Before you answer that for certain… have you ever asked yourself what is the root of all money?

Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and people able to produce them. Money is the physical form of the principle that people who want to deal with each other must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of those who claim your product by tears because they “need” it, or of those who steal, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men and women who produce.

Is THIS what you consider evil?

When you accept money in payment for your work, you do it only because you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the government, politicians, or thieves who give value to money. An ocean of tears or all the guns in the world can’t transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper (which should be gold) are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the people in this world who produce. Your wallet is your STATEMENT OF HOPE that somewhere in the world around you there are people who will honor and uphold the freedom of trade – that moral principle which is the root of money.

Is THIS what you consider evil?

And what is the root of production? Have you ever looked for it? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking drones. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

What’s that, you say? You say, “But Greg, money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak!”

What strength do you mean?

It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. So does that mean money is made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did NOT invent it?

Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?

No. Money is made – before it can be begged for or stolen by force – made by the effort of every honest person, each to the extent of his or her ability. An honest person is one who knows he can’t consume more than he has produced.

To trade by means of money is the code of those of good will.

Money rests on the ETERNAL TRUTH that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of someone else who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them VALUES, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods.

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your TALENT to their REASON; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money.

Is THIS what you consider evil?

But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace YOU as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.

Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse cause and effect – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the decision of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.

Is THIS the reason why you call it evil?

Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. (This is also why you see so many lottery winners hollow, broke and shattered versions of their former selves… and sometimes even dead!)

But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him… did it? Or did HE corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with 50 parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it.

Is THIS the reason why you call it evil?

Money is your means of survival. If you damn the source of your livelihood, you are damning your own life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you hate for customers you curse?

If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity?

Is THIS the root of your hatred of money?

Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit.

Is THIS the root of your hatred of money?

Ohh, wait… I know what you’re thinking now, “Greg, it’s not money, but the LOVE OF MONEY that is the root of all evil.”

Well, ok. Let’s go there…

To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to WORK for it.

They know they are able to deserve it.

Here’s a quick key insight into men’s characters you can always rely on: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.

That statement is the sure sign of an approaching thief. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

Money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of government goons that hide under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will quickly relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

Then you’ll see the rise of the men of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their stolen money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the CRIMINALS, and the laws are written to protect you against them.

But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and thieves-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims (think of ALL the government agencies, lawyers, men in black suits, men in SWAT gear – think about what happens when you don’t pay your taxes – think about all the fees, fines and regulations – it’s all the same)  – then money becomes its creators’ avenger.

Such thieves believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the best at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Do you want to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Because money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion…

…when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing…

…when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors…

…when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you…

…when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice…

…THEN you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality.

It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to “produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’

When you have made evil the means of survival (as what is happening now here in the United States), do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, “Who is destroying the world?” It’s simple. You are – if you believe money is the root of all evil.

RIGHT NOW you stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization EVER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor.

That phrase about the evil of money, which people utter with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – The United States of America – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American entrepreneur.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact we were the people who created the phrase “to make money.” No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of other continents. Now the thieves’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the entrepreneurs, as dishonorable, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own ass – and I think he will.

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all GOOD, you’re begging for your own destruction. When money stops being the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.

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They are responsible for a huge chunk of our economy. Many are run by good, courageous heroes who are on their way to bigger and better things in life. However, many are run by fools, and will stay small and insignificant for the rest of their pathetic days.

Small mind = small business, unless you are limiting your growth by lifestyle choice or pure laziness.

In any event, you will inevitably have to deal with many of these people on YOUR way to bigger people and better opportunity. Some will help you get to your goals faster. But the idiot small businessman is an automatic dead end. Unless you know how to handle him, he will rise up from his little swamp, wrap his slimy arms around you and drag you back down to the depths from which he came.

You’ll choke, suffocate, and drown in his puddle of half-baked business ideas, wildly inaccurate visions of reality, unrealistic profit projections, and total lack of proper funding.

This is preventable and avoidable. I’ve dealt with so many of these guys in the past 10 years I’ve now created a set of rules that weeds them out permanently – fast and forever.

Here then is my own personal set of rules I consider before I get involved with ANY new business deal or venture:

Rule #1. NEVER deal with anyone who is broke. Period.

If they have no money, run. Simple as that. People who are serious about their business ventures and passions will find a way to get the necessary funding and be prudent about its use. If they have no money and haven’t risked anything trying to get some, then you should write them off as dreamers who need to get their head screwed on straight.

What’s more is people with no money tend to have scarcity mindsets that cause them to make BAD decisions much more frequently than someone who knows he’ll have enough to eat and have a house for the next 3 months. The person who is comfortable financially will make more calm, rational decisions, especially when under pressure.

Bad small business people also typically create projects in which the cash flow is either undefined or so far into the future as to be unknowable. Only get involved in projects that can SCALE. That means they’ll make a small amount of money almost immediately and then be able to grow revenue from there by expanding the efforts. Special Note: I don’t mean profitable almost immediately, I just mean somebody needs to be paying for something the project produces within a short period of time. There needs to be revenue. Real money needs to exchange hands. This keeps people realistic and gives you something to work with.

As Gary Halbert always said, “You can’t multiply zeroes.”

Rule #2. Ask for 3 people who have done business with them before, who would do so again.

If the person you are considering working with can’t produce the names and phone numbers of 3 people who have done business with them before, who would do so again, that should set off more Red Alerts in your mind than a nuclear attack. Something is definitely wrong here.

And if they don’t have 3 people who would deal with them again… guess what? YOU’RE NOT GOING TO BE THE FIRST. Life is too short to experiment with your own livelihood in this way. People typically do what they’ve always done and if this guy is a screwup or a cheat, he’s going to treat you the same way.

This one simple rule will eliminate most of the bullshit in your business life. (Now if I could just get women to produce 3 letters of recommendation from 3 guys who would date them again, we’d be rockin’ HA!)

Rule #3. NEVER take ownership “sweat equity” as your only compensation

Early in my career, I broke this rule often and it was ALWAYS to my peril. One sure sign of a joker businessman with a bullshit project is how willing he is to throw around “ownership” but how UNwilling he is to part with any actual green, spendable dollars.

You need to arrange the deal to where you get paid SOMETHING, even if the project is a complete failure… which it probably will be. YOU MUST ALWAYS COME OUT AHEAD, WIN OR LOSE. Stack the deck in your favor from Day-1. You should not have to suffer for his own bad judgement and lack of foresight.

That’s not to say you should never take ownership equity. In the off chance the project actually succeeds, you don’t want to be kicking yourself for not taking a piece of the action. So yes, get as much as you can, but never take ownership as your ONLY form of compensation.

Which reminds me…

Rule #4. Get paid SOMETHING up front

I can’t be any more clear than that. Make sure you get paid real, spendable money up front. The more you get him to pay, the more he will personally invest in you and the project and therefore the more successful the project is likely to be.

This goes hand-in-hand with the “never deal with anyone who is broke” rule. When people pay for something, they value it more than if they got it for free. I run into this all the time in the information business. There is a lot of information and resources out there that are free… but hardly anyone uses them because “since they’re free, they’re can’t be as good as this other more expensive option” – even if people don’t think that consciously, it’s going on somewhere in their minds.

Likewise, people will respect and value you and your time more when they pay you more money. They have more invested and they’re more serious about making the relationship work.

Rule #5. Ideally, arrange for small monthy payments

Sometimes you’ll find it lucrative to get involved with a businessman who is competant, knowledgeable, and has money, but just not a LOT of money. Instead of asking for some larger sum up front (and lose him because he cannot pay), in this case what you should do is arrange for smaller monthly payments to be made to you – preferably by his credit card.

If he balks at this, get suspicious. Explain to him that even though this monthly amount is much less than your normal rate, the retainer keeps you on staff and available for action and advice. And during the months that he does not “use” you, the recurring payment makes up for any money you would normally get, but spread out over time to MAKE IT EASIER ON HIM.

Keywords there. You’re doing this because it “makes it easier on him” because you “want to work with him” but still “need to get compensated for input in the meantime until the project launches.” Of course in reality this is to benefit you too because he will most likely forget about the monthly payments ticking away on his credit card, gracefully blended in along with his strip club visits and a ton of other monthly payments he racked up and forgot about. And another reason you want it on his credit card instead of payment by check is because he never actually SEES the money leaving his hands each month so therefore it is LESS REAL to him. It’s also automatic which means he has to confront you to NOT pay you, which if he’s a chickenshit, will most likely not do.

Rule #6. NEVER take advice from someone who makes less than you do at the same goals you’re trying to accomplish

There are many non-expert experts out there who love to hand out bad advice.

There are people who will tell you how to make money on the internet and when you go look at their website, its a piece of turd that gets no traffic at all when you examine the traffic statistics. (Even worse, they expect you to not notice this or too dumb to notice it themselves, which is even more damning to their credibility.)

There are graphic designers out there who say they know how to create the best product packaging, the best websites, whatever – and many of them haven’t sold a damn thing in their lives.

And finally, among the worst in my opinion are investment advisors and financial planners who AREN’T RICH (they SHOULD be if their advice was any good), real estate agents who are timid terrible negotiators, and bankers who don’t even understand their own business.

A good example: Very often whenever I go in to my bank, the teller sees that I have extra money and tries to get me in to see one of their investment advisors. I usually say “no thanks”, do my business and leave. One time I said “sure lets see what they can do.”

First question I asked was “Are you or your family rich? Or at the very least, do you have what you would consider to be ‘a lot of money’ at your personal disposal?” Of course the answer was various excuses and flavors of “no.” Then why would I want to invest my money with someone who himself isn’t where I want to be in life? The purpose of investing is to make the highest return in the least amount of time while keeping the principal safe. If they can’t do that for themselves, they sure as hell ain’t gonna do it for me. I left his office by adding, “The main reason I have the extra money in the first place is because I stay the hell away from ‘investments’ like the kind you promote.”

Then I said “poppycock”, looked at the time on my pocketwatch, adjusted the monocle in my eye, and marched off gripping my lapels. (Not really.)

Rule #7. Chuck ‘em like an empty soda can as soon as it’s clear they’ve lost all commercial value

Sometimes good, well-intentioned projects go south. Fast.

It can be anyones fault, but the result is always the same; the project, idea, relationship has taken an irreparable turn for the worse and therefore has lost all commercial value to you.

That’s why you need to keep one hand on the ripcord to your Golden Parachute at all times. Winners are winners because they cut their losses short and let their profits run. Losers do the opposite. Don’t stick around and beat a dead horse; have that backup plan ready, pull your ripcord and FLY AWAY. Fly away to somewhere, anywhere else.

At the heart of it, this is a relationship with a commercial purpose. That purpose was to enrich you and anyone else involved on the project. But now it is headed for an inevitable crash. And commercial relationships need to be treated coldly and calculating so that no one loses sight of what reality actually is. Cut it off at the knees.

“But,” you might ask, “how would I know if it is just a temporary problem or that some inevitably fatal error or flaw has been made or discovered?”

That is where confidence in your own business knowledge, competancy, and ability to reason come into play. You have to sharpen these skills every day or they’ll start to get dull. You’ll never know when you’ll need them.

So read the works a lot of (real) experts who have already been where you want to go, study the past history of your busness and industry, and keep a pulse on what’s happening now and into the future. Be amazing. Because only the strong survive. And only the strong should.

As an extra piece of advice and probably THE most important rule of success I can give to you: Never… ever… EVER… allow yourself to be put into a position of need. That is my personal #1 rule. Because when you need something (be it money, a home, or even a boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband) then you will always be at the mercy of someone else. You’ll be under their power. Your personal power will be limited. Some part of you will be controlled.

The man who does not “need” the business deal to happen, holds all the cards.

The man who does not “need” the bank loan, is free to buy whatever home he chooses however fast he chooses. (And if he chooses a loan anyway, he can get one at the best terms with least hassle.)

The man who does not “need” a woman to feel like a whole human being, can attract the higher value women in the area and choose from them those which he enjoys most.

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1. Blatant Indicators of Positive Reputation Beat Subtle Luxury

Consider a face-off between the Toyota Prius and… a stylish Lexus.

Even Lucifer Himself couldn’t make me drive a dorky Prius.

But a recent split-test between these 2 cars revealed that when shopping in public, people are willing to spend more on a product they don’t really want as long as it makes them look like positive contributors to the greater good of society.

When the whole world’s looking (and can see the “green” eco-conscious logo) people buy the doe-eyed Prius. Then as you lock ‘em up in a room with no one to judge, they turn into me… a shameless consumer of pretentious luxury. The heated steering wheel. The baby seal skin leather seats. Plumes of toxic exhaust from a rumbling engine. Sickeningly delicious cheeseburgers in non-biodegradable containers.

Oh yes. We consumers are a dastardly lot.

And for the same reason, this is why clothes and other products with big, blatant logos sell better than those with more concealed identities:

Louis Vuitton’s classic “LV” on their bags. Abercrombie & Fitch’s garish tags. Polo Ralph Lauren’s pony. Apple’s glowing chrome apple.

People seek out the brands that best display their own particular set of personality traits. Regardless of what “flavor of the month” personality analysis books you may have read (not your fault, publishers barf up more of them than any sane person can handle), all human traits can be summed up as a measure of these 6 characteristics:

• General Intelligence - generally, how smart you are

• Openness - how receptive you are to new people and ideas

• Conscientiousness - your self-control, willpower, reliability, consistency, dependability

• Agreeableness - your level of warmth, kindness, sympathy, empathy, trust, compliance, modesty

• Stability – your ability to maintain control of emotions, deal with stress, ability to adapt

• Extraversion - how talkative, funny, expressive, assertive, socially confident you are

This model has been consistently proven to work over the past 40-some years. Like a delicate radio, all of us are tuned to different settings of the six. Different combinations make the difference between the neighborhood axe murderer and your Aunt Betsy. In all, there are 729 different personality types – which is one of the many reasons you won’t find a ton of experts on this topic.

I’ll write more on this advanced market segmentation in upcoming posts, but for now just understand the prime motivators for most purchases are rooted in a desire to express indicators of specific settings of the “Central Six” characteristics. That’s why there’s a market for so many different brands… we’ve got hundreds of personalities to display.

2. People Will Love & Respect You More If You’re Magical

Traditionally we as marketers are taught to “find out what a market wants and deliver it to them profitably”… but Apple Inc is one good example of a company who behaves differently.

Until Steve Jobs releases the new JesusPhone or whatever, no one has a clue what he’s up to. Mere mortals can only guess. And that’s precisely the allure of his mystique.

Nerds over at UCLA did a test where subjects read 2 equally positive performance reports. Employee A was praised for particular skills like “aptitude with numbers” while employee B just kinda “has a way of making things happen.” In another one, a CEO was praised for “long hours and loyalty” and the other for “insight and vision.”

In both tests, people preferred to work with the guy who’d achieved success via mysterious powers. Not only that, but people also wanted to hug him more and get “lucky” gifts from him.

What this means to you and me is it’s a good thing to not let lesser mortals peek behind your curtain. No one needs to know the wizard isn’t wearing any pants as long as you get the job done and perform with excellence.

Back in high school is when I first discovered the benefits of shrouded secrecy. My ninja skills with computers went purposely unexplained. Once I was called out of an important exam to rescue the principal from digital doom. When asked about the exam, my biology teacher shooed me away saying “Oh nevermind that Greg, you’ll get an A anyway.” Back then I had free reign of the halls and senior year no one even batted an eye if didn’t show up until afternoon.

These days, similar things happen to me because of Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. It’s amazing what people will do for you if you can work some voodoo on their campaigns that cuts their cost per sale to 25-50% of what it was.

There’s a question traded among marketers with a wink of the eye that goes, “So how many years did it take for you to become an overnight success?”

I love that because it’s so true. You hammer away at a skill for years, seemingly without benefit, and then… one day… the planets align and BOOM you’re a hit.

Another way to say it is “Success is when preparation meets opportunity.” That’s the key thing that makes you look magical to others.

3. Fast Food & Big Tobacco’s Dirty Little Marketing Secret

It’s fairly common knowledge that the larger the plate, the bigger the bowl, or the bulkier the package… people will consume more.

But what you may not know is the mere presence of healthy options on a menu (or the warning sign on a pack of cigarettes) can make people snarf down more junk than ever.

They call it “menu mentality” – the pleasant industry discovery that adding healthier food options to a menu keeps the bureaucrats and medical-types at bay, while satisfying the customer’s guilty conscience, thus… giving them the mental green light to order whatever the hell they want.

One of the most important things in the universe to understand about people is just because they CAN do something doesn’t mean they WILL.

Add salads and grilled chicken to the menu and… like magic… you get more orders for burgers and fries. Label a bag as “low fat”, “low carb”, or “low-cal” and you get more sales. And this is important: You get more sales not because more people buy your stuff, BUT BECAUSE THE SAME PEOPLE BUY MORE OF IT MORE OFTEN!

This, once again, is my favorite subject at work: segmentation. People will do what they will do. Always and without exception.

Take a moment to re-read that again. People will do what they will do. Always and without exception. The implications of that are more profound than you can possibly imagine at first glance.

If we want to influence people positively, we must be draconian and remove all undesirable options from the table. Instead of a choice between “healthy” and “unhealthy” we change the game to “healthy” and… “healthy.”

This is also why school lunch programs will continue to breed fatties until pizza, chips, and soda are gone completely. But that won’t happen. Why? Because people will do what they will do.

Several schools I read about who tried this had parents (and kids) in a literal riot. Picket signs, yelling, screaming, fighting. Desperate parents snuck twinkies to kids through the chain-link metal fence at recess in an act of defiance.

No exaggeration.

You might dismiss this example as ridiculous, but wait:

Parents did this because they’re part of a segment – a segment of society that will find a way to eat crap no matter what you do to stop them.

You can’t change that with mere rules. They will find a way around the rules. You can’t offer alternative options. They will ignore those options. They will have their cream filling and jiggly tummy. And to hell with you and your hard body and steamed vegetables.

I used this food example because it’s something most of us can read with a smile. But the same goes for any segment of a population. There’s a segment of people who drink alcohol (prohibition didn’t work). A segment who smoke (warning labels and PSA’s don’t work). A segment who like marijuana (even though it’s illegal in most countries, anyone who wants it can still get some within a very short period of time).

People will do what they will do. More on that powerful concept another time.

4. Product Placements Only Work When The Plot Depends On The Product

Three things were huge in 1982: video games, the movie ET, and Reese’s Pieces candy.

The latter 2 were no accident. When Steven Spielberg approached the Mars Company (M&M’s) to have their product featured in the film, they turned him away. That’s when Hershey stepped in and offered Reese’s Pieces. Sales of the candy tripled within 7 days of ET’s debut and over 800 theaters all across the country started stocking Reese’s Pieces for the first time.

Or take Tom Cruise. In the early 80′s, sales of Ray-Ban sunglasses were flat and the company struggled to make ends meet. After Risky Business, sales rose 50% and another 40% when Top Gun came out. Sales of aviator jackets surged and Navy recruitment soared 500%!

Product placement is powerful, but like most things, people tend to screw it up when they don’t know what they’re doing.

A more recent example is the James Bond movie, Die Another Day. As far as James Bond movies go, this one is considered by many aficionados (me included) to be the worst of the lot. Part of it was because of the shallow reliance on technology and part of it was because they featured 23 brands inside 123 minutes. Some critics called it “Buy Another Day.”

Casino Royale did infinitely better, but many brands went unnoticed. Why?

Well, as any Bond fan knows, the British MI6 agent is mainly known by these products:

• Walther PPK gun

• Omega watch (formerly Rolex in the old originals)

• Smirnoff Vodka Martini

• Bentley, Aston Martin, and BMW cars

• Clothes designed by Tom Ford (more recently)

• Casino games, especially baccarat

The only reason these became synonymous with Bond is because of their integration into fascinating story plots over the course of many years. When James briefly drives a Ford car rental to get to a hotel or sends a package FedEx, no one gives a shit.

But we remember how tough it was for Bond to give up his Beretta for the new (and better) PPK. We remember the times it saved his life. We remember the vodka martini he orders from Dr. No as it slowly dawns in him the drink might be his last. And we remember the little saw blade and laser Q Branch outfitted in his watch to cut rope or melt metal.

These are meaningful product placements. Mindless cameos will be forgotten.

If you enjoyed our little romp through Marketing Land today, you won’t want to miss upcoming posts on my site… there’s lots more crowd manipulation magic where this came from.

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Investors predicted it would crush golf carts, wipe out global warming, and render cars obsolete in big cities. It was hyped through the roof as some kind of “mystery transportation device” that would “revolutionize how we travel.”

They invested in factories to crank out 480,000 Segways per year to make way for what would surely be an explosive phenomenon.

Personally I too was excited at the time, thinking someone had at long last invented the hover board from one of my favorite movies, Back To The Future 2.

Imagine my complete disappointment when, in 2001, the Segway was released… to the thrill of no one. Consumers took one look at it and yawned. It was nothing more than a $3,000 glorified scooter… and one that made you look like a total dork at that.

Eight years later now in 2009, sales just passed 50,000… TOTAL. It’s target customers are fat mall cops.

(Since then, Dean has moved on, working to invent a water purifier that runs on bull shit… literally.)

I mention this catastrophic failure because it demonstrates in gory detail THE biggest money secret of all time.

…A secret so valuable that once you truly figure it out and put it to work, you will be envied… you will be hated… and men and women from all walks of life may even seek to murder you for it.

What is it? Simple:

Sell something people desperately WANT!

Not “need”… not “might want”… and definitely not “should want”…

…What’s that? Are you over there rolling your eyes at me, thinking “C’mon Greg, that’s obvious! Of course people have to want what you’re selling!”

Well, if that “secret” sounds obvious to you, then that means you’ve never tried to actually USE it to make any serious money.

Because every single success story I’ve ever read (including my own successes I’ve had with certain products) relied more on stumbling into the right combination of market, message, and product than it did on crafting some magical guaranteed potion of desire they thought would sell (or even more dangerous is something you want to sell simply because you love it.)

I’ll say that one word again, because it’s so important: STUMBLING.

Here’s the unvarnished truth you won’t hear from anyone who hasn’t actually fought tooth and nail with their own money in a marketplace trying to sell some widget:

EVERYBODY STUMBLES INTO THEIR SUCCESS.

Yup, it’s true. Everybody. It’s not planned. That’s exactly why:

• Drug companies spend billions on marketing trying to figure out which drugs will be a hit with buyers… BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW. With all the R&D that goes on and with all the years of experience they have in that industry, they still do almost as much guessing as I did back when I was still living with my parents trying to figure out how to make a buck.

• Google, with all it’s BILLIONS of READY CASH locked up in some vault somewhere, still can’t figure out how to make more money with something other than little classified ads. It’s true: literally 95% of their money comes from Adwords, which are nothing more than 120 character classified ads that get displayed when someone uses their search engine. Google has a ton of other projects going on including mapping the globe photographically, scanning in every book in existence, and reinventing Microsoft Office… plus their employees are encouraged to spend 20% of their working time on their own “pet projects” in hopes one of them will become the Next Big Thing. Why? BECAUSE GOOGLE DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE WHAT’S GOING TO MAKE MONEY!

• Untold thousands of marketers online and millions more of the Great Unwashed Masses herd and stumble around every day constantly in search of a gold mine they can leech onto and suck dry before someone else comes along to do the same. They buy $2,000 marketing courses, kits, and software and go to $10,000 seminars in hopes that ONE will contain the magic bean they can plant to grow their own money tree. It’s kinda funny because these products are almost always marketed at business owners who want to make more money from their existing business… yet who do you ACTUALLY see at the meetings and message boards? Desperate nomads in search of a drink of pure water amid the desert of dry bleakness that is their lives. The main person getting rich here is the seller of the course, software, or seminar – for he realizes that selling “make money” products is always a reliable gold mine to tap when you’re out of original ideas… but if he’s really honest with himself, even he stumbled into his success in one way or another.

• Joe Sugarman (whom I’ve met in person – wonderful guy with a wife who could melt butter from across a room), made good money with his electronics catalog company JS&A (in the 70′s, pre-Sharper Image) but didn’t actually become a billionaire until he was forced out of business and tried a new idea of selling sunglasses that block the blue spectrum of light, making it MUCH easier to see in bright sunlight… thus, BluBlockers were born and Joe made a killing on infomercials and later in stores. Oh and get this: Joe didn’t even invent BluBlockers – he stumbled into them by hearing about the concept from some other guy!

• Michael Dell started selling computers out of his college DORM ROOM. It was just something he was doing anyway that happened to blow up and get huge. Nowadays he’s a billionaire because of the #2 X factor below. He had the skills to succeed but still stumbled into his initial opportunity.

You can have the most awesome marketing system in the world, but you won’t sell a damn thing unless you’re offering people something they WANT. Marketing is your jet engine, but a product people want is your fuel.

Not only that, but not all markets are created equal. Your choice to sell one type of product or another will either make you rich or severely limit your income… even if you dominate the industry! For example, there’s a pre-set limit to your income if you decide to manufacture paper towels. Also, the maturity of the industry will determine how much you can make. Sure, diamonds are hugely profitable, but just go and try to compete with the De Beers family. Ha!

As for me, I stumbled into every major success I’ve ever had. Ever! The only difference between me and someone who’s broke are these 2 things:

1. I’ve stepped up to the plate to bat (and struck out) more times than any “normal” human being has the stomach for. Most… no, ALL the people I know would’ve just given up after a couple things didn’t work. Back when I sold insurance door to door, my boss told me that he’s seldom seen someone so impervious to failure as me. I could make 120 sales calls per day to complete strangers and had 4% of them on average let me come over to their house to talk insurance. Unheard of for a newbie. Still, I hated that gig and left after awhile because I didn’t really believe in the product and figured out it was a lot easier to make money with advertising than in-person phone calls and visits.

2. Once I have a hit ad/product combination, I have studied enough marketing and business to fully exploit the success for maximum return on investment. This one is really the “X factor” because even if someone has enough determination to keep punching at the jagged steel of opportunity with a bloody fist until it pays out, it still takes an unreal amount of knowledge and experience to extract maximum money from it before someone else comes along and screws up the whole thing (and they will – it’s not a question of IF but WHEN.)

I said earlier that success is never planned. That isn’t completely true. You can plan to have success with SOMETHING… but you can never plan to have success with a PARTICULAR thing.

Just ask Dean Kamen with the whole Segway disaster. His company of 200 employees owns over 500 patents in the U.S. and worldwide. Five hundred! So from his point of view, who cares if Segway didn’t work out? Even if his success rate is less than half of one percent, he can still get rich and afford to provide incomes to 200 families.

Thomas Edison was the same way. He cranked out thousands of inventions, yet most of us only remember his life for ONE thing: the lightbulb.

Think about that for a minute… your WHOLE LIFE spent sweating, testing, and trying… and in the end you’re remembered for one, maybe two successes if you’re lucky. The rest of your life is only of interest to specialists and nerds… or nerdy specialists.

This is how it works for EVERYBODY throughout all history. No one is immune. Not billionaires… not George Washington… not even fucking Einstein. (Washington lost far more battles than he won, and the only reason we even know about Einstein today is because a prominent physicist at the time just happened to see one of Einstein’s research papers and invited him up to his place out of curiosity to see what this whole “relativity thing” was. Einstein worked hard on his theories, but he stumbled into his fame and success.)

I would be the last person to dump on The Secret, but no matter what New Age Attraction Hippies say, getting rich and building a legacy ain’t easy. And that is the real reason why people will envy you, hate you, and maybe even want to kill you when you discover a gold mine that pays real dividends.

It’s HARD to keep going in the face of failure… and most people are lazy. Tap an oil well gusher and you better have a backhoe ready to dig it out and suck it dry because it won’t be long before the buzzards begin circling your exposed body.

That’s why Napoleon Hill said the major thing you need for success is a “definite major purpose” – because without that you will lack the drive needed to get back up and keep coming at ‘em, bloodied and beaten.

You almost have to want it more than living life itself. “It” means different things to all of us. If you don’t feel a kind of raging drive for what you’re after… if success were guaranteed and you wouldn’t drop everything to run off for it tomorrow with reckless abandon… it’s a sure sign you’re chasing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

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I’m not sure who originally wrote it or where I even got it – but whoever it was really knew what they were talking about.

So here it is for you in full glory, 50 Things Your Customers Want You To Know – plus some of my own comments scattered around here and there.

Try to look and see what areas you’re failing at with your own customers. Chances are, if you just tweaked what you’re doing a little differently, you’d reduce refunds, sleep more comfortably at night and make a whole hell of a lot more money.

#1. I don’t need you to be perfect, but I do need to know I can rely on you.

Greg’s Aside: In fact, my experience has been that you get BETTER responses from customers when you openly admit flaws and confess shortcomings. The more “real” you become to them, the more tolerant they’ll be and the more likely they’ll buy again from you in the future. An important part of marketing is managing expectations. If your service is shit but your product delivers as promised, you won’t get any complaints if everybody understands the deal up front.

#2. Telling me what you don’t know makes me trust you.

Aside: People get suspicious of the man who has all the answers. They’ll think you’re hiding something and unless you’re God Himself, they’re probably right. It’s a lot better to explain what you’re NOT the best at, and then turn it around with a statement like “…but as long as that doesn’t apply to you, I can help with X…” Then they’ll be far more likely to go for it.

#3. It means a lot when you take the time to thank me for my business or a referral.

Aside: Don’t be an ass and skimp on this. Make a real phone call. Send a real honest-to-God thank you note, handwritten on physical paper. Do NOT Hallmark this. You’ll be shocked silly when you see the response.

#4. You don’t need to do all that much to be a superhero. Just do exactly what you say you will do.

Aside: If you ask me, it’s the number one rule in life: Always do what you say. If you can’t do it or don’t think you’ll be able to make it happen, don’t say it. Simple as that. Word will spread quicker than wildfire you’re a man of his word, and even your enemies won’t be able to deny it.

#5. A friendly voice on the other side of the phone means more than you can imagine.

Aside: I’ve had customers call me before, literally in tears. I’ve also had customers beaming with happiness and angrier than Satan on cocaine. It’s all in how you handle it. So what would YOU do? Never let anything bother you, no matter what kind of crazy bat-shit babble spews from their mouths. Always remain calm, cool, and never patronize them by saying stupid things like “I understand how you feel.” No you don’t – they’ll see right through it and just get even more pissed. Instead, just an “All right – what would you like to know?” or “Ok, what can I do to help?” is enough to get the ball rolling to your side. Then remember some personal detail about them and recall it later in the conversation. This lets them know you’re REALLY listening. Position yourself as an ally, not “customer service.”

#6. Your employees treat me about as well as you treat them.

#7. I don’t mind spending the money, as long as I feel I’m getting real value.

Aside: Keyword there is “feel” – because the concept of “real value” is different for everybody. People buy your stuff for their own reasons, which are often very different from the reasons YOU think they should buy. In the information products business, sometimes people buy your books, CDs, DVDs, etc. NOT for the info, but just to feel a closer kinship with a guru they admire and respect.

#8. My life is really stressful. If you can reduce that stress, you become immensely valuable to me.

#9. I want to tell you what would make this relationship better for me. Why don’t you ever ask?

Aside: Some people screw this one up by having a “Suggestion Box” (or the digital equivalent) or asking their mailing list open-ended questions like “What can I do to serve you better?” That’s too vague. If you want quality information from people you have to pump it out of them. You do this by being specific. Instead, ask: “You know that thing you ordered from me last week? How did that work out? I hope it got there in time.” or “Were you able to download the package ok? If there were any problems let me know so I can fix it ASAP.”

#10. I don’t understand a lot of the messages you send me. Can you make them clearer?

Aside: There’s one guy I know who literally sends me entire e-mails in the subject line only. Since space is short, so is the message. 9 times out of 10, he comes off as a caveman. I’ve lost all respect for this individual because he can’t communicate worth a damn. Another time someone wanted me to critique a sales letter that began with the headline “Surprise. This should be you. Learn how you can receive 3 big gifts. This letter contains an even bigger prize to benefit you.” – I held this paper in my hands and thought, “What in the hell are these people talking about?” Plus it didn’t help that the entire piece looked like a chain letter. The point is this: If you can’t communicate effectively and don’t want to take the time to learn, then hire somebody who can.

#11. My life is very complicated. If you make it easy for me to just buy a simple all-in-one package I can use without learning anything, I’ll take it and be grateful. I’ll even pay a premium for it.

Aside: Yup, people are lazy. Like it or not, that’s the world we live in. You can complain about it, OR you can use it to your advantage. Throw your best stuff into one huge mega pack and slap a HUGE price tag on it. A certain percentage of your customers will always take it. Always. It’s free money you didn’t have to strain your brain too hard to get and they’ll love you for it.

#12. I want to trust you, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone.

Aside: That’s why it’s SOOO important you internalize a concept I like to call “scary realism.” Basically, do everything you can in your communication to customers that makes you as real of a flesh-and-blood human being as possible. This will turn some people off, but those are the people who wouldn’t have spent much money with you anyway. The people it attracts, however, will spend more and (if you do it right) will become fanatical about doing business only with you, even if some schmuck opens up a shop next door (or next to your search engine placement.) The more “real” you are, the more that trust barrier lowers.

#13. Once you’ve won my trust and loyalty, the truth is you can screw up once in awhile and I will forgive you. That is, IF I don’t think you’re taking me for granted.

#14. When I refer my friends and you give them exceptional service, that makes me look and feel smart. I love that.

Aside: “What other people think” matters hugely to 99% of the population, regardless of the trend in most young people today to say “I don’t care what people think; I’m my own person.” It’s bullshit. They’re not their own person, they’re tied into society just like everyone else. So treat their friends exceptionally well, especially on their first purchase. It’s not just one sale you’re fighting for, but dozens more in the future.

#15. I spend an awful lot of time being scared to death.

Aside: Personally I blame the U.S. media for this. I think everyone would be a lot better off in life if they never, ever, ever, ever, never, never, never, EVER watched any sort of news program ever again. Most of it is negative garbage specifically designed to evoke a base emotional reaction out of an otherwise confused populace of herded sheep. Why? Because emotions sell. Not just stuff, but ideas. And to the news, the idea of fear is their primary product. Anyway, love it or hate it, this is reality in modern-day America. Your customers are frightened little lambs, stumbling around in the dark looking for a socket in which to plug in their dangling umbilical cord. If you don’t get ‘em, somebody else will. So it might as well be you. Lead them. Guide them. Be their deity.

#16. The wealthier I get, the more I like free stuff.

Aside: Dan Kennedy tells the story of spending a day with Lee Iacocca, the famous man who rescued the American auto industry from Japanese control. It was lunchtime and they went out for pizza. Iacocca had in his wallet, 2 wrinkled up coupons he’d been saving for just such an occasion. Coupons. Mega-millionaire. Coupons. Reinvents the auto industry. Coupons! Save $3 on a deep dish pizza. The moral is: You are never too rich for a discount.

#17. A lot of the time, I secretly feel like a lost little kid. I don’t admit it, but I want to be taken care of.

Aside: See#15 above.

#18. I’m lousy at admitting I was wrong, but I respect you when you do it.

Aside: ALWAYS admit your screwups. This goes over with customers big time. Companies who do this on a regular basis make more money and have higher stock prices than those who try to cover things up. Statistics prove it, common sense proves it. So just do it.

#19. I like to get little goodies no one else is getting.

#20. I don’t understand how to use your website, but I can’t admit that because it would make me feel dumb.

Aside: There’s that word again. “Feel.” It’s astounds me that after a decade of computers entering the mainstream, we still have millions of people enter the domain name they want into Google instead of using the address bar. It astounds me that blue underlined links (a relic from 1995) still continue to produce more clicks than any other type of link. And I’m flabbergasted by the fact that even though one of my websites has bolded red underlined text telling them what to do right next to the payment button, there’s still people who call me up wondering how to buy. Even so, this is reality. We have to accept it or get out of business altogether. Read some books on website usability or hire someone who knows what they’re doing. Your website needs to be lame-brain simple.

#21. There’s no worse feeling than feeling I was suckered into trusting you. If I’m screaming at you or one of your employees, that feeling is probably behind it somewhere.

#22. Our relationship isn’t equal and it never will be.

Aside: I’d add that it never should be anyway. You’re the guru, the leader, the almighty one. Not them. They are the apostles at your feet, lapping up your guidance. You’ve got to show you’re a real human being on their side of the table, yes… but it’s still your table.

#23. I get crazy jealous if I think you love another customer more than you love me.

#24. I don’t have any interest in your excuses. In fact, I usually don’t notice them at all, and if I do, they annoy me.

Aside: There’s a difference between admitting flaws in your character and making excuses for poor performance. Character flaws are part of your sales message, while making excuses is a pathetic attempt to explain why you failed to perform.

#25. I find myself endlessly fascinating.

Aside: Which is why your sales message should be primarily about the PROSPECT and not you. When writing a pitch, you dance a fine line between talking about yourself (for credibility and believability purposes) and talking about what you’ll do for the prospect. Anytime you talk about yourself, it has to be in direct relation to the prospect. Shake him to the core and make the benefits so real, he can feel them in his mind.

#26. I hate salespeople but I really like to buy things.

Aside: What people really hate is being pushed into making a decision they didn’t feel was really theirs. They don’t “own” it. Skilled salespeople know this and act accordingly – but I meet dumb ones all the time (especially at places like Furniture Factory Outlet) who hover over you like a vulture, swooping down with lies and shady closing tactics. You can “sell” people but they’ve got to feel like they’ve made up their own mind.

#27. I only like to communicate over the phone/web/mail and I hate when you try to make me communicate with you over the phone/mail/web.

Aside: What this one is really saying is, people buy the way they buy. You can’t treat all communication channels the same. If they bought your product by reading a long-form sales letter, then they’re going to be a different customer than one who bought via talking with you over the phone. Same’s true for physical stores. The mail. Whatever. How a particular person buys is how they buy and you can’t change it. The best thing to do is segment your customer list based on what medium they purchased through and then only market to them again via that particular method. Phone buyers get called. Mail buyers get mailed. Web buyers get sent to a sales page on your website.

#28. I want to buy your product, but I need you to help me justify it to myself.

Aside: People have all sorts of strange little guilt complexes that hold them back from getting what they really want. Maybe a woman sees a new pair of shoes at Macy’s, but stops short of buying because she’s low on cash this month. Then she gets a coupon in the mail for $20 off any pair of shoes. Suddenly she can now justify the purchase, even though she’s only saving $20 on a $150 pair of shoes. She still hurts for cash, but now it “makes sense.” The fact is, she wanted the shoes and if you didn’t get the sale, then someone else would have. People will do what they want based on whoever makes it easiest for them to justify doing it.

#29. There’s something in my life I’m afraid of losing. If you can make me feel like you’ve protected it for me, my gratitude will be intense and eternal.

#30. I’ll give you anything you ask if you can help me not feel silly.

Aside: Feel, feel, feel. See the trend here?

#31. I want you to do the hard work for me. Even better if I can get all the credit.

Aside: John Carlton has a great quote about writing. He says “People don’t want to learn how to write better. What they really want is to have already written something, and bask in the glow of that.” It’s the same old story; people want all the glory with none of the blood. You can scoff at that from your Ivory Tower or you can cash in off it and go live on the beach somewhere while they stew in the juices from their fake little world. Your choice.

#32. I’d rather do it the convoluted hard way than learn something new.

#33. I’d love to know something about your product that I could use to brag at a dinner party.

Aside: One of my Rolexes is the same model worn by Sean Connery in the first James Bond movie, Dr. No. How do I know that? An even more important question is: Why do I know that?

#34. I have the attention span of a goldfish. Go too long without contacting me and I’ll simply forget you exist.

#35. Money is no object when it comes to my obsessions.

Aside: Everybody has something they spend money on irrationally. For me it’s designer clothes, leather-bound books, foreign women, and marketing information. For my friend Jason it’s DVD sets and books on physics and math. My mom buys dozens of huge thick health books she’ll never read in a million years. Everybody’s got something, and to them, the money is no object.

#36. What you think you’re good at is not what you’re good at. Ask me, and I’ll tell you what you do better than anyone else.

#37. I like it when I feel like you’re talking just to me.

#38. It infuriates me when you answer the phone while I’m talking with you face-to-face.

Aside: NEVER do this. Have respect for the people who exist around you physically. After all, there is SOME reason why you’re in the same room with them at this moment, isn’t there? Personally, I don’t even own a cell phone. Got rid of it long ago. Believe it or not, the world used to get along just fine without them 15 years ago. Calm down and take a deep breath. Whatever they’re calling you about, it can wait.

#39. Embarrassment scares me more than death.

Aside: It’s no exaggeration. Don’t underestimate the power contained in these few words. Just because we’re not in grade school anymore doesn’t mean those primal fears somehow disappeared.

#40. I’m lazier than I would ever admit.

Aside: Well, I’m admitting it right here and now. I have a lazy streak just like everyone else. The trick is to find ways to motivate yourself and others to action. For some people this is as simple as a deadline. For other’s you need to paint a mural of pain inside their mind so vivid and real it makes them get off their jiggly butt and DO something about it. When faced with a realistic enough train, most people will get off the tracks.

#41. I’m more selfish than I would ever admit.

#42. I’m more vain than I would ever admit.

Aside: People want what they want, and they also want to look good while getting it. It helps to show them how getting your thing-a-majig will make them look good to the crowd.

#43. I’m more insecure than I would ever admit.

Aside: I’ve met beautiful women who thought they were ugly because of something VERY minor.  I’ve seen black women the size of a tugboat who thought they were God’s gift to men. People are amazing.

#44. Despite all that, I secretly think I’m a better person than most people. Help me believe that and we’ll be fast friends.

Aside: One of the things people fear most is looking bad in the eyes of others. Some people will stop at nothing to make sure they’re perceived as “a good person.” I personally believe this is how many college age women fall into the predictable pattern of liberal ideals. It’s not because they’ve studied all the viewpoints and settled on what they believe best. Nooo. They’ve picked the one that makes them look good. Because on the surface of it all, “redistribution of wealth” and “tax the evil rich” sound like the humanitarian thing to do, somewhat akin to adopting a puppy from the pound, except without all the “work” of actually doing anything.

#45. I believe I deserve much more than I’m getting.

#46. I want to tell you everything you need to know in order to sell to me, but I’m lazy. Make it easy enough and I will. (Especially if you flatter me a little.)

#47. I don’t know what I want most of the time. You need to figure it out for me.

Aside: When I’m describing payment methods to a customer over the phone, I can actually FEEL their mind slipping away. BUT… if I just tell them the ONE payment method I think they should use, they’re eager to pay up.

#48. I mostly daydream about making life better for myself, but I’ll take action to keep from losing what’s mine.

Aside: If you learn nothing from all this, heed these words: Fear of loss is millions of times more powerful than promise of gain. Repeat it in your sleep. Over and over.

#49. I believe that most of what’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault. Let me keep that cozy illusion and I’ll believe anything you say.

Aside: And it’s just that, an illusion. Dan Kennedy has an old quote that goes something like, “Take a look at where you are right now in life. Because where ever you are right now, that’s EXACTLY where you want to be.” At first I didn’t believe this. I thought it was illogical and impossible. “Of course I’m not where I wanna be, why do you think I have goals?” But actually, what Dan said rang true when I realized the only difference between me and someone living what I supposedly “wanted” was… they were actually DOING something about it, and I was not. I was sitting around playing computer games and drinking wine instead of researching and developing my next new product that would bring in some dough. I didn’t want to admit this, but it was true.

#50. It really is all about me.

Yup, and there you have it. Really shines a new light on the human condition, huh? This is reality and this is the primary reason why the world moves forward at a snail’s pace. It’s up to us business men and women to grab the reins and drive society into the future. We are the movers of money, the creators of value, and drivers of destiny.

Without us, the world has no hope.

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I run across books like this all the time. Most of them are too wordy or take too long to cut to the heart of the matter.

Authors (especially mainstream authors who depend on large volume sales via Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, airports, etc.) usually fluff up their content by a couple hundred pages for 2 reasons:

1. To make themselves look smarter, more authoritative.

and…

2. Because most people (a.k.a. the mindless mainstream) don’t like to pay $30, $17, or even $12 for a 15 page book.

Hand the mainstream buyer a few power-packed pages loaded down with money-making meat they can fire up immediately and most will balk at the price. Nevermind whether those 15 pages are worth 200 times what you’re asking or not. They’d ship it back and pound their fists for a refund at once. Truth be damned.

Why?

Because in the hands of a loser, the Keys to the Kingdom are
just another set of keys collecting dust on a rusty ring.

One book I read recently did an unusually good job at keeping things pithy. It was a book on persuasion and any one of it’s lessons could net you some serious dough, and possibly even change your life forever.

(Aside: Hmm… there’s that oft-worn phrase “change your life” – we hear it so much these days it’s nearly lost all meaning. And when we do associate it, it’s usually with a positive thing like making more money or finding a lover. But what if I came over to your house right now where you’re sitting at your computer and chopped off your left foot? Would that “change your life” forever? Exactly. And what about the words that motivated me to do such a thing? Don’t underestimate the power of the persuasive word or the small change. People are irrational, yes. But predictably so.)

So here are…

46 Pithy Persuasion Tricks
(use them ethically, and… at your own risk!)

#1. Hint at social proof

When most marketers think of “social proof”, testimonials come to mind. But testimonials aren’t the whole picture. Smart copywriters hint at social proof in clever ways that slip by the customer’s skeptical mental radar.

In the past, infomericals used to famously say “Call now! Operators are standing by.” But what kind of image does that conjure up in your mind? To me, it’s a bunch of women in a big room with their hair up in a bun, twiddling their thumbs and filing their nails, waiting, just WAITING for that first phone to ring.

Hmm, not too many people must want the product, eh?

That’s why smart infomercials changed the line to: “If operators are busy, please call again.”

One small change. Lots more orders.

Or take McDonalds. When I was little, the sign used to say “XXX Billion Served” and you could clearly see the numbers on the sign weren’t printed on, they were replaceable squares, which indicated they were updated recently and were going to be updated again. Nowadays, the numbers are gone and the sign just says “Billions And Billions Served” – I guess because the number got so high they couldn’t fit it on there anymore.

Social proof in action.

The general thinking in the customer’s mind is “Well, if it’s good enough for all of them, there must be a reason. It should be good enough for me too.”

This is especially true in the case of testimonials, which ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS need to be delivered from the point of view of the customer AS SIMILAR AS POSSIBLE to the target prospect. That includes language, dress, gender, occupation, and physical appearance. I like to go one step further and include and audio or video of the testimonial just so everyone knows the guy/girl is REAL and that I didn’t just make the whole thing up.

And that’s another thing; the best testimonials are nearly impossible to make up because the real customers tend to say things you either can’t say, won’t say, or would never dream of saying in a million years. Little personal details that are so weird and specific, there’s no way a “professional business” would ever make them up.

Some people make the mistake of having their “best looking” or “most professional sounding” testimonial do most of the heavy lifting in a campaign. No. Wrong guidelines. The RIGHT guideline is to match up the testimonial with who you’re presenting to at that particular time. And if that’s a fat, bald, loser – then make sure your testimonial shows a picture of a fat bald loser who is now experiencing the benefits of what you did for him.

#2. Don’t try to get people to change behavior by emphasizing how many people DON’T do the desired action; instead, focus on the people who DO.

For example, you want to stop people from littering so in your anti-litter ads you make a big deal out of how many people litter or how many tons of litter are collected every day/week/month/year, thus burdening the world.

Ah, so you wanna guilt them into behaving themselves, right? Well, your approach is dead wrong.

The approach is a mistake because it gives people the subtle indication that “everybody litters” therefore “littering must be ok” because its socially acceptable.

To change their behavior, the ads should focus on how many people DON’T litter (which is the desired action in this case) and COMPLETELY IGNORE statistics to the contrary. Don’t add social proof fuel to the enemy’s fire.

Think of it this way: if I published a newsletter online, would it make any sense to say “70% of everyone who sees this website does NOT subscribe to my newsletter. This causes me a lot of pain and anguish. I spend sleepless nights questioning my manhood because of you. Please subscribe.” ???

Yet that’s very similar to what you’re doing with the litter ad.

The solution: I should instead focus on that 30% who DO subscribe to my newsletter. Quote it in the form of a number of subscribers per day or week and let the lookie-loos know about it.

And to pile on even more pressure, demonstrate social DISAPPROVAL for the actions you don’t want them to take and/or straight-up tell them the penalty for it being illegal (if that fact applies, of course – littering is illegal, however my efforts in lobbying Congress to socially mandate my newsletter remain unsuccessful)

Another example, take smoking. Almost the entire 20th century branded smoking as the “cool” thing to do. Not only was it socially acceptable, but it was the stuff of legends. Who didn’t want to be like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall? They lit one up every few minutes onscreen.

But toward the end of the 20th century, anti-smoking people started taking a different approach. Slowly, it wasn’t cool anymore. And nowadays, you’ve even got popular magazines like GQ reminding us men that, despite what we may see on Mad Men, smoking conjures up images of your grizzled old friendless loser of a virgin uncle, life hanging by a thread.

Wanna be like uncle Charlie, kids? Didn’t think so.

On personals ads nowadays, smoking is a turnoff for many young American women. The tides have changed. Never underestimate the power of “what’s cool” or even “what’s acceptable” – those who control what “normal” is control everything.

#3. People like to gravitate to the statistical middle

When it comes to social behavior, people with “less than average” performance will gravitate upward toward the average (but only IF you tell them what “average” means) and people “above average” will gravitate downward – both toward the statistical middle.

That’s fine for the people who started behaving themselves, but… what about the ones who got worse?

To prevent the backfire from people who were already behaving the way you wanted, you must reward them with a symbol of approval and “punish” those who behaved to the contrary.

Reward and punish them with WHAT, you might ask?

Well, in a test, a simple yellow smiley face for “good” people, and a little frownie for “bad” people was enough to keep the good people in line and cause the bad people to shape up a little.

Focus on how many people do the desired action, add emphasis of social disapproval to those who don’t, throw in a little reward and punishment and BINGO… Persuasion Cocktail.

4. Too many options result in no decision at all.

Reduce choices and you will see an increase in sales/actions/whatever. In my own marketing, my personal preference is no more than 3 choices per offer (a “good/better/best”), ideally 2 (normal/deluxe), and sometimes only 1 (take it or leave it.)

Going against this approach may work for Baskin Robbins’ 30-whatever flavors, but not every business has the luxury of customers who love to sample their products by tasting them.

Even still, you should know that out of all the hundreds of flavors of ice cream out there, vanilla is #1 and chocolate is #2 in terms of sales.

So maybe the A/B option isn’t such a bad idea after all.

5. When you give something away for free, always attach a value to it or else people will devalue the free gift in their minds.

A lot of companies like to give away a premium (or “freemium” if ya wanna get all buzz-wordy on me) to people who respond to their ad. It’s a great idea. But they’re selling themselves short unless they put a value on the “free” gift.

Why? Because a lot of people are inclined to think “If they’re giving it away for free, it must not be much good, or if it is good, maybe there’s something wrong with it. Is it damaged or something?”

Place a dollar value on the free gift and let people know about it. As in, “We normally sell this pen in our stores for $70, but if you come in today and buy our new Omega Seamaster watch, we’ll give it to you free as a gift to say thank you for being our customer in these uncertain times.”

…or some such copy to that effect.

(as an aside: I usually laugh to myself when I hear the words “these uncertain times” – a private joke to anyone who has studied economics and history – every generation thinks theirs is somehow “unique” and so even people back in the 30′s, 40′s, 50′s, the 1800′s, the 1700′s and any other time you can think of, always said their time was “uncertain” HA! As if that’s something new. When do we really live in “certain” times? Never. Same goes for people who say “today’s attention deficit hyper competitive environment” – guess what? They said the same exact shit back in the 1800′s, using only slightly different words. Nothing has changed.)

Even if the “gift” is your time, be sure to point out how valuable you know it was to the person receiving its benefit. They’ll get the picture.

6. When offering choices, best to show your most expensive stuff first

…because it can make your “middle” option (the one you REALLY want them to buy) seem more reasonable by comparison.

I know of a guy who sold Yachts like this:

First he showed them the top-of-the-line, ultra-expensive cruiser. Wow, impressive. The customer also noticed the impressive price tag in the process.

What’s that you say sir? Too pricey? Yeah, maybe you’re right. Well, how about this one…

Then he shows Mr. Customer the cheapest, tiniest, most shoddy clap trap of a Yacht he had at the dock.

“Damn… is that all you got at that price?” asks Mr. Customer.

“Well, at THAT price… but if you’re willing to go a little higher…”

Now all Slick Sam has to do is show the middle model (which looks fan-freakin-tastic compared to the other 2 options he’s seen) and the sale is won without any resistance at all.

Bonus Moral: It’s always good to have “Good, Better, Best” options when selling physical products.

7. People will block out fear/disaster based messages as “not pertaining to them”…

…UNLESS the message is delivered with an exact plan of action to take to remedy the situation.

Fear is a highly motivating tool of persuasion… but if you educate people why they should be afraid and then leave ‘em hangin’, they’ll dismiss most of your argument out of hand.

Instead, always have an exact plan of action mapped out for them to follow. THEN they’ll do it. For sales, this means an exact step-by-step easy way to order. (Your product IS the remedy to their fears, no?)

And for things like business proposals and even getting that lucky girl to date you, having a complete plan mapped out will increase the odds of them taking you up on the deal (just don’t play the fear card with the girl; they tend to frown on such things.)

8. Reciprocation – If you do something for somebody else, they will feel an obligation to do something for you.

For a lot of people in my business, this means giving away free content (videos, PDF’s, audios) to your prospect list over a series of days and then later asking them to do something for you (usually buying your Next Big Thing)

But it doesn’t have to be that involved.

You can use this same principle to get better customer service over the phone (or any number of things.) Simply tell the customer service agent you’re sooooo happy with her service so far, you’d like her to transfer you to her supervisor right after you’re done so you can tell the boss how wonderful she is…

She’ll love you for it.

…then make your most difficult request immediately after. She’ll feel compelled to try her damnedest.

9. Attaching post-it notes with hand-written messages to stuff increases response to the attached message.

Direct mail people have known this for eons. Now it’s time for you to benefit too. The basis behind this weird snippet is that adding a personal touch and personal accountability to the action you’re wanting people to perform increases the chances they’ll actually do it.

10. Tips at restaurants increase when the after dinner mint is given by the waiter at the end of the meal, instead of at the door on the way out.

That’s because patrons attribute the waiters “gift”, however insignificant it may appear, as a sort of personal “favor” in their mind. Tips increase even further if 2 mints are given and further still if one is given and then he doubles back and gives a 2nd as a sort of “what the heck” action.

But if you think you gotta be shoveling fries at Steak n’ Shake to benefit from this one, think again. The core principle at work here is the mental significance people attach to those who “go the extra mile” for them… yes, even if that mile means another 3 cent candy. Just make sure they know it was YOU who was responsible.

11. Reciprocation works even better when you ALREADY DO your end of the deal

…and THEN ask for their compliance instead of proposing it in the form of an exchange.

In other words, a “I’ll do this IF you do that” kind of deal is not nearly as persuasive as “I already did this for you, could you do this for me?”

The trick is to phrase it where only a real dick would turn down your offer.

12. Favors increase in value in the mind of the giver over time, and decrease in the mind of the receiver.

Useful because it tells us that asking for reciprocation “favors” need to be done soon after you helped them. Wait too long and they’ll downplay it’s value.

On the flipside, if it’s been quite awhile since a certain someone did a favor for you, it’s likely reached monolithic proportions in their mind by now. To win them back, you should acknowledge that you never forgot what he/she did for you “that one time” and then do something for them.

13. Asking people for a small version of a commitment up front will lead to a dramatic increase in their acceptance of a much larger request later.

This is why I like to design my new online order forms with a 2 step process. The first step is asking simply for their name and e-mail address. Then when they hit “continue” and move to the next screen, their name and e-mail are already filled in on the payment form and all they have to do now is choose which A/B package they want and enter in their credit card info.

The 2-step approach is better for several reasons:

1. I ask for a small commitment first. Just name and e-mail. Easy as pie.

2. The simple name/e-mail form not only pre-fills their info on the next screen, but also adds them to a follow-up list behind the scenes so that in the event they abandon the checkout process, I can contact them via e-mail and hopefully nudge them back into a sale.

3. People are more likely to complete the order process and not close out the window if they’ve already made a form submission commitment. In the mind it goes something like this “I’ve already said I was going to buy this product. I wouldn’t do that unless I really wanted it, so let’s go ahead and get it.”

Another good example of this in action is a study done where people were FAR more likely to accept a big gaudy sign in their nicely manicured front lawn if you first approached them asking to put a small sign in their front window. Then 2 weeks later, come back and hit them up about the gigantic lawn-monster. A shocking 70-80 percent of affluent homeowners let the survey guys junk up their yards when they got them to make the small commitment first.

Don’t underestimate this. It’s powerful shit.

Get this: Political prisoners can eventually be molded to denounce ALL their former beliefs and even praise their captors if they’re run through this same process of accepting the new doctrine a little bit at a time, over and over and over – bit by bit.

The bottom line is most people want to be consistent with their past behaviors.

14. People will want to act in line with the standards you’ve set for them.

For example, “I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re a good person.”

To get this principle to work, what you’ve got to do is label them and they’ll act in accordance with the label.

The airlines use a subtle version of this after every flight: “We know you have many airlines to choose from, so we thank you for choosing ours.” After all, you must’ve chosen that airline for a REASON, didn’t you? Well, a good reason for sure, because you’re a savvy consumer. And “savvy customers” will make the same “good decision” again.

This one’s particularly fascinating to me because it can be used in very subtle ways to get people to do (or not do) all kinds of things. I bet if you really thought about it for awhile, you could figure out how to dramatically reduce refunds in your business (even if the customer is dissatisfied) if you only used the proper labels… (I know I can…)

15. Asking people to predict what they would do in a given situation made them want to perform consistently with that prediction when the time came.

More Consistency Principle in action with this one.

For example…

Restaurants (or anyone) can reduce no-shows by changing “Please call if you have to cancel” to “Will you please call if you have to cancel?”

See how it works? You’re asking for a commitment and for them to perform in line with expectations.

To increase attendance even more, say “We’ll mark you down as a ‘yes’ and I’ll let the others know as well” – now you’ve attached the subtle hint of public humiliation to the outcome – they’d better show up or else… what will the “others” think? My oh my…

To bump response even more, find out why they say “yes” and use that info to bind them to their words.

16. Get them to take an active approach.

Getting people to write down their commitment is more likely to get them to follow through.

This is why direct mail people have used “involvement devices” on their order forms for decades. When you order Playboy magazine, they’ll make you move a little colored circular sticker a whopping 1-inch into a little area set aside for it. Why? A task uncompleted is more likely to bother you, which is more likely to get you to complete it, which is more likely to get you to go ahead and send in the order card.

Weird? Irrational? Yes. But the numbers don’t lie. It works.

In a sales office, a good example of this would be getting everyone to write down their sales/income goals. And in retail, getting people to fill out the credit app themselves will result in fewer disputes later on than having the salesperson do it for them.

In doctors offices, making patients write down their own appointment times on the little appointment card will get you fewer no-shows.

Don’t try to make logical sense out of it, just shut up and use it. It just works.

17. “The best way to ride a horse is in the direction the horse is going.”

In other words, to get stubborn people to switch over to a new way of doing things, first demonstrate how they were correct in the past, and how this new way is aligned with their CURRENT practices, beliefs, and values.

Doing it this way frames their old decision as “good based on the info they had at the time.” Because nobody likes to be told they’re out of date or wrong.

If there’s still a few stragglers hanging around afterward, you can bend them to your will by applying a cocktail of social pressure and social proof of the “new” idea. They’ll crack soon enough.

18. Asking someone for a favor will actually increase their perception of you.

If you borrow a book from someone and they give it to you, their mind dialogue will go something like:

“Why am I going out of my way to help Greg? I wouldn’t do that for someone I didn’t like. Maybe Greg’s not such a bad guy after all.”

And if they refuse your favor, you’ll only end up with the same “nothing” you had from them in the first place.

19. When asking for a donation, adding the phrase “even a penny will help” boosts donations

…without hurting the average donation amount. Likewise wth time; “Just an hour of your time would really help.”, “Even a brief phone call would help.”, etc

A lot of people don’t donate because they think their paltry sum won’t make a dent, so therefore they shouldn’t even bother. But by adding this sweet little line to your request, their pocketbooks will open.

20. When auctioning, start the bids low to get people committed and emotionally involved.

I’ve been doing this on eBay since 1998. It works for 3 reasons:

1. Low barrier to entry for people wanting to bid.

2. Social proof for more people to bid once they see how many other people are bidding.

3. Commitment. People are more likely to bid higher once you’ve wrapped them in your invisible web of commitment and emotional attachment. Hell, they might not even WANT the item itself… they just want to WIN.

21. To show yourself off without looking like an egomaniac, get someone else to do the talking for you.

Public speakers do this all the time. A musician’s manager talks up his artist like there’s no tomorrow. But there’s an even sneakier way of employing this principle.

The funny thing is, people don’t discount the bias as much as they should, so it doesn’t matter if the person signing your praises is paid by you or not.

If you work in an office with other people, train the receptionist to do these steps before transferring you:

1. Find out what the caller wants

2. …then say “Oh ok, you want [blank], I’ll transfer you to Sally who [give ultra credientials here].”

3. Bingo. Now Sally will have a VASTLY easier time talking to the prospect and will likely clinch the sale.

Another way of doing this is to plaster the walls with stuff showing off your credientials and testimonials. Works well for doctors, therapists, lawyers, personal trainers, etc. It can work for you too.

22. Ask for the input of your “lesser mortals” to build their trust and favor of you.

As long as each team member’s input is recognized and considered, they won’t feel raw about it if you decide to go a different direction. After all, you’re still the leader; you’ve got to lead.

23. The true dissenter is a better persuader than the devil’s advocate.

So when testing your idea for holes, it’s better to bring in someone who’s passionately against it to see if they have any good arguments you might not have thought of, than to just name one of your group as the devils advocate.

People in a company must not feel reluctant to disagree. It doesn’t mean you have to do what they suggest, just understand what they really want is to be HEARD.

24. Educating people based on others’ screw-ups and solutions is more effective than simply telling them the “right” way to do things.

If your training materials present things from the point of view of “Here is how things are done around here” then you’re wasting a lot of time and money.

Instead, present it like this: “Here’s Bob. Watch Bob really fuck up this assignment. Ok, can you tell me what Bob did wrong and what he really should have done instead?”

Believe it or not, training in this way will help the ideas sink in FASTER and for LONGER than ever before. And in case you can’t connect the dots, Buckwheat, that plugs up a huge gaping hole of time and money you’re losing right now. You can thank me later.

25. Acknowledge a weakness, then parlay it into an advantage.

Popular examples from big companies:

“Avis – we’re #2 but we try harder.”

“The Peace Corps: The toughest job you’ll ever love”

“Motel 6: Our rooms aren’t fancy but our prices aren’t fancy.”

“Listerine: The taste you hate three times a day.”

“L’Oreal: We’re more expensive, but you’re worth it.”

Also, whenever confessing a fault, the advantage needs to be logically RELATED to the fault:

“Our restaurant doesn’t have much space, but that’s exactly what gives it our cozy atmosphere.”

1984: Reagan vs Mondale – Reagan acknowledged he was old then said “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

HA! Great line.

26. Admitting you were wrong and screwed up will win you more persuasive trust than blaming a result on uncontrollable outside events.

The trick is to afterward offer how you’ve learned from the mistakes and fixed the problems that caused them so they’re not going to happen again.

This one works SO WELL that I’d even go as far as to say it’s a good idea to claim personal responsibility for something even when you’re not really sure who’s responsible and who isn’t.

It flies under the radar of popular skepticism! It’s cunning, it’s devious… I love it!

You just gotta have the balls to fess up. Just try it. You’ll be amazed how much trust it wins you later on.

27. People respond better to others’ with similar names, similar birthdays, towns with the same name, etc.

Kinda weird but true.

People also tend to pick professions (statistically) based on how similar it sounds to their own name. Even first letters count: Hardware store – Harry. Dentist – Dennis.

People move to locations with similar names, cities with numbers corresponding to their birthday “Two Harbors, Minnesota” 2/2 – Three Forks, Montana 3/3

People also choose streets matching their name, marry others with similar names (Eric/Erica, Charles/Charlotte), and even pick favorite candy: Allan/Almond Joy.

Knowing this could clue you in on how to name products, plans, reports, etc… dealing with Peterson at Pepsi? Try “The Pepsi Proposal” or “The Peterson Plan”…(alliteration always helps too)

28. Repeating a customer request back to them verbally will increase satisfaction and persuasion.

ALWAYS do this. Remember, people want to deal with people who they feel UNDERSTAND them.

Also, mirroring a person physically will get better response than merely doing your own thing. Pickup artists always teach students to match the energy level of a group of people when you approach the group. It’s just smart. Calm people don’t want to be around a spaz, and people having an energetic good time don’t want to be around a sleepwalker.

29. When smiling, the smile must be real and sincere.

Sounds obvious, but too many people employ the fake smile. Fake smiles can be detected, even if unconsciously.

If its difficult for you to smile, find something about a person you can honestly admire and then tell them. You’ll often get a surprising result.

30. Scarcity sells even formerly undesirable products.

Limit the quantity. Limit the time period it’s available.

A lot of people know this, but few do it right. The trick is to make the reasoning as REAL and BELIEVABLE as possible. To me, this is a little bit art, a little bit science. Usually, the number of words increases with the level of believability you’re wanting to convey. Not always. Usually.

Master it, and you’ll sell more, get more responses, whatever.

31. Threat of loss is more powerful a motivator than promise of gain.

POWERFUL stuff. I can’t emphasize enough.

Remember, people are slothful to change of any kind. Threatening a man’s job he already has will motivate him TONS MORE than promising him a new job… even if that new job is markedly better.

Same goes for selling. Writing a pitch to point out how you’ll fix a hole that ALREADY EXISTS within your prospect’s life will get a lot more orders than one written promising him all sorts of new fixes, changes, benefits, and technology.

The mind says to itself: Change = hard. Me no like change.

On the other hand: Losing something I already have = better get off my ass and fix this NOW!

32. Giving a good reason using the word “because” increases compliance.

Simple and oh-so-true. Personally I like to give reasons for just about every damn thing I say. Makes sales life easier that way.

Also, get people to give their “because” to you to reaffirm their own decision to buy from you. It’ll serve to reinforce in their mind the decision they’ve already made. A powerful adhesive.

Speaking of that…

33. When asking for reasons, asking for only one good reason is more persuasive than asking for many.

One reason = easy.
Lots of reasons = hard.

The brain does not enjoy “hard”

On the flipside: Making it difficult (by asking your prospect for a lot of reasons why they should get a competitors product) will make your product’s 1 or 2 good reasons look better by comparison.

Likewise, asking prospects to imagine themselves on a vacation or using your product is more persuasive as long as its easy for them to imagine doing so.

Bonus Moral: Make it as idiotically EASY as physically possible for your prospects to imagine (or see, or feel) the benefits of your product. Never try to be abstract or cute. A sale is a very fragile thing. Being anything less than crystal clear will kill the sale.

Which brings me to…

34. Names that are easy to pronounce get better response.

Stock symbols that can be pronounced perform better. Bad handwriting is less persuasive than nicer handwriting. Messages that are simple and easy to understand are more persuasive than using big words and complicated sentences.

35. Statements that rhyme are perceived as more persuasive.

“A stitch in time saves nine.”

“Caution and measure will win you treasure”

“What sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals”

“Loose lips sink ships”

“The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup”

“Gillette: The best a man can get”

“Click it or ticket”

“Bounty, the quilted, thicker, picker-upper”

“Birds of a feather flock together”

“If the gloves don’t fit, you must aquit!”

As David Ogilvy once said:

When you have nothing new to say about your product, sing about it.

…just make sure it rhymes

36. Prior experience colors perception.

Ten pound weights feel heavier after lifting a five pound and lighter after lifting a twenty.

Compare the cost of your product to something similar, yet unrelated.

Dan Kennedy calls this an “apples to oranges comparison”

Example: Comparing the cost of the consulting CD audios to the cost of the same amount of consulting time if they paid you by the hour. Now those $495 CDs with 20 hours of audio look like a bargain compared to your going rate of $250 per hour. Why, they’re getting 20 hours of you for the price of 2! Amazing!

37. Loyalty programs work better when you start them out with “points” right off the bat.

Affiliate programs get more signups if you start their accounts off with a positive balance of $25 or whatever. Loyalty punch cards that use stamps: give them 2 stamps immediately that contribute to their total.

And if you’re worried about giving them free stuff like that, just raise the goal total by the same amount. So if they needed 10 stamps and you started them with 0, now give them 2 stamps and raise the total needed to 12. Same difference. You’ll get more participation and faster compliance. Really.

38. Naming products:

Crayola figured this one out long ago.

Unexpected/descriptive names (like “Kermit green”) and ambiguous names (like “millenium orange”) create more mystery and intrigue (and therefore desire) than simply saying “green” or even “forest green”

So think about how you can name your product in an interesting way, but still have it be simple to pronounce and easy to understand.

39. Use point of sale branding reminders that tie into the advertising so prospects make the proper mental connections before making a purchase.

Memory aides can take the form of posters/logos in bars, cardboard displays at Wal-Mart, or even those tacky promotional items like logo’d frisbees.

Since there is often a disconnect between the location of the marketing and the location of the sale, you need to set up mental triggers to connect the ideas together in the prospect’s mind.

40. People are more self conscious in front of mirrors and are therefore less likely to steal, litter, or do other things they know they shouldn’t.

It’s cheaper than installing cameras and surprisingly… even more effective!?

Yup. At least in every test that’s been done.

And if putting mirrors in certain places is impossible or impractical for you, then in lieu of a mirror, even a poster with a pair of eyes on the wall reduces undesirable behavior.

The basis is, people don’t like the feeling of being watched when they’re doing something they know is wrong. Makes the slimeballs feel even more guilty… even if the watcher is themselves, or a fake pair of eyes in a poster.

41. Being emotional/sad makes you pay more for stuff and accept less for what you’re selling.

Some sellers explot this by purposely making the prospect emotional before negotiating the sale. That’s a little slimey even for me, but it works.

The moral is: Always compose yourself before dealing with a negotiation situation. Buying, selling, anything.

42. Pattern interrupts:

Another of my devious favorites. Weird but true.

Here’s how it works:

Say something unexpected, followed by a statement you want them to believe and they’re more likely to believe it.

Most people walk about their lives in a sort of perpetual zombie-like mental sleep. Jolting them out of their sleep opens a small window of time where they can be influenced. You accomplish this by saying something unexpected; the same thing you’d normally say, but using unconventional words.

For example: Quoting a price in pennies then saying “It’s a bargain” increased sales. Calling cupcakes “halfcakes” then saying “they’re delicious” increased sales.

But take note: it does not work in isolation. You can’t just say the unexpected thing and expect them to buy. You have to say the unexpected thing, THEN inject in your shot of persuasion you want them to believe (e.g. “they’re delicious”) and after that you’ll have greater success.

43. Caffeine makes you more persuasive to others and more susceptible to persuasion.

Get yourself and your audience hopped up on caffeine.

Give your presentations when people are most alert, and NOT after lunch when everyone’s sluggish. I’ve done this before and … it actually works wonders. You’ll say and do things you wouldn’t normally have said and done. For a brief period of time, you’ll be a dynamo in the conference room.

44. Meeting face to face and over the phone is more persuasive than over email or chat.

Personally, as some of my readers know, I hate cell phones and most communications technology in general – even though I’m a member of the first generation to grow up with it. But I’m also a member of the LAST generation to remember what it’s like to not have much of ANY communications technology beyond the normal phone.

And those were better, more personable, peaceful times. Back when people actually KNEW one another and if you were “friends” you really were friends. It wasn’t just some meaningless label you threw around, like so many people do today. Nowadays you can be “friends” and never even talk to each other.

Anyway, how this relates to persuasion is that study after study and public tests in many companies have shown that phone and personal face-to-face meetings accomplish MUCH more than e-mail, chat, and text.

Bonus nugget: Knowing personal details about each other will help more of your negotiations reach a successful deal for both of you.

45. Individualistic cultures are more influenced by a “benefits me” approach:

This means the US, UK, and Western Europe will be persuaded more by a more “selfish” sounding message.

Collectivist cultures are more influenced by a “benefits us” approach: Asia, South America, Africa, Eastern Europe.

The key difference here is messages of “treat yourself” versus “share with others”

The differences are also seen in how the Consistency Principle is applied: U.S. people are more likely to follow through because they personally committed to it. People from collectivist cultures are more likely to follow through when you add that they and their peers committed to it.

46. Collectivist cultures hate voicemail because its impersonal

…because they like to experience feedback with regard to their relationship to that person. Americans tend to just jump straight to the point and leave a blunt message without regard to how its being perceived.

If ya ask me, I like the American way of doing business best. It’s no bullshit, more direct and to the point. Less mumbo-jumbo. If an American says “yes”, he means “yes” – if a Japanese businessman says “yes” he means “yes I heard you.”

And the thing that REALLY frustrates me about Japanese businessmen is they’ll never be straight with you and just say “no” flat out. Instead, they’ll throw out some weak statement like “It is difficult”

“It’s difficult” essentially means “no” in Japanese businessman talk.

*sigh*

Whatever.

Anyway, there you have it. I’ve given you 46 persuasion keys as promised. Now it’s up to you to unlock the doors in your life with them that lead to greener pastures.

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“Live free,” I’d proclaim, shaking my defiant fist, “Viva la resistance!”

I thought that, until in actual practice of this “freedom” my life began to slowly disintegrate into a hazy mushiness where nameless days flowed directly into one another, I often forgot when I last ate something let alone when I was “supposed” to eat again, and my body was never quite sure when to go to sleep and how long to stay there when it did.

It wasn’t hell. Purgatory, maybe.

Nowadays, after realizing I get far more done in a day, look better, and feel fantastic – I’m a bit more appreciative of routine.

Like it or not, we’re hard-wired for at least SOME degree of routine in our lives. It’s one of those evolutionary-based things that’ll make you cry blood if you try to fight it.

Since we all gotta deal with routine and “time management” somehow, I’ve discovered a few tricks that have helped me get way more done in less time than I ever thought possible. Maybe they’ll help you too.

Ok, first, routine… we’ll do it first because it’s the easy one.

Just make a list (mental or actually write it out on paper) of everything you absolutely GOTTA do in a day to maintain a healthy, good-looking physical existence here on planet Earth. We’re talking life necessities here like eating, sleeping, exercising, hygiene maintenance, whatever. Make this list, add in the details that pertain to your life and congratulations… you’re now looking at everything you need to do at roughly the same times every day in roughly the same way.

Hence, the “routine” part of your day.

Why is this? Well, since your body and brain already crave some kind of routine anyway, why not feed them the stuff that’ll keep you in tip-top mental and physical shape so they can make them happen for you AUTOMATICALLY, even if the rest of your day goes to shit?

Now that you have your list, you’ve got to follow it and actually DO it… then in about 3 weeks, you won’t even need the list anymore. If you try to skip a step in the routine, it’ll feel like an annoying itch you HAVE to scratch before the day feels “complete.” This is good. This is training yourself to be at your best ALL the time, not just whenever it feels like it.

My routine in the morning has evolved into getting up, going into my study to see what e-mails await me (looking, but not touching… not yet), then going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, looking over my bulletin board of success reminders and aspirations to put the day into perspective, then going in the kitchen to eat. After I eat, I do some exercises and take my protein shake along with 1 gram of Sun Chlorella, a multi-vitamin, magnesium, calcium, a couple shots of B12, and anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 IU of vitamin D3.

At that point, I’m awake, alive, healthy, and ready to face whatever I want for the day. And equally important, I’ve reviewed my Master Plan of what I’m wanting to accomplish and the real reasons why I want to live and breathe at all. You absolutely NEED a “Master Plan” of your own! If you don’t have this, then why are you even getting up in the morning? LIVE, DAMNIT! LIVE!

Your routine list needs to consist of things that physically maintain your health AND put you in the right frame of mind every day. When you go to sleep at night, all the previous day’s enthusiasm and determination melt away into the night’s DreamLand. I used to wonder how to get this back, and that maybe not going to sleep at all was the answer. This is how I got into the horrible rut I told you about earlier. Don’t let it happen to you. If you’re working on a project and need to sleep, GO AHEAD AND GO TO SLEEP… your mind will reward you for it in the morning as long as you recharge it with your routine.

Ok, that’s the easy part. Now for the tougher stuff: dealing with distraction.

Distraction is the number one monster standing between us and a successful, happy, productive life. And this isn’t just distraction from “work” you gotta get done, but ANYTHING that holds you back from living how you want to live.

You’re working on something and people are coming up to you, asking questions. E-mails are coming in every minute, and your phone rings beeps chimes, whatever. Takes forever just to get the most simple thing done while the entire world burns as if you’ve got the only fire hose. Then before you know it, the day’s over and you’ve only crawled a few more precious inches toward your true desires.

If this even remotely sounds like your day, it’s time to make a change. Starting now. Not tomorrow. Now. Do it.

First, learn to let go of all that is not absolutely necessary. Yup, simple-sounding as it seems, it works. Sometimes the simple answers are best, but difficult to actually do. This one’s worth it. Believe me, most of the so-called “problems” you’re approached with during the day will either just “poof”, go away, or solve themselves while you’re busy breaking new ground and DOING WHAT REALLY MATTERS.

This also means to stop checking your e-mail. Seriously, CUT IT OUT. It’s a waste of time. I run a business and I know from personal experience how awesome it is to see those “you’ve got a new order” e-mails come in and I know how tempting it is to answer customer questions, complaints, praise, whatever and something inside you just makes you wanna do it RIGHT NOW, but… just relax. Take a deep breath. Hell, take a few deep breaths. Get focused on what YOU need to get done, and not how you’re going to REACT to all of these “extra” things. Then, when you’ve reached a break point, then and ONLY then should you schedule a time where you check your e-mail and deal with whatever’s there.

I used to have my e-mail on auto-check, every 5 minutes. The little sound was dinging all the time. But my writing and my life dramatically improved the moment I decided to shut down Windows Mail completely and only open it once or twice a day. Do it.

Speaking of scheduling times, you need to group similar tasks together. Oh man, this little strategy ALONE has saved me TONS of time! Just do it. If you have a lot of calls to make, rig it to where you make them all at once, one right after another. You’ll be amazed at how much time this saves over spreading it out over the day and doing it “whenever.” It’s so important I’ll say it again: GROUP. SIMILAR. TASKS. TOGETHER.

Your body operates on it’s own kind of “rhythm.” To get the most done in a day, you need to work WITH this rhythm instead of against it. You’ll know you’re working against your body’s internal rhythm the moment you feel the need to gulp some caffinated coffee or shock yourself into a burst of energy with sugar, like from a donut or whatever.

You should never need to do these things.

To start working with your body’s rhythm, after your morning routine you need to get yourself in a room and FOCUS on working on ONE SINGLE IMPORTANT THING for 50 minutes. That’s all, just 50 minutes. Set a timer if you must, but just do it. 50 minutes of hardcore, pure focus and attention with NO interruptions. Then take a little 10 minute break and think about something else. Now you’re at an hour. Get back to work for another 50 minutes. Pure focus, dedication. Afterwards, another 10 minute break where you think about something else.

Now you’re at 2 hours, which is one CYCLE of your body’s rhythm. If you’ve followed this and worked hard and distraction free, you’ve gotten a shitload of stuff done. Now that you’ve been at it for 2 hours, this time take a 1 hour break, and go veg out completely. Do something completely unrelated to the task you were on.

And then… when your hour’s up. Get back to work, just like before in 50 minute blocks interspersed with tiny 10 minute breaks. Do the whole cycle 3 times during a day. This gives you nearly 6 hours of highly productive work and enough breaks to recharge your batteries and fill the remaining 2 hours for a full 8 hour work day.

Trust me YOU WILL BE AMAZED at how much you get done, and maybe even more importantly how AWESOME you will feel after having done it all. Instead of being exhausted after work and not wanting to do anything, you’ll feel enthusiastic, energized, and HAPPY… ready for whatever’s next. Playtime, family time, personal time, whatever. Enjoy yourself. Get what you want. That’s what we’re all here for anyway.

If you’re in business, you need to figure out what your time is worth. This isn’t some “pie in the sky” exercise in egotism, either. It’s real, down to earth stuff. To do it, simply take the income you wish to make per year, and divide it by the number of working hours you want to do in a year. This’ll give you some number, maybe a pretty high one. You might not be used to making this much “per hour” but if you start ACTING like your time is worth this much, then one day it really WILL be worth this much.

Why is this helpful? Well, for one, it helps you put things into perspective when hiring people to do the things you don’t need to be doing in your business (a.k.a the “detail” stuff, the things that don’t really bring in the cash, but still need to be handled – like answering customer questions, shipping packages, and issusing refunds.)

Consider this: if your time REALLY IS worth $150 per hour, then why are you taping up boxes and delivering them to the FedEx guy when you could hire some other dude to do that for $12 per hour? And you know what? At that price, he’d be thrilled to do it for you. And do it right. All while you’re over somewhere else doing what you do best.

Now earlier, I kept talking about doing only what is most important, most vital to moving you ahead, but how are we to know what these things are?

I can’t point out the exact ones for your life, but I can help you find them. Here’s some ideas that will help you.

So far what I’ve talked about involves having a solid vision for what you want in life and how it will make you feel to live in that reality, having clear priorities of things you need to do to get there, and then finally the daily “discipline” (its not really discipline if you trick your brain to do it as routine) to make it all happen.

When compiling your daily do-do list, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Is this something I could delegate/eliminate? (like I said before, learn to “let go” of some things… it’s tough at first, but it’s holding you back. Try to only do the things you are absolutely the BEST at, things for which you are irreplaceable. For example, with me, the writing I do for my business is what I need to focus on the most. It’s the thing that brings in the money. Everything else is just details.)

2. Is there some way I could do this in half the time? (example: Why have the meeting next week? Why can’t we have it tomorrow (or better yet, this afternoon) and go ahead and make our decisions? Why not invite others to be in on the meeting so I won’t have to repeat all the information back to them?)

3. Is this related to an objective that will truly make my life better/richer/fuller? (if it ain’t, why are you doing it? Do only the highest priorities, the things that really matter to the life you want to live.)

To help with this, one thing you could ask yourself is: “Of these things I gotta do, which one will be more important to me at the end of my life?”

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. The only difference between you and the next guy is how you use it. You need to do fewer NUMBERS of things, but each thing you do having vastly more SIGNIFICANCE to your life.

The oft quoted “Pareto Principle” says:

Twenty percent of the things we do will achieve 80 percent of what we want. (And in fact, it’s also interesting to note that 20% of damn near anything in life is far more deserving of your time and energy than the other 80%… we tend to only wear 20% of the clothes in our wardrobe as our “favorites”, in business 20% of the customers make us 80% of our profits, etc etc etc… so what it all comes down to is constantly identifying the 20, separating it from the 80, and focusing only on that. Then doing it again, and again… and again.)

So ask yourself, “Which tasks that lay before me are among that golden 20 percent?”

Give yourself the power to take control of your time. It really is one of the “big non-secret secrets” to success. And in doing so, you will begin to get what you want and smell the roses along the way.

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“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“$5,000,” was Picasso’s reply.

“$5,000? But it took you only three minutes!” she exclaimed.

“No,” Picasso answered. “It took me all my life.”

Value is a funny thing.

How you value the things you buy, and more importantly how you value yourself and your skills, is literally all in your head. Once you realize what you’re really worth and have the balls to ask for it… eventually getting to the point where you assume your value to be true without question… you’re already rich; the rest is just the mechanics of making it happen.

Successful people say your income (and success in other areas of life) is about the average of your closest 5 friends. So look around. Who do you see? What do you see?

I remember one time my friend Jason was having lunch with some of our old friends from high school. One of them asked him “what Greg was up to” – Jason told them about some of my publishing projects. They sneered.

“Where does Greg get off charging people so much for his books,” one guy said, “It’s robbery. Here I am busting my butt at Lowe’s for $7 bucks an hour and he’s sitting back in some chair selling damn books on the internet.”

Hmm, interesting. Have you heard people talk like this before?

Jason, being the good friend he is, countered with, “Greg’s books are worth every bit he gets for them. They change people’s lives. He gets e-mails from happy customers almost every day. Just because he doesn’t sweat it out and get all dirty doesn’t mean there’s no value. How many people have you helped today?”

My old friends are good people. They mean well. But if I want to have the kind of life I KNOW I can have and be the kind of person I KNOW I can be, I can’t hang around people who think like that anymore. Hear too much of their negative bullshit and you’ll actually start to believe it yourself. And since what you believe is the core of your success, sometimes old friends just have to go.

One of my earliest mentors, Tim Fortier, said something to me that stuck really well: “Find a way to keep getting paid over and over again for the work you did 5 years ago.”

A lot of people have this idea in their head that hours worked equals dollars earned. This is NOT how to get ahead in life; not in here America and not anywhere else. Maybe if we lived forever, but in reality there’s just not enough time out there for any of us to get rich that way. So asking an advice guru how you can get a bump in pay from corporate, is in my opinion, asking the wrong question.

Instead, you need to start thinking more in terms of “what do people want, how much will they pay for it, and how can I provide this thing to as many of these people as possible?”

Yes, this takes time, research, and *gulp* W-O-R-K. But unlike a job where each day starts over from scratch (same $10, $20, $50 per hour today as yesterday), thinking like this will cause the work you do today to keep paying you that same money far into the future – whether you actually continue “working” or not.

There are all kinds of things people say to you every day that can corrupt your mind if you’re not careful.

One I hear in the business opportunity market a lot is when someone comes out with a new “money making system” of some kind (whether it be real estate, internet marketing, or whatever) there will be a handful of guys crawl outta the woodwork with a comment like this:

“Hey if he’s so successful doing this thing, and if he really made $2 million with it last year, then why does he need to sell his package to me for $XXX?”

I used to think this way, years ago. Do you know the answer? If this guy’s so successful and made $2 million last year, why is he selling this package on the internet or TV?

Simple. Because he wants to make $3 million this year.

See, when you get to a certain level, there isn’t some switch that goes off in your mind that says “Ok, I’m done with money now. I’m not worth any more than this right here.”

No. Hell no. Instead it’s more like, “I did $2 million last year. Awesome. Now I wonder if I have it in me to double that over the next 18 months? Of course I can! This is gonna be fun!”

Same goes for all those $100 million CEO “golden parachute” packages you hear demonized in the media. These guys don’t get fired and let go like janitors do because their decisions carry HUGE responsibility, shifting the tide of hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially directing billions just by talking to a few people in a 30 minute meeting. They alone determine the fates of thousands of people, and often they worked blood sweat and tears into getting where they are today, so why shouldn’t they get paid the most??

People also talk about how credit card companies and banks “take advantage” of a helpless public, “conning” them into debt, holding them hostage in monthly payments, “scamming” them out of their homes, and ultimately destroying their lives. I’ve watched 2 documentaries to this effect stitched together by some Michael Moore wannabe’s hoping to make a name for themselves by “exposing” the Great Credit Card Company Satan. They talk about how PayDay Loan shops pop up everywhere (especially around military bases) and milk innocents for insane amounts of cash. They talk about credit card companies making 51% net profit and how that’s just plain WRONG.

Well, they’re right about one thing: America HAS become way too reliant on financing to pay for stuff. And those PayDay Loan joints really ARE every-damn-where. But they’re NOT “scamming” anybody! And advertising and marketing does not wield some magic wand that “forces” people to buy things. People buy what they WANT. All advertising does is take existing desires within a person and show them how they might be fulfilled.

These companies are simply providing something people want (money) to fulfill some need of instant gratification and charging a price for it the customer is AGREEING to well in advance. That’s not a rip-off, that’s good business. If someone gives you money to buy a house, they’re giving you today’s money (value) in exchange for some future profit that might or might not happen. There’s a risk to that, which is why they get paid interest (at a rate that’s clearly indicated in the agreement). And it should come as no surprise to these people when the repo man drops by to yoink the 50-inch plasma screen or their house gets taken away because they can’t foot the bill for all the out of control spending; it was all right there in plain black & white from day one.

Some people just think there’s such a thing as “too much money” for other people – yet they spend on themselves like there’s no tomorrow.

The amount of money you’re comfortable with is the amount of money you have. “Enough” is whatever your subconscious says it is.

I remember back in high school when Jason got a well-paying job at the largest medical clinic in the area for what was relatively little physical work on his part. One day in the hall between classes, our friend Andrew heard the news of Jason’s good fortune. He threw his hand’s up in the air dismissively, and gasped, “Well, HE’S done.”

Done. Jason’s “done” now in Andrew’s eyes because he has a decent job with decent pay. No use playing anymore. Game over. Jason wins. Let’s go home.

This attitude of “enough” is silly and rooted in a poverty-based mindset. Thinking this way can and WILL keep you in the poor house if you let it. The truth is, you’re never really “done” with anything. There is no “grand destination” where you can finally say “Wow. I’ve finally arrived.” Life is always a work in progress and ends only when you die.

As your income goes up, so do your options and preferences. You wouldn’t keep eating out of dumpsters if you had the cash to buy some good food, would you? Well, the same is true for a lot of other things. I stopped eating tuna sandwiches and soup outta cans a long time ago. I stopped buying bad clothes that made me look like a fat loser years ago. Everything gets upgraded once you can afford more. Life isn’t the same ever again.

Some wealth haters profess “money does strange things to people” or “money corrupts.” I say money reveals your “true self.” Meaning, the “self” you secretly always wanted to be but hide from the rest of society out of fear and the lack of ability to fulfill it. For some people this is good and they become like Richard Branson. Others get downright evil.

Why is this? Because of social agreement.

When you really get right down to it, there’s only 3 ways to get somebody else to do something you want:
1. Give them something of value in exchange (like money)
2. Dazzle them with your personality and powers of persuasion, or…
3. Use brute force

Let’s hope you don’t really consider #3 a viable option to attain success. If you do, good luck, I’ll see you in prison or on the run from Feds. So really all that’s left for you to get what you want from others is money (or trade) and the power of your personal charms.

But last time I checked, the cute American Airlines girl at the ticket counter won’t give me a $1,200 round-trip ticket to Europe, no matter how successfully I flirt with her. She’ll lose her job. And since we’re not in Biblical times anymore, no one will take my herd of goats as payment either.

Well damn. I guess that only leaves me with my money.

The point is this: as you increase in wealth, your ability to bypass this social system of agreement goes up as well. And when it does, that’s when people unleash their true desires to buy the $5,000 bottles of wine, the personal “life assistant” who makes $70k a year doing your errands, the 90 room houses, and the $19 million dollar yachts and private planes all while donating to their favorite charity; you just don’t want to deal with all of life’s bullshit anymore. And even better, you don’t have to. Life’s too precious to waste on little indignities. When you reach a certain level, TIME is what really matters; it’s the only thing we all have the same amount of no matter what. So why spend it waiting in line at the metal detector in some airport?

I’ll say it again: money bypasses agreement like nothing else in the world. People who were more or less “good” before they got rich get even better and become shining examples to the world, and the scum of society get even creepier. That doesn’t make money good or bad; it’s just something that is.

I believe there are certain mental money “levels” – kinda like how there are levels in a video game. And just like in the video game, if you make the right moves, you can skip a few at a time.

Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say you’re like I was when I was first starting out, making a simple $100 per week. Wasn’t much, but it was awesome to a kid who was used to having nothing at all.

When you’re used to a bank balance of ZERO – anything sounds fantastic. But here’s the funny thing about money: when you’re used to zero, then once you get anything MORE than zero, something inside you feels “weird” – uncomfortable just holding on to it – you feel compelled to spend it as soon as possible on something you think you want. And pretty soon, that $100 is long gone and you’re back to zero… which is where your mind says you belong.

This is the basic theme of how poor people stay poor, and how you can even give a man $1 million in Lucky-Lotto winnings only to find his life worse off 2 years later than how it was when you left him. By giving him the huge influx of cash, you skipped too many mental money levels than what he was used to (or could handle), sending his mind into a tailspin resulting in reckless spending on a bunch of crap that doesn’t benefit him for any length of time.

The same holds true for $1,000 , $10,000 , $20,000 , $50k, $100k, a million, all the way up to infinity. Whatever you believe you’re “supposed” to have is how much you actually will have when it’s all said and done. Each one of these steps is a level.

So how do you get to the next level?

Well… I don’t know about other people but for me, it was always borne out of strict personal discipline. One time when I was making a lot of money selling Oreck air purifiers nationwide, for the first time in my life I could afford expensive things. For one, I wanted a Bow-Flex so I could do all kinds of exercises at home and wouldn’t have to trek to the gym every day.

I almost bought one… but I didn’t. I resisted the urge. I said to myself “damnit Greg, if you do that, what will you have left? Don’t you wanna actually BUILD something with your money this time?”

Yes, I did. So I made the decision and (except for the new Dell computer I bought my girlfriend at the time to thank her for helping me) held back on any expense that wasn’t absolutely necessary.

And it paid off. Soon, the amount of money that used to drive me crazy wanting to spend, became normal to me. When a certain amount of money becomes NORMAL to you, that’s when you’ve moved to the next level. If it’s not normal for you, keep it awhile, hold on to it and let it grow on you. Eventually the money you have and the income you’re experiencing will feel “normal.” Now you’re really moving forward.

So to a guy like Picasso in the example I gave at the beginning, he was a guy who KNEW what he was worth, was COMFORTABLE asking for the price, and could look you in the eye and honestly make YOU believe it too. There was no problem. Success was assumed. It was normal.

Just because something took 5 minutes on a paper napkin doesn’t make it crap; it could be a famous drawing or a multi-million dollar business model. Just because it took me 2 days to write a report that’s made over $200,000 and helped thousands of people doesn’t somehow make it a bad thing.

There is no “fairness.” You do not get what you “deserve.” Time does not equal money.

VALUE equals money. Go create some. Give people what they want and they will pay you handsomely for it.

Your customers will certainly treat you with more fairness than any employer ever would.

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You need to always be well aware what ad campaigns are pulling in the best return on your investment.

There are several key metrics to doing that:

Cost Per Lead – often, this means how much did you spend to get one name and e-mail address from one person? Let’s say you spent $100 to get search engine traffic to go to a certain page on your website designed to ask them for their name and e-mail address to sign up for your newsletter. Now let’s say that $100 brings 200 people to your site, which is a cost of 50 cents per click. Out of those 200 people, let’s say 10 of them decide to take you up on the offer, which is a conversion rate of 5%. In the situation I just described, your total Cost Per Lead would be $10 because you spent a total of $100 to get 10 signups.

Cost Per Sale – More important than Cost Per Lead is your Cost Per Sale. This is how much you had to spend to get someone to open their wallet and actually purchase something from you. Continuing from the example above, let’s say that out of those 10 newsletter subscribers, 4 of them end up buying your new book for $30 a piece – a conversion rate of 40%, which brings in a total revenue of $120. Since your newsletter was an e-mail that (for all intents and purposes) was free for you to send out, your only real expense here is the time it took for you to write the e-mails, your credit card processing fees, and of course the raw cost to produce the book. But let’s keep it simple and say that your cost in this case was simply $2 per book including shipping. Now you’ve still spent the $100 in advertising costs to get the 10 subscribers, and now you have an additional cost of $8 to fulfill the 4 books that were ordered. Your total investment so far was $108 and you managed to bring in $120, leaving you with a whopping $12 profit. Whoopty-doo, eh? Well, not quite. Because next let’s talk about…

Lifetime Customer Value – this is the most important metric of all. The reason why the above example isn’t too bad (and actually is pretty darn good) is because what if, out of those 4 new buyers, 2 of them go on to purchase your more expensive personal coaching program for $2000? That initial cost of $108 has now yielded several thousand dollars in revenue. I ask you: if there were an ATM machine you could go to and for every $108 you fed into it, it spit out $3500 to $4000 back – how many times would you feed it the $108? Now you can easily see how this changes the math considerably and why it’s a good idea to always take into account lifetime customer value before being too rash about your advertising expenditure. In fact, many businesses view the first sale as merely a cost of doing business and are more than happy to break even (or sometimes even lose money) on the front end in order to acquire more subscribers and customers, and make up for all the expense by marketing over and over to the same highly interested, highly qualified group of people.

So if you sell a front end product for $50, what’s the most you should be willing to pay to get a buyer and still be safe?

Answer: $50 (for simplicity’s sake, I’m ignoring costs like credit card transaction fees, etc… and besides, if you need to take such small things into account to be profitable, the venture’s not worth pursuing anyway)

Obviously we’ll always try to make as much of a profit as we can on the front end. But for the most part, think of your front end process as “buying a customer.” Because once you grab that name and address out of the ether, they’re yours to protect, nurture, and cultivate until they either buy, die, or tell you to stop communicating with them.

That’s how the game is played. And knowing your math is key to your survival and your success.

So you need ways of tracking ALL this stuff automatically.

First, this means installing web analytics software on your website. The one I use is the excellent Google Analytics, which is available at http://analytics.google.com for free. They give away what would normally be an expensive software package because they want to increase the number of likely advertisers on their Google Adwords search advertising system.

Second, this means setting up a Google Adwords account and also using their “Website Optimizer” software. This will allow you to test the conversion rates of different key pages on your site and compare the results to multiple versions of the same page so that you can drop the poor performers and continually improve the winners. You must always be constantly improving the conversion performance of your site. (Example: How might our hypothetical example above change if our front end conversion rate doubled and instead of 10 newsletter signups from $100, we now found a way to get 20? The profit numbers are staggering.)

But until now I’ve left out one important part of the profit equation: the source of the website visitor. Where did they come from? Different visitors coming to your website from different sources will behave completely differently and therefore give you wildly different numbers.

Sam coming to you from Google where he typed in “real estate investment course” is going to behave completely different from Mark who came from a banner ad on a gold bullion investment website, who will be different still from Harry who came in off of Yahoo because he typed in “investment advice.”

Each of these 3 guys came from different locations with different mindsets about investing and saw different versions of your ad copy (at least I hope so) before clicking. Getting each one of them to sign up for your investment newsletter is going to require a slightly different approach in what you say to them and how you say it. This probably means sending each one of them to 3 separate pages on your site, each having a different pitch to sign up for your free newsletter. Each mini-pitch will cater to a different set of beliefs and desires – maybe even make different promises of benefits.

This is only the beginning of how you need to think about your web marketing.

All of your keyword advertising needs to be tracked down to the exact phrase and the exact source. Your banner ads on other sites, your promotional e-mails you send out, your website’s most (and least) popular pages – everything – must be tracked so you can be continually improving what’s working, dropping what’s not working, and ignoring everything else.

Each day you’re not testing something new, your sales process gets a tad bit weaker and your business dies a tiny bit. You can go like that for awhile, but sooner or later, even the best ads tire out and even the best websites get old and stale. You’re either growing or you’re dying; there’s no middle ground.

Everything matters on your website; color matters, what you say and how you say it matters, your choice in graphics matter.

Examples of small tests done to different websites that dramatically improved sales:

1. Calling a group of your products “Best sellers” or calling them “Most popular”? Most people don’t like the idea of being “sold” and saying that something is popular implies that “if everybody else is doing it, it must be good” – so “most popular” won by a longshot.

2. On one of my websites, I labeled a section of things I didn’t want people to miss “Must Reads”, then later changed it to “Top Secret” – reading implies work and a lot of people don’t like to work. However, people do like to discover secrets and forbidden things, so Top Secret won by leaps and bounds. Also, you should know that “discovering” implies the answers are already there waiting for them, they merely have to open up the treasure chest and take a look. But learning and studying means lots of work.

3. Saying that a group of products “Start at $50” or are “As low as $50” – well, if something “starts at $50”, you can bet the price can only go up from there. But if its as low as $50, that just has a more pleasant ring to it. Easier on the wallet.

4. “Shop for lava lamps” or “catalog of lava lamps”? A “catalog of” something is passive and boring, while a lot of people associate shopping with a degree of fun and excitement. To shop is also an action verb, which helps too. Anytime you can give your visitor a direct command without sounding threatening is a good thing. (By the way, “shopping” is different than being “sold” something. The seller is in control of selling, while the buyer is in control when shopping. A very subtle but important distinction there.)

5. In one of my marketing pieces I tested calling my prospects “travelers” versus “tourists” – well, everybody knows that a “traveler” is a sophisticated citizen of the world; a person admired and respected by his peers… while a “tourist” waits in line at the claims office and gets mugged immediately after setting foot on the beach. Nobody wants to be a tourist.

6. I once tested the “Hacker Safe” logo versus the Better Business Bureau logo on one of my sites for credibility purposes. Now this was shocker; more than 51% of the site’s visitors responded more favorably to the Hacker Safe logo than the long established reputation of the BBB. When I examined further into this, I discovered something I hadn’t known before; in study after study, a surprising number of people in the United States really have no idea what the BBB is or what they do. On the other hand, with “Hacker Safe” you don’t even really have to know what they are in order to understand… it’s all right there in the name.

7. I’ve tested this on my order forms: big red ugly arrows next to my submit button or just the normal button and no arrows? Time after time, I’m learning that ugly has an appropriate time and place. In many cases, arrows improve conversion. Even different colors of arrows will yield varying results. Yellow and blue tends to make people more anxious and click, while red tends to stop them in their tracks and linger awhile. That’s why I often use a dark red in my headlines and blue and yellow order buttons with big ugly arrows pointing to them. Work a heckuva lot better with them than without.

8. Saying “We ship worldwide” on your site versus putting a string of little multi-national flags along the top? Yup, the flags increased conversion and stopped people from calling to ask “Hey do you guys ship to …” And yes, even though it says something very clearly on your site, you’ll still get people e-mailing and calling you asking about it anyway. That’s just how some people are.

9. Using audio and/or video on your site also usually increases conversion. Remember when doing audio or video that the same AIDA rules STILL apply. You need to use the audio and video to supplement your text sales message, not replace it entirely. Another clever use of video would be showing them exactly what will happen after they order. This gives them a “behind the scenes” look at things without making an up-front commitment.

10. Testimonials – use them often and sprinkle them everywhere you can. Make them as believable and “real” as possible. No “M.H. from Missouri” – say “Mark Hardy, construction worker from St. Louis, Missouri working for Hogan Construction. Then provide a picture, text of his testimonial and if possible even an audio clip of him expanding and elaborating on what the text portion says. Ideally, if you wanted the best kind of testimonial possible, you’d use a video of the guy speaking directly to the prospect via the camera about how great your product is and how much it helped him get over his back problems, make more money, etc etc.

11. Header graphics – always make sure the content of your website begins well “above the fold” (well within the dimensions of the computer screen) and as far up to the beginning of the page as possible. Where a lot of sites go wrong here is by having huge fancy “professional looking” header graphics that not only do not communicate value to the prospect, but also consume valuable website real estate that could be put to work for you in far better ways. On checkout processes, you need to get even more strict with this, sometimes eliminate the header graphic or navigation system of your site completely. Let nothing distract your visitor at the moment of truth when they’re about to give you their credit card number. While you’re at it, you need to remind your dear customer-to-be that her purchase today is protected by secure 128-bit military grade data encryption – the same kind sites like Amazon.com and eBay use. Actually, all sites use 128 bit encryption, but don’t count on your prospects to know that. Most people have no clue about that stuff.

12. Photos – I’ve talked about stock photography in a previous post, but it bears repeating in this one. My personal take is: don’t use it. Ever. Even if your alternative is badly lit, out of focus shots of relatively ugly people, my own personal tests have proven to me over and over again to always opt for highly realistic, believable photos over the clear, crisp “too perfect to be real” fakeness of stock. Not only is it cheaper for you to pull off, but it generates far more attention and commands unparalleled believability among your prospects. Highly realistic photography was my dirty little secret weapon as an eBay PowerSeller for years; while my competitors used stock photos from the manufacturer’s website, took my own photo of the machine running on my bedroom floor with a ruler in front to demonstrate the size of the product. As a result (and combined with a few other secrets), my listings got far more views and far more sales than any other guy selling the exact same product. I was believed and trusted. The others created doubt… and doubt kills a sale.

People buy for their own reasons. As marketers, it’s up to us to figure out what those reasons are, understand them, and then communicate how we provide the answer through our offering. Not everybody gets it right immediately and different appeals are needed for different people.

That’s why we must test. It is our duty to our customers to give them precisely what they want. And in doing so, we make them happier, and they make us happier by giving us more money more often.

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Most businesses make the mistake of thinking using any kind of real personality in their marketing is “unprofessional” or some other such nonsense.

That kind of thinking will get you burned at the stake if you ever go up against someone making good use of it.

In the long term, after all your best customers have purchased most of what you have to offer, the ONE THING that’ll keep them coming back to you – even if you have higher prices than average and your offerings have become more commoditized over the years – is your personality.

They like it. They need it. They want more and more of it. Your relationship with your market will be like an on-going fascinating novel, delivered to them in bit pieces, each one making them eagerly look forward to the next installment… but ONLY if you do it right.

Think of your ideal prospect or best customer as a single person representative of your whole market as much as possible. (The better you know who your customer is, the better you’ll be able to develop a business personality they’ll want to cling to.)

Now think of your business as a person, with thoughts, feelings, loves, hates, fears, super-powers, and yes, even weaknesses. If you’re the owner of the business and lead even somewhat of an interesting life, make your business “avatar” an exaggerated version of your own personality for the purpose of having a “voice” to use whenever you write marketing copy for your customers and prospects.

Your business avatar needs to be just like a real person. You need to be strongly FOR certain things and strongly AGAINST others. You need to love some things with a passion and despise others with a vengeance. You need to be a champion for your customer, someone out there fighting for your customer daily, reporting back occasionally with the next interesting bit of news.

If you’ve ever read a J. Peterman catalog, they do an excellent job of giving the reader something to look forward to with each catalog issue as well as injecting passion and romance into such seemingly ordinary products as wallets, shirts, and travel bags.

Part of this structured personality-based communication is similar to the ability to write good prolonged fiction. The Travis McGee series of books is a perfect example of long, compelling fiction spanning around 18 books and 20 years of “loyal customers” (readers) for life. These fans never stopped reading because the books were “too long” or the message “too boring.” The closer you can get to your own style of romance and intrigue, the more people you will hook, and therefore the more you will sell.

Yes, you may very well offend some people. And in fact, its usually good if you do. It means you’re on the right track of creating a business personality that STANDS for something instead of existing as just another faceless entity in the crowd of competitors. Ironically, by turning away certain types of customers, you will more fiercely attract others you never would’ve been able to hold for very long otherwise.

Much like a good body of series fiction, your business story needs to contain the elements of plot, characters, ideas, and adventures. These will be delivered out to your customers and prospects in small doses via your newsletters, continuity products, word-of-mouth, events/seminars/speeches, and via other industry leaders, thus building your “legend” over time.

Key Elements of Your Business Story

1. The Guru, Hero, or Leader – Your avatar needs a story of origin, a reason why you came into being in your particular market. In the health market I mentioned earlier, my story is centered around the fact I got a particular disease and since I had very little money at the time and no health insurance, I decided to go out and find a cure on my own. The story goes on about how hard I studied, researched, and tested until I finally found the elusive solution. Now I’ve packaged it into a special report I’m offering to the customer to save them all the time and expense I had to go through to find it. Bingo, instant dramatized sales story.

2. The “Parables” – Stories you tell your customers about yourself that teach lessons and build your credibility and competence in their minds.

3. The “Miracles” – Incredible things you’re known for making happen that hardly anyone else (or perhaps NO ONE else) can do.

4. Insider language or ritual – Think Starbucks’ “Venti Mocha Whatever” kind of products that actually require the customer to, in a sense, learn a new language. You need to have terms and phrases that are only understood by you and your market so that there’s a clear “inside” and “outside” to your company. Outsiders always want to be on the inside and insiders never want to be left in the cold.

5. The Dogma – Your personality’s fundamental core beliefs and value system. Your personal “rules” and code of ethics. What you will and will never do.

6. The Enemies – Like I said before, you must stand FOR something, and AGAINST something. Take stances and make certain decisions. Honestly admit mistakes and “fight the good fight.” This is especially easy to illustrate in the health market where oftentimes the common enemy shared between you and your prospects are either doctors or Big Pharma.

7. The Testimony – Social proof that your “miracles” really do happen and that your “dogma” is really the way to go.

Consider this: who do you think about if I were to mention…

• “Shaken, not stirred.”

• License to kill

• British MI6

• 007

• Walther PPK

Obviously, I’m referring to James Bond. But why did you know that? Was it a coincidence? Or did the creators of James Bond MAKE SURE you knew it?

Ahh, now we’re getting somewhere.

Ideally, you need to develop a business personality so compelling and recognizable that you can say just a few key words and people instantly “get it.”

Character Types That Have Proven Longevity In Business

1. The stern, but loving parent – curmudgeon
2. The patient teacher – philosopher
3. The dysfunctional eccentric genius – adventurer
4. The “everyman” – inspirational leader
5. The mystical seer – secret processes, language, and code

People want to read about the exceptional. And while you or I may not be exactly super-hero material, we can still craft exaggerated versions of our everyday selves that will be seen as exceptional to our customers and prospects. We will be more exceptional then our “real life” selves, but not entirely fictional either.

You need to identify and magnify your own special abilities. What are you good at that mystifies most people?

Even if you’re an auto mechanic or someone who sells handbags at an online store, you can still apply all of this to your business. You don’t have to be fighting government goons and dodging bullets for this to really be put to work for you.

As a copywriter, this is part of what I help people put together, along with all the other stuff we’ve been talking about.

You need to look at yourself and…

• accentuate your positives

• exaggerate your personality

• sharpen your voice

• …and embellish your heroics

You need to be a likable character. Obviously, a likable character is one who does likable things. (Why do you think every president has a dog or cat? Not a big thing, but it helps.) You need to do favors for people. You need to be witty in conversation. Don’t be selfish. Have an expansive view of life. Don’t take yourself too seriously. And be self-deprecating, but still confident.

You need to be the exceptional character… but with flaws. Be someone who overcomes obstacles and tells others how to not make the same mistakes.

Your character needs to be emotionally complex. An interesting character is not wholly agreeable to the audience. The audience will not agree with everything you represent or champion. At times, they will even struggle to reach agreement. You need to keep your customers and prospects guessing “What will he/she do next?”

For your customers and prospects to get and maintain interest for you, you must become a real person to them. Real people have flaws and are works in progress. None of us are perfect. From time to time we do make mistakes. This should be no different with our business avatars. No one wants to read about a perfect character.

Sherlock Holmes has endured for well over 100 years because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle understood he could not be perfect. While Sherlock has perfect intellect, he’s an emotional black hole incapable of a sustained relationship with anyone other than Dr. Watson, and on top of that, he abuses drugs.

You sustain an audiences interest over time to the extent you are willing to let them look into your personal life.

If people get to know you well enough and begin to look you up on the internet, do searches on your past history, etc… they’re going to find out something sooner or later anyway… so why not just come clean and admit certain key things in your marketing? The benefits will be two-fold:

1. You’ll get the chance to tell YOUR side of the story and spin it the way you want it to sound. And…
2. You’ll gain even more credibility in the long run for admitting to past mistakes.

For example, if you were selling books on how to get rich in real estate, it would probably be a good idea if YOU went ahead and exposed any past bankruptcies, divorces, or personal insecurities to your market rather than keeping them hidden.

Why?

Because they’re true things that really happened to you that you can use to enhance your “realism” to the market and more tightly bond with your customers and prospects, many of whom have likely been through the same hardships themselves.

Also, if anyone ever tries to “expose” you for being some kind of phony (any time you become successful, there are always people who want to see you crash and burn), it’ll be impossible for them to dig up any dirt that you haven’t already “exposed” yourself. You win no matter what and become immune to their jealousy.

As I’ve said before, you need to have a backstory. How did you come into being in this business? How did you get to be who you are today? What do you do what you do, and believe what you believe? This is your mythology, your legend, your life story summarized. It must be told again and again, endlessly and in different ways. It must be woven into even your newest presentations in new ways, always used as a foundation.

Next, what is your character’s context? What enemies do you battle (and conquer?) Under what circumstances do you operate? What kind of people do you interact with? Where do you travel, where do you live? What kind of adventures do you engage in?

In one of the websites I run, my business avatar does battle against the IRS and other “unfair bully” government agencies. He constantly deals with going against the grain on “normal thinking” when it comes to making money with investments and protecting your existing wealth. He hob-nobs with some of the most brutal and influential business men in the world (who wish to protect their anonymity), travels to exotic islands and distant countries in search of opportunity for his customers, and while doing so has little side-adventures with various women, corrupt government officials and sleazy merchants.

And you know what? It’s all TRUE… just exaggerated for the benefit of the reader. To keep them engaged in my sales messages so that they look FORWARD to the next one (oh boy, what in the world is he up to this time?)  instead of dreading them (oh geez, not another message from this guy…delete)

Do you see how this can impact your sales? Do you see how this can keep customers for life, buying from you over and over?

You also need to have parables – an ever-growing inventory of stories about your character you tell over and over to illustrate your key ideas, teachings, beliefs, etc.

Your stories must always have a point to them and arrive at that point clearly and concisely. Get used to telling your stories because you’ll need them again every time you send out a new marketing piece to attract new customers.

Always keep selling yourself, your ideas, the value you deliver, your viewpoints, your philosophy, and all the other things that bond you to your market.

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