Republished by elaunchers.com With permission from GKIC
T H E L A U N C H PA D I S S U E :
GROWING YOUR BUSINESS WITH A PRODUCT LAUNCH
MARKETING LETTER
k i l l e r s t r at e g i e s yo u c a n u s e to g row yo u r bu s i n e s s | au g u s t 2 0 1 5
Sales Magic Secrets
News Flash: Sex Still Sells p. 5 Big Lesson Of The Month
How Do I Know If My Direct Mail Campaign Was “Successful?” p. 6 Lee Milteer
How to Effectively Use Your Life p. 19 Energy Online Marketing
How to Plug a Leaky Sales Funnel with Ad Retargeting
p. 20
Inside the Mind of the
Millionaire Maker BY DA N KEN N EDY
BUY NOW! Buy before it’s too late! Buy while you still can. Buy now, to get in on the ground floor. Buy now, to be the first on your block. Buy now, because it’s a limited edition available only for a limited time, or until supply runs out, whichever comes first. Buy now, at pre-release pricing. Buy now, “off season,” for huge discounts. Buy now and we’ll double your order, just pay separate shipping and handling.
These are only some of the “Buy Now!” exhortations that can be seen and heard hourly, in TV commercials and infomercials, on QVC and HSN, from county and street fair pitchmen, from “closers” selling person to person; seen at e-commerce sites, webcasts and in print media and direct-mail. This is the world where people like me, like Rick Cesari – the author of BUY NOW!, presenting at Info-Summit, like Clayton Makepeace – newsletter industry copywriting king, also presenting at Info-Summit… live. We eat, sleep, and breathe getting people to buy now. Conquering this is our daily life. In the minds of millionaire marketers, there’s never a time as good as the present. There’s always a good and compelling reason for immediate action. Creating urgency is the name of the game. My friend John Carlton famously described the typical consumer as a “somnambulant sloth” who must be awakened, prodded by lightning bolt to action. I refer to that prospect when I caution: never underestimate the difficulty of the task. Please take that to heart. An enormous amount of unnecessary disappointment and failure is rooted in assumption and presumption that it will be easy or, worse, should be easy. (continued on page 3)
Secret Sauce You Can’t Go Wrong with a Good Plan and ‘The Money Button’ An interview with Parthiv Shah Parthiv Shah has a funny way of talking about his love affair with GKIC and Infusionsoft (IS). It begins with word pictures about human love and sex, hot and heavy stuff even for this publication; but it boils down to simple notions of building trust and creating pleasure in relationships – business relationships, that is. And finding ways to monetize trust, increase customer pleasure (which often means removing pain), plus wielding automation to achieve these missions, as well as to patiently chase and woo the distant and disinterested object of your affection: the unconverted lead. Parthiv, who describes himself as a data analyst who smells and chases money, is the founding principal of e-Launchers, which utilizes IS to help dozens of GKIC-member clients implement their marketing strategies by harnessing the robust platform that was designed for small-business entrepreneurs. He is also the GKIC Independent Business Advisor for Maryland, and it was at this local group where he first encountered the methods and the entrepreneurial community that comprises GKIC.
IS? And as a matter of fact, he not only chooses it, he also sells it. “I have never given an Infusionsoft demo to any prospect before selling it to them, because they’re not buying Infusionsoft. They’re buying a money button. Push this button, money comes out. It’s an ATM.” Parthiv continues: “Infusionsoft is a multifaceted system that does lead catcher, marketing automation, CRM, email distribution, e-commerce, and money mathematics. And it takes all of it from one central database. One central system that has all your data about who, what, why, when, and how much.
“Dan Kennedy says, ‘As a superhero you can’t just fly around. You eventually have to come down to Earth and fight evil”
“It all started with a plate of cookies,” he laughs. A colleague was bringing him to the local group meeting but they had missed the dinner and “I was starving,” he remembers. The leader of the group hospitably ordered a tray of cookies to share with the famished newcomer, and Parthiv was hooked. “I looked around the room and I’m like, “This is awesome. I should be part of this.”
“Before money and after money. It is a complex but powerful system and it is reasonably inexpensive – $2,000 to get in and $350 a month to implement. But it eliminates eight other systems that you would have to buy. And the data is not in a different silo.
He has been actively consuming (and we mean really digesting) GKIC books, products and live programs for years ever since, and owns pretty much a complete Kennedy-based library; he then takes this abundant knowledge and converts it into cash for others.
The Real Secret Sauce for Small Business
One Central System “I’m the ultimate swiper, the ultimate implementer, he says. “The ultimate deployer…I’m always learning. I’m always evolving.” And as a result, “I am the implementer, the head of operations for several dozen clients.” Why does the “ultimate implementer” choose GKI C.CO M
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“Usually when you have multiple systems, you have a multisystem chaos. This is something Infusionsoft has eliminated.”
basically building the curriculum. “You need to have your own continuing education curriculum and plan.” Incidentally, No B.S. was fascinated to learn that for each $1,000 he spends on a program Parthiv invests 10 hours of study to consume the material. 2.) Implementation. “You actually have to do sh*t,” he says. “As Dan Kennedy says, ‘As a superhero you can’t just fly around. You eventually have to come down to Earth and fight evil.” “So a binder will not do you any good unless you take a page out of it, put together an implementation plan and have a team that implements it for you. “Here is a secret sauce question for anyone who’s reading this article: When you go to a GKIC InfoSummit or Super Conference or Dan Kennedy private event or any other event... are you there as a tourist, or are you an informed consumer of continuing education? “What are you here for? What’s the point? In the global scheme of things, that doohickey that you bought, how does that fit into your business plan, your business model? “So the secret sauce is to not [chase] the shiny object; have a plan and work the plan…that will give you a transformational experience.” And true execution of the plan, he says, does not occur without Infusionsoft.
Parthiv insists that there are two ingredients in the secret sauce for entrepreneurs: (1.) Curriculum of learning. “But don’t just buy randomly chosen boxes,” he advises. “Study the entire GKIC product catalog and build a curriculum. Highlight the products that you are going to buy, then chronologically number them and put dates on your calendar as to when you will buy, when you will consume, what are you going to do to implement what you have learned and pick your implementation team. So that’s NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER
Parthiv Shah DECEMBER 2015
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Inside the Mind of the Millionaire Maker (continued from cover)
People do not easily buy now. Most home security systems are sold only after a burglary or home invasion in the buyer’s or neighbor’s home. “Prevention” is always devilishly hard to sell. Cavett Robert said, “It’s hard to sell burial insurance unless they see a hearse backed up to the door.” He didn’t mean literally. He meant figuratively. In the mind’s eye. If you are too late, a sale can be ruled out. Never waste time offering a bald man a comb. But you must also be keenly aware of everybody’s tendency to procrastinate. It is up to you to make them buy now, not later – even if doing so is inconvenient or they “can’t” afford it right now or, well, whatever.
In the minds of millionaire marketers, there’s never a time as good as the present.
Of course, it’s helpful to source leads and prospects and get sales opportunities when the timing for buying is good, and the customer has the present ability to buy, and the willingness to buy. But we must also persuade and motivate to action in less perfect circumstances with less perfect prospects. The first 7-figure income salesman I met was laser focused on this. He said, “Product, features, benefits, demonstration, price and the prospect all matter. But nothing is more important than my ability to manufacture and heat up a sense of urgency.” He went on to say, “No one questions the price of the ambulance. No red-blooded male turns down sex because the timing of the offer could be better. This is the kind of urgency the master salesman creates.”
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Intention withers. Only action is certain to be action. Ideas die by delay and dithering. Only an idea acted on and put into motion has certain chance at life. A 99.9%-certain sale may reverse itself if given time. This is why, in my mind, I am always striving for urgency and immediacy, for doing not to-do, for motion, not meditation. It is why, personally, I rarely accept a big, dumb, committeerun, chronically constipated company as a client; instead, the entrepreneur capable of making and acting on a decision. The idea that those who don’t or won’t buy now, won’t buy at all is false and foolish. My kind of multi-step, multimedia marketing deployed as follow-up to “Appointment, No Sale” prospects almost always pays good dividends. I have personally made a fortune mining “buy later” prospects others won’t bother with and too easily write off as value-less. But this should not relieve anybody of the imperative of getting all those who can be persuaded to buy now to do so. Time itself is an issue. Dr. Edward Kramer said that the only time you have is NowTime. I once knew the assistant head coach of the Detroit Pistons, of the Coach Daly era. He said, “Basketball has a big picture. It has a long season with a lot of games. Each game has a lot of basketball in it. It may seem to the casual fan that only the last 5 minutes of a game matter – but the game is not really decided then as it may appear to be. It is decided by each player’s every decision, move, made or missed shot, rebound. The only shot a player has is this shot. This minute. If players start thinking an individual shot doesn’t matter in ‘the grand scheme of things,’ and there’s plenty of time to make good on the bad – he’ll be home watching the play-offs on TV.”
Every shot at a sale must matter. If you start thinking any one doesn’t matter much in the ‘grand scheme of things,’ you’ll soon find yourself out of the marketing or selling game. This leads to the requisite “plug” – being at the upcoming Info-SUMMIT, entirely dedicated this year to getting customers to “Buy NOW!” is a very important thing. Attention is incredibly fragmented and hampered. It is easier to hypnotize a goldfish than to hold the attention of even a pre-interested human long enough to make a sale, particularly a complex one – yet this is what must be done, to succeed at selling information OR noninformation products or services requiring you to educate your prospect. And it is more important than ever to succeed at BUY NOW!, because the instant you aren’t commanding their attention, you are forgotten, as they return to the swirl of competing distractions surrounding them like a dense tornado engulfing a mobile home in an Alabama trailer park. Yet, this is, in significant part, now an Information (and Entertainment) Economy. More people are accessing more information for buying decisions than ever before. Having a plan for being one of the top, trusted providers of information in your category, with your customers, is critical. For all these reasons, every marketer of any kind of business has much to gain at the Info-SUMMIT. For the true info-marketer, not getting Rick’s, Clayton’s, my most current experience-based information and insights, in this challenging environment, is foolhardy. People say “Tomorrow is another day.” Others say “Take it easy.” Others say “Relax.” Others say “What will be will be.” Some say “Can’t win ’em all.” Some say “There’s another bus coming.” Who says these things? Poor people, that’s who.
NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER
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The
Dan Kennedy Lette r
AUGUST 2015 - Volume 4, Issue 8
This month will be a bit unusual. I’ll be referring to and talking about a number of subjects from the Advanced Business Development Academy conducted in June, and much of this is being written immediately after the Academy, far in advance of you reading it 2 months later. Some usual “departments” of this Letter have been set aside or abbreviated just for this month. This opening monologue is inordinately long. If you are a brand new Member, you’ll see a return to normal, as normal as I ever get, next month. Over all these years, Members, event attendees and clients have given me a wide variety of gifts. On three different occasions, clients have given me automobiles. I’ve been brought things from many different foreign lands – wooden shoes from Holland, wine from Australia, an ancient manuscript from China. So many books, rare books, first editions, rare comic books. I try to at least thank each person privately, but it is impossible to thank them all publicly. But in all these 40+ years at this, the one thing I have never been given by anybody before is…
LIVE PIGEONS! At the Advanced Business Development Academy in June, Parthiv Shah brought me, in a USPS approved carton, a box that opened to reveal two beautiful white, live pigeons. (Were it to present dead pigeons, that would not be good.) If you do not know IBA/CBA Member Parthiv Shah, you will now. Pigeons are descended from the rock dove, a racing bird, and one taught to carry messages back and forth. They have retained their ability to learn to be homing pigeons. Most of today’s pigeons are still wild, gather in public parks and other places with abundant food – like the Boardwalk at Atlantic City, and the Boardwalk at Disney World, and they can be a nuisance. Walt’s favorite song in Mary Poppins involves feeding the pigeons. But some are bred on farms and trained to be messenger carriers. “Pigeon” is also slang for a gullible person, picked by a con artist as a victim. I’m not sure what the two have to do with each other. The only other pigeon that pops to my mind is the late actor Walter Pigeon. Irrelevant, but at my age, the mind wanders. Anyway, when ushered outside to the hotel patio and presented with a box almost large enough to contain Parthiv, with holes in both its sides, you worry. Turns out the two pigeons shipped to the hotel are homing pigeons, two of many in the employ of a GKIC Member owned company, a client of Parthiv’s, that ships its trained homing pigeons all over the country to be given as surprise, surprising gifts; to be turned loose at weddings and bon voyage parties and real bon voyage parties i.e. funerals and other occasions, while some poem is being read. Obviously, a sales letter could be sent in the box with the pigeons, mimicking a now legendary stunt. This is why Parthiv gifted these particular pigeons, in honor of that story which I told at Mailbox Millions, my mid-year Training of several years ago. Once photographed and having delivered their message or served their ceremonial purpose, they are simply released and they fly back to the farm in Utah. Of course, Parthiv could not know that I have a fondness for barbequed pigeon. It is delicious. Home to the farm, nuts. Why not home to the dinner table? DIAMOND LUXURY Member, Pastor Nelson Searcy and his aide-de-camp Scott Whittaker were present. I like having them with me as protection against lightning strikes. In their honor, I thought: waste not, want not. Two pigeons, a side of slaw, a side of baked beans or corn on the cob, and who needs Colonel Sanders? Or, at the track, we have a lot of barn cats. Relax. I’m kidding. We turned them loose. And, with one’s brief head bumping into a window detour, off they went. Home, to rest, and then be rented again and dispatched on their next mission. Is there any lesson here? Of course. First of all, there’s simply no end to the size and scope and diversity of opportunity. GKI C.CO M
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There is no opportunity ‘problem’ – as so many whining and crying about the shortage of instant, good careers for college graduates or apologists for the ever-mounting number of people settling for being wards of the state, one way or another, insist. Anyone can make a job for themselves. I had a client years back who did so with one bucket, one mop, about $8 of supplies, a flyer, and knocking on doors and, 5 years later, sold her cleaning company for one million dollars. Retired a cash millionaire. A similar story is in this issue, about a furniture retailer. Anyway, should you have an unknown crazy uncle die and leave you as a strange inheritance a big pigeon farm of your very own, you now have an idea about what to do with it. There is no opportunity problem. The problems are only lack of imagination and lack of initiative. But here’s the bigger, more specifically useful lesson. In this case, Parthiv may have merely been engaging in a pure act of gratitude, in a creative way, thanking me for all he has gained (and purloined) from me, by bringing to life the little anecdote of advertising history he’d heard me tell. More likely, this was also calculated to garner some spotlight shined on him – at the Academy, where he was already an exhibitor but not the sponsors certain to get more attention (Dicks & Nanton/Celebrity Branding and Infusionsoft), and possibly, hopefully, something exactly like what is occurring here: exposure to the entire GKIC audience. This is a lesson in “currying favor”. If you wish to “curry favor” with just about anybody, whether you know them or not, you can. You can infiltrate just about anybody’s fortress, if you’ll approach doing so in a creative and clever way. I had lunch while at the Academy with a friend of 30 or so years who was in attendance, the real inventor of Internet marketing, Ken McCarthy. He told me of a nifty little ‘currying favor’ strategy he was using, to initiate conversations and create relationships with selected authors, health experts and others – which I summarized and repeated from the stage that afternoon, although I suspect most missed its instruction and heard it only as an odd little anecdote. Actually, it was a prescription anyone in the room could use to create connection with just about any person of importance they wanted to reach. Everybody has a ‘thing’, too, by the way. Mine isn’t pigeons, but one is ‘advertising history’, so Parthiv picked a ‘thing’ of mine to tie his favor currying to. Ron Popeil is possibly the world’s most avid olive oil collector. My old friend George Douglas was an avid collector of clown and circus memorabilia. These days, it is easier than ever to discover someone’s “thing”, thanks to their use of social media. People use Disney memorabilia and rare books, horse racing antiques and books, classic car related items as ways of getting my attention or maintaining a top of mind relationship with me. At the Academy, Qubein spoke of ‘relationship capital’ and I spoke of the value of sustained relationships, networks in which the ‘nine steps to Kevin Bacon rule’ apply, and developing and maintaining CCC: Concentric Circles of Capability. These are all applications of the ancient axiom: the size of a person’s Rolodex tends to predict and reveal the size of his bank account. You maintain the important relationships by investing in acts of currying favor, at least several times a year. That’s my modus operandi. I recommend formalizing it as yours, too. Now, brief detour: I am compelled to tell you that Parthiv Shah is a genius at organization, systemization and implementation of all the marketing “stuff” I teach, for clients of his company, eLaunchers.com. An article I invited him to write, hours after the pigeons-on-the-patio episode, appears on pages 15 and 16. You won’t always get an instant result, like this. The activity shouldn’t even be all or mostly about getting instant results. More, about building up a big bank of relational capital. There are things to bank that are more useful and important than money.
WHERE To Invest In Building Your Relational Capital Account? Belonging to GKIC, and being active in GKIC, is an outstanding way to very efficiently learn about, meet, form connection with a lot of very useful people with whom to develop relational capital. Where else do so many smart, clever, aggressive entrepreneurs and marketers, experts and specialists, 12
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open-minded deal-makers, “pipeline owners”, etc. gather? Nowhere. Being active means: being noticed. Making yourself visible. Contributing. Getting into the newsletters, on to the Gold or Diamond calls. Being in Peak Performers. Attending every event, and if you can be a vendor, exhibiting at every event. You can’t just consume. Many who began (just) as Members have made themselves prominent in the GKIC world; on Planet Dan, and have benefited and do benefit directly, in flow to them of customers, clients, joint venture partners, business friends willing to publicize or promote them, etc., etc., etc. GKIC even is a ‘market maker’ and launching pad for a number of enterprises begun inside our borders, then subsequently grown far beyond them – Infusionsoft, 3DMailResults.com, and Parthiv Shah’s company leap to mind. This is an incredibly valuable ‘place of opportunity’ (for astute investors in connections), and it will be that long after I have retired from it. It’s a good place to put down roots. Ask Titanium Members like Craig Simpson or Shaun Buck about this as ‘place of opportunity.’ Note, too, that they are “Steady Eddie’s”. Many, many others have come ‘round briefly or sporadically, hit ‘n run like a pigeon zooming in to snare a scrap from a table, then left this scene. It is those who sustain their relationship with this place that grow and thrive because of it. Infusionsoft, as example, sponsored the welcome reception and breakfasts, beverage breaks and snacks at the Academy despite, literally, 90% of the attendees already being Infusionsoft users. Not much to directly snare. For them, a wise investment in relational capital. Of course, there must be other ‘places of opportunity’ – additional places – of specific match with your specific business, geographically, or by peer involvement, or otherwise, where you should invest too. Make those yours too.
Fish Floss Hippos, A Symbiotic Relationship. Hippos Safeguard Fish From Prey, Making Theirs A Strategic Alliance, Too I also spoke about Co-Petition as alternate to Competition. GKIC is loaded with competitors who learn this, and then find ways to fearlessly aid each other rather than expensively butt heads against each other. If you operate a local business, there is a valuable ‘model’ for you, in what you see them do on a national or global level. In your market, in your town, you need to figure out how to form a network, put satellites in orbit around you, be a benefactor to and connector of others, and actually share customers. Customer-sharing is the new capital. It is accessible to anyone and everyone, no pesky banker in the way. It creates no financial debt. It trades away no equity. If you want to hear more from me on this here, in these pages, let me know. It will be a subject included in my main presentation at this year’s Info-SUMMITSM. Relational capital does “come home to roost.” At Academy, there were Members hearing me live for the very first time. A few as damp as yesterday’s morning dew. But the majority of these 165 stalwarts date way back with me. The record-holder in the room was DIAMOND LUXURY Member Gayle Carson, I think to early 1980’s. Many there to mid-80’s. Many also with whom I’ve had direct relationship. I was in Gayle’s living room many moons ago, consulting. There were people who have moved through three or four different businesses during their time with me. Even my guest speaker, Nido Qubein, dates to the 80’s with me, as a one-time client, a peer, a business friend. And without direct effort, I went home Saturday afternoon with a couple speaking engagements and copywriting projects and a couple consulting days raised up, by once again stirring this pot. I am proud of this, of these long sustained relationships, demonstrated by and at an event like this. I hope it serves as inspirational model for many others. Few of us are actually Scrooge McDucks, or Jack Benny, happy with just sitting in our home vault counting our cash. What really counts is the relationships. The only dollar most business owners can look at or show that has stayed with them over decades is the first dollar they made in their business, framed, mounted above the cash register, later in the den. Bill Gough hanging around means more. Being able to call on Ben Glass for assistance is more useful. Driving home Saturday, I was, of course, keenly aware of the money aspects of the work just completed: registration revenue vs. all costs, now known; sign-ups for the follow-up, small group mastermind with Nido and I at High Point University*, for the Media Platform/Writing meeting with me*, for next year’s Training*, the new consulting, copywriting and speaking engagements, and the fundraising done for my two animal charities. All told, it was a damn (Continued Page 15) good haul. I believe in being very well paid – and I think you should too. In me GKI C.CO M
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Dan Kennedy’s
MILLION DOLLAR MARKETING LESSON
Class is in session. The Professor of Harsh Reality and Grand Opportunity is here.
…in place of. Instead of a Lesson this month, a collection of smart questions from smart people. I gave Academy attendees many good ones, including ones designed to help you think about your business like an investor, not just as an operator. Here are some more… 1: HOW CAN WE BECOME THE (KIND OF) COMPANY THAT WOULD PUT US OUT OF BUSINESS? From Danny Meyer, the CEO of Union Hospitality Group; a multi-restaurant operator in NYC; author of Setting The Table. 2: IF WE WEREN’T ALREADY IN THIS BUSINESS, WOULD WE ENTER IT TODAY? IF NOT, WHAT ARE WE GONG TO DO ABOUT IT (TODAY)? From the late Peter Drucker, a question he reportedly posed to Jack Welch at GE, inspiring GE’s “FIX, SELL OR CLOSE” strategy for under-performing businesses and business units. Variation: IF WE ALL GOT KICKED OUT AND THE BOARD OR NEW OWNERS BROUGHT IN A NEW CEO, WHAT WOULD HE DO? From Andy Grover, former CEO of Intel, and one tough cookie. 3: ARE WE PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO OUR ‘PARTNERS’ WE DEPEND ON TO MAKE THIS COMPANY SUCCEED? Ron Adner, professor at Tuck School of Business. I hated including an academic, but it is a smart question. And it should include a lot of unofficial partners. We all need people, vendors, centers of influence, etc. who are genuinely interested in seeing us succeed, not
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just going through the motions when required. At my Modus Operandi Day (with Academy) I explained how I sustain and nurture and “feed” such partners. What’s your SYSTEM for this? 4: IS THERE ANY REASON TO BELIEVE THE OPPOSITE OF MY CURRENT BELIEF? From Chip and Dan Health, authors. I made a big point about differentiating facts from (ingrained) beliefs; that even facts change; and that test results matter but beliefs and opinions don’t. A related, good question: what advertising, marketing, sales or business premise or practice of yours hasn’t been tested in the past 12 months? 5: DO WE UNDERESTIMATE THE CUSTOMER’S JOURNEY? From Matt Dixon, director of research at CEB. This starts with Taubman’s ‘Threshold Resistance’ that I wrote about in July. I find most do underestimate the actual barriers encountered and/or the emotional barriers blocking the customer. At Info-SUMMITSM, in my session exclusively for CopyConfidential / Look Over Shoulder subscribers, I’ll be talking about Sequential Agreements, an important part of the customer’s journey. 6: WHAT SHOULD WE STOP DOING? Again, from Peter Drucker. For me, a very big one at its time was: stop traveling on business – which required stopping 90% of all speaking engagements and effectively ended customer/ member acquisition from speaking. Both the income and the acquisition were replaced, but might never have been without the Stop. (Source: INC. MAGAZINE, April 2014)
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being well paid! And in you being well paid. For each and every thing you do. One doc present told me he had immediately figured out how to turn a 2-income adjunct to his business into an 8-income operation, thus increasing his paycheck from it by 400%. Terrific! But driving home Saturday and then sprawling exhausted on my backyard deck, I wasn’t thinking about the money. I was thinking about the amazing relationships with such exceptional people. (Continued from Page 13)
(*You can contact Vicky, fax 602-269-3113, for information.)
A few lost along the way, mourned, too. Nobody has anything close to a 100% batting average. LeBron missed quite a number of free throws, and bounced it off the front of the rim for crying out loud, and probably should have been embarrassed by it. But, then, we all miss. Me too. But I stood and looked at everybody in this room and thought, what a remarkable number of hits. Of home runs. I hope you feel this way about your business relationships too. If you don’t, work on it. Money will follow. So, Parthiv and his pigeons. The original story follows. Will he and his client create a new, bigger, legendary business story? Will they conquer and corner the market on homing pigeons, organizing a global consortium of pigeon farms and pigeon refueling stations? Stay tuned. In the meantime, please, make this your home. Make this your place of opportunity. We put it all together for you. SYMBIOSIS By Parthiv Shah I’m a data guy. Like the kid in the movie with Bruce Willis who saw dead people, I see data. Awake, asleep; doesn’t matter. Running, compiling, split-testing, algorithms and APIs are to me what copywriting and horse racing are to Dan Kennedy. We are both pros in our own areas. I conveniently hang around him, “swipe” all of his stuff and feverishly implement it for my clients. He keeps coming up with new content. I keep swiping. Like a little sucker fish that hangs around the great white shark, Dan and I have had a great relationship for years and years. Recently, I was reminded why I’ve been hanging around Dan for so long. At his Advanced Business Development Secrets Academy and Personal Modus Operandi event in Cleveland, I discovered a “big aha!” That’s saying a lot, because I’m literally a little Indian guy. If you’ve been to one of Dan’s events, you’ll notice he references me as the little Indian guy, the annoying IT guy or the little guy who will stick to your leg like velcro. There’s a good reason he gives me a lot of crap from the stage. First, I continually pepper him with questions and ideas and favors and he continually says, “No, stop, get out of here or go away.” It’s when he graciously says “fine” or “yes” that I get to clean up a few scraps of business, like the sucker fish near the mouth of the great white shark. It happened to me at this event and it happens to me at nearly every event with Dan Kennedy. He says something profound, I ask a question or pester him about that area of business development and a client magically appears out of the ether to ask me to help in that area of their own business. Coaches, consultants, dentists, infomarketers, dentists who want to become info-marketers; all of these people come to me and ask me if I can implement what Dan teaches. The answer is always “yes.” But, I’m surprised more don’t see the power of the little game Dan and I play at live events. Some people come to an event to feel like they are accomplishing something. Getting on a plane, traveling to another city and sitting in a conference room feels like activity and movement in their business. Some come to network or to see new products and services by vendors like my company, eLaunchers. Others come to write down new lessons and actually implement new strategies inside their business. Regardless of how you approach a live event like Dan’s recent trainings in Cleveland, the smartest people in the room walk away with several different synergistic opportunities inside their own business or partnerships with new businesses or vendors that didn’t exist when they walked into the room. That’s what Dan does. He builds better businesses. He creates connections. Like my client, Dr. Dustin Burleson and his consulting group, Burleson Seminars. Burleson didn’t know he was going to build a multi-million dollar information marketing business, coaching orthodontists from all over the world. He certainly didn’t know how he was going to implement setting up InfusionSoft accounts and multi-step marketing pieces for hundreds of clients. He didn’t know that until he met me at a Dan Kennedy event years ago and saw what eLaunchers could do. I’m certain I asked Dan some annoying little question that brought me a whale of a client when Burleson brought his business to me. It’s happened over and over again with clients in similar niches, like Dr. Greg Wych and his successful coaching business and Dr. David Moffet in Australia. All of these brilliant business leaders have strengthened what they do because of Dan’s genius and my implementation. These types of relationships don’t happen on a webinar or through email. They happen when you get on a GKI C.CO M
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plane and sit inside four walls asking tough questions and seeking accurate answers about how to build a better business. So, at the next live event when you see me asking some annoying question and Dan giving me more crap for being the Annoying Little Indian Guy, it should be a reminder why you are there and what we are doing. Don’t let the power of live events escape your awareness and don’t let the distraction of everything else going on around you keep you from making the next big leap in your business. Start asking some “annoying” questions of yourself and of your own business. And, get to Dan’s next live event. It’s the first step in the next giant leap inside your business. This year I am going to apply for my doctorate in technology, and if my proposal is accepted I will be writing my dissertation on the subject of ‘Evolution of Technology in Direct Response Marketing’. If this proposal is accepted, I will be studying Dan in a whole new light. No one has studied Dan at the depth of doing a doctoral dissertation. If my proposal gets accepted I will have a whole lot of annoying little questions for Dan. I am always on plane, traveling to events where Dan is speaking or occasionally showing up at his house for a consult with a client. I am always studying. Read, listen, watch, observe, mind map and implement. That is my modus operandi. I studied Magnetic Marketing. Dan mentions the Magnetic INTERNAL marketing. Internal marketing is all about using the data you already have. At this event, one of my favorite lessons Dan taught was all about “plugging holes in the bucket” with multi-media multi-step campaigns. During a break I showed him the image you see here of a system we’ve created to plug those holes in any business (obviously swiped from what I’ve learned from him). We built an entire machine that facilitates every conversation you want to have with your prospect, client and ex-client. Dan says that most people don’t do the follow up because it is complicated and overwhelming. I embrace complexity. I ‘figure out’ how to do what Dan wants done. This system is a classic demonstration of how you can sit in front of Dan, listen, watch, observe, mind map and then make it happen. If you want to feel the power of the system visit the website www.internalmarketingmachine. com and request access to 3 video classes where our lead implementation expert Loren Smith unwraps the box. nnnnnn
Parthiv Shah is President of eLaunchers.com, Parthiv is also the Maryland/DC area GKIC Certified Independent Business Advisor. In 2015 Dan wrote a foreword for his book ‘Business Kamasutra: From Persuasion to Pleasure’. To request a free copy of his book along with a copy of the implementation blueprint please visit www.businesskamasutra.com.
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“TOP 10” CONSUMER INTERESTS? In May, the top 10 long-form direct-response TV winners were #1 Beachbody’s* 21 Day Fix; #2 the long, long reigning champ Total Gym; #3 Guthy-Renker’s Crepe Erase** with actress Jane Seymour; #4 Luminess Air; #5 – Beachbody* again – Focus T25; #6 – GuthyRenker** again – Wen Hair Care; #7 – Beachbody* again – Body Beast, and in #9 – Beachbody* AGAIN – with P90X#. Gee, I think we have to conclude that “LOOKING GOOD” is THE #1 consumer interest! This obviously applies to directly related businesses, like gyms, fitness equipment, spas, cosmetic DAN’S IN-BOX surgeons, etc., but also can be utilized by restaurants for healthy menu items; mattresses (better sleep = less bags under eyes, wrinkles, you’ll be noticed as having youthful vitality); even moneymaking opportunities – how others “see” i.e. think of you, envy you, admire you. In short, anything that can be tied to how you ‘look’ in other peoples’ ‘eyes’ should be tied to it. In May, the top 10 short-form DRTV winners were more diverse: #1 was Guthy-Renker’s** Pro-Activ Plus, but the rest included home repair products, kitchen gadgets, headlight brightener and the Pocket Hose. Of the top 10 lead generation campaigns, NutriSystem was #2. That last category is deceptively skewed by monster spending of companies like Progressive, State Farm and Liberty Mutual, included in this category incorrectly in my opinion. (SOURCE: DRMETRIX.COM). *Beachbody’s direct-mail is managed for them, from lists to execution, by GKIC Titanium Member Craig Simpson, author of the book, THE DIRECT-MAIL SOLUTION, to which I contributed. **Guthy-Renker has been a client of mine since 1987. Now, here is THE Million Dollar Moral of This Story, that can be worth 1,000 years’ GKIC Membership dues, if you’ll grasp it, embrace it, and apply it: People are much more motivated by how they appear to and are thought about by other people than they are by personal benefits. Stop. Read it again. Give yourself a moment to let it sink in. Later, take all your advertising and marketing messages, sales scripts, etc. with you into a locked room and meticulously examine them to determine how much of yours is pitching personal benefits versus talking about how others will see, think about, feel about and judge the person with your benefits and without your benefits. Look, the reason 5 of the top 10 long-form DRTV winners have to do with “fat v. fit” is that bathing suit season starts in June. The reason 7 of the 10 have to do with personal appearance is that attend-weddings-season is summer. People are pretty damn shallow. Very short-term thinkers. The above ‘reveal’, the italicized sentence, opens the door to a great deal of what I now call MIND HIJACKING®, a literal taking control of consumers’ minds – this the subject of my 2016 mid-year, Dan-only Training, which you can, already, now, put yourself on the early-invite list for, via fax, 602-269-3113. This rather amazing fact about human behavior and motivation in that single italicized sentence can be the key to making your proposition irresistible; to making people defenseless to it! FROM LITTLE ACORNS. In 2007, a Clevelander named Alex Nemet ambitiously opened a “wholesale” store featuring home furniture. He started in a neighbor’s garage, with an inventory of two dining room sets. When deliveries by semi-trucks became a regular disturbance in the residential neighborhood, he relocated to a rented storage unit, then two, then four. Then again, to an abandoned auto body shop. He got flooded, with no insurance, and wiped out once, but started over immediately. Today, his NORTHEAST FACTORY DIRECT operation consumes a gigantic warehouse – still with a leaky roof, just a few blocks from the auto shop, where every home product and home improvement is sold at wholesale prices. Last year, 1,000 complete kitchens, thousands of hot tubs, football fields of couches and bedroom sets were sold, all via what he calls “the NFD experience”. Alex did not attend college, and exited directly from high school into selling CUTCO knives door to door, there sharpening his sales skills. He’s never lost his “sense of” the barely-making-it-financially, hard working consumer. You can see his business at NortheastFactoryDirect. com. As I said in the open, there’s no shortage of opportunity. As a lesson: he knows his customer. He has crafted an experience – from which his customers deduce they are getting great, factory direct prices and savings. In my parlance, this falls under Message To Market Match. BUT THAT’S JUST NOT THE BUSINESS WE’RE IN. Rick and Larry Simpson have a western clothing store. At a customer’s suggestion, they started a fan club specifically for kids, which now has 3,800 members, most age 3 to 9, but with one 93 year old. For a $6 fee, the kids get a certificate, fake bullet or arrowhead, copy of The Code of the West to live by, and a family newsletter. And the Simpson’s own an Income At GKI C.CO M
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Will Position. You should be able to pull the trigger on a 3,800 membership and sell something to 5% to 20% of them (average 12%, good house list) pretty much at will. So, the Simpsons have written, produced and starred in six classic, traditional western movies – at it since 1996, and as very independent filmmakers, they are making a profit doing it! Their stated mission: giving kids stories that make clear right from wrong, that give them heroes like they (and I) grew up with – John Wayne, Sky King, Roy Rogers, and that show them a worthy way of life. Their theory of business: if we hook ‘em at age 4 or 5, they’ll be with us for life. Plus: get the kid, get the parent. They are direct marketers of DVD’s of their films via Western magazines, agricultural retail outlets, feed mills, small town stores. It’s easy to say: but that’s not the business we’re in. It’s smarter to ask: what businesses aren’t we in? – and could, should we be in them, partner in them, be a platform for them? Obviously, cautions apply, regarding distraction, deviation without synergy, lack of know-how and refusal to get it or rent it or buy it. But those cautions should be applied, not serve as prohibitions. You can look and then decide not to touch. But you should look. At the Academy, I told the little known fact about The Apprentice. Burnett came to talk Trump into doing the show, and Trump definitely could have summarily dismissed the idea; TV was not the business he was in. But to his credit as an entrepreneur (a creature different than a ‘business owner’ by mindset and behavior), Trump considered. One of the deciding factors: NBC foolishly let Burnett and Trump be entirely responsible for finding the company to be the subject of each episode’s competition, thus letting Burnett and Trump keep control over 16 such slots a year; 32 for the initial contract. From which Burnett and Trump pocketed $100-MILLION, by charging the companies promotional fees AND making the companies work, provide products, executives, supervision, and so on. It can be costly to too quickly say: that’s NOT the business we’re in. n WARNING: About Communicating With Me: an increasing number of people are sending correspondence direct to me by fax but with no fax number to respond to!….only an email address. I can no longer devote Vicky’s time to checking with GKIC for contact info or calling or otherwise chasing. No fax number – no answer from me. I’m now just throwing these in the trash. Sorry. Also: do NOT send email or mail to me @ GKIC. The email never reaches me. The mail accumulates for weeks at a time. My direct communication info is in every issue of the No B.S. Marketing Letter, but without either a fax# or, if you’re fine with slow, a stamped, self-addressed envelope, you won’t hear from me. And please don’t provide a phone number and expect me to call you. I work by pre-set phone appointments controlled by Vicky at MY office, grouped into one or two days each month, first accommodating Private Clients. There are tens of thousands of Members. I try to be courteous and responsive to all, and I welcome thoughts, ideas, success reports, etc., but it has to be by MY rules of engagement.You WILL BE IGNORED if you can’t follow them.
Final Thoughts, This Month – confessions of cheating, from ‘the professor of harsh reality’ The astute will realize I cheated a bit this month, getting Parthiv to paint two stretches of my fence ala Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, using larger type font, arguably an unnecessary photo. For entirely personal reasons, I had no alternative but to compress the normal time given this by half, and do it early, and hand it off to Carla early. I didn’t cheat you, though; I just cheated this. You got plenty served on your plate, and if you can’t make a good meal of this, I’m sorry for you. Not sorry about my cheating. Which brings me to the “GE-SPOT” that I often talk about, and did again, very openly and candidly, in the confessional booth of Modus Operandi Day at Academy. With most things, I do not do all I can nor do the very best I could, and I have made millions of dollars more by this (controversial?) practice than by subscribing to Tom Peters’ old “excellence at any and all costs” idea, first popularized by his mega bestselling book – which featured a number of ‘excellence companies’ that went belly up and bankrupt shortly thereafter. Oh, and, for the record, while widely praised for unmatched excellence, even by me, Disney cheats too. Did you know, for example, that they slightly speed up rides like Pirates and Haunted Mansion and Soaring at extra busy times? Well, they do. At Modus Operandi Day, I explained my time budgeting by ROIT: Return On Invested Time, which governs just how good or excellent what I do or make gets to be. Just like a thermostat governs just how hot or cool a room is allowed to be. It locks it. This is part of being a pragmatist, a self-identification and behavioral mandate I credit most of my success to. If you watch shows like The Profit, Bar Rescue or Shark Tank, you see business owners being everything but pragmatic. Some are coach-able and can be helped. Others cannot. In every business, there are elements that are of life or death criticality, that an inch or ounce of cheating with is caught by customers and severely disappoints them, but there are many other elements that can be temporarily or even permanently compromised with negligible short or long term impact. It’s important to determine which is which. Because, if you attempt democratic, universal excellence, you’re guaranteed to fail at its pre-requisite: survival. n 18
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LADDER OF SUCCESS
THE HIGHER YOU GO, THE FASTER YOU GROW. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CALL US AT 800-871-0147
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continued from page 8 second call. By the way, it doesn’t have to be five calls. It could be three, but five is a good number. And then I would always throw in a bonus call.
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I see where this ends up; you burn CDs, you transcribe the recordings, you package it, price it, and sell it. But couldn’t you just bluff this and record yourself monologuing without an audience, and sell that? At the end of the day, it’s about creating a great product and creating value. There used to be this theory that you didn’t have to have a great product. The reality is you don’t need a great product to make sales, but to have longterm success, you need a great product.
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Give me a final takeaway on bundling my expertise in way that’s going to benefit others and position me as the market leader. I don’t care what market you’re teaching in, you are teaching primarily beginners and since you are an expert in the topic, you have a hard time remembering what it’s like to be a beginner. So, often we create products that are slightly out of touch with our market. But by doing this seed launch process, you learn how to teach material. You learn how to stay in the beginner’s mind. You learn how to teach the material and it’s beautiful for them, and you end up with a great product.
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For more information about Jeff, visit jeffwalker.com
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