4 secrets I got from Dan Kennedy
Hey!
This is a transcript from a podcast I did a while back.
Enjoy:
Olivier
Alright. Today we’re going to talk about Dan Kennedy. I just finished Dan Kennedy’s biography called My Unfinished Business, and I’d like to give you four take-aways that I got from the book that helped me and I hope will help you too.
The first thing is basically what he says is that anything in his life that he really, really, really wanted, whether it be his third wedding marriage to the same wife, the being able to legally be a driver of a horses, or make a shitload of money, he had to go through major adversities, to go through major challenges. That made me feel better, because I know what I want and discipline, I’m taking massive action, I am learning from my mistakes, and always improving myself. I’m trying to use as much tools as I can, whether it’s energy medicine, NLP, you name it. Still, a lot of times, I get myself frustrated and I curse at God or the universe by saying, you know, another challenge, da-da-da. I felt as if I was the only one, maybe I said I’m retarded or something, that knows all of these technologies. I thought that life is supposed to be easy when you’re going after goals, because you can change your physiology and you can remove psychological reversals. But to know that, at least this guy, and I think it might be the same thing for a lot of people who achieve great things in their life, they have to go through major shit (chuckles) before they get what they really, really want.
So taking massive action is something. Yeah. But it seems that going through phases of despair and frustration, at least he had to go through these, and it gave me perspective. I feel less retarded and impatient because I can’t get my goals, because I mean I’ve got some pretty big goals. I work my ass off, and, man, results are thin compared to the efforts and the shit that happens to me. That’s a good thing. To realize that even though the sales pitch and making money and self-improvement and Tony Robbins and NLP and you name it is quick and easy and whatever, in reality it might be different. That’s the first thing I got.
The other thing I want to tell you is what he calls money-making secrets he would have loved to learn sooner. I’m going to give them to you and hope that it helps you make more money earlier. The first thing is it is what he calls price elasticity. Price elasticity. Maybe my pronunciation isn’t perfect, but he tells of the story of one of his customers, who I think was selling information on how to prevent your employees from stealing from you. His client had like a couple of tapes strapped together. He was selling that something for $600.00. Dan convinced his client to sell the whole thing for $6,000.00. (Laughs) So we’re not talking about doubling or tripling your price here, we’re talking about adding a zero. He lost one customer. His clients, by going from $600.00 to $6,000.00, lost only one customer.
I did this with my own business without really willing – I was not aiming at this. But when I do my promotions, for example, when I launch a product, I will say this is the introductory price. The price will double in the next three days. So people rush up to buy it because they know I will double the price. To be honest, the introductory price is the price at which I want to sell the product. When I double it, I know I’m not going to sell any copies, until the next time I do another promotion where I reduce the price. It’s one of the things that Doc LaTourette does. I don’t know if you know this guy John LaTourette, but basically he will do seminars. He will videotape his seminars and then not sell them. He will accumulate these like 20 DVDs-long seminars. When he does a seminar, he will say, “Well, if you act early, you will get these never-released before to the public bonuses,” and will stack up $10,000.00 of perceived values of bonuses. Each of these products he says is like $4,000.00. But, of course, nobody will buy these products at $4,000.00. It gives him an excuse to build up perceived value. It’s the same thing if you go to one of Harv Eker’s seminars. Long story short, price elasticity. So, yeah, return to my story. I sold one copy of one of my products at double the price. I don’t know why the guy bought it, but it just turns out that – yeah, so price elasticity.
The second one is you have a higher transaction size. If you have a higher average price point, to make a long story short, if you’re selling an e-book for $50.00, and you want to make $1,000,000.00 a year, you have to sell a lot of these e-books to a lot of customers to make $1,000,000.00 a year. If we go on the other extreme of that, Dan says that he charges something like $100,000.00 to write one sales letter. Now, I don’t know if it’s price-inflated or if he really charges that. But let’s say he does. At $100,000.00 per sales letter, you know, you only need 10 customers and you’re a millionaire. You can find your own range between these two. But one of the things I found is that this is one of my major flaws in my other business, my price point. Maybe it’s $50.00, $60.00, so I’ve got like 15 products at $50.00. What you can do – because I tried creating one big ticket that I sold for like $300.00, but it’s so much work. You know, if you’re doing crappy products, it’s okay. But, you know, I had to create 6 CDs full of information. I don’t do any fillers in my product, so it was a fucking lot of work. If you want to create these new monster products, it takes a lot of energy, unless you’re doing seminars, but I don’t.
One easy way you can – two ways that you can do to increase your average transaction size. The first thing, which is my favorite thing, is you bundle a couple of your products together into a whole course and you call it a system. The trick is to make the bundle, not sell it as a bundle, but as a system, but to give it an angle or a story that will appeal to a lot of people. For example, I will create in the coming years a bundle about stress, another one about weight loss, another one about self-esteem. When you look at the different products, they don’t really talk about weight loss except one. But you can stretch the truth, if you like, so that the whole thing is a package about losing weight. For example, I got a product that I sell called how to easily lose weight with energy medicine. It’s 50 bucks. I’ve got another one, it’s a DVD about the emotional freedom technique. Another 50 bucks, you know. I can easily say that with EFT you can rid of your bad feelings. I’ve got another one on self-hypnosis. You can use self-hypnosis to lose weight. I’ve got another one about intuition, what I call your divine intuition. There’s another thing. If you get access to intuition, life gets easier, you can get answers to your question and therefore you’re losing weight. You get the idea here. Basically, you package your different low price products together into a system or a bundle, and you give it a name or a whirl or an angle that will appeal to your target market.
The other way to do that is to do a compilation, to do joint ventures with different authors, and you all chip together. You have two DVDs; you put them in the package. Then you contact another author and he has a two-CD product and you put them together. You get a couple of your friends or a couple of your customers or experts that you know and you create the whole enchilada, like a whole package of all these products together.
The third way, I just thought about it, is to do interviews. The quickest way to do products, unless you know the information yourself, is to simply do interviews. You can do them by phone. One thing I did years ago when I wrote the incredible best-seller How to Make A Living with NLP is I did interviews by e-mail. I targeted some great neuro-linguistic programmers, like Ross Jeffries, Joseph Riggio, Michael Hall, like five others that I don’t remember because it was like years ago that I wrote that. For each of them, I wrote specific questions. Ross Jeffries, which is about speed seduction, and he is good in marketing, I did not ask the same questions that I did with Joseph Riggio. But I sent them the questions and most people were more than happy to answer my questions. They wrote themselves the answers, so you get a written product. The information was killer.
So in summary, three ways. You bundle your products together. You do a compilation – you package other people’s product with yours. Or you do interviews. That was the second money-making secrets that Dan Kennedy, I hoped you had learned earlier how to increase your transaction size.
The last one is the power of recurring products. Recurring products meaning that, instead of selling an e-book or a CD for 50 bucks or 100 bucks, people will give you money for months. It could be, for example, a CD of the month. They pay 50 bucks a month and they get a CD by mail. It could be a membership site for $30.00. There’s a couple of guys in the internet marketing who charge I think it’s $200.00. stompernet.com. It’s a recurring product. I think they really give value for 200 bucks. I want to buy it and check it out, but it’s still 200 bucks per month. Some of the good products is software. For example, I don’t know, maybe four or five years ago, I was doing some internet marketing coaching with people. I got a guy who I said try OneShoppingCart. It was then the best way to reach your customers and send e-mails and stuff like this. Well, yesterday I got an e-mail from OneShoppingCart saying that they’re going to send me a check for $450.00. I haven’t done anything. But the guy is hooked up with OneShoppingCart for the rest of his life because, if you remove this software, his internet business doesn’t work. Selling internet marketing tools. Another good one is aweber.com or SiteSell.com. Site built it. If people use these products, they’re fucked because, if they remove the product, they can’t send e-mail to their customers, plus they’re great products. So software.
Another thing I got from Dan is, if you’re selling services, coaching could be one of them, sell it as a membership site if you like. Instead of charging per the hour, have them sign a contact for, I don’t know, three sessions per month, etcetera. For Dan, the holy grail or the biggest breakthrough in the marketing of information, but it could be applied to any business, is what he calls forced continuity. Forced continuity. Now, I haven’t done it yet. But, from I got, is when you go to one of Dan’s websites, Bill Glazier’s website or whatever, and you want to buy a product with your credit card, let’s say you want to buy the new and improved magnetic marketing product. Let’s say it’s $200.00. Well, you’re forced to try his membership, his newsletter. So you’re automatically signed up for a two-months free trial of Dan’s newsletter. After two months, if you don’t cancel, then you’re billed, I don’t know, 50 bucks or 100 bucks per month. This is devious. This is powerful. If you have a good shopping cart software, which I don’t, at least in my other business, if your business is in English, use something like OneShoppingCart.com and make it so that, whenever somebody is buying one of your products, he is automatically signed up for a free trial of your recurring product. It could be, like I said, a software, it could be a membership site, it could be a CD of the month, it could be a ________ of the month, it could be a membership site.
Alright? So I hope you find value into that. In summary, the four things I got from Dan first was that it might be normal to be frustrated and have to go through major adversities if you want to achieve your goals. Maybe for some it’s easy as a walk in the park but, even if you’re doing everything perfectly, taking action, and you’re cleaning your beliefs and all of that, it still might be a challenge. The second thing is price elasticity. You can do testing and double, triple, quadruple your prices and be surprised how much people don’t really care about the price. All they want is you or the quality of what you’re providing. The third thing is to increase your average transaction size. If your average product price is 50 bucks, and you simply increase it to 100 bucks, well, you’re making twice as more money, less people. Long story short, it’s easier to make more money with higher prices and less customers than low prices and lots of customers. The easiest way to do that is to either bundle your low prices product into one bundle and then you give it a good marketing angle – lose weight, stress reduction, self-esteem, love, attraction, whatever it is, making more money. Or you bundle some of your friends’ products with yours. Or you do interviews – written interviews or by phone. The fourth thing is the power of recurring products. More specifically, he talks about forced continuity. Whenever you’re buying one of Dan’s products, automatically you’re signed up for his free trial, and then you’re billed each month.
I hope this brings value to you. Leave me your questions and commentaries. Thank you.