REPRINTED FROM

DAN S. KENNEDY’S No B.S. Information Marketing Letter

DECEMBER, 2013

Each Special Report brings you an extended length dissertation on one aspect of info-marketing. These Reports alternate every other month with Issues of The No B.S.

INFO-Marketing Letter*; 6 times a year, a new Report, 6 times a year, the newsletter.

The Letter/Reports are included in Information Marketing Association Membership as a Member Benefit (www.info-marketing.org).

*NOT to be confused with the regular No B.S. Marketing Letter or The No B.S. Marketing To The Affluent

Letter also published by GKIC.)

© 2014/GKIC

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Successful authors, self-publishers of books, people who sell home study courses, personal and business coaches, newsletter publishers, and seminar promoters turn to the Information Marketing Association for the critical insights on the business side of running a successful information marketing business. This information gap can only be filled by the one and only trade association for the information marketing industry.

The IMA offers everything you need to continue to grow your information marketing business under one umbrella. The benefits are too many to list.

Because you have this report, you can experience all of the benefits for free, for 2-months, with an invitation only opportunity to get a two month trial membership. Just visit www.IMAFree.com to take advantage of this opportunity, while it lasts.

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This Report is really more of a rant. A contemplation. An airing of a

conversation I have repeatedly with several clients. All in one. There are no exhibits or examples, just a summary of my thinking – and advice to clients – on the subject. I hope you find it provocative.

As you must know by now, we celebrated my 40th Anniversary in info-marketing at the GKIC Info-Summit, so I thought talking about “old” seemed especially appropriate. We are also in auld lang syne season, a time of reflection on our individual and collective past.

There is a lot of pressure to be “brand new” all the time. If Apple does

not have a radical, groundbreaking new innovation every 3 months, Wall Streeters and financial pundits worry that its CEO, Tim Cook, has “lost it” and needs replaced. This “now, this minute” thinking infects almost every industry and field, to its detriment. I believe it is over-wrought. And that paths to profit often ignore it. So, my take on….

When Is Old New Again?

In the December issue of the No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent Letter, I referred to the Christmas season TV commercial campaign Lexus runs – they re-used the same commercials for the 3rd year in a row in 2013. I say: good for them.

When I first started out as a “motivational speaker”, the wise old owl, Cavett Robert, persuaded me to use the “there must be a pony in here somewhere” joke, which, to my mouth, tasted much like the stuff the pony was being found in. He – CORRECTLY – said, “It’s new TO THEM.” A client used to drag me in every month, for about 5 years, to talk about replacing his tired, old TV infomercial with a new one because “everybody’s seen it” – despite steady sales numbers. To my credit, that should be good for credit in heaven, I kept talking him out of pouring his money into a new show. That show still, to this day, holds the all-time record for uninterrupted airing, for a pure lead generation show: 8 years. Every night, it was brand spankin’ new to enough people.

There are four big mistakes info-marketers make about “old stuff”

Mistake #1: personal disinterest in what I call “the gold in the old”. Frankly, it’s

sinful and criminally stupid for ANYBODY in this group not to have leapt at the opportunity to own my new Lifetime of Work Archives Collection*. To their credit, Frank Kern and Scott Manning, both very experienced yet relatively young marketers raced to be first to buy, at the Info-Summit. For anybody in health categories not to leap at the Making Them Believe/Dr. Brinkley Home Study Course and Archive*, dumb, dumb, dumb. For anybody using a newsletter(s) as “glue”

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not to study the Jerry Buchanan material I assembled, that I originally studied, foolish.** I’m currently writing a lot of opportunity copy for a major client, and I went through my 1900 to 1970 swipe file of opportunity ads and sales letters to find re-cyclable ideas. My Titanium Member Nelson Searcy, to his credit, puts a mini-bio and “lessons of” piece about a long ago elder of Christian ministry in front of the pastors and church leaders he coaches every month via his newsletter. More info-marketers need to do this. Just as we NEED to get our folks to read and have Study Ethic, we NEED to get them interested in the history of their field – both interests make them better customers.

*Information about this amazing, comprehensive, example rich Collection even complete with full replicas of key marketing pieces, audio recordings, and video, should be enclosed. If not, contact GKIC. The Brinkley Course is also available from GKIC. **The Jerry Buchanan Archive is available from Pete Lillo’s office, 330-922-9833.

Mistake #2: getting tired of speaking about and writing about and teaching what “THEY” most need to hear and/or what has been your stock ‘n trade, what brung you to the dance, what got you in the game, just as dumb as the aging singer or comedian refusing to do the songs or bits he’s known and beloved for. Paul McCartney once tried refusing to play Beatles music at a concert. In our world, people like my friend Robert Ringer – who long ago became unwilling to speak about ‘winning through intimidation’ – do themselves enormous marketplace harm. Zig wisely pumped the pump and told the Biscuits, Fleas ‘n Pump-handles story all the way to the last speech.

On the November Diamond Call, Ben Glass clearly, concisely stated the five things he wanted the lawyers he sells to and coaches to know about him, his ‘core story’, and he tells it consistently, frequently, ad nauseum to make sure they get it and its point. There has to be this ‘foundation’. You will think they all know it. You’re wrong. You will think they’re sick of hearing it. Wrong. I recently got a note from a 15+ year Member, who felt he had to tell me how he’d been encouraged by my ‘cat who licked stamps story.’ Has he heard or read it too often? Or despite it appearing in a number of places in print and being told by me repeatedly, did he only notice it once, when it meant something to him?

One of the things you learn by reading a lot of detective-series fiction, where the same lead character and a few supporting cast members, reappear in book after book after book, thrust into different situations but approaching them with the same modus operandi, is that readers do NOT want those characters to change. We don’t want Nero Wolfe to suddenly become bored with staying home, with his orchids, with his reading, drop 100 pounds and take up skate-boarding. In Win, Place or Die, the novel I wrote with Les Roberts, I took his characters to a new place (the racetrack) but within their constant place (Cleveland), and he kept his characters consistent. If a writer like Les gets bored with his characters and starts separating them from their foundation-of-consistency, he’ll get in trouble, fast. The foundation has to be put in place

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redundantly in every book to educate the new reader and it has to be there in a familiar way for the long-time fan.

One way to “lock in” a lot of this is in material, online presentations, or,

best, ‘live’ new customer-member training classes exclusively for those new to your tribe. GKIC is doing this well, with its Fast Start Implementation Boot Camps. These can be delivered exactly the same, literally forever, and should be. However, you can’t think “okay, we TOLD them”, and that’s done. You hear yourself say it every time you say it. I’ve heard myself say things 10,000 times. But the individual is hearing it now, once.

Incidentally, we used to get better indoctrination by pushing and getting

compliance with “spaced repetition learning” – getting them to listen to the same instructional recordings 7 to 21 times. I used to push “sleep learning”: listening repetitively every night with a pillow-speaker, so material could be imbedded in the subconscious while the conscious mind’s sentry dozed. This is pretty much all in the past. Depending on what you “told” them, sticking, being recalled and influencing days, weeks and months later is a losing proposition with no basis.

How To Pee Away A Lot Of Money

Mistake #3: one ‘n done or short term promotion-driven marketing (like:

launches, or infomercials, or solo mailings, or pitches at events) then relegating both the successful product and its marketing to a box in the corner of the basement. Amongst other things, this ignores Ogilvy’s principle of “the moving parade of interest.” (If you haven’t STUDIED Ogilvy, and you claim to be engaged in advertising as a professional, refer to Mistake #1.)

I tell my copywriting clients: I’m too expensive to pay just to sell some stuff. Let’s create assets for you. I teach copywriters to work at getting their clients to think this way. It isn’t easy. I have a client who paid me $25,000.00 to write a full page ad for him, now, 8 years ago. It runs every month in the same few magazines. Is it old? Obviously. Do a lot of the same people read these magazines month after month? Yes and no. Yes – but few people are exactly the same people month to month, year to year. Each individual changes. There is also some circulation turnover – people who lose interest and leave; new people who arrive. Combined, there are enough people the ad is new to every month. In his case, $25,000 divided by 3 magazines and 96 months; 288 = a “Dan cost” of $86.00 per run of the ad, dropping each month. That’s an asset, bought at a bargain price. How would you like to get to hire me to write a full page ad for you, for eighty-six dollars?

This involves many success factors beyond the copy, like Place Strategy; a comprehensive system for monetizing leads; and more. But this is the worthiest

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aspiration: a stable of consistently performing assets with long life, so your investment in them amortizes down to near zero.

I was recently retained to write copy for an info-marketer to fill “free

preview seminars” all across the country, for a year’s tour. I wrote it to do that, but also fill regional, paid seminars, and also to drive prospects from areas no live seminar will come to into an online funnel, and an online video sales event, and also to generate leads to be sold by sending material and driving to a tele-shark. One of these uses has the potential to be evergreen and automated.

One time use promotions and, less so, products are sometimes necessary or

the best of options. But operating entirely based on your next “blockbuster hit” is a great way to pee away a lot of money. It is like buying or building a great house and furnishing it expensively, to live in for 4 months, then burning it down and walking away. Sure, you had a great 4 months. But.

Why Bob Iger at Disney Paid George Lucas ALL That Money

To Own ‘Star Wars’

At bare minimum, you should think in terms of “franchises”, like the movie/entertainment industry does. I bought Lions Gate stock after the huge success of Hunger Games, because they had begun filming the 2nd, and begun production on the 3rd and the 4th film in the series. Obviously, the stock price, and the November opening numbers for the film are good, and I’m a happy and optimistic shareholder*. Yet I still think they missed a big opportunity, to re-release the first movie in theaters for a couple weeks before the new one, tied to some promotion, so fans committed to the 2nd movie could re-live the first and drag virgins to it, so they were prepped to go with them to the new one. I like Disney* because they think almost entirely in terms of franchises intended for long-term life. (*These comments are NOT intended as investment advice.)

The Endless Chain Theory

Info-marketers should focus on selling a product with a sequential

series of subsequent purchases behind it. As example, over time, I built the Renegade Millionaire as a franchise with this in mind. A new, first-time buyer should now begin with the original Renegade Millionaire System, then be sold the Renegade Millionaire Retreat, productized, then Renegade Millionaire Marketing, then Renegade Millionaire Time Management. Ideally, this would have had its own “club” and its own yearly event. That never developed, but not for want of my intent or urging.

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Each product should be the star of a similar chain; each 1st product in the chain a doorway to a separate world. Done to fullest extent, each franchise would have its own web site, online community, apparel, awards, and so on. In most cases, there’s too little “build out” of each product a typical info-marketer births. In short, info-marketers kill and eat their milk cows long before they’re out of milk.

These failures, or less harsh, under-exploited opportunities exist, in part,

because development costs keep getting lower and lower, and because most people don’t calculate time cost into development cost. But this is false thinking. It ignores the development costs of the marketing attached to the product as well as the difficulty of producing winning campaigns. Winners are NOT easy, so failing to leverage one to its fullest potential AND longest life, either continual or reoccurring, is very short-sighted and arrogant – the arrogance in presuming it can easily be followed by another new winner and another new winner.

Let me emphasize this point. I happen to know a helluva lot about

creating winners – winning products, events and promotions. I do it regularly and repeatedly. But even I do NOT do it every time. There are flubs. There are many, many dangers. It is neither simple or easy. It should NOT be taken for granted. I was recently annoyed at a client, and he never knew it, because there was a seminar marketing campaign I created begun, he was on a cruise, and nobody sent me any numbers for 2 weeks. By the time I talked with him, I was holding my breath so hard my ribs hurt, waiting. It was good news: 560 leads requesting info from first wave, early registrations every day, all things apace. I gently asked why I hadn’t been kept informed. He said, “Everything you tell us to do or give us works. Always has.” While I appreciate his trust, past performance is NOT a guarantee of future results. Jordan missed more game-deciding shots than he made. I’m better. I make almost all of them. But the key word is: almost. And, bluntly, you may not be as good at this as I am. You may choose not to hire me, or your projects’ values may not permit hiring me. You should NEVER take the next winner for granted. When you have a winner, you should do everything possible to (a) EXTEND it, (b) EXPAND it, and (c) subsequently RE-USE it. If possible (d) get someone else to use it – affiliate(s), joint-venture partner, distributors, trade association, etc. It disturbs me deeply when GKIC or another client has a confirmed winner; a product+promotion that filled coffers, that get too quickly shelved.

These are good lists to make:

1. How can we EXTEND it? 2. How can we EXPAND it? 3. How/when can we RE-USE it? 4. And: WHO ELSE can we let and get to use it?

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Often, I’m having this conversation with somebody who’s never been

broke or gone hungry. They therefore lack my fear and paranoia. I have been both. I have been broke, cars repossessed, no heat, checks bouncing hither and thon, bill collectors physically at the door, humiliated in bankruptcy court. I know broke. I have gone hungry. And more times, close to it. A dozen nights’ dinners in a row waiting until 11 P.M., when Jack ‘n the Box rolled out its’ Nite-Owl Special: two bean burritos, fries and a Coke for $2. I don’t fear this on a day to day basis. The memory is clear but not acute. But I do know: winning again and again and again is never to be taken for granted. Success can exit without notice. You can even do everything right and get sour results. To me, leaving a proven opportunity under-exploited is an insult to the gods, an invitation for punishment. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Why Jay-Z Had To Spend $1-Million Of His Own Money, When He Discovered Just How Dumb Publishers Are

Mistake #4: more new products than new marketing for good, existent products.

The book publishing industry is so dumb about this, and stays so dumb about it, it’s almost unimaginable. There is no other industry where so many idiots are concentrated together, in charge. Not only do the publishers pump out ten times more new product per “season” (quarter) than they should, they under-market what they invest in. An example, from Anita Elberese’s book: Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk-Taking And The Big Business of Entertainment*, is the publisher’s approach to Jay-Z’s book. They gave Jay-Z a 7-figure advance i.e. upwards from $1-million dollars but set a marketing budget of $50,000.00. As Jay-Z’s manager explained to them, fifty grand barely covers Jay-Z’s travel costs to one event! But setting that aside, surely the illogic is clear: invest over a million dollars in the product, and less than 5% of that in the marketing. Further, the fools actually plan for a very short life for the book. In this case, for his own agenda, out of his own pocket, Jay-Z assembled a team of 50 people dedicated to the book’s launch and marketing, including writers, game designers, graphic designers, print and digital producers, internet marketers, publicists and media representatives, and he basically spent his advance on the marketing. The equation is upside down; it should be a $50,000.00 advance to the author, $1-million marketing the product. To paraphrase Gamble, who said “any idiot can make soap – it takes a genius to sell it”, anybody can get a good info-product made (that’s low skill) but it takes a genius AND MONEY to sell it. *Note: get and read this book, especially pages 6-7,22-23,28-29,38-39,58-61,104-105,158-159168-169,198-199,210-211228-229262-263. Warning: it’s an academic book by a Harvard business prof, so ponderous, not easy to read. But loaded with inside information and important business math relevant to you.

Publishers suffer pregnancy and give birth to books, but refuse to invest in

them afterward. If they don’t rise up and walk all on their own, their death goes

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un-mourned – everybody’s busy getting pregnant again. To be crude, the fucking is more fun than the child rearing. Also, it takes less know-how to fuck than to raise kids.

You just can’t be dumber than this. And the publishers rarely deserve any

credit for their winners. When winners occur, it is almost always because an author made it happen as in the Jay-Z example, or the publisher picked up a property and an author who already had momentum (as with 50 Shades of Gray), or, literally, an accident occurs. Were I put in charge of a publishing company, my “radical” approach would be (a) publish 50% to 75% FEWER new titles, (b) pick and re-release old or even dead titles with new, better, more aggressive marketing, (c) almost without exception, only publish “franchise titles” that can have multi-book series life and have other product, fan activity, etc. built out around it (Chicken Soup, a fine example*), and (d) never invest more than 10% of the dedicated marketing budget into the product. It seems to me this very same thinking can apply to a direct-to-consumer info-marketing business, not just to trade publishing. (*The co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul franchise, Mark Victor Hansen will be my special guest at my Architecture of Advanced Wealth Attraction Academy in 2014, for an evening presentation and discussion. Information about the event is available from my office – fax 602-269-3113. CHICKEN SOUP is one of the all-time biggest franchises in non-fiction publishing, with a very, very long life, and spin-offs of a myriad of products – but it is only one of Mark’s business adventures and successes. BE AT THE ACADEMY, for my electric on-stage conversation with Mark and his exclusive “wealth presentation”.)

To Wind Up With More Profit,

Wring More Revenue Out Of What You’ve Got, Not What You Create Next

My friend Jay Abraham wrote a book titled, ‘How To Get Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got.’ Like ‘Magic Of Thinking Big,’ you need not read the book. You can be provoked by just the title. There are different ways to get more out of things you’ve already got, and they should all be explored with the fervor of a cocaine-fueled proctologist told there’s a million dollar diamond stuck up an obese man’s butt.

You already have: products, present and past. Past advertising and

marketing that worked. Customers. Past and lost customers. Unconverted leads. In them, there are million dollar diamonds.

I am bemused but comforted every time I find myself writing and speaking about something now that I was writing and speaking about the same way 10 and 20 years ago. I am pleased that Nightingale is still advertising and selling The New Psycho-Cybernetics product I created in 1989, and that GKIC re-birthed yet again, this month, The Magnetic Marketing System, “the product heard ‘round the world,” that I birthed in 1981. It’s all new to the person discovering it for the first time.

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By the way, the failure to segment customer lists, identify who has and has not bought the different products in your cupboard, and direct different promotions – as if each product was new – to each group of non-buyers in favor of creating a whole new product to push at everybody is goofy. It used to be very, very difficult to do precise cross-selling. It was a bitch with 33-up Avery labels and file drawers full of order forms. There’s now this thing called a computer, and it runs this thing called a database. Right up there with the miracle of indoor plumbing – which even the Amish now put in their houses. It doesn’t matter how old the product is OR how long you’ve had the customer, if he didn’t pay attention to or wasn’t ready for the particular product the last time it was promoted. Disney still sells the 2-eared Mickey Mouse club hat they were selling when I was sitting cross-legged in front of the first color television in our neighborhood. They still sell the Davy Crockett fur hat, too. Bob Iger recently recognized a declined and declining use of Mickey Mouse ‘n friends, Donald, Daisy, the nephews, Goofy, Pluto – and set in motion an aggressive plan for raising them to new prominence. Why these “old” hats and these “old” characters? – ‘cuz people are having new babies. Iger also just cut a $100-million deal with Netflix, to let them use “dead” and obscure Marvel characters for their new programming. This guy is a really great CEO.

When our daughter, Jennifer, was young, I realized she couldn’t distinguish between old TV programs alive only in re-runs and new programs. We know it’s old. THEY don’t. And even if they realize it, the smart ones (i.e. the best customers) don’t care. Whether for entertainment or business-use purposes, what matters is that your product is entertaining or productive when used. The best holds up. Kids discovering Mickey for the first time don’t know he’s ancient and quaint and antiquated. They love Mickey.

Most info-marketers also do a terrible job with full product line marketing via catalogs, although I make headway with some every year. My Titanium Members Nelson Searcy and Ben Glass went to work on this seriously last year. A lot of products can live on profitably for years or decades in your catalogs, even if they never get a fresh, full-fledged promotion. More products should. In today’s publish-on-demand world, it’s hard to justify killing one altogether.

In the excavation work for my Lifetime of Work Archives Collection, I came across quite a bit of one-time-use work, more for clients than for myself – because I tend to be more frugal about my time, and tend to re-use and re-purpose the same work until there’s no blood left in it to suck out. For an upcoming speaking engagement, I pulled out a collection of manuals on “practice building” from 2005, tweaked a sentence here and there, and created a great bonus item for the product offer. In 2005, it was assembled from a variety of newsletter articles, from 1987 – 1989. Man, it IS old. But it’ll be new to THEM. Just like Mickey is to the next 3 year old.

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