The One With Kevin Harrington - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #118

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and this is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe.

Polish and we are ready to rock and roll. Today we've got a. We've got a really special guest. Dean. You guys were just playing golf yesterday.

We really were. What a great day. It was a brand new golf course that neither of us had played. But yeah, we had a great time.

Yeah. And. All right, so here's our guest and I'm going to read his bio first and then we'll introduce him because I mean, unless most people in the marketing business have been living under a rock, then they've probably heard of or know who he is or seen him on tv. His name is Kevin Harrington and he's one of the smartest direct response marketers on the planet and just all around a cool dude. So let me read a little bit about who Kevin is and then we'll get into it. So he's the chairman and founder of TV Goods Inc. And chairman of as Seen on TV Incident. He's widely acknowledged as a pioneer and principal architect of the infomercial industry. In 1984, Kevin produced one of the industry's first 30 minute infomercials. Since then, he's been involved with over 500 product launches that resulted in sales of over 4 billion worldwide with over 20 products that reach individual sales of over 100 million. In 2011, Kevin's company, TV Goods Inc. Acquired the web property as seen on TV.com and it's a highly trafficked catalog of direct response products with over 2 million customers and hundreds of thousands of unique visitors every month. He is now the chairman of as Seen on TV Inc. Throughout his career, Kevin helped to establish two of the most important and recognized global networking associations. The first being the Entrepreneurs Organization, which is eo, formally known as the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. And then the Electronic retailing Association, or ERA. ERA represents $125 billion electronic retailing industry that uses the power of electronic retailing to sell directly to consumers via television, radio, Internet and wireless media in over 100 countries all over the world. Because of his extensive resume, Kevin was selected as an Investor Shark on ABC's television series Shark Tank, produced by Mark Burnett and and that show gives budding entrepreneurs the chance to pitch their products to a panel of acclaimed judges in hopes of turning their ideas into a successful business reality. And he recently released a book titled Act How I Turn Ideas into Million Dollar Products that chronicles his life and experiences in the direct response TV industry and that was the shortened bio. I could have gone a lot longer because there's more I left out.

But it doesn't say anything about competitive golfer. Nothing. It's not. We need to update.

I'm competitive and I lost. Dean is a great golfer. I had a great time. It was, you know, I need a few lessons. And the funny thing is, all the years of business, I didn't get enough time to play golf. But I'm now trying to get out there and enjoy myself a little bit more at least once a week now. So next time, Dean, be ready. Okay, I'm ready.

I can see. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, here's the funny thing, too. Well, you're going to be in Phoenix tomorrow, and so we're having lunch tomorrow. So the funny thing is you guys are both in Florida right now. We're doing the podcast, and then you're going to be here in Phoenix tomorrow. So we're going to see a lot of each other.

Absolutely. Looking forward to it.

And you're one of the speakers at my 25k annual group meeting, as is Dean, in August in New York. And if anyone is listening, you can see ads with Kevin featured in all of the ads right now that we're running in Forbes, Fortune, Inc. Entrepreneur and Success magazine. So lots of cool stuff. And, Kevin, you actually came on the Necker island trip that we did this year with Richard Branson, and that was super cool. And I'll tell you, Dean, Kevin is in freaking killer physical shape. It's amazing.

I noticed that. Absolutely. I noticed that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, well, Kevin, what did I leave out? I mean, we're going to get into some marketing, talk about business. There's so much we could go into. But what did I not say about you that our listeners would be interested in hearing?

Yeah, I appreciate being here with you guys. Everybody has their skill set. Both of you have a skill set that is very complementary to mine because I'm kind of a product guy and entrepreneurial across the board, and that's a particular niche that I've been involved with for years. The one thing I know you're going to be talking about, because Dean and I mentioned yesterday we talked about celebrities, you know, when sometimes a celebrity makes sense. We've dealt with a ton of celebrities over the years, from George Foreman, Montel Williams, Tony Little, the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, you know, on up and on down, 50 Cent, the rapper Cee Lo Green we're doing a deal with right now. So, you know, I can tell you some of the good, bad, and ugly in our podcast today about whether celebrities are good or not. Some that have done very well for us and some that have absolutely bombed. So that, you know, that's part of hopefully, what we'll have some time to talk about today, too.

No, actually, I would love to hear that. That would be almost sort of like a TMZ version of I love marketing, sort of.

I'll give you an example. CeeLo Green, we just brought on recently, gave him a whole pile of cash up front, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, lots of stock on top. And he came into our weight loss company. We own A company called eDiets.com and eDiets has got millions of customers, been around 12 years, was at one time, $150 million a year company. I made an acquisition not too long ago for about $10 million. I bought the whole company. But this company, we wanted a brand ambassador. We hired CeeLo Green, Holley Madison. Now, having said all that, the week that we hired Cee Lo as our brand ambassador, the TMZ has a picture of him coming out of Kentucky Fried Chicken with a bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken. So, you know, it's funny how, you know, there's clauses that you got to be careful with in your agreements with celebrities. You know, there's. And not with CeeLo, but there's morals clauses and things like that that, you know, hey, at some point, if the person doesn't do what they're supposed to do, you got to be able to, you know, cut the deal and move on, because there's ongoing responsibilities on both sides on that particular deal. That was a different celebrity type of a deal than some. Some deals. Like we shot a show with Hulk Hogan. It was an infomercial. We paid him his money. He gets a royalty, he shows up for the shoot. That's it. He's done. He doesn't really have any other obligations other than if he wants to. When we go on QVC with that product or hsn, he can come and make some extra money doing that also. But at the end of the day, it's kind of, you know, he gets paid for services rendered. Weight loss is a little different situation because that was a work in progress. CeeLo had to give us a weekly weigh in. He got, you know, he got the 27 pounds off so far. And that's the good news. You know, he's a large, you know, man weight wise to begin with, so 27 pounds. You can see a difference. You know, he looks better, but we actually would love to see him get, you know, to that next tranche and that next plateau of £50 off, then we're really going to start seeing some major success with him.

Well, let me ask you about that. Like, you know, why. I mean, obviously we understand it because we're all marketers, we've been doing this stuff for years. But why in, why celebrity endorsements? And what is like, if you don't have something like the celebrity or the social proof attached to it, and you just have a really great, you know, weight loss product or a great product, but you don't have that, how does that, the addition of the celebrity endorsement, the social proof, the results through someone else's stories, preferably a recognized person, how does that affect the ability to sell it? Meaning, you know, can these things still succeed on their own merit without that sort of stuff?

I was going to ask that same thing. Like, is there, do you have an example of like, you know, a product before a celebrity and then you bring in a celebrity and there's a, there's a bump?

Yeah, very good question. So, yes, I have a perfect example of the celebrity bump. And then, so I'll talk about that. But just I'll say this. I always believe, because I'm a product guy, that product can be king and should be king. So I first look for the hero product that has the potential to stand alone by itself. So that's the first thing that I look for. And I have a checklist of things and we can talk about that in today's segment. Also, I have a 10 point checklist and there's five or six that are the must haves that I think I definitely want to mention in today's podcast. But the bottom line is that a celebrity can. If you have a product that's already king and now you bring a celebrity, you should be able to lift that by 20, 30% in sales. Otherwise it may not be worth it based on what you got to pay the celebrity. And there are certain categories that are so competitive. And weight loss and beauty are two areas that you'll generally see celebrities. And the reason being is because there's so much clutter. When January 1st hits, it's weight loss season, it's the new you. And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of companies that simultaneously are coming to the market to advertise weight loss. The celebrity gives you a chance to cut through the clutter, rise above the top, and succeed where the others may not. And I'll give you a great example. We had a product that was called the iheater it was an infrared heater that supplemented your heat in the wintertime. And. And actually the concept of I heater gets really cold. I'm from Ohio originally, and it would get really cold in the winter. And the room you hang out in, it's chilly, but you're heating the whole house. Bring this little supplemental infrared heater. And the infrared technology is a heat seeking technology that comes out into the room, finds the body, and heats your actual body. So this product was cool all unto itself. We shot the show, did the infomercial. It did well. First year successful, you know, $15 million, give or take in sales. Okay. The next year we said, this thing is so cool. What if we brought Montel Williams in a celebrity? And Montel, you know, Montel is a buddy of mine, so he was 18 years, had his own TV show syndicated on television. So he is absolutely a celebrity. And he's not a George Clooney, but he's a celebrity. All right. So Montel came in. And Montel is more than a celebrity, though. He's a good salesman. And we got a 20 to 25% lift on the performance of the infomercial with Montel pitching that product. And it was the same product, just Montel coming in and putting his name and likeness and his credibility as well as the way that he sold it, because he took it a little bit. You know, he's got a little punch to the. To the sale.

That's probably even more of a bump when you take into account that that was the second year of it, right? Like you've had. You probably would have had a decline in the second year, maybe without.

It could very well have been now. I said, you know, we got a bump. I'll give you one. That was a. Was of detriment. We brought in Joan Collins to shoot a beauty infomercial, and we gave her 50,000 up front. We negotiated with her agent, and she shows up for the shoot, and she's all, you know, like real kind of like very cool and not very talkative. And so we're going through the script, and she just gets up in the middle of our rehearsal, and she says, look, I'm not endorsing this product. I'm only here to host the infomercial endorsements. An endorsement would have cost a lot more than $50,000. And bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. Talk to my agent. And we more or less pulled the plug on the whole project right then and there because. And lost our 50 grand because, you know, without. And this was A mistake that we made by not tightening up the agreement enough on the front end. But we just clearly believed, you know, hey, look, we're shooting a beauty infomercial. We set our samples up front. The agent signed, had the deal signed by her and it was a little vague on scripting, but she had final approval of the script, which was a mistake. And so at the end of the day, that was not going to be a success because she wasn't going to say that she thought that this was a great beauty product. So I have a firm belief that you need to engage that celebrity tremendously in the product and they need to have an emotional tie in to the product. And if not, the last thing you want is to drop 50 grand with somebody like Joan Collins. That just didn't work out. So there could be good and bad with celebrities for sure.

Better that it's only 50 grand and you didn't roll it out and spend all the money.

We knew at that time that this was not going to be. It was just, that was just way bad karma all the way across the board. So we, we basically pulled the plug and just said, let's just move on. And we tried to get some of our money back, but it didn't work. We just let her keep the 50 and move on. But I'm still a big believer in celebrities. And I think you'll see more and more if you tune into Aegisn or qvc. I mean, Wolfgang Puck has done over a billion dollars on Home Shopping Network. Why? Because he's a famous chef. And I will tell you this, when he puts his name on a knife set or set of cookware, he's going to sell more than if it didn't have his name on it, without a doubt.

Yeah.

Well, you know, something I think is very important too though, because you said that, number one, you look for a product that is, that has the ability to stand on its own, that the products a hero product. Because it sounds like what you're saying is you can't just slap a celebrity on something and that's going to cover up the fact that the product is no good.

I believe what you said is pretty much true. If, you know, if you have a product that really isn't that great, just sticking a celebrity's name on it is not necessarily going to make it successful and you really have to have a great product to begin with.

Well, I guess for longevity purposes and even back end and everything, having a great, great hero product is awesome. And at the same time, I've Got to imagine there's been plenty of ridiculous products or things that weren't all that great, that still sold very well because of the power of the endorsement and everything. Now, you know, granted everything that we teach in, I love marketing with the before, during and after unit. I mean, there is no really good after unit if what you're selling to people is crap. So, you know, that being said, there's got to be plenty of cases of, you know, putting a celebrity or strong picture endorsement that actually sells something that's mediocre or not even that great. I imagine you see that it's, I'll.

Say this, you know, over the years, absolutely, I agree with you. Nowadays you have to be much more careful because of social media. For example, on hsn, they put up all their, all their products go under, you know, customer reviews. And so if, if a celebrity like, you know, Christie Brinkley put her name on some cosmetics and she's starting to get some massive kickback on the Internet on it, and to the point where I know that, you know, that her people are talking to the people that are behind the company and the product and all this, and, you know, she's starting to get lots of, you know, personal email and negativity coming at her. And it's, you know, it's the product, number one, number two, how it's being sold, how it, how the hard sell on it, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, nowadays you got to be just a little bit more careful, especially, especially with the kickback that these, you know, because the celebrities, you know, they can get some, you know, their Facebooks and their likes and their dislikes and, you know, instantly something can go pretty quickly into a. Into a negative situation over the Internet and cause some harm for a celebrity. So they're being a lot more cautious now.

Right. Well, I actually like the fact that, you know, if you are out there selling garbage, you can be found out a lot quicker simply because of reviews and how quickly people, you know, find out. And on the flip side, if you have something great, all it does is help spread it that much quicker because that's where referability comes in, by delivering the very best that you can deliver. Now, one thing I want to point out and talk to you a little bit based on what you were just going through, is that clearly, Kevin, you are a guy that has spent a lot of time testing things and have had a tremendous amount of failures in the process of attempting to sell something, get the right pitch, the right offer, the right endorsement. You're Willing to put money on the line, you know, in cases where you've lost it. So for all of the success that you've had, you know, having sold, you know, $4 billion worth of things you've been involved in, you know, let's talk about the mental mindset that one needs in order to have a big hit. Because you clearly, you know, I mean, this isn't all because of luck. I mean, if people were to go through your whole career, I mean, you've put a lot of time and energy, first off, learning and understanding in applying marketing, but also the ability to take risks. And so I'd like to kind of talk about that whole.

Absolutely. I mean, I think I say, you know, I've launched over 500 products. I've probably had more failures than certainly most out there, okay? Because that means right now I bat about one out of four of what I do. Ends up making money in one form or another. And not necessarily big money, but, you know, one out of four that, you know, that comes back to a success, maybe 1 out of 10, that does real well. So, but that means 3 out of 4 lost money. So on 500 products, that's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of losers, you know, that, you know, you know, when I paid Chubby Checker and, you know, I was on the, I don't know if you saw the segment on CBS Morning News the other day, they asked me and they caught me off guard. They said, what's been your biggest success and what was your biggest loser? And I said, well, one of my biggest successes, I always have a hard time saying the biggest success. But, you know, the one I liked the most was Tony Little. Did over a billion dollars with Tony. One of the biggest losers that I had was with Chubby Checker. And we did a fitness product with a guy named Chubby. I mean, that was a bad start. Okay, so, you know, so, you know, we lost a half a million. A half million dollars. Okay. But I mean, I'll give you an example. You mentioned testing and I had a show where we had a commercial, a 30 minute infomercial. And you know, Billy Mays and I were back and forth and Billy's like, look, I gave him the first rough cut. And he said, kevin, you know, I like the spot, it looks good. One big thing. He said, I believe you need to pop this commercial in at about the first cta, the first call to action. You're waiting until about the 12th minute in. And he says, I like to see my CTAs come in much sooner. I think you should be at seven or eight minutes into the spot when that first call to action comes. And I said, Billy, I said, you know, Billy comes from the world more, God bless him. He's passed away now for a couple of years, but Billy was more of a short form guy where he did more two minute spots and the two minute spot business, it's $20 and under, it's 14.95, it's 9.95. You can make your mind up in a short period of time whether you want something for 9.95 or 20 bucks. I'm selling. This was a product called the dual Saw. This was a hundred and seventy nine dollar product. So you know, we're talking about fairly, you know, with shipping and handling. You're going to spend 250 bucks shipping and handling and tax and you know, upsells and whatever. So I said to, I said to Billy, I said, tell you what, I'm not going to say whether you're right or you're wrong, but this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to run, but I'm going to tell you, I don't agree with you, but I'm going to one of us is going to be right and it doesn't really matter who is because the best, you know, may the best show roll out. So we rolled two versions of the show. We ran the first version the same weekend actually. One version was a CTA at about eight minutes and the other one was about 12 or 13. And the longer one came out at about 15% better. And this is historical my belief on higher priced products you need more time to get people over that hump. And if you try to come in, you got a 30 minute show, you're going to come in in six, seven minutes and ask them for 300 bucks, 275, $250. It's like, well wait a minute. See now once you've come in with that first cta, it's kind of like time for them, if they didn't buy to say, oh, let me go get that sandwich or let me watch a movie or let me go cut the lawn. Whereas when I keep them now for 12 or 13 minutes before they come to that CTA, now I've sold them and I've taken away every obstacle that might be there. And there's one major sequence that Billy fought with me over that he wanted to put the CTA before. And we had a segment that lasted three minutes. And what we did was we Walked down a table where we have every other drill product that's out on the market. And our the host of the show, Billy and Sully, and they're like, Sully's like now, Billy, like we're in Home Depot right now. Let's look at every other kind of drill out there. And then we show why each other product that's out there does nothing like our dual saw or is near as good. And so we dispel all the other ones. Then at the end of the table is the dual saw, leaving you with the conclusion that ours is the one that you need. And that's it. But that's a three minute segment. And Billy's like, nope, we've got to do the CTA before that. And we proved out that keeping that segment in before the CTA came was very, very powerful. And so, you know, yes, we test like crazy. We test price points, we test one pays, we test multi pays. We test what point does the commercial first CTA come in? We test, do you do two CTAs, three CTAs, etc. Etc. It's a testing world. And not until we've exhaustively tested something will we walk and throw it away and go on to the next. But even then, after all of the things I just mentioned, we still fail three out of four times.

That is such an important thing. And Dean, I want to get your perspective on this too. But in the process of teaching people how to be more effective at marketing and simply the importance of marketing as it relates to success in business, which we think is like everything, you guys are some of the best in, not some of. I mean, you're the best in the world in these categories in what it is you do and have seen everything under the sun and have years. I mean, you talk about the 10,000 hours for someone to acquire an expertise. I mean, you've probably got 30,000 hours in this, this stuff. And even with that, you're talking about one out of four success. And that's why, you know, when someone comes to any of us and says, oh, you know, I really want to do some good marketing, and they got something. And they've never even read a marketing book and they've never written a sales letter, they've never shot a video, they've never done any of that stuff and they just think because they've got something that they're going to somehow have an instant success. I mean, the reality is, one of the biggest reasons I think people fail is that they underestimate the difficulty of the task. And with this sort of stuff, I mean, you know, we always say this is that in the. In the real world, it's called failure. In the marketing world, it's called testing. And if you're not willing to go through that, I mean, the chances of you ever having a big hit. Because the other thing you said too is that one out of four is a success, but one out of ten does really well. So, you know, the fact is you've got the. With that understanding, you can approach the things of having success in your business in a much more accurate thinking mode versus a lot of people that will just, you know, they won't even test intelligently. They're so convinced that their product or their service is going to be a big hit that they gamble everything they have and then they lose, you know, they lose their business. They go bankrupt before they even had the chance to get started. So anyway, Dean, what are your thoughts on this?

Oh, God, I was fascinated by the, you know, just the part of that three minutes of the way you described it of laying out all the other options and then addressing them, and just the wisdom in, you know, acknowledging what might be going on in their mind. Because really so much of that, that would be in our profit activators. What we talk about is profit activator number three, educating and motivating. And part of educating is educating them about the things that it does. But it's also educating them or removing whatever misconception that they have or educating them about a different. Answering an objection that they have in a way that's not so overt because there's so much of this silent dialogue that's going on when people are watching. Like, you know, you, you probably, you know that. That addressing those things is probably a big part of the secret sauce of what makes your. Your shows so successful is realizing what the conversation going on in their mind because they might look at something new like this dual saw and say, yeah, but, you know, I think this one, they've got their idea that this is. And then when you slowly dismantle those without even really doing it as overcoming objection kind of thing, you're doing it as an education.

Exactly. We actually call it the bad boy segment. We got to shoot the bad boy segment because we show what's bad about all the competitive products, which leaves, you know, ours to be the winner. So, yeah, I mean, it's a psychological process. That's one of the reasons why I love the infomercial business. We get 30 minutes to bring somebody over the Hump to pulling out their wallet and getting their credit card, calling the number to order the product. So the important thing there is can actually, I can take the exact same footage and just by moving things around, you know, change the, you know, change the response rates, you know, by, you know, double at least, you know, by just moving, you know, from CTA here to there, edit this, move that there, you know, so it's, it's. There's a psychological process, and that's one of the things I love. As you learn the business, you learn the techniques and you learn what works and where to put it. So there's some very artful salesmen in our side of the business. I have one other couple quick little techniques I'll give you. There was a guy on Home Shopping Network years ago, he created. It was called the Price Game and the Item Game. And he would go on HSN and he would. He would take a stone, say, you know, a sapphire, and he would, you know, he would say, okay, today we got the special. We got a. Got a big deal. We're bringing big volumes of jewelry in. We got the special arrangements. Tonight we're going to be selling this sapphire for $99. Look at the quality. And he stole. He's pitching and pitching and pitching it. And he goes, three, four minutes, and all the lines are lighting up and people are buying this thing like crazy. And he says, but wait, you know, special deal. We're not. We're going to throw you in a ruby and we're going to throw you in this. And now he's got five stones on the table. So that's the item part of the item game. So now you just ordered one stone for $99. Now he's got five on there for the same price. If you buy tonight, you're going to get all five. And now the lines are lighting up like crazy. And then after that's all said and done, he drops the price to 59.95. That's the price game. And now the thing just goes bananas. And if he'd have come out from the very beginning and said, I got these five stones for 59 bucks, he might have sold 100 of them. When he came out and did it the way he did it, psychologically, he sold 10,000 of them. And, you know, so this is one of the beautiful of having the time to sell something is, you know, that's what I love about infomercials, that 30 minutes is just so valuable to give you that chance to bring home the message, you know, What?

Go ahead, Dean.

I was just going to say the great thing about that, too, is that on television and video, you know, they're forced to consume it in the order that you deliver it. You can build anticipation and they can't skip ahead. They can't skim it. You're able to build that sense of theater into it. And that's probably what makes TV and video as powerful as it is.

Absolutely, yes.

Well, you know, speaking of that, like, how has the Internet changed what used to primarily be TV in your world?

Well, it's funny because the other day on the CBS program, they asked the same question. I said infomercials. And, you know, we're, you know, I'm a, you know, people think of me as an infomercial or TV guy selling products on TV. But we, our business is more than 50% of our business now happens off of the, you know, offline happens, you know, on the Internet, through catalogs, through retail, international sales, et cetera, et cetera. So we used to do, you know, it used to be call the 800 number or send check or money order. Then it was call the 800 number, send check or money order or go to the website. And we do 10% of our sales off the web. Now it's 40 to 50 to 60% of the sales are happening on the website. And that also has the ability companies now they use. You used to because your TV show was seen live and it's here and then it's gone. The Internet survives forever because you saw that TV spot. And that's why I made the acquisition of as seen on tv.com as seenontv.com started out as just, you know, just a website that was products from as Seen on tv. But we now have positioned it as the place to go. If you didn't remember the phone number, you didn't because we sell everybody's products there. So I'm getting now 15 million people coming to as seen on TV.com and because we want you to understand, yeah, the industry is spending $10 million a week on television advertising their product. But you may not have gotten that phone number right at that particular time or the right URL. You know, was it, you know, buysnuggie.com or snuggietv.com or what? Oh, forget it. Let me just go to that scene on tv.com it's going to be there. So that's what's happened for us is I don't have to spend a day dime of media and I still do millions and millions of dollars of sales on adseenontv.com because 15 million people come there to buy their products. So that's been a huge plus for us owning that site. But you know, at the same time, I'll give you a great example of how the Internet has hurt us also. You know, we launched the when, when Obama ran for president the first time, there was a huge win that he had and a lot of excitement. And we came out, we were the very first ones out with a colorized Obama coin. And it was a presidential dollar. And you know, so it was colorized and really cool. We were selling a dollar for 10 bucks, you know, and you know, it was funny because you know, on all the Jay Len hose and all this, like, hey, there's these guys on TV. You can buy a dollar for $10. Okay. You know, it's got a picture of Obama on it, you know, and, and so you mean we sold millions and millions of these things? That's right. Okay, so, so now my first week out thing was just going crazy. For every dollar in media that I spent, I was bringing back $25 in sales. It was at 25 to 1. It was huge. And it was the biggest response I've ever seen on any product I've ever done. But 35 to 40% of the action was coming in on the Internet. And I realized this was going to be a short lived thing because he had won and then he had, you know, he was coming, the inauguration was in, he won in November and then his inauguration was, was in January. So every single week though, we tracked this thing and the Internet percentages dropped from 30 to 25 to 20 to 15, got down to 10%. And we're like, as this was happening we didn't totally understand it. And then it all of a sudden hit. What happened is we got knocked off by about 100 different companies that we were driving people to the Internet. And so we had the TV commercial running presidential Obama coins to celebrate Obama's victory. You can order now for 10 bucks or go to obamacoin.com well, they were googling Obama coins, seeing Obama Coins for less. Obama this. All these knockoff guys, they were stealing all of our Internet orders. And we actually found out that our actual partner and supplier on the project was actually running a site, the siphon off, you know, business Obama coins for less, which was just mind blowing. And we confronted him. This was, you know, we had a partner on this deal. And I don't want to mention names here, but the bottom line is they were actually, they set up a website to compete with us to grab all of our tv, to grab all the action off of the TV commercial. And so the Internet is the wild, wild west. And people making lots of claims, lots of this, lots of that, a lot of it not proven. We only sell products that are clinically proven, have the product testing, and, you know, will stand the test of any government agency across the board. But there's a lot of guys out there that are running fast and furious that don't do that, obviously.

Well, let me ask you about dealing with that. I mean, you have to have big cojones to go into that world anyway, because people, for one, you know, there is the testing, there is the time. You know, sometimes you're risking, you know, not just time, but money, but also you're dealing with. If you have a success, everyone and their brother's knocking you off. So what are your thoughts on that? I mean, you know, how do you, I mean, is it just an accepted fact that you're just going to have you come up with something great, people are just going to steal it, you deal with it as best you can. Or how do you approach that?

Well, a couple, couple ways. Number one, we test much more quietly now. So there's monitoring services that monitor the airwaves. So before, when we would test, we would just go out and buy a bunch of media, and the media agencies would see the results and the testing places would see the spot. And everyone's like, oh, look what, you know, look what's out there. Now we go under the radar on the test. You know, everybody's under NDA and we go, we know where the monitoring agencies monitor, so we don't go where they monitor. We get a test on it. So before we let the industry see or hear about it. Now, if it goes on an HSN or qvc, that can't be done. But if it's in a broadcast test, you know, we can, we could buy, we could stay away from certain cable networks, go to certain broadcast networks. We can get a test without anybody knowing about it. So now then, because what happens is this in our business, you test now you put, put, put your creative out, you put the product out there. Now the knockoff guys can start. But if you test under the radar, then you ramp up, get your inventories coming in so that, okay, I got a winner. Now let me go to the factory and get all the inventory. Now let me go tie up all the URLs around this product, you know, you know, like Obama Coins for Less, Obama coin, this, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, we now will try to, instead of just coming out with the one URL, we'll buy 100, 200 website addresses so that we tied up a lot of the good ones, you know, you know, snuggie for less buysnuggie.com, you know, whatever it might be, all the way around the name. And so that we also will even take it to the next step of knocking ourselves off with a competing product that now when you see the branded as seen on TV product, you see a knockoff. So now if you're a, if you're a marketer and you're looking at this, you see 100 websites, you see two products already out there, and you don't realize it's one guy. Okay? But you know, people think, I mean, if, and I don't do, I'm not a knockoff guy. But if I see two products and 100 websites, I already think, wait a minute, that's already a saturated business. Too late for me to jump in. Right? So, you know, that's, that's one of the things that we'll do to prevent and try to head, head the knockoff guys off at the pass.

Right, Right.

Well, let, let me ask you, like, do you think a Joe Polish coin versus a Dean Jackson coin would just hit it completely out of the park compared to like a D. Jackson coin?

Oh, man.

I'm just wondering, like, what level of endorsement would de need in order to compete with the Joe Polish coin? I mean, would he need to get the president to endorse it or how would that, how would that work?

I think it goes. They both go straight to video.

You know, we really, we really do need to do some of this stuff. We should take some of these crazy products that Kevin has done in the past and we should like, literally brand some for us. Dean, have you put up all the money? Because certainly most of them won't sell, but it would just be for just having things around the office and giveaways. I could see a good market.

Fantastic.

What have you learned from Shark Tank, Kevin? Because you've obviously not only on Shark Tank, but just in your own life. You are constantly being sought out for people that think they have the greatest thing in the world and they want your, you know, direction, you know, to, to do something with it. How do you make it a success? Some people, you obviously want to partner with you and all that, but what have you learned from, from Shark Tank? Because that's where so many people know you from.

Shark Tank was such a great experience. I loved it. I did 175 segments over three seasons. And I will say that the biggest thing that I learned, number one, it's a show for television. I mean, because Mark Burnett is one of the smartest TV producers out there. You know, he's unbelievable in terms of the success he's had, from Survivor to the Voice now to Shark Tank to the. I just lost track of all the.

The Apprentice.

The Apprentice.

Yeah. Celebrity Apprentice with Donald Trump. Okay, so now. Now when you talk to Mark Burnett, he doesn't care about the deals. He doesn't care about the business transactions. He only cares about good television. Okay. And so what I learned is, yes, they would bring products on and bring deals to the table. They also made it very difficult for some of the best stuff to get through to the show because of some of the things they put people through, including demanding a little equity in the company just to be on the show. By the way, a lot of people don't know that, that they actually. Whether you get a deal or not, abc, Sony, and Mark Burnett Productions, they get a little piece of equity of your company just for being on the show. So some of the best deals fall out at the last minute before they sign the final contract, because their lawyers won't allow them to give 5% of their company away if they have a real company. But I tell you what I learned is that people in general, they just don't really understand how business works. And people, they thought they. In Shark Tank, if I get a shark, this is all I need, is just to get on Shark Tank. And they thought it was like winning the lottery if they could get on the show and get a deal. But guess what? You still have to go out and build that business. And I mean, a great example, I mean, somebody came on the show, they said, I bought 20% of their company for $100,000. And then. So now. So they own 80, I own 20. And now they wanted me to write a check for $5 million to help build their business. And I'm like, but wait a minute. I own 20%. You own 80. We need 5 million. That means I'll put up a million, you put up 4 million. They're like, no, no, you put up 5 million. You're the shark. Aren't you going to fund me forever and ever, no matter what it takes for your 20%? And I'm like, that's not how business works. Okay. You know, so, I mean, it was such an Education, dealing with the people that after we did these deals that they just didn't quite understand that look, if you know it this, we've got a. Yeah, you were just on Shark Tank, okay, But you didn't win the lottery. You now have to go build your business and make it successful. I'm going to be there, I'll put some money in, but I'm not going to guarantee your success. And I'm not going to be at every store opening you have. And I'm not, you know, this, that, whatever, because people, they expected me as their partner now to almost be like I'd be in their store every day with them, you know what I'm saying? So it was really was not a lot of fun from that standpoint. And so after doing 175 segments and more than 20 deals that I did on Shark Tank, I realized, wait a minute, every deal was like getting married. You know, we had, you know, you had to have due diligence and 25 page documents to acquire, you know, part of their company and buy sell agreements and all this stuff. And I mean it was like getting married. And so it, you know, the bottom line is in over a two year period, how do you get married 20 times? I mean it's like, you know, it was very tough, consuming and to this day, Barbara Corcoran, I know she's pretty much full time just running her Shark Tank deals. I mean that's what she's got an office in New York and all these full time people running around just overseeing all of her Shark Tank deals. And that's great because she sold her other company and now that's her business is running her Shark Tank stuff. But my business is finding the next Snuggie. And that wasn't coming in on Shark Tank. So it really was a learning curve for me. But Mark Burnett and Sony and abc, they wanted good television, which didn't necessarily mean they were going to find me the next Snuggie because a lot of these products were made for TV kind of products and not necessarily things that I wanted to invest in or be partners in.

Yeah. Wow, that's a great insight just to, you know, just to hear all that stuff too. Can I ask you about this like in you because of all the stuff, you know about marketing and product launches in inventory and everything that's required in order to create a successful business, when do you recommend that people actually go out and partner with investors versus when is it just great to bootstrap it and figure it out yourself? Because Ownership, you know, being such an important thing. I mean, what are your thoughts on? Are you a big believer in going and getting investors or is it. Is the real answer? Is it.

This is sort of what I was going to say is. It seems like a lot of times people, they don't know, they think getting the money is going to be the answer, but they don't have. In my observation, when you ask them on the show, a lot of them don't have any idea of what they're going to actually do with the money. And that might be great to have your insight on. When does it make sense to seek money and partners?

Very good questions. I am a big believer in bringing partners in from many standpoints, because what people don't realize, let's just take a product, for example. In my world, if a product is successful and is going to roll out, it's going to take 3 to 5 million dollars in capital. So there's very few people that walk in my office that have the capabilities of writing that check. And so what happens is if they bring it out and they're successful with the test, they're going to tell the world about it. Now it's public domain, and now all the knockoff guys come in and beat them to the punch. So the bottom line is, is that if you partner up with the right people, you can put together an orchestrated plan that in my world, and every distribution outlet has a different process. But my world is test it first, put a spot out, run it on TV, use TV to build the brand, spend 3 to 5 million on TV, take it into retail, home shopping channels, international distribution, etc. Well, that's going to take 3 to 5 million. So you need a partner. You might as well bring that partner in on the front end that knows what they're doing because they can, number one, help you do it from day one so that you don't have to put out any of your own money virtually. And I even say I teach people when I do. I have some masterminds of programs that I do with people and inventors and entrepreneurs. And I tell them I can show you how to find a lawyer that will do all your legal work for free. And I have an industrial engineer that will do all the design work for free. And when I say free, I mean free from a cash standpoint. Up front, there's going to be something on the back, and it might be 10 cents a unit or 25 cents a unit or equity or whatever, but I've got factories, I've got Engineers, I've got lawyers, I've got manufacturers, all of these people, all the way through the process that will invest in your product where you can come out with an idea, not have a penny in your pocket, but get everything done without having to write any checks, get it all done for pieces of. Of the action, and sit back and collect massive amounts of profit as the deal rolls out. So I believe in bringing partners in because if something is successful, it's going to require a big, big budget and a lot of cash. And I just don't think most people realize they haven't really written their projections, they haven't looked at use of proceeds and what they really need to build the business and make it the next big grand slam.

Wow. No, that's. That's great insight. Well, you know, since we're on an I love marketing episode, why do you. Why do you love marketing? I mean, you've been doing this for so long.

I love marketing because, number one, I'm a. I'm a product guy at the core. And if I walk in, I don't care what store it is, you know, there's somebody demonstrating something or, you know, I'm always attracted. I mean, I'm very curious. And, you know, I talk about curiosity overload. I subscribe to, you know, dozens and dozens of newspapers and magazines on a monthly basis and the Internet, downloads of different things. I get probably somewhere around 1500 catalogs sent to my home. And I'm talking about different catalogs. I mean, a number of times these catalogs are hitting hundreds of thousands of them over a year, probably because they mail multiple times a year, etc. And I just love to read and look and see all the products, how people are selling them. That, to me, is almost a form of entertainment. To sit at the Philadelphia Home show and watch some guy demonstrate some innovative new product. I love it. I love watching it. And that's what got me excited about this business. And that's when I first said, wait a minute, what I just watched. What if I turned the camera on, captured that on camera, put an 800 number on the back of it and put it up on TV to the millions of people out there, instead of just to the eight or ten people right here at this home show at that particular moment? And that's how I got into the infomercial business. So, yeah, I love marketing. I love seeing people and how they market. What I love about marketing also is then we were all sitting around back, this is back in the late 80s, and a group of Us in the infomercial business. And we said, you know, we really need. We should be getting together on a regular basis and get all of us together and share some ideas and things we've learned. Because I had customers that were ordering a dozen of something, and then they'd say that they never showed up because they didn't have a signature. And it's like, oh, well, I got a blacklist of those customers. And we'd share things like, hey, let's form an assignment association. So that's when myself and Greg Rinker started the Electronic Retailing association era. And that was back 1990 now, about 23 years ago. But, you know, then I said to myself, I love marketing because I love the people in the business. And you know what? Like mine. And all of a sudden, here we are, and I go down to Necker Island. Who do I meet? A bunch of nice guys, you know, and girls, too. Entrepreneurs. So what a great business we're all in. It's such a pleasure to network inside an industry that's full of such creative minds and really, at the end of the day, just a lot of really good people.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Well, Dean, go ahead. I want to give you a chance to answer.

Plus, the lifestyle things are pretty good for having a marketing business. You get the play golf on one day, go to the office one day, go to Phoenix the next day. It's a pretty cool life.

Oh, yeah, well, absolutely. I mean, I think certainly I love it more when it's successful and you reap the rewards of the success. Absolutely. I mean, think about Joe. I know you've done a lot of interviews with Richard Branson, and, you know, I mean, certainly he's had a chance to enjoy all of his success, you know, enough to have his own island that he can just hang out on six, eight months a year and not have to worry about anything. I mean, he seems genuinely just interested in just hanging out and not, you know, I'm sure he does a lot of business behind the scenes, but he really is a genuine guy that really likes meeting and hanging out with entrepreneurs, you know, So, I mean, there's. There. That's the essence of love and marketing, is making a lot of money and hanging out with the right people and enjoying yourself along the way.

Oh, yeah. One of my first interviews that I did with Richard was, oh, gosh, probably back in 2007, I think it was. I asked him, how does he spend his time? And he said, at this point in his life, 40% of his time was spent looking at Philanthropic projects and things like that. 25% on looking at new deals, 25% on marketing, and 10% on fighting fires. That's how he spent his business time. And I thought, very interesting that he would say 25% of his time is spent on marketing. And that's a huge deal, because a lot of people don't put 25% of their time into marketing. And the fact is, without marketing, nothing is going to happen. I mean, nothing. And it's such an important. It's such an important skill set, depending on what side of the coin you're on. I mean, I have this great video online called Is Selling evil? That people can see if they just type in Is selling evil in the Google little video. But I look at marketers as the carriers of messages. I mean, they're the ones that get the messaging out there that the best product or service in the world is not going to do anything without marketing. I remember seeing years ago this little sugar packet in some cafe, and I didn't eat the sugar because I don't really eat much sugar. I just remember the little packet, and it had a caption on it that said, advertising. And it said, he who has something to sell and whispers in a well is not as apt to make the shiny dollar as the guy that climbs the tre and hollers. And I just thought that was the funniest damn thing, because it's true. You know, if you got something that you really need to get out to the world, even if it's not for money, even if it's a movement, even if it's a nonprofit, I mean, you have to get the messaging out there. And so what's great about your career is you're a person. Like, what you just said it a little while ago is you watched a great demonstration, and you're like, you know, what if we videotape this thing and put it on TV and boom, you know, invent the infomercial? I mean, that's a huge thing, and people really need to kind of get that.

No, I mean, it's. I think you, you know, what you guys do is fabulous. I think, you know, communicating through the podcast like this with, you know, select people. You know, I enjoy doing this because hopefully there's somebody out there listening that's going to say, you know what? This guy Kevin, I think he may be able to help me. And this is my 30th year in the business, and without a doubt, I think this is kind of an interview of, let's just kind of drop our drawers and talk about it. Hey, look, I can talk about my successes and I've had quite a few, but I fail a lot more times than I succeed. And I don't like to necessarily admit that, but hey, that's just the way it is. But I will say that every time we fail, we learn something that's going to make you that much better on the next one. And certainly what I try to say is fail fast because I can fail cheaply, because in the old days, it used to cost me sometimes as much as 100, $150,000 to learn that I had a failure. But now I do a lot. I do web testing, I do a lot of different things behind the scenes, and I fail fast and I fail cheaply before I get something necessarily to this huge budgeted situation. So we've learned a lot over the years, and that is one of the other things that the Internet has given us the ability to do, is to fail fast and fail cheaply in a fashion that doesn't put it out to the world to see beforehand. So, you know, we definitely have seen a lot of things work towards our favor with the Internet as well as some of the tougher things. But, you know, definitely it all comes back to loving what you do and loving marketing and hanging out with the right kind of people. So I'm glad we had a chance to get together today, guys. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, let's do this. To wrap up, I think this is going to be only the beginning. If anyone would like to see Kevin in person, meet him in person along with all of us together, come to our event, the Genius Network meeting in New York. And Dean, I want to put the link to the recent show he was on CBS on Ilove marketing.com so they can actually. It's actually a really good segment and Kevin lays out some good stuff and we can put that up there along with this episode. And then, Kevin, for anyone that wants to read your book, go to as seen on tv.com any, find out more information about you, pitch you on deals, if that's even doable. I mean, where do they go? What resources can you give out that would be useful for our listeners based on hearing what you said?

And I think probably if anybody's got questions or products or ideas, whatever, I'll just throw out a web address. Kevin7810aol.com is one of the emails. And through that email I can get back to you. I've got myself and a team of people here. I try to answer as many the emails as I can. My son, who you're going to meet, Joe tomorrow, is coming with me. He's 24 years old and graduated from Penn State three years ago and is learning this business and he's really ramping it up. So that email address is Kevin K-E V I N7810O L.com and that way we can just steer you in the right direction. And, you know, I go to your events. I'm going to be, you know, at your event in August in New York, which I think is going to be a really cool event. You put on a bunch more and I've got some of my own stuff that will be going down this year also. So I'd love to hear from anybody that's out there looking for some help or ideas or just want to send me an email. Love to hear from you.

Awesome. Awesome. And Deans, what are your final last words? And then we will be done.

I think that's good. We'll put up the video, we'll put up a link to the book. And Kevin, just thanks so much for sharing. You're a very generous guy with your ideas and your time and it's been great getting to know you.

Super. Me too. I appreciate it. And just, you know, maybe one of these times you'll let me win at golf, Dean. Okay.

Absolutely.

Awesome. Yeah, exactly. One day I'd actually like golf. All right, everyone, go to ilovemarketing.com give us your comments about what you thought of the episode with Kevin. And Kevin, thank you so much. Have a great day and we'll talk to everyone on the next episode of I love marketing. Take care.

Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye.