How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear!
How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear!
JEFF PAUL'S STUDENTS SPEAK OUT...
LISTEN TO SOME OF THEIR AMAZING SUCCESS STORIES...
"Getting involved with your course was the single best investment I've ever made. To this day (over 2
years later), I still use your course darn near every week. The results of studying your material?
I
gross between $30-$60 THOUSAND
a month
with my information product. I feel a deep sense of
gratitude to you. Thank you so very much for your help!" - Mike C. Decatur, GA.
"I wanted to let you know how your system is working for me. So far, I've received 78 orders at
$849.00 and I haven't even sent out the second notice! Even though I have a practicing career, as a
result of direct response marketing, I have hired another person to treat my patients in the morning so
I can run my business out of my home on the hill; and yes, sometimes in my underwear! I'm really
enjoying it. Now, I work 3 afternoons at my office collecting $35,000 a month there, and thanks to
you,
I'm on course to collect $50,000 - $60,000 a month in about 2-3 months with my home
business.
Even though I'm far from an expert in lead generation, there can't be anything out there
that a "beginner" can do with such dramatic results in such a short period of time. I really do owe it to
you." - Ben A. Haywood, CA
" I think the course is phenomenal! In early January '97 we started marketing
the sales letter and by February 25th we've had $6000.00 in orders. I wish I had
started sooner. This course worked better than I expected." Paul C. - Superior,
CO.
"Thank you! First for your
outstanding program.
The money I have made as a result of it is allowing
my wife and I to buy our first home! Second, thank you for the incredible service. I was amazed at
how quickly you responded to my questions and how friendly and helpful you were on the phone.
Many companies pay lip service to customer service but you actually follow through and do MORE
than is expected" - David P. Alpharetta, GA.
"I think you're doing a great job at teaching and supporting all of us students. I want to thank you for
putting the tools in my hands that will enable me to
escape
the slavery of employment and make
lots of money
so that I can marry my long-suffering (3 yrs.) girlfriend. I want to be a good provider!" -
Christopher B. Kings Park, NY.
"All of your honesty has paid off in every aspect. You have a very
respectable, foolproof system
that will make our future way brighter. Your knowledge will allow us to live the lifestyle we want and
give us that key to success!" - Petur T. & Karen P., Canada
"You have given me the tools I need and the answers to a lot of questions I have pondered for what
seems like ages. I still have questions, but I know the answers are available.
There is no reason to
be skeptical any longer.
Thank You!" - Jan A., Terre Haute, IN.
"You are
the most forthright, down to earth, consistent set of individuals I've ever had the
pleasure to be acquainted with
...I'm also totally relieved this is on the up and up - I've been burned
in the past." - Christine B., Canada
How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear!
ii
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted for resale or use by any party other than the individual purchaser who is the sole
authorized user of this information. Purchaser is authorized to use any of the information in this publication for his or her own use only.
All other reproduction or transmission, or any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by
any informational storage or retrieval system, is prohibited without express written permission from the publisher.
LEGAL NOTICES: While all attempts have been made to provide effective, verifiable information in this Book, neither the Author nor
Publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. If
advice concerning tax, legal, compliance, or related matters is needed, the services of a qualified professional should be sought. This
Book is not a source of legal, regulatory compliance, or accounting information, and it should not be regarded as such. This publication
is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding
that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance
is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Due to the nature of direct response marketing and
varying rules regulating business activities in many fields, some practices proposed in this Book may be deemed unlawful in certain
circumstances and locations. Since federal and local laws differ widely, as do codes of conduct for members of professional
organizations and agencies, Licensee must accept full responsibility for determining the legality and/or ethical character of any and all
business transactions and/or practices adopted and enacted in his or her particular field and geographic location, whether or not those
transactions and/or practices are suggested, either directly or indirectly, in this Book. As with any business advice, the reader is strongly
encouraged to seek professional counsel before taking action. NOTE: No guarantees of income or profits are intended by this book.
Many variables affect each individual's results. Your results will vary from the examples given. Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. cannot and
will not promise your personal success. Instant Profits Marketing, Inc. has no control over what you may do or not do with this mail-
order success program, and therefore cannot accept the responsibility for your results. You are the only one who can initiate the action,
in order to reap your own rewards! Any and all references to persons or businesses, whether living or dead, existing or defunct, is
purely coincidental.
Published by: Instant Profits Marketing, Inc., 1218 N. Bridge St. Ste. #105, Yorkville, IL 60560
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DISTRIBUTED WORLD-WIDE.
©2005 Instant Profits Marketing, Inc.
This is not a free eBook
How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear!
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Chapter One: How Exaggerated And Outrageous Is: "How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy
Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear?" ..................................................................................... 1
Chapter Two: "I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE WRITTEN THIS BOOK!" .................................................................... 3
Chapter Three: WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT...................................................................................... 5
Chapter Four: Jeff Paul Tells All: How I Went From Failure to Success In Mail-Order.............................. 7
Chapter Five: How My Incredible Moneymaking Breakthrough Came To Be............................................ 10
Chapter Six: The Component Parts of My Moneymaking System ............................................................. 13
Chapter Seven: How To Really Profit In Mail-Order... Starting With Less Than $1,000.00 ...................... 17
Chapter Eight: Why, When & How To Use A "Free Recorded Message" To Enhance Your Advertising 21
Chapter Nine: An Inside Look At How I Make $4,000.00 A Day And You Can Too.................................... 23
Chapter Ten: The Incredibly Profitable Business Of "Publishing On Demand" ....................................... 26
Chapter Eleven: Can you use my system to make big money on the Internet? You betcha! .................. 29
Chapter Twelve: Let's Get Going! ................................................................................................................ 33
Chapter Thirteen: Why should they buy from you?.................................................................................... 40
Chapter Fourteen: Create Your Ad And Letter! ........................................................................................... 47
Chapter Fifteen: Test, Test and More Testing! ............................................................................................ 55
Chapter Sixteen: Rolling Out!....................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter Seventeen: Build Your Back End Profit Machine!......................................................................... 70
Chapter Eighteen: Who Me? A Direct Marketer?......................................................................................... 77
Chapter Nineteen: Making Money From The House! .................................................................................. 84
Chapter Twenty: "My Customers Are Different! This Kind Of Marketing Won't Work On Them!"........... 90
Chapter Twenty-One: How About Getting Started? .................................................................................... 96
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Only Thing Isn't Winning! Marketing Is The Whole Game! ........................... 103
Chapter Twenty-Three: Hard Work Is For Someone Else!........................................................................ 109
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Chapter One
How Exaggerated And Outrageous Is:
"How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy
Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear?"
I guess that's a pretty strange title for a book, and I suppose it sounds unbelievable and outrageous.
Still, you've got this book in your hands, and I hope that will turn out to be a good thing. And, as silly
as it may sound, that title does absolutely, accurately describe what I've been able to do, and what
anybody with a brain who takes the time to understand my example should be able to do, too.
No, I cannot and will not PROMISE that. I'd be a fool to do that - and why would you want to take
moneymaking advice from a fool? I can't control how you apply the information I give you. Since I
have no control over you, I'm not about to accept responsibility for your results. All I can promise you,
and what I will do, is tell you the absolute truth about my business and my discoveries, reveal every
part of my "System" and talk straight talk with you.
HOW BIG OF A "CASH MACHINE" DO YOU WANT?
Now, when I say "Make Money Quick And Easy", I mean just that. Right now, as I am writing this
book, in January 2004, my typical day's gross income is about $4,000.00. Some days more, some
days a little less.
As of the end of 2003, I have generated revenue of over $30 million dollars since I started this system
in 1991. Yes, that's gross, not net. But a lot of it is net. So rather than telling you I'm a millionaire, like
a bunch of these "high rollers" posing with their borrowed Rolls Royces, in front of their rented homes
do, I've got a million dollar a year income, it's for real, and I can prove it.
By the time you've completed this book, you WILL know exactly how I'm making this money and how
you can too.
Of course, you may not want to make a million dollars a year. You may not want to work very hard.
You may not have my "drive" and ambition. You may have more modest needs and desires. Maybe
$1,000.00 a day sounds darned good to you. Maybe $100.00 a day, part-time or spare time, is more
your speed. That's okay. Your choice. What you will discover in this book can help you set up a
DAILY CASH MACHINE that spits out just about any amount you want, from $100.00 to $1,000.00 or
more.
The other thing I've got to tell you right up front is that this is NOT some "fluke" that has worked only
for me, like lightning striking some guy on the head in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. The way I've
hooked them together may be a little unusual, but everything I'm doing has been done and is being
done by lots of other people.
"FROM TINY ACORNS, GIANT TREES GROW"
Right now, my business operates from a 400-square foot "office" I built for it above my garage. And I
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have my own hideaway in a den in the house. But,
the original folding-legs card-table Peggy and I
started this business on is still in use in the office.
And I did run the business right off that table in our
kitchen for many months.
By the way, I'm a real cheapskate in many ways. I have no interest whatsoever in pouring my money
into a fancy office, a receptionist sitting there filing her nails and reading Cosmopolitan or anything
like that. (I had all that before in my earlier life as a Certified Financial Planner.)
These days, I am interested in PROFIT.
With the business I am going to reveal to you, you NEVER need to dump your profits into "overhead."
You do NOT need an office outside your house. (Not at least until your volume is so big that you need
to get a small room to work out of.) You do NOT need a bunch of employees, along with all their
whining, fighting, and personal problems. You do NOT need to commit to any new or additional
expenses.
On the off chance that my business stopped making money tomorrow, I could collapse it and walk
away cleanly in 48 hours.
I GAVE ALL MY SUITS AND TIES TO GOODWILL
You see, your "customers" NEVER come to your house, you never go to them, you never see them,
they never see you, so you could actually hang out naked if you wanted to and it wouldn't make any
difference.
Personally, I used to have to put on a shirt and tie and sports coat or suit nearly everyday, and I now
"feel" that is a type of imprisonment. I now only own one suit. My normal garb is a pair of comfortable
jeans and a T-shirt. But the point I make about this business is: privacy. And freedom.
So, I want you to know that every part of this book is for real.
Now we can get started. I'm first going to tell you in detail "my story". You may be tempted to skip
ahead but I urge you not to. You need to know how I got to where I am so you can have the
confidence that you can do it too. It'll be much easier to understand and believe in my "System" if you
first see its evolution.
Then I'm going to tell you exactly what I do and how I do it.
Finally, I'm going to offer to help you get started.
The other thing I've got to tell you
right up front is that this is NOT
some "fluke" that has worked only
for me, like lightning striking
some guy on the head
in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.
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Chapter Two
"I CAN'T BELIEVE I'VE WRITTEN THIS BOOK!"
My name is Jeff Paul. I'm 48 years old. My wife Peggy and I have three boys. We live in a nice suburb
of Chicago where
we bought a $385,000.00 house with 50% down in cashola - not bad for a family
that was sleeping in a relative's basement just a little more than a year before that.
And, just for accuracy's sake, I'm actually writing this book on a little "laptop" computer, sitting at my
kitchen table, in my boxer shorts and a T-shirt.
LET'S "LIVE THE FANTASY!"
I have actually achieved the FANTASY of making a ton of money from a simple, easy, pleasant
home-based business.
I say "FANTASY" because that's what it is and remains for so many people. I can't believe I'm writing
this book and running the ads for it, because for so many years I was a "sucker" for "opportunities". I
was a get-rich-scheme junkie. I answered every ad. I devoured magazines like Moneymaking
Opportunities, Income Opportunities, Spare Time and Entrepreneur. I sent away for books, plans,
reports, tapes, courses, even distributorships. Ten bucks here, twenty bucks there; God knows how
many thousands total. And most everything I got was junk.
Odds are, you've had that same experience and now feel massive skepticism and doubt about me
and I don't blame you one bit. (Although I hope we can get past that.)
If you had told me then that I'd ever be writing and advertising anything like this book, I would have
laughed in your face.
But here I am. Now, why am I doing this?
Let me tell you - I sometimes ask myself that question. First of all, I really do not need the money I
may make from sharing my System with others. And I am very, very big on avoiding aggravation at
any and all cost so I certainly do not have any desire to be famous.
The truth is: I feel like I've been so fortunate I ought to tell others who are like I was - sincere,
ambitious, but struggling and wasting time and money on fool's gold schemes - that I ought to tell you
about what I've learned. Keeping it to myself seems selfish.
Oddly enough, as you'll come to understand, telling you everything I know does NOT take anything
away from me. I won't be creating competitors for myself; it just doesn't work that way. So there was
no good reason NOT to reveal my "secrets".
I did want to somehow test all this through and determine whether or not other people could learn and
use my System BEFORE writing and advertising this book. So through the influence of my "mentor"
in direct marketing, I got about 20 people together in the East, 30 or so in California, and I did two
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"Jeff Paul Tells All!" Seminars. We charged $795.00 per person. That's a pretty gutsy price, isn't it?
Frankly, I'd have done these for nothing just to get the guinea pigs to prove my System was
duplicable but my "mentor" (who I'll tell you about later) insisted we charge "decent" money. He
argued for $4,000.00 per person. "
You're making that much EACH DAY
," he hollered, "
surely we
should make 'em pay that much to learn what you're doing.
" Well, somehow we compromised at
$795.00. Anyway, I did these two Seminars, spilled my guts, handed out copies of all my stuff.
One guy went home and made $12,000.00 PROFIT in the next 18 days using just one part of my
System.
Since the Seminars, we've had a slough of people reporting very specific sizable income results as a
result of using my system. I'm not going to bore you with each "case" right now - what's important
here is what YOU can do and I want to get there as quickly as possible. But I did want you to know
that I took the trouble to road test my instructions with other people besides myself.
Back to the story: you're reading a book written by a disgusted opportunity junkie who answered
boatloads of ads and never found anything worthwhile. Now that I have a way to provide something
that's real and practical, I just couldn't resist.
That's why I've written this book.
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Chapter Three
WHAT THIS BOOK IS
NOT ABOUT
I think it's important to get some of your fears, doubts and skepticism out of the way, to clear your
mind, open up your mind for the information I have to share with you. So, let me take just a few
minutes to tell you what this is NOT about:
1. This is NOT "multi-level".
I don't necessarily have anything against "multi-level" or "network marketing", but it's not for me and I
do think a lot of people spin their wheels with multi-level schemes that can only enrich the few at the
very top.
Anyway, whatever you think about multi-level, this book has nothing more to say about it one way or
the other. And my System has no relationship to multi-level whatsoever.
Just for the record, remember too, that with my System you NEVER need to see your customers
face-to-face. Although I choose to do so, you don't even have to talk to any of them on the phone.
You can use my System for
"PURE"
mail-order business.
2. This is NOT one of those goofy deals where I tell you to get rich by selling "get rich stuff"
to other people.
I've made my money and am making my $4,000.00 a day from providing very useful, legitimate
products to a specific type of customer and I'll give you the exact details of that later.
I already made
millions from this System I'm going to teach you before ever sitting down to write this book that you
are reading.
3. This is NOT a deal where you buy catalogues or brochures from me, sell my products, and
I make money while you lose money.
The magazines are full of these pre-packaged mail-order "businesses". In my experience, they're all a
big, fat mirage. After I've taught you my System, there's nothing else you ever have to buy from me;
you never have to give me any of your profits; we need have no connection whatsoever.
I want to make you financially free and independent, not dependent on me.
4. This is NOT a "made up" story.
Do you know - some of the "people" you see in those get-rich ads, with their Lear Jets, Mercedes,
and boats are NOT even real people! Those are pen-names, made-up stories, models, even stock
photos from ad agencies. It's outrageous but true.
Well, Peggy and I are real people. VERY real. Ordinary folks. We exist. And everything I tell you
about us in this book is 100% true. For one thing, I am NOT going to jeopardize my income, my
How You Can Make Money Quick And Easy Sitting At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear!
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business, my home, or my reputation by making things up. I don't have to - my REAL story is
incredible enough.
5. This is NOT something that sounds good on paper but most people could never really do.
As everything unfolds before you in this book, you will see that just about any reasonably intelligent
adult can use my System. You do NOT need a lot of money to start - I certainly did not. You do NOT
need lots of education. You do NOT need an office or store, special equipment, inventories of
products piled up in your garage or employees. This is a
streamlined business
in every way.
6. This is NOT even mail-order, as you think of it.
It's a radically different approach to mail-order that took me from dead-broke to $4,000.00 a day. It IS
going to take a little, patience, careful thought, and time reading and re-reading this book to fully
understand this very different approach. But once you get it, it'll be "Katy-Bar-The-Door" for your
income too.
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Chapter Four
Jeff Paul Tells All:
How I Went From Failure to Success In Mail-Order
I was sort of a goof-off in school. After some in and out-of-school adventures I won't drag you through
here, I managed to squeak through night school and I became an accountant. While going to school, I
got married and had a kid on the way, needed to make some money.
I was not a very attractive candidate to other accounting firms and didn't have the confidence to start
my own practice, so I bought an accounting business franchise. I had to borrow $15,000.00 from my
parents to pay the franchise fee. Also, because I lacked confidence, I took in a partner - a hotshot
with an MBA from the University of Chicago - and I wound up the junior partner with a "draw" of
$300.00 a week. Whoopee. Still, in spite of my immaturity and inexperience, in spite of the debt, in
spite of paying part of our income back to the franchise company, in spite of a lazy partner, by the
time we got through the first tax season, we'd been incredibly busy, had lots of clients and I knew
we'd made some serious dough.
Imagine my surprise when I found less than $250.00 in our business bank account.
It seems my partner had discovered cocaine and prostitutes. While I'd worked like a slave and gone
without a paycheck for three weeks, my partner was snorting all my money up his nose.
On top of everything else, we had a $200,000.00 Small Business Administration loan which my
partner had negotiated, somehow I'd co-signed the damned thing without being fully aware of what
was going on. I had signed the loan documentation at the same time I signed the partnership
agreement and now that my partner was going bankrupt, I was on the hook for $204,000.00.
I STARTED MY "CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER" BUSINESS $200,000.00 IN DEBT
I wound up selling insurance for a while and going back to school to become a Certified Financial
Planner. Surely you've been told that more education is the answer. That's what I thought then.
Let me shorten a long story. Becoming a CFP, in itself, didn't
instantly
change anything. In the
meantime, I got into some more financial trouble living off debt, and in a couple of other bad deals.
Finally though, I got a financial planning business going and started making really good money. (How
that happened
is
instructive.)
I discovered that most financial planners hated "marketing", had no earthly idea how to attract clients,
and were all wrapped up in ego, pride and image. Since I had no ego hang-ups, I quickly figured out
that to make money, I had to get clients, and I did what was necessary to make that happen.
Pretty soon, I was a "marketing expert" in my field - and my marketing efforts were bringing in enough
clients to support a growing firm with a whole staff of planners. (In 1989, the financial planning firm I
was now a partner in did over $1,500,000.00 in business.)
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I got my debts paid down. I had a new car and car phone. Nice house.
But. First of all, I was doing all the work to get clients; my partners were sitting on their duffs. A lot of
friction developed. Second, I was gradually discovering that I didn't like what I was doing. When
everything came to a head, the partnership blew up in a big, big way, and I barely escaped with my
skin.
Everything was okay though; I quickly landed a high-paying "account executive" job with a financial
services business in Philadelphia. We had to relocate but it was worth it. Almost immediately after
moving my family to Philadelphia, my big, fat-cat employer with the fancy offices went suddenly
bankrupt.
I had immediately decided my job was lousy, by the way, and I detested it - until I lost it.
During all this I was answering all the "opportunity" ads, trying different moneymaking schemes,
experimenting with mail-order, trying to find a way to be truly independent.
I knew I didn't want any more partners. I knew I didn't want to put on a suit, tie and smile every
morning and go away for the day, days or even weeks selling things I didn't care about to people I
didn't care about. I was burnt out with that. I knew I didn't want to work for someone else until I was
65, and then finally have some freedom. You see, I was very, very clear about what I did NOT want.
But I had no idea what to do about it - except for the vague, unformed "idea" that I'd like being in mail-
order.
So I did a very dumb thing when my new employer went bust. We moved right back to Chicago and
we lived off my credit cards. I did NOT go get another job. I locked myself in the house and
determined that I would somehow develop a mail-order business of my own before I ran out of credit.
And I started trying different "plans", running ads, mailing out brochures, and so on.
You have to know how far down I went before my big breakthrough so you can see that anybody can
do what I've done. If I can go from where I was to a million dollar a year income, so can you.
You will probably take my System and start with many more advantages than I had. You may even do
better than I've done.
JUST A FEW PAYCHECKS AWAY FROM BEING A HOMELESS PERSON!
We lost the house. We had to move in with Peggy's sister and live in their basement.
Peggy, me and
the boys literally living on one old couch in a corner of a basement!
I went from being a "bright, young,
successful guy, an up-and-comer" to being an embarrassment to my family ... a mooch to my friends.
We had been only a few paychecks away from being "homeless". (How about you?)
Well, I sat up at night in that basement, beating myself up, but still, incredibly, determined to make the
ideas I was pulling together work in mail-order. Looking back on all this, I'm honestly amazed at
myself and very, very grateful to Peggy. Why and how I kept having faith in my dreams and ideas, I
don't know. Why Peggy didn't leave me I'll never fully understand.
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But, I became OBSESSED with developing a totally independent, simple, home-based mail-order
business. And I managed to pile up $100,000.00 in debt on our credit cards while trying one "idea"
after another, working from a rickety old card table in another corner of that basement.
Now, here's the amazing
end of this story:
In less than 2 years, we went from that basement to buying a $385,000.00 home with 50% down in
cash. We have plenty of money in the bank. Nice cars. Kids in school with everything they need. I
even bought a boat. A big fat retirement plan in place. And, I'm putting $4,000.00 A DAY in our bank
accounts. We're making significant contributions to a particular charitable cause. We travel first class
and take great vacations OFTEN. We go up to our lake house we own up in the woods whenever we
feel like it, My time is my own. I go to my kid's ball games. I can go play golf on a weekday. We are
the people the government has targeted as "excessively wealthy"! We’re the people that President
George W. Bush hopes to help with his tax cuts.
The System that turned everything around in about 18 months is the subject of the rest of this book.
You can accomplish just about any financial goals with this System. I hope you will devote every one
of your brain cells to fully grasping and understanding this System.
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Chapter Five
How My Incredible Moneymaking Breakthrough Came To Be
I was close. Very close. I had managed, through dumb, stubborn persistence, to pull together more of
the "elements" I needed to make big money in mail-order. But, there were just a few missing pieces.
A few tiny adjustments to make. And I was clueless.
But, through all my reading, telephoning and pestering mail-order experts, searching relentlessly for
help, I kept hearing about one particular person; in most cases, a "behind the scenes" genius at
making money in mail-order. I eventually got an invitation to attend one of his seminars.
As you might guess, the world of direct marketing is chock full of false prophets. They're everywhere.
"Pretend Experts" who have never done anything, telling others how to do everything. Fakes and
frauds.
I bumbled my way through a few of them, getting separated from money each and every time, with
nothing to show for it but ultimately, that $100,000.00 of credit card debt and a mailbox full of nasty
collection letters every day. But this one man sort of rose by reputation out of this swamp. He seemed
to be THE guy to trust, THE person who just might save me.
We went to his Seminar and right then and there this REAL expert tweaked what I was doing and ...
I HAVE TO BACK UP FOR ONE MINUTE.
I STOOD AT THE BOTTOM OF THE
HIGHEST, MOST INTIMIDATING
MOUNTAIN YOU CAN IMAGINE ...
You know the old stories about going to the Wise Man high atop the mountain. In this case, the
mountain was money; it costs a staggering $3,495.00 to go to this guy's seminar. That's right: three
thousand, four hundred and ninety-five dollars. Plus airplane tickets. Hotel. To my long-suffering wife
and I, this felt like the national debt. Imagine living in a basement, besieged by bill collectors,
wondering where the next dollar could possibly come from and being asked for $3,495.00!
We decided to go out fighting.
I had a little room left on one last credit card. We borrowed a few bucks here and there. We went. At
the hotel, we didn't eat in the restaurant with the other people - about 20 of them - attending the
seminar. We ate peanut butter and crackers up in our room.
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I STILL THINK IT'S FUNNY
HOW JUST A FEW MINUTES
CHANGED OUR LIFE
IN SUCH AN ENORMOUS WAY
At the Seminar, I began to see and understand what I'd been doing wrong. Then the great-and-
wonderful-Oz himself (!) sat down with me personally and listened to me describe our ideas, my
products, how I'd tried advertising, and everything we'd been doing. He told us we were 90% of the
way there with our plan ...
he made a FEW suggestions
.. and sent us home.
The month before that encounter, September 1991, we had taken in only $1,090.00 from my
struggling attempts at mail-order.
Following this guru's advice, our income EXPLODED like a fireworks display on the 4th of July. Here
are the actual numbers, absolutely verifiable by my bank deposits:
October
$13,400.00
(A 13-times increase!)
November
$26,200.00
(doubled!!)
December
$49,800.00
(in a "bad month" for
our type of business!)
Now, I've just got to tell you that putting just shy of FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS into OUR bank
account in one month ... with NO partners hanging around, NO office, just Peggy and me sending out
our letters, answering the phone and counting the money ... well, sex is still better but not by much. I
couldn't imagine that $49,000.00 in one month was just the beginning.
But it was. As we continually refined the rough edges and sloppy parts of our business and gradually
arrived at a true SYSTEM, the income kept climbing.
We went back to three more of our mentor's seminars and each time he helped us improve what we
were doing.
In 1992, we put over ONE MILLION DOLLARS in the bank and kept about HALF as PURE PROFIT
after all expenses.
In 1993, we put $2,100,000.00 in the bank, with just under half as pure, bottom line profit. (Before
taxes of course!)
In 1995, we put over $5,000,000 in sales into our little office. Now, in 2004, in this supposedly “bad”
post 9/11, post Enron, War On Terror economy, I still take in over $1,000,000 each year!
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But money isn't everything. (Easy for me to say now.) This is also the perfect "lifestyle business", too,
which you'll understand as we go along.
But now, I'm finally going to get into the DETAILS of my System...
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Chapter Six
The Component Parts of My Moneymaking System
Here is a checklist of the key components of my System which I'm going to reveal to you one-by-one:
1. Complete Control and Independence
2. Proper Selection of a Specialized Target Market.
3. Focus On Specialized "Information Products".
4. The Secret Of Picking The Right Product.
5. Low-Cost "Lead Generation" Type of Advertising.
6. The Secret Of WHERE To Advertise
7. How A Simple Recording Turns The Telephone Into A 24-Hour A Day, 7-Day A Week Sales Staff
For You
8. The 3 Main Ways You Take In Money
9. How To ENSURE That You Make Big Profits: "Publishing On Demand"
10. What Else You Need To Learn
Now, as we begin to look at each of these 10 Steps, do not be concerned that you are not getting or
grasping each and every minute detail. You're NOT ready for that yet. We need to begin with an
introductory overview to these 10 Steps, so you own the big picture.
Please do not let yourself grow impatient with me or with the learning curve you're on right now. I
have given a great deal of thought to how I wanted to reveal and present this information. I have
carefully structured this process and this book to create maximum understanding.
Let's get started with:
#1. Complete Control and Independence:
You need to have complete and total control over the products you are going to sell. That means you
cannot be buying widely available products from some source that sells to many others besides you.
You cannot be getting them as a "distributor" or "dealer". Your products must be YOUR products in
every sense of the word.
Does that sound impractical? Will it require a huge investment? Not at all. I'm going to show you how
to completely, totally, unconditionally own exclusive products with almost no investment at all!
No one will ever be able to pull the rug out from under you when you follow my System.
#2. Proper Selection Of A Specialized Market:
Here is one of my most important "secrets". Most people think that having products with broad public
appeal will most likely lead to mail-order success, but there's a major flaw in that idea. When the
general public is your market, you need very substantial resources to communicate with the market.
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To sell to the general public, you may need to run big ads in very expensive media, like newspapers,
USA Today, tabloids like the National Enquirer, or consumer magazines like Cosmopolitan. Even a
small ad in publications like these can cost $4,000.00 or more each time you run it. To test several
different ads in several different publications can easily consume $25,000.00.
Another rapidly growing means of selling to the general public is through "electronic mail-order" like
TV infomercials. It can cost $100,000.00 and up to play in this arena. For these reasons, my
preference has been to skip the big markets.
I'm getting rich by being a big fish in a small pond.
I've chosen to sell to Financial Planners. Because I used to be one, I understand these guys inside
out. When I write or talk to them, they know I'm one of them, understand them and am talking straight
to them. I chose this very specialized "Target Market" precisely for that reason; that I understand
them and they know it.
You should pick your first Target Market the same way. If you love to fish, maybe your Target Market
should be fishing enthusiasts. If you collect coins, maybe your Target Market should be coin
collectors. If you've been successful selling cars, maybe your Target Market should be car
salespeople. If you're a pastor, maybe your Target Market should be other ministers. If you have a
successful web site and like the Internet, maybe your target market should be people who want to
make money on-line.
Are you getting the idea? In choosing a Target Market, look to your past and present occupations and
vocations.
Most such specialized markets are "manageable". Instead of there being 200 million people to try to
sort out and find customers in, I have only about 30,000 CFPs and insurance professionals to do that
with. Most specialized markets have small circulation but very well-read media that you can advertise
in at relatively low cost. Best of all, people in a specialized market are highly responsive to an offer
that is clearly just for them.
This will make more sense to you as we continue. It fits hand-in-hand with #3 ...
#3: Focus on Specialized Information Products:
First, an Information Product can be a book, booklet, CD, manual, report, newsletter, audio cassettes,
video cassettes, DVD, seminars, websites, web seminars, ebooks, software, or any combination of
these things. As you'll see later, these are the
perfect
products for mail-order, and for my System.
Now, second, what about "specialized"? This means an Information Product that is custom fit, usually
custom designed for the specialized market of choice. If my Target Market is "trout fisherman", then I
want to sell, say, a DVD about little-known techniques for finding and catching trout,
not
a video about
catching
all
types of fish, or worse yet, a video about boating, camping or traveling. Or, I want lures
specifically and exclusively for catching trout.
The "trick" is to perfectly match a product with a market.
And the "tighter" the match, the better.
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In my case, I built a home study course just for CFPs all about methods for attracting new clients to a
financial planning practice. My product was perfectly matched to my market.
Please understand - there are any number of books, tapes and courses out there on prospecting,
advertising and marketing that CFPs could learn from and use. But none of those are exclusively for
them.
My course is.
Now, #4: The Secret of Picking The Right Product comes into play. You want a product that
addresses the greatest "pain" and desire of the people in your Target Market.
This sets up a strong emotional response to your marketing. I don't have the time and space to teach
you the importance of that in this book, but for now, let's just say that selling by emotion is infinitely
easier than selling by logic.
In my case, I knew that the CFP's greatest "pain" had to do with prospecting. Planners HATE to
prospect for new clients. They LOATHE the activity. Many feel it's beneath them. Others are lazy.
Others don't know how to do it. Most are competent as planners and can satisfy clients once the
clients are plunked down in front of them, but most are terrible at getting clients. Knowing that, I
designed my product to connect with this pain.
I also know that the CFP's greatest desire is to have clients somehow "magically appear". Actually,
they want to advertise and have advertising work for them, but most fail at that.
It so happens that as a CFP, I had learned how to make advertising pay off. So, I built my Information
Product to feature advertising strategies and sample ads that worked. My product was a perfect
match with my market's greatest desire.
We'll start talking about how I actually sell my products in the next Chapter.
First, let's review the
foundation we've laid here:
I want you to choose a Target Market you have a great deal of knowledge
about, understanding of and empathy for. If you also have recognition and respect there, so much the
better.
Then you put together Information Products that are custom-tailored exclusively for your Target
Market. You focus those products on your market's greatest pain and greatest desire. And you want
to own and control your own products. This is a very, very solid foundation for making large sums of
money quickly and easily, following my System.
Incidentally, I can teach you how to create these products even if you think you "can't write". I can
also show you how to find and obtain either the publishing or the marketing rights to appropriate
products. Even if you insist you personally have no marketable experience or know-how of
specialized markets, I can show you how to find someone who does and secure the rights to the
person's name, likeness, knowledge, information and reputation, and build products around that.
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(Since perfecting my System, I've done just that and started a second business in an entirely
different Target Market built around someone else's knowledge and credibility. As a matter of fact, by
the end of the first year in this new specialized targeted market, I generated almost identical revenues
as my financial planner business! Over a million bucks a year! (The trick here is I found a guy with the
expertise and used my model to promote his knowledge and we each share the profits!)
As you can see, I am outlining an approach to making money in mail-order that is different from
anything you've probably heard or read about before. But make no mistake about it: this approach
works.
This is for real.
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Chapter Seven
(Component Parts Of My
Marketing Systems, Continued)
How To Really Profit In Mail-Order...
Starting With Less Than $1,000.00
The "engine" that pulls my moneymaking train down the track is #5: Lead Generation Advertising.
By definition, this means that the ad's job is NOT to make a sale. NOT to build up the image of my
company. NOT to describe my product. Its job is ONLY to get people most likely to buy my product to
step forward and identify themselves to me, by asking for advertised free information. The person
who responds to this kind of ad is called a "lead".
Now here's a very important tip: these ads should never be asked to do more than one job. I use
"multi-step marketing", where each step does one job and one job only. The process screens out
those not really interested and identifies those who are really interested, so I spend significant money
telling my sales story only to those most likely to buy.
This is how I can get a 10% to 12% order rate from my direct-mail sales letters sent to these leads
(even though most direct-mail only does 1% or 2%). This is very efficient. This leverages and turns
expense dollars. This lets me get maximum results from minimum costs.
No, this is not the only way to sell information products by mail. But the System that I'm teaching you
is a low start-up cost, low risk, low investment, simplified, streamlined and repeatedly proven one.
The simple idea of a Lead Generation Ad is to describe exactly who you want, and offer them
something free, that is likely to be of interest to them. This "free report" is really a lengthy sales letter
for your product. Here's an example of a Lead Generation Ad we might run in "Trout Fisherman
Monthly Magazine":
ATTENTION: TROUT FISHERMEN
FED UP WITH GIMMICKS,
FANCY NEW LURES,
AND EXPENSIVE GADGETS?
Champion Fisherman and Private Tutor to serious trout fisherman reveals 5 simple but
powerful insider secrets for catching bigger trout and more trout. For my exciting FREE
REPORT: "The Trout Won't Stand A Chance!", call 000/000-0000 or write: Trout King, 123
Waterway, Lakes, Minnesota 56789.
As you can see, this could be a small classified ad or a one, two or three inch "small" display ad. It
might interest you to know that there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of small mail-order entrepreneurs,
most of them selling various types of information fueling their entire businesses with lead generation
classified ads.
I know of one such gentleman who has been at this for SIXTY YEARS, making $30,000.00 to
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$50,000.00 a year working only part-time from his home in a pleasant, rural area of California.
As he describes his life: he gets up most mornings whenever he wakes up, takes a walk with his dog,
exercises a little bit, reads the paper over his juice and coffee, then he works for an hour or so in his
spare bedroom office - with a huge picture window overlooking the ocean.
When the mailman arrives, his wife helps him go through the mail, send his sales letters out to the
new leads, and process the orders from the customers. This usually takes about an hour. Then they
have the rest of the day "off".
A couple of times a week, they drive into town, make bank deposits, go shopping, see a movie and
visit with friends. His little classified ads have paid off his house, put his kids through college, funded
various investments, and let him live his life exactly as he has wanted to.
He is not all that unusual. As I've built my business, I've begun running across many of these people,
quietly making very good incomes, some getting rich with businesses driven by Lead Generation
Advertising.
However, very few people have matched Lead Generation Advertising with all the other components
of my System.
I STARTED OUT WITH "CHEAP" ADVERTISING
AND YOU CAN TOO
I started with cheap classified ads, by the way. Then very small display ads. My first ads cost only
about $138.00 to $275.00. In fact, I started my business "over", after getting the help I described at
that seminar, for less than $200.00. It cost me only about $138.00 in advertising to do $13,000.00 in
business my first month and not much more than that to do $26,000.00 the next month.
A small ad budget can generate enough leads to make a lot of money.
Incidentally, the opposite of using Lead Generation Advertising and doing multi-step marketing is
"one-step"; advertising a product and asking for an order right in the ad. I do NOT recommend this
method, particularly for beginners. It is much more difficult to make work. It may appear easier, and in
terms of your work, it is, but doing what comes easiest is very rarely a path to riches.
One of the things I'm going to show you as we go along is the wisdom of developing and selling
relatively high-priced products. This can be done with multi-step marketing but is very difficult to do
with one-step marketing.
Keep in mind that I am teaching you THE lowest risk, safest approach to the mail-order business.
Now we can talk about #6: The Secret of WHERE To Advertise. I call this a "secret" because most
mail-order beginners naturally gravitate toward the big circulation, mass media they are most familiar
with: newspapers, USA Today, tabloids like the National Enquirer, business magazines like Success
or Inc., consumer magazines like Cosmopolitan. In these magazines, advertising is very, very costly
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because of the huge circulation numbers - but you are always paying for a huge amount of waste:
people who will just not be interested in your ad. And your small ads are easily "lost" in these big
publications.
I have made a fortune by turning my back on all this major media and focusing instead on small
circulation, specialized magazines.
Every business, industry, profession and hobby has several (or
more) very specialized magazines or newsletters.
For example, did you know that there's a monthly magazine just for firemen? If I'm a fireman and I've
developed a product about making money in my spare time with my pick-up truck, that's the place to
advertise, like this:
WANTED: FIREMEN WHO OWN PICK-UP TRUCKS. Fireman has found unusual opportunities
to earn $20 to $30 an hour in spare time with a pick-up truck. I can help you supplement your
income. For my Free Report: "How To Make $20+ An Hour", call ...
This example has several things going for it that we've discussed previously: the ad has instant
credibility because it is from one fireman talking to another fireman. It creates a high level of interest
because, instead of making a general, generic offer, it presents an offer specifically for the reader of
this particular publication.
Beyond all that, advertising in this kind of specialized magazine is relatively inexpensive, yet just
about everybody who gets it reads it cover to cover, word for word because of its specialization. This
virtually guarantees that your ad will be read by 100% of the circulation.
THE SECRET PLACE TO ADVERTISE:
We told you we knew over
500
places to advertise, but we
lied. We know where to find over
16,000
places to advertise. They usually can be found in the
reference section of your local library, but we’ve given you their phone numbers in case you can’t find
them or want to buy them for yourself. (Of course, you can locate these resources and many more on
the Internet through Google, Yahoo searches, and so on.)
The
Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media
(formerly
Ayer Directory of Publications)
edited by Gary Braun has over 11,000 trade, technical, and professional publication listings. It is
categorized by state under subject headings. (800-877-4253) The Gebbie Press
All-In-One Directory
,
edited by Amalia Gebbie contains over 3,000 publications. (914-255-7560). Another resource is the
Oxbridge Directory of Newsletters. (212-741-0231) These directories list the publications phone
numbers and/or address. They are easy to use, and only a few examples of the resources you may
not have tapped into.
Of course, if a copy of "Vietnamese Pot Belly Pig Breeders Magazine" somehow finds its way to your
kitchen table, you're probably not going to read it. But everybody who IS a Pot Belly Pig Breeder and
loves these unusual little pets will read that magazine with enormous interest. So an ad like this:"POT
BELLY PIG BREEDER REVEALS HIS METHODS FOR TEACHING ANY PIG TO DO SIX TRICKS
IN SEVEN DAYS - Free Report .." will be read and will get very good response.
I sell information products that teach Certified Financial Planners and other financial service
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professionals how to market their services and promote their businesses, so I advertise in
"FINANCIAL PLANNING" and "CFP TODAY". These are magazines you will probably never read and
may not even know exist. Just like these, there are thousands of other occupation-specific or
hobby/interest-specific magazines that represent outstanding advertising opportunity for offers
perfectly matched to the markets they serve.
I HAVE JUST HANDED YOU
THE MOST IMPORTANT
SECRET TO MY SUCCESS
Please do not discount the importance of what I have just explained to you. This is the very "core" of
my phenomenal success. This can be your "secret key" to turning very small investments in
advertising into a very big income in mail-order.
I've found that my cost-per-lead goes down with the bigger ads. But these are still only Lead
Generation Ads. And I moved up in size only as my success warranted it and my confidence grew. I
started with cheap, small ads and you can too.
I encourage you to start out cautiously and conservatively.
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Chapter Eight
Why, When & How To Use A "
Free Recorded Message"
To Enhance Your Advertising
In this Chapter, I'm going to teach you a
technique with three very important benefits.
In most of my ads, I tell the reader that he can get my Free Report by calling a number for a FREE
RECORDED MESSAGE. Why do I add this step of the recorded message? Why don't I just have
them call my office?
THIS LITTLE TRICK
CAN DOUBLE THE RESPONSE
TO YOUR ADS
Many, many people are reluctant to call and respond to an ad because of what the person
(salesperson) on the other end of the phone is going to ask them, push them to do, or sell them. So,
even though they are interested in what is advertised, they "chicken out" and do not respond.
This is why I add the "Free Recorded Message". This tells the person he can
safely
respond. He can
listen and bail out if he wants to. And this little trick will double response, sometimes increase it even
more!
THIS SAME TECHNIQUE ALSO
MOVES THE SALES PROCESS ALONG
In the recorded message, the caller hears your friendly voice or someone's friendly voice redescribing
the offer, possibly giving some more information Then the caller can leave their name and address to
have your Free Report sent to them.
This person has now (a) read your ad, (b) responded to your ad, (c) stayed on the phone and listened
to your message for several minutes and (d) chosen to leave his name and address. He has jumped
through FOUR hoops to prove his serious interest. And, in doing so, he has actually heightened his
own interest. Now he is eagerly waiting for your information to arrive.
You are spending money putting information in the hands of a very seriously interested prospect.
THIS SAME TECHNIQUE
LETS ME MAKE BIG MONEY
WITH A VERY SMALL BUSINESS OPERATION
One month my ads generated over 2,000 leads.
That's 2,000 phone calls! If I had those calls come to
my office, Peggy and I would have to hire employees and have a number of employees just handling
these calls. We'd have to supervise these people. Fire some, hire more. We'd need office space.
Have to lease a telephone system. And the callers would stay on the phone longer, asking questions
of these people that I want to deal with in my sales letters.
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I DO NOT WANT ALL THAT! I have no desire whatsoever to have an office and office rent to pay.
The very thought of all this complexity and cost makes me sick to my stomach.
That's why #7 in my System is: How A Simple Recording Turns The Telephone Into A 24-Hour A Day,
7 Days A Week Sales Staff.
By directing all these leads to an automated, recorded message, I have the ability to take those calls
anytime, day or night, weekdays or weekends, with no employees or overhead. I contract with a
service set up to do this. Their automated equipment takes these calls, plays my message and
records the callers' names, phone numbers through some Caller-ID on steroids, and addresses. It
works while I sleep.
Then, every day the people at that service company send me those names and addresses through an
email. Zip - my leads arrive on my desktop.
There are many such services in major cities throughout the country and you can find them in your
own Yellow Pages or in trade publications like Direct Marketing News available at your public library.
What's important for now is to understand why and how I use this technique so you can use it too.
Many mail-order advertisers do not understand the power of advertising for a Free Recorded
Message.
Now you do.
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Chapter Nine
An Inside Look At How I Make $4,000.00 A Day And You Can Too
There's one more big "secret" I need to share with you, the last important component of my System,
but first I'd like to be sure you have a clear picture of how the money comes in and how my business
works. Earlier in this book, I called this a "lifestyle business" and I think that is as important as the
money.
Frankly, I can make good money a number of different ways. I did have a successful, high income
practice as a CFP and I could do that again, better and smarter. I've been offered six-figure salaried
positions as Marketing Director with several big planner partnership companies. Recently, I've been
getting quite a few invitations to come and speak to groups of CFPs, insurance salespeople and
stockbrokers. But I stuck it out through all my trial-and-error agony for a very clear, compelling
reason: I not only wanted a great income - I wanted a great lifestyle.
I'm sure your definition of "great lifestyle" is different from mine. And I believe you can use my
Business System to create whatever lifestyle you want. You can live anywhere: in the city, out in the
middle of nowhere, in Hawaii, it doesn't matter. But I'll just quickly tell you how my business works
and how it makes my lifestyle choices reality.
#8: The 3 Main Ways You Take In Money. I use the term "mail-order", but there are actually three
ways that sales happen in my business.
First, remember that everything starts with my Lead Generation Advertising. People respond to those
ads, call in, and the automated service collects their names and addresses, then faxes those leads to
me.
For those steps, I'M DOING NO WORK. All I do is place the ads; the rest of it takes care of itself.
Next, we send those Leads our "Sales Letter Package". This is the "Free Report" which is really a
lengthy letter from me that ultimately sells them my "information product".
I actually use a series of these sales letters so that the person who doesn't order from the first one
gets a second one, and so on. This can all be done manually on a small scale. We now keep track of
it on a personal computer.
In the beginning, Peggy and I got the letters copied, stuffed the envelopes, licked the stamps and
took it all to the post office. Now we have several people in our neighborhood who we pay to do this
work for us in their homes.
It took some work to get all this up and running but now that I have that done, it is just about on auto-
pilot. It is a moneymaking MACHINE. So now, all the way through these steps, I'M STILL DOING NO
WORK.
From those sales letters, orders and income come in three ways:
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A bunch of the orders come back in by mail. Mail orders. We never speak to these customers. They
send in their money, we send out the product.
Another chunk of orders come in by fax. The customer fills out the order form including his credit card
information and uses his fax machine to fax it to our fax number. This lets them order impulsively,
instantly, anytime, 24 hours a day, without us having a phone manned.
So, most mornings when I wander into the office, there are orders laying there that came in over the
fax during the night - a beautiful sight! (You don't have to have this to get started. But if you do market
to businesspeople, it will improve your business.)
Third, some orders are called in or get sent in only after someone has called in and spoken to me,
Peggy or Mary in my little above-the-garage office. In the beginning, Peggy and I took all these calls
ourselves. These days, others take the calls. Peggy hasn’t worked in the business for several years,
since 1992 actually, and I never talk to customers anymore.
Sometimes, if I have an unusually large number of leads, we "route" the overflow to one or two other
people who take these calls in their own homes. We're doing over $1 Million a year in sales this way,
and I know we can do twice that without it getting any more complicated than this. AND I'LL STILL BE
DOING NO WORK!
By now, you're probably wondering -
what the heck does Jeff do, anyway?
Peggy'd probably tell you
"Not much". I play with my kids, I go fishing on my boat. I lay in my hammock. I play lots of golf in the
nice weather. I plan our vacations. In the business, I do the things I like and find interesting, namely
creating and modifying my ads, developing more products to sell to my customers and now, very
recently, experimenting with new ventures, like this one. (But if I didn't like doing these things, I could
get them done for me too).
The one thing I do almost every day and every week that is very important, is to look at and keep up
with all our business statistics so I make good decisions and control costs. But let me tell you what's
really important to me:
I answer to no one. I really am my own boss. I have no debt and no problem people in my life. There's
no dress code at my office. If I feel like taking the afternoon and going to a Cubs game, I don't need
an excuse; I don't have to lie to anybody. I'm home for my kids. I have total control over every minute
of my time.
Most people get into business only to find out they've gone from the frying pan to the fire. They wind
up slaves to their businesses.
Their businesses own them; they don't own their businesses. And they
wind up working longer, harder hours for the same money they were making on their jobs. I'm very,
very fortunate to have avoided that.
Most people who start businesses have to accumulate all kinds of debt and keep putting money into
their business,
instead of taking it out. One government agency actually tells people to expect to go
three to five years in a new business before taking any profits out. Well, I stacked up $100,000.00 in
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debt fumbling around before I got my System together, but you can avoid all that. Once my System
was together, I took in $13,000.00 and took out nearly half of that in profits THE VERY FIRST
MONTH. You can start with my System and look for profits in 3 months, not 3 years, down the road!
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Chapter Ten
The Incredibly Profitable Business
Of "Publishing On Demand"
A conventional book publisher gets a manuscript from somewhere, has it typeset, prints up 10,000 or
more copies of that book, piles them up in the warehouse and then tries to sell them. There may be
$30,000, $50,000 even more at risk on just one "product" before the first sale takes place. NOT FOR
ME!
Instead, I want to "publish" only AFTER there is a sale!
This is the new business of "publishing on demand".
Thanks to personal computers, desktop publishing, high speed copying, full service 24-hour a day
copy centers like Kinkos, the complexity and cost of putting information on paper has come way, way
down. You can have the desktop published "originals" for a 300-page Notebook all about your-name-
the-topic, say "How To Make Money With Your Pick-Up Truck", sitting on a shelf. No money tied up in
inventory. That - in its purest and simplest form - is "publishing on demand".
My business is a tad more sophisticated than that, but not much. "Publishing on demand" IS one of
my secrets. However, the other way that I ensure big profits is that I have chosen a specialized
market that I will gladly pay a high price for specialized how-to information (and I encourage you to do
the same).
The main product I sell includes 4 spiral-bound Manuals, each about 100 pages long, which can be
published on demand. There's also a video tape I made myself (for under $400.00) and that can be
duplicated onesy-twosy. The entire product costs me about $45.00 to put together. I sell it for
$995.00. There's a gross profit of $950.00 on each and every sale. Now, let me tell you several things
you need to know about this "scenario" that I just described to you:
#9: How to ENSURE That You Make Big Profits.
I believe in choosing a specialized market or markets where the people can and will pay premium
prices for specialized how-to information. Then, if you properly put value into your information
products and properly describe them, you can get the kind of prices - and huge mark-ups - that I get
and still have happy customers eager for more.
Learning how to do this is very important, because you MUST have happy customers. But putting a
product together in such a way that it's value to the customer has no relationship to manufactured
cost is equally important. This is what enables you to share my "secret" that ENSURES big profits:
GIGANTIC MARK-UP!
Basically, I'm operating at a 10-Times mark-up. Minimum. What costs me $45.00 to $50.00, I sell for
$600.00 - $995.00. This is what lets me run my ads, send out a whole series of lengthy sales letters
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and, in total, do a very, very thorough marketing job, to go to great lengths to make a sale. I can do all
of that, maybe even do it more efficiently than some big computer and cash-rich company might. I
can pay full price for my advertising, and, after everything, I still have plenty of profit left for me.
MY BEST ADVICE
IS TO SELL A HIGH-PRICED
PRODUCT WITH VERY HIGH MARK-UP
I could fill a book just convincing you of why selling a high-priced, high-mark-up item is best and you'd
still be tempted to argue with me, because what I'm telling you is contrary to what you've always
thought or been told. Many moneymaking opportunities, dealerships and distributorships heavily
advertised in business magazines ... ads you may have answered ... offer your products at discounts
of only 50% or so.
What you would buy from that supplier for $1.00, you'd sell for no more than $2.00. So, you may think
this is the way things should be. Some promoters of catalogue plans even tell you - lying - you can
mail out their catalogues and make money with those kinds of discounts and mark-ups. You cannot.
Direct marketing professionals know that a mark-up of 5x to 8x is absolutely essential to make a
profit. And you may think that you will make more money by selling a low-priced item because you'll
sell a lot more of them. This is not so.
Within a specialized market, there is only a certain percentage of the people who you can persuade
at an affordable advertising and marketing cost. When you are selling how-to information, this
percentage does not expand with a lower price. It will be about the same almost regardless of price.
And it will take almost as much effort to sell a $100 product as to sell a $500 product or a $995
product or whatever. For all these reasons, the advice that I'm giving you is very good advice.
A PUBLISHED-ON-DEMAND HOW-TO INFORMATION PRODUCT BUILT FOR
A PARTICULAR BUSINESS OR OCCUPATION
OR HOBBY OR ORGANIZATION IS ARGUABLY THE PERFECT MAIL-ORDER PRODUCT
When I think about starting in mail-order, there's no doubt in my mind that my mistakes and
experiments would have destroyed me before I found success if I'd been dealing with any other type
of products. And I now believe there is one type of product that is superior to all others, to build a
mail-order business around, starting from scratch, with limited risk and resources, and it is a
published-on-demand, how-to information product targeted to a particular, specialized occupation.
Here's why:
Publish-On-Demand so you can keep your money out of inventory, so you do not invest in quantities
of products that may or may not prove profitably salable, and so you keep your focus on marketing,
not warehousing!
How-To because it is the most reliable category of all time. When you can tell others how to do
something or things that will alleviate their pain and accentuate their pleasure, people will pay to get
what you know. You cannot visit a bookstore, open a magazine, turn on a TV or go to a convention
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without seeing "information" advertised and sold.
Information Product because the value the customer gets from the product and places on the product
has nothing whatsoever to do with the manufactured cost of that product.
Take something else, say a toothbrush. I don't care how much better your toothbrush is to all other
toothbrushes, people already have a number in mind for what that toothbrush is worth. And even
though you may have years of research in that new beneficial design, you can't ask $100.00 for the
toothbrush to get paid for your knowledge - somebody'll say, "Hey, it can't cost more than fifty cents to
make that thing. Where do you get off asking a hundred dollars?"
But that does NOT happen with an Information Product, because the value is the Information itself.
To be simplistic for a second, you can sell a map to a buried treasure to a treasure-hunter for $100
and he doesn't say, "Hey, that piece of paper only costs two cents. Where do you get off asking a
hundred dollars?" Treasure maps, not toothbrushes.
Built For A Particular Business Or Occupation because specialized, how to make more money
information automatically and inherently has a lot more value than "general" information. I cannot
emphasize this point enough.
I really hope I have explained all this in a way that makes sense to you and that you can accept
conceptually, because it is a "blueprint" that will prevent you from making a great many costly
mistakes.
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Chapter Eleven
Can you use my system to make big money on the Internet? You betcha’!
You wanna’ know a secret? You do? Good. Here goes…
Selling online is the exact same thing as selling off-line! Sure, there are some differences, as I’ll show
you in a minute. But I’ve discovered that my system works as well online as it does off-line. What
most people do wrong on the Internet is that they ”forget” emotional direct response marketing.
As you already know direct response means we get them to take action and do something. In the
offline world, it’s pick up the phone and call us and order. On the Internet, it’s e-mail for more
information or simply click a button and fill out our order form and buy.
So you want the visitor to take an action, whatever that may be. So how do we create a site that really
sets us up for the best success here and really puts us in a good light to get visitors to respond the
way we want them to? We do the same thing that we do in offline direct mail.
The number one thing you must understand is that your web site has to load fast. The faster the
pages can load, the better. I actually try to go all HTML and no graphics, but some times we end up
using some graphics for a particular reason. Usually, those reasons promote the response I want.
The second thing is there’s got to be customer benefits right up front. Why should the customer
bother reading and responding to your message? The benefits got to be clear, they’ve got to be
exciting, they’ve got to make them act. And here’s the big secret: the benefits got to be early in the
message otherwise the visitor will click away.
It’s just like if you get an envelope and you open it up. You need a hard-hitting headline and you need
to pull and yank them right into that letter with benefits so they don’t throw it away. Same exact thing,
but we’re just translating it to the Internet.
Okay, the point here is that the benefits to the customer must be clear and up-front. They’ve got to
see it early on in your message. If they don’t they won’t respond and probably move on to the next
web site. Not good.
So we’ve got to tell them how our product can solve their problems and how we can change their life
and improve their life, and why they should do business with us. It’s the exact same thing as with
sales letters and ads.
Let’s move on.
Okay, the next point with the website is you need a risk-free offer. You want to be building trust. You
do that with a guarantee. The customer can simply ask for the money back if he or she is not happy.
That’s just all there is to it.
You may have heard it called "risk reversal." That’s a popular phrase for it. That’s a good phrase for
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it, too, because it means you’re assuming the risk. And you should assume the risk, not the customer.
It makes your offer more compelling. And if your product really solves a problem or improves
someone’s lifestyle, then they’re crazy not to buy it because there’s no risk. They basically profit.
Maybe not in money, but in what they learn from you or what you can do for them.
Now, if they look at you and they don’t trust you, then they’re not going to do business with you. So
you’ve got to build trust. What you have to say has got to be believable. When you do this effectively,
then sales and requests for information will just skyrocket because it’s a no-brainer.
I hear you. Aren’t people gonna rip me off if they can get their money back?
Some people will take advantage of you, but the bump in response you get from having a great
guarantee will more than take care of the deadbeats. There will always be someone out there who
wants something for free.
But like I said, the increase in sales will far outweigh any returns or people taking advantage of you.
And if you do get a bump in returns, then it’s not because of the guarantee. It’s something wrong with
the product.
There’s a positive to take away from that, too, if you can figure it out and fix it. So if you need to fix it,
you’ll find out by the returns. You can fix it and then your risk reversal is really still a brave way to get
your customers to give you negative feedback, because if you’re taking all the risk and what you’re
giving isn’t all that positive, they’ll let you know about it. If you want to stay in business, it gives you
the opportunity to fix it.
And don’t worry about the crooks. They’re always going to be out there. If they want to return, send
them their money back and get rid of them.
Here are six more tips for making money online.
1. Buy Your Own Domain.
Yes, you can make money using one of the free servers out there, but your customers will feel much
more comfortable buying from you if you own your own domain. Visitors who notice that you are on a
free server may wonder if you’re just another fly-by-night company and think twice about ordering
from you. Owning your own domain will also give you a little more control of search engines, which
will help potential customers find you.
2. Start Your Own Opt-In E-mail List.
Did you know that the majority of sales come from opt-in e-mail techniques? If you look at the stats of
some major Internet players, you will notice that the most aggressive e-businesses have an opt-in e-
mail list and regularly send offers, sales, solo ads and more to their list.
So the best way to start making money with your own products or as a member of an affiliate program
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(selling other people’s stuff) is to start an opt-in e-mail list.
There are three different ways you can run an opt-in list:
You can use e-mail software to run your list. This works great when you have a small list, but once
you have more than 1,000 names, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage mailings.
Another solution is to use a list server. The problem with a list server is it will cost you around $400
and
you can’t personalize your mailings.
The final way way is to use a CGI program. There are several out there which can send HTML e-mail
messages, personalize the e-mails with the name of the subscribers, and best of all, can handle all of
the subscribes and unsubscribes automatically.
3. Target One Specific Theme And Market.
Don’t try to be everything to everybody. You need to pick one specific target market and focus your
marketing to
only
that market. Don’t sell website design and Pokemón trading cards on the same
site. Pick one main product and maybe one or two other products that are similar or can be used with
the main product.
The key to success is focusing on one market at a time. You can make money selling just about
anything online if you know how to market it effectively. Choose a product that you enjoy talking about
or using. Then, learn how to position it correctly and get the right traffic to your website, and you’ll
probably be successful with it.
4. Create At Least One Of Your Own Products.
You can make a significant amount of money from affiliate programs (selling other peoples stuff), but
the biggest profits almost always come from selling your own product or service. Create a report,
book or audio tape about something you enjoy, like a hobby or something you have accomplished in
your business or personal life.
Once you have your own product or service, you can then offer an affiliate program for other people
to sell it for you. Plus, it’s much easier to develop backend products based on your original product,
such as tape sets or how-to videos.
5. Develop Multiple Traffic Sources.
You need to use many different sources of traffic to market your products. Place free classified ads
on sites like Yahoo, submit to search engines, use pay-per-click search engines like Overture, submit
articles to ezines, and find people who will “recommend” your product in their newsletter.
If you rely on a single source for traffic, you could find yourself up a virtual creek if that source
changes their policies or goes out of business.
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6. Develop Multiple Income Streams.
Your business needs to have more than one stream of income. Many of the most successful websites
are making money in a dozen or more different ways. Participating in affiliate programs is one good
way, so is building a solid line of backend products. The smart thing to do is build strong relationships
with your current customers. You will find it infinitely easier (and cheaper) to sell something to an
existing customer than to go out and find a new customer.
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Chapter Twelve
Let's Get Going!
“A man can succeed in almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm!”
Charles Schwab
“To become what we are, and to be what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
In these next twelve chapters, you'll be getting more information and motivation to help you succeed
in your quest for a home based, low cost, low overhead, highly profitable information selling business
through the mail!
So, let's begin this issue by covering the six steps you'll need to take to get your business to wherever
you want it to go! After I list these steps out, we'll cover step number one in this issue, and the
subsequent steps in each succeeding issue.
OK. So here are the six steps of mail order success:
1. Visualization, And The Ground rules.
2. Define And Identify Your Market; Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition.
3. Create Your Sales Letter And Ad(s).
4. Test Your Idea.
5. Put Together A Prototype Of Your "Product(s)"/ Rollout.
6. Build Your Backend Profit Machine.
And let's start off with the first step, Visualization, And The Ground rules.
This step is actually so important, that if you don't get this one right, none of the others will matter. I
am a firm believer in building a foundation for your business, that is solid, unbreakable, and will be
able to stand against the test of time.
Let me explain what I mean.
Whether you already have a business of some kind, or if you are working for someone else, you must
have bought this course for a reason. And, I'm sure that reason has something to do with your desire
to change your life for the better.
Which is what I want you to do as well!
But just wanting to change your life, isn't enough. It's too vague of a concept. Yes, having the passion
is crucial. Having that burning desire to make your life better is the cornerstone of success. No one
can dispute that. But, desire and passion alone are just not enough.
While they act like the fuel to move you ahead, they will not be able to do anything by themselves.
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These emotions need to be guided by very specific, very defined rules, goals and objectives. And
when I say specific, I mean specific.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say you have a burning desire to go on vacation.
You're burned out, tired, and need to get away. You can't imagine anything better than a change of
scenery to make you feel better and to recharge your batteries.
So, you sit and think about this vacation. You talk about this vacation. Great. Now there's only a few
teeny, tiny little problems. What problems, you may ask? Well, how about things like:
Where are you
going? When are you going? Who are you going with? How will you get there? And so on.
I'm sure
you would agree these little details are very important.
See, wishing to go on a vacation, is not the same as
planning
a vacation!
Now, just about everyone I've ever met, will think about a vacation in much more concrete terms than
just thinking about wanting to go. When you decide you want to go, you start picturing things in your
mind's eye. You see the white sand beaches, with the crystal clear Caribbean water gently lapping up
to the shore. You see the palm trees hugging the shore line. You see the little thatch umbrellas over
the tables next to the pool. You see the waiter bringing you your drink in the tall glass with the multi-
colored drink inside. You see the room with the balcony overlooking the sun rising over the glass-like
ocean. You see....
Everything!
Yes, when you want to go on a vacation, you see it all very clearly. Now, this visualization is common
for most things in life that we want to do badly. Whether it be a vacation, or a new car, or whatever;
we see it in our mind's eye!
But, this same sort of very specific picturing of our wants and appetites, often escapes us when it
comes to the big picture of our life. Most of us do not devote the same energy and enthusiasm to
seeing our future as clearly as the hands in front of our faces!
Why is this? Well, I'm no psychologist, but I think I have a simple answer.
Picturing the true desires of
our life is overwhelming!
And, anything that is so big, and so important, can easily get lost in the day
to day shuffle of our lives.
Let's face it. Changing our lives is scary as hell. Picturing a vacation or a new car, or your kid's team
winning the soccer tournament, are smaller, easier to imagine goals. Picturing them does not threaten
us.
But, changing the fabric of your entire life, now that's a threat!
See, the stuff I'm helping you learn how to do, may in fact, change everything your life is about!
Following my system of mail order success can cause you to do things like:
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Be at home with your family.
Not have to commute to work for long, wasted hours.
Spend your time reading, studying, watching tapes, writing, and being very creative.
Control your own personal and financial life, with no one telling you what to do.
Be forced to learn about how to invest your profits, reduce large tax liabilities, etc.
Face the negative feedback you'll be sure to get from friends and relatives, telling you
that
you should not be doing this.
Deciding everything in your life for yourself. What you wear, where you go, who you do
business with, etc.
In other words,
be the total master of your own fate!
And sometimes, the thought of such a radical change in your life can lead to, well, basically nothing
happening. If the fear of the change is so great, you may have a difficult time visualizing the
"vacation" from your current life; and therefore have little chance of ever achieving the change!
So, the first thing you have to do is picture your changed life, very clearly and in great detail. (I
describe how to do this in the summary that is part if the course.) See your "trip" in your mind's eye,
and you'll be on the road to getting there!
The other part of this first step, is to set up your ground rules for your new enterprise. Once you have
figured out what you want out of life, you must build your business solely around that dream. You
cannot just start doing things in a haphazard fashion, or you'll never have a chance of seeing your
dream become a reality.
Many people think I'm nuts when I tell people that planning your business out from a "top down"
perspective is totally important. I understand why people say things like that. They think that I am
asking people to look down the road, before they have even got into the car!
Understand something. I am not like a business school professor who tells you to develop a detailed
business plan, with multi-year cash flow projections, sales analysis, financing strategies, etc. No,
actually, I think that type of plan is stupid, and usually worthless.
Those types of details are far too speculative, and provide little if any insight or direction.
The ground rules that I want you to put down on paper right now, revolve around the details of what
your life is going to be like, and how the business fits into those lifestyle decisions.
For example, in the summary of my philosophy of direct marketing, I gave you the parameters of the
only way I would accept a niche marketing, direct mail business. If you remember, I talked about how,
at my lowest point in my life, I set up the only acceptable parameters I would allow for myself.
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After I established a visualization of my life, I built a framework to live that life under. For example, I
decided that any business I built, would have these types of characteristics:
1. No more face to face customers.
2. Mail order, or phone order, direct response only.
3. Home based.
4. No more nights or weekends, unless I chose to do so.
5. I would see all of my kids little league, soccer, basketball games, karate matches, school plays,
etc. No more occasional father.
6. No more depending on others.
7. High priced information products only.
8. No more inventory. Publishing on demand only.
9. No out of town trips unless I wanted to go to a seminar or something.
10. I would make the use of new technologies to save money.
11. I would be able to create the products on a computer, and copy them easily at a copy store.
12. The business would have to be one that others could easily run without me being around.
And, when I moved into specialized, niche direct marketing, every single decisions I made either
followed these ground rules, or it didn't happen! (Which is still the case today, by the way. For
example, I get asked to speak at seminars quite frequently, and hardly ever accept the assignment
because of my lack of interest in being on the road for business. I
do,
however, take lots of vacations;
and will go to a seminar if it's in Vegas or someplace that I can combine goof off time, with some
work!)
OK? Is this all making sense? Because here's the homework assignment I'm giving you, which is
going to lead us into more hard, meaty details, in the rest of these newsletters: Sit down, and find a
picture of your life, in your mind's eye. Once you have it, concentrate on it all the time. See it when
you go to bed. Dream about it when you sleep. See it while you daydream at work. Watch yourself in
that scene every single second you can. Never let it get buried back into your subconscious. Keep it
in your conscious thoughts, and you'll eventually make it a reality.
Next, sit down, make up a list of the ground rules for your soon to be business. Use my list as a guide
if you like. Just promise me you'll write it down on paper. Also promise me that you'll keep it in a
visible place, where you can see it.
I want you to be able to see it, so that any time you are making a decision to take, or not take, any
action, your decision will be based on your ground rules, and not on what may seem more important
at the time!
(By the way, you are allowed to change the ground rules any time you want. I'm not saying these are
cast in stone, and can never be altered. No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that you
always need a set of these rules, and that no matter what they are, or if they've changed, or
whatever; they will always be there to lead you to the picture of your life in your dreams!)
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Alright! Next chapter, we're going to review the most critical element of selling information,
How To
Define And Identify Your Market; As Well As Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition!
This
may sound dumb, but most people start with a product, and try to find people to sell it to. And then,
we're going to show you the safest, lowest cost, lowest risk method of success!
First find a market,
and then find a product they want to buy!
Bonus Chapter #1: The following is a column written by my good friend, and mentor, Dan
Kennedy. I asked Dan to add some of his insight to this book on getting what you want out of
life. Dan was nice enough to share his thoughts with us, so here they are!
The fat Cheshire cat sat in the tree, looked down at Alice and smugly said:
If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
And that is how so many people go through their entire lives totally without focus. Well, success is
very, very rarely an accident. And right now, as you get into this new business, you have the fantastic
opportunity of doing what the crowd (what I call 'The Mediocre Majority') never does: stopping long
enough to pinpoint, on the map, where you want to get to. Then you set up a bright, shining beacon
there, pointed back at you, to light the way. By keeping your eyes firmly fixed on that beacon, you'll
get safely through the fog; you'll say "no" to distractions and deviations' you'll make smarter
decisions; and you'll make fewer mistakes and misjudgments.
That's what Jeff has described to you in this Issue - the setting up of the beacon. Of course, this is
nothing new. If you haven't read it, you should read Napoleon Hill's masterpiece, THINK AND GROW
RICH, and pay particular attention to the remarks about "definiteness of purpose." And remember:
very, very, very few people get this working for them. Those that do are invariably successful.
This Business Is For The Birds!
At least it can be. A story: right now, as I write this, I'm completing a new book which will be
published by Dutton later this year - "How To Turn Your Ideas Into A Million Dollars" - and, in the
section on mail-order, I'm telling the story of Peter Deutsch and Carol Curtis, a husband-and-wife
team who have built a small but profitable and growing mail-order business from their kitchen table -
aimed (only) at bird owners. It so happens that there are 52 million pet birds in the United States.
Maybe each human owns three or four of them, but that's still 10 million potential customers. BIRD
TALK MAGAZINE alone goes to 175,000 bird lovers.
Well, in 1990, Curtis invented a shoulder perch doohickey that has a big pouch to catch the birds doo-
doo. A gadget, not an information product, but the rest of the example is still instructive. They
advertised that in BIRD TALK, and it sold like crazy. And they captured the customers. And they
hurriedly created and found other products. In 1991, the first edition of their "Creative Bird
Accessories Catalog", a 6-pager, went to the 5,000 names they'd painstakingly accumulated. Today,
the catalog's up to 28 pages, the customer list up to 38,000. The response rate from each of their
mailings has been about 5%, as high as 17% in some cases. And, in just three years, part-time,
working from the kitchen table and the garage, with virtually no capital, they've built a business that hit
$200,000.00 in sales. Should do more this year.
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Now, Jeff or I could tell them at least three dozen ways to have done a million instead of $200,000.00
last year. There's a whole lot they don't know . . . most of which you do or will, by the way, thanks to
this book you now own. But that's not my point. After all, a $200,000.00 a year business isn't exactly
chicken feed.
No, my point has to do with another fellow who has been to one of my seminars and, I think, to Jeff's,
who had some substantial success advertising in this very same magazine, Bird Talk, his book about
how to teach tricks to parrots. He has not gone on to build a business from that. He could have. He
still could. But he's gone off in other, less "narrow", bigger market directions. His choice.
"I Climbed Up The Mountain To Talk To The Old Wise Man.
Then I Climbed Back Down The Mountain And Followed Only
The Part Of His Advice I Liked. Then I Blamed Him For The Results."
Jeff and I charge more than $8,000.00 per day for consulting, in the field of direct marketing. Quite a
few clients incur fees in the $18,000.00 range. About a third, maybe more, could sum up their
experience as I just did above, in that quote, if they were brutally honest with themselves. You have
that choice too. We KNOW that the "model" Jeff has presented you with works, if properly AND
COMPLETELY applied.
A Few Tips About This "Vision Thing"
You may remember President Bush talking about "the vision thing." He didn't have one. And,
unfortunately, that's what opened the door for . . . well, let's stay out of politics. It just so happens that
"the vision thing" is vitally important. Napoleon Hill observed it at work in successful peoples' lives as
'the dominant thought principle'; whatever you fix in your mind as your most dominant thought,
ALWAYS, inevitably becomes reality.
I've had the pleasure of watching Jeff Paul develop, and develop his businesses, since he and Peggy
came through my seminar the first time, $100,000.00 in debt, honestly bewildered by what "wasn't
working." So I've been able to observe, objectively, looking in from the outside, which success
principles he has applied . . . most he's aware of, a few he's applied intuitively, a couple he's missed,
but so will everybody. In any case, one of the very important, foundational steps Jeff conquered was
getting a very clear and definite "picture" of where he wanted to get to. Not just an idea. Not a
daydream. Not vague generalities. Specificity and detail are important here.
Another 'success book' you might read, another classic, is THE NEW PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS, by
Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Dr. Maltz discovered that people who do certain things successfully, consistently,
have this kind of a clear, definite, very detailed "picture" of what they're doing and the desired
outcome, and that they very frequently run this little 'mental movie' in what he called "the theater of
the mind."
So, tips: (1) get your "picture" built very, very clearly; (2) get it down on paper, in prose; (3) create
rules to live by that "match" the picture; (4) resist the scattering of your thoughts, energies or
resources and, instead, stay focused on the direct path to the "picture" by adherence
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to the rules; (5) spend some time, 30 to 60 minutes EVERY day working on this, on your clarity of
purpose, and on you, because success is an "inside job." This provides a very solid foundation to
build your business on.
Which is it - Tools Or Blueprints?
There's a famous house, now a tourist attraction in San Francisco, where, for years, they just kept
building on room after room after room, up, from the back, from the sides - with no plan. There are
spiral staircases that stop dead against a wall, but the craftsmanship is beautiful. I'd surmise the
builders had terrific tools. Based on 20 years in this business, I can say to you: you now possess
great tools. But don't go running off half-cooked without studying the blueprints. Follow the very
same steps that Jeff walked, in the same order, in their entirety, with the same patience and
persistence, and you WILL be successful.
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Chapter Thirteen
Why should they buy from you?
"I get up when I fall down." Paul Harvey, revealing the secret of his success.
“Success is being able to hire someone to mow the lawn while you play golf for the exercise.”
Anonymous
This chapter will be devoted to a topic of absolute importance:
How To Define And Identify Your
Market; As Well As Identify Your Unique Selling Proposition!
This may sound dumb, but most
people start with a product, and try to find people to sell it to. In this issue, we're going to show you
the safest, lowest cost, lowest risk method of success!
First find a market, and then find a product
they want to buy!
As I just told you, mostly everyone I know tries to sell a product, whether it be a physical product, or
information....totally backwards!
Here's what happens: First, you come up with some great idea about something people need. You're
sure of it. Then you go out and spend all the time and money you can, to create this product. Either
as a prototype, or in the case of books, actually going and getting them printed up.
Then, you start to explore how you're going to sell this thing. You may go talk to bookstores, or you
may run some ads, or get some press releases published, or whatever. And then you expect to sit
back, wait for the phone to ring, and collect your mega-watt income!
WRONGO BUSTER!
This typical method of trying to make money can work, if you have an unlimited capacity for spending
money, wasting time, and have no concern for risk.
But, if you're like most of us who want to do things, shall we say, a little more safely and cheaply, then
I'm going to attempt to switch your thinking around.
First and foremost, do not spend any time thinking about the product, until you've discovered the
market!
As I've discussed in your course, the tightly matched, niche markets are the best and safest to go
after! Now notice here that I keep stressing the
market, not the product!
(At least not yet, anyway.)
See, you have to decide what market either you, or someone else you choose to work with, know
stone cold. (Remember when we talked about picking someone else with a specialized knowledge to
work with, if you don't have any yourself? So when I say "you", I really mean either you, or the person
you're working with.)
You have to find markets that really, really want things...really, really bad!
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For example, fishermen want to catch more, and bigger fish. They would want anything you know
about that! Or, nurses want to know about how to make more money in the nursing profession. Or,
moms want to know how to nurture their kids better, to build self-confidence in their children. And so
on.
There are literally thousands of potential tightly niched markets out there. Your first job is to find them,
and what they want, before you even begin to think about what kind of information or other products
they might buy from you! Notice I said their "wants" as opposed to their "needs"?
THE FASTEST WAY TO DEBTOR'S PRISON IS TO FIND A NEED AND TRY TO FILL IT!
No doubt about it. If you only learn one thing from me, I hope this idea will be it. To start dispelling this
myth, let's talk about what a "need" is anyway. You see, there are different levels of "need" someone
can have. The first level is the basics of life. You know, food, clothing, shelter, paying taxes, etc. The
things we all need to deal with on a regular basis. And, things we really cannot survive, at even a
subsistence level, without making sure they are taken care of.
In other words, while we all need to eat for example, you can survive on lousy tasting, very
inexpensive food. (Just take a look at any third world country, and see what they eat. Yet, they do
survive: if only barely.)
Then, there are the second level "needs" which are sort of basic, but not really basics. Things like
good food, decent clothes, nicer shelter, etc. But, in a second, I'll explain what these second tier
"needs" really are. You see, they are not really "needs" at all. No, "need" is the wrong word here.
What they are is much more important than a silly old "need" would ever be. What they really are, is:
WANTS!
Yes, that's exactly what they are. Wants. Because, let's face reality here. The things someone
"needs" revolve around chemical intake of oxygen, proteins, carbohydrates, etc. The stuff we "need"
to live. Almost everything else beyond that is a:
WANT!
Pizza instead of roots. Leather shoes instead of bark sandals. A four bedroom colonial, instead of a
grass hut. A car instead of a mule. And so on. All these things are not "needed" by anyone.
Have you ever stopped to think about what the word want means? (Instead of need?) Well, if you look
in a thesaurus, you'll see synonyms like: desire, wish, crave, covet, fancy, etc. Did you notice
anything in those words that connotes a "need", or do they all indicate exactly what a want is:
THE DESIRE FOR SOMETHING!
Yes, a want is what somebody will spend any or all of the only three things we have to spend: time,
money or energy.
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Think about what people spend these three assets on. A spray that covers up your bald spot(?), bell
bottoms, make-up, Mercedes, electric can openers, camping trips in the Grand Canyon, uniforms for
5 year old T-Ball players, 4000 square foot houses, and on and on and on. (Does anyone "need" any
of this stuff?)
In other words, we all trade our assets of time, energy and money on things that we
want
.
And, you, my friend, do the exact same thing yourself. So do your kids, and spouses, and family.
Everyone seeks what they want. Always have, always will. And, you can never kid yourself into
thinking that this simple truth will ever change. Because it won't. Human nature is unchanging and
unbending. Since the first ape-like ancestor of ours mutated into a human like creature, we've always
sought what we want.
All through time, people have attempted to conquer their neighbors. To enslave weaker cultures. To
build monuments of power and wealth. To venture out into the unknown. To create wealth, and
destroy harmony. All those actions are motivated by a want for something more, or better, or different,
or bigger, or faster, or prettier, or safer, or whatever. As a matter of fact, if the motivations of humans
came only from searching for "needs", all our world would be is a group of primitive animals, hunting,
gathering and dying. All of our progress and improvements have their roots in our want for more.
Now, tell me, is there anything more irrelevant on this planet than what YOU think someone else
"NEEDS"?
So, let's agree that first you're going to find your market, and then you're going to find what they want!
By the way, you can find more markets than you could ever dream of by simply watching the world
around you, and by going to the library…or browsing around on the Internet! Go to the reference
section in the library, and ask the librarian how to find mailing lists, and trade magazines, and all other
kinds of information on specialized markets…or start putting in terms in Search Engines to find what’s
out there. If you spent a half a day, once a week, going through all these reference resources, I
promise you you'll find more markets than you could handle in your life!
And, once you find these markets, you should start subscribing to their publications, go to meetings,
talk to as many of them as you can, and find out from your own first hand experience, exactly what
they want!
Now, let's say you think you have found some information that they want. Before you start putting
together your book or tape or whatever, there is a very, very important question you must ask
yourself.
Let me ask you this bottom line question that Dan Kennedy asks of all his audiences when he speaks
about marketing. This question applies to any business person, in any field. Not just us. Anyone.
And it is so profound a question that it literally cuts through all the B.S., to get to the real deep down
stuff. (Like everything Dan does.) So here it is. Here's the silent question every prospect wants to
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know about you:
“
Why should I do business with you, above any and all other options, including doing nothing,
or whatever I'm doing now?”
That's it folks. The 64 Thousand Dollar Question that is the real secret to getting sales.
Dan says that if you can't answer this question in a clear, simple way, then you'll have trouble getting
business.
What we're talking about here is a thing called a
"Unique Selling Proposition"! (USP)
Your USP needs to quickly make a deep emotional connection. A USP is really like a headline. A
headline is quick, and gets them interested. And, your USP needs to have that same sort of punch. It
has to hit them right between the eyes. A good USP will provide a conduit into their heart, from the
brain.
So, I thought that to explain how to get a USP, I would illustrate "services" that offer nothing even
remotely close to a USP. Things like:
New ! Improved! Lowest Rates. Highest Yields. Quality Service. Fast, Friendly And
Dependable.
Highest Levels Of Trust. Established 1980. The Widest Array Of Products.
The Biggest. The Oldest. The First. Client Satisfaction Is Our Only Concern. Get _ _ _,
It Pays. Own A Piece Of The Rock. A Breed Apart. The Company You Keep............
People don't get emotional over this. Yet, you really want them to. But you
wanting them to
is not
going to ever make any difference. They only want what they want.
So, let's move on. How do you get a USP? What do you say you do that is so interesting, and so
compelling, that people want to hear more about it? In fact, Dan says they should say things like,
"Really? How do you do THAT?", when you tell them what you do.
See, if you think they really want whatever it is you figured out they really want, you still have to
communicate to them that you have what they want! (Or, they won't buy your stuff!)
And in order to communicate this to them, you need to have a compelling USP, that makes the
emotional connection into their heart. which will then lead to the connection into your merchant
account!
All those phony baloney USP's I just read to you a second ago mean nothing to anyone. Do you really
think that saying something is "New and Improved" will create an emotional connection? Do you think
that saying you have a trustworthy and dependable weight loss product for women is going to get
much attention?
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No, not much of a chance. See, a USP cannot make people drop everything they're doing if it doesn't
get an immediate and powerful emotional reaction!
For example, one of my USP's (you are allowed to have more than one) is that I know that most
financial advisors are frustrated because they know they are good money advisors, but they don't
have enough clients. So, I came up with things like:
They All Laughed When I Ran That Little $40 Ad...But When I Got 81 leads!
or
How To Get A Flood Of Prospects To Call You! No More Cold Calls!
See how these comments create an emotional feeling? See how they hit the real emotional pain of
my market? (They hate to prospect or make cold calls more than anything on earth!) Do you think
either of these statements would get one of my prospects to say, "Really, how do you do that?"?
What are some other USP ideas? Well, since theses niche markets are so specific, you need to find
the biggest hot buttons for that market. I'll give you some random ideas I've either seen or worked
with or made up. While they may not apply to you, they should serve to help you come up with your
own ideas!
For dog owners:
How To Train Your Dog To Be A TV Star And Make More Money Than You!
For restaurant owners:
How To Train Waiters And Waitresses To Serve Twice As Much
Food!
For truckers:
How To Increase Your Speed Without Getting Tickets, Guaranteed!
For caterers:
How To Sell Twice As Many Parties With Twice The Profits!
And so on. If these markets want this stuff, and you give them a reason to buy because your
message is so tightly matched, and so unique,
you will be successful beyond your wildest
dreams!
If you try to find their needs, and fill them, using boring, meaningless slogans, you will most
likely fail! Please try to use the first method. You can test real cheaply, and your chances for success
are real high!
In the next chapter we discuss
How To
Create Your Sales Letter And Ad(s)!
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Bonus Chapter #2: My good friend and mentor, Dan Kennedy adds some of his insight here on
identifying your market, and the critical importance of having a unique selling proposition!
THE PARADE OF BROKEN, TEARY-EYED "INVENTORS"
PASSING THROUGH MY OFFICE JUST NEVER ENDS
Because of the nature of my consulting practice, and my heavy involvement in the TV infomercial
business, I get contracted by dozens and dozens, sometimes hundreds of people each month with
products in need of marketing. In many cases, the "inventor" has poured heart, soul, blood and every
penny he could beg, borrow or steal into publishing his book or making his doohickey . . . with no
earthly idea who will buy it or how to (affordably, effectively and sensible) get it to those presumed-to-
exist customers. Now the "inventor" is without resources and without a
business.
I'm not going to tell you that you CAN'T hit a home run this way. There ARE products that rise up out
of this "traditional" approach and find their way to the marketplace successfully, ultimately making the
originator a fortune. But the odds are right up there with lotteries and lightning strikes. As Jeff says,
this is backwards.
IF YOU COULD HAVE ONLY ONE ASSET, ONE TOOL,
ONE ADVANTAGE, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Our friend, Gary Halbert, uses this as an in-seminar exercise: imagine that you have a whiz-bang new
food product or you have a great new fast food restaurant. If you could add just one thing to put you
over the top, what would you choose? People say: . . . a famous celebrity spokesperson . . . "secret
sauce" . . . a clever name . . . and on and on and on, all "product focused."
Gary says: "I'll give you all that and still whip you, if I can have just on thing -
a
starving crowd.
"
That's being 'market focused'.
The fact is (although I don't advocate it) you can make money with BAD products, if there's a starving
crowd! The "roach coach" lunch wagons that come to factory parking lots and sell junk food prove
this point. The food is bad and over-priced. But the business is lucrative, because of the starving, in
this case, captive crowd.
FIND THE STARVING CROWD FIRST!
Try thinking of yourself as a "Need And Wish Fulfillment Product Architect." An architect does
not
invest months designing a new house from scratch, creating blueprints, assembling costs, and then
finds a client. Instead, he gets a client, finds out what that client needs, wants, will pay for and can
afford, then he designs a blueprint to meet that criteria. He gets his customer first.
PICK A "CROWD" YOU DEEPLY, THOROUGHLY UNDERSTAND,
SHARE PASSIONS WITH, SHARE EXPERIENCES WITH,
SHARE A 'LANGUAGE' WITH, AND HAVE EMPATHY AND CREDIBILITY WITH!
From a tiny market of fewer than 4,000 people (a selected group of my colleagues in the speaking
profession), I routinely "extract" $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 year after year after year, with a few
information products and offers custom-built to appeal exclusively to those people. How can I get
such exceptional numbers? Because I am one of 'em. I understand them as I understand myself. I
talk their language. I know their innermost desires and fears. My "story" has the ring of truth and
authenticity to them. To be very metaphysical for a moment, I am one with my market.
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This is by far, the safest path to making money from scratch in mail-order.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Don't be lazy about your homework. Use SRDS* to find out who has bought what, in what numbers,
from advertising in what media, at what price points. Check old SRDS against new SRDS to see
who's doing well, who's stagnant, who's falling by the wayside. Use SRDS to determine the
demographics of your chosen market: ages, sex, incomes, marital status, etc. Read every magazine
your market reads. Go to all the web sites, chat groups, blogs, ezines, etc. they frequent on-line.
Watch the TV shows they watch. Go to the events they go to. Be concerned about what concerns
them. Gather every fact, every statistic, every article, every successful ad from someone else selling
to your market, every "artifact" you can to enhance your "at oneness" with your market.
THEN be an "architect" to satisfy that market's most urgent, most emotional, most important needs
and desires.
(* Standard Rate and Data Service)
PRODUCT GETS EASY WHEN YOU START WITH A MARKET'S NEEDS AND DESIRES
There are hundreds of different kinds of profitable 'information products' (and services) you can
create, inexpensively 'manufacture', sometimes publish-on-demand, and market. (I detail all of them
in my book 'The Ultimate Information Entrepreneur.') But putting together SUCCESSFUL products
gets much easier (and faster) when you are really responding to a market.
Imagine this: a person hands you a list of 50 questions he wants the answers to, and will pay you
$1,000,000.00 to go and find the answers and provide that information to him in the most appropriate
form.
You have a customer, you know what that customer will cheerfully pay, and you know what he wants.
Can you collect that million dollars?
Probably.
Well, if you understand everything Jeff is teaching you, you get into that very same position, except
it'll be 10,000 people each giving you $100 instead of one person giving you the mill. If you look at
this as a formula, the information - the "product" - is relatively easy; finding the guy who'll give the
million dollars for it is the tougher job. It'd be pretty dumb to assemble a bunch of information and
then try and find a guy who would buy it for a million, wouldn't it?
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Chapter Fourteen
Create Your Ad And Letter!
“You can observe a lot by watching!” Yogi Berra
“It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.” Sister Kenny
Last chapter, we talked about how critical it is to identify your market before creating your "product".
We also talked about having a unique selling proposition (USP), to create an emotional frenzy in
prospects, so they will order your program.
Now, let's assume that you have found a market that looks promising, and that you have a USP that
really sings! What do you do next? Well, we now have to begin the most interesting and fun part of
the process, create ads and a sales letter to send to people who respond to your ad.
Why do I think this is the most fun part? Well, because when I write an ad or a letter that ends up
working, I feel a great sense of accomplishment that goes far beyond the money I make from a
successful venture!
See, when you are able to get people to call you and they end up ordering the program without ever
meeting you in person...you have become a master at understanding human behavior! And once you
understand human behavior so well that you can get people off of their couches to call you, you are
set for life!
See, once you find the right words to say in one project, you'll probably be able to find the right words
in other projects. Which, allows you the comfort to know that unless you screw up big time...you can
always make money! (Which is my definition of the necessary ingredient in life that allows you to be
able to relax!)
OK. Let's talk about writing an ad and sales letter. Now, keep in mind that in my opinion, an ad and a
sales letter are basically the same thing. The ad is usually shorter than the letter, but they have to
have the exact same elements to work.
Each ad and sales letter need to have the following:
1. Powerful headline
2. "Grabber" first words
3. Copy that gets the reader an emotional reaction
4. A compelling offer, with bonuses and guarantees
5. Ask for the desired action
Now, with that said, let's discuss some of the biggest mistakes you could ever make when writing an
ad or sales letter. (These rules apply to anyone, whether you're experienced or just starting out.) If
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your budget is tight, then follow these rules exactly, as they will permit the highest response rates with
the lowest budget possible!
1. Trying to make it "look" pretty.
Never, ever use any graphics or artwork in your ads or letters. They add cost and time, and in my
humble opinion, add nothing to the results. (In fact, I think they can detract from the results!)
2. Trying to be clever.
Never, ever, be clever. (A clever rhyme, eh?) The worst mistake you could make would be to assume
that your cleverness would be understood by anyone other than you! You must be
CRYSTAL CLEAR
on what you say, so that any prospect seeing it would know exactly what you're saying!
For example, my friend, Ted Nicholas, tells the story of his writing a book about getting out of debt.
He titled the book, "How To Get Out From Being Over Your Head". All the bookstores put the book in
the sports section. No one bought it. Then he changed the title from the cute and clever one to, "How
To Get Out Of Debt". And guess what? People actually bought the book!
See, what this story illustrates is that there is nothing to be gained from being clever. Say exactly
what you mean, and you'll always be ahead of the game!
3. Writing like you've been taught at school.
If you use any writing techniques that we're all taught at school, you're sure to fail. You know,
following rules like not ending sentences with prepositions, or having real sentences, or paragraphs
that actually contain several sentences! And so on.
And, I promise you that if your copy reads "professional", rather than "down to earth", you will starve!
If you write your copy as if you were writing a letter to the phone company asking to get your address
changed, or like an executive would write to a college organization, you are going to fail, guaranteed!
Your copy must be written with clarity, using down to earth words, that are written exactly like you or I
speak to each other.
Now, this philosophy is not based on my dislike for "professional" copy. Or because it's easier to write
like you talk. No, actually, this type of copy is my choice
because it sells stuff!
For example, let's
look at the wrong way, and the right way, to write copy that sells:
Wrong way:
If you desire to lose weight to maintain your employment, you should know some important facts.
Most Flight Attendants discover that additional weight gain occurs when they are temporarily idle.
They report that certain categories of food substances, when ingested in quantities greater than the
metabolic system can diffuse the calories, even more weight gain is experienced!
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Right way:
If you're scared you're gonna get fired because you are too heavy, pay close attention here!
See, we
deal with an army of flight attendants. They all tell us that they gain weight when they are sitting
around, doing nothing, and when they eat crappy, fat filled foods! (Foods that not only make you fat,
but can get you sick as a dog!)
Some big surprise, huh?
Now, doesn't the second way communicate the exact same thing as the garbage in the first way? Isn't
the point made in either section precisely the same?
Yes.
(I just used a one word paragraph. Another blunder, say the academics.)
Anyway, I hope you get my point. Write just like you talk, and your sales will always be higher. Use
common expressions. Use everyday words. (e.g. sick as a dog, etc.)
Always. (I did it again! Heh, heh!)
4. Not writing as if you are in their office or home, listening to their private conversations.
This is a skill that almost no one understands. Let me explain. If you are trying to sell a course to
anglers on how to catch more walleyes in the rivers, you need to communicate to these fisher-people
(politically correct, but very awkward way of saying this)
you'd better sound like you were sitting in
their cabin last night!
For example, let's say you know that the reason anglers don't catch as many fish as they should is
that they are not positioning the boat properly, and using the wrong kind of lure. Here are two ways to
say the exact same thing. The wrong way, and the right way:
Wrong way:
Most fisherman use boating techniques that create a problem in catching walleye. Also, they tend to
use lures that really aren't as effective as other types of lures.
Right way:
Does this conversation sound familiar?: "Yeah, when I had the boat next to the rip-rap, and then on
the inside turn of the weed line, we got skunked!" "Yeah, I was flippin' a jerk bait, and then I tried a
crank, you know, that new floatin' Rapalla? Nothing. I always get these post spawn 'eyes on Rapallas,
when nothing else is happening..."
Now which way of communicating sounds like someone talking to fisher-people, versus someone
who
is a fisher-person talking to another fisherperson?
Obviously, the second example makes the reader feel like the writer in one of them. And an instant
psychological and emotional bond is created...which improves your chances of success a million
times!
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So make sure that whatever market you go after, that either you, or the person that you're working
with, knows the prospects lingo, jargon, and most importantly...
knows EXACTLY HOW THEY THINK
AND WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT!
OK? If you appear to be an insider, you're light years ahead of
the other marketers who write professional copy that sounds like an outsider wrote it! Which leads to
the next biggest mistake:
5. Not using stories in your ads and sales letters!
This is a point that is so critical, yet virtually overlooked by everyone. Using stories! (Another wrong
paragraph!) See, Robert Collier said that a picture is worth a thousand words. A
word picture,
however, is worth ten thousand pictures!
When you read a book, you see the story rolling by in your mind's eye. Don't you? Don't you have a
picture of what the characters look like, and what the scene in the story is like, and so forth? Of
course you do!
Now, I have discovered that the most powerful form of communication is to paint a mental picture in
the reader's mind, and you will find your sales going through the roof!
Hardly more than a handful of direct sales copy writers know how to use stories to improve the sales
message. Think about the bible. Isn't it just chock full of
stories?
Did the writers of that powerful sales
book (Which the bible is. It is used to convert people to a certain way of thinking. Right? Isn't that
what sales copy does? Convert people to thinking enough like you to order? Think about this!)
understand that concepts are much easier to digest when they written in story form?
If you have a concept you want to get across, use a story to illustrate it...just like I did with the two
fishing examples I told you about, a couple of minutes ago. (See, I said "told" and "minutes", instead
of "wrote" and "pages"! Watch for this when you listen to my stuff. It is not in there by accident!)
6. Asking your step to do more than it is supposed to do!
This is a big mistake. People want their marketing stuff to do everything. To get leads. To make sales.
And so on.
Keep in mind, that the only purpose of the headline is to get someone to notice the ad. The headline
is not trying to do anything more than that. The ad is designed to get them to call into your voice mail
box. That's it. It isn't trying to make a sale. Just trying to get them to call! The voice mail message isn't
trying to get them to buy either. It's merely trying to get them to leave their name and address. (You'll
get their phone numbers if you use a service that has caller ID.) Now, the sales letter they get
is
trying
to sell them something.
Maybe.
See, in my case, with the higher priced items, I found that they are likely to buy after talking to
someone. So, my sales letters are really designed to get them to
call us!
Then, one of our sales
people can close the sale.
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See, if you expect each step to do more than it can reasonably do, your marketing will break down.
Today's consumers don't like to be pushed into anything. The easier and gentler you move them
through the system, you will make way more sales and profits! (Bad grammar, but correct, for selling
type copy.)
You have tons of examples of ads and letters in your course. Feel free to use them as models for
whatever you decide to do. You should also pick up some books on writing copy that sells. I have all
of these and refer and re-read them frequently.
1. "Robert Collier Letter Book", by Robert Collier.
2. "The Ultimate Sales Letter", by Dan Kennedy.
3. "How To Make Your Advertising Make More Money", by John Caples
4. "Tested Advertising Methods", by John Caples.
5. "How To Write A Good Advertisement", by Victor Schwab.
Alright! Next, we're going to review how to correctly test your ideas, without spending hardly any
money! (Wow! Is my proper writing atrocious or what?)
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Bonus Chapter #3: My good friend and mentor, Dan Kennedy adds some of his insight here on
WRITING ADS AND SALES LETTERS THAT SELL! Dan was nice enough to share his thoughts
with us, so here they are!
7 Tips For Putting Together Marketing Documents' That Work
I thought I'd confirm and expand on a few of the points Jeff has shared with you so far.
1. Forget About "Advertising". Stay Focused
On "Salesmanship In Print".
I once owned a 'regular' advertising agency, and I can tell you...firmly...that the ads, sales letters and
other materials people like Jeff and I use to make huge incomes, selling information by mail, have
absolutely nothing to do with advertising. Instead, they are selling duplicated. They are "talking in
print".
I also have been a salesman all my life, and I can tell you...firmly...that our marketing documents
have a whole lot to do with selling. The powerful headline, for example, is akin to the attention-
getting, compelling first thing out of the salesman's mouth - usually including an exciting promise - to
stop the prospect from hanging up the phone or slamming the door (or mind) shut.
And, because of that, I'll give you a big moneymaking secret right here and now; just like Jeff urges
you to find and study the books by the old, early masters of direct-response advertising, I suggest you
do the same with the old books by the early masters of selling. At the library or a used bookstore,
find an out-of-print book called DYNAMIC SELLING by Robert Trailins. Or THE CLOSERS. Anything
by Red Motley. Frank Bettger's HOW I RAISED MYSELF FROM FAILURE TO SUCCESS IN
SELLING.
2. Warning: It's Easy To Be Too Cute Or Clever For Your Own Good.
Selling is pretty straightforward. Even selling via media, like TV infomercials, works best when it's
pretty straightforward. You see, people think advertising is a creative thing, that creating advertising
requires you to be clever, cute, to be a great writer. But that's advertising, not selling.
3. It's Like A Jaguar Automobile - Looks Great, But Doesn't Run
I've got an acquaintance who owns a Jag. The darned thing looks like the automotive equivalent of
an absolutely stunning, conversation stopping super model strolling into the room in the skimpiest,
tightest evening gown imaginable. Unfortunately, he doesn't get to drool over his Jag as much as
he'd like - because it doesn't run, so it's always in the garage. It spends more time with his mechanic
than with him. And I'm sure his mechanic enjoys looking at it, too.
See, if you want something pretty to look at, go get that super-model. Or a Ming vase. But if you
want to get down the road to the 7-11 to get a quart of milk and a newspaper, forget the Jaguar. A
good, boxy ugly Dodge with a stick shift is a better bet.
If you want something really elegant to look at, on slick paper, with beautiful photographs, lots of
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white space, that you can look at and admire and your friends will ooh and aah over, go hire a bunch
of Armani suited guys in an ad agency and you will get it.
But if you want to sell something, forget all that slick stuff. Forget being cute, clever or creative. Put
together a sales letter that works like that clunky but reliable Dodge.
4. "Mommy, Mommy, read me a story."
Jesus told stories (parables) to make his points. And every adept speaker since has done the very
same thing. Garrison Keiller and Tom Bodett have made fortunes as storytellers. When you were a
child, you were "into" stories. Having a story read to you was a treat, a reward. If all this doesn't tell
you how to command attention and get your ideas accepted, you just aren't paying attention.
5. You Can Write a Sales Letter Even If You
Can't Write A Grocery List
That's the entire premise of my book: THE ULTIMATE SALES LETTER. It's a simple, little book that
takes you by the hand through 28 steps - same ones I use - winding up with a completed, effective
sales letter. And I get letters all the time from people who have trouble writing out a thank you note,
who sit down with this book, follow along, and wind up with their own sales letter that works. Some
people get so good at it, quickly, they can't stop doing it. I've created "pros" with this book. Don't build
it up in your mind to anything tougher than it is. As Nike says: Just Do It.
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6. You Will Improve Your Odds If You Stick To Accomplishing
One Objective At A Time
I do not totally, always agree with Jeff about restricting each step in a sales process to accomplishing
a single, very limited task. I know of ways to violate that instruction successfully. But, I agree that his
approach is the easiest to make work. If you want to weigh the odds as far in your favor as possible,
ask your sales letter to do just one thing; include everything that can make that one thing happen; cut
out anything that doesn't move the reader closer to taking that one action.
7. But Now, Here's The Biggest Secret
To Sales Letters...
...WHO gets your letter. As pro copywriters – Jeff and I routinely get paid $10,000.00 to $35,000.00
to write a series of sales letters! I'd love to insist that my copy makes all the difference in the world.
I'd be lying, or an ego maniac. Most pro copywriters grudgingly admit: it's the list, stupid!
The readiness to respond to your kind of offer of the recipient of your letter is the single most
important success factor. That's why, almost always, leads generated by advertising are far more
productive than rented names on others' mailing lists. If you can figure out how to affordably acquire
qualified, motivated, responsive, ready prospects, you're more than half way to the goal line!
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Chapter Fifteen
Test, Test and More Testing!
“In calm waters, every ship has a good captain. Swedish Proverb
“I never tried quitting, and I never quit trying.” Dolly Parton
OK, Last chapter, we talked about writing copy that SELLS, as opposed to copy that is clever, boring,
or otherwise useless. Now, we're going to assume you've done the following things:
1. Found a starving crowd. A market that wants something badly.
2. Written an ad and sales letter that you think will hit their hot buttons right on the head.
3. Built up an expectation of success and are ready to start making money!
OK. Let's move into step 3. Let's see if your ideas are going to work!
Before we get into some specific testing instructions, we need to have a frank discussion about this
concept of success, and its evil twin cousin, failure.
See, whenever you have an idea of something other people will want to buy, it's inevitable that you
will be convinced that everyone else will be as impressed with your idea as you are. It's only natural.
You love it, so why wouldn't everyone else?
Well, while all that is perfectly OK to be thinking, I have to give you some friendly advice:
Don't Get Emotionally Involved With Your Project!
Yes, you should be enthusiastic about your brainchild. Yes you should be excited about the
possibilities. Yes, you should put everything you can into making it successful. But, getting "married"
to your books or whatever, is not going to help, and in fact, can kill you, big time!
Understand that being so in love with your project, that you can't see reality, is not the right state of
mind. I'm saying this because you must have a clear, uncluttered perspective of whether or not your
testing results are good, bad or ugly!
Here's the deal. You must test your concept as cheaply and safely as possible. I'll explain exactly how
in a second. But if you don't have a firm grip on reality, before you spend your first nickel, you may
end up in deeper water than you should be swimming in!
See, I love this business more than any business I could imagine. When I say "this business", I don't
mean that marketing of information to financial advisors. I mean the information marketing
business, in general! I have three different active information marketing businesses going on right
now, and have two more in the preliminary testing phase as we speak.
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See, testing is the method of preventing little failures from becoming big disasters. It is the safety net
that allows you to move onto a higher tightrope after seeing that a lower one seems to be OK. It is the
control device that can make you, or break you!
When I discuss little failures, I want you to know that I, as well as every other successful direct
marketer I've ever met or heard about,
has had many, many failures!
Some of the best guys in the
business have had many more failures than successes. (Myself included, believe me.)
See, if you test the way I'm going to tell you to, you'll never feel
too
bad about failing, because you
won't have wasted too much money. You will learn to change the way you think about failing from a
negative emotion...to a positive one!
You'll realize that each failure is a stepping stone to real success. Thomas Edison said when asked
why he kept going on trying to invent the light bulb, after failing 10,000 times, that he
now knew
10,000 ways not to make a light bulb!
Do you see that each failure is nothing more than a feedback mechanism that tells you whether or not
your idea is worth a damn, or only worth chalking up to experience and more knowledge!
As an example, I once spent two months writing a book I was
sure
was going to sell big. I
knew
the
market I was going after would eat it up. I spent countless hours writing the ad for it. I committed
$10,000 to the test ads. I
knew
that it would at least break even. I had 1,000 books printed to handle
all the orders I knew were coming.
Peggy and all my associates at work said it was the best thing I had ever done.
When the first ad hit, I knew I was dead in about two days. We had only two or three orders. As the
weeks went by, I knew all was lost. I ended up eating a lot of the books for dinner since they weren't
much good for anything else.
The moral of the story?
1. Never, ever, ever assume anything you do will sell, until people actually respond.
2. Never, ever try one step ads, unless you have a lot of money, and don't mind sucking wind most
of the time.
3. Never print up an inventory of product, except for a teeny, tiny amount. If you bomb, you won't
have wasted any money on inventory. And if it is a hit, you have 30 days to fill the orders, which
should be plenty of time to print up more.
4. Even us so called "smart guys" make the mistake of falling in love with our work.
Now, One thing I didn't do was get all pissed off, and stew about the failure. I actually liked the
disaster. Why? Because it taught me how to never make any of those mistakes again. It taught me
humility. It taught me to listen to my own advice.
It also hurt me enough to make me sting very badly, which I deserved. Fortunately, it wasn't even
close to being fatal, because I had enjoyed enough success by that point, that I had plenty of cash
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reserves. But, if I had made that same mistake when I got started, I would have been buried deep into
the ground.
Please Follow This Plan For Testing! Do Not Waste Money!
If you want to avoid financial disasters, as well as the emotional grief that can follow a dumb move,
than use this plan as your guide to safety:
1. Get a TOLL-FREE voice mail box. (You can call Automated Marketing Solutions (please tell them
Instant Profits Marketing sent you) at 1.800.858.8889, to get set up with direct mail recorded
message systems, if you don't have a local service that can get your messages, as well as the
phone numbers the calls come in on. They have a voice ID system, that gets you the phone
numbers of every lead, without having to ask for the phone numbers!)
2. Write your ad(s) that are designed to get the leads to call the voice mail box and leave their name
and address for the free information. Then write your sales letter. (Or, some people do better
when they write the sales letter first, and then take the best stuff out of there to write the ad!)
3. DO NOT TRY ONE STEP ADS! GO FOR THE LEADS! IT IS MUCH SAFER TO TEST LEAD
GENERATION ADS, AS OPPOSED TO ADS THAT GO FOR THE SALE DIRECTLY!
4. Find the magazines or other publications that you want to advertise in. Get their media kits, and
see how many people get the magazine, what their advertising rates are, etc.
5. The number, and size of ads you run for the test will depend on your budget. Call the magazine(s)
of your choice, and try to get them to give you the lowest rate they can for your first test ad. BE
SURE TO TELL THEM YOU'LL GIVE THEM CAMERA READY COPY, AND THAT YOU WANT
THE STANDARD 15% ADVERTISING AGENCY DISCOUNT! (They'll all do this, but you'll have to
ask, and give them camera ready copy. If you can't do the camera ready copy on your own
computer/laser printer, bring your draft to a Kinkos or whatever, and have them do it. It'll be
cheaper to pay them, and get the 15% discount in most cases!)
6. DO NOT COMMIT TO MORE THAN ONE, TWO AT THE MOST, TEST ADS! Do not listen to the
B.S. of the sales reps of the publications. If it doesn't work the first time, it won't work in
subsequent attempts! Just try it once or twice, but that's it. If they tell you you're going to miss an
issue of the publication because they need so much lead time to place the ad, then tell them that's
just the way it will have to be! Explain that you won't repeat an ad until you know the test was
successful.
7. There is no specific formula to judge whether a test is successful. But, I can give you some
guidelines to follow so you know if you're in the ballpark:
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Divide the number of leads you get into the cost of the ad to determine the lead cost. For example, if
your ad costs you $300, and you get 30 people who have left their name and address, you have a
lead cost of $10. ($300/30=$10). This figure, in and of itself, isn't the answer you're looking for, but it
is a guide to compare one ad versus another.
Add up your other costs to start figuring your success or failure rate. If your mailer costs you $2
apiece for the first one, and $1 apiece for the second and third mailers, then you have a $4 mailing
cost. Let's say your phone bill (800 voice mail) runs $1 a lead. So, for this example, you have:
Ad cost-
$300
Mailing cost-
120 (30 leads x $4)
Voice mail-
30 (30 leads x $1)
Total cost-
$450
Now, if your package sells for $455, you need to sell 1 unit to break even. If you sell 2 or more
packages, then the test would be successful!
If your package sells for $113, than you need to sell 4 units to break even, and so forth!
Now, of course, you can see why I prefer higher priced packages. But, you can test your prices as
well as anything else. You can send out half the leads one price, and the other half a different price.
Don't be surprised to find the higher priced packages selling as well, or even better, than the
lower priced tests.
(Don't be afraid to price test. One person won't know that another person got a letter offering the
same deal at a different price. If for some reason, someone calls you about it, than just give that one
person the lower price!)
Does all this make sense? See, if you test carefully, and see what the real demand for your idea is,
you will never get hurt badly. The bottom line is this:
The only true measure of your idea is what the market tells you with real live testing! All the
conjecture in the world will not replace a well designed test!
Now, if you lose money on the front end test, you may want to change something to see if a different
version will work better. If your "back-end" is the goal of the project, you may be able to afford losing
money on the "front-end". If you just have the front end, and it loses money, and you can't fix it, then
forget it.
If the tests start to work, then you can make the ads a little bigger, or run them in a few other
publications to see if the original test was valid.
If the tests keep working, save your money and reinvest any profits that you can afford to leave in the
business for more, and bigger ads. I started with a $138 ad, and through careful testing and
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reinvesting, later spent $14,000 a month on ads, generating between $150,000 and $200,000 a
month in revenue!
Now, to prove to you that I keep doing this myself, I want to relate a story to you about my own testing
of a different project. You might remember that I found a fellow who knew all about a particular
market, but did not know how to do all the stuff I've taught you. As a matter of fact, he was running
around the country, killing himself, doing seminars to sell his materials. When we met, I wanted to get
into his market through mail order, and he wanted to get off the road. We combined forces, drafted an
ad and sales letter and…
Tested, Tested, Tested!
First we ran some regional ads in the biggest trade magazine in this industry. (You can often get to
test a big ad, but just in one region, for a fraction of testing a big ad in the whole magazine's
distribution.)
We had some decent lead costs, and the letter worked OK, but not great. (We made a small profit,
but nothing to get excited about. Then we tweaked the ad and letter some, raised the price, and the
results got much better. (We got to the point where a $1,000 ad was selling $9,000 worth of courses.)
Then, and only then, did we go full speed with a full page national ad for $13,500. (After eight months
of testing, testing, testing.) How did we do in the first month? Well, how does 6,000 leads, and 300
courses at $600 average price sound? (That's $180,000 in front end sales. We are just now going to
test the back end.) The moral of this story?
We took the same formula I’ve described to you, and applied it exactly to another market, and after
careful testing, rolled it out, and it's going to be as big as PPS! And if it didn't work?
I would know more about my business, and be out a few thousand bucks. (Keep in mind, that I can
now test a full page ad, and afford to spend $1,000 or $2,000 testing a new idea. In the old days,
when I was getting started, I would spend $200-300 to test. It's all exactly the same principles, just
with a bigger budget.)
If you start your testing with hardly any money, that's fine. Just get in the game, and quit thinking
about it. Start your tests, like NOW, and see what you learn! Good, bad, or indifferent, it doesn't
matter. Just being in the game with some sort of a test is the first step to a new life. Promise me you'll
try. OK?
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Bonus Chapter #4: Here, Dan Kennedy adds his insight into TESTING, TESTING, TESTING!
A LIFETIME OF FAILURE
I think most people have a "picture" of the entrepreneurial experience that goes something like this: I
struggle and starve when I start out. I make lots of mistakes. I learn tough lessons. I experience
"failure". Then I get smart. Then I experience "success". Somehow ARRIVING at a point of zero
failure. 100% success. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the few constants of a lifetime
of entrepreneurship, is the mixture of failure and success... and the process of failures birthing
occasional success. In the direct marketing field, we call "failure" by a different, nicer sounding name:
Testing!
If you do not approach everything Jeff is teaching you with the emotional and financial determination
to test, test, test...and test some more, you are doomed to PERMANENT failure. Of course, it is
possible to hit a home run first time at bat. Rank amateurs occasionally do it. Very experienced pros
do it a little more often. I did it three times last year (out of about 15 tries). But, more often than not,
you will have to test, tweak, adjust, change, modify, test, tweak, and gradually make each piece of
your first "money machine" work...eventually getting the whole machine working.
Imagine having to invent the automobile from scratch. You might get the square block of rock sanded
into a round circle thing figured out first - you've got "the wheel" and that thing works. But then there's
the challenge of the engine. And the transmission. And the windshield. And the windshield wipers.
And, oh yeah, brakes. Etc. Etc.
Let me tell you about one of my clients, just as an example of a "lifetime" in this business. They
started out in the mind of 1980's, trying to market a series of how-to books about making money from
home, in various unusual businesses.
They tried and gave up on six different advertising campaigns before hitting on an ad that
emphasized one of their moneymaking plans, that was much more appealing to the marketplace than
all their other plans added together.
As Jeff tells you, the
marketplace
had to tell them what to do.
They revised their product; they strengthened and re-tested the successful ad; they re-wrote the
follow-up letters, and, over a period of another year of testing, testing, testing, they finally got each
piece of the machine performing very successfully - the ad, the recorded message, the follow-up
sales letters, the product itself, and the upsells.
From the late 1980's through 1991, they ran their ads in between ten and thirty magazines almost
every month, mailed hundreds of thousands of sales letters, and, in total, stacked up well over 10
million dollars in sales, and, in terms of "net", made themselves bona fide millionaires.
In 1991, they began trying to develop their "next" product (money machine). After a year of struggle,
trying and giving up on things, they again hit on a winner, which provided them with a virtually
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automatic 5-figure monthly income. In 1992, they tried a third money machine - and with print ads,
direct-mail and television...and they failed miserably. In 1993, they sold their first business, they
discontinued their second business as it had -as some do- quickly run its course, they gave up on the
third project, and pretty much took the entire year off. In 1994, they are testing three different projects,
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with the hope of having a new, major operation up and running in 1995. It’s still going now 9 years
later in 2004.
What Was "The Old Pro" Doing Last Week?
Last week I talked to one of the "pioneers" of direct-responses advertising and direct-mail marketing
of horoscope/astrology, psychic advice, and mind power information. This gentleman ran his first ad
in 1948. He has made many millions of dollars over the years, is financially secure, and is well-known
to the top pros in this field. His full-page ads have appeared in countless issues of the National
Enquirer, Star, Tattler, etc. as well as "niche" magazines, like Astrology Today, New Age and
Prevention. Last week, when I talked with him, he was testing a new direct-mail campaign... mailing
5 different versions of the same packages, testing different headlines, prices and bonuses.
It never ends.
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Chapter Sixteen
Rolling Out!
“When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.” Henry J. Kaiser
“Watch out! You might get what you're after.” David Byrne
Now, we're going to assume you've done the following things:
1. Found a starving crowd. A market that wants something badly.
2. Written an ad and sales letter that you think will hit their hot buttons right on the head.
3. Built up an expectation of success and are ready to start making money!
4. Started to test your idea, and are getting some level of success, even if it's modest at this point.
OK. Let's go right into the next step,
Putting Together A Prototype Of Your "Product(s)" And
Moving Into A "Rollout".
One of the most important points of doing this type of specialty market niche information, direct
marketing is that you don't have to buy, or invest hardly any money in "inventory".
Let me explain what I mean by way of an example. Let's say that you wanted to get into direct
marketing, or direct mail, or whatever, in the more traditional way of selling tangible products.
You know, things like cute horses with clocks in their stomach, hair braiding tools, painted dishes,
watches with pictures of the president or Mickey Mouse, water filters, and on and on and on.
There are two ways to get involved in this sort of business. One is to buy or make the product, and
spend all the money and/or time to get a supply ready to sell.
The other way is to hook up with an outfit that will drop ship your orders to your customers. You send
them their wholesale cost they charge you, and then they send the product(s) to the customer. And,
you keep the difference between what you've collected and what you're being charged.
Now let's explore these two methods, and see why I have avoided them like the plague, and focused
on niche, information marketing!
The first method requires that you have enough money, or borrowing capacity, or both, to either buy
or build your product.
Now, the nature of this type of product is that you must tie up money in inventory or raw materials. If
people place any orders, you have to ship them what they paid for.
(The Federal Trade Commission and most Attorney Generals sort of frown upon your taking
orders and not sending the product(s) to the customers.)
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Now, you must keep in mind that FTC rules require that you deliver your customer's orders no later
than 30 days after you receive the order. It used to be that you had 30 days after you either deposited
their check or ran their credit card charge through. Not anymore.
You must deliver the order within 30 days of the receipt of the order. If you cannot deliver, you must
notify the customer in writing, and provide them the option of replying at your expense as to whether
or not they wish to wait, or want a refund.
The reason I'm bringing this up, is that this point is extremely important when it comes to what you
choose to sell.
If you sell a tangible product, you'd better have enough inventory or raw materials to make the
product ready to deliver in a month.
I cannot tell you how easy it is to get messed up big time, by ordering a product from a manufacturer
or distributor ether before or after getting your orders, and then finding out things like:
•
"We are temporarily out of stock, and cannot send you the materials you ordered."
•
"Our plant in Taiwan is having labor problems, and the clocks will not be here for a couple of
•
months."
•
"We cannot drop ship your apple peelers due to a deep freeze in the Amazon Rain Forest. We
•
should be able to resume shipping in a few months, after the freeze ends."
•
"Due to Hurricane Andrew, we will be forced to shut down production until the factory is
rebuilt..."
And so on.
See, if you need and depend on others to make your products, deliver your products, or provide raw
materials for you to make your own products...
You are asking to have nothing but trouble and aggravation!
Trust me. If something can go wrong, when you depend on third parties for your livelihood, it will! Not
to mention, that the mark-ups from being a distributor are usually not high enough to make a living!
So, with that brief discussion about selling "products" as opposed to "information", let's talk about the
real beauty of the niche information selling business!
First of all, you have none of the problems we just described a second ago.
You'll never have to depend on others, or be annihilated because you can't get something shipped to
you or your customers! See, basically, your "product" can be something as simple as 25 pages
typewritten, and copied on a copy machine!
(When I first got started, Peggy and I used to copy the books at the local "Staples" office supply store,
and three hole punch them at home!)
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Think about how important this is! You will never have to get stuck without product, or wait for
something to get here from Singapore.
While that is critical, the next point is even more critical. What point?
Inventory.
Inventory is a very nasty word. It implies having a supply of widgets laying around, waiting to be sent
to eager customers.
Inventory is something a typical good businessperson has to contend with. But not us.
See, us information entrepreneurs don't have to have anything except a word processor and a four-in-
one machine! (You know. Like I have. Which is a fax/printer/copier/scanner all in one. It’s made by
HP, the hp officejet d135.)
Anyway, beginning like this is not silly or "unprofessional". It works, as long as the information you are
selling is what the people want!
Now, when you get some more money, you can hire a printer and have them print your stuff up. But
in the beginning, you can get by with very simple production methods.
Why is this so important?
Because you don't have money tied up in inventory, allowing you to use whatever money you have,
(even if it's almost nothing) to RUN ADS!
See, let's say you have a $500 budget to get something going. Not a lot of money in the scheme of
the world, but it may be a real lot to you right now. (Believe me, it was a fortune to me when I got
started!)
And you have a choice of testing three ads for $167 each, or running one ad for $167, and spending
$333 on printing up books, waiting to be sold, which strategy makes more sense?
Well, if you know me at all by now, you'll realize that there is no contest. Running the ads is the only
answer.
Remember when we talked about testing? And when we said that you have to test inexpensively
to find the right message in the right media?
OK. So we have to test. And running three ads to test is three times better than running one ad,
hoping it works, and then having a pile of books sitting around with no one to sell them to!
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Listen to something I've said before, but it bears repeating:
Never, ever assume anything will work until you've tested it first!
Right?
So, what you have to do is very simple. Once you've got your idea ready to roll, make up a master
copy of your product. Just one. Then, test your ad or ads.
If and when you get a hit, and people are ordering your book, you simply run some copies off, and
send out the orders! Not only is this the cheapest way to make an expensive product on the planet, it
is also the safest way to make and sell an expensive product!
Just to remind you, my very first book was 50 pages long, typewritten, and photocopied at the store,
by hand.
Each book cost us about $2 to photocopy.
We bought $2 three ring notebooks, and went home to punch the holes in a hand held manual three
hole punch because it was cheaper to punch the holes ourselves than it was to buy the paper pre-
punched.
Total cost of product? About $4. Original sales price? $395. Profit margin?
Awesome.
See, I knew that the information was worth the price of the book. I also knew that I could have spent
much more money on each book, and made them look just like a store bought book.
I could have had a bunch of them lying around. I could have done all those things, but I didn't.
See, I knew that I had no room for even the slightest error, or waste of even a penny. Every cent was
necessary for survival. So I quickly figured out that having a simple but useful book, was infinitely
preferable to a beautiful and expensive stack of inventory.
(Of course, we keep some inventory on hand nowadays. But only enough for a week's worth of
orders. I will still not tie up any more money in inventory than that. Yes, I have much more money
now, than then, but I still try to be smart!)
Now, when your product starts selling well, and you see a sort of predictable pattern of orders coming
in, then you have the luxury of printing up some products, and having a few of them on hand at a
time.
So, my message is to never, ever accumulate a huge inventory!
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Always play this close to the vest. Have enough around to fill your immediate orders, and keep an
order in with the printer to get you x number of books, every x days. But don't sit on inventory!
If you have a huge hit, then you can plan your inventory ahead of time to a certain degree. But not
when you're just starting to roll out your tests into bigger ads, and get a real business going.
Make sense?
See, this concept is sort of way outside the traditional way people do things. Particularly bigger
companies. But in this home based, information age of the 21
st
Century, with faxes, computers, the
web and email, there is no need to think like everyone else. This issue is one that falls into the
category of being street smart. Marketing professors at college would look at me like I was nuts to tell
you things like this. That's OK. Because they don't have to make things work on almost no budget.
I've had to. And that's why I'm using my common sense to succeed, and have learned to avoid
thinking like everyone thinks things are "supposed" to be done! Starting out with little inventory, and
more ads, is the only thing that is based in common sense.
And common, street smart sense will get you to the top faster than you could ever believe!
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Bonus Chapter #5: Here, Dan Kennedy adds his insight into the costly mistake of having
inventory instead of advertising! Dan was nice enough to share his thoughts with us, so here
they are!
"I HATE SLEEPING DOLLARS"
In the early 1980's, I took over a fairly large, custom manufacturing company in severe financial
difficulty. Existent management's greatest source of pride was the giant warehouse filled with
hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inactive inventory.
One of the biggest assets against which their bankers had loaned considerable, now uncollectable
sums of money, was this same huge warehouse bloated with inactive inventory. These executives
and these bankers were, in my opinion, stupid beyond belief. I mention this because it does
represent traditional business thinking (or stupidity, as I prefer to define it) and it represents the
opposite of the path Jeff has carved out of the woods for you.
Back then, I took an ax to that inventory and quickly found or invented ways to standardize packaging
and make multiple uses of the same component parts, so as to support 300% more sales with an
inventory reduced by 100%.
Why did I do that? For the very same reason that, these days, I operate my mail-order business, with
21 different products, as well as my speaking/seminar business (which sells over 1-million dollars in
product per year) with the barest minimum of inventory, with interchangeable component parts, and
with publishing on demand, and why I always "dry test" new products pretty much as Jeff has
described here in the last couple of chapters.
Because every dollar sitting on a shelf in inventory is a dollar that cannot be out there working hard,
turning over and over, multiplying itself in advertising and marketing or cannot be taken out for my
personal use, investment or enjoyment. I believe that INVENTORY and OVERHEAD are the
enemies of maximum profit. A dollar invested in advertising is a WORKING DOLLAR; a dollar
invested in inventory is a SLEEPING DOLLAR. And in a high mark-up business like "information
products", it's very, very rare for the economy of volume production and inventorying to make up for
the loss of a working dollar.
So, the first thing I would call to your attention to is the beauty of the particular mail-order business
you are learning about is: little or no sleeping dollars.
The second thing I would emphasize is the corollary of simplicity. Fred Herman, arguably the
greatest sales trainer in American history, coined the term "KISS", standing for "Keep It Simple,
Salesman!" Well, we ARE salesmen; we sell mostly via print rather than in-person, but we are
salesmen nonetheless. And that's good, because that's where the money is.
Money is NOT in inventorying products, unpacking boxes, piling up inventory on shelves in your
garage or basement; money is NOT in sleeping dollars; and money is NOT in complexity. The smart
salesman learns and uses the simplest, straightest possible path to maximum earnings. The specific
"model" that Jeff has presented in this book is such a path.
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The last thing I'd like to comment on is "testing." As I've mentioned before, there is a never-ending,
really amazing parade through my Office of inventors, authors, publishers, manufacturers, importers,
people with ideas, big companies, novices, almost all passionately in love with their particular idea,
almost all determined to tell the marketplace what it should and will want.
And I am here to tell you that the fastest path to tax-loss city is trying to dictate to the marketplace.
Failures never test their hypotheses and assumptions. Smart, successful people look for
opportunities to test, so as to let their chosen market dictate to them.
Back to Fred Herman. Fred is, to my knowledge, the only sales trainer ever to guest on the Johnny
Carson Show - introduced as America's greatest salesman. Carson handed Fred the ashtray off his
desk and said "Sell it to me."
Fred examined it, muttered quietly about its looks and quality, then asked Johnny: "If you were to buy
this astray, how much would you expect to pay for it?" Carson answered with a price and Fred said,
"Sold." He closed the sale in less than 3 minutes, on national TV, and gave millions of viewers a
"KISS" lesson in selling (and testing) - he let his market dictate to him.
Tying up money in inventory is bad. Tying up money in untested assumptions is just as bad, maybe
worse. Follow all of Jeff's instructions for carefully, gradually testing your ideas and listening to your
chosen market, and you'll be richer for it.
By the way, earlier I used the term "publishing on demand." I love publishing on demand. One of my
very first information product projects, nearly 17 years ago, was sending a little catalog to a niche
market of about 2,000 prospects, offering choices of about 50 different "reports" on very specific
subjects. Each Report was 4 to 8 pages long. I had very little money to work with, so I put every cent
of it into printing and mailing my catalogs. My "product" had to be made onesy-twosy, as cash orders
arrived. Every morning I walked across the street from my apartment and picked up my orders from
my P.O. Box, walked next door to my bank and deposited the checks, took the originals of the
Reports out of their file folders and made the necessary copies to fill the orders, put the copies in
envelopes and addressed them, walked back over to the post office and mailed them, went home,
and went down to the pool for the rest of the day. I made about $20,000 in 3 months doing nothing
but that.
There are days, these days, when I wonder why I've complicated my life beyond that! But even these
days, 8 of my 21 products are "manufactured" much the same way, although the "production" is done
once a week instead of every morning, and it's done for me instead of by me. But the principles are
the same!
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Chapter Seventeen
Build Your Back End Profit Machine!
“Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.” Ambrose Pierce
“No victor believes in chance.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Now we're going to talk about the reality of any direct marketing business, the "back end"!
Here's the deal: No matter how successful you are, or hope to be with your main product, the front
end sales will almost never carry you to the mansion and yacht you may want to own.
Let me explain the concept of the "front end", versus the "back end", and then tell you how and what
to do.
See, the "front end" is usually going to be the first sale you make to a new information product
purchaser.
In the case of my financial planning information program, my front end sale is either $497, or $677,
depending on which membership the new customer signs up for.
Now, in the very beginning, I was making a lot of money with just the front end sale. My cost is about
$40-50, and when you're selling the materials for $497 and $677, you would expect to make money,
right?
Well, yes I did make money.
But, as with every direct marketing information program, the economics change after a short
honeymoon period, and you must have a back end series ready to roll after a few months...if you
want to continue to make big money!
Let me use my own numbers to illustrate my point.
In the beginning, I ran one ad for $138 that generated the initial business. After a short while I ran my
first full page ad for $2,200, and earned over $50,000 worth of sales from that ad!
After a few months, my responses went down from that one magazine, and I started to test other
publications. About a year after starting out, I had an ad budget of $14,000 a month, and my sales
were over $80,000 a month. Still profitable, even after all the mailing costs, etc. Actually, I made over
$500,000 in profits that first year.
Now, let's move to the end of the second year. Still the same $14,000 ad budget, but front end sales
are down, and expenses are up. Refunds are up. All things being equal, my profits should be down,
right?
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Well, actually, I netted way more money the second year, than the first! How?
Because My Back End Sales Were More Than My Front End Sales!
See, after the first year, I realized that my expenses were inevitably going to climb, and my leads and
sales were inevitably going to decline. In just about any direct marketing program like this, that is
usually the case.
So, I did a couple of things. One, I added a couple of small products to advertise in my monthly
newsletter. These were things that many customers had asked for, and that I decided to offer
separately. Since I was mailing the newsletter anyway, why not add some "commercials" to see if
people were interested?
Well, they sold pretty well, and I realized that these back end sales were better than my front
end sales!
See, it costs me about $140 or more to acquire a new customer. That is the ad cost, plus the mailing
cost added together for each new customer.
But, it only costs me a buck or so a month to mail a newsletter! So, if someone orders a product for
$495, my advertising cost is almost nil!
Once I figured this out, I started asking customers what they wanted, and either creating those things
myself, or finding people who had those items, and offering to split the net profits of any sales to my
customers with them. (Which is usually 50/50.)
For example, one of my friends wanted to write a software program for our customers, which he
eventually did. We offered it originally at $495. Our advertising cost was the expense of copying a
video we shot demonstrating the software, ($4) and a sample of the output/reports the software
generates, ($3), plus the $1 each month to promote the software.
Not too much money, wouldn't you agree?
And, the sales have been in the range of 10% of the customers ordering the program. In fact, we've
sold about $10,000 - $20,000 a month worth of this software. Instead of the net profit being about 30-
40%, as is the case with the front end...the net profits are about 80-85% on this back end product!
Now, I split the profits with my buddy, which means I'm netting about 40% out of each sale. Which, is
about the same as my front end, but...I didn't have to write or create the program!
I just advertise it, and that's it. He has to answer all their questions, take sales calls, etc.
I sell, he services and updates the program. In fact, we just recently offered a much improved version
of the software, and raised the price to $795, and still sell the same number of units! (The $495 price
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was way too cheap. His program is the best out there for that particular type of software, and is still
too cheap at $795.)
Anyway, I have cut several other deals with people who I've met, or found, and sell over 15 different
products to my customers. I've only created a few of them myself.
(My attitude is that it is better to split 50/50, with someone else doing all the creating, than it is to
create all the time. I don't mind creating a few things, but my time is better spent finding other
people's deals to sell, and diversifying my business interests into new companies in new markets!)
I hope this is making sense to you. The whole secret, that no one understands, is that
the back end
sales are infinitely more profitable than the front end sales!
And, you do not have to be a creation machine to have back end stuff to sell. Not in the least.
Any time I see someone selling something that I think my customers might want, I try to arrange a
trial with my customers to see if the product is appealing to my people. Sometimes the sales are too
little to continue, and sometimes they are big sellers!
I explain to the third parties that I cannot guarantee anything as far as sales go, except the following:
1. They will have zero advertising expense to market to my customers. I will put ads in my monthly
catalog that accompanies my newsletter, and see if anyone is interested. As I said before, since
I'm mailing the newsletter anyway, I'm not going to charge the third party anything to test their
product to my people.
2. If it starts selling, we'll both make money. They'll get customers they probably would not have
access to, thus, they're getting 50% of something, instead of 100% of nothing! Plus, they have
ZERO risk up front, which they wouldn't have if they had to pay to run ads or mail to my
customers!
(By the way, I try to negotiate a discount for our members, off of the usual price people pay off the
street for their product. I don't always get the discounts, but I try. When I do, it makes my customers
more pleased that they are members of my program. They buy things they wanted anyway, and get a
cheaper price through me!)
Anyway, as I've said, some things test well, and others bomb. But, no one is losing any money when
they bomb, and everyone is making money when they hit any level of success.
Some of the items only generate a few thousand dollars a month in sales, and I get to keep about
40% as I said before. So, if one product generates $4,000 a month in sales, and I make $1,600 a
month from it, hey, that's my mortgage payment!
See, I know this sounds weird, but you have to have a back end vision, even as you start out with
your front end testing!
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Now, you don't have to start out creating your back end until you know the front end is a winner, but
don't forget the real reason you're in business!
In case you don't know, the real reason you're in business is to help your customers, and make a lot
of money doing so!
But you won't make the kind of money you could, and you won't be helping them as much, if you don't
always watch the back end, and keep giving them more things they want and need!
Now, some of my businesses basically a break even on the front end, but I still make a lot of money.
Even if I was losing some money on the front end, I could continue running a profitable business as
long as I could find enough back end products.
Don't ever get fooled by anyone's front end of their business. I cannot tell you how many imitators
have either copied my ideas, or tried to compete with me, and have washed out completely.
There have been six or seven guys trying to do something like what I do since I've been in this, and
none of them have lasted.
One guy's former employee told me that his boss kept saying, "How can he run those full page ads,
and make money? I can never get mine to do much more than break even!"
See, he didn't understand the real business of my back end.
One interesting side-bar to this issue. Another guy tried imitating my front end, and my back end, and
still bombed out. Why? Because he was only trying to make money, and everyone could tell. His front
end sales were poor, and his back end sales failed.
They failed because he didn't deliver on his front end, so no one bought his back end.
If you go into anything just to make money, you will almost certainly fail.
My customers know that since we truly want them to succeed and prosper, and since my front end
delivers on its promises, many customers buy on the back end!
It's the same thing here with this business. My first, and only mission, is to help you get out of
whatever trap you're in, and escape to the freedom of being your own boss, working at home.
I hope you feel we delivered on our promise to show you how to start a specialty information
business. And, as time goes by, you'll see more back end programs that you may or may not want to
be involved with.
If you do, then that's more help we provide to you, and more income for our company. If you don't,
that's OK too, because over time, we will find more information you will find valuable, and we will
continue to be profitable!
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I want you to understand that this system is not just a "one hit wonder"! I have started two more
businesses doing the same thing as my original company, and they're both making money. In fact,
anyone who follows this methodology, will succeed!
And once you succeed, you'll be hounded by people wanting to joint venture with you!
I turn away deals all the time, because I don't have the time! Go out and find your own deal, and let
us help you reach your own dreams!
The only thing we cannot do is go out there and get you off of your butt to do something! If you do
that, and follow our proven system, we'll help you with the rest.
But, we cannot help you if you are sitting around watching TV! You've got to get into the
lineup before you can play in the game!
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Bonus Chapter #6: Written by Dan Kennedy
THE MONEY MAKING SECRET OF
"THE TOLL BOOTH POSITION"
At one of my client-companies, a company that, in less than 10 years, has gone from a 10-million to a
100-million dollar business one of the people I work with frequently has jokingly given herself the title,
"Vice-President, Back-End."
Although that clearly opens her up to be the butt of many jokes (!), it does very accurately describe
her very, very important area of responsibility, in direct marketing parlance. At least 80% of the
company's profitability depends on
her
contributions.
Many direct marketing businesses mirror the picture Jeff painted for you in this newsletter: There is a
relatively brief period of time during which there are significant, exciting profits on the front-end i.e..
the very first sale.
But that happy situation dissolves over time, as you "cream" the market. And, as you go deeper and
deeper into a market, the cost of making the first sale (acquiring a customer) goes up and up. At
some point, it gets so high it is no longer practical to advertise and sell that product to that market.
Nothing is forever. This FACT OF LIFE is what mandates being smart about making all the money
that you can from "the back-end."
There's another aspect of this that Jeff also revealed in this Newsletter: The value of the asset you
create in a list of satisfied, predisposed to respond, customers. When you CONTROL a sizable list of
customers who bought from you, know your name/business name, are happy with what they bought
and with the ensuing relationship...and are pre-disposed to read your mail and buy from you again,
you own your own TOLL BOOTH.
A pioneer of direct marketing, Harvey Brody, taught me the power and value of getting into THE
TOLL BOOTH POSITION, and I've been teaching it for years. Imagine owning your own toll booth on
the highway near your city. Anybody who wants to get to the other side of that toll booth has to pass
through its gates and pay you money.
As the controller of a responsive customer list, that's exactly where you are; sitting there in your own
toll booth and anybody who wants to get their appropriate product or service to those customers you
control, has to pay you money.
You can collect a toll through joint ventures, as Jeff described. Or via "endorsed mailings", very
similar to what Jeff described, but the other party does the work and bears the mailing expense.
Or, if you build a list of 50,000 or more, though outright list rentals. (I have a number of clients who
pay all their overhead expenses every year just with the checks they get from the list broker
representing their list to others.)
I have often paid others to pass through their toll booths - and done so cheerfully. I have also been
paid by others eager to get through my toll booth, to my customers, with my endorsement.
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A Brief, Final Word . . .
Since this system was first assembled, Jeff has gone on to apply his 'model' to build two more
successful businesses. He and I have a very profitable business together, functioning almost entirely
on auto-pilot, using a slightly different 'model' but many of the same strategies and techniques in this
Course.
I just want to conclude by emphasizing a very simple point: what you have in your hands is real,
factual, practical, and very valuable. If you carefully follow the instructions you've been given, with
relatively little trial-and-error (although EVERY venture has some), you can create your own high
income business. It only remains to you to apply yourself and take the necessary actions. I am
delighted and proud to have played a role in bringing this outstanding Course to the marketplace, and
to you.
Good luck!
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Chapter Eighteen
Who Me? A Direct Marketer?
“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.” Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The penalty of success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you.” Lady Nancy Astor
I'd like to address some of the most commonly asked questions that we get from our customers since
we started. I'll try to give you some answers that will help you move along the path to achieving your
information marketing business success!
I'd like to start out with by giving you an update on a venture that I got involved in to replicate the
formula we’re discussing.
As you may remember, about a year after starting my business marketing to financial planners, (the
company is called Planning Profit Systems – PPS); I used the EXACT same formula that got up to a
two million dollar business, and cloned it into another business. A brief history is in order here.
I began working with a guy I'd met at a seminar I'd attended (one of Dan Kennedy's outstanding
information marketing conferences he used to do), who is an expert in the real estate industry.
He had been selling training courses to real estate agents, mostly in seminars. He saw what I was
doing, and we decided to test and apply the same EXACT formulas I've shown you from PPS, to the
real estate industry.
We wanted to see if we could replicate Planning Profit Systems.
We basically took the formula that you all have, we adapted the salesletters, the ads, the course
information, the type of copy, in other words,
everything,
into a program that was a clone, so to
speak, of Planning Profit Systems...although completely redone for this new market.
There were two reasons that I wanted to do this.
First, I was interested in diversifying my business interests. I wanted to spread out the profit centers
that I have, to generate more revenue and profits. By diversifying, I knew that I could spread out my
sources of income, and reduce the risk of losing my income, if something went wrong with PPS.
Secondly, I wanted to verify the formula that I was teaching all of you, and that had worked so well for
me, could be replicated in a totally unrelated industry using the exact same methodology and system.
The good news is in both cases, I've hit a home run. Let's take a look at why:
(1) We started out with a very small budget of $2000.00 to run a couple of test ads in a real estate
trade journal.
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Now I use full page ads as testing at this point in my career, because I feel that full page ads are
always the best buy for your dollar. But, it does not have to be done this way.
If your budget is much tighter, obviously you can start with much smaller ads, just as I had done
initially in Planning Profit Systems. (I spent $138 on my first ad to get the business going!)
When we ran our test ads, we used the same exact type of copy as PPS. We used the same exact
voice mail response device, and the same exact emotional copy that stimulated the responses for
PPS.
We found that our cost per lead was pretty much the same as it was with Planning Profit Systems.
We then took the sales letter from Planning Profit Systems - the same one that you have in your kit -
and modeled another sales letter using the same formula as far as the introduction, the stories, the
type of copy and the offer at the end, etc.
We basically used the same price points. We found that the initial sales of the course were running
approximately the same percentage as the Planning Profit Systems and that the test was working.
So we slowly expanded the advertising budget, reinvesting all profits that were generated from the
business, and over the course of 6 months were able to get to the point where we could afford to run
a bunch of national ads for over $35,000.
That full page ad pulled in several thousand leads, and at this point we are currently running the
business exactly the same as Planning Profit Systems. We're generating approximately $150,000 -
$180,00 a month of revenue on the front end.
We then added backend stuff in the monthly communication to the customers.
We had already figured on doing the backend, but wanted to wait until we got the program completely
up and running smoothly, before we added the backend products.
Those backend products are just beginning to be implemented, and we have already seen a healthy
cash flow stream coming from the very first offers.
The reason I'm bringing this up is to answer the commonly asked question, of "Can I do this in
another industry or niche?"
YES, you can do this in any industry, vocation, hobby, niche, etc., as long as you stick to the niche
marketing method, and do not go in for the general consumer market!
A question we still get all the time is "I'd like to sell this to everybody. How do I do that? See,
EVERYONE is a prospect for this great widget!" Please understand that this formula will work much
better, and is much, much safer than attempting a general consumer deal.
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If you can do exactly what we are teaching you, stick to the formula, and run your tests in the niche
markets, you will find the cost of entry is minimal, the risks are minimal, the business is easier to run,
and the potential for high profit margins are outstanding!
(For example, the margins on a consumer program might run in the 4-10% range, where the
profit margin on a niche deal can be as high as 50%!)
The other thing is that you don't need to be an expert, in order to make this work. Look at the
example I just shared with you a minute ago.
I found this fellow who had the expertise in the real estate market, worked a joint venture program out
with him, and now we're splitting the profits. And, yes it's true I'm not making 100% of the profits like I
am with Planning Profit Systems.
On the same token, I'll take a percentage of the profits on a $150,000 a month business...compared
to 100% of nothing! See, I could not have done the program without his knowledge, or someone like
him.
As a side note, this guy had sold real estate information before, but had done it from seminars and
was very tired of going on the road. He was very happy to see that I had a way for him to market his
information, while staying home in
his
underwear.
So now he's accomplished
his
goal, I've accomplished
my
goal of diversifying, merely by following the
same exact formula. I want to stress to you there's nothing magic about what I did. It's just taking the
things we've already proven that work, and applying them in other markets.
Another success story centers around a hypnotherapist (whatever that is?) who is using my formula
to sell courses to other therapists. He is doing this part-time, and is running one small ad for the time
being. He cannot afford to abandon his practice right now, so he is using a low volume version of our
exact approach.
Oh yeah. He's making $1,000 a week, doing a mini-version of this business! Not bad for a couple of
hours work, wouldn't you agree? And another student and friend of ours, sells a course to people who
re-charge laser printer toner cartridges. He runs the same type of deal. And, he is making an average
of $5,000 a month working out of his home, presumably in his underwear as well!
Another female student of ours, ran her first tests in a niche market she wants to keep secret for now.
(It's a small niche, and she doesn't want anyone to jump in on her yet.) Anyway, here are her
statistics from her first test:
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1. Ad cost - $450
2. Lead cost - $2.45
3. 80% of the callers are leaving their name on the voice mail box.
4. Conversions are running at 9% of the leads buying the course with the three step mailings!
5. Her first national ad is running soon, and she promised to give us her figures then.
6. She is VERY profitable already and has enough money from her test to pay for a national ad, and
to take some cash out for herself!
See, there is no limit to the number of niche markets that you can ethically and legally exploit with this
formula! The only limit to the amount of niches you market to, and the amount of money you make, is
coming from YOUR OWN IMAGINATION!
I, for example, am in the process of testing three new niche markets that I'm working as a joint
venture with another individual. He has expertise in these niches, in which I have zero knowledge of
myself. As the months go by I'll share the results of those with you.
Each business is being tested with a $2,000 start up budget. We will run one test ad for each, and
see what happens. If there isn't any sign of life after running the test ads, most likely the patient will
be allowed to expire. If there is some measure of success, we'll keep the testing alive.
We'll be talking more about these tests and joint ventures in the future. I just wanted you to
understand that you have all the knowledge you need to do EXACTLY what I'm doing! Don't let your
self imposed limitations slow you down! OK?
Another question we get asked often is about copywriting and about things like "I just can't write
the same way you do" "How can I learn how to write like this" and so forth.
Well, there's several answers to those questions. First off is anybody can write the way I write.
Why do I say this? Because all you have to do is
write just like you talk!
Now in my case, I didn't know any better when I first got started. In fact, I had really never written
anything before I began selling mail order information. (Other than in my brief stay in college, which I
never finished. My professors all gave me C's and D's in writing, by the way!)
I just started DOING things. See, I figured writing something incorrectly...was better than writing
nothing perfectly. As time went by and I saw that my copy worked OK, I also realized that it could get
better.
I've got to tell you, that by constantly practicing and constantly writing, I became very good at writing
copy that sells.
But, again, like everything else I've told you, I got a lot of help. Dan Kennedy's programs that I bought
added an incredible amount of knowledge and success to my writing.
Learning how to write copy will be very simple if you basically talked into a tape recorder, said what
you wanted to say and had somebody transcribe it onto a word processor. You'd find that your copy
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would be pretty much the way mine is, and would probably be very successful.
Another quick point! You can see how I write the copy, and the style that it's written in. You'll notice
the friendly, down to earth, conversational tone that it carries. You should pay close attention to the
deep psychological resonance it makes with the target market.
I promise you that writing copy that sells is nothing like writing a book, magazine article, or any other
"professional" piece. Just be yourself, be down to earth, and tell the entire story. Study everything you
can get your hands on about direct response copywriting. Get on every mailing list you can and study
other people's pieces. Read any ad that is editorial as opposed to an "ad" looking ad.
Finally, if you just don't want to write, there are zillions of starving writers who will do research, and
write copy, for peanuts.
One of our students put an ad in his local paper for a writer, and got 52 phone calls! The guy he hired
agreed to do all the research, and write everything for $5 a page! So our student got a 50 page piece
done for $250, and it is working!
See, there's always an answer. There's always a solution. Just promise me you'll stop thinking about
doing something, and you'll go out and do it!
See you next time!
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Bonus Chapter #6: Written by Dan Kennedy
"I Know It Can Be Done,
But Can I Really Do This?"
This December I'm speaking on a program in Grand Rapids, Michigan with Michael Gerber, author of
the book "The E-Myth", which, if you haven't read it, you should, because it deals with the issues of
"systemization." The book will give you a great understanding and appreciation for the value of
"system" in a very uncertain, unpredictable world. Jeff, with a bit of help from me, has turned his
businesses into a true system, in every sense of the word.
Achieving something in a certain way once might be a happy accident. Twice, coincidence. But three
or more times - system. Jeff is now into the third cloning of his model, the model taught to you in this
book, absolutely proving it as a true system that can be replicated over and over again. But there IS
one little flaw in the fabric, fly in the ointment, pothole in the path:
If there is any problem, it is copywriting. If there is any one thing a person might isolate, after fully
understanding everything presented in the Mail-Order Course, and say "I can't do that", it would be
writing the ads, sales letters and other marketing documents. You might very well feel that the writing
itself is somehow beyond you. So, as my little add-on contribution to this Issue of the Newsletter, I
hope to get you past that.
Ernest Hemingway.
William Faulkner. William Shakespeare
They Mighty Give Me An "F", But The Marketplace
Gives Me An "A" - Which Stands For A Whole Lot Of Money
These days, I earn a hunk of my living as a "professional" direct-response copywriter. Quite frankly,
I'm amazed at the compensation I command. Jeff and I routinely get $8,000.00 to $35,000.00 to write
sales letters, brochures, infomercial scripts and magazine ads.
And that's just the fee; I also get continuing royalties tied to the use of the stuff I write for my clients.
Sometimes I marvel at all this. But I go through this not to brag; I don't have to. And not to stir up
business; I can't handle everything flowing to me now, just from referrals. (I'm very fortunate and very
grateful.) I tell you all this because I have arrived at this level of skill and proficiency with NO formal
education or training, NO apprenticeship, and NO discernible, natural talent. I am just NOT any
smarter or more gifted than you are.
(I
may
be a harder, more determined worker than you are.)
Just to briefly elaborate: I am a high school grad. From a small high school in northeast Ohio. I think
I am one of its most famous grads. Another, unfortunately, was Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal.
Anyway, the only times I've set foot on college campuses were to pick up dates or, more recently, to
speak to my friend Dr. Herb True's classes at Notre Dame.
The aptitude tests we took in junior high and high school offered no encouragement for me as any
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kind of a "writer."
I did have some interest; I did take 'Creative Writing' and 'Journalism' classes, but I didn't distinguish
myself there. C's as I recall. I tried writing mystery stories and novels, and I have a desk drawer full
of rejection slips to show for it.
I tend to butcher the English language when I do write. There is nothing in my background that would
cause anybody to assume I was making huge sums of money by writing.
How can this be? Because - - - and this is very important - - - what I do in creating direct-response
ads and letters, and what you need to do on behalf of your own products, has no more to do with
"writing than peeling back the plastic cover on a microwaveable dinner has to do with being head chef
in a fancy-pants French restaurant. You should NOT be intimidated by this task at all, because there
just isn't anything intimidating about it.
It is NOT "creative"; it is craftsmanship. It is not writing; it is talking on paper. And, best of all, a lot of
what you'll need to do is fill-in-the-blank formulaic. This is much more like paint-by-the-numbers than
art.
You can (and should) "borrow very liberally from historically successful examples.
You can and should learn to do this.
You can learn as you earn. As Jeff says, doing something not quite so great, is better than doing
nothing quite perfectly!
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Chapter Nineteen
Making Money From The House!
“I take a simple view of life: Keep your eyes open and get on with it!” Sir Laurence Olivier
“Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time you've got!” Art
Buchwald
Now I’m to help you on your path to financial security, whilst you stay at home and watch your
business grow without overhead and without all the normal hassles of business!
By this time, I really hope you've been able to get something going.
I hope you've had an idea or two or three, and you've got some testing going...or better yet, have
some money rolling in!
And whether you do or don't, I wanted to use this issue of the newsletter to discuss some things that
are very important in making money in mail order, out of your home!
What things? Well, it turns out we get lots of questions about running ads, and I thought this would be
a great time to refresh your memory, and update you on how to run ads the right way!
First of all, I DO NOT encourage you to start off by running either big ads, or ads that are one step
sales.
I also do not encourage you to run ads for general circulation, consumer type products.
All of these things are TOO risky to start out with! (Unless you have a huge bankroll you don't care
about losing a chunk of!)
For example, let's say you have a book and tape on "How to train a dog to do tricks and listen to you
in 5 minutes or less!" And let's say you're broke, and you have $250 to test an ad. Here's the kind of
ad you should run, as a display ad, in some sort of
dog
magazine or publication. (Notice I said
dog,
not
pet
publication. See, the more specific you are with your targeting, the more specific you'll be with
your big deposits into the bank! For example, when I run ads in
insurance
publications, I use the word
agent
in the ads. When I run the EXACT same ad in a publication that is read by financial planners, I
substitute the word
planner
for
agent.
You can never be specific enough!)
Anyway, the ad should be in the display section if at all possible. Classified ads will be cheaper, but
will normally not have the pulling power of a display ad.
As we discussed earlier in the book, all you need is to set up an automated ad response system that
has a toll-free number run into it. (The best way to do this is to use a place like Automated Marketing
Solutions (AMS). They have a 48 hour set up time (Usually); 24 phone lines coming into each box, so
you'll never get a busy signal; caller ID, so you'll get EVERY phone number without asking for it, and
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Amazing FREE Report Reveals The Jealously Guarded Secrets
Of Professional Dog Trainers...Learn How To Teach Your Dog To
Do Anything In Five Minutes Or Less!
Did you know that there are wrong ways to train dogs, (The way most of us do
it!) and there are other, little known ways the pros use to train them to do virtually
anything...in five minutes or less? Since hardly anyone knows how to train dogs
this easily, we have prepared a FREE report that reveals the almost unheard of
secrets of how you can teach your old dog new tricks no one else knows! You
can get your FREE copy of this startling report, by calling toll-free, 1-866-123-
4567, 24 hours, to hear a FREE recorded message!
Who Else Wants Their Dog To Learn Tricks That'll Be Good
Enough To Get 'Em On David Letterman...In Five Minutes Or
Less?
Did you know that there are wrong ways to train dogs, (The way most of us do
it!) and there are other, little known ways the pros use to train them to do virtually
anything...in five minutes or less? Since hardly anyone knows how to train dogs
this easily, we have prepared a FREE report that reveals the almost unheard of
secrets of how you can teach your old dog new tricks no one else knows! You
can get your FREE copy of this startling report, by calling toll-free, 1-877-123-
4567, 24 hours, to hear a FREE recorded message!
so on. They even have an option to let your prospects get the report FAXED to them instantly with
Fax-On-Demand. If you want to contact them, be sure to mention that you're a Instant Profits
Marketing customer. Their number is 800-858-8889.)
OK. So now you have your toll-free #, your automated ad response system, and you're ready to test.
All you need is the ad copy. Let's remember a very important point:
The Only Purpose Of The Ad Is To Get Them To Call, And Listen To Your Recorded Message!
That's It!
The ad isn't attempting to make a sale. It's attempting to get a
lead!
If you try to do anything in the ad but create unbearable curiosity from your target audience, you'll
waste your money.
Remember:
Never ask any step in the process to do more than it is supposed to do!
Ads should get leads. Outgoing messages on your automatic ad response systems should only be
designed to get them to leave their name and address. Here are a couple of examples.
(If you use AMS, you'll get all the phone numbers automatically.)
OK. So let's look at a couple of ads that can be used with the same recorded message:
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Time Savers Dog Training, Inc.
Now, here it doesn't matter what the copy says, because no one will be reading
this. The headline isn't a headline...it's the name of this person's company. Also,
the graphic over on the right here, tells everyone's subconscious that this is an
ad, and therefore they will probably blow right past it as they scan the
publication. Hell, I could be saying things like: I'll teach your dog to play the Lotto
and guarantee you'll win millions of dollars, and it won't matter because no one
will ever read the ad. Even if you offer a FREE report, and that they can call toll-
free, 1-888-123-4567, 24 hours to hear a FREE recorded message!
OK. Do you think you could generate leads with an ad like either, or both of these?
I assume you noticed that the body copy is the same in both ads. The reason is that for most ads, if
the headline works, the ad will work.
Dan Kennedy says that 80-90% of results an ad produces are based solely on how good, or bad, the
headline is! Not to say that the body copy isn't important, it's just that it's not as important as the
headline. (If no one reads the ad because the headline sucks, it makes no difference what the body
copy says!) For example, let's ruin the same ad, with this headline:
See what I mean? Never be tempted to waste your time with boring headlines like this. And, please
pass up the temptation to fool around with desktop publishing, graphics, reverse type, clip art, etc.,
etc.
It's been my experience, and Dan Kennedy's experience, and thousands of our customers'
experience that nothing works better than plain, news style typesetting. Now, you can try to make
your ads look more "appealing", or "eye-catching", by adding all this other stuff. You can fall in love
with all the computer skills and software you have. But, if your goal is to make money, as opposed to
looking good, lose the desktop publishing.
Dan, myself, and a host of other successful direct marketers, have generated millions of dollars in
sales with nothing more than a typewriter or a simple word processor.
If you can type on either of those contraptions, or can get someone to type for you if you can't...you're
in business!
OK. Now, I'd like to discuss the voice mail message to use. Remember, the mission of the message
is not to sell people on your course! It's only to sell them on leaving their name and address. That's it.
So, you must maintain the same level of curiosity with this message as you did in the ad.
For example, you wouldn't want to say:
"Hi! My name is David Leno, and I am the greatest dog trainer
on this planet. I have a book I sell for $395 that will teach you how to train your dog better than
anyone else. I'll teach you everything I know. You'll learn how I smash dogs in the face with the palm
of my hand..."
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No, that type of message tells them everything, and scares them off.
The right kind of message is one like:
"Hi! Thanks for calling the Dog Training Hotline! If you are
looking to learn the almost unheard of secrets that professional dog trainers use to teach any dog,
even yours, how to do even the most complicated of tricks in five minutes or less...our FREE report
will tell you just how you can learn these insider secrets that until now, have been kept under wraps!
You will be startled by how easy it is to train your dog to be your own version of Lassie! If you leave
your name and address after the tone, we'll send you a FREE, no obligation copy of the report
immediately! So, after the tone, please leave your name and address, and be sure to speak slowly,
and spell any uncommon names. If you have an email address, please leave that for us as well.
Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you and your dog on David Letterman very soon!"
See the difference?
Now, if this message is getting more than 50% hang-ups, (another feature of a good ad response
system is that they'll tell you instantly what your hang-up ratio is) you need to try a new message. If
you are getting at least half, you may want to test a different version. If you're getting 80% or
more...don't change a syllable!
(I've never been able to get much higher than 80%, no matter what I say. If you can do better than
that, great!)
You'll also notice that I did not ask for their phone number. It's been tested countless times that
asking for phone numbers decreases your numbers of name captures. Sometimes dramatically! Use
a Caller-ID ad response system, and then you'll have the phone numbers without asking for them!
That way, if you decide to follow up with your leads on the phone, (which you should, if you can) you'll
have all their phone numbers.
One question we get asked all the time is, "What if the people get mad, and want to know how you
got their phone number?"
My answer to that is to have whomever is making the calls say that your recorded message line
records all the phone numbers, so you can follow up and make sure people got the FREE report
alright. Promise them, (and be sure to keep this promise) that no one outside of your company will
ever have their number, and if they'd like, you'll delete it from their file.
Most people don't get mad, especially if you're honest. And, if someone is really pissed, then tell them
you'll take them out of your list, and you won't bother them again. It happens so rarely, that if you
purge a few dingbats out of your list, it's no big deal! Go out there, and get those leads!
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Bonus Chapter # 8: The following is written by my good friend, and mentor, Dan Kennedy.
A Jack Of All Trades Is Often The
Master Of None
You've heard variations of that saying your entire life.
Consider: a marketer to all markets...is often a master of none.
Personally, I take this risk; as a consultant, I move from one market to the next frequently, and I am
often involved in "mass-marketing" - such as with infomercials selling weight loss or cosmetics.
But I definitely PREFER niche markets. I specialize, by preference, in only three or four target
markets. I target my own businesses.
And I would suggest to you that Jeff has given you the KEY to risk reduction; to safety in marketing;
to the shortest, most probable path to a win - - - "you can never be specific enough."
I have taught this as "Message-To-Market Match" for over ten years. It is absolutely, inarguably
proven valid. And, as an almost inviolate rule, the tighter, the more precise, the more perfect the
match is, the better the results.
A Horse Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course - But . . .
Consider the person who has a new nutritional formula for horses. It improves the overall health,
vitality and stamina of the horse. It CAN be sold to owners of show horses, Thoroughbred
racehorses, Standardbred (harness) racehorses, Quarterhorses, rodeo horses, and so on.
But let's recognize, for example, that people involved with thoroughbreds dislike, distrust and
disavow kinship with those involved with standardbreds. It would be a big error to use the same
message for both. Try crossing over one testimonial and lose a whole market.
Now, let's take just the thoroughbred market. Trainers who specialize in bringing along youngsters
will respond differently than the "journeymen" trainers who work mostly with already broken, older
horses.
Trainers who frequent the West Coast tracks do not like the East Coast guys and vice versa.
And, in each case, the more perfectly I matched my message, my talk, my testimonials, etc. to the
specific sub-sub-sub section of the market, the better the results I would get.
This sort of thing exists everywhere.
I used to market a lot to chiropractors. In fact, I built the largest integrated seminar and publishing
company exclusively serving chiropractors and dentists in North America, in 3 years.
There are about 35,000 chiropractors; we did some business with over 10,000 of them - 30% market
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penetration. But did you know . . .there are "straight" chiropractors, holistic chiropractors,
chiropractors who specialize in work injuries, chiropractors who only use the Activator method . . . that
there are individual constituencies within chiropractic tied to different practice management gurus. . .
a small number who practice cooperatively with medical doctors, but most are at war with medical
doctors . . . ?
Well, if you don't know all that, you can't message-to-market match.
And you may go off so half-cocked you get clobbered. (This is why you or your expert-partner must
REALLY know your target market inside out and upside down. And you should still do a ton of
homework. It still amazes me how many people are eager to spend money but too damned lazy to
spend a week at the library.)
KISS
The great sales trainer Fred Herman coined this, as
Keep It Simple, Salesman!
It's often said as:
Keep It Simple, Stupid! (like "It's the economy, stupid!" from the last Clinton election.) Anyway, it has
marvelous application to business and to marketing many different ways.
One Jeff has pointed out here: just because your computer'll do 48 different typestyles, hieroglyphics,
reverses, gray screens and other graphic doodaddery doesn't mean you have to use it all in one sales
letter!
Get this: I'll beat most graphically jazzed up, colorful, slick brochures with a long-form sales letter.
Give me typewriter and I'll give you a sales letter that'll outperform one that was typeset at much
greater cost. Simple is better.
The Beauty Of What You Are Learning Is . . .
Simplicity. Lowest cost. Shortest testing path to determine win/loss. Highest probability of victory
approach.
You see, IF or WHEN you can get leads affordably, THEN you should be able to work everything else
out with low-cost testing, in small numbers, of one variable against the other. But the bottom-line here
is: stick to Jeff's model. Not just the parts of it you like - in its entirety, and every piece. Including
message-to-market match, the more specific the better.
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Chapter Twenty
"My Customers Are Different! This Kind Of Marketing Won't Work On Them!"
“Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can
make it so”. Belva Davis
“Most people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying they made
them.” Anonymous
I'd like to discuss a new venture I've started, and then relate the moral of the story, as they say, so
you can use this information to make lots of money...and eliminate one very common cause of failure
in this, or any business!
Let's start with the story.
A while ago, I received a message that a guy from Australia called me, and wanted to discuss a joint
venture. I wasn't exactly sure what the message meant, and since I get calls like this all the time, I
gave it my usual response.
Which is, to have him fax or email me something explaining what he was talking about, and that I'd
get back to him if I was interested.
(Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not be pompous or arrogant or anything. It's just that I get so many
calls with people who have a "deal" for me, that I cannot possibly get anything done on my
businesses that are working if I take all these kind of calls. If someone has an interesting idea or
whatever, I always return the fax or email.)
Anyway, this guy didn't do that. The next message I received from Mary was that he was coming to
the States, and would be stopping by at 10 am next Monday.
Well, since this guy was flying 10,000 miles to see me, I figured I'd be courteous, and be here when
he shows up. Which I was.
He introduced himself, and explained that he had heard about my system for insurance agents and
financial planners, and was curious about how it might fit into being sold in Australia and New
Zealand.
Now, let me tell you that I was quite skeptical about this whole thing.
First of all, I didn't know this guy from Adam. He seemed very knowledgeable about the insurance
and financial planning business, and appeared to be a very intelligent man...but I wasn't exactly sure
who he was, or what he really wanted.
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Second, I was very skeptical about using my type of marketing in a foreign country. Especially one as
far away as Australia.
See, I had been to Mexico and the Bahamas before, but otherwise never out of the US.
I knew absolutely nothing about Australia other than they have kangaroos, and that Crocodile Dundee
was filmed there.
After all, even if this guy was on the level, what made him think that using what I thought was surely
an American art form...would work in Australia?
Why would emotional copy that talked about people's deep seated fears and dreams work in a place
that had a hole in the Ozone layer over it, and where people wore funny hats and goofy looking
shorts?
Well, he made enough of an impression on me that I got to know him better, and learned that he was
an honest guy, looking to import a whole new way of doing business to Australia.
He eventually suggested we form a joint venture, that would license all of my materials for the
insurance agents and financial planners, and customize them for Australia, and use them the same
way I do here.
He convinced me that people in Australia were the same as people here, except that they call our
football, "gridiron", and they play something called Cricket.
I wasn't sure what to think. After all, I imagined that the insurance agents and financial advisors over
there were sort of Britishly conservative. I saw them as wearing dark gray suits with vests, and talking
in professionally hushed tones and all. I couldn't see them responding to an ad in a trade publication
about how messed up their home offices were or whatever.
Well, this man finally convinced me to go down there to check things out for myself.
Peggy and I and Alex went down to Sydney Australia, which is a very, very long trip. (We left Chicago
at 5:30pm on Tuesday afternoon, and arrived in Sydney at 9:30 am on Thursday! Total travel time of
over 20 hours plus 15 hours lost time from crossing the international dateline.)
To make a long story short, we found out that not only is Australia a totally cool place, with great
beaches and weather,
but everyone we met, and everything we saw seemed a lot like here!
I bought all kinds of magazines and newspapers and tabloids to see what Australians read, and what
kind of ads they had and so forth.
And you know what? Everything was the same as here too!
I saw some of the trade publications they have, and the ads were just as lousy and useless as the
ads in the trade journals I advertise in! All image, no direct response at all!
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He had me convinced to give it a try. I started thinking that maybe the type of marketing I have
become so fond of would actually work in this far away place.
Well, we decided to run the best ad I've run here, down under. The headline is:
It's Just Not "Professional"....
"They All Laughed When I Ran That Little $40 Ad - But When I Got 81 Leads...!"
Anyway, he had to change a couple of words in the copy, mostly spelling differences and the like.
(They spell "color", "colour", and stuff like that.)
The ad was 98% the EXACT same ad. EXACT.
We couldn't use a voice-mail box, because they didn't have them yet. (Yes, as hard as it is to believe,
at that time, electronic voice mail wasn’t down under. The national phone company owns a string of
answering services, and is fighting voice-mail, but I've heard they're getting it soon.) We had an 800#
hooked into an answering machine in his house. It's not the best way to take the leads, but it is
preferable to doing nothing!
And, we picked a magazine that had a good mix of insurance and financial planning professionals,
and ran the ad for $1,000.
Well, the first day the ad hit, the phone was ringing off of the hook!
We took in just under 100 calls in the first two days, and started sending out the 36 page sales letter.
A sales letter that was virtually identical to mine, reduced slightly by some of the American references
to laws that don't exist in Australia.
The results? We've sold about 15% of the leads the course. We have two options, a basic course for
$677, and an advanced course for $977. (That's Australian dollars, which are worth about 75% of our
dollars. For now.)
Anyway, the first ad cost us $1,000, and the mailers cost us another $400, for a total of $1,400.
The sales from the first ad grossed just under $20,000. Is that good? You bet your bippy it is! We ran
an ad in a different magazine for $1,200, and generated 150 leads, and made 18 sales...for a total of
$14,500.
Another winner! (Keep in mind that we sold even more by sending out the second and third letters!)
And, published a newsletter to the buyers, which was the same as my newsletter here, edited slightly
by my friend in Australia.
The moral to this story. We hear people say the following thing all the time:
"You don't understand...my customers (target market) are different. They won't respond to this
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sort of marketing.
They're too...(fill in the blank) sophisticated, broke, unsophisticated, jaded, professional,
unprofessional, illiterate, well read, etc., etc., etc.
The truth?
People are people, anywhere, any time, any place!
They all have the same pain, the same desires, the same dreams, the same wants, the same needs,
the same...everything!
If I had made the mistake of listening to my stubborn skepticism, and had not kept an open mind to
this Australia deal, I wouldn't have another (my fourth) successful direct marketing to niche market
mail order business going at a profit right out of the box!
All it takes is too follow the formula, EXACTLY as I've shown you how to do. EXACTLY.
Don't try to shortcut anything. Don't make invalid assumptions based on misguided and incorrect
perceptions about your market.
If you, or someone you know, knows something useful or desirable to a niche market, and you follow
this formula very closely, your chances of success are improved way beyond any other way of testing
and profiting from a home based business!
I still say if someone can show me a business that you can get started for less than a few hundred
bucks, and literally generate six or seven figure sales right away, with huge profit margins, and little
hassle, no employees, no overhead...and most important of all, the ability to walk around in your
underwear all day long, I'll leave this field and switch.
For now, I'm going to keep adding new ventures following the same formula. I'll keep you posted! Just
promise me you'll do the same, and get out there and DO IT!
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Bonus Chapter # 9: The following is written by my good friend, and mentor, Dan Kennedy.
Two Giant Marketing Mistakes That I Watch People Make Over And Over Again & What To Do
About Them
As Jeff pointed out, marketers love to insist that "their customers" are somehow different from
everybody else's; alien beings from another planet.
Because I work with clients in 68 different industries (at last count), audiences filled with every
imaginable business and occupation, I hear this foolishness all the time.
I also hear that what works in marketing to Mom 'n Pop Consumer won't work in "business to
business" marketing.
Get 'Em All Naked And Then Lets See If You Can Separate The Smart
From The Dumb, The Sophisticated From The Rubes,
The Professional From The Grunts
Wesley Snipes was asked: "Are you an actor or a black actor first?"
Thoughtfully responding to this inane question, he said, "I guess I'm a black actor first because when
I get out of bed in the morning naked, I'm black, then when I go to work, I become an actor."
Listen: everybody crawls out of bed in the morning naked.
The President of a Fortune 55 company, the manager of a local deli, the guy who works at the
factory, all the same.
When you strip away their titles, job descriptions and other convenient labels and get them naked,
they're all just people.
And they ALL respond pretty much the same way to a finite number of emotional and logical appeals,
fears, doubts, worries, needs and desires.
As Jeff found out, it doesn't matter if you schlep halfway around the world. People are people are
people, and that's all there is to it.
In spite of this very, very simple, universal truth, I watch marketers make the mistake of believing their
customers are different over and over again.
The fundamental, foundational, motivational messages that move people to action have not changed
since time began, and they're not going to change either.
Dumb And Dumber
If you can't take the dumbest weight loss ad you can find in the National Enquirer and re-write it to sell
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your sophisticated computer software to computer programmers, you just have not taken ownership
of this idea.
You're still fighting it. And you'll keep getting bit in the behind as long as you do fight it.
Here's a tip: when in doubt, aim at the lowest common denominator in your market.
Keep everything very simple. Replace "big" words with easier ones.
More of your customers are "there" than you'd ever believe. And the ones who are above that level
won't mind stepping down. But the others may not be able to step up.
Get Out Of The Way!
The other, related, big mistake is getting in your own way.
Marketers who inject their own assumptions, biases, beliefs and preferences into their marketing miss
the whole point.
Marketing is all about figuring out the customer, then offering him exactly what he really wants. It is
NOT about imposing your ideas on the customer.
Your "shoulds" and "ought to's" are all irrelevant in the real marketplace.
Public Television (PBS) is made up of a bunch of high-brow intellectuals trying to force what they
think people should want and do need down their throats.
That's why public PBS can't exist without big, fat, juicy government subsidies from your tax dollars
and grants from big corporations. The marketplace would kill them off in a month.
(There is enough of a constituency for that kind of programming to deliver it in other ways and make a
profit, which is how the vacuum will be filled if the government subsidies ever stop, as they should.
But that's another subject altogether).
The important point here is that you cannot afford "PBS Think." The government is not going to
generously subsidize you. Everything you're learning will be useless and meaningless if you don't get
out of your head...and climb:
Into The Head Of Your Prospects,
Always Remembering They Are PEOPLE First And Foremost!
And that means that they are affected by their emotions, and will respond emotionally! If you try to
use logic, or assume they want sophisticated copy, you'll never make any money!
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Chapter Twenty-One
How About Getting Started?
“In some cases...we learn more by looking for an answer to a question and not finding it than
we do from learning the answer itself.” Lloyd Alexander, The Book Of Three
One of the biggest problems I’ve seen from people over the years, is that they want to make more
money selling information products through direct marketing, but they:
Just Don't Seem To Be Able To Get Started!
Why is this? Why do you think people have such a hard time getting the ball rolling?
Well, I have my own reasons why I think people don't get going, and I'll hopefully be able to give you
some ideas to help you move ahead.
The first thing I want to discuss is what I think is the number one reason people don't make changes
in their life.
Because, let's face it. Most of us are not very happy with the way our lives go. I know from my own
experiences, just how miserable life can be or feel at times. I know what it's like to feel like you have
no real hope, no prospects for a better life, no way out. I also know that all those feelings are nothing
more than that. Feelings. Thoughts.
All those doubts and fears are self created, self imposed, and self induced.
And since they are brought into our lives by ourselves, they can just as easily be removed. Banished.
Disposed of forever.
So let's talk about what causes these feelings that prevent you from getting what you want, and from
going where you want to go!
In my opinion, there is a huge difference between wanting things to get better, from wishing things
would change...and really expecting things to change!
See, anyone can voice a wish or desire for something. Anyone can
say
they want things to be better
or different. But merely expressing the words won't do it. No, there has to be a fundamental change in
your
thinking
if you are to get somewhere new.
See, all of us have two forms of psychological baggage that we may have ingrained in our minds.
One kind comes from the years of brainwashing that we receive from our parents, and from society in
general.
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In fact, our whole culture and heritage comes from a puritanical origin of close mindedness, and
negative thinking towards life.
The first immigrants from England did not leave England to escape religious persecution. Rather, they
escaped England to find a place where they could
practice
religious fundamentalism. Where they
could freely espouse their particularly harsh and negative view of the world, and of our spiritual
destiny.
America has retained that inner core of negativity throughout the generations. We're all taught that
any thinking outside of the "norm" is weird or nutso. Anyone who challenges the conventional
"wisdom" of life is looked upon as a rebel or boatrocker. That type of collective consciousness is one
form of emotional baggage most of us carry.
The other type is from our own thoughts, unaided by outside influence.
Yes, the negativity we seem to attract is just as much from our tradition of negativity as it is from our
own personal way of viewing the world.
See, many of us allow our thinking to flow into the easiest type of thinking there is. Negative thinking
is easy because if we see ourselves as being less successful than we want, we can validate our
thoughts by never taking any actions that could possibly lead us to a different, more positive
conclusion.
The age old self fulfilling prophecy is alive and well!
If our minds tell us that we cannot be more happy, more successful, our actions that follow will assure
that we cannot achieve a new way of life. So, it's easy to continue being the way we've always been,
because we rationalize that's all we deserve.
Baloney. I'm convinced that there's a simple technique that anyone can do to make this negative, pre-
determined agenda of little success, go away forever.
It's a technique that I learned on my own, and only after years of being miserable and unfulfilled. A
technique that sounds so simple, and really is simple, if you let yourself be open to its beauty and
wonder. It's a technique that forces you to stop living in another place and time. To live in the present.
Let me explain. It's been my experience that most people are waiting for some event or thing to
happen,
when they'll finally be happy.
You know, like
"When I get rich, then I'll be happy!"
Or,
"When I get a new job I'll be happy!"
Or,
"Things used to be so good when my spouse was here."
Or,
"When we had that business, that's
when things were great!"
Always living in the future or past. Not being here, right now!
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See, you are here, right now! You have to become aware of the present. You have to start living in
today's world. Not some far off, distant place. But right here, right now! What I mean, is that you have
to relish the current moment, your current feelings, good or bad, and be aware that what you are
feeling at the moment is a message you have to pay attention to.
You cannot ignore what your heart and mind are telling you that you have to do. Not if you want to
really
make a change. Not if you
sincerely do want something better.
As I see it, this avoidance method of living for a better time, instead of living here and now, is the root
of the inability to change, to get something new going. Why? Well, if you are focusing on some other
time when you'll be, or were, happy...how can you also focus on what you have to do now to make
things happen?
Our minds cannot focus the energy we have into two totally separate places. Either you're living in the
future, the past,
or the present!
But you cannot be living in more than one! Your mind isn't built that
way. It can only deal with what it is being asked to handle.
So, if you're waiting for a day when things will get better, I've got news for you, that day won't come,
because unless you start living here and now, you won't be able to have the awareness of how and
what changes you must make to get to that better place in the future!
Once you achieve a state of awareness of being in the present, you will notice a change in you begin
to emerge. You'll start seeing things for what they really are. You'll see that love and beauty are all
around you, even if you're broke or stuck in a job you hate or whatever.
You'll see that you are, well, what you are. You'll see your good points, your strengths, your
experience, your knowledge and your ability to be happy. You'll also see your faults and drawbacks
and mistakes you've made. Either way, by being aware of the present, and who you are...you will now
be able to make meaningful changes!
How can you make changes, if you don't recognize what really needs to be changed? Right?
See, it isn't that hard to get going. It isn't that hard to say, "OK. I've seen what doing what I'm doing
now has gotten me. It's time to take action, to make changes!" Especially when you are truly aware of
yourself, and no longer
wish
for change...but now
expect
to change!
Once you switch from blind hope, to specific expectations, you'll see the path to your new life. You'll
stop procrastinating. You'll stop making excuses. You'll stop watching others, envious of their
successes! You'll stop blaming the world or your circumstances for your plight.
Instead, you'll start
doing the things that you need to do!
You'll listen to the tapes again. You'll re-
read the manuals. You'll go to the library and do some simple research. You'll make those phone
calls after work, instead of plopping down in front of the TV. You'll arrange your schedule so you have
a few hours a week to get some information together.
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You'll also get the courage to talk to some people you might not otherwise feel strong enough to.
You'll contact people who are already doing something you think could be packaged up into a
product. You'll have the conviction to seek out people who can provide you with a product idea. You'll
feel confident enough to write a small ad, and actually place it!
Let me give you a quick example. A fellow who enrolled in our course, was miserable as a computer
programmer for a large company. Barely making a living. Feeling depressed and trapped. After
getting our course, he realized that the only way out of his personal prison was to market a software
package he had been developing for years.
He became aware of his present moment. He stopped
wishing
for change, and saw that in his current
state, he must
expect
to change. And change he did.
He got the courage to call a software marketing firm. He met with them. He then called other people
who he thought might be of help. Some of those calls went unreturned. Some people blew him off.
Some people ignored him. And, a couple of people expressed interest in his program!
Then he realized that if others are interested, why not market it himself? Why take small money from
these companies, when he might make a go of it on his own? After all, he had the best marketing
training course for direct marketing, so he figured it was time to step up to the plate!
No more thinking. It was time to change! He wrote a small $200 ad, got some responses into his
voice mail box, wrote a sales letter, and made a few sales! He's just getting rolling. No telling if this is
going to be a home run, a double, or maybe just a single. But,
he's no longer watching the game
from the stands!
No, he's in the game, and there's no turning back now!
He sees that following our models, it's simple to get something off the ground. He sees that even if
this attempt in fact is only a single, he could still make more money selling a couple of packages a
week...compared to his salary at the company!
But much more importantly, he had the courage to see himself in the present,
and use that
awareness to get off of his butt and start something!
And that 's what I want everyone to understand. It is easy. Making money isn't hard. Selling
information products using our models is as simple as anything could be. We've done the hard part.
We've tested and proven EXACTLY how to make thousands of dollars a day, sitting at home in your
underwear. Now, you've got to do the easy part...
Get Out There And DO IT!!!
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Bonus Chapter # 9: The following is written by my good friend, and mentor, Dan Kennedy.
I asked Dan to add some of his insight into why many people don't get things going. Dan was
nice enough to share his thoughts with us, so here they are!
Why People Fail
I am delighted that MANY of the Course buyers are creating new products and businesses and
incomes, and are reporting impressive successes. But for every successful person like that - who
simply, thoroughly follows instructions and makes something happen - there are a dozen amazed and
astounded observers sitting on the sidelines, wondering why him and not them; finding ways to de-
value his achievements, attributing to luck, inborn talent, more resources, whatever; and excusing
their own non-performance. Why do so many people sit there on the bench, when they could be
starring in the game?
"How Do You Eat An Elephant?"
There's an old axiom - how do you eat an elephant? Same way you eat a hamburger. One bite at a
time.
Just about any worthwhile project looks like an elephantine, insurmountable, overwhelming mountain
of work and effort when you are about to begin. Doesn't much matter whether it's cleaning out the
garage, writing a book or launching a new business. Whatever.
And as long as you keep staring at it in its entirety, you give it immense power over you, the power to
stop you in your tracks.
I write at least one new, major book each and every year. Currently, I have seven books in
bookstores, published by "real" publishers and an eighth due out next year, and this does not include
my prolific output of books, manuals, tapes, newsletters and other information products for my own
businesses and developed for clients.
I also write and record a daily, syndicated radio broadcast. And I do direct-response copywriting for a
number of clients. many people are nonplused by this.
I could never write a whole book!
Well, nobody
writes a whole book all at one time, all in one setting. (Almost nobody, anyway.) How do I do it all?
The most useful part of that I can reveal to you is this:
I write Every day. Every day. Usually, every morning. Weekday or weekend, workday or holiday,
Monday morning or Christmas morning, at home or in a hotel, in Cleveland, Ohio or Cozumel,
Mexico, whether I'm tired or not, whether I feel like it or not. I write everyday. It all happens one bite at
a time, one page at a time.
In my speaking, consulting and copywriting businesses, for the last several years, I have (gratefully!)
been "booked solid." That means I have more people literally lining up and offering me money than I
can accommodate. I am perpetually busier than I need to be or should be. My schedule is jam-
packed six months or more in advance. But this doesn't happen by accident. Some of it occurs
somewhat by itself, in response to an accumulation of credibility, recognition, products in the
marketplace, referrals, and so on.
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But I also make certain I do at least one proactive thing to create new demand for my services each
and EVERY day. Doesn't matter how busy I am with other matters, how pressed I am for time, how
tired, where I am, EVERY day I do one thing that could directly generate new business. I keep
demand for my services high by very deliberate action, one bit at a time, one day at a time.
Somehow, every successful achiever in every field finds a way to put together this kind of personal,
self-imposed discipline.
Jerry Rice of the San Fran 49ers, arguably the best receiver in the NFL, practices with his team, as
required by the coaches, then after those practices, he practices some more. He hasn't taken any
kind of an extended vacation in 15 years. After winning the Super Bowl, what would Jerry Rice be
doing the next day? Working out, sticking to his physical conditioning regimen, getting ready for the
first game of the next season. He doesn't have to do this any more. No one could force him to do it.
He either does it or he doesn't. He does.
The opposite of all this is the number one disease of America: procrastination. Avoidance. Delay. And
everybody has the ability to come up with all sorts of reasons to put off doing what should be done.
However, here's a fact: people good at making excuses never seem to be good at making money.
Procrastination is the language and lifestyle of the poor, the mediocre, the "rut people", the frustrated,
the embittered.
We Are- And We Become What We DO –
Not (Just) What We Think
Much of the self-improvement literature, past and present, celebrates the idea that "we become what
we think about most." And there is significant truth in this - that how we think and what we choose to
think about has near-controlling impact on the results we achieve and experience in life. But if you
stop here, at best, you'll be an optimistic failure instead of a pessimistic failure.
Ultimately, we are what we DO, not what we think, feel or say. Take a thin, physically fit person. He
may very well be "thinking thin"; working on self-image and self-esteem with goals, affirmations and
visualizations; reading and becoming an expert in nutrition; and all that is helpful, admirable, maybe
even necessary.
But when he stands in front of the mirror naked, the mirror will reflect each little ACTION he took;
each time he opened the frig door and grabbed a banana or a piece of pie, a yogurt or a sandwich.
He is and will become what he eats, not what he thinks about eating. He literally IS one bite at a time.
Ask Yourself Some Tough Questions
When I speak to audiences of people involved in multi-level/network marketing businesses, I ask
them: "If each and every person in your downline distributor organization did exactly what you did
today, no less but no more, how successful will your organization be?" (That, incidentally, also
describes the biggest problem with MLM, but that's another topic altogether.)
I would ask you: what action did you take today that moved you measurably, significantly and
definitively closer to your "goal" of having a profitable, going information products mail-order
business? Buying a new stapler for your office doesn't count.
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You Have To Start
I can't get any writing done wandering around the kitchen, sleeping, or cleaning up my office. I have
to sit down at the desk, put my fingers on the keyboard, and start writing. If I want to market a new
product or launch a new business, I have to start. Just recently, I've launched a new information-
related enterprise, utilizing promotional methods relatively foreign to me. I, quite frankly, do not know
what I'm doing, and I do not know whether what I've set out do can and will work well enough to
justify my continuing involvement. But there is only one way to find that out. I had to create and send
out the first sales letter. When that flopped (and it did), I had to get somebody on the phone, calling
prospects, to find out why, to create a new strategy. One bite at a time.
I want my radio broadcast to be heard on 100 stations. To get that done, we had to sign up 1 station.
The day we got one, we stopped being virgins. That was a breakthrough. One. Then we got a second
station. And a third. Then a couple in a week. A bite, two bites at a time! Whatever number of stations
I'm heard on by July of this year will be a reflection of what we DID more than of what we thought. It
will be a reflection of what we did on March 1st. And on March 2nd, And on March 3rd.
Most people don't fail because of lack of persistence, lack of personality, lack of positive thinking, lack
of profitable ideas. They fail because of procrastination.
Some Quick, Practical Advice
Get your project, your understanding of this system, everything boiled down into a sequential list of 90
specific things you need to do to "make it happen." 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, right through 88, 89, and 90. Do
them in order. Do no less than one each day. Everyday. Starting today. NOT tomorrow; today. And do
not stop the day until you've done the thing to be done. If it's dinner time and you haven't done it,
don't eat, don't stop for the day, don't sleep until you do. Stay up all night if you must. Just don't let
yourself off the hook.
By the 90th day, you will have established an entirely new and different behavioral pattern. You'll be a
different person. You'll see tangible financial results. But only if you do the next thing up, every day,
without interruption. 90 days right in a row. No cheating. There's just no substitute for doing.
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Chapter Twenty-Two
The Only Thing Isn't Winning!
Marketing Is The Whole Game!
“To know the road ahead, talk to those coming back.” Chinese proverb
From the first day you went to school or thought about going into business, you were taught that
knowledge about technical aspects of your job or profession or whatever...was what you needed to
know to become successful.
That your "professionalism" will be the key to success.
That people will come to you once they hear about how "good" you are.
And that if you go into business for yourself, in any field, you were probably given the age old
"wisdom" that says if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door!
"Yeah, right! As if!"
Let's speak honestly to each other.
As you work with me, you'll see that I'm very blunt and candid. I don't pull any punches. I'm not going
to tell you what you want to hear, only what I know to be the truth.
But not my
opinion
on what is true or not. No, my opinions are just as worthless as anyone else's
opinion
when it comes to making money.
Rather, I'll be giving you information that is based on years of
experience and results!
See, I don't want you to think that I'm in love with these ideas you'll be learning because I made them
up, or because I'm so smart...or anything based on my ego.
In fact, I've been beat up so much, that basing my suggestions on anything other than proven winners
is just not going to happen.
I wanted to get that out of the way up front, so you know that I'm coming from a place of doing as
much as I can to help you make more money, enjoy your business, and feel the power that comes
from success and a high level of self-esteem.
I really feel good, when you not only make more money...but gain the inner peace that comes from
having a great feeling about yourself, and your life!
And as crass as this may sound...
getting customers without suffering through tortures like cold
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calling or knocking on doors or wasting money on worthless ads or promotions is the best
way I can help you feel great!
Which brings me to my first, and possibly most important point:
Knowing how to get customers is infinitely more important than any other knowledge you may attain!
That's it.
I've never known any way to make my business (and thus, my personal life) better, unless I have a
constant, never ending flow of prospects and customers who've all called me!
I know that this statement gets some people upset. That's not my intention. All I'm trying to do is
make the point that until you grasp the fact that you are not in the information business...but rather in
the:
MARKETING OF INFORMATION BUSINESS!
That's the bottom line.
In fact, no matter what business anyone is in, they are really not in that business! They are always in
the
marketing
of that business!
And you're no different.
Once you change your psychology to accept the fact that you are a marketer first, provider of
information second...you'll never make the kind of money you want to make.
This acceptance of your role of a marketer is paramount in changing the size of your bankbook, and
gaining a measure of success otherwise unattainable.
Let's face it, in any business, the information is no different...
but the best marketer wins!
Period. End of story.
And this unbreakable rule has always been true, and will always be true. He or she who markets best,
gets more money!
And, of course, I am not implying that you should just market better and deliver sub-standard
products or services. No way.
Not only must you be the best marketer, but you also must be the best information provider as well.
People deserve the best. But, and this is the big but... it doesn't matter if you're the best and most
knowledgeable information provider in the world, if you have no one to talk to or sell to, except your
co-workers and your family! They're nice enough, I'm sure...but they aren't a substitute for customers!
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Getting customers is the name of the game, and marketing is the mechanism that gets customers!
Now, as you know, the kind of marketing we're teaching you is very, very different from anything else
you may have seen or heard of.
We'll show you how to make marketing fun!
Fun, because it's easy, and fun, because it works!
As you read through and use this system, and learn the marketing techniques that work...you'll find
out that there are two ways to market:
1. Sickeningly wasteful and pushy ways.
2. Inexpensive and response oriented ways.
We'll focus on type # 2, if that's OK with you.
There are any number of people who will teach you how to run ads that look good, or that are clever
and cute. You can learn the type #1 stuff anywhere.
What you cannot learn anywhere, is the type of marketing you're about to embrace. We teach it
because it works, it's fun, and it's legal.
It's never sleazy or obnoxious. It is marketing that touches people's deepest emotions.
In other words, marketing that WORKS! But it is different.
And to many, being different is the same as being a heretic.
That's fine, because I'm not trying to impress anyone, nor should you be.
We're all trying to help people by providing them with information that helps them improve their lives,
not look a certain way to our peers or competitors.
Right?
After all, the top income producing information marketers don't necessarily have the best books or
tapes or seminars or whatever, compared to low income producing information marketers.
They don't have better looking covers.
They don't have better pictures. And so on.
The only thing top information companies do better than anyone else is:
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Get A Constant Stream Of New Customers!
Period.
My focus is always on two things.
One is having something to sell that people might want to buy.
That is an important part of my waking hours thought processes. (Other than fishing.)
But, my number one, top of the heap, king of the hill, pressing priority is to always have:
People To Sell Things To!
I know that may sound a little shallow. It might not sound politically correct in these days of political
correctness.
It might sound a little selfish, even.
But, I can live with those possible negatives.
First of all, those potential negative descriptions may be in other people's minds. People who will
never be buying anything from me anyway, so who cares?
Second, I have been so successful because I have this priority centered into my brain like a laser
beam!
I know that getting people to buy my products or services is all that matters.
To me, the givens are that these products or services will be of high quality and ethically congruent
with what people were promised. That kind of stuff goes without saying, for me, anyway.
So, since my bottom line is one of 100% ethics and Golden Rule delivery, I can rest comfortably
knowing that my mission is to GET NEW CUSTOMERS, and MARKET MORE STUFF TO EXISTING
CUSTOMERS!
Which means that everything I do, or everything I say, or everything I enter into thinking about doing
or saying...always has to answer one question for me:
Will This Activity Lead Me To More Customers, Or To Sell More To My Existing Customers???
Call me simple, but that's all I think about from a business strategy standpoint!
Now, be honest, is that all you think about? If not, start right now! I swear that's the best advice I can
give anyone.
Changing the way you think about marketing is the best change you'll ever make!
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Bonus chapter # 11: The following is written by my good friend, and mentor, Dan Kennedy.
HOW TO BE A "FINANCIAL SUPERHUMAN"
by Dan Kennedy
Before I dig into THIS topic, I just want to tell everybody something:
With 17 years in the speaking business, conducting and attending all sorts of seminars and
conferences, sometimes going to great lengths to be there --- (I once flew to San Francisco, didn't
have time to get to the seminar in time to hear the first speaker by cab, so I chartered a helicopter;
that's how seriously I take the pursuit of know-how) -- presenting seminars costing as much as $3,850
per person, attending seminars costing as much as $7,000 per person...
the JEFF PAUL MAIL-
ORDER BOOT CAMP we had was one of the all-time best seminar experiences I've had in my
entire career!
The people were ALL fantastic!
I thoroughly enjoyed speaking as well as listening.
I was thrilled to see how many of the students are either already making big, big money or are well on
their way there.
It was great to hear my "protégé", Lucinda Burke, tell how she was making more money than a "kid"
her age oughta be allowed to make so darned easily.
This was, in EVERY respect, an OUTSTANDING event - very valuable to everybody there.
The Love Of 'Marketing' vs. Blood And Gore
Now, to the subject at hand. How excited should you be, to be knee-deep in "marketing"! Well, I'll tell
you why I chose this field.
I grew up thinking that the really big incomes in the U.S. were made by doctors, lawyers, big
corporations' top executives, investors and entrepreneurs, plus entertainment industry and sports
stars. I once thought I was going to be a veterinarian - until I discovered that having my hands full of
blood and internal organs makes me throw up. A lot.
Doctor was out.
Lawyer was out from the beginning; even though I'm quite good at making a case, I developed a
contempt for the legal profession every, very early in life. It, too, makes me throw up.
After holding a job for a year, I determined that I lacked the temperament to work my way up the
corporate ladder. My boss wholeheartedly agreed. The Fortune 500 was out. I have no special
talent that would take me to Hollywood. And, as an athlete, I make a terrific couch potato.
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My Big Discovery:
But beyond all that, I gradually discovered that even the doctors, lawyers, Fortune 500 execs, etc.
were all paying the biggest money to others - others who understood marketing - others who knew
how to sell something.
Today, in my consulting practice, I make more "per day" than most of my clients, including CEOs of
every big company, and I get to do it on my own terms, as my own man. (Money really ISN'T
everything.)
How Would You Like To Be 10-Foot Tall And Bulletproof? King Kong? The 300 Pound Parrot?
Anyway, no matter how you look at it, one of the most prized, most generously compensated skills in
all of America is:
MARKETING.
And it's the most secure "job" of all.
Robert Allen used to run an ad that said,
'Drop me out of an airplane in any city in America, with the
clothes on my back, no money, no credit cards, no other resources, just my wits, and by sunset, I'll be
in a business partnership, I'll be making money"
or something along those lines.
That's sort of the way Jeff, I, and others who know what we know, feel.
What you are learning by studiously applying yourself to this Course, attending the Boot Camp(s),
developing your project - this transcends just one project or one business.
It can literally make you "financially superhuman".
So, dig in.
Work at this.
Master it.
There is nothing else you can do or find to do that can possibly provide you with the power that
mastery of these methods can.
Anyone can do it.
I learned how. Jeff learned how. Many others are now learning that "E-Factor" (Emotional Factor)
direct response marketing is the best business there is. And now, you are learning it too! The day you
got this book, was the day you became the next "Financial Superhuman"!
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Chapter Twenty-Three
Hard Work Is For Someone Else!
Working Hard Is Not The Answer!
“There are no alternatives to thrift in the absence of money!” Scottish proverb
As I was looking for a topic to write this issue of the newsletter about, I was sitting down, taking a
break, watching the Cubs game as I do quite often. (Working out of your home has its dangers!)
Anyway, I was listening to the Cubs Manager explain how he told the team that if they just kept
working their hardest, and doing lots of hard work, and working hard (he stressed this issue of hard
work quite often), that things would "come together" and they would start winning.
He ended his comment by saying that "as long as you work hard fellas, we'll win ball games". Now
that kind of philosophy sounds real good on TV and makes a lot of sense to people who hear it.
The only problem with it,
is that it doesn't work!
In fact, working hard has absolutely nothing to do with being successful in baseball, or any endeavor,
particularly the information marketing business.
Let's see, first I want to define my terms and what I mean by working hard.
See, to me, work is anything that you do with your hands or your mouth or your body. For example, I
am sitting here typing this newsletter into my word processor. I consider this
work.
A lot of you may have things that you consider work, whether it be physical or mental labor, or both!
It's work whether you talk on the phone, deal with customers, sell, driving a truck, working in a retail
store, or whatever. All those activities fall into my definition of work.
See, the interesting thing is that while it's necessary to do work, and it's impossible to make money
and be successful doing no work....
it's just simply not true that hard work, and hard work alone
will make things "come together".
No, in fact, working hard only makes you tired. I personally don't like working.
Even though I make quite a bit of money, and have very successful businesses, I still have to work.
I'm close to the kind of net worth I would consider completely financially independent, but I'm not
there yet.
My definition of being completely financially independent, by the way, is that I have so much
money stashed away, that I wouldn't have to work at all for the rest of my life...and still live the same
lifestyle that I like to live. (And my lifestyle desires tend to be a little bit on the expensive side, so I'm
not ready to quit just yet.)
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But, just like the Manager of the Cubs, most people think that this
hard work
is going to get you
ahead.
But do you want to know the truth? Do you want to know what I've discovered is the real answer?
The real answer is not working hard, it's
thinking hard.
Yeah, that's right.
Thinking hard.
See, we all think all day long. Even when we're sleeping, we're thinking (which takes the form of
dreams). When we get up in the morning and are watching TV, or washing up, or taking a shower,
or getting dressed, or putting makeup on, or getting shoes on, or leaving the house, or driving, we're
always thinking.
When we do things at work all day long, we're thinking. When we come home and are with our
families, we're thinking. Our minds are always going, we're always thinking.
The secret of success is
what
you think about, and
how
you think that makes the difference!
See, thinking smart is the whole key. Do you know what I mean by that? Well, it's pretty simple, and
sort of complicated, all at the same time.
Thinking smart,
means that you keep your eyes open, pay attention to what's going on around you,
and see things in the success light, that's quite different than how you may see them now.
Dan Kennedy tells a story about how, at some point, some executive at McDonald's was going
through a drive-up window at the bank, and by paying attention and seeing what was going on around
him or her, said to him or herself,
"Hmmm, I wonder if we could pass food through a window? We
probably can't use the hydraulic tubes, but I bet you we could pass the food through a window and
serve twice as many people."
Whoever did that, created a multi-billion dollar industry, because an incredible percentage of
McDonald's business is done through the drive-up windows, as is most other fast food franchises.
Now the person who thought of that idea has probably made a great, great deal of money off of it. (At
least I hope so. Who knows when you work for a big company?) And, making this fortune required no
work on his or her part whatsoever. All it required was smart thinking.
We hope that we've been helping you learn how to think differently, by learning how to think smart.
Napoleon Hill, who wrote the
"Think And Grow Rich"
series back in the 1930s (He studied the 500
most successful men in business at that time. Sorry, but he did only study men. Those weren't
politically correct and enlightened times.), said that one of the 17 principles of success is
accurate
thinking.
Now, Napoleon Hill called it accurate thinking, and I might call it smart thinking, either way,
it means the exact same thing.
It means being able to
see things
that other people
don't see.
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It means being able to figure out how to do things so they are easy and simple.
It means being able to figure out how to get things done in ways that don't cost money...that produce
large amounts of money. (
There are no alternatives to thrift in the absence of money!)
It means seeing the TRUTH! Yes, what's real, is often the toughest thing to spot.
We're all conditioned to accept certain givens as the TRUTH. Unfortunately, these hand-me- down
thoughts and beliefs are nothing more than myths and lies.
Thinking hard and smart will awaken you to realities 99% of the world will never see or recognize.
It also means not paying any attention to what anybody else
thinks.
See, I think that a lot of times people think inaccurately, or don't think smart, because they are paying
attention to what other people do, or how other people do things, or what the tradition or the norm is,
or what's accepted or what's standard, and so on.
All of that means absolutely nothing!
When asked what I do, my kids sometimes tell me they don't even know what to tell their friends what
their dad does for a living.
I'm not even sure if I can describe to anybody what I do for a living exactly. You guys all know.
People like Dan Kennedy and Jim Fleck know. My wife, Peggy, knows. But to everybody else in the
outside world, this would be almost impossible to explain.
I’ve had years where I had three little companies grossing between $5 and $6 million a year. I'm still
working out of my house, but I make more money than most presidents of large corporations doing
exactly what I want to do, the way I want to do it.
While Napoleon Hill calls that accurate thinking, I still like to think of it as smart thinking. Not that I'm
bragging that I'm smart, you understand.
I'm just using the term "smart" in the sense of doing things that work, that are simple, and that cause
the least amount of hassle...with the most amount of financial results!
We've taught you many ways to do that. We've taught you how to run little ads that can get people to
call you. We told you how to use the incredibly powerful secret of voice mail, non-threatening
response mechanisms for your advertising and marketing.
We've shown you how to create and produce products dirt (clay) cheap. Actually, I've coined a new
term that I call "clay" cheap, which is what I think we're really doing.
Why? Because dirt is on the surface, and that's pretty low. But clay is underneath the dirt, and I like to
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think of what we do as "clay cheap" marketing and production.
We've shown you that you can sell a book that's photocopied and stuck in a $1 three ring binder that
can be sold for $400, $500 or $600.
We've told you about people who are 23 years old and used our system and made $38,000 in their
second month, selling a book that cost them maybe $20 to produce.
See, all these things aren't supposed to be possible because everybody thinks you have to work real
hard to make big money.
And don't get me wrong, I work my butt off! Dan Kennedy and Jim work their butts off! We all work
real hard. But, we work real hard in the context of working smart.
See, that's the key. The hard work in and of itself will do absolutely nothing except get you tired.
Smart thinking will make you rich!
We love to hear from you with your questions and comments! We love to hear you telling us how
you're thinking smart so
we
can learn from
you
.
We get success stories all the time, and want to hear about yours! Please start thinking about this,
and then start thinking smart!
I wish you a lot of success and we look forward working with you and helping you achieve your
dreams and getting out of the prison (job) that you may be trapped in, and want to escape!
Good luck!