace
Corps, in some godforsaken jungle with rats on her tin she’s roof, peeing through
gaps, that leaps to mind. We sign on for things that quickly seem more challenging
and difficult than we’d hoped for – maybe putting to use what is being provided to
you by the publisher of this; maybe putting together furniture from IKEA. We
walk into a dark alley, perhaps stupidly or ignorantly or arrogantly, figuratively of
course, and then get the crap beaten out of us, literally, and limp home, humiliated.
The list of celebrated, influential and rich entrepreneurs with at least one
embarrassing bankruptcy or very close call, past and contemporary, is long, long
indeed. I, myself, am on the list, and in very fine company. And if the doc’s
message is true, that life is tough, life for those who claw their way to the peak of
the business success and money pyramids is even tougher. Entrepreneurship is all
about managing a never-ending in-flow of crap, and diligently looking for the pony
occasionally in it; about converting adversity to opportunity when you can, and not
being overly troubled when you can’t. And, of course, not quitting.

Quitters are very uninteresting. What’s interesting and instructive is those who
are unabashed, who are quickly resilient, who achieve redemption, who have a
greater and grander next act. Over the long haul, this ‘resiliency’ may be the single
most important of all personal characteristics. How well you can take a punch.
How quickly you can recover. How you can weather storms of criticism or
humiliation. How adept you are at reinvention. How courageously and creatively
you respond to difficulty. If you want to cultivate a characteristic, this is the one.
And one way to do it is with little stuff. The day to day. A lot of people are easily
derailed. Easily put into a funk lasting hours or even days. Easily compromise their
agenda. The breeze from a missed punch is sufficient to send them to the canvas.
They wonder why they don’t get more accomplished. It’s "their glass jaw.”

At least be honest whenever you quit – especially if your reason is “gee, where’s
the Easy Button, anyway? Don’t see it here. I’ll go look over there.” That kind of
quitting isn’t about the place you walked into, the activity you started, the toolbox
you opened up, the learning curve and time required. It’s about YOU.

The Secret of Getting Referrals

There has never been any argument in advertising circles that the most effective
business advertising is word-of-mouth advertising.

That’s why direct selling is so dramatically successful as a method of marketing
every imaginable product and service, and why direct selling is such a great
business in which to be. As a direct salesperson conversationally telling another
person why you like a particular product, you are much more convincing
advertisement than any TV commercial or magazine ad.

The tremendous persuasiveness of your personal endorsement of a product is what
word-of-mouth advertising is all about. Much to the chagrin of professional ad
agencies, such word-of-mouth advertising cannot be purchased. But you, as a
direct salesperson, can put this special type of advertising power to work for your
business.

Because you are fortunate to be on friendly, personal terms with your customers,
you can enlist their aid in promoting your services. You can actually turn your
present customers into a personal advertising department. All you need to do is
master the right way to ask for their help.

Develop Personal Relations

If you learn how to properly ask for their help, your customers will enthusiastically
go to work advertising your business. This will help promote your services, lead
you to scores of new services, and give you all the valuable benefits of word-of-
mouth advertising. There are two types:

1. The customer actually becomes an advertising agent and tells others about
you and the service you provide.

2. The customer gives you referrals to people who may be good prospects and
allows you to use their name as an endorsement.

Either type can be extremely valuable in multiplying your customer list.

Avoid Pressure

The most important thing to remember is that this kind of help cannot be bought
from your customers. It must never seem like you are offering a bribe in exchange
for a list of names. As a rule, people will not “sell” their friends to you. Offering
an “inducement” also might raise doubts about the quality of your services. If they
are as good as you say they are, why should you bribe people for their
recommendations?

Remember two very important things about human nature: first, people usually
enjoy telling others about products they try and like. Second, people like to be
appreciated. One way they get appreciated is by being helpful to others.

In short, offer an incentive for help without appearing to be paying for it.

Show Appreciation

In this way, you’re thanking the person, not bribing them. They’ll be pleased,
won’t feel guilty, and will be more willing the next time you ask.

The next time you call on that customer you should remember to again thank them
for their help. Report to them on the reactions of the prospects they suggested. Let
the person you know you did call on them, that Mrs. Jones did become a customer
and purchased such and such, and that Mrs. Walters was interested but wished to
purchase at a later date.

In many cases, after reporting these results, you can obtain a couple of additional
prospects from them.

Prospects are the lifeblood of your business. Your greatest asset in direct sales is
your inventory of prospective new customers. And there is no better way to
maintain that inventory, converting prospects to customers, than by using the
power of word-of-mouth advertising ...with recommendations from your present,
satisfied customers. Put this power to work now and watch your profits and your
list of customers multiply.



Innovate

Just the other day, I was listening to a recording of a speech by Joe Sugarman* and
Joe said, “One good path to success is to learn all the proven rules and
meticulously follow them. Another path is to occasionally break all the rules,
because breakthroughs come only from breaking rules.” Resonates with me; as
you know, I wrote a whole book based on breaking rules. On one hand, I’m
cautious about innovation; pioneers usually come home full of arrow; it’s often
costly and time consuming...and I am always much more interested in “what
works” than a new idea. However, as Joe said, OCCASIONALLY, or I might
say, at carefully chosen time, you have no alternative but to be the pioneer in order
to move forward and in order to stand out from the crowd. It is, of course, the
minority of times that you successfully innovate that you get noticed for, not the
majority of times you successfully follow an already plowed path.

(*In case you don’t know, Joe Sugarman is a mail-order pioneer: first to sell
electronic calculators via direct-response ads, first to use 800#’s. You may know
him via his infomercials or QVC appearances for Blu-Blockers. But his JS&A ads
and catalogs preceded The Sharper Image and led in selling various electronic
gadgets.)

I think the best times to innovate are when you are absolutely convinced that
the conventional wisdom; the already plowed path; the crowd is wrong. Just
as an example, when I was getting started in the speaking business, everybody
seemed to operate under the policy of billing clients for fees and expenses after
their engagements (anything else was viewed as impolite and unprofessional), and
most speakers who sold product from the platform sort of begged the clients for
permission, and often sacrificed that opportunity. Very early on, I determined that
being in the banking and collections business did not serve my purposes very well
at all – nor did speaking only for wages. So I insisted on a 50% fee deposit to take
a date off the calendar, balance and travel expenses paid on
site at the speech, and I refused dates where I could not also offer my materials. At
the time, peers criticized me; told companies would never accept such terms; and
called ‘unethical’ by agents and bureaus. Today, my payment policies are the
norm in the profession. Another example: at a time when every vendor in a
particular niche was offering only very expensive services requiring long-term
contracts, I copied their marketing method but used it to sell a substitute product at
a very small price (and quickly took in a couple million dollars) – I was convinced
they were idiotically leaving a lot of motived but unsatisfied customers behind by
not offering a low price option.

An interesting survey of selected, successful, profitable large corporations turned
up 74% that said they’d achieve their first big success with either a unique product
or a distinctive way of doing business, although this breakthrough may not have

come along until they had been in business for many years. Note the word: first. I
also know many companies that are able to subsequently build on that first
breakthrough more conservatively, to grow and stabilize their businesses.

The bottom-line, I guess, is that you gotta gamble. You try to gamble only when
you must OR when circumstances look so favorable that it is irresistible, but you
got gamble.



Test and Grow Rich

“Testing” is an ugly topic. Why? Because testing variables in advertising direct
mail, phone scripts and sales presentations requires discipline, diligence and
patience. To get it right, you can only test one variable at a time. This means that
if you change a headline, you can’t change anything else. Plus you have to make
sure all other variables remain the same, like the mailing day or a war breaking out
that has everybody watching CNN day and night or the President getting caught
again with his drawers down or a hurricane hitting.

Frankly, most business people will just not go through the “detailitis” required to
test - which is why it’s a very good idea to model proven promotions. And in
some cases where you’re only going to use something once or twice or you’re
dealing with a very small number, it’s just not worth testing; instead, you take your
best shot. But let’s assume you’re working on something you intend to use over
and over and over again in some significant quantity, so that it’s worth real effort
to fine-tune it...

I have some tips for you: first of all, there’s non-testing testing - huh? Well, I
describe that in my book ‘The Ultimate Sales Letter’ (available
at http://www.gkicresourcecenter.com/books-by-dan-kennedy-and-bill-glazer/the-
ultimate-sales-letter/ ), where I talk about the steps to take with a finished sales
letter before you actually mail it. Second, there’s split testing, which is the fastest
way to test and get to a reasonable conclusion. Let’s assume you have a postcard
and you want to leave everything the same but test four different headlines, and
you have 4,000 similar addresses to mail to. You do “nth name testing”; that
means Headline #A goes to every 4th name, Headline #B to every 5th name,
Headline #C to every 5th name, etc.

So you evenly divide the list without bias among the headlines being tested. Some
media (like Val-Pak or MoneyMailer) will let you split test within a single
buy. Third, there’s testing against a control. A “control” is a marketing strategy
that already works well and you’re using it on a continuing basis - maybe it’s a
series of letters you mail every month. You have been using it long enough you
know what it produces. You have a “known” to measure against. Now you can
start trying to improve that control, ideally one step or variable at a time.

If I’m trying to beat a control, here are the “hot” variables I’ll look at closely, to
see if there’s room for improvement:

1. The offer
2. The guarantee(s)
3. The urgency of response
4. The big idea or big promise
5. The overcoming of skepticism i.e. credibility and believability

6. The style or tone of the writing itself
7. The look of the piece

By the way, little, very testable things DO sometimes make very big
differences. Recently I showed an example in my newsletter of a guy who just
added four rubber-stamped words to the outside of his envelope, and beat his
control by 300%. I once brought a TV infomercial back from the dead
by raising the price of the product.

Gary Halbert saved the Pearl Cream advertising by adding a particular bonus. In
1984, after attending my seminar, a dentist in Sacramento changed five words on
his Val-Pak coupon and went from getting two or three new patients a month to 15
to 20. This is the sort of thing that makes direct-response advertising as frustrating
as golf. (Did you happen to see John Daly miss a put seven times and scratch
himself out of the tournament a few weeks back? Ugh.)

Obviously, you can’t test if you can’t, won’t or don’t collect accurate data. You
have to code every offer, and track where every ounce of business comes from. If
you have employees who are lax about this, you must educate them about the
importance, discipline them if they goof it up, and ultimately can’em if they won’t
do it right 100% of the time. I confess that I fly by the seat of my pants in my
business more than I should, but I can’t fire me, God knows there are days I
should. Anyway, I can assure you: the clients I have with the best profits and
incomes possess the best information about where their business comes from.

Let me switch gears and talk briefly about another aspect of “testing”. This is
actually how all highly successful entrepreneurs view everything they do...as
testing. They do NOT see things in the context of “success” or “failure” like
ordinary people do, and as a result they do not become “de-motivated” like most
people do. See, most people drain all the vitality, courage, optimism and git-up-n-
go out of themselves by focusing on all the things they do that don’t work out well,
as a compilation of failures.

But successful people understand the powerful impact of that negative
reinforcement on their own self-image (somewhat akin to the impact of pouring a
gallon of toxic waste into a pint of clear water, drinking the result, and wondering
why the stomach backs up into the esophagus). Instead, they carefully organize the
things they do into a series or sequence of experiments, testing options, and
focusing on the ones they find that work. And they fully expect to go through any
number of experiments that don’t pan out before walking away from the lab with a
winner. This not only has practical relevance, it has profound psychological
ramifications.

Just like a little tweak in thinking can make a big difference in the results of say, an
ad or a flyer, a little tweak in thinking can make a giant difference in the life results
experienced by an individual.



Seeing What No One Else Can See

“Wealth comes to the man who can see the potential for wealth. – Napoleon Hill

Does this seem goofily obvious? Maybe it is. But then why are so few people
rich in a place
and time of virtually unlimited opportunity? The fact is, most people see things
only as they are.

I live in a luxury resort community developed by a guy who made his mark and his
fortune
creating such communities in areas of cities no one else saw as a valuable; in low
income areas, up the sides of craggy mountains with no flatland to build on. The
great visionary entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Bugsy Siegel and Sam Walton
had few personal characteristics in common, but they all had this prized ability to
see what others could not even imagine.

I think the first place you have to be able to see potential for wealth is in the
mirror. Most people look in their mirrors and see someone destined to finish as
is. They do not see a millionaire waiting to hatch. There is no doubt in my mind
that the picture you see of yourself virtually governs what you become. If wealth
is on the agenda, you’d better see a wealthy person, a wealth magnet, a person
deserving of wealth in the mirror.

Then comes the ability to identify the opportunity in a given set of circumstances
where most others are unable to spot it.

There are “formulas”, by the way, that keep getting applied in slightly different
ways, over and over again. Consider the trend of the past ten years or so, largely
led by just a couple of development companies, of going into decrepit downtown
industrial areas, converting warehouses and abandoned docks into entertainment
areas full of restaurants, night-clubs, offices – like The Flats in Cleveland, Inner
Harbor in Baltimore, etc. I’d call this the “Ugly Duckling Model”, getting rich by
turning ugly ducklings into swans. Conrad Hilton started out by taking on aged
dowagers hotels and transforming them. Al Davis did it successfully during the
glory days of the Raiders by taking on “outlaw” players nobody else wanted. A
few years ago, I was walking through an arts-and craft show somewhere and
stumbled across a guy doing a pretty brisk business selling planters made out of
old, worn out cowboy boots he’d rehabbed and decorated – as I recall at about
$100 a hit. Look around, you’ll see this Formula at work.


The Salesman and the Bean Counter

“Worriers and spellers can be hired for minimum wage.” – James Tolleson

I won a couple “spelling bees” when I was a kid, and I’m a reasonably bright
guy. But unless
you’re going to teach English lit, it turns out that mastery of grammar and spelling
is not particularly important to most careers or businesses. I get letters from time
to time offering to edit everything from my books and newsletters to my sales
letters, to correct the grammar and syntax or present a more erudite, professional
image-but these letters always come from people who have never had a book
published or never made any serious money from creating advertising. You CAN
hire these folks for minimum wage all day long. Most of the highest income
earners I know have a few of these people around. The point, of course, is that
“perfection” and “professionalism” as defined and perceived by most people has
not one darned thing to do with making a lot of money. It turns out that book
publishers all have editors who can fix what you write – what they need is
somebody who can come up with salable books and then sell them. Ad agencies
can hire people to fix grammar easily; what’s hard to find is the guy who can come
up with something like “They All Laughed When I sat Down At The Piano…” that
can actually sell something.

See, when you have the ability to cause people to jump up and part with their
money, you can hire – or the world will ante up and provide – people to run around
behind you and do everything from fix your grammar to get your laundry cleaned
to mollifying hotel managers after you’ve trashed the penthouse suite. This tells
you the one and only business skill worth focusing on, worth mastering. And I
can’t tell you how happy I am to have had that revelation early in life.

As an aside, if you really want to do your son or daughter a favor, push them into
summer jobs in selling. Even if they want to become doctors or, God forbid,
lawyers later, the most valuable part of their entire education will be the three
months spent selling in the store, car dealership or door to door. (Some years back,
I did a survey of 100 chiropractors with practices earning at least $500,000.00 a
year; over 80 of them had worked in direct sales, like selling vacuum cleaners, fire
alarms, cookware, etc.)

Similarly, you can also hire a bunch of pinheads and bean counters to sit around
and worry over every imaginable detail and potential problem for a whole lot less
than you can make from the same time selling or causing sales. In essence, it
really doesn’t pay to worry! Hard to break the worry habit: most of us are taught
this habit by our parents and have it deeply imprinted in our subconscious. The
best antidote or, at least distraction though is positive, productive, proactive
action. I do know one entrepreneur who actually hired a guy to worry for him – he
pays him $35,000.00 a year. Every morning he gives his Vice-President of

Worrying a list of stuff to worry about, and then he goes on to focus on selling and
causing sales. This pretty much tells you the only two functions of business worth
investing your time and energy in. And note this: everybody who takes your time
or attention away from those two things is your enemy.



Leading the Pack Even When You’re Out-Ranked and Out-Gunned

“Leadership depends more upon the man than the rank.” - Harold Geneen .

For good or bad, I consider myself fortunate to have missed the Vietnam
experience. But I’ve talked to enough vets to know that “fragging” was much
more common than the public knew; meaning, grunts shooting their leader in the
back. This demonstrates that rank doesn’t necessarily guarantee respect. The
same thing is true in less deadly situations. Just because you’re the boss no longer
means anybody will do as you ask.

Fortunately, this has a very positive flip side. When I first read this, I was also
reading Ringer’s stuff, and I realized that you can take control, assume leadership
and be the boss in situations where you have no rank. This is a very liberating
idea. It frees you from structure, from intimidation and from a whole lot of very
limiting past programming. You can become the leader in a defined marketplace
in under a year, even if there are companies competing there with 100 years’
tenure. You can lead a meeting, a group’s thinking or the direction of a project
even if you are the newest, smallest puppy in the kennel. As a consultant, I often
find myself leading in situations and environments
where I have no rank.

Where Does The Confidence To Lead Come From?

I think all leadership confidence is based on a disdain for the other contenders and
for the troops. This is a controversial idea, very offensive to many, and I
understand that. Military and political leaders will vehemently deny it. But the
truth is, most leaders gain the confidence it takes to lead by looking around and
arriving at the conclusion that everybody else around them is inept, inarticulate,
lazy or otherwise woefully unqualified. This is the best reason of all to enter a new
business or a new market, by the way: the conviction (not just arrogant opinion)
that those already there are idiots. I’ll never forget how my confidence about being
in the speaking business soared after attending my first
National Speakers Association event – sure, I saw a number of people there who
were better speakers than I was, but I met nobody with their head screwed on
straight about the business. I also saw a group of professionals obsessed with the
illusion of “rank” that was meaningful to them out meaningless in the
marketplace. Whenever you spot such conditions, you can count on having found
enormous opportunity.


Success Secrets “They Don’t Want You To Know”

There is a tendency amongst authors writing about ‘success’ – as well as
entrepreneurs and CEO’s telling their success stories – to be warm ‘n fuzzy and
present classically popular ideas palatable to the largest number of people. To say
that nice guys win. That having a positive attitude and drawing little smiley faces
above the i’s you dot will not only endear you to people but actually attract
prosperity. In truth, there is little evidence of this. None of it is harmful in
moderation, but it conceals fundamental truth about ultra-high achievers: they tend
to be tough, intolerant, hard-driving, demanding, competitive people often viewed
as difficult, mean and ruthless by others. And they tend to have a profound sense of
superiority usually viewed as arrogance. It sometimes gets them in trouble, but it is
also an essential factor in their success.

Quoting a Forbes reporter: “Donald Trump has a dim view of the world. To the
real estate mogul and TV star most people are either ‘enemies’, ‘bastards’,
‘sleazebags’, or ‘stone-cold losers.’ “ Bill Harrison recently gave me a phenomenal
book by one of the richest Europeans you’ve probably never heard of, Felix
Dennis, ‘How To Be Rich’, which has much to say about this, and should be read
by anybody who thinks they sincerely want to be rich. (It’s also a fun read.)

These individuals who raise themselves to great wealth and power exhibit
messianic beliefs from the beginning. Gene Landrum writes about this extensively
in his must-read books on the high achiever’s psyche. He cites countless examples;
one, Napoleon being told by his mother while still in the cradle that he was born to
rule the world. Andrew Carnegie spoke of having a sense of enormous superiority
over ordinary men. In the book ‘The Alexander Complex: The Dreams That Drive
Great Businessmen’, its author notes thatgreat business empiricists “live in the
grip of a vision. Because they are convinced they can change the world, they often
do.” With this sense of superiority comes the unavoidable conviction that most
others are profoundly inferior. These individuals see themselves as strong and
disciplined, others as weak and undisciplined; themselves as independent and in
control, as kings, others as dependent and in need of constant supervision, as
pawns to be moved about as necessary. These individuals have a centric vision,
demanding that the world revolve around them. They see their rightful place as
atop the hierarchal pyramids because of their superior studiousness, tough-
mindedness, discipline, determination and resilience. (NOT superior intelligence,
as Dennis points out, and as I have frequently stated.) While they may say that
there’s nothing significantly different between them and other men on the street,
because humble plays well, they privately know the opposite to be true, and have
disdain for all those who could but don’t.

Further, these people take (legal) advantage when and where they can. Sam
Walton cultivated an image as the folksy fellow in the battered pick-up truck, but
Andy Griffith he was not. Walton’s success formula focused on minimized labor

costs, grinding vendors down on price repeatedly, and forcing manufacture of most
goods overseas. Wal-Mart has always been run with an iron fist: wage caps;
extensive electronic surveillance of employee phone calls and workplaces;
prohibition of purchasing agents accepting so much as a cup of coffee from a
vendor; an internal security force investigating every deviation of company policy.
NIKE founder Phil Knight made his fortune in shoes by paying Indonesian factory
workers less than a dollar a day …eventually admitting that his company had
“become synonymous with slave wages.” Bill Gates an elephant eagerly stomping
mice. Opportunism, even predatory opportunism is heavily in play. One rich client
of mine I won’t name recently told me – gleefully – that economic slump in his
industry prompted him to open up his piggybank, because it was the ideal time to
steal competitors’ best employees and advertise more aggressively than ever to
build market share. Rockefeller famously said, “I buy when there is blood in the
streets.”

Attitudes and behaviors most view, at best, squeamishly, and at worst, as evil, are
accepted by high achievers as what separates the men from the boys. A very rich
man I got to know 20 years ago, who made his money buying up cash-strapped
companies at virtual gunpoint, told me: “I have five secrets. Five reasons I am rich
while others are not. One, I am willing to pick up turds with my bare hands when
necessary. Two, I am willing to trample the weak without qualm. Three, I am a
very tough sonofabitch, I’m damn near impossible to knock out, but I’m still
careful to pick fights with inferior opponents as much as possible. Four, I don’t
care about being liked. Five, I only generously reward performance.”

These are some of the success secrets “they” don’t want you to know.



5 UN-Creative Thoughts About

Creativity

Entrepreneurs and marketers are constantly challenged to be creative. But
creativity as it is commonly thought of and practiced is sin not virtue, because it is
slow and ponderous; because it begins with a blank slate. One of the most
profitably creative entrepreneurs of all time, Walt Disney, said “….stop talking and
begin doing.” To be profitable in the real world, creativity must be fast, decisive,
practical, implementable and implemented. There’s little room for creativity for
creativity’s sake.

I tend to practice “creativity cheating” – and thought I’d give you a few quick
“cheats”, from the many I talked about at my one day Creative Thinking For
Entrepreneurs Seminar.*

#1: STEAL AND ADAPT WHAT’S ALREADY BUILT

From Tony Baxter, Senior V.P., Creative Development/Imagineering at Disney:
“For the climactic scene in the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, we wanted
the ride vehicle to suddenly start backing up as the giant rolling boulder comes
thundering toward us. Having a ride vehicle back up in the middle of a ride is
SOMETHING THAT’S NEVER BEEN DONE, BECAUSE IT’S NOT
POSSIBLE. With eighteen vehicles traveling down the same track at the same
time, a vehicle going in reverse would collide with the next vehicle coming behind
it along the track. But if you’ve ever ridden in the Indiana Jones attraction, you
know your vehicle does suddenly start backing up. At least that’s your perception.
Your vehicle has actually stopped. It’s the walls and ceiling that are moving,
giving you the undeniable feeling that you’re traveling backward…….so, where
did we come up with this solution? A car wash. One of those self-service machines
at the gas station where you pull your car in and park while a series of brushes and
spray heads mounted above and beside your car travel back and forth.”

There’s more to Tony’s story, but enough here to make the point: whatever you’re
trying to do, somebody has already figured out and built --- just not in your
business or industry or in an application you might ordinarily, easily think of in
connection with your business. You do NOT want to invest umpteen days, weeks,
months duplicating all the figuring out and innovation and engineering – you want
to find the thing that’s already built.

Oh, and a key question to ask every time you see anything, go anywhere,
experience anything: how can I use that?

#2: WORK BACKWARDS

Most people approach creative thinking from the front – the idea. Let’s say you’re
going to open up a new restaurant. You’ll probably start with the name, maybe the
theme, the menu. But the best place to start is with what will insure a customer
keeps coming back. Or his final few minutes in the place. What goes on at the cash
register. What will create the highest average ticket. In short, you start thinking
about outcomes and then build backwards. Right now, in the movie business, a ton
of very important money comes from stealth advertising and product placement.
So very, very, very early in the creative process, in many cases prior to script and
definitely prior to picking actors, the list of every possible product/advertiser that
can be integrated into the film is thought through. I am told in one blockbuster
movie of 2005, a scene that took place inside a ski resort’s dim-lit bar at night in
the book was moved to daytime, outside on the restaurant’s deck because they
could get a sunglasses company, a parka company, and a liquor company with its
name on patio table umbrellas to pony up money.

#3: BE MARKET / BUYER DRIVEN IN (ALMOST) EVERYTHING YOU
DO

I started out, ever so briefly, in the ‘traditional’ advertising business, and have
occasionally been involved – such as a few years back when I butted heads with
Weight Watchers’ big name Madison Avenue agency. They tend to start their
creative process with random ideas. If you watch the advertising-related exercises
on ‘The Apprentice’, you’ve seen this same mistake made. So, gather a bunch of
ad industry creative types together to talk about advertising for a new perfume,
they’ll instantly leap off a dozen creative cliffs: names, colors, package, celebrity,
music. I say: wait a damn minute! Tell me who the ‘target’ is – don’t even bother
telling me about the product. I don’t give a rat’s patootie that it smells like jasmine
or ocean breezes or beached whales in the last throes of death or is made from
cedar planks or horny minks’ glandular secretions. I want to work backwards from
who the intended buyer is. And it matters whether she’s 18, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50,
55, single, married, etc. I catch clients constantly playing BLIND
ARCHERY. Don’t develop a product or service or offer or Marketing Message
unless you are developing it for a particular somebody. Not only is that the best
and surest way to make money and avoid flops, it’s a terrific creativity shortcut
because it narrows your range of creative work from the git-go. If you want to
manage time better, by now you probably know my best strategy is to give yourself
less loose time to manage. If you want to get through the creation process quicker,
give yourself a smaller canvass.

#4: SWIPE, SWIPE, SWIPE, SWIPE (LEGALLY & ETHICALLY)

I get real joy out of hearing from GKIC Members as I did the day I wrote this, and
hearing one after another telling me how they took an example from the NO B.S.

MARKETING LETTER, etc., etc. Again, you should never start with a blank slate.
Too hard, too slow. Gather up some stuff to give you a jump start.

#5: DOODADS AS INSPIRATION

One of my favorite shortcuts is finding the little doodads, promotional items,
grabbers that are available, that suggest or furnish the theme for my marketing
campaign --- especially when doing direct-mail. The copywriting I did for Rory
Fatt’s boot camp one year, ‘The Magical Business Life Boot Camp For Restaurant
Owners’, was because I first found a bunch of magic stuff in the Oriental Trading
catalogs: tricks, cards, top hats, etc. I picked the theme because these things were
available cheap.

If you don’t get these catalogs, you must:

Hands On Fun – Creative Tools
www.handsonfun.com

Oriental Trading/Business
www.orientaltrading.com

Fun Impressions
www.funimpressions.com

Here are just a few items that beget ideas:

Magnetic Construction Set

“Build a better _____________”

Foam Fall Leaves

“The leaves have started to turn colors – your reminder to __________”

Dinosaurs

“Once upon a time, mighty dinosaurs ruled the earth. They no longer even exist/
Why? Because they didn’t adapt to change. Don’t risk extinction!”

Jumbo Foam Dice

‘If you want to gamble, go to Vegas.

If you want a sure thing: ________________”

Seasonal Themes….a little more obvious. For example, Chinese New Years, St.
Patricks Day

So, for example, instead of the Magic theme, next year Rory might use : Build A
Better Restaurant Business. There’s the construction set I just talked about, hard
hats, toy hammers and tool kits, sales letters printed on architects’ blueprints,
building permits, and on and on and on. Who else could use this? Kitchen
remodelers…..fitness center (build a better body)……karate school (build a better
kid)….

See, wandering through one of these catalogs is another creativity shortcut.

There’s a business term: “speed to market.” It’s extremely important. The
entrepreneurs I work with who make the most money are “speed to market”
people. They rely on creativity shortcuts. You should too.



Which Gets Read More – Ads Or Articles?

The ‘Advertorial’,

The Challenge Of Maximum Readership

Reconsidered

The knee-jerk answer is: articles. And the argument for the “advertorial” i.e. an ad
made to look like editorial material is that it is obvious; people buy newspapers
and magazines for the articles, not the ads. But, like all dogma, ain’t necessarily so.
For example, lots of people buy the Wednesday newspaper to get the supermarket
coupons, buy the Friday or weekend newspaper to see the movie and nightclub ads.
In analogy, people often go to national conventions more interested in the trade
show than in the seminars, me included.

MY ADVICE: DON’T STEP IN THE DOGMA
Anybody who has an ironclad rule about the most successful way to do
something can be proven wrong. I constantly violate one of the most respected
direct response copywriter’s rule about the number of words for a headline. The
“A-pile mail” argument makes perfect sense, but I have beaten it in split-tests with
teaser copy laden envelopes. Not often. But sometimes. To conclude that the
advertorial is the ad format that will always get the highest readership is wrong. On
the other hand, a lot of advertisers err in never using it – in space as well as in
direct-mail.

I try to be careful about this; I know too much about what doesn’t work. So, I try to
be careful not to be dogmatic, or too quickly shut off a client’s idea. I’ll say: I’ve
never known ‘x’ to work, and I’ve certainly seen it not work, but let’s explore it
from several different directions, including…..can it be easily and cheaply tested?
Is there a more reliable approach that will do just as well? Is there enough benefit
to balance the cost of experimenting? Etc.

THE CHALLENGE OF READERSHIP
Here’s the key point to keep in mind, whether contemplating different ads or
FSI or direct-mail formats, headlines, photos, grabbers, etc.: it can’t sell if it
isn’t read. The Big Lesson is – you have toWORK JUST AT GETTING IT
READ. Not presume readership, which is what most people do. Way, way, way
too much advertising and mail is produced with a presumption of readership.
Actually, the opposite is the smarter approach; presuming every recipient will try
NOT to read it.

THE BEST WAY TO MAXIMIZE READERSHIP IS…

….targeting. My ‘message to market match’ principle. But when you can’t target,
when you must use mass media and fish from a very large lake, then you have to
work even harder at getting people to bother reading your message.


https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/newmifge/seoptimized

Watching The Clock

The ‘secret’ reason long copy usually out-sells brief copy, and lengthy sales
letters out-sell short ones is simply time. The longer the prospect stays in my
store….

the more time he invests in my proposition,
the more likely he is to buy.

The best catalogs are designed to keep the person paging through them for the
longest possible amount of time. The best stores keep customers in them for the
longest period of time possible – which the FAO Schwartz store in Vegas has
tackled many different ways; three floors, slow escalators with brilliantly
conceived signage that sells, the opportunity to buy 30-minute use cards to play all
the games on the 3rd floor, the environment itself, a maze of specialty stores within
the stores, salespeople who engage you (not clerks), even a soda fountain and
sandwich/snack counter, so you need not leave for food. The best sales letters keep
the reader reading for as long as possible. It’s why we use multi-media: letter, CD
or DVD --- it expands the amount of time the prospect invests with us. The best
web sites are designed to involve the visitor and keep him there.

I’m amused when clients fall into the grip of competent technicians who are
marketing nincompoops. The fools tell the clients that their sales videos should be
no more than seven minutes long, audio CDs ten minutes at most. In one of my
business fields, professional speakers are even fed this nonsense: keep your demo
reel short. All the opposite of the ideal:

find ways to create so much interest

the person will stay with you, keep listening,

keep watching, keep reading.

The more time invested, more likely to buy.

In good old fashioned nose to nose, toes to toes, mug to mug selling, first in
peoples’ living rooms, then B2B, in offices, I quickly learned what many such
sales warriors know: likelihood of closing goes up in 15-20 minute increments. If
I’m there for 2 hours, I’m not twice as likely to close as if there for only 1 hour,
I’m three to four times more likely to close. That’s why the in-home guy selling
pots ‘n pans or encyclopedias, etc. unpacks and has stuff strewn all over the place;
it expands the time he’s there.

Of course, you can overstay welcome, unsell the made sale. In each selling
situation --- on stage, face to face, in a tele-seminar, in print, online, etc. ---
there is a specific “sweet spot” where sales peak; stop short or go long, suffer. For
my basic ‘Magnetic Marketing’ speech, it was 90 minutes. I could get good results
in as little as 70, up to 120. Less than 70 or more than 120, the sales drop off
dramatically. But for the most part, most people stop way, way short of the point
where maximum sales occur.

There is link between time invested and likelihood of buying.

The highest earning auto salesman I’ve ever known always took prospects to his
office first, for conversation; then out to look at cars; then to test drive; then back
to the office. Why not right out to look at cars? 15 more minutes. That’s why.

But what about….

Today’s shorter attention spans.

Age differences – younger buyers, shorter attention spans

My customer’s different…..he’s very busy, won’t read a book…

Blah, blah, blah.

Look, all these things are real. Yes, today, everybody’s busier, there are fewer
readers and fewer people reading as a matter of course, younger buyers do have
shorter attention spans. But the correct answer is not to sacrifice what’s effective,
not to merely surrender. The answer is to be more interesting and compelling.

A few years ago, ABC-TV was in the dumper. Fourth of the four networks, no hits.
And series TV had given way to modular TV. Shows like CSI, CSI Miami, CSI
New York, CSI Poughkeepsie, LAW & ORDER, LAW & ORDER SVU, LAW &
ORDER CI, LAW & ORDER PMS, etc. are all designed so you do NOT need to
follow them week after week. The story line begins and ends in each show. Each
episode is self-contained and free-standing. And because of their success (as well
as, admittedly, higher syndication longevity and value), the prevailing viewpoint in
network television was that episodic, serial shows were dead. ABC, desperate for a
breakthrough, went contrarian – and hits have emerged that are, in fact, serial:
Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal, Sunday night winners.

My point is simply this: it’s less about modular or serial, as it is about
interesting and compelling. And purely in terms of sales effectiveness, who’s
evidencing greater power? --- the writers, actors, etc. behind a show so fascinating
viewers calendar it and make a point of being home to watch each episode, or
those whose viewers feel comfortable with missing an episode?

Sometimes we are legitimately constrained by weight for a direct-mail
piece, or space in print advertising, the 28 minute limit for the infomercial. But
more often, marketers unnecessarily imprison themselves, with self-imposed time
limits far short of their real time limits for their sales presentation and the
prospect’s buying experience.

Sometimes we are legitimately constrained by very practical operational
considerations. In my old seminar business, selling to chiropractors, dentists,
podiatrists, optometrists and veterinarians, we found the 3 hour evening seminar
far easier to get attendance for than the full day, and it allowed the speaker to travel
each A.M., work every P.M., thus fitting five seminars and five cities into five
days (vs. three in five if full days). So, essentially, operational considerations
exerted control over sales considerations. But more often, operations controls sales
when it shouldn’t. The first, best way of thinking is to determine what situation
will optimize sales, then try and figure out how to create that situation. More often,
marketers decide on the situation that suits them or their employees or fits some
industry norm, then try to create sales within its parameters.

A mistake made at Caesars Palace: they built a gigantic, new 4,000 seat
showroom for Celine Dion. Next to it, is a giant Celine Dion store of souvenirs,
music, clothing, etc. But the people exit the showroom down steps next to the
store. They should be forced to exit through the store. (Disney rides, like Tower Of
Terror at Disney/MGM exit through the souvenir store.) This is minutes in a store,
and minutes translate to money.

You have to look carefully at how you manage your prospects’ or
customers’ time. There is a three way linkage:

Interest+Involvement+Time

Classic involvement devices in direct-mail include the “affix these stamps
to the card” Publishers Clearinghouse kind of mailing pieces. Opening sealed
envelopes. Taking quizzes and tests. Even a trick used by Sugarman (and others):
find the misspelled words, get the right count, win a prize. Some of these classics
can move online or into other environments; some can’t. In retail, such things as
trying on clothes or test driving a car. Maytag is testing stores where you bring in
laundry and do it there, or cook in the in-store kitchen. The retail chain (also with a
store in the Forum Shops) that gets this done through demonstration is Houdini’s
Magic Shop. On my team, EVERYBODY made a purchase there – and they held
us for about 30 minutes. Including the red room/blue room gambit: buy now, we’ll
take you behind the curtain, in the back room and teach you to do the trick.

In-home party plan selling is making a huge comeback. Here’s why I’ve
always liked it: every single person who takes the time to go to an in-home party,
goes intending to buy something and does buy something; coming home empty-

handed would seem like a waste of time! But instead of a quick walk-through of a
store, the person is kept for two hours. Most buy multiples, spend more than they
intended – because of the two hours. And the involvement: interaction with the
salesperson and other customers, demonstration, looking through catalogs together
– involvement. For the party plan business, INVOLVEMENT + TIME equals
sales.

So, things to think about –

How can you get your prospect more invested in getting ready to buy from you
and in selling himself, so the sale is more automatic, the customer will buy more,
will pay more?

How can you get your prospect to invest more time reading, listening, watching,
visiting?

How can you actively involve your prospect?

How can you create a buying experience?


https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/newmifge/seoptimized

Can You Handle The Truth?

Will You Tell The Truth?

We are very, very sloppy with language.

Consider the word “can’t”. People use it often, casually, and, mostly, inaccurately.

As in: I just can’t seem to lose weight. Actually, barring a genuine medical
disorder, the odds against somewhere in the 25,000 to 1 range, anybody can, in
fact, lose weight. There’s no mystery to it whatsoever. Reduce calorie, fat, and
empty carb intake, add exercise. The accurate word replacing can’t here would
bechoose. I just seem to choose not to lose weight. I choose to remain fat, ugly,
unhealthy.

I’m not a theologian, but I recall one of those bothersome commandments brought
down from the mountain having to do with not lying. I know a lot of people who
profess belief in those ten, yet lie like dogs daily to themselves. You’d think we
could at least manage some private honesty with self.

In my businesses – publishing, consulting, coaching, training – quite a few people
excuse themselves from doing the things necessary to be successful. In 30 years, I
imagine I’ve heard every excuse. Most quitters aren’t very imaginative, so even the
30 year list is short. There’s the old story of the guy asking his neighbor to borrow
his tractor. His neighbor says: “Can’t let ya. There’s a horrible drought in
Kansas.” The puzzled guy says, a little irritated, “We’re in Iowa. What the heck
does the drought in Kansas have to do with me using your tractor?” And the
farmer says: “When a man doesn’t want to lend out his tractor, one excuse is just
as good as another.”

Whoever publishes the piece in which you find this series of Why People
Fail articles is just like me and every coach, karate instructor, art teacher, personal
trainer, business advisor; he, we, hear a lot of quitters’ excuses. One of the
saddest is “I can’t afford it.”

My friend Jim Rohn, a world class success teacher, has famously said: “Rich
people have big libraries. Poor people have big TV’s.” Somebody visiting one of
my homes said, “It must be nice to be able to afford to buy and own all these
books.” (There are thousands.) I said, “It is – but a good number of them were
bought when I couldn’t afford them.”

They are cause, not effect. When Houdini moved from his country home to the
city, it required five full-size moving vas just for his library of books about magic,

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