How to Be A Key Person of Influence | Kevin Harrington

I'm dean jackson.

He's joe polish. And this is the I love marketing podcast.

I don't know if I should even say anything about our next presenter because you're going to see a short video in just a moment. It's a short video, but I will. His name is Kevin Harrington. He's a great guy. He's awesome. A couple months ago, we spent several days together in Arizona. He was out speaking at a group to 3,000 people. He's awesome. He's kind of a slacker, though I do want to mention that. I mean, he's in the last 30 years of being one of the top direct response experts on the planet, he's only sold $4 billion worth of stuff TV. So, you know, I try to, you know, get whatever talent I can here to come and talk, but Kevin is awesome. He's the chairman of a scene on tv. You've probably seen him on Shark Tank. Incredible mind. We're going to watch a short video first and then you're going to have him come up, okay?

So pay attention. Do you have a bright idea but need the money and a little direction to make it big? Meet Kevin Harrington.

With 500 products launched and generating over $4 billion in product sales worldwide, meet Ken Kevin Harrington. Kevin is the ambassador and principal architect of the global direct response industry. He is founder and current chairman of the board of as SeenOnTV.com Inc. Kevin has created brand after brand in nearly every category, including housewares, fishing, golf, music, fitness, and automotive. By combining great products with great superstar talent like George Foreman, Billy Mays, Anthony Sullivan, Jack LaLanne, Montel Williams, Hulk Hogan, Tony Little, Kim Kardashian, Kathy and Paris Hilton, and Kris and Bruce Jenner. Kevin's acquisition of as seen on T the world's as seen on TV portal has positioned him as the ambassador of the as seen on TV industry. Kevin was selected to star as an investor shark on the ABC television network hit show Shark Tank, produced by Mark Burnett, where budding entrepreneurs pitch their product ideas for a chance to sell them and make millions. Kevin is sought after all over the world. Whether he's throwing out the first pitch at a major league baseball game, ringing the NASDAQ bell, or inspiring and teaching students, entrepreneurs and business professionals. Kevin Harrington is author, marketing guru, advertising celebrity, television personality, ambassador of the as seen on TV industry, the billion dollar man and infomercial king of the infomercial industry.

Give it up.

All right. Thank you. All righty. Thank you. Thank you very much. Joe. Joe, you forgot to mention we were at Necker island, and we did some sumo wrestling with Richard Branson. How about that? So a lot of fun, and thanks for having me here today. Today I'm going to talk about how to become a key person of influence, because I actually figured out I had been doing this for a long time, but when I met a bunch of the other sharks, and there's now 10 of us, and each one of these, you're going to see some new ones. John Paul DiGiorio on the end there, and Steve Tisch this year coming out. Jeff Foxworthy was a shark for a season. I did three seasons, 175 segments. I learned a lot from these sharks, Learned that they were key people of influence in their industry. And so I said, you know what? Let me write down how I became a key person in my industry. And it was really kind of simple when you think about it. It's the old 9010 rules. 10% of the people make 90% of the income. But actually, really, today, it's almost 2% of the people are making 98% of the income. So, you know, that's, you know, this middle 10% actually have 90, but it's now becoming even closer to a 98.2percent ratio. So there's five things that I say that you need in order to become this key person of influence. We're going to go into each one of these very shortly today because of the time constraints, but get a perfect pitch, publish your ideas, productize your value, raise your profile, and also then seek great partnerships. And I think that's one of the reasons why many of us are here today, is to seek great partnership. So the perfect pitch, I have a formula I use for this tease, please, and C's are the three steps of that. And the guy that gave me the most unbelievable perfect pitch the first time I realized it, his name was Arnold Morris, and he was at the Philadelphia home show with the knife. He's cutting through a Coca Cola can, then a hammerhead and a muffler. And then he said, it's so powerful, this knife, that it can still cut to a tomato, and you can read the Sunday newspaper through it. This was called the Ginsu knife. I said, arnold, that pitch you just gave, I'm going to put it on tv, take a camera, capture it, and take it to millions. Because he had only been taking it to 10 people at a time for 30 years. He had a perfect pitch, but I said, let's take it to the masses. That was the perfect pitch. Not somebody like this that came on Shark Tank and couldn't even talk. Okay, so that makes a bad pitch when you cry. All right. In fact, you know, when I got done with Arnold, we went back to the Philadelphia home show and watch this. Billy Mays, I'd like to introduce to you the washmatic International. It's the only washing system in the world that works directly from a bucket. Who cares? All right, all right. That was not a good pitch. All right. That was Billy's first infomercial. God bless him. I did that infomercial. Fortunately, I didn't lose a lot of money, but I learned early on you need to create a perfect pitch. And here is Billy's last infomercial. The dull saw is no ordinary saw. It uses counter rotating technology to cut through all types of material with unmatched safety, speed and precision. It's a process that took eight years and cost millions of dollars to develop. That's a perfect pitch. $100 million in sales. God bless Billy Mays. His family still gets a royalty to this day now that he's passed away a few years ago, but that when he passed away. 62 products on television when he died. God bless him. So, yeah, there's other people we can talk about. Lazo Freeman, a personal trainer over in the uk, came to us and, and I said, what's your perfect pitch, Lazo? I get a kick from motivating individuals to be the best they can be. That sounds a little bit generic to me. Not a great pitch. But this is what we turned it into. I only do exclusive radical 12 week body transformations with business leaders, celebrities and public figures who achieve amazing things at work. But ordinary things naked. Okay, how about that one? All right, this guy has a 12 week waiting list now for people that want to use his services. That's what I call a perfect pitch. And by the way, you should have a 32nd perfect pitch. A 62nd, a 92nd, 122nd. You never know when and who you might have to make that pitch to. T's please. And C's publish now. There's a lot of people here. I've seen a lot of people have their own books already. So yes, having a book is great. I had my own book and that helped me get on Shark Tank. Actually, I can talk a little bit about that afterwards maybe. But books and blogs and newsletters, trade journals, newspaper articles, magazines, publishing creates credibility. And without a doubt, I know there's, I see folks here that go on the Today show. We know who we are here and things like this. So everybody knows the, they need to get the publishing credibility because you keep your customers. If you have a newsletter that comes out, you get new customers. We talked about credibility. You stand out from the competition. You enhance your reputation as an expert, you build your brand. And it has a longer shelf life than other marketing because you can give your book out, your newsletter continuity, you can do clubs, et cetera. So, yes, publishing is very, very powerful. And this lady, Hadi Hassan, she was a struggling female plumber. And she said, what can I do? You know, I don't know, what do you have for me? I said, well, let's come up with something. We've now published over 350 books for people through our organization now. And what we did with Hadi is we said the Joy of Plumbing. And that book now has taken off. It's a best seller over in the uk. This book has positioned her now. She started her own association. She does radio talk shows, television shows. She's got a 16 DVD set of DVDs that she sells on an ongoing basis. And she now is a rock star plumber. So publishing has put her into a whole new league. Third step, productize. Because a product never sleeps. I have friends that are chiropractors, doctors, lawyers, they can't bill while they're sleeping, all right? So I say, you got to productize your assets. We live in a global idea economy right now, and productizing is what it's all about. In fact, when I met Tony Little, he was a bodybuilder, personal trainer. All right, look at Tony. He looks a little different today, but Tony Little, I said, how do you make money, Tony? I get $40 an hour. I, I start at 5:00 clock in the morning and I work people out all day long. So at the end of the day, he made a couple hundred, 500 bucks, maybe if he had 10, 12 sessions like Tony. How can we unpack your valuable IP? He said, Kevin, he said, what I do, I can target train women, primarily if they got a little bit of arm fat here. Love handles, glutes, you name it, I target train them. I said, boom. Okay, brought him into the studio. We shot six one hour DVDs, created the target training DVD set. Here it is. $300 million in sales for Tony Little. He was getting a check for about a million dollars a month actually at one time. So this was all. By productizing his valuable ip, Tony's done billions. We went on to do the Gazelle with Tony Little, which actually has now done over $1 billion in sales. By productizing here's another guy, Jack Lalanne, he's a healthy old fitness guru. Another guy that's passed away, God bless him. But I said, Jack, he hadn't made any money. This is about 20 some years ago. And I said, what do you do to stay so healthy? I drink juice every day. Okay, Jack, here it is. We're going to make you now a healthy and wealthy old Fitness Guru. Okay? $1 billion in juicer sales. Jack Lalanne, unpack your valuable IP. Fourth thing. Profile. Raise your profile. So important, you know. Let's talk about the evolution of the industry. It took radio 38 years to get to 50 million people. Took television 13 years. The Internet four years. IPod three years. Facebook two years. But guess what? This guy, he did it in six months to a billion people. Psy. Okay, the Gangnam guy, this guy just blew the market away because what did he do? He didn't use the old media. A few channels broadcasting to millions. He used new media, which is millions of channels broadcasting to a few. And that is the new big. Small is the new big. Big companies have a harder time competing against you because just like this right here, I have a 35,000 square foot studio. I shoot my infomercials. I can shoot the same quality on this little iPhone that I do in my studio. And that's where we're going with this because here's a guy. Phil Geer. 810 million views. What mattered to me today, Michelle Phan, 580 million views. She gets seven figure sponsorships from companies that pay her to show how to put makeup on for Asian girls. And Jenna Marbles. Over a billion views. How to trick people into thinking you're good looking. So you know who would want me on tv? A lot of people say, well, if a blanket with arms can become a TV sensation, so can you. The Snuggie. $400 million in sales, 26 million units. Last thing, partnerships. And I'm out of time. So I'm just going to wrap it up here. I went to Guthy Ranker. They do beauty, I do hard goods. I said let's form a venture. We'll take people that come to you with hard good products. You bring them into the venture. People come to me with beauty products. We formed a 50:50 joint venture, very successful. Everybody in this room has the ability to partner with just like invent help which helps inventors. They come to us. We have a program where we line up 7,000 companies to invest in inventors ideas. And that's because we have engineers, we have manufacturing companies. We have every kind of company that can help an inventor with his idea. It's all about partnerships. And that's what everybody here is here today, this week to do. Joe, thank you for having me. I had to cram 50 minutes into 10, but I had a great time, so. All righty.