Jay Abraham MK

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:
* My advertisement isnt working. What should I adjust?

* Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?
* I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and Im disheartened. What can I do to
get back up after a big loss?
Q: My advertisement isnt working. What should I adjust?
A: First, did you run the ad to the right market segment? A lot of times peoples profile selection is
too broad. You have to make sure you target as qualitative and on-point as possible. Second,
there are high impact factors in the ad itself such as the headline or its equivalent. Does your
headline denominate the biggest payoff, benefit, advantage, outcome, protection, etc. that the
prospect can get? If it doesnt, test different headlines. After the headline, you can test the
proposition. The proposition is the premise youre taking. Assuming your headline is good, is your
proposition on the mark? Next, you can test proof elements. Depending on laws and restrictions
you can either use testimonials or not, and those testimonials could be abstract or concrete
depending on what is legal. For example, you could list the kind of results people are reporting.
Then you can test different risk reversals.
Q: Other people who have more resources than me are copying me. How do I stay ahead?
A: People knock off people. Thats the reality of competitive society. If you cant change it, you
have to outthink it and constantly be ahead of it. Build up proprietary and aggregate programs,
products and services that have unique advantages, twists and breakthrough technology to them
and then partner by going to organizations and individuals and buy them your work, product or
service so they can see results. If they do well, then expand the scope, reach and distribution.
Q: I lost $______ and/or reputation in a business venture and Im disheartened. What can I do to
get back up after a big loss?
A: If you look at any successful company today, the average has to pivot three to seven times. If a
business fails there are forces, factors and elements that are drivers of success or deterrents of
success. You have to do a self-evaluation and see if youre harnessing those drivers or youre
being a victim to them. Most failures are a function of decisions you made or didnt make, actions
you took or didnt take, and forces you harnessed or didnt harness. You have to evaluate your
thinking given what you know. From this point forward, ensure you make success a natural part of
everything you do. Most of the things that fail are because your decisions arent astute. If you
havent read my book The Sticking Point Solution, you can get a copy of it on Abraham.com
gratis. It describes the 9 ways business get stuck and how to get unstuck. Overlay the lessons in
that book to what you were doing when your business venture failed. Remember: You can always
use relational capital to get back in the game as well as figure out what kind of value proposition
you can build that is preemptive and preeminent.

* How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?
* I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting appointment
and not showing up. What do I do?
* Im giving something away for free. How do I best position it?
Q: How can I get started putting together joint ventures and how do I get paid to do it?
A: You could go to entrepreneurs who dont have the resources they need to grow. You create an
assessment and isolate all the things they could do if they had money but cant do because they
dont have money. You can then arrange to find collaborative ventures that would bring them the
equivalent of that and you get paid in two ways: A nominal fee for your effort AND a tie-in with the
collaborative relationships you engineer based on whatever they are worth.
Q: I have people changing their minds about using my product/service and/or setting
appointment and not showing up. What do I do?
A: You have to be able to denominate what youre offering, what it means, prove your claims and
do it all in a powerful way. What will they get that is either bigger, better, quicker, easier, etc.?
First, denominate that. Offer them to test your claim in which you buy them their first use of your
product or service and tell them to compare using your product or service to not using it, and
allow them to see which one produces better results. You can also explain the methodology and
reason why behind your product or service and its results. What is it that makes your product or
service better, quicker, easier, etc.? You can them preempt the incredulity by saying, Most people
think its impossible, and we did too before we developed this and studied all the research.
Youve got to prove all this, challenge them to experience it, and then project for them forward
what they can expect after using your product or service. If results take, for example, 4 weeks,
you can say, In week 1 youre going to experience the following:__________. In week 2, you will
start __________. In week 3, youre going to see __________ By week 4, you will __________.
Were willing to buy you (the first month/the first session/etc.) because this works. Theres only
one catch: If youre really not interested in a proven and powerful method that _____(results they
can expect)_____ and only requires you to _____(what they need to do)_____ , then please dont
waste our time or yours. When you powerfully denominate, prove and position your offering in
this way, it can cause people to follow through with their initial commitments.
Q: Im giving something away for free. How do I best position it?
A: Articulate and revere what has gone into making the item you are gifting. Dont just say Free.
Say, We spent __#__ years studying this and we spent __#__ years refining this. Weve now put
it into a form that you can grasp it and act on it instantly. It means a lot to us to share this with
you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you, but there is an expectation. If
we do that, wed like you to be willing to spend the time to read it and reflect on it and take action.
Were hoping it will help you appreciate it and want to do business with us. Set a standard of
what it is and why youre doing it. Its a waste to just say free. Free has to be animated, valued,
and you have to connect it in an almost implicit or explicit agreement of hopeful expectation if
upon actuating it produces a result.

* I want to develop a business. Where do I start?
* I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the clients
physical presence?
* What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?
Q: I want to develop a business. Where do I start?
A: First, you need to have your product or service. You cant get partners, promoters, or
performance-based individuals to set up deals with you if you dont have anything to show them.
Second, you need the marketing for the product or service to show people. If you arent strong in
marketing you can run ads that say, Marketer wanted to partner with/on ___(What You Have/Who
You Are)___. Equity and deferred fees offered. Call ___-___-____ to discuss project. You dont
necessarily have to do it all yourself, but these two things are your first priority. Then you have a
fork in the road: Do you fund it OR partner with somebody else for equity or interest in the
business in exchange for them helping you build it out. This is how you start and remember:
The journey of a thousand steps begins with one step, so you got to break the process down into
steps.
Q: I have a virtual business. How do I build trust and grow my business without being in the
clients physical presence?
A: The easiest way to do this is to identify organizations and influencers who already have
enormous reach, trust and credibility with the market you want. Work out with them a joint venture
or a strategic relationship where they get a portion of the sale in exchange for being your
advocate to their audience. They can say, So many of our clients/readers/members/audience
tells us they have the following problem: _____________________________________. Our
relationship with ___YOUR COMPANY___ allows you to solve this problem at an affordable cost.
The quality you will get is __#__ times what you would be paying. It will help you do the following:
_____________________. Start looking at organizations that already have access to the market
you want and figure out how to incentivize them. You could give them a continuous share of the
revenue, OR a front-end load where depending on what the profit margins are you could give
them the initial sales profit, OR whatever compensation or alliance fee works to motivate them. If
you do this right, you could have multiple entities, organizations and/or influential individuals you
have structured arrangements with. The point here is that rather than doing this cold, its so much
easier if you find somebody who already has the trust, incentivize them, and give them content or
value-adds they can start sending to their audience.
Q: What strategy can I use to make my advertising yield greater return?
A: You can create reports, user guides or whitepapers that give people ideas that are really useful
from experts AND that establish a buying a criteria. The buying criteria should establish what they
should look for, what should be evident, and what they should demand in a provider and youre
the only one that satisfies it. When you offer these guides in your advertising it will be seen as
valuable, establish a greater commitment, and give you more prominence.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to
experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, Im going to
ask you 9 revealing questions and then Im going to give you 9 solutions that will
move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 9th and final question in this series. Be honest:
QUESTION #9: ARE YOU TRYING TO DO IT ALL YOURSELF?
If you said yes to this question, let me give you a solution to consider:
If you want to grow your business and out-perform your competitors you cant try and
do everything. You must determine where you are the strongest and where that
strength is the most valuable for your business. Once you do this, youve got to allow
other people that have different strengths do the heavy lifting for you. In short, you
must tap into OPR Other Peoples Resourcefulness or Other Peoples
Resources.
Your job as the owner is to be the strategist, NOT the tactical person doing the heavy
lifting. The only way you will flourish and prosper is to get other people who have
more skill than you OR other people who are more capable of doing things that take
so much of your time. Let them do these things so YOU can focus on high
performance.
In order to do this, you need to be able to creatively collaborate with people inside
and outside your business. This could mean experts who work on a percentage,
profit-share, or cost-saving, or partners with resources you can leverage.
If you believe you have to do everything yourself, your business wont last. The go it
alone mindset is no longer useful in todays business world. By leveraging other
peoples resourcefulness and resources, you can increase your sales, enter emerging
markets, add value to your customers, operate more flexibly, lower costs, access
knowledge and expertise beyond your own limitations, and expand your business.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to experiencing
superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, Im going to ask you 9 revealing
questions and then Im going to give you 9 solutions that will move your business toward
stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 8th question in this series. Be honest:
QUESTION #8: IS YOUR MARKETING MEDIOCRE?
Most businesses dont know how much more powerful they can make their marketing. To have
more powerful marketing, you must first monitor and measure how your marketing is performing.
How many sales come from it? What kind of sales come from it? How profitable it is? What kind
of buyers do you get? Do your buyers repurchase? How many times do they repurchase? How
much profit is a buyer worth to you? You need to analyze all this and more.
No matter how you market there are certain factors you need to look at. You must:
* Telegraph the biggest, best, most powerful reason why, outcome, or benefit your product,
company or service offers so that prospects will want to read your communication and take
action.
* Prove your promise with testimonials, analysis, comparison, and endorsements.
* Tell them what benefit they will experience in their lives after they buy.
* Incentivize them via bonuses, price advantage, guarantees, faster delivery, greater support,
discounts on additional items, risk reversal, and many other possibilities.
These elements can be added to: Your sales presentationsyour adson the phone when
people call youon the phone when you call outon your websiteand you have to start using
them because they will make your marketing perform better.
QUESTION #7: ARE YOU BEING MARGINALIZED BY THE MARKETPLACE?
No matter what business youre in there are a four forces trying to make you a commodity and
make your products or service irrelevant. First is the consumer. They are so well educated that
they want to work you against everybody else and make you a commodity. Second is your direct
competitor. They dont want you to be superior, preeminent or advantageous, so they work hard to
make you irrelevant. Third are the alternative choices consumers have to your product or service.
While not direct competitors, they want to make you a commodity. Lastly is procrastination,
equivocation, contemplation and inertia on the part of the prospective buyer. This marginalizes
you because they dont get excited enough, committed enough or take action enough, and its a
big part of your market.
Instead of giving in to these four forces you must become fiercely proactive, massively
preeminent, and position your company, product and service highly above everybody else in
quality, performance and/or desirability. You have to become masterful enough in your selling
communication to move people who procrastinate to action. The only way you can do this is to be
masterful at putting into words what they will gain by taking action, showing them the pain they
are tolerating by not having your product or service, and showing them the benefit of having your
product or service at work in their lives.
If you think of Aikido, its a Japanese martial art that redirects the momentum of an opponents
attack. What you want to utilize is what I call the The Aikido School of Marketing and take the
four forces trying to make you a commodity and turn those forces into maximum advantage. To do
this, you must take charge. Do not succumb or accept the four forces that want to make you a
commodity. Decide not to be marginalized. Make your business preeminent. Deal with clients and
customers in a better way. Gain greater advantage. Communicate more powerfully, effectively and
compellingly. Get your company and people caring more, being more, and doing more. Show that
your product is a superior choice than doing nothing or choosing alternative products. All this and
more has to become a conscious shift in how you do business.
QUESTION #6: ARE YOU STUCK DOING THINGS THAT ARE NOT WORKING?
Most businesses waste much of their effort on activities or actions that dont work. They dont
question them, they dont analyze them and they dont experiment or test different approaches,
markets or marketing. As a result, they lose money, dont make the money they deserve, and
forgo double, triple, even quadruple the result they could be getting from the same result, time,
effort and money.
To overcome this, you must test different and better approaches. Ask yourself, HOW COULD I:
Target more qualified prospectscreate better presentationsimprove my guarantee and risk
reversaluse more effective messagingcraft more compelling copytest more effective sales
approachesrun more profitable advertisingdemonstrate a more powerful proposition or
positioningget buyers to buy repeatedlyethically program buyers in the beginning of the
relationship to buyput in place additional products to sellbuild referral systems?
Recognize this: In an ultra-competitive market, you only have your ability to better think, act,
transact, communicate and be more powerful. Working harder doing the same thing that doesnt
work is NOT going to get you anywhere except exhausted. Commit to finding breakthroughs.
Unless you experiment, test and evaluate, you cant do this. So commit to finding better
approaches than the ones you are using now and you will produce more profit and move forward
faster and more predictably.
QUESTION #5: ARE COSTS EATING UP ALL YOUR PROFITS?
Costs eating up your profits could be due to many factors: Cost of fulfillment; Underutilizing your
peoples capabilities; Office and equipment costs; Non-optimal business processes; Not selling to
the optimal amount; Margins; Not using opportunities to the maximum amount; and many more
possible factors. However, there are ways you can fix these problems.
First, if you are underperforming in sales, marketing, productivity or talent performance, you can
go to experts. Instead of paying them fees, you can offer them rewards that are based on the
results they produce. If someone can get you extra volume every month or get your people being
twice as productive., you can give them a percentage of that increase.
Second, you could share services to lower costs. Other companies that are not directly
competitive with you could share services with you such as warehousing, billing, bookkeeping,
buying power and so on.
Third, you could buy weaker competitors. Instead of paying cash, you pay them out of the
accounts they have that you take over. Using this strategy, they eliminate their overhead, you
service their accounts, they get paid a percentage of the profit and you gain greater utilization.
Fourth, if your product doesnt give you enough margin then you can find other products people
buy before, during or after yours and package them together. You can do this even if they arent
your product, because if you can get even half the products on an item along with your normal
sale then you just increased your total profit on that sale by a large amount.
Fifth, you can add complimentary products and services that people buy. Ask yourself, What else
do my customers buy besides what I sell? Make partnerships to offer these products and
services to your customers because they already trust you.
Sixth, look at your business capacity. Most businesses perform under capacity in terms of their
staff, facility, production and so on. You may be able to handle double or triple the sales with not
much more expense other than your cost of goods. If thats the case then selling a lot more,
whether its volume or larger size purchases, could be very profitable to you. You might want to
look at markets where you sell larger quantities at low prices because it takes your sales above
and beyond the level youre at now. Even though you dont make as much profit per item, youll
still be making more profit. If you do this in alignment with your normal activities, its another way
to overcome cost issues.
QUESTION #4: IS YOUR BUSINESS TACTICAL INSTEAD OF STRATEGIC?

Most businesses are tactical, not strategic. Having a plan doesnt mean youre strategic. Being
strategic means figuring out the most powerful system for continually driving a constant flow of
prospects and buyers to you. It means that same system keeps buyers coming back to you and
buying repeatedly from you. It means you avoid taking ineffective actions that are a waste. It
means not doing anything that doesnt advance or enhance your master strategy. If you want to
win in the competitive world, you must be super strategic.
Strategy is your long-term master plan. Everything you do to generate revenue, sales, marketing,
advertising, promotion and more is designed to support this master strategy. Most people throw a
bunch of random ads or marketing up without testing them, improving them, or making them
consistent with any overriding master game plan. Once you establish your long-term game plan,
never do anything that deviates or diverts you from advancing, enhancing and supporting it.
There are 9 big ideas you can use to go from stuck, stalled and struggling to
experiencing superior business success. In this short series of blog posts, Im going to
ask you 9 revealing questions and then Im going to give you 9 solutions that will
move your business toward stunning growth if you act on them.
So, let me ask you the 3rd question in this series. Be honest:
QUESTION #3: DO YOU HAVE ERRATIC BUSINESS VOLUME?
If youre experiencing erratic sales volume it could be because you have erratic
marketing. If you dont do things with regularity, you cant expect a consistent flow of
prospects and buyers. From the moment you start a discussion with a prospect, you
have to know how long it takes them to buy. Based on that (and the costs to run the
business) you then have to determine how many prospects you have to generate so
you get a certain number of buyers within a certain period of time and how many of
those buyers will keep coming back. If you dont have systems designed to generate,
advance, and convert prospects to buyers, buyers to repeat buyers and systems that
get customers to re-active once they stop buying, then you cant expect anything
except erratic sales volume.
Depending on the product or service you sell you may want to create or acquire a
less expensive starter product or service to get people started in a buying
relationship. If you sell only a few products or services, you may want to partner with
other people who have products and services that are logical extensions of what you
sell so you can add value, volume and consistency to your business. If you have
selling cycles or seasons, you could acquire other products or services and sell them
to buyers who would normally buy them during these times.
You also want to be strategically quantifying your efforts. Some marketing pulls
better than other marketing; some media pulls better than other media; some
products sell better than other products; certain salespeople may be better than
other salespeople; and so on. Unless you analyze these things, you wont know where
to make the best investments. Everything you do should be a strategic investment
with optimal long-term financial and strategic business returns in mind. Analyze the
data; it speaks. It will tell you what is most profitable and where to put your money so
you experience more consistent business volume.
So, let me ask you the 2nd question in this series. Be honest:
QUESTION #2: IS YOUR BUSINESS NOT SELLING ENOUGH?
If youre not selling enough it may the method of selling. Most people are trained in product
features and elements not consultative advisory selling. Yet, consultative advisory selling helps
you and your team members guide the prospect toward a trusted relationship with you and helps
the prospect feel comfortable making a decision to buy from you. Get trained in consultative
selling.
If youre not selling enough you may not have a systematic process in place to keep generating
new prospects. You must put in place strategic methods to target the best, most desirable profile
of potential buyers and reach them continuously and regularly so they start a relationship with
you. This may mean calling you, inviting your salespeople out, visiting your website, and so on.
You dont want to be doing things erratically or occasionally. You need to, again, put in place
regular marketing, systems, and activities that reach the highest probable profile of target
prospects you want to reach. Without this in place, you wont put quality people into your sales
funnel or system that will close. Take proactive control of your selling process.
If youre not selling enough you probably dont have enough pillars in your Power Parthenon. You
must find multiple ways to reach your target audience. Its not just about using social media, or
advertising, or word of mouth you have to slowly and conservatively test multiple ways you can
market at the same time to your market. The combination will cause people to take action and will
reach people you wouldnt normally reach. Another part of this is utilizing referral generating
systems and having happy satisfied clients continuously and enthusiastically referring more
people to you every month.
Lastly, If youre not selling enough you have to put together strategic alliances, partnerships and
finding new forms of distribution. Ask yourself, What do my customers buy and who do they buy
from before, during and after they buy from me? Start making partnerships with those kinds of
companies. This is how you can reach your market from multiple ways at the same time and gain
dominate competitive advantage.
So, lets start with the 1st question. Be honest:
QUESTION #1: IS YOUR BUSINESS LOSING OUT TO COMPETITORS?
When you have a superior value propositions, a competitive advantage, and a preeminent
position in the minds of your customers, you become seen as the only trusted company for them
to deal with.
The very concept of advantage means youre offering something more appealing, more beneficial,
and/or more advantageous than competitors. You may offer better service, a better guarantee,
quicker delivery, more bonuses but in all causes it is beyond what everyone else is offering. If
you dont offer something beyond what other companies are offering, you cant have advantage.
Learn to become preeminent. This means your relationship with your clients, prospects and/or
buyers is a closer and more caring one than your competitors. You have to be there for them in
ways your competitors are not. If you care more, do more, respond more, offer more you gain
advantage.
* Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?
* Im an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get
paid for my effort. How do I do it?
* I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?
Q: Can you give me an example of a post-purchase referral system I can use?
A: After you get clients and they start repeatedly purchasing from you, you can write them and
say, Our business is predicated on finding wonderful people who appreciate the benefits our
product/service delivers. We depend on, and appreciate, referrals. If youve benefited from our
product/service, we encourage you to tell as many people as you can. When you do, we wish to
honor, acknowledge and reward you in appreciation by gifting you the following:
____________________. You can then decide what gift to send them that encourages them to
refer people to you and shows appreciation.
Q: Im an employee and entrepreneurial. I want to create more revenue for my employer and get
paid for my effort. How do I do it?
A: Go to your employer and say, I want to create a division for us that is going to augment, not
supplant, any business we do. I will build this division and work on it. I can work on it in my own
time or take a portion of my current work time to work on it. When I build and develop it I will want
one of three things: I either want a long-term participation in the revenue OR I want a lump
sum based on what its worth at a certain point OR I want a buy-out of it, or if its not big
enough I want the right to buy it out from you. If you dont want to do this, thats okay, but it seems
ludicrous not to do it because the worst case scenario is we try it and it doesnt work. The best
case is that I can build us a $________ profit center that is totally additive and augments what we
do.
Q: I want to start getting paid on performance. How do I do it?
A: Dont make it complex. Identify one or two no-brainer areas where you can start creating a
measurable impact. Whether you measure response, conversion, dollars whatever metric is
easiest, use that. You can then go to people and say, There are __#__ impact points in your
business that can multiply your results. I would like to start with you on the two most immediate,
impactful, and profitable ones. I will do it on a performance basis as long as I get ____% of the
increased performance above and beyond a base metric we will agree on together. After this you
can add more, but dont try and do too much at first. Find one or two no-brainers you can knock
out of the park and you will win every time. Even if its not initially that lucrative, you can build on it
once you have get results.

* What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?
* Ive been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?
* I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now sales
are down. What do I do?
Q: What is the fastest way to get started with joint ventures?
A: Look at businesses that have a lot of prospects they dont convert, and/or buyers they have
nothing else to sell to, and/or buyers that could be more perpetuated on recurring purchases. Ask
yourself, How can I help them convert more, sell more and/or perpetuate recurring purchases?
See how you can help them do more with what they do. You could also try to see what
complimentary products and/or services could logically be purchased before, during, after and/or
in association with what they sell and set up deals that way. You can also look for arbitrage where
you connect gaps that arent being connected. For example: Someone may have a book on a
subject without anything else. They dont have an advanced course, or consulting, or a seminar,
or a group program. You could find someone that has that and put the two together and take a
piece of both sides, or you create the concept for them and have them give you a percentage.
Q: Ive been going through a hard time (e.g. bankruptcy). What can I do to succeed?
A: I have a concept called the Aikido School of Marketing. Aikido is a martial arts category where
you use the power of the enemy to your advantage. The key here is you have to use your
negatives positively. Go to people who are somewhat iconic and start making relationships with
them. Articulate a meaningful, concrete, well-documented, thoughtful vision that could be
presented by the iconic individual to the people you want to reach. This individual is your bridge
advocate and could make an introduction for you. However, again, the vision cant be an abstract
concept. It needs to articulate how it would work, why it will be powerful, how it can be
conservatively tested, what can be done to adjust it, and it needs to show all the research you
have done.
Q: I want to sell my business, but my partner who had expertise in the business left and now
sales are down. What do I do?
A: If the business is dying, you need to stabilize it and turn it around. Run ads in the appropriate
media to find the right person who is knowledgeable. The ad could say, Partner Wanted: No
investment required. Business established. Clients and revenue underperforming its potential.
Investor wants dynamic and ambitious partner who can build the asset to be valuable enough to
create wealth for both parties. You go to media that would have this person and try to get
somebody. Tell them that their only investment is going to be funding themselves. You can tell
them that whatever investment youve put into the business, they get to leverage that investment
for only the cost of underwriting themselves. You get people that want to do it and give them the
right to build it. You could give them equity based on performance and/or phantom equity that is
conditional and provisional based on performance. Next, look at non-competitive, complimentary
companies that already have access to the market and go to them and say, Ive already invested
$_________. Ive got _______, _______, and _______ , but the lead person has left. Ill make a
killer deal with you: You can have this as the backend. We will split profits. You provide your team
to run it, and when it gets to a certain point we can sell it to the outside market OR you can buy it
from me at a pre-agreed upon under-market valuation. Now, having said all this, depending on
how much youve invested, the infrastructure you have, and your current cash flow, you may look
at the reality of the situation and be better off closing the business down OR you could take
the clients you have and sell them to somebody else for a piece of the revenue and then close
down the business but keep the name and make it a division of somebody elses business. Some
people are so focused on taking their losing investment or disappointment with people they have
backed and try to get it back and turn it forward. However, in our lives, all we have is our time,
effort, opportunity cost, resources, capital, and so on. To spend too much time on something that
is going to be very difficult to get above even, let alone get to high value, may not be the highest
and best use of your time. If you can sell it on an earn-out and move it to somebody else or give
them the chance to keep it (even if you have them free rent for a while) and start monetizing it
better, you could take that money and invest it into something you have skill, knowledge and
expertise in.
* How do I better manage my time?
* Im providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?
* Im lacking confidence and/or people skills. What can I do?
Q: How do I better manage my time?
A: This goes back to highest and best use theory. You look for where the highest and best use of
opportunity is for the highest probability monetization. You bring on partners and employees,
depending on who is most appropriate for the situation, and YOU only operate in the realm where
you are the most powerful. For example: If there are 12 things you could do, but three of them are
going to have 10 times the probability and 18 times the profitability, that is where you personally
concentrate your time. You can utilize staff to source and verify opportunities before you involve
yourself or talk to prospective clients. You have to know what is the most valuable and what is the
least valuable, and you only work on the area of activity that is the most valuable.
Q: Im providing something that is similar to a lot of other people. How do I stand out?
A: When the statistical odds arent in your favor, do something where you have control. Why
would you want to compete? If you have 500 competitors, why would you want to be 501?
Sometimes we put ourselves in a position that doesnt make sense. Do something where you get
control. For example, if you could take those same 500 competitors and put them under you and
get override on all of them, that would elevate you beyond being a provider and put you in the
position of being a controller of the deal. If you cant control a deal, dont worry about it; its not the
only deal that exists. Only do deals where you get the toll position. Like a toll road where you have
to pay to use it, you want to be a position where YOU control the deal and get an override on, in
our example, 500 people. This way you are no longer the 501st person in a low viability deal. Find
someone who has something great, get control and then have all the competitors promote it. If
they dont want to do it? Dont do it! Never do anything in your life where you are nothing more
than a commodity. There is no advantage to that. Only do things where you have control of your
destiny.
Q: Im lacking confidence and/or people skills. What can I do?
A: Watch, listen to, re-watch and re-listen to everything on preeminence. It will liberate you.
Remember: Its not about you; its about them. When you stop worrying about how you
communicate, you will be more powerful. In Greek mythology, there was a famous orator who was
trying to rally the townspeople to go to war. There was a big meeting in the town square, and the
famous orator disseminated the most eloquent, wondrous speech he had ever given. It
mesmerized, bedazzled, and impressed everyone who heard it. What a great speaker, everyone
said. Then, a little uneducated farmer spoke. He loved his heritage, his freedom, and his
countryside but he was intimidated, awkward and couldnt even make eye contact with the people.
However, he talked about his heritage, his family and freedom. He talked about how important it
was for his children and for everyone there, and how tragic it would be for them to let that
disappear. The speech was awkward but sincere. It was not eloquent it was emotional. When
he was done speaking, the towns people exclaimed, Lets March! Give yourself permission not
to overthink what you are doing. The concept is always more important than the copy. If you
convey the right purpose and positioning, it will be strong. You can transform peoples lives and
make money with what you do and how you do it. You have the privilege, opportunity and
obligation to make a difference in peoples lives. When youre not worried about you, you will be
much more fluid.
Heres the truth: Anyone can become a marketing genius. Right now, you really DO have the
power to elevate, accelerate and multiply your business results
IF:
Youre willing to replace old and outdated models
Youre willing to throw out attitudinal limitations and fears
Youre willing to welcome possibility and boundless potential
Once you release the constraints of the status quo, you will find everything you do become
increasingly effective, almost effortless and wildly profitable.
That stated, let me give you a short course primer on the three elements that make up YOUR
marketing genius:
#1 AOS:
First, AOS (The Abraham Optimization System) gives you maximum profits with minimal time.
Most entrepreneurs unknowingly limit, constrict and constrain the number of prospects they could
be converting, the number of buyers they could be selling, the number of repeat buyers they could
be generating, the size of the transactions they could be doing, and more. Yet, as part of your
marketing genius mindset, optimization reveals all the hidden ways that revenue, sale and impact
could be slipping through your business fingers. Optimization is about getting the highest and
best use of ALL your time, effort, opportunity, access, people, relationships, capital
EVERYTHING.
Even though the odds are high you are NOT getting the maximum performance, results, impact,
sales and profits you could from everything your company, partners, distributors, vendors,
associated and more are doing know this: Once you gain a broad, comprehensive, expanded
sense of how many better, safer, faster, higher yielding, less risky, more recurring options,
opportunities, approaches and possibilities there are available to you to replace underperforming
ones OR add to multiply what youre doing now your business transforms. Thats what AOS can
do as part of your marketing genius mindset.
#2 APS:
AOS only works optimally when you add the next element to it: APS (The Abraham Preeminence
System). This is a strategic philosophy that is the lifeblood and foundation of superior performing
businesses. Its the culture you instill in your people. Its the elevated way you communicate. Its
the formation of your advertising, marketing, and sales communications. Its what you stand for.
APS positions you and your business in the mind of the prospect as THE authority in your field
the only viable choice the prospect can make. APS takes you from being a generic provider of a
service or product, to your clients most trusted advisorthe most elevated sourcesomeone
who always has their best interest at heart.
If you truly incorporate APS into your business and marketing genius mindset, it allows you to
charge more for your products and services without having to increase your costs, shorten your
sales cycle while multiplying your trust factor, and create more value from every interaction and
transaction. Imagine: Champion and advocate clients that love you and appreciate you so much
that they each refer clients to you every single month. Thats what APS can do as part of your
marketing genius mindset.
#3 ARCS:
As powerful as AOS and APS are, theres one more element you must add to ensure cohesive,
integrated growth: ARCS (The Abraham Relational Capital System). This is about creating a
profit arc that supports and elevates your business expansion and stability by orders of
magnitude. This means multiplying money through relationships. You can tie into millions,
hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars worth of other peoples past, current and future
expenditures, good will and credibility. It starts with a focus on OPR other peoples resources.
There are over 100 categories of OPR impact points that most people never even see, let alone
harness and harvest.
Through ARCS, your clients and customers become your best salespeople. You elevate and
create newfound levels of credibility for you and your business. You connect with respected and
prestigious individuals and create strategic alliances, advisory boards, and more with them where
they have no liability yet lend their credibility, reputation and stature to you. You achieve
extraordinary marketplace differentiation, preeminence, and pre-emptiveness. Thats what ARCS
can do as part of your marketing genius mindset.
When you implement all three elements of the marketing genius mindset AOS, APS, and ARCS
you not only unlock and unleash passion, possibility, profit and purpose, but you also magnify
the impact youre able to have throughout your industry, community and life.
* My product/service could be helpful to a lot of peoples audiences/customers. How
do I approach them?
* What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and
advertisements?
* I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking
differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?
Q: My product/service could be helpful to a lot of peoples audiences/customers.
How do I approach them?
A: Identify a list of the most favorable list owners, bloggers, organizations, communities,
publications online, publications offline and iconic people in your industry. Once you do this, you
can offer your product/service as a non-competitive, ancillary product/service value-add that
doesnt diffuse anything that company, list owner, website or community offers, and rather
reinforces what they do and simply pay for results. Contact each of the partners and say, I have
line of products/services that __________. Its designed to support the people you serve by
__________. I would like to propose a collaborative marketing partnership where I provide
marketing to you that you can use, and we sell the product/service on your site together at a price
point of $_____, and we split the revenue ___% / ___%. If you hit a receptive person, you have to
have your marketing in place to show them. It must be compelling and you need good copy, but
you can create this. If you do this, you have a possibility of building a great distribution network
and you can then sell more products and services. Also, once you sell one of the
products/services, when you ship it out or deliver it, you have an opportunity to offer more
products/services and packaged offers where people can buy greater quantity or frequency.
Q: What should I read if I want to learn how to create compelling sales copy and
advertisements?
A: There are many, but here are just a few recommendations:
1. My Life In Advertising/Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
2. Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz
3. Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy
4. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy
5. Successful Direct Marketing Methods by Bob Stone
6. How To Write A Good Advertisement by Victor Schwab
7. The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier
8. Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
9. The Greatest Direct Mail Sales Letters Of All Time by Dick Hodgson
10. 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success by Denny Hatch
11. Million Dollar Mailings by Denny Hatch
Q: I want to change the paradigm of my industry/market, get people thinking
differently and also position myself in my industry/market. How can I do it?
A: First, create a book. The book could deal with why almost everyone in your industry/market is
out of control and doesnt even know it and you describe how to get masterful control and
sustaining improvement forever. You tell your story, talk about your contributions and your
hardships and dysfunction in the industry/market that you see. The book can be your contribution
to the industry/market to help the companys in it understand where they could be stuck and
methods they can utilize to gain more productivity, profitability, or whatever the measure of
success is in your industry/market. Help them identify the problems they dont see, the causes of
the problems and the best prescriptive treatments. Describe the generators of dysfunction that no
company in the field would want to be contributing to, but are then give them rapid, sustainable
phases for extracting themselves from that state. To make the process even easier, you dont
even have to write the book: Sit down with someone youre comfortable with, break the book into
sections and titles, outline it, and then just talk it through and record it. Send that recording to a
transcriber, and once you get your rough transcriptions back, go to a local journalist student and
ask them to edit it. Now you have a first draft you can start sending out to people and youre on
your way!
* How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?
* What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their
business using my expertise?
* How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?
Q: How do I make it easier to keep building and deepening the relationships I have?
A: You build a system so that once you initiate contact, it sustains the relationship and takes it to
the next logical outcome. If youre going to go out and meet 100 people and you want to have top
of mind awareness that is building momentum, credibility and a bond, you have to ask yourself
this: What elements of value-based communication, content, gifting, information, introductions,
books and so on can I do that will keep working hard for the outcome Im after and will elevate
and distinguish me and my business into a strata of awareness and appreciation that is beyond
the crowd? You dont have to figure out what youre going to send them, how youre going to
communicate every month/week, or anything of the sort. Put the system in place. How? Decide
what frequency and format your system will have. Is it going to be a link to somebody elses
article? Is it going to be a book? Is it going to be a recording of something? Are you going to find
the rights to something somewhere else and give it to your people? Whatever it is for you, have it
ready so you dont have pressure placed upon you after you initiate the relationship instead, you
have the system working for you.
Q: What is the best way I can approach companies, partner with them, and help them grow their
business using my expertise?
A: First, identify the entities that are the most appropriate profile or most qualified to work with you
whether you know them or not. Second, you can allocate some capital every week and send out a
number of letter (in accord with your schedule to follow up) along with something valuable they
can utilize a book, a newsletter, an article, or something else and the letter might say
something like this: If history is any indicator, youre a ___________. I see some wonderful
opportunities in your future but with those opportunities come some issues that need to be
resolved: _____________. This is where I can be helpful. Rather than waiting for business to
happen or for money to change hands, Im going to invest first in you. I think this
newsletter/book/article might be helpful. My goal here is very clear; I want a relationship. I want to
invest in you now so when and if you ever need me, youre comfortable that I will serve you and
your company well. In the letter tell them why you are sending what you are sending them, tell
them what to do with it, tell them what it can mean to them give them context, guidance,
perspective and intended outcome. Third, after you send this letter, you follow up and you start a
sequence. Remember: Youre much better off only sending 10 of these letters and being able to
have a continuity and a complete cycle than you are sending 1,000 of these letters and just
playing the law of averages. This is about quality of connection versus distribution.
Q: How can I build an initial relationship with international markets?
A: Dont try to do it yourself. Find partners that already have the market, the buyers, the
subscribers, the email list, the platform, the distribution and so on. Have a third party researcher
or service spend time coming up with every category of business who would be a good partner
for you, and then start looking at their website, stature, best-selling books, and so on. Then try to
make contacts before you ever travel there.
There are only three ways to grow any business.
1. Find and convert more prospects to buyers.
2. When you convert prospects to buyers, get them to buy larger units of purchase each time they
buy.
3. Get buyers to keep coming back more often to buy more and if you dont have a lot of other
products to sell, you figure out other complimentary products or services you can acquire, private
label, joint venture or get rights to so you have ongoing revenue.
The goal of a business is not to keep finding new buyers all the time that never buy againits to
keep finding buyers that come in, start buying, and buy again and again. You then have a base
that you keep building so you create predictable future revenue that you have certainty will keep
coming in.
When your business has predictable ongoing revenue, you have financial solidarity or security
AND your business have value to others. Not only will you be creating a significant predictable,
recurring, sustainable income, but youll also be creating a wealth asset you could sell to
somebody in the future because it has predictable future revenue.
Your advantage in business comes from gaining higher and better outcomes, performance and
results from your time, effort, access and on. To drive up your performance to this level means
understanding a critical principle
STRATEGY.
Most people are tactical and do things for the moment. Being strategic would mean having a
master game plan fueling and directing everything you do. When you start with the end in mind
and every action, activity or decision your put time, money or effort into is designed to advance
and enhance your outcome, youre being strategic.
Let me give you an example: If your model was to do the easiest offering to your market that will
get them to start a relationship with you because you knew the sooner they start a relationship the
sooner you will get subsequent sales, then it would be strategic to make it easy to have a
relationship with you. Your strategy in this case could be to go into various markets with different
marketing and make offers that are irresistibly easy to accept so you can build a relationship and
move people to the sale and resale. This would give you a great advantage over people who are
just trying to sell.
If your model is to get people started easily, move to them to the first sale, add more products to
the first sale, add a re-consumptive product that the client would buy again and again, add
ongoing structure that helps the buyer keep buying over and over, add more products or services
so the client buys more things over longer periods and it makes you more profitnow youre
thinking at a heightened level of strategic discipline over your competition.
The reality is, most people dont have a well thought out strategy. They just try and sell
something. However, when you think strategically it makes a huge difference to your results and
outcomes.
When your business model is propelled by a great strategy and everything you do is congruent
and consistent with your strategy, everything you do produces a greater initial and ongoing effect;
so ensure everything you do advances, enhances and multiplies the long-term business game
youre playing.
Strategic thinking puts you far above how everyone else is thinking and a properly deployed
strategy can yield exponential results.
* I want to make a deal between companies that have a product and bigger brands/companies
that have customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?
* Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?
* How do I position me and/or my company as high end?
Q: I want to make a deal between a company that has a product and a bigger brand that has
customers that could buy the product. How do I do it?
A: Go to the big companies and get signed documentation that states that if you can produce,
provide or represent to them a certain product, they will be open to buying it or distributing it.
What you want is a Contingent Agreement. A contingent agreement states that If you do X, I will
do Z. So, for example: If you can get the rights to XYZ product, we will buy it exclusively from
you. You want to tie up the commitments from the big company first. Once you have five or ten
commitments, you go to the companies with the products and show them you have commitments
and give them two weeks to respond. Youve already got the trust and commitment of the bigger
company if you can deliver, so if the company with the product wants to do the deal with you they
can or you can find a competitor. In this way, youve already got the arrangement locked up,
and if the product company wants to work with you and make it worthwhile exclusively, youve
now got buyers and distributors. If they dont want to work with you, you have a list of alternatives.
They key is this: Tie up the deals and relationships exclusively before you go to the product
companies. Dont do anything until you get those agreements. If you dont get the products, its
okay, but first get the bigger companies and send the distinctions about the bigger companies to
the product companies so they can see what you got.
Q: Which direction should I go: Mass Market or Higher-End Market?
A: If you are a quality provider that will not let your market down, go for the higher-end first. Once
you build that, you can go to the mass market and say, We serve the highest end people.
However, there are a lot of smaller clients that need this. So, weve decided to make our
products/services available to you. While normally our model is doing $________ deals, we are
open to helping you because we know most other providers are mediocre. We will be more
expensive by ___%, but we will be more effective and the result will be more outstanding by about
_________%. This way you can still charge a premium. Consider this: If a deal is $4,000 or
$40,000 and youre making 20%, on $4,000 you make $800 and on $40,000 you make $8,000.
You want to experiment. As long as you have the performance validation that what you provide is
high-end, you will make more with bigger deals. You have to do so many more smaller deals to
make the equivalent of one big deal. So, start with the big ones and if it doesnt work you can go
down market. However, make sure you and/or your providers are so exceptionally qualitative and
high on references and profile that you/they are worth it.
Q: How do I position me and/or my company as high-end?
A: Your position needs to be the preeminent provider that can be easily validated and verified
before you ever make a commitment. You can say to prospective clients, I will meet with you first
to ensure you are compatible. Then I will introduce you to our process/providers. You can judge
it/them against anything/anyone else you might have considered. It will either be clearly evident
that my process/team is dramatically and incomparably superior or it wont. If you want
mediocrity and you want to save ___%, I cant help you. If you want mastery and greatness then
we have the process/people to do it. You have to decide because I cant sell you. If you want
something everyone else has that is not unique, profound or distinctive, then there are a lot of
mediocre options to do it. My company refuses to even go there because that is not what we do. If
you want this done so exquisitely that you cant wait to experience the following: ______________
then we are the ones for you. If you want to do something everyone else does/has that is
basically a commodity, we cant decide that for you. If you want something only we have that is so
proprietary and so elevated, thats what we have.
Youre likely familiar with the 3 Ways To Grow A Business model since Ive posted it on
this blog. Once you have this model well established in your business, you can utilize
the 3 ADVANCED Ways To Grow Your Business
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #1: Every year penetrate one new market.
Take your product, service, knowledge, intellectual property, or skill to one new
market. A market could be a different industry, city, country or even a different
application.
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #2: Every year introduce one new product or
service to your existing clients. You can introduce one new low-priced or no-price
product or service in order to make it easy for market place to start a relationship
with you and/or you can introduce a very expensive product or service because in
any buyer base there are individuals who want more advancement, specificity,
individualization and more.
Advanced Way To Grow Your Business #3: Every year acquire a similar business in
your same field and/or acquire a feeder business. Let me explain
First, you can buy a similar business in your field by paying the owner out of the
profits and without having to write a big check. When you combine two businesses,
you can eliminate a lot of overhead from the business you buy. If you have a good
company that has areas of expense right now and you buy a struggling business
where you combined their buyers (that you dont have) with your buyers while
eliminating the majority of the overhead they have, you would make a low-profit or
unprofitable business very profitable.and you can do this over and over again.
In terms of a feeder business, you can acquire a business that feeds your business
OR a business that is fed by the business youre in. When you buy a business, you
have to think about what else do people buy before, at the same time, after and
instead of the product or service. Once you identify these possibilities, you now have
a number of other businesses you can acquire (or even start) that would either feed
your business by bringing people to you who are ready to buy your product or service
OR your product or service feeds the other businessand it becomes connected,
synergistic, and everything feeds one another.
When youre determining where to focus your energy, time, effort, resources, capital, and more,
you have to factor in the value of the best alternatives you forgo.
Answer these 5 questions to ensure youre getting everything you can out of all you do:
Question #1: When you consider what you want to do, whats the best area you can pursue using
your skill/capital/relationships that has the highest success probability for the time you can invest?
Question #2: When you consider what you want to do, where are the biggest gaps or voids in the
market where you can take the greatest advantage?
Question #3: When you consider what you want to do, where can you bring your greatest
advantage with the least amount of capital/time/resource?
Question #4: When you consider what you want to do, where can you partner, or whom can you
partner with, that has the highest probability of you being successful?
Question #5: When you consider what you want to do, where are you ultimately trying to get to?
All Buyers Are NOT Equal: An

Interesting Way To Find
Overlooked Profit Opportunities In
Your Current Business
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
If you look at your company and you analyze:

1. Where you get your buyers
2. How many different buying cycles there are within your buyer base
3. Concentrations of types of buyers you didnt know about
you can start to focus and specialize. Heres what that means: Most companies
dont know which buyers are most valuable, what source of buyers are the most
valuable, what kind of buyers buy the most often, what buyers are the most
profitable, and on. You can find hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars of
opportunity you didnt even realize exist. As you analyze the data, you will realize
certain types of ads, marketing, sources of marketing and more produce a higher or
lower quality of buyer.
In fact, certain kinds of marketing may produce somebody who is more profitable
right away, but that buyer may not buy as many things for as long a time as a buyer
that came from another source. When you dont know these things, it may looks like
the buyers from a particular source are great when in fact they are only great
because they make you profit one time, but they dont buyer over and over again.
Another source of buyer may be less profitable initially, but buy more things, more
often, for longerbut you may not even realize it.
As it relates to buyer concentrations, you may accidentally or unknowingly have a
huge number of buyers in a category say, Doctors, just as an example even
though you dont sell to that category of buyer intentionally. If thats the case, you
would now be privy to the fact that the product or service really appeals to that
category of buyer in this case, Doctors and you can start targeting Doctors, or
whatever that category of buyer may be.
When you realize all buyers are not equal, you gain an enormous advantage and
insight from analyzing your buyer data that you can leverage and harness to
maximize your profit and impact.
Harnessing The Power of

Access
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Theres a provocative and overlooked question I want you to consider

Ask yourself: Who can I access?
The answer to this question can lead to vast array of opportunities in your life. Think
about it access can mean:
* Acquiring knowledge from a mentor
* Involving an advisor or investor
* Partnering with an individual or company that has a list
* Getting introduced to other people who are in your market
* And many more possibilities

You want to find everybody that has a product or service or media that reaches the
same kind of a prospect or decision maker you are going to want to reach.
You want to go to vendors or those types of products and see who they know outside
the market you are targeting who do the same thing that might be a good company
or individual for you to partner with, or get to mentor you, or who already have a
success formula you can model and simply pay them a license. In fact, these vendors
might also know salespeople who are unhappy working for their current company and
that you could hire full-time or part-time to represent you.
You want to find people who have stature to their name. It can be celebrities,
individuals with jobs who have incredible importance relative to what youre doing,
people who write article for online or offline media, retired people with great resumes
and you want to ethically utilize these individuals by seeing if they will become
advisors to you and see if they will let you use their name in your marketing and
promotions so you increase credibility, give you insights and guidance you may not
currently have, and even give you access to their network of relationships.
As you gain access, you want to play to your strengths and avoid depending on your
non-strengths, and find other people who possess the strengths you dont and find
ways to get them to help you. For example, if you dont know a lot about technology,
you can find someone who does and give them equity in your business or a share of
the revenue that results from your business in exchange for collaborating with them.
If they would normally charge something you couldnt afford, pay them more (yes
more!) but as a percentage of the sales that come.
You want to get a Mastermind Alliance. This is similar, but different from advisors.
Advisors possess distinctions you can use to your marketing advantage along with
their expertise and network. Mastermind Alliance is the process of going into your
community, community or anywhere in the world and approaching far more
successful people in a very broad and diverse number of fields/industries
commercial, political, sports, and so on and asking them to become part of your
Mastermind Alliance. You get them once a month or once a quarter to spend time
together either in person if its local or remotely if they are all over the country. Tell
them what you are doing, how you are doing it, the goals you have for your business,
and you want them to give ideas for doing it better, faster, safer and with more
effectiveness because these people have been where you are trying to go.
You want to go to everyone and anyone you know, and ask them who they know who
would be a good prospective buyer, or investor, or introducer of you to other people,
or whatever the case may be in your specific situation. Like a fountain that has
cascading flows, you have infinite outreach when you understand this.
There are tons of people, organizations, media, experts and influencers that already
have what you wantbut you cant maximize your ability to harness this power until
your first understand and are clear about:
1. What are you trying to accomplish and why?
2. What skillsets and abilities do you have and not have and what are your
strongest skills?
Get clear on this, utilize even a few of these strategies and a world of possibility,
opportunity and access will open up to you.
What Marketing Is All About (Part

1)
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
The purpose of marketing is to educate and make a preferred target market that has
the highest probability of being a buyer aware of a couple things:
1. That they have a problem or are pursuing an opportunity (and you have to get
them clear on what it is)
2. Have them see the advantage of either solving the problem or accomplishing the
opportunity
3. Have them see that you understand them, their problem, or opportunity better
than anyone else because you learn to express it better than anyone else (and then
you have to get them motivated to seek that solution or achievement immediately
and only from you.)
This is what marketing is all about.
Its about gaining the trust of your market.
Its about showing your market the benefit, advantage, and improvements in
outcome that they can expect by doing business with you.
Its about speaking to your market in language no one else has and showing them
you understand their objective better than they do.
Its about understanding the most tangible and intangible levels of risk that
consciously and subconsciously occur to your prospective market and alleviating,
eliminating, reducing or overcoming these risks and making it easier for your market
to say yes than no.
Its about being seen as the only viable and meaningful trusted source they can turn
to.
Its about having your clients best interest at heart.
* Im a service business and I need a facility, but I dont have the money for it. What should I do?
* How do I make my sales team more effective?
* I want to become a preeminent expert/consultant in my field. Where do I start?
Q: Im a trainer and I need a facility, but I dont have the money for it. What should I do?
A: Find a facility that tends to be unused on weekends and evenings. Go to them and explain
youre starting a business and you think this business has the capacity to utilize their facilities
every week/every evening/every month/etc. Tell them you have a very limited budget, but if they
will invest trust in you, you think you will be viable and meaningful to them within ___ months, and
you will give them a share of the revenue instead of the rental fee. If the rental fee is normally
$1000, tell them you will give them 10-15% of the gate until you equal or exceed $1000. Tell them
it may not be that much in the beginning, but youre committed and your resolve is to build this
into something magnificent and if they support you in the beginning, you will be loyal to them to
the extent that they can accommodate it. Secondly, tell them you will allow them to send anybody
they want within reason gratis. So if you would have charged $_____ every time they send
somebody, they are going to get $______ worth of value, plus they will get the ___% youll give
them. Tell them that if at the end of ___ months if youre making a lot of money youll convert and
just pay it or if you havent gotten to the point where the variable is even more than the fixed,
you will sit down with them and either continue if youre on a good track or youll move.
Q: * How do I make my sales team more effective?
Find out who excels at what in the selling process in terms of what they do, why they do what they
do, and how they do it. Figure that out and teach that to everybody else. There might be 20
different impact points that different people in the organization are better or worse at. If you figure
out how to improve all 20, you can gain hundreds of percentage of improvement in performance
of the sales people. For example, you might find somebody who is great at opening accounts
where somebody else is not as great at maintaining them. You might find somebody is great at
selling one product, but not great at cross-selling. Somebody may be great at holding margins.
Somebody else may be great at selling a specific clientele. You want to figure out how much
greater they are than everybody else. If you figure out the 3 people that are 20% better than
everybody in a specific category and you figure out what they do by way of Socratic interviewing,
then you can translate that success. The mistake most sales organizations make is that they
make everybody responsible for everything. Its a delusionary, illogical and irrational assumption
to think everybody is good at everything. By focusing on each impact point, you can usually
increase sales 10% to 30%.
Q: I want to become a preeminent expert/consultant in my field. How do I do it?
A: Every day make a list of everybody out there who is an expert and known for it these might
include authors, consultants, trainers, professors, and so on. It doesnt necessarily have to be the
biggest individuals since they may be harder to approach, but you could try if you have tenacity,
resolve and charisma. Once you have your list, pick peoples minds. Ask them questions. Ask
them what the keys are. Ask them what they would do if they were you trying to do what youre
trying to do. Tell them they are the kingpin and you would never compete with them and ask them
to share the big lessons theyve learned and discovered. You could even ask to intern with them.
Ask them if they will train you and give them all the revenue for the first couple months. And you
can do all this multiple times to where they educate you. When you talk to people say, I am so
committed and my purpose is to _______. I want to be able to make that difference and bring
superior value in the results I can help them produce for themselves. Utilize your intention,
humility and successes as the vehicles to have these individuals talk to you. Another thing you
can and should do is read everything out there. Go to Amazon and read everything you can of
relevance. Look at the titles for insights. Look at the Amazon book reviews because they will give
you insights into what people got out of the books, both good, bad and what they got out of it and
what it taught them. This will help you understand the mind of people youre trying to serve.
Immerse yourself.
* If Im doing a deal where I get paid a percentage, how do I ensure I get my percentage of the
profits and integrity is always being kept in check?
* How do I get people to work for me or my company based on performance?
* How do I reach and get more customers for my business?
Q: If Im doing a deal where I get paid a percentage, how do I ensure I get my percentage of the
profits and integrity is always being kept in check?
A: First, you start with as high an integrity ethos individual or company as you can possibly deal
with. If there is anything in their background or dealings that is at all indicative that their ethical
compass is not in the same direction as yours walk. Dont worry, you will have more
opportunities than you have time to accept them. Second, if its a big deal, you can pay to have
somebody monitor and be on site; you can ask for joint reporting and you can have audit
privileges; you can have responses go through you in some sort of pass through that is online
depending on what you are doing; you can talk as often as you want to a financial person, and
there are enough ways to calibrate and correlate to see accuracy by talking to the sales
managers, marketing individuals, delivery people, financial people and you have it built into your
agreement. If they balk, you can say: Heres why Im asking for it, and I think its justified. Im
investing risk in you. Youre basically only going to get upside from me. I know you warrant that
you will be truthful, but if you are fully intent on that and your integrity is inviolable, you should
have no trouble as long as I warrant absolute confidentiality and allow me to verify from as many
calibrating and collaborating points as possible. If that is bothersome to you, Im fine taking a fee
and letting you to have all the upside.
Q: How do I get people to work for me or my company based on performance?

A: If you put them in the onerous position without you having a success validated model, you are
doing irreparable damage to them and its not fair to make them your guinea pig. So first, you
must have a doable, provable, documented, success validated model. Then, if they are going to
take all the risk, you have to be very generous on either the front-end or the residual to them.
Then, you have to have strategies, scripts, target audiences, time you allocate for them to report
successes or failures. There is a moral responsibility and obligation that if you are going to recruit
men and woman for your benefit who have lives to service financially, families, hopes and
dreams, you have to protect them and provide them with high developmental and growth abilities
to help them be successful, or youre stealing from them. Instead of asking the question to figure
out how to ensure they are successful for you, the question is how do you make sure they are
successful for themselves. If you want to pay them a salary, thats one thing. If you want them to
take the risk and you dont have a success validated model, its terribly abusive of their
opportunity cost, passion and precious time.
Q: How do I reach and get more customers for my service/product business?
A: Go to other people who have complimentary products or services. They probably have people
who start and stop using their products and services who are past or inactive clients. You can go
to all of them and say, You have people who have started and stopped using your product or
service and are past or inactive clients. Let me have their names or you contact them and tell
them that for whatever reason your product or service didnt seem to be appropriate, but you have
a wonderful relationship with me and I have a product/service that is ________ and it can help
them do the following: _________. And since you are so confident in the benefit to your clients,
tell them you have arranged with me to buy them ____ sessions/access/days/etc. thats one
way to do it and you pay them on result. Another way to word this is to have the company referring
who you are paying on result say to their past or inactive clients, We are buying you this $_____
introductory product/service and you should have an experience that is very powerful. You will
experience these results: __________. If you do, then we hope you will want to continue. If you
have limited funds or limited clients, you need to find endorsers, power partners, joint ventures or
relational capital you can leverage off of. You could go to local papers, and if an ad costs $2,000
and you dont have that money, say: If you run an ad for me, Ill give you the first $2,000 of
whatever results. If its only $1,500, youll get that, and you start building your reputation.
However, if you dont have a lot of marketing money or clients who refer you, you have to utilize
astute marketing.

* Im starting a business with little or no capital. How do I demonstrate credibility to clients if I
dont have any testimonials?
* What can I do to stand out to my clients in the crowd among existing competitors?
* Im a service provider. What business models can I use to grow?
Q: Im starting a business with little or no capital. How do I demonstrate credibility to clients if I
dont have any testimonials?
A: Go to people who have your market and offer them a non-cash, non-investment equity in your
business in exchange for referring business but first have them nominate 10 or 20 people they
care about and trust, and ask the people to compare your business against anything else. A
second way of going about this is you could also go to people and say, I want to be your provider
of _____ service/product, but its unreasonable for me to ask you to invest in me when you know
nothing about me. I could tell you my background, values, and criteria for providing you my
product/service but telling is very different than showing. Since somebody has to take the first
step, I am offering to invest ___ months of service/___ dollar of product to you and pay for it. In
other words, I will buy you $____ of my service/product with only one stipulation attached and
its a moral one; not a legal one: If I over-deliver and outperform on everything I promise, you
continue using me thereafter as long as I deliver. Anytime I stop producing that level of outcome,
you stop because I dont deserve your business.
Q: What can I do to stand out to my clients in the crowd among existing competitors?
A: First, determine your unique abilities and positioning. Once you do this, you can go to
influential people who have the respect of groups, their own database, publications or platforms,
and explain your unique ability and positioning. Then, either on the phone or in writing, share
some of your strategies, techniques, methods, principles, and proprietary approaches. Explain the
difference between this and the way everyone else buys, acts and transacts. Say to them, I will
buy you or your company an experience with me or my product for no other compensation other
than if it exceeds your expectations, you endorse and introduce me to others and Im fine in
sharing that revenue with you. Earn the trust of influential people and companies by performing
for them at your expense and ask them to introduce your newly emergent brand to all of their
constituents. If you have a book, you can send that to them and buy them access to your product
or service. You may make no money for a couple of months if you do this for a lot of people, but
you can end up with many people endorsing you and many of them partnering with you. Going
through this process demonstrates your grit, ability, resolve, and level of commitment.
Q: Im a service provider. What business models can I use to grow?
There are many business models. You could do projects; coaching; masterful thinking
partnerships; performance-based deals with measurable criteria you establish that when hit you
get success fees or shares of the measurable enhancement; mass trainings; private clientele who
pay you a retainer; onsite training and the list goes on. You can even give away a lot of content
to be established in the eyes of the market as a more elevated, qualitative and distinctive state.
You can buy clients a half a day of your time or if its a huge client, a day of your time and
treat them as if they paid you as long as they understand that upon conclusion if you come up
with enough meaningful insights, ideas, recommendations and demonstrable evidence that you
can grasp what is there and you have great solutions and strategies, they will go forward with
whatever your deal is. You may even want to get less fixed monetary compensation and instead
get a share of the profits if its a big deal if its not a big deal, a fixed compensation may be
preferable to you.
* What method of marketing is the easiest for me to focus on first?
* Im generating leads for a client/customer in XYZ industry how do I make the relationship with
the client/customer more valuable?
*Im in the supplement business and I cant make any claims or use any testimonials what can I
do?
Q: What method of marketing is the easiest for me to focus on first?
A: It depends on your business and a multitude of variables, but if you currently have a business
going and growing, referral generated clients are the most responsive, most lucrative, fastest to
closure, and they buy more, more often and refer more people. There are approximately 93
different referral generating systems weve identified. All 93 wont be applicable to you, but no
matter your business many of them will be and you will have a huge advantage in leveraging
goodwill and relational capital. There are referral strategies that are ongoing, situational,
seasonal, social and more. You can adapt, adopt, modify and morph these strategies to fit your
situation. If youre interested in accessing all 93 strategies, email Joseph ( joe@abraham.com )

and he will help direct you to them.
Q: Im generating leads for a client/customer in XYZ industry how do I make the relationship
with the client/customer more valuable?
A: If youre in a specific industry and generating leads for a client, heres what you can do to make
the relationship even more valuable. Once the leads youve sent the client buy from the client
(and you dont disrupt the process and cannibalize your own efforts) or if they didnt buy or
they didnt upgrade to a higher level of service/product with the client, then you can go back to the
leads and say: You are obviously motivated strongly to ____________. The client has a really
great program. You didnt sign up/You didnt upgrade to a higher level of product/service. Maybe
the timing wasnt quite right or the cost was an issue. What Id like to do is introduce you to
another well respected program / product / service / platform All you have to do is look up
products, services, programs or platforms in your category. You have an infinite amount of
repurposing and redeployment you can do.
Q: Im in the supplement business and I cant make any claims or use any testimonials what
can I do?
A: You can use the laws to your advantage and you can utilize the Aikido school of marketing.
Aikido is a martial arts that uses the force and power of the enemy against the enemy. Your
regulatory constraints do not allow you to say anything? Use that to your advantage. How? Say
this: We wish we could show you the __#__ testimonials we have. We wish we could show you
all the results people have sent. But we cant. Its illegal. Its more frustrating to us than to you.
However, what we can do if you click here is show you, not 3 or 4, but __#__ satisfied clients
smiling, healthy, glowing pictures after they started using our product. We should also tell you that
the vast majority tried many of our competitors. You have to make your own decision, but if youve
tried other solutions, product or supplements, and have been disappointed or outright frustrated
with the outcome, all we can say is this: These are real clients who were thrilled and eager to
send their picture to help encourage people like you who were a little bit apprehensive or
uncertain. In addition, we dont consider any purchase you make of our product final and binding
on your part until youve personally used it for at least ____ days. You will see the outcomes
youre after or you wont.
What do you want to do?
I want to run a company that has 1,000 employees and generates $50 million.
I want to build a chain of 500 retail stores.

I want to make $1,000,000 in a year.
What is it for YOU?
Now, once you know what you want, let me ask you a question: If theres an easier, safer, less
demanding, less expensive, less stressful way to get to your end result wouldnt you want to
know what it is?
Heres a reality most people miss: There could be ten easier, faster, safer ways to do what you
want with a lot less management, less fixed commitments, and so on but you have to be
informed.
For example, maybe you want to make passive income. You can make passive income from
OTHER PEOPLES assets, relationships, media or distribution, where you work very hard for a
short period and then you get recurring income over and over again. That recurring income can
be used to finance and stabilize your transition to the next level when you figure out what your
next level is; that income can be used to finance at a bank; that income can be used to
supplement your lifestyle and relieve you of stress
No matter where you are right now, the differential between where you are and where you want to
be the delta is your current gap. Most people try and get from where they are to where they
want to be very quickly, very dangerously and very poorly because they dont know a lot about it. I
recommend you slowly stair-step methodically a little higher and make sure that you have stable,
predictable, solid revenue behind you all the time that will always be there to support and finance
whatever new things you want to do is.
This is a way of thinking; a mental mindset. Its important that you create business vehicles that
work harder for you than you work for them AND the best way to do it is safely, without
needless risk, utilizing high probability success methods.
A Strategy You Can Use to Build

a Wealth-Generating Brand (and
a Short-Sighted Mistake People

Make Trying to Do This)
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
When you build a well-liked, well-received, and well-respected brand, the money it
makes is almost secondary. Whats primary? This: The brand has enormous wealth
creating value. Heres a strategy for building a wealth-generating brand (while
generating profit windfalls too):
Go to a company that has a quality brand that targets quality buyers with limited
products or services. This could be a perfect market for you to get control of a
complimentary product or service without being competitive and do this: You or them
put a joint brand on it and get a licensing deal where they will distribute the product
or service through their distribution channel, salesforce, trade shows, catalogs,
website etc. and they get half the profits and you get the other half. You engineer
this by figuring it out, acquiring a product or service you white label, and put a
proprietary private label of your own on it so it becomes you and your new partners
product. This way youre always building a brand versus building somebody else.
Now, some people may do this for OTHER PEOPLES products. Heres where people
tend to be short-sighted: The reality is you can go to ANYONES product with this
strategy different products every day and you can make profit. However, doing
this means you are not building anything other than the fact that your clients know to
buy the products. Everyone who buys other peoples products are going to start
repurchasing from other people and not from you.
On the other hand, if you get control of products and sell them as YOUR brand
through YOUR distribution and they want to repurchase they repurchase from YOU.
This means you control the client/buyer and the majority of the profit and you are
building a brand you create in your name that has enormous market value that a
company will pay 6x or 8x the cash flow or profit you make when youre ready to sell
it.
Want to Buy a Business But Dont

Have the Money? No Problem,
Try This
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
If youre an entrepreneur who is just starting out AND/OR you simply dont have the
capital to buy a business you want, here is a way to do it with ZERO capital: Contact
business owners and say the following:
Would you be interested in selling this business to me in the next few years?
If they say maybe or yes, you can respond with this
I would be willing to work for you for up to ____ years full-time at a reduced salary to
be your intern to turn into the General Manager with this understanding: I would start
with the option to buy into the business at the end of _____ months/years if I perform
at a certain quality/level/volume/etc. If I add value and can prove I can run the
business and make it better, you agree to sell it to me in _____ years.
We will work together whether you sell me all of the business or part of it but I earn
the right to buy it when I come in IF I perform.
You have control. If I dont perform well, its nullified and void. If I do, then every
month I work for you I get credit for what I do because Im going to take a lesser fee.
At a certain point I will have the right to buy either the entire business or a portion of
it; whatever we agree to, and you will allow me to pay for it out of the increased
profit that I will have created for you out of the increased revenue I will have
generated for you.
What Every Young Entrepreneur

Ought to Know About Starting a
Business
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
The world is filled with delusions, misinformation, confusions and hallucinations about
what it takes to start a business and be an entrepreneur.
You think you have to go into terrible debt? Not so.
You think you have to work mercilessly hard? Its not true.
You think you have to be miserable and beleaguered until you finally make it? Wrong
again.
Yes, you could opt to be this person and youve very welcomed to follow that path
but I wouldnt.
The truth that every young entrepreneur ought to realize about starting a business is
this
You can have the fastest, safest, easiest, most result certain first endeavor.
You can start a business that has the highest probability of making money so you
have predictable cash flow that can be used to subsidize your current income; and/or
finance products or services or equipment you might need; and validate to you that
you have the capability of making and creating commerce and making new profits
and revenue happen.
You dont have to put your life in jeopardy financially. I know a lot of people who put
everything on the line and they won. However, I know a lot of people who put
everything on the line and they lost everything. There are many more of these
stories than the former. When they lost everything, the worst thing they lost was
their entrepreneurial spirit. They lost the willingness to try again. They lost the
capacity to see themselves as someone who was destined to succeed. They lost the
ability to have passion for creating a business, enterprise or vehicle that they owned,
could grow, and utilize to create many other vehicles. They lost all of that passion,
possibility and purpose forever
I dont want to see that happen to any young entrepreneur I dont want to see that
happen to you.
I want to help take you through a methodical way of thinking, and then through a
series of safe, proven, high success probability actions where the only way you will
get stressed, depressed, and fail is if you dont act. The truth is you have virtually
unlimited directions, options, possibilities and choices available to you to start your
business.
A High Probability Success Model

You Can Leverage Starting Right
Now
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Go to a business that is successful, but limited in its geographic scope. It could be a

great restaurant, dry cleaner, animal hospital, car repair store, clothing retailer, and
so on.
Go to them and say: Are you planning on expanding outside of _____(Geographical
Region)_____?
Now, you will get several types of responsesand depending on how they respond,
here are some possible responses back.
If they say, I have no interest in growing my business past the current one in this
location.
Ask them, If I can immerse myself on my free time and figure out how to blueprint,
codify and replicate your success model meaning, how you do it, your processes,
your procedures, your marketing, your operations and I can get partners for us in
other cities outside of this region and get them to pay a fee and percentage, will you
share that equally with me if I manage it?
If they say, I havent thought about expanding outside my region.
Ask them, Would you like the revenue without the risk or expense of expansion?
Unless they are control freaks, they will say yes, and you can share a variation of the
previous response.
If they say, Yes, we want to expand, but not for ____ years.
Ask them, Why?
And then, depending on their reasoning, you can respond with something like this: If
I could figure out how to do it in ___ months, not years, with no capital, but you would
give up 50% of the profit so you have to share some of the revenue with me but
youd have no downside risk, you would get cash flow upfront and then ongoing, and
you would have qualitative control of how your business was replicated, and if
somebody didnt follow the process we would have the rights to terminate the
relationship would you let me license other people outside of the market instead of
waiting ____ years?
If they say, Yes, we are planning on expanding.
Ask them, When would you do it and how would you do it?
Youre asking them about their timeline and whether it would be company-owned or if
they would try and get partners and you can utilize a variation of the previous
response.
This is a high probability success model you can start leveraging right now.
Your Life 2.0: Thinking About Your

Next Level
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Wherever you are right now in your life, career or aspirations you have the
capacity, capability and responsibility to determine where you want to be. Once you
do, you can take safe, predictable, high-probability success steps to get there.
In order to get to where you want to be, first you must optimize. That means getting
the highest and best use, result and return from your time, skill, efforts and
investments. However, you cant optimize anything until you first understand a
majority of the alternatives, options, opportunities, and possibilities available to you
so you can select the wisest path that will get you most safely to your next level.
No matter where you are today, know this: You are on a permanent progression. The
key is answering this question:Where do I want everything I am doing to ultimately
take me?
Since you cant optimize until you think about your options so lets start there.
FIRST: Wherever you are personally and professionally, you have to decide your level
of commitment. Why? Because this will determine what strategy will work best
depending on where you are at right now. For example, if youre an entrepreneur, but
you are currently depending on your job for a paycheck, it may not be wise to
abandon your paycheck and throw caution to the wind and just start a business
without much thought. However, in this scenario, it would be advisable to start a
part-time business with a high success probability that utilized your greatest skillsets
even if it didnt initially make you a lot of money. Whatever your level of
commitment, you would, of course, still put very passionate, focused, purposeful
attention to everything you do. The point is: First you must determine your level of
commitment to your next level whatever that next level is for you.
SECOND: You must determine where you are strongest and where you are weakest.
For example, if you are terrible at selling or dealing with the public its not highly
likely you will be a great deal maker, BUT, you can easily find someone else to make
and close deals for you. You might also have a skillset that is very desirable and you
may have never known it. You have to ask yourself the questions: What problems
are people trying to solve on a regular basis that they recognize and What
opportunities are they trying to achieve every day? Once you determine the
problems people want to solve and opportunities they want to achieve, you can see if
you have a skillset that can provide the solution or opportunity for fulfillment OR if
you can get control of someone else who has that kind of ability and work out a
partnership where you make it available and they provide it. So, honestly
determining your strengths and weaknesses is the second step on the path to your
next level.
THIRD: Always start with something that has a very high probability of success. This
will reinforce your psyche, mental model and start with a win that works as you move
toward your next level. This also means being comfortable that whatever you or the
person/people you enlist to help you is adding value to the people you serve. Ask
yourself: Whats the value of what I, or the people I enlist, do for other people?
Theres no shame if you havent thought this way in the past but theres great
shame in not thinking this way now. Take charge of your next level and your destiny.
The Four Types of Markets You

Will Meet In The Marketplace
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There are four categories of markets you have to understand so you can source the
best market for your products and services:
MARKET #1 Unaware and Uninterested: These are people who are unaware of what
you have, who your company is, what your service/product is and they arent
interested.
MARKET #2 Aware and Uninterested: These are people who become aware of your
products, services and company, but are still uninterested.
MARKET #3 Aware, Interested, but Not Ready To Buy: These are people who
become aware of your products/services, are interested, but they are not ready to
buy your products/services.
MARKET #4 Aware, Interested and Ready To Buy: These are people who are aware
of your products/services, are interested, and are ready to buy but need you to
provide the bridge to purchase and repurchase.
By looking at your market through this clarifying lens, you can massively increase the
probability of success when offering your products and services.
Upselling and Downselling 101

Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
All buyers are not the same and all buyers needs, requirements and desires are
not the same. If you treat them all the same, you are doing them and yourself a
disservice.
Heres why: Some people are going to want more quality, more quantity, more
combinations and so on. Some are going to want to start with less. You have to
understand that there are different stratas up and down the buying process that you
have to make available because different people are at different points of
progression, desire or ability.
For example, someone may not be ready for a full program you offer, but they may
be ready for an introductory product or service that gives them the foundation and
fundamentals.
So understand that different people are at different places, and you have to know
how to sell more things to the people ready for a lot more and how to sell less things
to the people who would love to buy your major offering but perhaps they cant
afford it, arent motivated for it, or the timing might not be right for it.
The Rarely Talked About Reality

of Repurposing
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Repurposing can be summed up in a question: What else can you ethically do to

serve a buyer after you have sold them everything you have to sell them or to
serve a prospect who doesnt buy from you?
The answer could be offering them complimentary, additional, and even competitive
products and/or services.
Plus, there is a rarely talked about reality of repurposing I want you to consider: You
might make more on repurposing than you even make on selling your basic product
or service. For example, you might make money from people who dont buy from
you, and you can introduce them to alternative products or services that fill the same
need. Making more money from what you dont sell than what you do sell imagine
that!
37 Ways to Nurture Customers

(Part 1)
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
What follows is a reprinted section from five-volume set of my best-performing

mindset and methods called The Super Books. The five-volume integrative set was
designed to sell for $2,500 (thats $500 per volume). Here are the complete Tables of
Contents from all five volumes for you to review:
http://abraham.com/breakthroughs/Superbooks . Contact Rob Colasanti at
RobColasanti@Abraham.com if you want access to them.
1. Stop acquiring and then abandoning your customers for trivial reasons or
expenses.
2. Do not neglect your customers.
3. Marketing is educating people to recognize and appreciate the value and benefit
from working with you.
4. If you do a lot of work behind the scenes then tell them so. They dont know it if
you dont tell them.
5. Let your customers know the care you take preemptively. Tell them what they are
likely to say and see.
6. If you have a good friend in your life, how many times a year do you communicate
with him/her? Should you communicate with your customers any less? Do you think
your communication goes deeper with each and every communication?
7. People want to feel special, unique, valued, respected and care for. Your customers
are dear and valued friends who have trusted you and valued YOU. Reciprocate by
letting them know what you mean to them on a consistent basis.
8. Let the customer see the business through your eyes. Let him view the relationship
through your eyes.
9. If you cant establish contact personally then have an operative do it on your
behalf.
10. Treat your customers as dear and valued friends or relatives. If you did, how
would your relationship change/evolve?
11. The name of the game you are playing is affinity. The more bonded you are to
your customers, the more your business will grow broader and deeper. The more
affirmed, valued, appreciated they are the more they will reciprocate. You must
demonstrate through your efforts.
12. Try ongoing frequency of continuous communication with your customers.
13. Do not be self-serving.
14. Disseminate information.

15. Give them valuable ideas, recommendations, experiences, studies. Anything for
the customer to be better educated, informed, knowledgeable.
16. Let in on the reason why.
17. Letters, calls and more letters on a continuous basis.
18. Try change-up pitches so a customer does not become acclimated to your
information.
What follows is a reprinted section from five-volume set of my best-performing mindset and
methods called The Super Books. The five-volume integrative set was designed to sell for
$2,500 (thats $500 per volume). Here are the complete Tables of Contents from all five volumes:
http://abraham.com/breakthroughs/Superbooks . Contact Rob Colasanti at
RobColasanti@Abraham.com if you want access to them.
19. Send audios.
20. Send interview transcriptions.
21. Buy the copy rights to a book and send it to your customers.
22. Tell them how you help another client.
23. If confidential material, do it without acknowledging the client.
24. Show them how explicitly they can benefit from the information you are sending.
25. Focus on doing all you can do, to help that client be the best they can be.
26. Send them valuable information on activities outside of your area of expertise. Show them
that you care.
27. Over-acknowledge your clients.
28. Telephone them once a month. Keep them abreast of whats happening right now.
29. People dont appreciate what you are and what youve done for them unless and until you go
through the effort of authoritative and respectfully educating them.
30. Offer free education.
31. To increase your affinity with your customers, send your communications more frequently.
32. Communicate from the heart about their interests, not yours. Make it a benefit for them.
Educate, inform, suggest, share, recommend, tell them about new breakthroughs, etc.
33. Have your salespeople or service technicians communicate with your customers if you cant
personally.
34. Make offers.
35. Ask customers what you are doing wrong. But be humble and dont make them wrong for
doing so. But look for the opportunity.
36. Send personalized notes, letters and cards. The less institutionalized it is, the more value it
has.
37. Send thank you notes or notes that acknowledge their situation.
Why People Stop Buying From

You (and What You Can Do
About It)
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
When people stop buying from you, its for three different reasons:
Reason #1: They have an interruption in their life that has nothing to do with your
product or service. Maybe they were on vacation; maybe they had to work on a
project; maybe they got sick; and so on. They stopped doing business with you for no
reason that was negative about your company.
Reason #2: They had a negative experience with your company. Maybe the delivery
caused them dissatisfaction; maybe a promise wasnt kept or an expectation wasnt
met; maybe the assembly went wrong; and so on. This accounts for the majority of
reasons people stop buying.
Reason #3: They no longer benefit from your product or service because their
situation has changed.
What can you do about this? Try implementing one of these solutions depending on
the reason they stopped buying:
Response to Reason #1: Contact them and express how they havent bought from
your company in a while and sincerely ask them if anything is wrong and ask if
youve done anything wrong then, express how if you did something wrong, it
wasnt intentional. The important point here is to do whatever it takes to make them
happy, be aware of their well-being, and satisfy them.
Response to Reason #2: Contact them and humble yourself by making right
whatever went wrong. Do whatever is necessary including giving them something
free or giving them their money back. If they are so upset they wont deal with you,
tell them you understand but that you dont want their last interaction with your
company to be a negative one and then do something that will leave them with a
good memory of doing business with you. Do whatever it takes to make it right.
Response to Reason #3: Contact them and express genuine concern for and interest
in their current situation. Ask them if everything is going alright with their new
situation and look for ways to offer them complimentary products or services that
could add to or enhance their new situation even if that means referring them to
competitors. When you look out for their best interest, it will stand out in their minds,
and many times these people who no longer benefit from your product or service will
refer you to other people who would benefit.
Statistically, if you respond in the aforementioned ways via calls, letters, in-person
meetings, and so on, it will renew business activity from all three situations where
people stop buying.
How to Uncover a Profit Windfall

From Leads and Prospects Who
Dont Buy
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There are enormous numbers of companies that generate enormous numbers of

leads and prospects that they dont sell. These leads and prospects invested time in
contacting these companies or connecting with them and what most people dont
realize is this: The majority of the money these companies spend to find the people
who buy are sunk costs, and these companies are spending money mostly on finding
the people who dont buy.
Think about it: If a company generates 1000 leads or 1000 visitors in a year to their
business, and they close 5% every month 50 people they could stop right there
and be contentORthey can realize all the majority of the money has been spent
on people that didnt buy, and they are in fact losing money on the 95% of people
that dont buy.
This realization can result in a profit windfall opportunity for YOU.
How?
Let give you three ways:
#1: You could find ways to go to the people who didnt buy and get them to buy.
#2: You can determine the profile of the leads/prospects, figure out other things for
them to buy, and make those things available.
#3: Just because they didnt buy today from the company, doesnt mean they dont
want to buy from somebody in a few days, weeks or months. You can make
arrangements with competitors and set up a deal.
The bottom line is this: There are companies that have already sunk a major
investment in the 95% of people who didnt buy anythingbut those people can be
mined to buy something else. You can work out an arrangement with the company
that has those unsold prospects, visitors or leads. You can work out a deal where they
keep using your strategy over and over to get those prospects to buy, and as long as
it works you receive a share of the revenue that comes in continuously.
Q&A with Jay (Part 7)

Jay Abraham
May 26 2016

* How can I distinguish and differentiate my offer from all the ones my prospects
have had before?
* I want to help businesses grow. What can I say in my letter to them?
* I tried to buy someones business and they reject the offer. What can I do?
Q: How can I distinguish and differentiate my offer from all the ones my prospects
have had before?
A: Assuming your business is profitable and you have a marketing budget of some
amount, use that same marketing money to buy people of influence an experience.
Even if you have a limited amount of money, buy them something they can utilize
and will find valuable relative to your proposition. This can not only enhance your
stature in the marketplace, but also earn you endorsements. Go to the influencers
and say, Everyone else asks you to do things for them: Im not. Pick somebody you
know and care about who is a representative; it could someone from your list, a
colleague, your son/daughter, your wifes business and I will buy them _________ of
our service. After that, judge us accordingly. If you know youre going to win, more
often than not, this is how you do it. Take your budget and invest it in a strategy like
this.
Q: I want to help businesses grow. What can I say in my letter to them?
A: Heres something you can start with and send to 50 people if you have a small
budget or 500 people if you have a bigger budget: If youre too busy or if you have
any days, times or seasons in the year where business is slower, we are offering to
help you and make you one of the businesses we represent. We are contacting you
because by all outward indicators you are a quality business that does very good
service. We believe on an annual basis we can provide you with an extra $__________
to $__________ of income. If you have a staff, then multiples of that. If you wish to
explore working with us, we want to verify your credentials and you reputation, as
you should us. Our fees are very reasonable at _____% _____%. Lets talk about it.
The ones who are interested will contact you and then you can start dialoguing with
them and build the vision of what youre going to do. Theres one caveat to this: You
want to find businesses that really get the value of this and have a growth desire. You
want to start with people who get your proposition and are receptive and not try
and go against the grain by trying to sell those who are complacent.
Q: I tried to buy someones business and they reject the offer. What can I do?
A: You can say to them, What your business is worth right now is $________. If you
want to sell the business, and our offer is out of range lets look at it differently. Let
us help you sell it for the maximum amount. We will operate the business for
$________ fee plus we will take its current EBITDA and its current trend, and if we can
increase it by ___% ___%, you just added a ___ times or ___ times or a ___ times
multiple, and we want ___% of that when it sells OR the right to match the best real
offer that comes in. If we can liberate the untapped potential in your business before
you sell it, youre going to get a lot more. Why would you mind giving us ___% of an
extra $_______, particularly when we charge you a relatively modest amount to
achieve it and it comes out of the growth. We can set up a milestone at the end of ___
months or a year; if we dont have a growth trajectory thats a minimum of whatever
we agree upon, then we can do a systematic withdrawal.
The S.T.E. Connection

Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
You might remember my previous blog post titled One Principle That Leads To
Increased Performance, Outcomes and Results. If you havent read it, CLICK HERE to
read it. I want to come back to that and suggest the following to you: Never do
anything as a tactic that does not consistently and congruently advance and enhance
your overall strategy. This means being ruthless in ensuring every ad you run, every
brochure you use, every sales message you put out, every email everything
conveys what you are trying to achieve strategically. Ergo, you must know what your
strategy is, what your strategy is not, and why.
If you know your strategy, then you must choose tactics to support your strategy.
How? Start with this action step: Clearly identify the most direct, cost-effective, lowrisk, highly predictable source of the most targeted market. When it comes to tactics,
I strongly encourage you to engineer as many partnerships, joint ventures and
strategic alliances that you possibly can. If you can align with other companies and
individuals that are already dealing with the same target audience you want to,
something wonderful happens: Theyve already spent the time, money and effort to
attract and win trust, credibility and patronage, and they can shorten all the time,
money, and risk elements you have to deal with by orders of magnitude. This is how
you can make getting clients less costly, more probable and happen more rapidly.
If you have figured out your strategy and tactics, its time to execute. Execution
means properly implementing, articulating and utilizing the tactics that are going to
drive your business. Execution doesnt mean just doing them it means
conservatively testing them and making sure you are effective, successful and resultproducing with each tactic. The odds are high, initially, the tactics wont be expressed
or implemented correctly; you have to play around with it. The name of the game
here is perseverance, practice, iteration and re-iteration.
When you make the S.T.E. connection and line up your Strategies, Tactics and
Execution, the wheels of your business vehicle are in alignment and success becomes
much more probable.
5 Copywriting Formulas That Sell

Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Copywriting is about assembling words that sell. The words you use in your ads, in
your selling, on your website must position, attract, convince and motivate your
prospect to want to do business with you. The truth is this: Creating copy is not as
difficult or complex as you might think. In fact, Im going to give you some formulas.
If you incorporate them in any and all your marketing communications including
your ads, emails, website, brochures, sales literature, and more it will enhance and
multiply your success many times over. These are formulas that some of the greatest
copywriters in the history of copywriting used. All you have to do when you write
copy (or you have someone write copy for you) is make sure it contains many, if not
all, of these elements. If it does, it will have a multiplies success probability and if it
doesnt, it wont.
#1 The AIDA Formula:
A: Attention. Get attention.
I: Interest. Arouse interest.
D: Desire. Stimulate desire.
A: Ask. Ask for action.
#2 The Robert Collier Formula:
Attention.
Interest.
Description.
Persuasion.
Proof.
Close.
#3 Victor Schwabs AAPPA Formula:
A: Attention. Get attention.
A: Advantage. Show people an advantage.
P: Prove. Prove it.
P: Persuade. Persuade people to grasp the advantage.
A: Ask. Ask for action.
#4 Bob Blys Formula:
1. Get attention.
2. Focus on the client.
3. Stress the benefits.
4. Differentiate yourself from competitors.
5. Prove the case.
6. Establish your credibility.
7. Build the value.
8. Close with a call to action.
#5 Bob Stones Formula:
1. Promise a benefit in the headline or first paragraph and make it the most
important benefit.
2. Immediately enlarge upon the most important benefit.
3. Tell the reader specifically what they are going to get.
4. Back up your statements with proof and testimonials.
5. Tell the reader what they might lose if they dont act.
6. Rephrase the benefits in your closing offer.
7. Incite them to take action right now.
These five formulas apply not just to copywriting, but selling as well. Copywriting is
simply salesmanship multiplied. You can include and incorporate these same
components in everything you do with your sales people or anyone on your team that
communicates with your clients. The ability to demonstrate, denominate, show
benefits, prove them all of this gives you the opportunity to be advantageously
superior and more marketing savvy and methodical than anyone else. No matter your
business, marketing copy is critical in terms of what people read, hear and say. All
your selling communication will be enhanced and improved if you incorporate the
fundamentals from the aforementioned formulas.
What Every Entepreneneur and

Business Owner Ought To Know
About Marketing
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Marketing is not manipulative, hyperbolic, or taking advantage of people.

Its the opposite.
MARKETING IS:
*Educating people;
*Acknowledging people;
*Demonstrating to people how much better they can be by deciding to take action
with you;
*Proving it before they act;
*Gaining trust by respecting people more and demonstrating that respect;
*Taking a You attitude with everything you do and communicate;
*Over-delivering;
*Being there when they need you after the sale;
* and its all rarely practiced.
MARKETING IS ABOUT:
1. Educating another person about his or her unmet problems, challenges, needs or
issues or helping them recognize their unachieved desires or opportunities. Its
about educating another person that solutions to problems or realizations of
opportunities are possible.
2. Proving to the other person that you understand their circumstance in a better,
more complete, more respectful, and more empathic way than most other people.
3. Showing the other person how they can gain the solution or solve the problem.
4. Showing the other person the difference between their life/the circumstances they
are experiencing now versus the improved circumstance they will experience when
they have your product, service or company in their life.
5. Getting the other person to desire that outcome, solution, or achievement at such
a complete intensity that they take meaningful action.
6. Fulfilling on the other persons expectation, preferably over-delivering, so they will

want to continue doing business with you over and over again. This means they will
have trust in, believe in and buy any other products and services you offer them, and
they will be comfortable, eager and highly motivated to continuously tell other
people about your products, services and company.
Your marketing must be externally focused on the benefit and advantage you bring to
others. You have to educate people. The reason is because many people dont realize
they have a problem or the possibility of a better alternative, more potential, or
greater achievement. You must intensify their awareness, educate them to what is
possible, prove to them it is possible, show them the dangers or downfalls of
remaining where they are, and show them the advantages of dealing with you. You
must prove why you are, relative to all other options, a better choice, a better
outcome, a better value, and a better result or benefit to them at whatever price
point youre at.
The educational component at the heart of marketing makes it wonderful. Youre not
manipulating people. If you have to manipulate people to get their money or
business, then you are not authentic in your marketing. Marketing is based on
authenticity and caring enough to tell people the truth. Your marketing should help
people by giving them a selection or buying criteria. The more able you are to
accomplish this, the more impact, motivation to buy, and sales you will produce from
the marketplace.
The Ultimate Way To Build An

Unstoppable Business
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
You can harness the power of geometry in your business using a multitude of
leverage points. When you do, you multiply your results, yield, impact, payoff and
profit in everything you do. One of the ultimate ways to do this is with The Power
Parthenon.
Most businesses generate the majority of their revenue and income from one primary
activity or source. In other words, one pillar supports their entire revenue stream.
Heres the problem: If anything ever goes wrong (and so many things CAN go wrong)
with this one primary source of revenue the company is compromised. Like a diving
board, this approach never sustains upward growth.
Heres a different strategy for you: You want to build multiple pillars of additional
sources of revenue. These may be different channels, marketing approaches, media
sources and so on. If you imagine this visually built out to look akin to the Parthenon
from Greece with pillar after pillar, you can see how its much stronger and
impervious to the elements that would destroy a typical business built on a single
pillar diving board approach.
If your business already exists and its been primarily generated by one source,
imagine adding seven or eight more sources and each one only adds 5% to 10%
more sales. The compound effect would cause your business to double and re-double.
While all your competitors are working harder and harder, youre working smarter
and smarter and allowing the power of geometry to work in your favor.
Every pillar you add can be created as a profit center. You can implement them slowly
and safely and create a foundation that is broad and strong. When your business is
built on a multi-pillared foundation, it becomes almost unstoppable.
From this day forward, never do anything that is incremental if you can invest the
same effort, energy, time and opportunity to make it exponential. You want
everything you do to produce multiplied results not linear results. When you do this,
you unleash enormous growth and profit opportunities in your life.
A More Systematic Approach To

Take With Your Marketing If
Youre Just Starting Out
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
The biggest problem most entrepreneurs have when they are starting out is that they
are episodic, erratic and without a systematic approach when it comes to selling and
marketing. They dont have systems or processes they follow. If they happen to have
a system or process, they are often chosen arbitrarily without validation whether they
are good systems or not.
Part of what stems from this lack of systems and process orientation is a fact that
most entrepreneurs starting out miss: The clients you serve are at different levels of
readiness, reception, receptivity, trust and interest. Treating them all the same is a
mistake because they are not all in the same experiential place.
Your marketing ought to segment and target different progressive states of readiness
in your prospective market. You have to consider all the attitudinal and buying
maturity cycles because if you deal with everyone as if they are all ready to buy from
you this moment, it will limit you. Buyer arent always at the same place of readiness.
On the other hand, if you have different marketing that addresses different segments
of the progressive market you can own the market. You can develop systems that
keep progressing them forward.
I urge you to study everyone in your market. You want to see all the different ways
other people are reaching the market, the different messages they are taking to the
market, the different proof elements and promises they are utilizing you want to
look at and for everything. Look for gaps. You can do what they arent doing or you
can borrow and model from a different categories.
Invest the time and attention to study the competition in as many forms as possible.
The payoff and return on your investment will be huge.
Finding More Ways To Contribute

To and Serve Your Market
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
As a trusted advisor, your job is to lead and guide the market you serve to their
optimal and maximum benefit, outcome and result. This could mean moving them up
to a higher quality, larger quantity or better combination of products and services.
The important point is this: You only do it when it is in their best interest.
Most people dont buy what is in their best interest. They buy what they often
haphazardly decide to buy. Your job, again, as the trusted advisor, is to guide them to
the best category, quality, quantity or combination they can access.
This could also mean adding products and services to their purchase that naturally
compliment, complete, or enhance the performance of the single product or service
they were going to buy. These products and services could be ones you sell or ones
you acquire from outside providers.
Some people may not be ready for bigger products and services. In this case, you can
sell them a starter product or service or one in which they will receive a benefit and
you will have the opportunity to begin a relationship with them which you can
develop, nurture and grow.
To do all this and more, you must stay constantly connected to your clients. You must
keep them aware of all the advantages they are gaining. You must communicate
continuously and add value.
None of this is manipulation; its contribution and service. If you know in your heart
that buying one thing will not deliver the maximum outcome that is possible if they
added other products and services to the transaction, know this: You are leading,
guiding and advising them, as well as doing them a service and making their life
easier, when you acquire or offer the maximum beneficial combination of products
and services.
$2 Billion. Zero cost. Zero risk.

Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There are a multitude of intangible elements that exist within and outside your
business that can give you infinite access to almost any resource you ever want. You
are never stuck with limitations or constraints.
Think dont have enough capital?
Think you dont have enough sales people?
Think you dont have enough products?
Think you dont have enough marketing capability?
Think you dont have enough credibility?
Think you dont have enough technology?
None of this is EVER a problem.
Why?
Simple: Somebody else already possesses everything and whatever you could
possibly want. All YOU have to do is figure out how to structure a joint venture,
strategic alliance, affiliate arrangement, power partnership, distributorship deal,
licensing deal or buying and selling a right. You simply talk and negotiate with the
people who already have what you need. This is the methodology Ive used to
generate over $2 billion worth of profits for my clients and myself with zero cost,
zero risk and massive profitability.
Let me give you an example from my own life: We did $250 million in two and half
years in the seminar business without spending much of anything. We did this by
going to all kinds of other organizations that already have the entrepreneurial
individuals we wanted. We went to business magazines, consulting firms, business
book publishers, thought leaders and so on, and we got them all to endorse and
partner with us so we only paid them when they produced results for us. They
would send powerful and positive emails, webinar and so forth to their list about me
and my event. We only paid them after they generated attendees that paid us
$5,000, $15,000, or $25,000.
I had a client that was a small seller of gold bullion. I went out and did joint ventures
with financial newsletters. Those newsletters endorsed our gold business because we
were not directly competitive. The result? They built us a $2 BILLION business.
Somebody already has whatever you resources you need: Sales forces, brand
endorsements, licenses, distribution, space at trade shows, processes, knowledge,
intellectual property, displays, technology, products, marketing, and on. Its all within
your reach without risking anything and without spending any money. The impact to
your business could be millions of dollars. Its not just possible its probable if you
decide to do it.
Some Straight Talk About Selling

(Plus: 6 Action Steps You Can
Take To Become An Authoritative,
Trusted Advisor)
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Some Straight Talk About Selling (Plus: 6 Action Steps You Can Take To Become An
Authoritative, Trusted Advisor)
By Jay Abraham
All elements of life and business require and incorporate selling.
You sell products and/or service to prospects.
You sell distributors on taking on your products and/or services.
You sell your vision to prospective employees and team.
Most people believe selling is manipulative or a bunch of techniques. As you already
know from reading this blog, that is so far from the truth its almost laughable.
To be massively and continually successful in whatever business you start, buy, or

partner with, you must understand the needs of the other person and become the
ultimate advisor in their life who gives them perspective, tells the truth, and helps
them evaluate situations. You do this by helping them get clear on the result, benefit
or goal they are trying to achieve, the negatives they are trying to avoid, and you
serve as their advisor guiding them, being socratic, and giving them well-reasoned,
objective, externally-focused advise and recommendations.
You are not focused on selling anybody anything you can for any reason. You are
committed and focused on advising everybody on what is in THEIR best interest.
How do you this?
Here are 6 steps you can take:
1. You give them reality as you see it.
2. You tell them what you recommend they do.
3. You tell them why you recommend they do that.
4. You tell them what you believe the outcome will be for them.
5. You tell them what the penalty will be if they dont do it.
6. You respectfully establish why doing it through and with your business is a wiser
decision that doing it through a competitor, via an alternative, or not doing it at all.
When you sell, you are taking on the role of a professional advisor or consultant. You
are always looking out for the best interest of your prospect or client. You are on a
crusade for the betterment of your clients and getting them the best results, benefits,
success, experience and helping them avoid negatives. This also means being
able to teach, instill and install advisory selling in all of your team, because your
team needs to be consultative and authoritative in guiding and advising the client to
what is in their best interest as well.
You NEVER manipulate anyone for any reason; Manipulation is not allowed in advisory
selling. You must always advise, counsel, direct and consult someone in what you
believe in your heart of hearts is in THEIR best interest. You never try to get someone
to buy what they should not buy. Conversely, you must not allow someone to buy less
quality or combinations than they should buy. You have a moral responsibility to the
client to advise and tell them what is in their best interest, why its in their best
interest, and project them forward into how much better their life and experience will
be when they take the action you recommend.
You must make clients better off because you and your company are in their life. This
is a way of thinking. Its not based on structured phrases or scripts; its based on
assuming the authentic and legitimate role in your entrepreneurial life as the most
trusted advisor to your marketplace.
13 Characteristics of High Trust

Leaders and Companies
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There is one element, maybe more than any other element, that defines your success
probability and how the market sees you, your team, your products/services and your
brand.
That one element is TRUST.
The question you must answer is this: How do I create a connection with my market,
team, vendors, community and influences where they see me as the most
trustworthy representation of having their best interest at heart?
After researching some of the highest trust leaders and companies in the world,
Stephen M. R. Covey identified 13 common characteristics of high trust. This is what
the highest level of trust looks like. When you apply these 13 high-trust
characteristics, you build greater levels of trust with your market, team, vendors,
market, community and everyone around you.
#1. TALK STRAIGHT: Be honest. Be authentic. Tell the truth. Dont be covert or
cryptic; Say what you mean.
#2. DEMONSTRATE CONCERN: Everyone matters. Show you understand, respect,

appreciate and acknowledge their life. Have genuine concern and respect for their
life.
#3. CREATE TRANSPARENCY: Open yourself to others equitably, purposefully and
transparently.
#4. RIGHT WRONGS: Correct disservices that happen in your life. Dont let pride get
in the way of doing the right thing.
#5. SHOW LOYALTY: Show loyalty to everyone including your team members, clients,
vendors, community members and on. People will multiply their commitment on your
behalf, expand their willingness to move mountains for you and intensify their
respect.
#6. DELIVER RESULTS: Mediocrity doesnt count; deliver results that far exceed the
minimum expectations.
#7. GET BETTER: Commit and program constant growth into everything you do every
day. Grow your ability, understanding, respect, trustworthiness, relationships,
appreciation and knowledge base.
#8. CONFRONT REALITY: Dont avoid the real issues and dont bury your head in the
sand. Address issues head on and acknowledge the unsaid. Lead conversations
courageously.
#9. CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS: No two people hear the same message when people
talk. No two people have the same experience or values; they interpret everything
based on their unique experiences. If you want to make sure your prospects, team
members, clients, vendors everyone is committed to the same noble purpose, you
must clarify expectations. No matter what you communicate, make sure both sides
say and hear the same thing. Ask everyone to tell you what they just heard you say
and tell you what it means to them. If there is misunderstanding, you can correct it.
#10. PRACTICE ACCOUNTABILITY: Dont blame others when things go wrong; hold
yourself and others accountable. This means taking responsibility for results.
#11. KEEP COMMITMENTS: Say what youre going to do, then do what you say youre
going to do. Make commitments carefully and keep them.
#12. LISTEN FIRST: Find out what is most important to the other person; dont
presume you have the answers. Understand first before you diagnose. Listen before
you speak.
#13. EXTEND TRUST: Demonstrate the propensity to trust and learn how to
appropriately extend trust to others based on situation, risk, and the character and
competence of the people involved. Extend trust to abundantly to those who have
earned your trust, and conditionally to those who are earning it.
As an entrepreneur, you want authenticity. You want to be the best not just in the
quality of your people, products, services but in the quality of your intention and
quality of bond you create with everyone you relate with including clients, prospects,
referrals, marketplace influencers, distribution channels, vendors, advisors, and so
on.
Increase Your Sales 20% to

5000%: A Different Way to Look
at Selling
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There are a lot of people who erroneously believe selling is manipulative. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
Let me give you a preeminent paradigm and perspective from which to look at
selling:
Selling is nothing more than the passionate ability to advocate, champion, and
represent a concept, solution to a problem, way of achieving an opportunity or
desired outcome with such compelling certainty and trustworthiness that the
prospective market you are selling to totally and absolutely embraces and accepts
what you are saying and they trust you enough to take action.
You want to be seen as the most trusted advisor to your market. An advisor counsels
people in what will give them the best outcome. If you advise your market on what is
in their best interest, more often than not you will make bigger and larger quantity
sales. The reward to you for doing what will make your client get a better outcome is
you will get a larger sales and increased profits.
When you and your organization become consultative and advisory oriented in your
sales approach, this approach can increase your organizations sales from 20% to
5000%. In fact, get everybody in your organization who interfaces with the public
not just the sales people trained in consultative advisory selling. It will transform
your results, it will transform your culture, and it will connect you to your clients in a
way you cant fathom.
Maximum Trust=Maximum
Success
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There is a huge area of business most people totally overlook and dont grasp the
magnitude of, but when embraced will multiply your business and transform your life
and that area is
Trust.
Research shows that individuals and companies that enjoy maximum trust with their
marketplace, teams, vendors and community perform nearly 300% more profitably
and predictably than people who dont.
A maximum trust environment where your mind, heart, soul and communications
convey and establish maximum trust at all times is vital for maximum success. Its
also very liberating and a wonderful way to connect with people. The more trust you
can create with your prospective market place, your buyers, and the people youre
working with, the faster they will work for you, the more they will do for you, the
more loyal they will be to you, the more they will repurchase from you, and on.
The greatest ethical advantage you could possibly possess is to be more trustworthy
than your competitors because you will win at such a greater level on every criteria:
Speed of sale; longevity of relationship; effort of your people; attitude of your market;
quantity and quality of opportunities that come to you; and more.
Trust is the most important element inherent in all good businesses, all good
leadership and all good life conduct. By being trustworthy and transparent, the power
you will yield in your world will be amazing.
A Brand New Porsche Every

Year
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
There was a young man who wanted to drive Porsche automobiles all his lifebut he
couldnt afford one.
He then found out a Porsche dealership was for sale in his citybut he couldnt afford
the $1,000,000 down payment.
Instead of seeing these things as problems he saw an opportunity.
Car dealers can allow people to drive demonstrators, which means you can take a
brand new car and for 3 months maximum you can drive it and its still considered a
new car. It uses special plates and its not registered as sold, and then it goes back to
the dealership.
Now, he didnt have the $1,000,000 down payment for the Porsche dealership, but he
knew there must be a lot of Porsche car enthusiasts who really wanted to drive
Porsches and didnt have the money to keep buying new ones.
So he ran an ad in the newspaper:

I can give you a brand new Porsche to drive every year for the rest of your life.
Instead of spending $100,000 every year for a new one, pay $75,000 one time and
you will never pay another penny again.
200 people responded. He said to these people that if they gave him the $75,000, he
would use the money together to buy a Porsche dealership and as a Porsche dealer
he would allow them to drive a demonstrator for 3 months every year for free. He
would simply take it back and give them a new one, and they would keep doing that.
He never had to pay a penny in interest to the banks because it wasnt a loan.
He never had to pay a penny to any partners because it wasnt a partnership.
He used this simple philosophy and raised $3,000,000, bought the dealership and got
$1,500,000 extra as a bonus.
Thats the power of creative thinking.
An Ode To Entrepreneurs
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Animated. Excited. Passionate. Possibility-Oriented. These are just a few terms that
characterize entrepreneurs.
They have the vision to see opportunities to help people be more successful, more
productive, more effective, less stressed, and more.
They have the ability to look at an industry and see gaps that can be purposely,
advantageously and beneficially filled.
Entrepreneurs not only have a burning desire to create something but something of
value. It only through value-creation by way of the quantity, quality and significance
of problems they solve and opportunities they create for others that they are
rewarded.
The entrepreneurs world is of limitless possibility with a constant focus on adding

more value.
Entrepreneurs are multipliers; not diminishers. What they do and how they do it
makes everything better. They make their clients feel better, their product or service
makes their clients life better, they improve their industry by way of their innovation
and service improvement, and they have a greater respect and appreciation for their
employees, vendors and clients. They multiply the impact their product or service
makes in the market.
They bring benefit. They bring advantage. They make people better off because their
business, company or product is in peoples lives.
Whatever negatives, problems or weaknesses exist, they see as the greatest
opportunities. They are transformers of more productive and rewarding outcomes.
Their commitment to their team is to grow, develop and cultivate an environment of
contribution where passion and success can flourish. They care more about the
people they serve than almost anyone else.
Ultimately, its the entrepreneurs mindset and ingenuity that makes our world a
better place.
12 Money-Making Business
Seeds
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Whether you want to start a business from scratch with no money at all, leverage a
skill you currently have into a new business, or make your current business more
profitable, here are business seeds that you can blossom into full-fledged moneymakers; simply add action:
1. Take a skillset you have that other people dont that you could offer full-time or
part-time.
2. Take a company that has only one facility in one area and make a partnership to
take that facility and have them finance you opening another one ore licensing their
business in another city.
3. Get the rights to create new profit centers, service models or products under the
brand of other existing companies.
4. Partner with offline/online media (e.g. newspapers, websites, magazines, social
etc.) to create products or services.
5. Create service companies with no employees or equipment, and joint venture with
companies that have employees and equipment but arent utilizing them fully and
have them provide the fulfillment while you sell it under your company name.
6. Acquire rights to tangible/intangible items such as a product that is popular in one
industry but not used in another industry and you get the exclusive rights to sell it in
an industry where it doesnt exist.
7. Get the rights to help grow businesses profits or save businesses money, and if
you dont know how to make them profit or save them money, simply find other
people who know how to do it and partner with them and bring them in to do it while
you create half the profit for yourself.
8. Find a successful business outside your country and get the rights for no capital
outlay to license, franchise or partner with other successful companies in your
country.
9. Find successful companies in your country that would be successful in other
countries but they havent taken it there so you license it.
10. Find prominent people such as celebrities, business people, athletes and arrange
to represent them, and then go to companies and make them that companys
endorser and charge a fee plus a percentage of the improved sales that endorsement
creates.
11. Purchase businesses without any initial capital by paying the owner out of the
future earnings and the growth you create and extra profit you generate.
12. Tie up and secure the rights to something (e.g. buy the rights to a business
outside of your geographic area) and then sell those rights to someone else (e.g.
bring it to your geographic area and partner with a larger facility)
A Short Course In Positioning

Yourself For Maximum and Total
Success
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Most business have the wrong positioning or no positioning at all. This leads to
opposite messaging than you want or no distinction, differentiation or advantage at
all with your market.
WHY is positioning so important?
It is the defining differential, meaningful advantage and reason why your target
audience will want to buy from you instead of buying from your competition,
alternative choices, or doing nothing at all. You have to be able to define,
differentiate, describe, contrast and compare the reason why they ought to choose
YOU over anything else. If you cant tell your prospective buyer the reason why they
should buy your product or service, favor your company or deal with your
personally they wont do it and you will only prosper accidentally.
WHAT is positioning?
It is the integrated message you send out and that your product, people and business
conveys and communicates to the market. It is a way of being not just words. You
must decide what you intend to be to the market. You must know what you are, the
perception you want the market to gain, and the fulfillment you want to project and
deliver. Until you know this, you cant create a positioning.
HOW do you position?
You starts by deciding what you are and what you are not. Look at your business as it
is operating successfully (or as it should be operating successfully) and decide who
the market you are going to serve is and who you are not going to serve. You cant
be all things to all people or you will dilute and water down your message to the point
of being ineffective.
Positioning Question #1: Who do you want to be reaching?
Once you know who you are targeting, your message has to convey the value you
represent, the benefit they will gain from dealing with you, and the advantage you
represent and will provide above and beyond other choices. This means having a
message that matches the market and ensures your business can deliver on
whatever positioning promise you decide to stand by. The buyer must see the
advantage before they will seize whatever you are offering.
Positioning Question #2: What advantage will your business represent to the market?
Once you know what advantage your company is going to represent, look at how
different companies use positioning. Study everyone else in your category (and
outside your category) by looking at their ads, websites, value propositions, copy,
claims and so on. This will tell you whether you are truly bringing more, better,
and/or different advantage to the market, and it will show you where there are voids
and gaps. Also, understand this: Youre not just competing with direct competitors,
but indirect alternatives as well. Study the copy, positioning, psychology indirect
alternatives use too. Look for voids your product, service, or company could fill and
success processes you can borrow, modify and model.
Positioning Question #3: Where are there voids/gaps you can fill?
Positioning Question #4: What success approaches can you borrow, modify and
model for your product/service/business?
If you have clear answers to these questions, your job now becomes defining and
developing in the mind of your prospect the value you represent. How do you do this?
One way to do this is with a positioning strategy I call, Dividing and Conquering.
This is a powerful process you can utilize in your advertising, marketing and selling to
separate yourself from the pack. Imagine communicating this: There are a lot of
people in the market selling __________(Your Category of Product/Service)__________.
Most of them are good, honest people. However, none of them are approaching you
the way we are: __________(Describe What Is Different About You Here And How You
Do It)__________. Sometimes what differentiates you is simply telling the prospect
how you create your product, select your product, support your product or do what
you do.
Once you have your positioning, you have to incorporate it into all your activities. You
have to be congruent with whatever your positioning is. You and your companys
messaging and conduct has to be in alignment. Positioning is not just an abstract
word; its a thread that runs throughout everything you do. Once you figure out what
your positioning is, you have to ensure all your conduct, communication and
consideration of everyone you deal with is congruent with it.
When you figure out who your market is, what it is about you that is defining, and in
an integrated way you convey it congruently your product, service and/or company
enjoys attention, response, purchases, ongoing business and elevated status in the
marketplace. No matter what you are selling, when you do this, you stand out.
Your Greatness and Profit Destiny

Awaits: Never Limit Whats
Possible For Yourself
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Many people think, Theres no way I can be a millionaire or Theres no way I can
have a big, successful business.
Never allow yourself to limit, constrict or constrain what is possible for yourself over
your lifetime.
There ARE absolutely safe, success-proven ways to start with one strategy, activity or
business and utilize it to grow and multiply.
You are a unique person, and there are optimal profit destinies that will work for you.
Over the course of reading this blog and accessing the spectrum of videos,
templates, keynotes, interviews, insights, downloadable books, articles and over 100
high level resources you can get right now over at www.Abraham.com, you will see
how many options you really have.
Youll see the wide range of possibilities you have to build your own unique business
success plan. Not only this, but once you have success, you can take it higher.
Heres what I want you to know: You have within you greatness. Its a greatness that
has always existed but probably hasnt been allowed to develop for a myriad of
reasons.
You have the ability to achieve greatness in many elements of your life including as a
husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, fianc/fiance, friend, value-contributor and even
in your character, passion, compassion, appreciation and on.
In achieving greatness, remember that the first steps are not always successful. This
doesnt mean these steps wont allow you to reach your greatness; it simply means it
requires building your skill and proficiency. If you can accept that at first you will have
some less successful starting points, the good news is you will discover safe, easy
ways to build your abilities, develop your skills, and achieve success.
So where are you now AND where on the continuum do you need or want to be as
it relates to your greatness?
You have the capacity to liberate and emancipate within yourself talents, abilities,
creativity and opportunities you never dreamed possible.
Success is a function of whether you execute, implement and believe. You are
capable of so much more for yourself and others.
Think deeply and committedly about your greatness. See it in your minds eye,
because I believe you are destined for greatness.
Gordian Knots Untangled: 7

Creative Ways To Outsize Your
Business Performance
Jay Abraham
May 26 2016
Strategic and creative thinking is never more important than when youre facing a
seemingly unsolvable problem or a complex Gordian knot. These are the sort of
challenges and problems Im asked to untangle and come up with solution to every
month on a conference call series I curate called the Outsizing Your Business
Performance Program.
What follows is a summary of some of the key takeaways from the call I had February
2016 that you can start utilizing in your business to achieve greater revenue, profit,
relationships, positioning, prominence, market dominance and more.
If you find it intriguing and if youre curious to learn more, you can contact Rob
Colasanti (RobColasanti@Abraham.com) and he can get you the program details.
However, if you do nothing else, I hope youll take these approaches to think beyond
your current circumstance and consider where the most strategic connections and
collaborations are in your business and life.
Gordian Knot #1: Approach a competitor that has the same customers you want.
Heres a script to consider sending to the owner: I have a very provocative proposal
for you. I would like to partner with you and have you sell my ______________ through
your distribution. I can help by doing the following: _________. I think the alignment
will create $________ for me. I will give you, in exchange for this growth, not only half
of all the revenue/profit, but ALSO as long as it grows to a certain level the right to
buy the product line/business from me at a very under-market multiple in ___x___

number of years so that you making my growth possible is only going to be an asset
for you. The growth I get from you will fund my ability to grow my service in other
markets and you will be the beneficiary.
Gordian Knot #2: Create profit from thin air by leveraging struggling businesses.
APPROACH #1 (For a non-competitor who is struggling): I want to buy and grow your
business. Whatever youre making youll always get that amount. Above that, Ill
take all the risk, the marketing of it, management of it and you just fulfill or well take
it over and its a negotiable thing and I will either buy it out from you at a preagreed upon price that will be paid out of the proceeds that I create for us OR I will
just take half interest and you get a free ride by continuing to do what youre doing
and Ill just keep half of everything above that. Well agree upon a certain benchmark
timeline, and if I dont hit it then Ill let you take over and pay me a share for what
Ive created for you.
APPROACH #2 (For a competitor who is struggling): Everything I know, seen and
heard about you is that youre a quality company/service/product. I think you work
too hard and your products and services are too good for you to make less than you
deserve. I have a proposal: Ill take over the business and consolidate it into mine
and put my marketing muscle, resources, capital, and know-how behind it. You will
eliminate all your expenses and costs. I will give you 25% of the profits from
everything we make from what youre doing and youre now free to do whatever
you want, and for as long as we sell your product/service or keep your
clients/customers, youll get a permanent percentage from it, and any add-ons we
ever sell to them or any other business that emanates from it youll get a piece of
thatand you dont have to do anything except, if you want, go out and generate
more.
Gordian Knot #3: Accessing and penetrating a country youre not in.
There are likely some number of companies that have licenses to either import or
manufacture products. Start a search and discovery process of asking the companies
you have relationships with if they have licensees for any of their products in the
country you want to access. Further, you could go to 300 to 500 companies and say,
If you have a licensee in X country, I believe I can make that relationship bigger,
better, more successful, more profitable, less problematic, etc. and better partners
for you.
Gordian Knot #4: Maintaining full control and transparency when youre the middle
man.
Say to both parties: I have the ability to increase your business, augment not
supplant, and give you windfall access to _______ which you would have never had on
your own, and its all newfound revenue. If I can do that, may I have ____% of the
initial sales and all the residual? Have both sides/people/companies say yes to this
and put it in writing. Neither side should mind the percentage youre making because
incrementally, even though they are going to make a little less, its all additional
revenue. In fact, the money they are making now is going to service overhead and
this revenue is above and beyond. Once you have all this accepted, depending on the
deal, you can incorporate reporting into your deal. If its a big deal you can put a full
time person there. You can get joint copies of the deposits. You could have it go
through an online method you have control of or collaboration on. You can have the
money distributed such that a certain percentage is automatically given to you
and/or to the other person.
Gordian Knot #5: Accessing and penetrating a market where certain long-time
vendors or suppliers are favored.
If you have clients right now that arent using those favored vendors/suppliers, but
are instead using you, you can clinically, analytically and comparably denominate
and prove the reasons they use you over the other companies. Then, compare these
metrics to a similar representative client, and if you see you can make the case that
there may be recommended or favored providers, but the clients you have are
more successful than the average. This would give you a great story, and you could
do an introductory pricing for new clients and earn their business by performance
while saying, We have demonstrable evidence to prove we will outperform dollar for
dollar what youre doing now by ____________ . We will allow you to use our service at
a steeply reduced price for a period. Dont sell with abstractions, generalities and
platitudes; create data no one else, exempt what it doesnt prove and play to what it
does prove.
Gordian Knot #6: Wanting to do a Joint Venture where the parties dont seem to trust
what youre proposing.
Ask them to let you do a survey and go back to a number of their past clients. See if
before, during or after those clients utilized the service/product youre proposing they
joint venture on. If you can prove statistically a lot of people will use it and choose
someone to do it anyway and the money is going to go to someone then you
propose, in totally transparency, you will not compete with them in any way. All you
want to do is maximize the totality of the expenditure their clients will have already
done, will do concurrently or will do after. The solution here to simply prove your
hypothesis so you can monumentally enhance trust.
Gordian Knot #7: Access an audience or list at lightning speed without taking years
to build it and start increasing revenue fast.
Acquire a license to a quality product that has valuable testimonials from the target
market you want to reach that affirm the value of the product. Find
people/organizations/communities that already have a forum to the market you want
to reach and start partnering. Explain what you got and make the deal very lucrative
for them. If, after set up, it costs you incrementally very little, you could give a
portion of the upfront revenue to the partner in exchange for promoting the product,
and create education based components you disseminate to win the trust of the
audience and also allow the partner to make a preferential offer for the product to
their audience.
17 IMMEDIATE MARKETING
SOLUTIONS (Private Notes From
Tony Robbins 2016 Business
Mastery Event)
Jay Abraham
April 9 2015
Just this year I was asked to speak at Tony Robbins 2016 Business Mastery event in
Florida. Out of my 2 hour presentation, a third of it was dedicated to solving
attendees biggest challenges, opportunities, issues and problems. Not only was it
great fun, it was also very well received. Each person had 2 minutes maximum to ask
a question and I had 3 minutes maximum to answer.
What you will find here is a condensed version of what was shared, distilled into
marketing solutions you can start applying immediately. Since youre paid in life for
thinking differently, my hope for you is the insights that follow will reward you richly
not just in monetary terms, but also in thinking differently as well.
#1. How do I improve my business?
Talk to the highest performers making the most money in the area you want to
improve. Talk to people specializing in different industries and see what they are
doing. Look online at everyone else doing what you want to improve and see if they
sell their technology: Contact them and offer to buy a license. Look at every model
similar or related and see how its working. Look at everyone reaching the audience
you want to reach to see if you can possibly set up joint ventures.
#2. How do I keep up with my competitors if they are growing past me?
Go to your best referrers and say the following, We need to invest in the people you
refer to us more generously than our contemporaries. So, anybody you think we can
help, we will buy them the first ______________ , so there dont have any apprehension
in patronizing our business. Secondly, there are probably people who have smaller
businesses or semi-retired individuals from whom you could buy their client base and
give them a perpetual piece of the business if its legal.
#3. How do I get new clients at better price points?
Dont play the same game everyone else is playing the same way they play it.
Whether locally, nationally, online or offline, find people who specialize in industries
and make them marketing partners if they dont have the piece of the puzzle you
provide. You can also go to people who have your piece of the puzzle, but if you have
an advanced product or service, do deals with them to take their offerings to the next
level. Find people who have sold everything they can sell to their client base, and
offer these clients your endorsed products and service. So find out who already has
the market and it could be a competitor if they dont have as deep a product or
service and find utilization with their clients.
#4. How do I build trust with prospects better/quicker/easier?
Instead of making the relationship overwhelming or creating implicit fear, say Call
this number and we will first invest in you. Well educate you; well show you the
good, the bad, the ugly. Well show you who is right. Well show you strategies. Well
give you a way to test our concept. Then well follow up and discuss it with you, and
if were compatible then well invite you in. Offer less threatening ways to educate
prospects before they have to make a commitment.
#5. How do I get the attention of high level people/companies/decision-makers for
my product/service offering?
First, find out who else is doing this, how are they doing it, where are they doing it
and how well are they doing. You dont need many to begin with. After you get just a
few high level individuals/companies, you can validate you already have clients. Go
to the bigger clients with your proof and say We believe we have an offer that will
play out and pay off, but wed like to buy _____________ of the service gratis to begin
with and let you judge it on the most critical criteria we can come up with together,
and earn your business.
#6. I dont want to do business the same way everyone in my industry does it. What
should I do?
First, work on building more referral sources. A referral generated client is many
times more profitable, less likely to waste your time and easier to deal with. You cant
build referral sources until you have a unique value proposition. So learn all the
referral strategies you can and invest real value in developing, building and enriching
relationships with people that have access to the market you want. Another
possibility is to find people who may be retiring and they have goodwill with your
ideal clients, and make a deal with them where you take over their brand and
integrate it while paying them 25% forever and work their clients for them.
#7. There are so many possible audiences for my product/service. Where should I
focus my marketing efforts?
Willie Sutton was the greatest bank robber who ever lived. He robbed more banks
than anyone else. When he was arrested, he was asked, Why did you rob so many
banks? His answer was straight forward, Because thats where the money is. Think
about it pragmatically and go to where the money is.
#8. My competitor is for sale, but has a broader customer base that I service right
now. Is it strategic to buy them?
If they have a lot of growth you could add by being a better marketer, strategist,
make it more preeminent, set up relationships with people who have access and if
you analyze their client base and find verticals you could expand on too then
theres a definite possibility. If they have clients you couldnt support, you could
probably sell them for an earn-out to someone else who would love them. The real
question is this: Who, if anyone, will buy it? Can you make the competitors
employees part of an ESOP? Are there other suppliers that have a big enough interest
they would put up the money to be exclusive suppliers? Think about all the
possibilities before you write a big check you dont have to.
#9. My business is coming from different sources. How much importance should I
place on each source?
Look at the numbers and what they are telling you. Of one hundred percent of the
business you do, how many come directly from each source? That will pretty much
tell you what to focus on.
#10. Give me a specific step-by-step referral generating system I can use.
Sit with them and say, Before we start this process, I want to share something
serious and relevant with you. We started this business _____ years ago with a very
unique belief. We belief that our success can only be predicated only the success we
create with clients like you and your desire to share that success with as many
other people you care deeply about. So we have a process: We have a choice of
spending our marketing budget on radio, seminars, advertising and so on. Weve
chosen instead to invest in research, educating our people so we are the best we can
be for you. Every client we take on we share with them what we are going to do with
them first. Were going to _____________. Were going to concern ourselves, care and
be there through anything that happens good or bad. We will never avoid anything
negative and always give you the most well-reasoned decisions and were committed
to _____________. What we ask is this: Upon achievement of this, you agree in the
beginning to refer to us at least __#__ quality, like-minded people you care deeply
enough about in your life whom we can explore the possibility with. Well give them
best reasoned second-opinion, well give them our straight-forward philosophy and
on. They dont have to use us, but we ask this of you because if we dont get this
from our clients we have to run ads, charge you a surcharge and it gives us less time
to do what you really want us to do which is ____________.
#11. How do I escape the price/commodity business and become more profitable?
Quantify the soft attributes and show what it means in dollar savings, time savings,
personnel saving, what the output is worth and so on. Quantify your performance.
#12. How do I keep and retain more of my clients/customers?
You have to understand what people value when youre not in their life. You have to
find implicit and explicit ways to keep them aware of the performance and value you
are providing beyond just the service. Doing more things, educating them more,
bringing them experts, investing back some of your profit so it will be so explicit you
are in this for the long haul and dont just do it passively. Your competitors will try
and take your clients/customers to lunch, so youve got to be able to express more of
the reason why you are committed to them for life. Invest in them because they are
your long-term investment and you know they are worth it.
#13. How do I create win-win partnerships to drive traffic to my business?
Find people that have the clients that are doing relative things. Make a
comprehensive list of your customer profile and go to people that have the market
directly or indirectly. Who already spent the time, effort, performance-fulfillment and
has the trust and credibility with the same market you want and can introduce you,
partner with you, put you on the their blog, create a program with you, and so on?
Find out who already has direct access/distribution and start there.
#14. How do I get my message in front of more of my target market and have them
self-identify themselves?
Dont waste your time calling cold. Find out who already has the market and from
there you have lots of flexibility. For example, give them a self-diagnosing test to selfidentify themselves.
#15. How do I calculate my customers Lifetime Value?
Youre going to have different products/services, different categories of buyers and
different sources of those buyer. First, look at the first sale that predictably emanates
from different products, categories or medias or distribution; Then look at the real
profit or loss that accrues; Then, in a realistic timeline, look at what flows from that in
terms of repeat orders, alternative orders, referrals etc. and compute conservatively.
Example: Profit from first sale = $200. Average repeat: 5 sales. Average client stays 3
years. So, in this case, Lifetime Value would be $200 x 5 x 3 = $3000. So every time
a new client comes you would be accruing $3000. You could increase business by
incentivizing sales people with 100% of the first $200 sale since the business would
make $2800 over the lifetime of the client.
#16. How do I reach more clients?
Leverage the people who already use you and ask if they will introduce you to their
contemporaries and counterparts.
#17. How do you overcome objections major/large companies have about doing
business with my company?
Ask them to give you their worst problem no one else wants or can solve, and you
take it on gratis. Then have them promise to give you more if you solve it, and grow
together. You re-channel marketing dollars into subsidizing the creative solutions to
the problems. There are certain problems you could find solutions to even by going
out and hiring three of the top people whom all they did was solve the problems, and
you utilized your marketing dollars for this and you become the company that takes
it on and figures out the solution, and you dont even charge for it. The simple quid
pro quo is then executed and honored if you deliver.
Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan
Encounter!
With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan
Jay Abraham: Welcome to Encounter! Today, our guest is a man whos a very dear friend
of
mine, but thats not the reason were interviewing him. Im interviewing him today
because he is a legend
in an industry which is legendary. Hes probably helped introduce technology nationwide
to more nooks
and crannies, and educate more people than any five people I know, and I know a lot of
people in this field.
He is a legend who basically took a concept in its embryonic, infancy stage and turned it
into one of the
largest companies of its kind in the world. In the process, hes been on the cutting edge
of more
technological advancements for the consumer than I think I can count.
In addition to that and Im not trying to flatter him, I think hes a brilliant entrepreneur. I
think
hes one of the most gifted educators Ive ever met in my life. And education is the ability
to explain the
complex in very simple terms, and he can do that masterfully. But hes got so many other
attributes that I
want to focus on, and talk about today, that rather than build his ego any higher, lets get
right to it.
My guest is Drew Allen Kaplan, founder of DAK Industries, creator/originator of the famous
DAK Catalog. All you DAKonians know what Im talking about. And before I start, I
should say, were
sitting in one of the most comfortably air-conditioned studios in all of Southern California,
when its 112
outside. Were sitting here shivering, but having a great time.
So Drew, how are you? And welcome.
Drew Kaplan: Hi Jay. Thank you very much for having me, and thats a very flattering,
and
somewhat embarrassing introduction. What I am is a simple guy who loves electronics,
has always loved
electronics, has always loved cutting edge in science. And all Ive tried to do is bring that
hobby of mine to
everyone else.
Jay: Its interesting when I asked you to come here, you thought I was going to ask you
just
about copywriting, and about the mail order business, and about technology, when in
fact, I think the
greatest gifts you have to share are your knowledge, your experiences, your
understandings of all the
aspects of business buildingof being an entrepreneurof breaking into a changing, or a
cutting edge
industry.
So with your permission, Im going to take you on a very broad, and a very fascinating
journey.
Were both going to have an educational adventure of our own while were doing this
interview.
As you know, Ive had the good fortune of interviewing, of working with, and getting to
meet a lot
of entrepreneurs. One things been real evident to me: If you go back in time and look at
their origins,
many not all, but many of them started out with little enterprises, even when they were
kids. They started
out collecting Coke bottles, or pop bottles, and selling them for money and using the
money to buy a
bicycle. Or they had a news route, or a lemonade stand, or they bartered, or traded, or
they reconstructed
things from scrap and resold them in a reconfigured manner. Did you do anything like that
when you were
young?
Drew: Well Jay, the first thing that I did that was productive and profitable was laid
bricks, and it
happened to be at home. We lived in the mountains, and I laid over 2,000 bricks, and
terraced a hillside.
Jay: How old were you?
Drew: I was about 13 or 14 at the time, and no one thought it could be done. We were
very
fortunate we lived next door to one of Disneys head architects, and every morning on
his way to work
hed come out and say, Well why dont you use a string to straighten that wall out?
And anyway but I learned how to lay bricks. I learned how to mix concrete, I learned
how to
thread pipes
Jay: And youre 13 at this time?
Drew: 13, 14I did that one summer, and it took me three months, but that hillside
today still
exists, with all the brick walls in place.
!1
1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc.
Jay: A question comes to mind. When you did that, what inspired you to want to lay 2,000
bricks?
Drew: Well, it may seem trite, but it was there. I looked at all this hillside of ivy, and I
said to
myself, This has to be changed. I wanted to change it. So I removed all the ivy. I used to
pay the city
trash man to take it away. There was a 5-limbed, 100-foot-high eucalyptus tree that had
fallen, and the
stump was there, so I bought a chain saw and cut the stump out, and then dug it out, and
then
Jay: Had you ever used a chain saw before?
Drew: Never. Never. Sorry I tried that too. I had to dig a hole six feet around it by hand,
and
then I rented a chain, and when the trash truck would show up once a week Id hook the
chain up, and the
trash drivers would pull out whatever Id cut.
So I started really young, but it was high school that I really got going.
Jay: What did you do then?
Drew: I was really lucky. I as youve probably guessed, I love technology. I used the
money I
earned laying bricks at $1.25 an hour. I bought a tape recorder, which in those days was
very, very new.
And I made tapes of the music that I loved. My mothers a concert pianist, and I also
loved folk music,
which was kind of an interesting combination.
Jay: Interesting combination, yes.
Drew: A very interesting combination. I still love classical music - I was a cellist - and I
still love
folk music.
But I wanted to buy more and more tapes, and so I needed to support that habit. And so, I
started
installing 8-track car stereos.
Jay: This was when?
Drew: This was 1963, 64I was about 16, and by the time I was 17 and I was driving, I
was the
pride of Beverly Hills, because I spoke English. And Id go to peoples houses, and for $50
Id install a car
stereo. And so, by the time I started college UCLA, in 64, I had a real good business
going installing car
stereos for custom installations.
Jay: Now, what do you think drove you at that period to be that enterprising, that
entrepreneurial?
Drew: Ive always enjoyed taking on a project something that looked difficult, but when
you
took it apart, was easy, or could be done. It wasnt a great masterstroke. It was a matter
of, it was there I
wanted to do it. I never was comfortable sitting. I always loved electronics, and I used to
put an
electronics catalog inside my schoolbooks and read that instead of the schoolbooks.
But I was always stuck on tape - tape recording, and music. So thats how it all came
together for
me.
When I moved into the dorm at UCLA I had nine tape recorders in my dorm room. And I
was not
a real popular person.
Jay: Thats wild. So here you are, what, 17 or 18 years old
Drew: 17. 17 years old.
Jay: Youre in college, and youve got this enterprise thats really thriving.
Drew: Thriving, yes. Absolutely doing great.
Jay: Did you have people working for you, doing it?
!2
Drew: By the time I had three people then. After the first year at the dorm this was
Dykstra
Hall at UCLA, suggested I might run my business elsewhere, because too many people
were showing up at
the front desk buying recording tape
But let me just tell you, what I was doing was, I had these nine tape recorders. Cassettes
hadnt
been invented yet. And I found a way to buy used recording tape from the studios. We
had all these
studios here in LA. When you were recording Frank Sinatra in one of the studios and you
had an 80-piece
orchestra, you didnt use the same tape for out-takes. As soon as you went through one
reel of tape youd
pick up the next. So the used tape with the out-takes in it was generally thrown out.
So I started buying it at roughly $1 a reel
Jay: Was that really cheap?
Drew: Oh, yeah. Tape was $6-7 then.
Jay: OK.
Drew: So Id buy it for $1 a reel, and I took it and I used it myself. And then I took it back
to the
dorm and Id sell it for $2 a reel. So I literally started the company, DAK, the first
company, with $100. I
bought 100 reels of tape, brought them back to the dorm, sold them for $200, went back
and bought $200
worth of tape, sold it for $400, and by the time I was, oh, maybe a junior, I had bought a
tape factory for
$20,000 that actually made tape. And thats when I moved into a warehouse where I lived
for seven years
while I finished college and went on to found the company.
Jay: Now, Im going to get to the company, but I want to ask you some questions. Im
obsessed,
almost, with learning how your mind thought. How it saw opportunity, challenge, issues.
Because you see
life different than I do, different than a lot of people, and I want to understand what you
see positively that
we dont. So a question I want to ask is this: You said earlier, from the time you were 13
and laying the
bricks, you were always fascinated with challenges and projects that were not as hard as
they seemed. How
did you see I mean, most people see a project as insurmountableas unpleasantas so
complicated and
intimidating, its not even worth trying. How do you see projects?
Drew: I tend to object to looking at things straight on, the way that most people would
look at
them.
Jay: Tell me why.
Drew: Well, because going at things in a straight line is A) the way everybody else does
it. That
means that there are a lot of smart people who have tried going at things in a straight
line, and if anyone can
do it, why should I do it? Im only interested in projects and products that no one else can
really sell, or no
one else can really conquer.
Jay: Have you always been that way?
Drew: Always been that way. I mean, my happiest days are when I can take a product
and Ive
really enjoyed products. I dont know as much about services, but product or service
that other people
have failed at, or said, This cant be done. And thats like throwing the red flag in front
of the bull. To
me, thats OK. How do we go about that?
An example, back to the company, againthere was a company that was making
computers. It
was a terrific, early IBM computer. And it wasnt selling, and they werent going to
survive. And they
handed it to me, and they said, Well, what can you do with this? We have two thousand
of them. So I
looked at it, and I said, Ah. This is really a sophisticated typewriter, which is what a
computer was in
those days.
So I came up with a headline called, Unfair Competition. And I went out, and I bought a
Xerox
Memory Writer, and I bought an IBM, I think it was a Wheel Writer. And they were each
about $1,100.
And I offered this computer for $1,000. It was a word processing program that I created,
very basic, that
was nothing more than a typewriter and a Daisy wheel printer, for those people who
remember the little
spinning wheels.
!3
Jay: Sure
Drew: And I called it Unfair Competion, sold it for $1,000, used the metaphor of the two
typewriters, showed the receipts of what Id paid for the typewriters, and said, Well, you
can go buy one
of these typewriters, or you can have a computer that does everything the typewriter
does, lets you keep
everything in memory, rewrite things, edit things and play all the IBM software that
there is.
So the whole concept of coming at it from a different direction. Its not a computer; its a
sophisticated typewriter.
Jay: Did it work?
Drew: Oh, we sold there were 3,000 of them? We sold 23,000. We kept that company in
production for two years. But it was exciting, because it was something that had already
failed, and yet it
was a great product. And thats something that I hold as a caveat: You should only offer to
anybody a great
product or a great service. Dont offer junk, because it will haunt you forever. You have to
have integrity
with what you offer.
So I cant take a bad product and make it look good. Thats not what Drew Kaplan does.
You know, I look at a product, and I look at it as a solution rather than a product. I dont
care how
big it is, what size it is, or what it does. I care what it does for the individual whos reading
the ad. So
when I wanted to sell an intercom, I didnt just call it an intercom I called it a Hey,
Martha phone.
The reason is, everybody can identify with, Hey Martha, come to the phone! So its a
combination of a
phone and an intercom.
When I wanted to sell a pulse watchpulse watch doesnt have the same sort of appeal
as
Wrist-EKG. So its not just a good name, but its putting it in a different venue. Its
putting it so that
people think of the resultthink of the qualitythink of what its going to do for them.
So another really good example might be, I had a camcorder. It was one of the first
camcorders
made. A really neat product nobody knew what it was. Did I call it a camcorder? No. I
called it,
Daddys Pride and Joy. Why did I call it that? Because I had surveyed people as to why
theyd want
camcorders. Most of them wanted to record their children. Thats the main reason people
bought
camcorders that and weddings.
So what I did is I told the story about my younger son, who was making a speech at
school, and I
had to be away on a business trip. So I called it Daddys Pride and Joy. I sent my wife
with a camcorder.
She recorded it, and I got to see my son. And I told the whole story and sold 20,000
camcorders. So that
was in the days when there were no camcorders, so I would have really missed seeing my
son.
And when I sold a tape deck that had no hiss it had a certain noise reduction system I
called it
Stealth Bomber Update. So I attacked the reasonI went after the reason that it would
be good for
people, and I came up with a new name, a new concept for the product so that theyd
understand it.
And thats really what I do. I mean, even the first product that I carried, the used
magnetic tape - I
called it studio recording tape, the tape that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and Sammy
Davis recorded
on. If you called it used, then nobody would have been interested in it. But associating
it with leading
names like that made it really exciting. It made it a better than new product.
Thats what lateral thinking brings to advertising, and what it brings to problem solving.
You
dont go in a direct straight line. Any smart person can do that. The creative mind tends
to attack things
from the side, and its easy to do. You just stop looking in a straight direction and think
about it, and say,
Well, how else can I think about this? What are the other alternatives? And when you do
that, you find a
whole multitude of ways to look at products and services, and make them exciting for
your potential
customers.
Jay: Drew, can you give me a little formula that might be useful for anybody in any kind
of
business or profession to develop this kind of a mindset?
Drew: Sure, its actually really easy. Heres an idea: Write down ten words that are totally
unrelated, like brick, like music stand, like cello, (Im a cellist) like tall. And then,
put your
product, or your concept, or your service, or whatever it is youre going to do next to
them. And then write
a sentence using your product, your service, your idea with each of those ten words. And
you know what?
Youre thinking laterally already. Its just that simple.
!4
Jay: Thats fascinating. When you looked at an electronic, or a computer piece of
equipment, can
you sort of go through what your mind would do? Youd look at - for example, Im looking
at some of
your lateral - whats Smart Sound Detonator?
Drew: Smart Sound Detonator is one of my favorite products. It was an equalizer that
made
your stereo system sound 5-10 times better than it sounded before you put this in the
system. What it an
equalizer
Jay: But most people wouldnt even know what an equalizer was, would they?
Drew: Well they didnt know, before I sold them 170,000 of them. What it is very
simple. If
you have a tape deck, you put it in the tape loop of your stereo system. And then, instead
of having one
volume control and a bass and treble control, you have 10-12 volume controls for each
channel, and each of
those volume controls controls one segment of the frequency spectrum like 20 Hz, and
60 Hz, and 400 Hz
Hz being cycles per second. So your string bass, which is down around 60 Hz, you slide
that volume
control up, and all of a sudden the bass just resonates through your room. You slide the
16,000-cycle slider
up, and your cymbals will crash into the room.
So what it does, is it gives you instant control of the sound, so you get it just the way you
want it.
I learned that in the recording studios when I was a kid. Consumers didnt know about it
when I started
selling equalizers. It was terrific.
Jay: But you educated me, right?
Drew: Right. What I did is not so much educated as shared something that I knew, was
fortunate
enough to learn, in my past and apply to a new product. And thats what I do with a
stereo or with a
computer. A computers full of chips. You look at the computer. In the early days you
could show a
picture of all the chips, and everybodyd be impressed, and youd say, Oh, this is
powerful.
Today, and even over the last few years, want people want to know is, What will it do for
me?
And so a computer isnt a thing. People say that theyre using an IBM, or theyre using
an Apple
Macintosh. It doesnt matter. What matters is, what does the particular program that
youre running on
that computer do for you? Is it word processing? Is it graphics? Is it sound? All of these
things are
available to you, and people get hung up on the mechanical parts its this fast, or its
this big, or its that
That has nothing to do with the actual motivations behind why people buy, and thats
true, whether its in
mail order, whether its in person, whether its on the telephone all of these things hold
together, and
lateral thinking, and explanation and education - they all tie together.
Jay: Now theres something thats got to be evident, because its surely evident to me.
When you
talk, you dont talk without inflection. You talk with such passion emanating out of every
pore of your
being How do you become passionate about your product, about your service, about
what it does for
other people? About looking at it in this CAT scan perspective?
Drew: I think you look at your productyou learn about your productyou fall in love
with your
product.
Jay: Drew, youre on a little bit of sacred ground here for me, because Im on record as
teaching
and advocating that you should fall in love with your customer or client, not your product
or service, and
there seems to be a little bit of an incongruity. Can you help clarify, or tie it together or
if you can, you
can refute me, whichever isI just want to get your perspective on it.
Drew: Oh, well Jay, I agree with you 100%. When I fall in love with a product, I dont
mean that
I fall in love with the physical product; I fall in love with what its going to do for the end
user, for the
customer. Not what the product is unto itself.
Jay: So - how its going to enrich, enhance, protect, expand, help me in my life. Make it
better,
richer, more prosperous - whatever.
Drew: And save you time, which of course is my main critique. I believe that saving time
is the
best thing that I can do for my customers, or one of the best things. Thats why Im here.
!5
Jay: Thats great. It reminds meIll go shopping frequently and see a dress. And Ill fall
in love
with that dress because of the vision of how attractive it will make my wife look, or how
happy it will make
her feel. Are we saying the same thing?
Drew: Exactly. Thats what a product is all about. It isnt a thing unto itself; it is what it
means,
in this case, to your wife.
Jay: Great point. Were harmonious - lets move on.
Drew: OK
Jay: OK, but before we move on, give me a summary. Lateral thinking what would you
tell
anybody, in any field of endeavor about how and why lateral thinking should be a critical
part of what they
do every day?
Drew: I tell people to look at things sideways. First approach it head-on how would you
normally do it? Then come up with six or eight other solutions to the problem of
explaining it to your
customer, to educating your customer, to helping your customer or your client. And when
you do that,
youll find that you start thinking laterally all the time, and most of the time youre going
to find that lateral
thinking helps you do a better job, provide better service, and make your customers
happier people.
Jay: But I suspect it will also make the process of your business or your practice a lot
more fun,
wont it?
Drew: Oh, sure. Its been fun. Ive been doing this for 30 years, and I loved every minute
of it.
So yes, lateral thinking gives you new ways, new creative ideas, and it keeps you going. It
keeps you
excited all the time.
Jay: Thats great. Youre leading me, and setting me up for the kind of questions I really
want the
answers to, so Im going to ask you another one. Im taking you on your career, and Im
almost on the
precipice, probably, of DAK. But I dont want to get there yet. I want to know about your
attitude on
selling - on helping people customers, if you will seize the benefit for themselves, not
just the
enrichment to you, of a product or service. Before you started DAK, you were selling
tapes, you were
manufacturing tapes. Howd you sell them? And why, and what was your motivation?
Drew: Well actually, tapes were number two. First was the 8-track car stereos.
Jay: OK
Drew: First of all, I was installing them, and I worked for a not for, but with a stereo
store in
Beverly Hills called The Sound Center. The owner was a friend of mine. As would be
expected when
youre 17 or 18, and you have friends who are in electronics, what do you do? You hang
out at the
neighborhood stereo store.
Jay: Sure
Drew: Thats what I did. When I was in high school, on the same corner as the school
there was a
store called The Hi Fi Corner, and we all used to congregate there. There was a small
group of us that I
guess today would be called nerds, because we all loved stereo and electronics. And
stereo was just
coming in right then it was still hi fi.
Jay: Yeah, sure.
Drew: Monaural. But it was a really exciting time, and as each new product has come
out, Ive
been able to put my hands on it, play with it, and then, its always been fun for me to
explain to other
people what made it work. And thats, I think, where I come in, and where what I do is a
little different, or
!6
what Ive always done is a little different. Whether I was installing an 8-track car stereo,
and then I was the
first Lear Jet remember the airplane people?
Jay: Sure
Drew: I guess theyre still around, but they also introduced the first 8-track car stereo
that had a
special motor called a Paps Motor boy, youre taking me back a long way. But this
motor had a very
heavy flywheel that spun on the outside, rather than a belt that caused flutter and wow,
meaning a waving
sound in your car.
Jay: What was the advantage?
Drew: The advantage was that you had better, smoother music, and it didnt go Rrr,
rrr, when
you hit a stop, or when you moved, and this was a far better system.
Jay: A breakthrough.
Drew: A breakthrough. It was literally a breakthrough. And I became the first dealer in
Los
Angeles, so not only was I installing for people, I started selling. And I started in
advertising in where?
The Daily Bruin. I was at UCLA, I was a student, so it was just it was the beginning of, If
youre like
meif you love stereoif you want to hear your

Jay: Is that how you wrote them?
Drew: Yeah.
Jay: Now what was your advertising philosophy, and what was your motivation when you
were
writing ads as a college student in The Bruin?
Drew: Well, why I wrote them was because I had this great product that no one else had,
and that
I could make money and support my habit, and buy more and more tape recorders. And
live a life style that
was more in keeping with the way that I wanted to live. And by the way, I had no
problems. My parents
wanted to pay for my college education, but by the second year it became sort of, you
know, not important,
because I started at UCLA in September of 1964, and by October I was self-sufficient.
Jay: Thats really good.
Drew: So it was really - it was a lot of luck, and a lot of good fun, and I enjoyed every
minute of
it.
Jay: So youre installing. Youre now a dealer. So take me to the tape. I want to know
about
your method of selling, of persuading, of connecting with your customers. Howd you do
it?
Drew: Well, it was easy, because I loved electronics. I tended to hang around with other
people
who loved electronics. And as an example, before, when I was very young, I actually had
my door open
and close to my bedroom when I was 12 automatically. There was no stereo in those days,
but I had nine
speakers in my room. And I had remote control of my drapes. And I think I was about 10
or 11 when I
almost burned the house down using used wire that I had soldered in about 10 different
places. So my love
of electronics started very, very young.
Jay: And did your parents nurture that?
Drew: They nurtured it. They werent into electronics themselves, but they were into
allowing
me to pursue my interests as long as I was headed in the right direction, which was
college, I could do
pretty much anything I wanted to do. So they nurtured it, they supported me, and I had
extremely
supportive, very intelligent parents.
So, when I looked at my own needs as an owner of nine tape decks, knowing what I
needed in the
way of tape, in the way of equipment, it was real easy for me to recommend to other
people in the dorm !7
which was the first stage, Stage One all the people on my floor, 5 th Floor, Dykstra Hall.
The second
stage was to expand beyond that to the rest of the dorm verbally, telling people. I
became pretty much the
dorm expert.
Jay: But give me your presentation in a summarized minute.
Drew: It was, Here is the best tape you can use. Its the same tape that all of the
professionals
use. This isnt tape from a hi fi store that may or may not be good. This is the same tape
that people like
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis were all using. I had their voices on these
tapes. It was really
exciting to listen to these tapes! They were and tapes running at 15 inches/second,
and I had the
recorders to play them. Then I would erase those tapes, and wind them to 7 reels, which
was the size most
people could use. So I was offering to people at UCLA in the dorm the best tape that
money could buy
the same tape the professionals used, and I was offering the very best tape that money
could buy, not at $6
or $8, but at $2 a reel.
Jay: So the precedent was set.
Drew: The precedent was set. It was the best tape, bar none, and it was at a price that
was a third
of what they could buy any tape for in a hi fi store. So there was the price, there was the
This is the tape
that Sammy Davis used, and this is the best tape coming from Drew, who is really the
nut with the nine
tape decks.
And then I started running ads in the Daily Bruin that said, Studio Recording Tape, you
know,
Use the tape of the professionals. And I had some of those ads. I was looking at them a
couple of
months ago. And the whole concept was, use the same tape. Dont use inferior tape.
Because there was
cheap tape around, just like there are cheap cars, theres cheap everything. This was the
best tape that could
be bought. This was the tape the professionals chose, and I was offering it at a great
price.
So you had the concept of professional, and you had the benefit of cheap price, which of
course,
for college students, very important. And that business continued to grow, until I ran out
of used tape. The
studios weren't producing enough to tape to support how much I was selling.
So then I went to the government, and I found out that there was great reams of
government
surplus tape. At that time they were using tape for all the space shots. Those were the
days, in the '60s and
early '70s, when we had a very active space program, and most of it came from Fort
George Mead, outside
of Washington D.C. And I found a way to negotiate with the government through bid, that
no one else
knew what to do with the tape. And I used to buy truckloads. At one point I was buying
40" truckloads, 8,
10, 12 truckloads at a time.
Jay: And you're how old now, 21?
Drew: I wasOh, no, no - 19, 20.
Jay: OK
Drew: I moved from the dorm to an apartment, a two-bedroom apartment, grew out of
that and
moved to a four bedroom house, grew out of that, moved into a three thousand square
foot warehouse. I
was in the three thousand...
Jay: You were living there too?
Drew: I was living in the warehouse. By the time - I had an indoor hot pool, I had an
indoor
sauna - I was very comfortable. I had palm trees. It was great, I was baking bread...I was
doing all sorts of
neat stuff in my warehouse. Having a wonderful time, still going to college. And I was able
to bid on what
they called government surplus tape. And then I had enough tape. Because then I could
buy all the tape I
wanted, and we were bringing in 40 truckloads of tape, 8, 10 at a time. A 40-footer also
coincidentally
holds 40,000 pounds of tape thats a lot tape! And so I started selling that tape as still,
used recording
tape, and I was selling all of that that I could make and slit. And at that point, I bought a
tape factory and
started making tapes, and that's about when cassettes hit, and I started making cassette
tapes.
Jay: And how old are you now?
!8
Drew: Oh, by this time I was 20, 21.
Jay: Had you graduated?
Drew: No, I actually spent five years at UCLA and actually never graduated. I have one
class
left, Statistics, to take.
Jay: That's funny. OK, so you're in the tape business, manufacturing cassette tapes
Drew: Cassettes, open reel, and video tapes, all three.
Jay: OK, and videotape back then was a much different market than today.
Drew: It was a much different market. There were no cassettes. They were actually 7"
and 10
reels of tape, half inch wide. I had 200 people at that point working for me, slitting this
used tape and
manufacturing new tape.
So I was a tape manufacturer, the same as Scotch or Ampex. They were my competitors.
And we
were one of the few people that actually manufactured tape. We coated it. We bought the
Mylar from
Dupont; we bought chemicals from the various chemical companies; had 9,000-gallon
underground tanks at
Ball Mills; mixed all of the oxides; coated the tape...
Jay: Now I've got to stop. Ive got to stop and ask a question. Here you're a young man,
figuring
out how to do all these rather complex functions, relatively technical, competing with
very large,
multinational companies... First of all, what gave you the confidence to do it in the first
place? No. 2: How
did you figure out how to put it all together, and what was your selling proposition to your
customers?
Drew: Basically the concept was - no one told me I couldn't do it.
Jay: Interesting.
Drew: And its a very trite phrase, but if somebody tells you cant do it, you tend to be
afraid to try
it. If nobody tells you cant do it, and you try it, - it works!
And so my first tape was not very successful, but by the second, the third, the fourth, or
the fifth
time, I was making very good tape. And so our tape was comparable to any of the major
brands. In fact, I
had many state contracts. I was selling by mail, obviously.
And let me step back for a moment. How did I sell all this tape not just at UCLA?
Remember, I
said my friends were tape nuts.
Jay: Yes.
Drew: One of them was a service manager for a company called "Concert Tone, which
was the
early TEAC, which is a major electronics company. Another one was UHER, a German tape
recorder
company.
I happen to have terrible handwriting, so I became a very good typist. I took all their
warranty
cards, and I typed the names and addresses from all of the warranty cards that had come
in from these
various tape deck manufacturers, and created a mailing list, not knowing anything about
mail order.
Jay: Just intuitive.
Drew: Intuitive. I dont know that intuitive is even fair. Im not sure it was that good. I
knew the
people, I had the warranty cards; I said, Why dont I send something to these people?
And so in 1965, 66, I was already mailing things, and I had my own string tyer; I did bulk
rate by
myself... I just sat down and
Jay: string tyer, for all...
!9
Drew: Oh, I'm sorry, when you mail something bulk rate, you have to put ten pieces to a
zip code
together and tie them up with a string. And then you put them in a trailer, which I rented.
Hooked it to the
back of my station wagon...
Jay: This is very enterprising!
Drew: And drove them down to the terminal annex, downtown Los Angeles.
Jay: Now stop. Ive got to know this question. Something in your being has got incredible
ambition, incredible resourcefulness, and incredible focus. What do you think it is? What
happened?
Drew: Well, I was very fortunate. Im not a first-generation immigrant. My parents were,
and
they taught me a work ethic. And they espoused a work ethic, and they lived by a work
ethic.
Jay: Can you summarize what that ethics is?
Drew: Ethic is: work hard, save, do well, help people, and you will do well yourself. And
my
parents have always contributed to the community. And I think it's a very important that
you do something
with the community, and that you work hard. And I cant Ive tried, I have two children
of my own that
Ive tried to instill this work ethic. And I think weve been successful. Of course its up to
them, but you
either have to work ethic or you dont.
I dont know how to tell anybody how to work. I know how to tell you how to work
smarter,
faster, easier. Thats what the beauty of technology is. But you have to; you have to want
to do it. Thats
the only thing that you have to have within yourself.
Jay: I suspect that its a misnomer. I dont think work to you is drudgery. I dont think
work, to
you, is anything but a sheer joy. Am I right?
Drew: Youre absolutely right. I love creating. I dont mind looking something up in the
dictionary, or the encyclopedia. I will look and do research for fun, because Im interested.
I mean, I read
an article yesterday, in Discover Magazine, on Easter Island. Ive always been fascinated
by Easter Island.
Somebody just did a complete dissertation on what happened at Easter Island. But I took
an hour
and read the article Ive always read everything I can get my hands on.
And I think that one of the things - when I just said that people have to have that inner
drive
themselves, thats sort of unfair. If you know you can do it, that drive tends to generate
itself. If you dont
know how to go about accomplishing something, or youre afraid to do it, the drive stays
dormant. I know
that if I dont have, right now, a computer next to me, I dont tend to write. But if theres
a computer right
there and something that I can see finishing, Ill write, Ill create, I just cant contain
myself. I want to get
more out.
Jay: Like our new letter.
Drew: Like our new letter, right! Thank you, Jay! But if theres nothing - if theres no end
in
sight, if theres no goal thats obtainable, Ill sit around and clean up my desk for two
weeks without
accomplishing anything.
Jay: So whats the lesson there?
Drew: Deadlines. Deadlines are wonderful things.
Jay: Do you impose them on yourself?
Drew: I impose them on myself. I say, Ive got to finish this by tomorrow. And it may be
two,
three, four in the morning, that Ill keep going, just because I want to finish it. Rather than
leave it until
tomorrow, because if you dont set a deadline you never finish anything. And thats just a
bit of selfdiscipline.
That once you start doing youll find it makes life much, much easier.
!10
Jay: OK, now its time. I've got to get you forward, because Im getting excited. Im
getting
really excited. So weve got you in this 3,000 square foot warehouse...
Drew: $300 a month for rent, which I was really nervous about, because it seemed like a
lot of
money in those days.
Jay: But something tells me you had a surplus in the capacity to pay it comfortably.
Drew: No problem.
Jay: OK, so lets get to the big event. So how did this glint in your eye turn into reality?
Lets talk
about the concept, the inspiration, the formation, the whole emerging, sort of genesis of
DAK?
Drew: Well, the whole concept - it already was DAK, but at that time I was in my fifth year
at
UCLA studying psychology, and loving psychology by the way, but I realized - and I was
very fortunate at
a young age to be able to say, I want to do what I love doing. And thats something I
think everybody
should strive to do. Because if youre unhappy at your job, youre unhappy in your
marriage, youre
unhappy in your life youre not going to accomplish anything.
So I had to make a really tough decision (and this was during my fifth year) that said Am
I going
to become a psychiatrist (which was the way that I had been heading and with which I
think I would have
been happy) or am I going to pursue this technology that I love, that I seem to never be
able to get enough
of?
Even today, 35 years later, every time I get near something new, I cant keep my hands
off it. Im
out, I buy it, I play with it, I explore it. I go over to the Orient and I play with it, and I
invent it. I love this.
And so I chose, I was very fortunate at a young age to say, I have - I can always go back.
Let me give this
a shot for a few years and see what happens. And that really, I would say, was more the
genesis of DAK,
was the ability to say, What have I got to lose? If it doesn't work out, I withdrew
gracefully, with good
grades - I can go back.
Jay: But you went into it with full, unbridled passion, didnt you?
Drew: Oh, I started DAK in 64, it was unbridled passion.
Jay: But you and I both know, because weve had the bad fortune of seeing a lot of
people who
play-act at business as they do at life with no passion, or a very low level of passion.
Drew: Well a lot of these people went into business, went into work, went into life, to
make
money.
Jay: As opposed to?
Drew: To going into it with passion, with love for accomplishing something. For building
something. For inventing something. I believe that if you do what you love doing, the
money will follow.
Youll have enough money to do the things you want to do, and often, you may have a
goal that is earning
more money because youre so miserable at what youre doing. Thats a terrible way to
run your life, is to
be waiting for weekends, or two weeks off at vacation.
You should love what you do. When you get up in the morning you should be enthused.
Jay: Now do you like Monday mornings?
Drew: I dont like Monday mornings, because the phone starts ringing. Other than the
phone, I
love Monday mornings, but I dont have a problem, because I work seven days a week.
Jay: I was going to say, you and I are not dissimilar.
Drew: It doesnt make any difference.
Jay: But its not work!
!11
Drew: The only difference for Monday morning is that everybody else comes in, and they
call you
with whatever they didnt finish the previous week. So I dont love Monday mornings, but
it isnt because
of going to work; its - I work Sundays. I still am putting in 8, 10, 12 hours a day of - some
would call it
work. But it is working with things that I love doing.
And no one dont get me wrong. You will never love every minute of what you do. But if
the
overall thrust of the day is powerful, is potent, and you feel youve accomplished
something at the end of
the day, the two or three hours of perhaps, negotiating, or doing something with
someone you dont want to
do it with - that fades away. You concentrate on the good parts. And it is a wonderful way
to live ones
life.
Jay: I can tell by your eyes. Youre sparkling. But Ive got to get to DAK as a catalog
company.
So here DAK, the tape company, is rolling merrily along, and what year is it?
Drew: OK. Let me fade for just a minute, and then I promise well move forward.
Jay: OK.
Drew: In 64 or 65 my first catalog, which went out to the first tape people, its headline,
its
byline, its logo said, Importing And Exporting of Products; Close Outs; Introduction of
New Products. It
was pathetic. It was just - it was - I dont know where I came up with the three or four
things that were part
of what I considered the logo, but they were there.
It ended up in DAK being importing and exporting of products. It ended up introducing
new
products, and it ended up doing closeouts. And - oh, and the fourth was mail order. And it
ended up being
a mail order company entirely. I loved all of those things.
So the original genesis really never dramatically changed. It was what I liked to do, and it
was the
way it evolved. So DAK, the catalog of electronics that everyone is familiar with, really
had its genesis in
the early 80s 79 to 80. And thats already ten years into a company that was doing
millions of dollars.
What happened was an event changed my life.
Jay: What was the event?
Drew: The event was very simple. It was a man. Names Joe Sugarman.
Jay: I know Joe.
Drew: Probably the greatest copywriter, really the greatest promoter. And a great
gentleman, real
good friend of mine. I went to one of his seminars.
Jay: Now Ive got to stop. Joe Sugarman had a company - he still does, but he had a
company.
JS&A, that in the early... 70s?
Drew: Through 79 or 80.
Jay: Was...was like an icon for selling high-tech, low priced, modestly priced,
breakthrough
consumer products.
Drew: Not necessarily low priced.
Jay: That's what I said - high-priced consumer products.
Drew: Right.
Jay: Im easy!
Drew: No, it was a great product
!12
Jay: But I remember him, just for clarification, he had the same gift, or you and he were
kindred
spirits on opposite sides of the country. I remember one of his classic, classic successes.
He looked at a
little walkie-talkie set, and he said, You know what that is? Thats a pocket CB. Didnt
he?
Drew: Absolute classic Joe.
Jay: And he recharacterized it, and what did he sell, something like $20 million worth?
Drew: At least. And it was a fabulous concept of taking a walkie-talkie, which he did the
same
sort of thing that I do. What he did is, he looked at that, and he went to the manufacturer
and said, Explain
it to me. And they explained, Well, its this, and its a walkie-talkie, and its thisand it
broadcasts on
this CB frequency, #14. He said, CB frequency 14? He said, Yes, all walkie-talkies are
on CB
frequency 14.
Jay: This was back when CBs were really hot, and you couldnt get them. You couldnt buy
them
if you wanted to.
Drew: Right. So Joe came up with pocket CB. Its a perfect example of taking a product
and
showing - again, his sort of view of it is lateral as well. Looking at it, instead of it being a
walkie-talkie, he
made it a pocket CB. And he sold more than he could ever deliver, as usual.
Jay: And he sold numbers of products like that. Now, at this time, I happen to know because I
was operating in the mail order business back then - that he got the desire - and I dont
think it couldve
been profit motivated, because he didnt sell it for that much- but he got the desire to
start offering to a
select group of people...was a weekend or week?
Drew: It was a week - five days for $2,000 dollars...
Jay: Which was nominal.
Drew: That you could go and listen to Joe explain the concepts behind how he created
advertisements and marketing.
Jay: And tell me - so, just as other clarification its the year 1978, 9?
Drew: 1979 or 80 - it was in that range.
Jay: OK. Joe Sugarman, the classic, most successful, at that point, consumer electronics
mail
order retailer, is offering a select group of people the chance to come to his mansion in,
was it Wisconsin?
Drew: Wisconsin. Yes. One in Wisconsin, he also had one in Hawaii.
Jay: He offers to train a handful of people for a real nominal amount, because he must
have been
making millions of dollars then.
Drew: He was making a lot more.
Jay: It couldnt have been the money.
Drew: It wasnt the money; it was the concept of working together, and the feedback.
Jay: So Drew, what did you get out of that seminar? You attended, what, four times?
Drew: I attended the seminar four times. I must be a slow learner. The first time was
exciting; the
second time was really great. But lifes experience helps a lot, because the first time, I
hadnt written that
kind of advertising. The second time I had. By the third and fourth times, I was busy
writing hundreds of
ads, and each time, my enthusiasm would be raised to such fever levels. I came home
ecstatic - ready to
write.
!13
But I want you to know that Joe Sugarmans seminars changed my life. And he changed
the life
of a lot of other people who attended his seminar. And I learned a lot. It was the seminal
difference
between normal writing And what he unleashed with me was the ability to write ads like
Illegitimate
Child for a Headset. The Can You Be Bribed? ad, I wrote after that seminar.
Joe was the most important single individual in forming the kind of advertising that I
write, and he
really unleashed this kind of concept in my head.
Jay: Without breaching proprietary or intellectual property, because I know that he still
occasionally considers doing that and its a legendary program. And back then was very
expensive, and
today it probably, for the value would be real inexpensive but. . . Can you share what you
think were the
embodying traits that he taught you that no one else at that point, and perhaps no one
else even today
understood?
Drew: Well let me share something that I think is really important. Ive been to a lot of
seminars;
Ive read a lot of books. One: Joe Sugarman has done it. Joe wrote ads, he created
products, he did it. So
when he came to a seminar to tell us what he did and to interact with us, he was able to
do it in the real
form. He was a real businessman, not a teacher that had never done it. And what he was
able to do, was to
impart his wisdom, his knowledge, his experience to people at all levels of sales and
marketing. The
experience was really terrific. He taught nuts and bolts, and he taught concepts. And that
made the
seminar really worthwhile - not once, not twice, not three times - but ten times if he had
kept giving the
seminars.
Jay: Im going to get you on a tangent for just a minute, so you can help me and help our
listener.
Joe Sugarman doesnt regularly give those seminars anymore. How can I, or how can our
listener get the
same kind of a real world, hands-on experiential-based learning process? What you think
the closest
comparable alternative to participating in a Joe Sugarman seminar might be today?
Drew: Well, you know maybe Joe will do some more seminars, and Ill tell you, Ill be
number
one on the list. Two, Im thinking of doing some seminars and some tapes on the nuts and
bolts of
marketing.
Jay: I would encourage that. I think thatd be a great gift to the whole world, and certainly
to
every business owner, or perspective one.
Drew: Well thank you very much. I think that what Ive done is really exciting. Ive had a
good
time doing it, and I understand it. One of the reasons that Joe gave the seminars, and the
reason that Im
thinking of doing it is, it helps you codify your ideas. Joe got a lot out of the seminars, as
do the students.
Because Joe was able to codify his ideas that he had used subliminally over time.
When you give a seminar, you have to be able to elucidate. You have to be able to clarify.
You
have to be able to make those ideas really clear for people listening to you. Often, we
write, we create, and
we dont know why we do it! We start with a blank piece of paper, and when were done,
we have a really
creative ad. A painter has a great painting. But most of us dont really know what it is that
we went
through to get there.
Let me give you an example: A couple of years ago I was trying to teach some writers
how I write.
And they said, You know Drew, you write in triads. And I said, Gee, whats a triad? And
they said,
Well Drew, its a group of three consecutive ideas that tie together, and that makes a
really powerful
mental impression. And I said, Gee, I hadn't noticed.
So I looked through my catalogs, and lo and behold, virtually every ad was loaded with
triads. I
mean, I looked at a phone ad. It says, Its smart, its tough, its fast. I mean, that was
the way that I
wrote about an automated phone.
I had another - a temperature controller. It says, Check the temperatures of anything
from your
Jacuzzi, to your aquarium, to your attic. You had a security system that said you can
watch for pilferage,
shoplifting, or accidents.
Let me kind of give you an idea of how I would use a triad in a paragraph, and its sort of
the style
that I write. This was an ad for an answering machine, but before we explore just how
easy it is to use, and
all of the sophisticated features such as toll saver, two-way record, and remote erasing of
messages, lets
take a look at the phone. Well, you see the triad in there? That kept them going, and it
kept them interested
for what was coming later. And then I said, But let's stop for a minute and look at the
phone.
!14
So thats another writing technique, but the triad is so strong that it kept them reading,
because
they wanted to find out about those three things, that I'm going to tell them later in the
ad.
Jay: So, if you follow through, which I encourage you, and Ill be one of the first to attend
your
program, and you do that, thats great. But if you dont, or if it takes you a year or two,
what do I do if I
live in New York, or Pennsylvania, and I want to get exposure to someone whos done it?
Someone who
understands business? In some way, maybe you could go in your neighborhood - did you
ever go and
intern, or just basically network with anybody in your field? In your industry, when you are
running DAK?
Drew: You know Jay, I wish I could have networked, because I had to reinvent the wheel,
and do
things that I thought were original that turned out You know, I recently read a book I should have read years ago. A book by Claude Hopkins.
And
Claude Hopkins was, I think, in 1930, one of the great advertising men. Just a fabulous
guy...
Jay: One of my heroes.
Drew: ...And I had never read his book. And I read his book, and in his book he tells a
story about
a department store that was just about facing bankruptcy. And it had a set of old
mackinaws - that tells you
how old it is. Rain slickers - that werent very good. They were really cheap, and they
werent selling. So
they went to an advertising man - Claude Hopkins - and they said, Could you write an
ad? Because weve
got to move these, or were going to file bankruptcy next week.
And so, Claude Hopkins wrote an ad that said, You know, weve got some really second
class
mackinaws. Theyre not good, but not really terrible either. But for two cents each, theyre
a really good
buy, and youre going to love it.
And so Claude ran the ad, and before the ad appeared, the president of the department
store called
him and screamed at him, and said, How dare you do that? Youll put us out of business!
We have
absolutely no chance! By 10 oclock in the morning, every one of the mackinaws was
sold - the store
was saved.
Thats a true story. Thats what happens when you tell people whats wrong with
something, and
thats the kind of thing that Ive done throughout my advertising career. Had I read the
book earlier, I
would have known that. I wouldn't have had to learn that myself.
Jay: So, one more time. The sooner you get your seminars, or your tapes, or your books
together,
great. But until that timeIm a dentist in Ohio. Or Im a contractor in Philadelphia. What
do you think
might be the most intelligent and viable approach I could take to get the equivalent of
your Joe Sugarman?
Drew: Well, I think what you should do is look around the city youre in, because its the
easiest
and what you can do the fastest, and find the people who are the most successful at
doing what you want to
do, and go to them, and meet them. And try and understand what theyre doing, and
spend time with them.
Maybe intern with them. You know its only time. If youre willing to spend some time and
help them,
youll learn what they know, and then youll carry that knowledge with you for the rest
your life.
So I strongly recommend that you spend the time to go and meet the people that you
respect. And
follow them. And that will lead you on the road to future success. It really isnt difficult. All
you need to
do is pick up the telephone, make a few calls, and you get in to these people.
Smart people generally arent threatened by teaching other people. Its the mediocre
people that
are threatened by teaching you. And you dont want to be mediocre, and therefore the
people that you seek
out will probably be willing to talk to you.
Jay: I think in confirmation of that, Drew, is the fact that when Joe Sugarman did his
seminars and
charged a lot then, $2000 - what did he limit it to, 20 people?
Drew: 12 people.
Jay: Yeah, so he made a whopping $24,000, which sounds like a lot, but at the time his
business
was earning him millions. I know he didnt do it for the money. He did it for two reasons:
People are really skilled love to teach, and they also love to learn in the process. And as
you say,
the more you ask someone to explain how and why they do something, the clearer it
becomes to them. So
its a dual growth. So I think everyone here would be very benefited by following that
recommendation.
!15
Why do you think, though, that some people like yourself are willing to seek out other
experts,
colleagues, kindred spirits, mentors - people who can train, can direct, can nurture,
liberate their energy,
their ambition, their resourcefulness, their passion - and many people dont have the
wherewithal - even if
it doesn't cost, because theres no I mean, I remember myself when I was young, I worked all night for one year at a job so
that all
day long I could go sit out and hang out in the offices and pick the minds of successful
business owners in
Indianapolis, where I was raised. People thought I was crazy. No one would do anything
like that, but it
taught me so much.
It sounds like you were willing to spend a relatively substantial amount of money, and
travel a
relatively large number of miles to gain access to somebody elses expertise.
Drew: Its an apprenticeship, and Jay, you should understand that, because thousands of
people
pay you tens of thousands of dollars to attend your seminars. And they come away from
those seminars because Ive met a few of them - very, very enthused, and with a better understanding of
how to change
their lives.
So I think that there Im not the only person in the world that came out of Joes seminar
or your
seminar fully charged and ready to go.
Every time you listen - you can go a 10, 20, 30 times, and each time youll pick up one
more
thing, or ten more things. Its really exciting.
Jay: People dont realize - and again, I dont want to get too far afield - but there are
experts and
mentors that Ive been impacted by at a very, very, very high level, who Ive gone back to
their well, either
in a written form, audio form, and whenever Ive had the opportunity in the live form dozens of times, and
they may say the same thing to me over and over again, but I hear it with greater clarity.
I see nuances. I
see depth. I see connectivity. And I sense thats whats happened to you.
Drew: Well, its lifes experience. I mean, they often say, Educations wasted on the
young, and
youth is. But when you have already been in business-when youve written a thousand
ads, and then you
hear someone talk about advertising, you know where the chaff is, and how to separate it
from the wheat.
So, Jay, let me give you another example of a wonderful product that had a problem that I
turned
into a real opportunity for my customers. And it was really good for them. This one was
interesting. I
called it, The Thunder Lizard Mistake. And it was a super 15-inch stereo speaker system
a 15-inch
woofer, 8-inch mid-range, and it had a crummy little paper tweeter. It was made by a
company called BSR.
And when you plugged them in, they sounded like thunder. They didnt have much high
end, but they had
a great bass. I happen to like bass.
So, I looked at them, and I asked them, Whyd you make these things? I'm not going to
sell them.
They don't sound very good. They said, Well, there was a mistake. We put the wrong
tweeters in them.
We actually were going to use these great horn tweeters, which was a 3, 4-inch plastic
horn. But we
didnt.
So we got these three thousand. I said, Ill tell you what. Ill buy those from you. Give me
the
horns. And they said, OK.
So I bought them, and I ran an ad in my catalog, and I said, Dear Customer: Here is this
incredible speaker called The Thunder Lizard Mistake, and it has the greatest bass, has
great mid-range,
but it has a lousy tweeter.
So what I did is, I went out and I got these tweeters for you, and if you have a
screwdriver you
just take the tweeter thats in there out unscrew three screws put in this great horn
tweeter, and youre
going to have great highs to go with the great lows. Youre going to have the greatest
speaker system in the
world.
Jay: But at a fraction

Drew: Yeah, but at a fraction of what it would have cost. And there were a couple
thousand of
them. We sold 35,000 pair of speakers. And we started by the time we were selling
these things, we just
started shipping them with the new tweeters in them. Because the ad was so successful.
Because I took what was a disaster, and what could be a wonderful speaker, and gave the
customers really good value for their money, but I gave them a story. It was fun. It was
interesting. And I
explained what a crossover was. I explained what the woofers did, what the tweeters did.
They learned
more about speakers than they ever knew before, which is part of what I do.
!16
Jay: Thats great. I want to talk about words. I want to talk about words that compel,
words that
sell, words that grip, words that induce, ethically, people to believe, to attend, to respond.
Youve used a lot
of great words in a lot of years to sell about, what, $250 million worth of products?
Drew: Well over $1 billion.
Jay: Excuse me, four times short.
Drew: In just the last ten years, actually.
Jay: OK. Give me a billion-dollar education in about five minutes. Tell me about some
selling
words and their implication. Youve got a psychological background tie it together and
explain it for me,
and wrap it up for me in about five minutes.
Drew: OK. Words are critical. I like strong, powerful words. I like words like thunderous.
I
like attack words, like propel, ignite, rocket you into the future. I like things that are
really exciting,
that reflect my passion for the kind of products that Im selling. You know, if it isnt just
passion, I want to
involve you with a word like imagine. When I say imagine in an ad or in a context of a
conversation,
youre thinking in terms of imagine if you had this product in your hands. It puts you in
with me. Its
part of the bonding process.
But power words are where Im at, and I use words like eradicate and letter-cruncher
and
unfair competition and blunder and force field and extortion and detonate and
thruster. I had a
sound processor; we called it The Hiss Assassin. And Astounding writing for a wordfinding device.
And Marriage Saver for a pair of headphones that saved marriages because your
spouse could go to sleep
while you watched TV. And a stereo a little Walkman that I called a Station Stalker.
I sold some microphones, and I called it a Microphone Gamble, because I hired The
Limelighters, my favorite folk group, to come to Carlos and Charleys Nightclub, use my
microphones with
150 people, and perform for the first time and they used microphones. It could have
blown up in my face.
But we did that, and I put that on the cover of a catalog.
So yeah, I like to find words that are really, really strong. When I sold a 62 CD collection
of
various classical music, I called it Mozarts Revenge. Again, you see a strong word like
revenge. Why
was it revenge? Easy I was only charging $3 a CD. The rest of the world was running $8
or $10. But the
concept is, when they bought 62 CDs at one time I sold over 2 million CDs. But it was
really exciting,
because people looked at it, and they understood the concept the metaphor revenge
against the record
companies.
So, I like strong words.
Jay: Thats great. Let me ask you a question. How can I, or any of our listeners, use
strong,
power words to help their sales efforts, their advertising efforts, their sales letters, their
direct selling, their
in-store selling, their trade show activities?
Drew: Well, you know, my brain over the years has sort of turned into a Thesaurus. But
its not
difficult to write your story, your letter and letters are very important. Dont just think
about this for ads.
A letter is a sales letter, no matter what letter that is. Youre selling your idea, your
concept even if its a
love letter, its a sales letter. Draft the letter - everyones doing it on computer today
and then check your
Thesaurus. Dont just pull words randomly, but look at the words, and that will broaden
your ideas.
Theres nothing wrong with using a Thesaurus, and when theyre electronic, it isnt like
thumbing
through the old Rogets, where it took you forever. Now you type a word and you have
100 choices. Its
wonderful it gives you lots of options. And soon, you may not even use it. But dont be
afraid to use it.
Jay: What do you think our obligation is, as businesspeople men and women as
professionals,
to help our customers or clients get a better appreciation, a better clarity, on the result,
on the value? Do
you think words are the critical connection?
Drew: I think words and concept are the two critical connections.
Jay: What do you mean by concept?
!17
Drew: Well, why are you writing a letter? Why are you writing an ad? I think you have to
plan
ahead as to what it is that you want to accomplish with your letter, with your ad, or with
your telephone
call. If you pick up the telephone to try to make a sales call or an informational call, and
you havent
written down a few notes, youre not doing a service to your customer.
The way that you express yourself denominates the kind of person that you are. The kind
of
language that you use. I dont use the word employee. I use associate. I never was
comfortable with
having employees. I liked having people who were working with me.
I dont really like the word customer. I liked DAKonian, because by using a name like
that, I
didnt have to separate myself. It was Lets examine this together. Thats the way that I
like to do things.
It isnt us and them, or them and us its us together. Were exploring new frontiers.
Were exploring
ways to make our lives better, our families happier, our communities stronger.
This is what we do together. When you choose your words, dont choose separation
words;
choose together words. Make a decision of whether what the person is going to buy
from is for them a
for me buy - meaning, are they buying it for themselves, or are they buying it for
somebody else. And
then sit down next to them, put your arm around their shoulder, and have a discussion
with them, just like
were having now about how best to fill that need.
Jay: I think you stand out as a great model, I hate to say the word icon, but an icon,
almost, of
what is right about educating and respecting the intelligence Somebody can be very
intelligent, but they
can be computer illiterate. My hands up - Im one of them. I dont consider myself dumb,
but I dont
understand computer-ese.
Drew: But if youll sit down with me for 30 minutes, Ill show you how to use a program
any
program. And there are some programs that are more complicated than others, but most
programs are easy
to use. You dont need to be computer-literate to use the power of the computer. And I
dont claim to be
computer-literate. I know how to program some, but nothing like an engineer.
So the whole premise that someone is superior to somebody else is a mistake. You want
to be an
authority on the subject. You want to be intelligent about the product. You want to be able
to explain it.
And its not a process of selling its a process of sharing. Its sharing the experience,
examining together.
Joining hands, and saying, Lets explore this product and see whats good about it, and
whats not good
about it.
And thats really the focus of what I believe you should do, whether youre selling by mail,
whether youre selling within a company youre part of your department, or youre
trying to interest
management, or youre selling as a salesperson, face to face. The first thing you do is you
look at the
person youre talking to, and you try to understand that person. What do they want? Why
are they there?
How can you help them? They dont care about you. They dont care what you want. They
dont care that
you need to make this sale to make your mortgage, or you need to make this sale so that
you can buy a new
Mercedes, or Rolls Royce, or airplane, or whatever what they care about is whats in it
for them, OK?
So the first thing you do is, you put yourself in their position and say, How can I use this
tape
recorder? Or How can I use this computer? Or How can I use this air cleaner? and
you then approach
your advertisement, your sales message, your discussion on their terms, in their
language. And one thing to
always remember is, there are going to be objections. Theres no such thing as a perfect
product, at least
not in electronics, and not in any product that Ive ever bought.
Jay: Or service.
Drew: Or service. So whatever your service or your product is, think about a few of the
disadvantages. Why isnt it perfect? And if youll insert one or two of those disadvantages
in your
advertisement, in your sales presentation, when you talk to people, when you write to
people, you will get
two major, major bonuses.
And this is something I strongly believe in, is tell people the truth. Tell them whats good,
because
thats a given. We all know were going to get out there and say, Were going to puff.
Thats an
advertising expression for build up the product. But very few people have enough
courage to tell people
whats wrong with the product when theyre trying to sell it to them.
Let me give you an example. There was a product awhile back, not an electronic, but for
TV,
called the Beam Scope. What it was was a Frennel lens. This was one of those big
pieces of plastic with
little ridges on it, and if you put it in front of your TV it made your TV seem about three
times as big.
!18
Jay: With good clarity?
Drew: Great clarity, and quite bright. It was really a good product.
Jay: So you could actually turn a small TV into a quasi-big screen one?
Drew: Quasi-big screen you could turn a 13 into like a 21, or a 21 into a 30, OK.
And it
was
Jay: Reasonable resolution.
Drew: Excellent resolution.
Jay: OK
Drew: Really a good product. I got the product, looked at it, said, This looks pretty
good. Got
the sales literature. The sales literature explained exactly how to demonstrate the
product. It said, Turn
off the TV. Bring the customer over to a chair. Sit them in the chair. Turn off any overhead
lights that are
exposed, because they will reflect in your beam scope. And make sure there are no
windows that could
reflect on it. And then when thats done, and youve sat the customer down, turn on the
TV, and then
theyll enjoy thrilling, wonderful big screen size.
So I took an ad, and I wrote to my customers, and I said, Hi guys. This is a really great
product.
Youre going to have this great big picture. Its really bright. It is a terrific product, but Ive
got to tell you,
there are two things about it. One: if you have an open window during the day, and
theres a reflection on
it, youre not going to be able to see the TV. And two: if you have any naked light bulbs
that arent covered
by shades, theyre probably going to reflect in it, and depending upon what angle they
are, you may see
them. Aside from that, its the greatest product in the world.
I sold tens of thousands. It was really, really successful. They ended up using my ad as an
example for all their sales people, because what I did was, I was honest with my
customers, so when they
got the product they were happy. They knew what it would do for them, and what it
wouldnt do for them.
And so I felt good that I could tell them that. And two, they felt comfortable buying from
me
because I told them some things that no one else would tell them.
Jay: You made it very credible.
Drew: I made it credible.
Jay: And real.
Drew: Right. So I sold more to start with, and they stayed sold because they didnt get it
home,
see a reflection on the screen, and not be able to watch their TV.
Jay: I like that.
What I want to do now is really going to be fun. I want to take you, rat-tat-tat, down a
bunch of
your actual offers, and I want you to dissect the anatomy of the offer, the key selling
component, the
psychology, and the element that would probably have universal appeal and value to
anybody, in any
industry, in any business, in any profession, in any product, in any service, who might be
listening. So I
want you to comment, almost like the ultimate psychological marketing Rorschach test,
OK?
Drew: I got it. That sounds like fun.
Jay: OK, all right. Lets talk about Ten Tapes.
Drew: Ten Tapes. Ten Tapes was, I think, my #1 project. I brought in over a million and a
half
customers
Jay: Not dollars, but customers.
!19
Drew: Customers, customers - profitably, into my company. And the way that I did that
was
really interesting. As I told you before, I was a tape manufacturer, I was making tapes. I
sold the tapes for
about $2.50 apiece. And when I tried to get new customers, Id put them on sale for
$1.99. But who cared?
They werent buying them for $2.50. Getting them for $1.99 they still didnt know it was
a deal. At $.29,
they didnt know it was a deal. So I came up with this concept called, Can you be
bribed? And what I
did is, I gave you ten tapes and a watch for $5. So I sold you the ten tapes for $2.49 each
- $24.90, OK?
Its the only was I sold them - $24.90 and if you bought those ten tapes, you could buy a
watch for $5.
Now this was when LCD watches were $30. I brought them in from Hong Kong for $7-8,
but if
you look at it, I sold the watch for $5, losing $3, but the tapes, which I sold for $29.90
only cost me $5 to
make. So the whole package was very, very profitable.
Jay: So on a net basis, you were ahead of the game how much?
Drew: Oh, $17 an order, plus postage and handling.
Jay: Did you sell many of those packages?
Drew: I sold 1.5 million packages of ten tapes and a watch, ten tapes and a calculator,
ten tapes
and a phone, ten tapes and a camera, ten tapes and you name it, and I did it.
Jay: What do you think the lesson in that experience might be for anybody?
Drew: Well the lesson in that experience for anybody isnt selling ten tapes and a watch.
Jay: What is it?
Drew: The lesson is, how do you build a company with $100, and build it into a multimillion
at that point, almost $100 million operation? And the lesson is this: Look at the back end
of your business.
I made enough money on the ten tapes and a watch promotions to break even and make
myself a few
bucks. I was doing fine. But the interesting part of this and this is why Im so excited
about this is who
cares about selling them ten tapes?
Think about it for a moment, OK. What did you know if they bought ten tapes and a
watch? You
really didnt know how much they wanted the ten tapes or the watch. They knew it was a
good deal, and
the watch was fun. But they wouldnt have taken the ten tapes at any price if they didnt
have a tape deck,
OK?
Jay: Yes.
Drew: Thats where this gets really exciting. If they have a tape deck, what else do you
know?
Theyve got a receiver, theyve got an amplifier, theyve got speakers. They have a stereo
system. I then
went on and sold 200,000 equalizers. I sold over 100,000 sub-woofers. I sold over a
quarter million sets of
speakers. So what I did was, I entered the hi-fi field the stereo field that I loved so much
through the
back door, looking at it sideways. I didnt care about selling ten tapes and a watch. I
made money, it was
fine. But what I was looking for the bigger question is, why sell a product in the first
place? And its to
get a customer. Not to make that one sale, but to get a customer that will be happy, and
buy other things
from you, long term.
And thats what I think what everybody listening should really internalize is, dont go and
sell
something once. Sell an annuity. Sell something that you can keep selling to your
customers. That they
love you for. That theyre going to come back to you for, over and over again. Dont do
one shot deals.
Jay: OrIf I may be so bold as to recharacterize what Im getting out of this, sell
something
which opens the door to a deeper, broader, more substantial ongoing buying relationship
that maybe makes
it easy for someone to raise his or her hand a customer, a prospect, a client and
without intimidation.
But it reveals a lot more about their needs, their desires, and the applications you might
be able to benefit
them with.
!20
Drew: Exactly, its beautifully stated. The concept is, I knew what I was doing, but I didnt
know
why. I knew it was working. I knew I wanted those people, because I had identified them.
They were selfidentifying
themselves to me as being stereophiles. As being stereo owners. Therefore, I could then
sell to
them all of the other products.
And in every box of tapes that went out was a catalog full of guess what? Audio items!
Things
that went with their stereo system. And I sold tens of thousands of lots of products that
everybody else had
been unsuccessful in selling them. To sell a quarter million speakers by mail, where those
people had never
heard them before is a tribute to the fact that people believe in you if you give them a fair
deal.
Jay: I dont think that most people think about establishing affinity, a trust, a connection
based on
a customer feeling that you, the seller, understand, respect, know what theyre feeling,
and are there for
them. And thats what you did.
But Im going to move on, because times a-wasting.
Drew: OK
Jay: Lets talk about the Radar Challenge.
Drew: The Radar Challenge was one of the most fun projects we ever took on. I had a
very good
friend of mine who was president of a radar detector company called Maxon. And Maxon
made an
excellent radar detector, but the whole market was tied up by a company called
Cincinnati Microwave.
They were #1. They made a radar detector called The Escort, and later, The Passport
two radar detectors.
No one could touch them. They had every magazine review locked up. They were the best
in the world.
And indeed, they were. They made a great product. But while they were making the great
product, the
great unwashed mass of the other ten radar detector makers was getting better and
better, so there wasnt all
that much difference.
So what I did was real simple. I challenged them. I issued a $10,000 check in the name of
Cincinnati Microwave. I put a picture of it in an ad, and I said, in short, We think our radar
detectors just
as good as yours. Come meet us on the road, and if our radar detector isnt as good as
yours, Ill give you
this $10,000 check. And I ran that ad, and 450,000 radar detectors later 3 or 4 ads
later DAK was one
of the top radar sellers the #2 in the country.
Jay: And they never took you up on the challenge.
Drew: They responded to my letter saying that the $10,000 was de minimus, which in
plain
English, for the rest of us poor folk, who would like to put a $10,000 check in our pockets,
it was a lot of
money. So I responded to them, and I said, OK, Ill raise it to $20.000. Ill scrape together
$20,000.
Now we were spending $20,000 apiece on the ads. I ended up mailing 8-11 million
catalogs at a time, so I
was spending $5 million mailing the catalogs.
From a business level, they were right. $10 or $20,000 wasnt a lot of money. But from a
psychological level, from us as consumers, when we take off our business hats, and we go
home, and we
look at our bills, and we look at the cars, we look at dinner, $10-20,000 in our pockets a
lot of money.
So they batted zero when they came up against us in their response. And I printed their
letter,
which they never thought Id do, saying that our radar detector was a cheap, Koreanmade radar detector.
Jay: And you refuted it.
Drew: And I refuted it. And I said, OK, well, lets have the challenge then. If you think its
made in some rice paddy, and I said rice paddy, right in the ad you ought to be able
to beat it. And
they avoided us for awhile, and finally, we hired the head-testing engineer from Road and
Track Magazine
to hold the test, and we held our own. We beat em in a few places, lost in a few, but it
was about a break
even. The radar detector technology had really improved, where the best of the best was
only a few percent
better than the mid-class.
Jay: But you were selling a better value.
Drew: I was oh, I was an enormously better value. They were selling a $200 radar
detector, and
I was selling a $69-$99 dollar radar detector, and what I did when they said that ours
was cheap, and in a
!21

rice paddy, I did something that no one has ever done before. This is where it really gets
to be fun. I
bought stock in their company. They were a public company. I published their 10K in our
next ad, and
they made $45 million on sales of, I think, $140 million. So I responded by saying, OK,
maybe your radar
detector is better, but it isnt because it costs that much more to make, because look at
all the profit youre
making!
Jay: Thats wild!
Drew: So they didnt like that very much.
Jay: Whats the lesson I can learn in my business or my practice from that very
aggressive, very
innovative, very lateral thought-based action?
Drew: Its really simple. It doesnt matter how big the competition is. It doesnt matter
how well
thought of they are, how much power they have with the press. If you have a good
concept, and you go
after them, you can win.
Jay: But you have to have a quality product that performs a quality service or value for
your
customer.
Drew: Absolutely. A) You never involve yourself in false advertising, and competitive
advertising is tough. You have to be absolutely sure of your facts. You never leave out a
fact. If you list
ten things youre better than your competitor in, be sure you list the ten things theyre
better than you in. If
you dont do that, youll get yourself in trouble, and you wont be honest. And customers
know when
youre not being honest.
Jay: I agree. I could get into this subject for another hour, but again, the clock is ticking.
So lets
talk about bread making.
Drew: Thats one of my favorite subjects of all time. Not because we sold 900,000
breadmakers,
which makes it the #1 selling product, but because it was a product that everybody said
wouldnt work,
wouldnt sell, and wouldnt be successful. I took a look at the product, found it in Japan,
brought it back to
the United States, and said, This could be a big winner, or it could be a loser. I brought
in 10,000,
nobody thought I could sell them.
The first thing that we did we being my wife and myself we sat down with the
breadmaker and
created 50 really exciting, interesting recipes. We created an onion-dill bread recipe,
which I
Jay: Onion dill?
Drew: Onion dill.
Jay: How does it taste?
Drew: Wonderful bread. It happened to be my signature bread. This is a bread that I had
already
made in the manual form. It has sour cream in it; it has cottage cheese in it, onion and
dill. Its a wonderful
bread. We adapted it to work in the breadmaker.
We had cherry cheesecake bread. We had macaroni and cheese bread. Even Diet-Rite
bread, what
I happened to drink. We had strawberry peaches and cream bread. We came up with the
most exciting
recipes
When I met with the people in Japan, they said, Oh, well, this will be good for farmers. I
said,
No, no, no. Farmers have plenty of time to make bread. Its working people in the city
that dont have
time to make bread, and have that great smell in their home.
So we created a 50-recipe cookbook. And then I wrote an ad. In that ad, I said, Hi. My
names
Drew. Which is the way I start a lot of my ads. And I said, When I was young and single,
I had this great
stereo system, and I had a great video system. And I used to date, and Id bring the girls
back to my
apartment, and theyd look at the video and theyd say, Oh, thats very nice. Theyd look
at the audio, and
Id turn on the stereo, and theyd say, Thats very nice. But when I brought out the
home made bread,
that did it. That was my character.
!22
And the ad actually said this; it was a bit of a sexist ad, but it very successful. The 10,000
were
gone within weeks. And then we started bringing more and more in. At times, we were
60,000 pieces
backordered. But in all, we sold 900,000 breadmakers on basically the one ad and the
cookbook. And Id
made the cookbook because I thought it was important, not just for the ad, but for people
to be able to make
exciting kinds of bread. If you want white bread, buy it at the supermarket. But if you
want oat bran bread,
with peaches and bananas, make it in my breadmaker.
And so, these exciting recipes, and then a couple of gourmet gazettes, where we made
you a club
member, and then every couple of months, wed send you some more recipes. It really
ignited the passions
of people, and everyone loves the breadmaker.
Jay: Whats the lesson here?
Drew: The lesson is, go the extra mile. Find out, not what a product is, but what it does
for
people. Figure out what home made bread is worth to somebody. Not the machine the
machine was
terrific, but that wasnt what was important. What was important was getting people to
imagine smelling
home made cinnamon raisin bread in their home, with less than 5 minutes in the kitchen.
And that was true
it actually took me 3 minutes. I did it 22 times before I actually ran the ad, which was
titled, Five
minutes to home made bread. It took four hours for the first bread makers to make it,
but it took less than
five minutes in the kitchen before they could walk out and forget it.
Jay: Thats wonderful.
Drew: It was a wonderful product.
Jay: Ive got to go on. I would like you to tell us a couple more of your success stories,
particularly the story about the CD-ROM. I love that.
Drew: Oh, Jay, I love CD-ROM. CD-ROM opened the door, for both education and general
knowledge in this country. Up until the advent of CD-ROM, which I introduced in 1990,
1991, hard disks
in computers were very expensive and generally about 40 MB. There was no way to store
large amounts of
data for the consumer.
CD-ROM changed all that. A CD-ROM disk, which only costs about $.75 to make, can hold
680
MB of material. So youve got the capacity to have 1,000 books90 million phone
numbers. Youve got
the capacity to have a map of every street in the United States, all on one CD-ROM disk.
And the capacity
is mind-boggling, but what you have to remember is that this is sort of Internet on a disk
for the consumer.
Theyre very inexpensive. Theyre very easy to operate, and you can have 1,000
magazines on
one disk. So all you do is type a name, and instantly, everything about that name thats
on the disk appears.
One of the best uses is encyclopedias. I have two encyclopedias at home, but I use my
CD-ROM
encyclopedia, because if I type something like thermocouple, everything about
thermocouple comes up
on my screen, and there may be five or six articles. And all I do is hit return on the
keyboard, and each
article is in front of me. Its really exciting.
Whats really important, though, as we talked about earlier, is that CD-ROM itself is just a
medium. The question is what does it do for the consumer?
And thats why I got so excited when I introduced this. I produced a 24-page book about
CDROM,
explaining to customers that this isnt some black box technology. It isnt scary. Its really
very
simple. All it is is like an old-fashioned LP record. It just contains data. Instead of an up
and down needle
movement, it has pits that a laser, a little laser reads.
So the data is all contained, just like it is on a floppy disk. Everybody understands how a
floppy
disk works, or at least that its an easy medium. A CD-ROM is basically even more simple
than a floppy
disk. And all you do is plop in a CD-ROM, and in a few seconds you have an encyclopedia
loaded. Pop it
out, pop in another one, and you have 90 million phone numbers, or 10 million
businesses.
This is really great for a small business owner. When you start wanting to trademark your
name,
or market to somebody, type in the name you want to trademark. Immediately, you have
9 million
businesses in the United States, and you can see if somebody else is using that name.
And you can call
them, and you can see what business theyre in.
This is just an example of what these powerful CD-ROM programs can do for you.
Jay: So tell us about your best CD-ROM promotion.
!23
Drew: I think my favorite is still called, Library of the Future. A friend of mine owns the
company. I fell in love with the product for what it could do for myself, my children, and
my customers.
Over 1,000 books - every word that Shakespeare wrote; every word that Plato, Aristotle;
every
word that Dickens wrote; War and Peace; the Bible; The Code of Hammurabi, which
happens to be one of
my favorites its all there. And if you type in, To be or not to be, youll find it, of
course, in
Shakespeare. Youll also find it in Huckleberry Finn, and youll find it in several other
locations. You can
read the books onscreen, because the screens easily adjustable. Every word is there of
every great, major
work.
Its fascinating. It gives me access to more books than I could ever fit in my livingroom.
Imagine,
well over 1,000 books and where would you keep them? In boxes - I have boxes of books
in the garage.
Now I have it at my desk. Any time I want to look at a book, especially a classic, or a
history book, or
anything thats really interesting, its all there on that one CD-ROM.
Jay: Thats great. What were the components of the actual offer?
Drew: The components of the offer were similar to what weve been talking about. I
didnt sell a
CD-ROM drive. I sold a CD-ROM drive with 6 CD-ROMs. So the concept was that I didnt
just sell you
something that I described I gave you the power that you needed to get started. And
again, we were the
first to do this. I gave you the encyclopedia with the drive. I gave you a map of the United
States. Every
city, every state, every road, basically all the major roads a history about each city,
rules; the phone
prefixes all the basic information. I gave you a world atlas on CD. You put the CD in, you
can pick any
of over 100 countries and you can learn about their history. Look at their capital cities
see even pictures
of their cities. Understand their education level. All the informations there. Of course, the
Library of the
Future that Ive described.
Also, another book called The New York Public Desk Reference, which contains the most
frequently asked questions at the New York Public Library. Its a neat reference book. I
mean, if youre
like me, and you cant figure the difference between meters and feet, or gallons and
liters, this will give you
everything that you ever want to know for converting. When did something happen? Who
was president at
what time? All of the questions that the New York Public Library gets - which they answer
for free - are
contained in this book that they put out. But this ones on CD-ROM, so you have
everything instantly.
Jay: Thats fascinating. As a futurist and its a little bit off the subject, but what do you
think
the future implications of CD-ROM will be?
Drew: Well, the future implications are already light years ahead. The CD-ROM right now,
as I
said, holds 680 MB. Theyve already got a CD-ROM with three times that much. The
Internet has
hundreds of thousands of CD-ROM-type home pages, where you can get information on
just about
anything.
So, whats happening is, the CD-ROM is a metaphor for a public library. Imagine youve
got a
public library. Most school libraries do not contain half of the books that are on one CDROM, like
Library of the Future.
Jay: Wow.
Drew: You can go now, with your computer, and access information. And information is
power,
make no mistake.
100 years ago, 200 years ago, we humans were very primitive. We still are, but a couple
hundred
years ago, we lived by being big, strong, and bulky.

Today we live by our brains. Today, being strong doesnt really buy you anything
economically.
Being smart does. Having knowledge does. So you need to learn how to use a computer.
You dont need
to program a computer, but you need to learn how to access that information, because
the power of the
future is knowledge, it isnt strength.
You know, its really exciting. Were making great strides in finding our ancestors, and
Neanderthal Man was short, and strong, and had a much stronger jaw but we dont
need all that anymore.
What we need now is to use our brainpower, and we have that brainpower, and all we
have to do now is
access the information, and we can answer any question. And thats where the future lies,
thats where
profitability in the future lies, and thats where making a good home for your family lies.
!24
Jay: Interesting answer. One last promotion, then well move on. Tell me about X-10.
Drew: X-10 is a delightful product which does so much for so many. X-10 is a remote
control
system that allows you to retroactively automate your home. It allows you to turn lights
on in your
livingroom from your bedroom. It allows you, if you hear a noise at night to turn on all the
outside lights.
It allows you to dim the lights romantically by your bedside. All of this without ever
touching a
screwdriver.
It used to be that if you wanted to turn lights on, or turn on a coffeepot, or turn on an air
conditioner, you had to get up and go do it. You couldnt do it remotely, you couldnt do it
when you were
away from home.
With X-10 everyone now who doesnt build a new home can have complete, instant
control of
their environment. They can put the lights on in their curio cabinets by touching a button.
They can walk
around their house with a RF, radio frequency, meaning no wires a little remote control,
and turn lights on
as they go on the patio have all their patio lights come on. Its really a great service to
people. Everyone
should have X-10 in their home.
Jay: I already want one. But how did you compel how many did you sell?
Drew: Oh, hundreds of thousands.
Jay: How did you compel hundreds of thousands of people to want one?
Drew: Well, it was easy. Everyone wants one. You just heard me describe it. I dont have
to do
any work all I have to do is tell you, Would you like to turn on all your lights if you hear
a noise?
Jay: Stop. You mean all you have to do is tell me the result, and the benefit, and the
advantage?
Drew: Is this a surprise? Its what weve been talking about! A good product sells itself if
you
merely tell people, your beloved customers, what it is that it does for them. X-10 does a
lot for you, and
its cheap, its about $9-10 a module. So its inexpensive, anybody can plug them in, its
so easy to do, that
you can have instant control of your environment, and isnt that what were all trying to
achieve?
Jay: Youve probably sold successfully 100, 200 products? How many?
Drew: Oh, thousands.

Jay: Thousands of products. What do you think the single, most universal sales lesson
youve
discovered that is essential and integral to all your successes has been?
Drew: Pick the best products that will help people the most, that need an explanation.
That are
not commodity-types of products. In my opinion, the best future is in the niche marketing
areas. Pick
niche markets. Pick small markets, or markets that you can go after that you can be
special; that you can be
knowledgeable; that you can be the best.
And you dont need to be the biggest. You shouldnt be the biggest. The best fun, the
most
excitement comes from going after a major company in a product category, and being the
best, because
most companies dont pay attention to their customers. And if you pay attention to what
it is that makes a
customer want a product, and thats a legitimate reason for owning the product, you will
succeed.
Jay: Thats a great answer, and a great lesson. I should stop there, but Ive got to take
you to a
flip side. What if Ive dedicated my business life to a commodity-type business what
should I do then?
Drew: Theres nothing wrong with commodities, but you have to be the biggest, or youre
only
going to make a small percentage. You know, Ive printed hundreds of millions of
catalogs, but I could
never be a printer, because printers make money two cents at a time. They make money
by running their
businesses very, very carefully, and watching every nickel, and every sheet of paper that
comes in or goes
out the door. They dont go after home runs. They dont go after major breakthroughs.
They dont go after
!25
the kinds of products that I look at not just high tech. If you have the best hammer,
youre out of the
commodity field. If you have the best pair of underwear, youre out of the commodity
field.
But if you go in, and just try and be, say, a telephone supplier of basic telephones,
without
differentiating yourself with anything but color, youre not going to make big money, but
more important
than that, youre not going to have a franchise with your customers, because youre not
supplying them
with something that everyone else in the world
Jay: You have no benefit you have no unique advantage to offer.
Drew: Exactly. So why do it?
Jay: But if Im already deeply involved in a businessIve invested my life, and maybe
mortgaged my home, and my family, and my retirement, and the well-being of my
children, and my kids
educations, and everything else, and the livelihood of 25 families who are dependant
upon me are all in the
offing - what would you have me do, or recommend that I do, to turn my commodity into
a proprietary
business? To turn my non-advantage into an advantage for my customers or clients?
Drew: OK, well let me tell you, because I have a two-part answer for you, and the first
one may
be a bit of a snipe, but let me say it, and then, let me give you the real answer.
The first answer is, you may have to sell something and provide a service, or lay bricks
like I did
to make a living while you make the transition.
So stay with what youre doing. Dont give it up. But start thinking laterally about the
service
youre providing, and see how you can differentiate that service, and broaden that
service, and build more
out of the customers that you have. Because I think thats your road to freedom, to
building a franchise
with those customers. Increase what youre doing. Find new ways to use your product,
and go after those
ways so youre no longer a commodity.
Jay: Thats a very good answer. I want to talk about business. I want to talk about
business
management. I want to talk about psychology, motivation, lessons learned.
You have a distinction starting from scratch at a very young age, you took an idea, you
modified
it, you turned it into over $1 billion in sales over 4 million very, very loyal customers
DAKonians. You
probably singularly were responsible for spending, investing, $500, $600 million dollars in
ads and letters.
You probably singularly were on the cutting edge of introducing more technological
computer, electronic,
audiophile-type breakthroughs in the last 10 or 15 years. Youre synonymous with selling,
advertising,
copywriting, innovation.
Id like to ask you questions about none of those now. I want to know what youve learned
about
management. About managing business, about managing people, about managing
money, about managing
vendors. Do you mind?
Drew: No, Jay, actually, I dont mind at all. As you know, my expertise is marketing. In
order to
market, I needed an organization. DAK had 450 people, so I did work with people, and
what I learned
about working with people was very much like what I learned about working with
customers. You have to
respect the people youre working with. You have to hold them in esteem. You have to
understand what
their needs are, and at DAK it was particularly difficult, because I wrote the ads, and my
name was on
every page. People didnt get the satisfaction of seeing their names, and having the
public notoriety that I
had.
So I had to work especially hard to make sure that my operations people, the financial
people, the
people in the warehouse - understood that they were important, and that writing the ads
was important, but
it wasnt the only part of the business.
So I think its a basically simple response: Treat them as you would treat your customers
with
respect, and they will treat you well in return. So thats how I handle the management of
people.
Now vendors one of my expertises was working with vendors. Because I loved the
electronics
that I dealt with, I understood the products they were making. One of the things that I
used to do and this
is good for anybody who buys anything know what it costs for your vendor to make the
product youre
buying from them. That may sound like a strange proposition, but let me tell you, it is
probably the most
important, single, solitary part of buying, and let me tell you why.
!26
When somebody offers you a product for $100, how do you know what to pay for it? Do
you
automatically negotiate, and say, Oh, I want it for $80, or I want it for $70. When you
do that, every
time the vendor comes to you, theyll be at $120 if they want $100. So how do you figure
out what to pay?
Well its very simple. You take the product, you open up the product in my case it was
electronics. You may be in hammers. You may be in office supplies. You may be in
anything, but open up
the product, and count the number of transistors. Count the number of resistors. Count
the circuit boards.
Weigh the plastic. Figure out what that product costs to make. Once you know that it cost
$42 to make,
give the manufacturer 10, 20% markup, whatever it is you feel is fair - not particularly
what he feels is fair
and then pay him that amount.
Because if you make him an offer thats less than it costs him, hell walk out, and hell
hate you,
and he wont do business with you. Pay him $100, and youll leave $20 or $30 on the
table.
So the most important thing I can teach you is, learn what it costs your vendors to make
the
product.
Another easy way, by the way, is to get quotes if there are lots of vendors for a given
product. You
should do this with office supplies. You should do this when you have letters printed. You
should do this
with whatever you do, because theres lots of money to be saved. And its a lot easier to
save money than it
is to make money, for most people.
Jay: Great point. Continue.
Drew: OK. Now let me tell you what DAK taught me about managing growth, and
managing
money. First lets talk about growth.
Growth was really easy, because the marketing worked, and we were able to grow from
$100,
back in the days of the dorms, all the way up to well over $200 million. The growth was
fun, it was
exciting, it was stimulating. Each new product was bigger than the last.
But managing growth is very important in a business. You have to control the operational
side of
the business, because just marketing doesnt solve all your problems. Because you can
sell a product
doesnt mean you can deliver it quickly to your customers; doesnt mean that you can
even afford to bring
it all into the country.
So you need some money, and depending upon how fast you want to grow, you have to
make
decisions about how much money you want to bring into the company.
Early on, I made the decision not to bring in venture capitalists, and I kept 100% of the
company.
I used bank financing. And while it slowed the growth a little bit, because we only had a
sum-certain
amount of capital, we were able to grow because our front end advertising the tapes
that I told you about
before was profitable.
But over the years, we were able to get the financing we needed to import the products
and supply
them to the customers. One of the reasons I like mail order is, you dont have open
account. So when I
shipped a product, I cashed a credit card the next day. So if I shipped your order on
Monday, I got your
money on Tuesday in my bank account.
So a mail order company doesnt require the kind of capital that a manufacturing
company or a
wholesaling company does. So thats one of the reasons I love mail order.
We were able to grow each year, culminating in a year of about $238 million. At that time,
we
thought we had a long-term relationship with the bank, and unfortunately, due to the
changes in the
economy and the changes in the value of the dollar, the bank changed its mind about the
size companies it
operated with. And DAK had to find new banking. We werent successful in finding new
banking, and
unfortunately, that caused the demise of the company.
My view is that you have to learn to be a winner, and you have to learn to sometimes
jump into the
abyss. So I consider this all a positive experience, and now I look at life with a whole new
perspective.
Im ready to start a new DAK in a minute.
Jay: Thank you very much, youve been very candid, and I appreciate that, and Im sure
our
listener does as well. I want to ask a couple final questions. #1, you talked about the fact
that in a
heartbeat, youre ready to do it again. What do you really going to do when you grow up?
What are you
doing with yourself right now, besides me trying to do things with you, and I am. Im
encouraging you to
do about 7 different projects with me. What do you want to do with yourself?
Drew: I think doing some seminars and tapes, like we talked about, would be fun. But
Jay, the
one thing that I think I really told you before we started this interview, is that Im not as
excited about
!27
positive mental attitude as I am actionable nuts and bolts technology. I wanted to make
sure that and if I
can, can I talk to our listener for a moment?
Jay: By all means.
Drew: OK. I want you to get out of this tape some experiences from what I did, and some
actionable things that I did that you can apply in your own business, your own practice,
your own industry
today. I dont want this to be just an interesting, I hope, story about Drew. I want this to
be a real
educational experience. Thats what I hope for you thats why I agreed to talk to Jay.
Jay: Thats what I knew you would insist on giving to our listener. Youve been an
incredible
interview, and Ive grown personally, and been very enriched by the time we spent
together. Thank you
very, very much.
Drew: Jay, its been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
!28

Jay Abraham MK

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jay Abraham MK

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

* My advertisement isnt working. What should I adjust?

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

QUESTION #4: IS YOUR BUSINESS TACTICAL INSTEAD OF STRATEGIC?

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

All Buyers Are NOT Equal: An

If you look at your company and you analyze:

Harnessing The Power of

Theres a provocative and overlooked question I want you to consider

* And many more possibilities

What Marketing Is All About (Part

Q: How do I get people to work for me or my company based on performance?

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

situation. If youre interested in accessing all 93 strategies, email Joseph ( joe@abraham.com )

I want to build a chain of 500 retail stores.

A Strategy You Can Use to Build

a Short-Sighted Mistake People

Want to Buy a Business But Dont

What Every Young Entrepreneur

A High Probability Success Model

Go to a business that is successful, but limited in its geographic scope. It could be a

Your Life 2.0: Thinking About Your

The Four Types of Markets You

Upselling and Downselling 101

The Rarely Talked About Reality

Repurposing can be summed up in a question: What else can you ethically do to

37 Ways to Nurture Customers

What follows is a reprinted section from five-volume set of my best-performing

14. Disseminate information.

Why People Stop Buying From

How to Uncover a Profit Windfall

There are enormous numbers of companies that generate enormous numbers of

Q&A with Jay (Part 7)

In this Q&A, I answer the following questions:

The S.T.E. Connection

5 Copywriting Formulas That Sell

What Every Entepreneneur and

Marketing is not manipulative, hyperbolic, or taking advantage of people.

6. Fulfilling on the other persons expectation, preferably over-delivering, so they will

The Ultimate Way To Build An

A More Systematic Approach To

Finding More Ways To Contribute

$2 Billion. Zero cost. Zero risk.

Some Straight Talk About Selling

To be massively and continually successful in whatever business you start, buy, or

13 Characteristics of High Trust

#2. DEMONSTRATE CONCERN: Everyone matters. Show you understand, respect,

Increase Your Sales 20% to

A Brand New Porsche Every

So he ran an ad in the newspaper:

The entrepreneurs world is of limitless possibility with a constant focus on adding

A Short Course In Positioning

Your Greatness and Profit Destiny

Gordian Knots Untangled: 7

buy the product line/business from me at a very under-market multiple in ___x___

Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan

meif you love stereoif you want to hear your

Jay: But at a fraction

Encounter! With Jay Abraham and Drew Kaplan

years ago, we lived by being big, strong, and bulky.

Drew: Oh, thousands.

1998, Abraham Publishing Group, Inc.

buy the product line/business from me at a very under-market multiple in _x_