Building Blocks of Renegade Millionaire Marketing (2 of 2)

Welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In the last episode, Lee Miltier, Dan Kennedy, and Bill Glazer all spoke about the building blocks of Renegade Millionaire marketing and their specific steps that you need to be taking in order, in order to be able to help your business grow. So if you missed the last episode, you're gonna wanna definitely catch up before we jump in because in this episode we're gonna talk about the last two building blocks that are required in order to help you Find success. Number 1 is all about building the only asset that truly matters. And here we get to hear the story about where the idea came of Dan Kennedy riding on a bull. If you've seen that iconography anywhere, you get to be able to enjoy that. And then number 2, how do we make sure that we find the riches in the niches? Let's keep listening in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignore it at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. With your host, Dan Kennedy.

Okay, next thing I want to talk about is completely understanding and committing to developing what you call the only asset that really matters. And Dan, I'm going to have you go first because I know you call yourself a rancher and you talk about having a herd. And truthfully, I think that confuses people occasionally because they see that picture of you on that bull and they think you're talking about a herd of cattle. Which is quite humorous to me.

Yeah. Well, also some people, a few people actually take offense at—

Oh, they do.

The analogy of being in a herd of cattle. Absolutely.

That's not—

I don't care about that. No. I mean, look, in the original Renegade Millionaire system, one of the, one of the critical differences that we talked about, about how we think about things differently than most business people. So most business people, most salespeople think about the purpose of getting a customer is to make a sale. Right. And we think that the purpose of making a sale is to get a customer. And so when you talk about the only real asset that matters, the only real asset that matters is the actual customer and actually the relationship with the customer, if you want to be more complicated about it. But because all other assets come and go and are vulnerable, are subject to loss of value, and essentially have no value without the customers. So you can go down a list. So if you take intellectual property, which we're all in an intellectual property business, right? So write books, create this program, yada, yada, yada. Well, I could spend the next hour and many people would know the names talking about famous authors, famous speakers who after their death, the lid on the coffin is barely closed before all the value of everything they've created is gone. And in some cases I have and others have, but in some cases I have bought the rights to everything. For a pittance, for pocket change, because all that stuff has no value without any customers. Where's, where's the, where's, where's, where's the person who wants it and wants more of it? Right. And, and, and a business can, you know, the business itself can change by force, compulsion. So the car business, the value is not the technology and the patents and the the make of the car and the brand, because all of a sudden they're all finding out none of those assets really have any value. I mean, what of the Big Three? What'd they lose in the last quarter? Some— I mean, billions and billions and billions of dollars. Well, so all those assets are actually worth negative billions. So, so where's the asset? The only asset is in, is in the customer. And the rancher-herd analogy is about having your herd, your group of customers, having a good relationship with them, which is the fence, a well-maintained fence, and being a good rancher, meaning picking good ones in the first place. So if you go to a cattle auction, you know, you're hurt, you got to pick good cattle. Otherwise you get a herd of cattle that can't breed and they go 3 seasons and they don't have— and they're sick and diseased. And, you know, so the analogy is not really meant to be offensive to anybody, although I don't care. But it's made to like, you know, sort of put a picture in your head of what this is all about. And so the value is not the farmland because the farmland is no good without the cattle. The value is not being a great auctioneer, no good without the cattle, etc., etc. And so in every business, all of the other assets, whatever value they may have, they are valueless without, without the herd. And one of the things that, that is somewhat unique to, to Renegade Millionaire marketing is We think about the ability, we aspire to the ability, and people should aspire to the ability to create income at will. And so the way I explain that often is John Lennon's quote that whenever, whenever we want another swimming pool, I sit down and write a song.

I love that.

And so what he really meant is whenever we want anything, we want to buy another mansion, we want to pay some alimony, whatever it is we want to do, but he wants to be— we, we, we create another song.

Okay.

But, but really, that's incomplete because the song is worthless if there's not a million fans out there lusting after waiting for the next song that they can run out and buy the minute it's announced that it exists. Right. Now, few of us have that talent. I happen to think I have no talent. I've carefully developed skills, but I have no talent. But few of us have the talent. Well, I made it. Okay, just sit down in there. No, no, I mean, come and fix it later.

So I disagree with that.

Well, but okay, so, so few of us have the talent to, to get the swimming pool by writing a song. Or a great play or the next great American novel. Okay. Very few of the people listening to this program and none of us in the room have that. But we can put ourselves in John Lennon's position by creating the other side of that equation. The herd, the, the group of customers who we have carefully rounded up, put a fence around, taken care of, nurtured a relationship with. Who are waiting for whatever we come up with next. So the person who has a very successful store, very successful restaurant, right? But he wakes up in the morning and decides he wants to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. He still has no way to create that income at will if he doesn't have a list of the customers, a relationship with those customers, those customers trained to respond to him, because otherwise he comes into his restaurant and he sits here and he hopes. How many people are going to come in this week? I don't know. When are they going to come in? I don't know. What are they going to spend? I don't know. He's operating on hope. He's got a big restaurant. They came in last week. Presumably they'll show up this week, but he can't, like, make them show up. He can't make them show up in bigger numbers than they were going to show up normally. He can't make them show up and spend more money than they were going to spend normally so he can go buy his motorcycle.. But if you do all kind of marketing, you can, cuz he can create a special event for him. He can create a special 4-course thingamabobber with 3 special wines, and then he can do a direct marketing campaign and he can flood the place on Thursday night when it's normally empty with everybody coming to this special event. And now he can go buy himself a Harley-Davidson motorcycle if he wants to. So the income at will position, which is which is the most powerful form of security that there is, is all based on the asset of the herd, not any other kind of asset.

Just momentarily, you use the word train. I think a lot of people would be, you know, that's almost over their head that you're training people to do business with you.

Well, if you don't, to be very basic about it, a sales trainer, David Sandler, said you either have a system for selling or you are vulnerable and dependent on the customer system for buying, right? Or the customer system for non-buying. Right. So that's the position most people are in. They may have customers, but the customers don't, don't behave in the way that the business owner prescribes. They behave randomly. Right. And so training the customer may be even more important than training the employee, although that's important too. But so really, again, think about the destination. So think about how do you want your customers to behave? All right. Well, so we want— if depending on the business, you want them to come in frequently. Right. So what does that behavior entail? Well, it entails Like if you're in a restaurant business, that entails not going to 5 other restaurants and spreading your business around, coming to my restaurant more often. It entails coming to my restaurant for every special occasion. It entails when somebody says, hey, let's go out to dinner tonight, it entails you taking control of that conversation and saying, well, let's go over here to so-and-so's rather than, well, okay, where do you want to go? Well, that's not gonna happen by accident. So you have to train that customer to adopt those behaviors that lead to the outcome you want. And the most important thing you ought to train them to do is to respond. Again, we're doing direct response advertising, we're doing direct response marketing. So if you do a general mailing to the general public, so we take the white pages and we do, great mail piece for whatever kind of business, if we get a half a percent response, we're like heroes, right? And big companies would, would kiss on the cheek and hire you, right? And you would be a hero to get a half a percent response mailing to the White Pages, right? But if we have properly trained our customers, we can do a direct response campaign to our customers and get 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% to respond. And therefore we're really, really profitable. But if we don't train them, they're often no more responsive or barely more responsive than would be the white pages.

You know, I guess while we're clearing up this whole issue about defining training—

Oh, good. You picked something that should be clear.

Right, right. Let me— let's clarify one other thing that often people get confused about, which is this whole, the whole issue of the bull and clearly Dan Kennedy sitting atop a bull, the bull. And so why don't you explain to everybody so that the derivation of where the bull came from.

Theft actually, like everything else, not actually that I went and stole the bull, but I rented the bull for that famous photograph now. And he, by the way, it's not like I own the bull and him in my backyard. And sometimes people wanna know if they could come visit the bull and, you know, no. What's the bull's name? I actually forgot. He does have a name, but I've forgotten that, you know, over the years. 'Cause that's been, I mean, that picture is 10 years old. Oh, it's older than that. I don't know how old, but it's older than that. First of all, it's the fat Dan. If you look at the picture closely and it's a Dan who had hair, so You know, that picture's kind of dated.

Well, makes you feel any better, the bull is not doing so well either.

Well, yeah, but it's quite possible he's aging better than I am. He probably didn't stay up till midnight last night, get up at 6 o'clock this morning to come do this. He probably got a good night's sleep. So the bull may be doing better. But anyway, he was a rentable bull. There's a, there's a car dealer for years in Phoenix of the car dealer advertising school, the Cal Worthington School. You know, if you had Cal Worthington in California, for those who don't know, for many years was, you know, the late night TV advertiser. And he always had a different animal in the commercials. And his deal was, if I don't make you the best deal in town, I'll eat a bug, was how every— but he always had like a leopard on with him in one commercial and a grizzly bear in the other. And there's a movie called Used Cars with Robin Williams? No, no, that's a different— that's a good car movie. But, um, I can't think— Goldie Hawn's husband that's not her husband. Kurt Russell. Kurt Russell. There's a movie called Used Cars. Great movie.

Um, you're very, very valuable.

Uh-huh. Um, and, and the char— and, and the one of the characters in it is based on Cal Worthington. So for a while there were a lot of car dealers that copied Cal. There was a whole school of car dealer advertising. It's kind of gone away. But there was a guy in Phoenix called Tex Earnhardt for, for many years who, who had a big old cowboy hat and stuff. And, and, and, and he sat in the TV commercials on this giant bull, which he actually did own his bull. And, and so the end of his commercial always was, and that ain't no bull. And so Tex was in my head, you know, when we started this No BS thing. And actually the first photo I used, you may remember it, you may not. And the photo I used in the very early edition of the No BS newsletter when I started the No BS thing was actually— and I paid about $1,000 to have a professional photographer go take it. I really still like it, but it's a big picture of a fresh steaming pile of dung in grass, steam rising up off of it, which we did with dry ice.

And I mean, it's a magnificent picture of this pile of Seems inconsistent that you can use the word fresh and dung in the same sentence, but go ahead.

Old dung. Oh, you just aren't around the barns enough. There's a big difference between fresh dung and old dung.

I plan to continue not to be around the barns enough.

And Carla hated this picture. I mean, just hated it, you know. And so gradually, you know, I mean, I mean, you loved it. Well, I loved it. But, you know, anybody who's been married for a long period of time, you got to pick your battles, right? You know, and so gradually this one wasn't worth fighting. And so, okay, I'm going to replace it with something. What am I going to replace it with? You know, well, okay, if I can't do bullshit, then I guess I should do a bull. And then Texas commercial. And so the inspiration really was, was theft from another advertiser. But he's a Red Bull. All he ever did was show business stuff. He's been in 3 Disney movies and they take him to trade shows and they tranquilize the you know, crap out of them when you take the picture. And so, but I was on them for 4 hours to get that picture. And it's because it's a real photographer and, you know, they're a pain in the butt. They're out there in the middle of the desert, the light bars. And, you know, we got to wait because now the sun's at this angle and I'm, you know, I'm sitting on this bull with these horns. I'm thinking, could we just get this over with? You know, I mean, but, and I got 56 poses. But that photo's been worth millions and millions and millions of dollars. And it's interesting. I mean, people, people do ask about it because they remember it. They identify it. They, you know, it's weird and interesting and odd and all of that. The first book cover that we put it on, the publisher fought tooth and nail about it. And, and then, of course, loved the results. As, as you said earlier, you know, results tend to change, you know, opinions. But if it wasn't used in the context of direct response, of course, if you used it in a brand-building context, we should all live so long and spend enough money for it to be real value. The other quick thing I'll tell you is, is sort of to lend some authenticity to the whole rancher story, though I am in the cattle business. For real? Yeah, for, for real. And I did it for the story, but it turns out we're actually making money. But, but one of our members, their family's been in the cattle business for years. And so in one of my coaching groups, we all put some money in a pot and we bought a couple of cows. And now we have, I don't know, 9 cows and we sell the babies. And but the story I liked was, was, was this story. So she's telling us at the meeting and that's so it turns out. And most people would think, I imagine, I thought in, in the old days, so you bred a cow and you got a calf and then you bred the cow again and you got the calf. Well, it turns out now you breed the cow and you get like 20 test tubes and now, so you, and you implant them, the embryos. Well, you sell the embryo for one thing and then somebody takes it and implants it in an ugly cow or you can implant it in an ugly cow that you don't breed to. There's a lot of, ugly cows and not many great cows. So you implant these things in the ugly cows and they carry them to term, right? So mama's now a cattle factory. She's not kicking out one every so many months. She's kicking out like 20 or 30 every so many months.

I can't wait to see how you tie this whole thing in through any of this.

Oh no, this is what, this is a great story. That's why I did the whole time, why I got everybody to invest. So I have this story because it makes such a, it makes such a great point about, but first of all, you do have to have a little sympathy for the ugly cows, right? 'Cause after a while they gotta figure this thing out, right? And they gotta realize, A, I'm never gonna have any sex and I gotta do all this work. You know, it's sort of like, you know, the chaperone, right? It's like the ugly sister going along on the date but never having a date. And eventually reality sets in. And so they got all these cows gotta have very low self-esteem. They gotta have bouts of depression, you know, I mean, I imagine by now they've got him on antidepressants. I don't even— but here's the point.

I think it's a good time to reinforce the fact that this is a great story.

It is. It is. It makes a great point. Oh, it makes a fabulous point.

Okay.

It's a business in which there was no leverage that they figured out how to have leverage. It's a leverage story because it was a bad business before. Okay. Now it's a good business. Because they figured out a way to have leverage. And in every business, that's one of the things we're always trying to do, right, is where are the points of leverage in this business? And again, the points of leverage are rarely in the stuff most people pay attention to in their business. The great leverage is not in picking better merchandise. There's some leverage there, but not much. The great leverage is not in giving a better chiropractic adjustment than you did 6 months ago, or the guy across the street. There's some leverage there, but not a lot. The points of leverage that usually are the great points of leverage, the breakthrough points of leverage, are all in the marketing segment of the business, not in the other segment of the business. But basically, I just really like the story.

Well, and listen, and as a byproduct, it's also a great example of how you can use a photograph to very much in your marketing. And now we've taken the picture, either the picture of real Dan or real Bull, or cartoon Dan or cartoon Bull, and use it often, and in many cases every chance that we get to relay the whole, you know, immediately has the vision of this whole no BS mantra of marketing that we teach. I mean, Listen, I, and this happened also, I don't, yours was more by design. Mine was more by accident almost. But the picture of me in the Superman outfit, I mean, I was speaking in Las Vegas and, and somebody came up to me after the presentation. At the time I was just providing marketing information to the retail genre. And somebody walked up to me and says, you know, Bill, you know, you know, he was actually pitching me to have a featured article in the big menswear magazine. And was telling the publisher, you gotta write this article about Bill because he's out to save the retail world. And, and with that sort of the light bulb clicked off in my head, said, gee, you know, out to save the, the world from mass destruction. And I got a picture of me in a Superman outfit with Bill out to save the retail world from mass destruction, which is now my, my photo that immediately tells my story. So I, it's, it's very, very smart to be having these and to be using these often.

Getting back to looping back to this whole issue of the herd, there was a topic here.

There was. I like to just make sort of a point or two about this whole issue of the herd because it's, as Dan, you know, as you would agree, this is like the most important foundation to embrace here is this whole issue there. Of the herd. This is really about list building. This is about, you know, your number one job as the marketer of your business is to be diligent about building your list. I mean, once I embraced this in my menswear stores, we would actually tabulate what percentage of all customers— and we actually call them clients— that would come into our menswear stores that we would track to see how many of them left where we would have complete contact information, and also not only contact information but other information about them, such as their— what they bought and when they bought it and how they bought it. And, and, and over 95% of all clients that left our menswear store, we would have that information for. Now, it was, it was really only because, by the way, that I, as the owner of the business, made it mandatory that every person, every sales associate that worked for me, and, and, and, and would also be reinforced by the cashiers that would ring the transaction, would make sure that we would have all that data before the client would leave the store. And, and the only reason why we didn't have 100% is there actually is 1 out of every 20 person that would say, no, I don't want to give you that information. And of course we didn't push that, but the other 19 outta 20 did. And think about the last time that you went into a menswear store or any retail business, by the way, and somebody asked you for all that information. And so it's really— this is really about building your herd is all about— is all about list building. And it really is, as is, as Dan points out, is where all the wealth of the business is, is in the business. And, and, and unfortunately, I see, as I mentioned, most businesses are really, really poor about this. And again, don't take this as this only works for retail. I mean, this works in anywhere you're at. I mean, In our business, Glaser Kennedy, we're diligent about it. And so what you really want to make sure you do, and this is worth— for those of you who are listening and not driving along the road or going back and listening to this again, this is all about figuring out the list of what is all the data that you need to collect for your customers that would really help you to make smart decisions about marketing to your customers, to your, to your herd, to your best assets. So like in my menswear stores, we obviously went to their name. We wanted their home mailing address, which was important to us, much more important than their business address. We wanted to have their, their phone number, their cell phone number. We wanted to have their fax number. We wanted to have their email address. We wanted to also know their entire purchase history. And also one of the big breakthroughs that we finally figured out we needed to know, which we made a separate entry on in our database, was how they— with who they bought. So were they buying with their spouse? Were they buying with their with their, their assistant that they work for in their office? Were they bringing their children in with them when they bought? We want to know that because now this all goes back to making very, very smart decisions about slicing and dicing that list in order to be able to send your message, your target, your message to a smaller list where now you can get a terrific response on. So like, for example, in my in my retail business. I'll use this as an example. We would have certain customers that we knew that only bought specific brands. And so when, when the new merchandise came in of that brand, we gave them— we communicated with them and told them that that merchandise was available. In certain cases, we would have special days that we would set aside, which in the, in the menswear business are commonly called trunk shows, that are set aside in order, you know, they— that from New York or whatever, they company would come in and have a big display of that brand, and we would invite those people who would only buy that brand. Well, as you can imagine, the response to that smaller segment of that list was tremendous. And those days were often some of our biggest retail days in our store. We would, we had customers that we knew only bought on sale. So just, they, they were people that would only buy when things would be at the end of the season. Those, only those people would be sent that offer. We had people that were customers that would only buy in the beginning of the season. They wanted the newest thing that was just out and they wanted the longest time to wear it. They got that. We, we had probably one of the most valuable lists that we developed. And this is a lesson for everybody, is what we call lost customers. And these are customers for— and everybody's got them in their business. Especially people that have repeatable transactions in their business, is when should the customer return to the business? At what point in the menswear business? Our definition was every 6 months. We wanted to— we felt as though our customers would need to come a minimum of twice a year. If I was in the restaurant business where, you know, there's 21 meals being eaten a week, well, that, that is much more frequent. If I'm in the If I'm in the jewelry business, it might be once every year or two. Furniture, maybe every 2 years. So every— you have to define when somebody becomes a lost customer. And this is one of the most ignored parts of any list because the lost customers, as I teach, is the third easiest customer to get to come back to any business. Only third to number one, existing responsive customers, and number two, to, to referral customers, people that refer you customers. So it's a very, very fertile list and it's very, very often ignored. So, so that's been how you— by being able to be a, a list builder, by creating your herd, you can go in and you can actually be able to invite just those people back, which we did. And this also, by the way, what I just explained to you is don't make this mistake that this is only about communicating with these people one way. This is really about— now, what I just explained to you is because of the data that we had, we could communicate with our customers multiple ways so we could send them direct mail to come into the store. Our sales associates could call up their customers to invite them in. And, you know, we were probably the only menswear store in the entire world where 35% of all of our customers arrived at our store with definite day and time appointments. So, so we were— our sales associates were trained to call their previous customers that they had sold to and invite them in as part of a campaign. We would fax them when we had permission to fax them. And that was, you know, now I know that the fax laws are more and more challenging. So anything I tell you on this, make sure that you check the regulatory issues. We would voice broadcast them, we would leave messages on their answering machines, we would email them. So we would— and this is very instructive because some people don't respond to one type of media. So the more different ways you can communicate with your people, the better that is. So this is about being able to segment your list, segment your herd, and also to be able to communicate with them in different ways. And And you know, it, you know, I'm sure everybody that's listened to this has heard this before, but it's important. It's worth mentioning that it is, you know, if you, if you ask most people and whatever business they're in, I don't care what business they're in, you say to them, what's the number one thing that you can do that, that would help you? They're gonna tell you, if I could just get more customers, once I can get more customers, You give me the customer, I can sell them. That's what I've heard so many oftentimes. And although it's very, very important to continually bring a fresh supply of customers into any business, and at Glazer Kennedy, you know, Dan would tell you this also, we constantly think of ways to continually to attract new members, which is our definition of a customer, we call 'em a member, into our business. But really, Really, the real value, the big value in the business, again goes back to the list, which is getting the existing people that you already have to come back with you more often. So, and that's much, much less costly to do that than what this new whole new customer acquisition is. So, and, and a lot of this deals with one of the real foundations of, of, of, you know, being able to communicate with people and also different ways, and also to be able to segment the list, is building probably the most important thing that will increase your business, which is this allows you to develop relationship with your customers. And the building a relationship with somebody, uh, through able to be able to communicate with them multiple ways and be able to communicate with them specifically to a message that they want to hear So that the customer who, of yours, who only buys a specific product or service that you sell, and you deliver, you speak to him about that specific product or service that he or she likes, them now knowing that you know that they like that and care enough about them makes a world of difference in how they will respond to your message. And, and, and, and I want to make one point about this, and then I want to tell you one little story. But one last point I want to tell you about this, there'll be somebody, some people that will be listening to this, and they will dispel in their minds this whole notion that we're teaching you about having the herd, having, building your list, because their response to this is, that doesn't work for me. Because I'm in a single transaction business. You know, I only— I can only sell this person one time. And then when I'm done selling them, I can't sell them anything else because they buy this thing one time. And that— I don't believe that to be the truth in any business. I don't care what business you're in. So, so last night Dan mentioned that we were at one of our local Glaser Kennedy chapter meetings and and somebody walked up to me and he was in a very interesting business that I didn't really realize existed, but he was in the business of taking wallpaper off the wall. He didn't put the wallpaper, new wallpaper back on. All he did is take off wallpaper. I always assumed that the guy who put the wallpaper on also took off the old wallpaper, and I'm sure they do that, but all he does is take off wallpaper. They need your specialization. Yeah. And, and, you know, and, and, and by the way, he's been a Glacier County member for a while and he did not challenge this premise of the list. What he was talking to me about was how do I use my, my customer list to my greater advantage? So that's the thinking that you really want to get to. And so we were talking about the fact that, hey, now your list has value to be able to sell it to people that put wallpaper up on a wall, to painters, to obviously these people that are taking off wallpaper show that they are making, you know, home improvement and/or office improvement. So they're fixing up their offices. So now anybody who provides other, other types of services that people want to fix up their homes or fix up their offices, this is a great opportunity for referral. You know, who else do you know out there that also needs to have wallpaper taken off and where it's effortlessly and you know that it's done the most professionally. So I don't care what business you're in, it, I don't care if you think it's a single transaction business, that list has great, great value. And then the story I wanna talk, tell you about is, is getting back to your sort of, your story about I'm gonna go out and write myself a song in order to get my, to get a swimming pool is that, A couple years ago, my wife and I, we were in Australia. We were speaking. I was speaking for, uh, at an event out there, uh, and, uh, we were staying at a beautiful hotel. And, you know, a lot of these hotels, by the way, it happens a lot, you know, you walk out in front of the hotel and they take all the most beautiful cars of the guests that are staying there, they line them up in front of the hotel, you know. And, uh, and, and what Karen and I, we walked out and I looked at, there was this beautiful shiny new Porsche sitting in front of the hotel. And, uh, and, uh, and I was just walking by, and, and I really— as, as Lee and Dan, you both know, I'm not one that usually goes and spends a whole lot of money frivolously because I'm pretty happy with, with, you know, I don't, I don't need it, need to do that. I'm pretty happy with what— with living my life. And but I looked at this car, I said to Karen, she, you know, I would I wouldn't mind having that car, you know. And Karen said to me, you know, he said, well, you know, if you want that car, we should get that car. I said, yeah, but I don't wanna pay for it.

So, and so I just wanna have it, you know.

So, so this is a true story, by the way. And so I said to Karen, I'm just gonna create this coaching program that's gonna buy that car. And, and that's what I did. I just added a new coaching program, put 21 people into the coaching program, and they more, more than paid for the car. As a matter of fact, they paid for the car despite of whatever the gas— I don't care what the gas prices are, they paid for the gas for the life of that car. So it's just a question of, you know, once you got this herd, you can go do anything at will that you want to do and just send the bill to the herd, you know. So that's my story about my going out and writing a song and getting my, my whatever I got.

My—

okay. The third building block we're going to talk about is called Riches in Niches. You know, I imagine that most people resist this. It's counterintuitive to go after a smaller number of customers than you could. And everybody must think that the surest path to millions is to have a business that appeals to just about anybody, like to the masses. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, or Amazon.com. Bill and Dan, you both advise that most people do this differently.

Why?

Well, the first thing, of course, is, is that almost all renegade millionaire marketing is counterintuitive, or it's at least, as we talked about earlier, it's, it's sort of the opposite of the way you've been conditioned to think. But, but the fact of the matter is, is that very few people have the resources, mostly monetary, but even time, have the resources necessary to do a good job selling to everybody. And so you can't— I would say you can't out-market your resources. And so you really— the smaller the pot of resources you have, the more strategic you have to be about your thinking if you're going to be successful. Otherwise, what you're doing, what most people do, is, is, is, is they have a little pot of pennies and they try and do $1 million worth of marketing. And it's the equivalent of getting in our car and driving from Cleveland over to L.A., going to the beach and spitting into the Pacific Ocean and driving back home and thinking we did something. It did. It's gone the minute that we do it. And so really what you want to do is you want to find a really, really, really productive puddle and jump up and down on it so that you can have major, major impact. And so, and you also want to find a space where you're not constantly operating in the shadow of giants. So, you know, the foolish person who tries to be a low-price provider of something— food, lawn and garden supplies, toys— he's operating in the, in the shadow of Walmart right now. Right. And will be overshadowed by Walmart at every turn. So this is about like finding a space that you can make your own in the market and where the resources you have to work with allow you to have some significant impact. And it means then through self-imposed, self-imposed discipline and determinations, deciding who you're not going to bother with attempting to talk to at all. So, yeah, like in a weight loss industry. Now, finally, Nutrisystems appears to have conquered it, although the jury is still out. But they're the first ones ever to actually have any success selling weight loss to men in any significant numbers. Really? And women are— 85% of all weight loss is bought by women. Well, for a variety of reasons. First of all, guys look in a mirror, they don't look below their chest. Okay. Women look at their whole body. Okay. So that's why you see that guy walking around on the beach in the Speedo with the big thing plunged out over the— it's 'cause he doesn't see it. It's frightening. Right. Women see all that stuff. Guys don't see it. They look at it, oh, I look great. But they, you have 'em in front of a full-length mirror. They just don't look down. And it just matters less. To guys for a variety of reasons. So, so weight loss has always been about selling to women. But I've had this fight with weight loss advertisers for 25 years so that they'll be doing an infomercial, they'll be doing a print ad, and let's say a print ad, we're going to put 8 testimonials in it. They insist on putting in 6 women and 2 guys because we have to balance the testimonials. No, no, don't talk to guys at all. The odds play here. The odds are 85 to 5. That your buyer is going to be a woman, just play the ad, throw the guys out altogether. Don't say men and women. Don't waste space in that ad talking, trying to talk to guys about their issues and talk to women about their issues. Talk only to women because that's your market. But you have to be willing to totally walk away from that other market. Few people really get it, but if they analyze their pot of resources, they'll realize they can't talk to everybody effectively. So now the question is, how many people can you talk to effectively? And I'd rather send 5,000 pieces of mail five times to 5,000 ideal prospects than send 25,000 pieces of mail and cover everybody in this neighborhood. Because Though I just spit in the Pacific Ocean. It came, it went. But if I get 5 times in a row, I can't be ignored if I show up every other day with a message that builds on itself and is ideally matched to these 5,000 people. So, and one of the ways to get here is to understand that America divides into niches and subcultures. And for simple definition, a niche is occupational, vocational business. So, and many people are in more than one niche, but so the chiropractor may be in, maybe in pain, he may be in back pain relief, injury treatment, he may be in wellness and anti-aging, he may be in weight loss. And so those are topic categories, right? But now If he's doing weight loss for flight attendants, now he's in a niche. Okay? If he's doing back flexibility for golfers, he's in a subculture. So subculture is about hobbies, interests, passions, what we choose to do. A niche is our vocation. So a guy who's a lawyer who's an avid golfer, he belongs to a niche and he belongs to a subculture. He may belong to niches within his niche. So if he's a personal injury lawyer, first of all, he's a lawyer, that's a niche. Then there's only personal injury lawyers, that's another niche. If he's in a small town, now that's another, that's a third niche within the niche within the niche. And the narrower we get with the niche, especially if we have limited resources, the more effective we can be. If he's a golfer, now he's in a subculture.. But if he's an avid golfer who plays every weekend, where, versus a casual golfer who plays when somebody invites him 5, 6 times a year, now he's in a different subculture within the subculture. If he's an avid golfer who gambles a lot on playing golf and everybody he plays with every weekend plays for serious money, now he's in a subculture within a subculture within a subculture. So all of America divides into niches and subcultures, and we are all most interested in. So when Bill earlier talked about emotional triggers and connections, see, direct response is all about that. We are most interested in ourselves. So we are most interested in the niches and the subcultures to which we belong. And we have very narrow definitions of the niches and subcultures to which we belong. And most people ignore it altogether or they're very, very sloppy about it. So, for example, military families is a subculture to which right now I'm doing a lot of marketing campaigns for a client. And so they think differently than families that don't have anybody in the military. They don't have a vet. There's not a veteran in the family and there's not a currently serving serviceperson in their family. They think differently. So they're a subculture., but there's Marines, Air Force, Navy, Army. Uh, they all view themselves as different subcultures. They have different language. They describe their experience different. They believe they're different. Then there's Special Forces. There's, are they serving in Afghanistan? Are they serving in Iraq? Are they Vietnam War era? Are they World War II era? Are they, so this thing splitters and splitters and splinters and splinters and splinters. And, and, and they all have a very profound connection to that little subculture that they're in. They have it to the big subculture, but they have it to the little subculture. And the more you are marketing to that precise, to that subculture or precise to that niche, the better off that you will be. And that allows you to get small and focused even within your own list. So Bill described list segmentation. And different ways that he would talk differently to different parts of his list. See, that's— most people won't do that. They'll do one big, broad, generic, sloppy message and send it to everybody and then wonder why they don't get good response. Same thing when they like— if you market in the state of Ohio. And so let's say that whatever business you're in, you're not local. And so you're going to market to the whole state. So very recently, my, my daughter and son-in-law and the whole family was here. And so we went to the Burton County Fair. This is like in the middle of the state. So north part of the state is Cleveland, southern part of the state is Cincinnati, middle of the state is Columbus. And the middle of the state, with the exception of the urban community of Columbus, is still pretty agricultural. It's still pretty rural. It's a lot of very small towns. And so, and, and there's a big Amish population in, in Burton itself. So the Burton County Fair. Now my daughter, Lives in Washington, D.C., and she's a reformed liberal but not quite conservative and comes from a cosmopolitan area.

Right.

And is sort of, you know, now not of the right age that we would— but the old term yuppie would be closest to the accurate description. Right.

Glaser Kennedy Marketing, if you would, how to get more clients how to charge more for the clients, to the clients that you get, and, and so on. And, you know, that's a, that's an interesting niche because this goes back to sort of the not often transaction happening niche. So when somebody buys a new home, they get it inspected and they live in that home. On average, last time I looked, the average person lives in a home for 7 years.

And so if that's the case, then currently 7 and a half because they're on the market 6 months longer. That's right.

So, so, so, so you don't need that person's service now for another 7 and a half years. But so what he's now doing is he's moving from now that we've inspected your home, he's now moving to a new sub-niche from there is now into the regularly scheduled home inspection maintenance program. So basically there's several different programs he has, but basically, and now that, now they'll come back into your home every, every 3 months and go around and check, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and check all the major mechanical problem, major mechanical systems in the home and look at the roof and the gutters and the downspouts and avoid costly repair for you. And so he's now further niching within the niche and very smart thing to do because now he's moving from, now I've gotta see every 7.5 years, now I've gotta see every 3 months. And the last example I'll tell you about how this works, a lot of it is really about also And once you figure this out, is getting through your own belief systems of I gotta be generic. And I'll give you my own personal example so that when I first joined with Dan in 2004, when we went from Kennedy Inner Circle to Glazer Kennedy Insider Circle, we would get a lot of new members as we still do today. And every time a member would cancel their membership. And as much as some people might find this hard to believe, actually some people do, I would take it very personally. I mean, Karen would like try to hide it from me, you know, this person canceled, you know, 'cause she knew how I would take it. Like, so perhaps, I mean, how could somebody be so stupid to cancel their membership? You know, was my reaction, you know. And of course Karen would come in and, you know, yeah, I know they're stupid, Bill. So, you know, So this is a true story. So, but then I figured out that, you know, Glaser Kennedy is not for all entrepreneurs. Glaser Kennedy are really for entrepreneurs who are looking for this kind of marketing, you know, and the kind of marketing that, that yes, we know works and it's really the only kind that they should be doing, but you can't make it, you know, you can't, you can lead the horse to water, but you can't make them drink. So I've now, I've now, I've now to, you know, come to terms with this. And although I still believe people, you know, leave for all the wrong reasons when they do leave, but I understand is that, you know, our job at Glazer Kennedy is to really provide this type of information to people who get it, to people who sort of understand this, embrace this. And so therefore, that's our niche within our niche, even though we're kind of like general practitioners, if you would, because if you look at Come to any of our events, you'll see what Dan calls the mixed breed of dogs in there. Um, but it's all people, however, that get it. And that's very, very, by the way, it's very, very, uh, sort of therapeutic for people to be in a room of other people that get it.

Well, there actually, we have, and it's sort of a real advanced topic beyond this program, so I'll just mention it, but We have what I would call a psychological subculture within our niche. And so if you define our niche as mid-sized company owners, small business owners, and independent entrepreneurs, now the truth of the matter is, is that we appeal to, and to the best of our ability, need only to invest our resources in reaching out to people who fit that niche description, first of all, there's a demographic bias, age, etc. But then there's this psychological bias, which is they are, they're searchers. They're actually looking for ways to do better and to do things differently. So they have a mindset that is responsive to the different.. And a lot of business owners don't. So especially small business owners with the shopkeeper mentality, they wanna show up and do the same thing the same way every single day and have that work out. And they really don't want to have that cage rattled. They, they, they're annoyed by it, irritated by it, offended by it, disturbed by it, made uncomfortable by it. They're certainly not looking for it.

Okay.

And by the way, that doesn't mean some of 'em can't be successful within their definition of success. And so, but, but the guy, the person that's right for us is a person who actually is already of the mindset of the hunt for ways to do things differently than I now do them, than everybody else does, does, does them. They're like, I know there's a better way and they're hunting for it and they tend to have kind of a renegade mentality to start with, not like developed as a skill, like I suggest you develop it, but they kind of have that attitude already to start with. So there is such a thing within an niche, within a subculture, has a particular mindset that works for a particular business that you need to kind of hunt for and connect with too.

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