Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 29

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Marketing From The Heart: Issue # 29
Copyright © Zerald Communications Corporation 2002
http://www.zerald.com
All Rights Reserved.

By Tom St. Louis - Canada’s Marketing Wizard

February 6, 2003
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Sitting at the Foot of the Ultimate Marketing Master

Dear Subscriber:

Belated Happy New Year! I decided to take some time off to reflect on marketing and life in general. Instead of my normal "marketing tips" format, I'd like to tell you about an amazing experience I had in Los Angeles in December with Jay Abraham. The article below will be featured in Small Business Canada Magazine next month.

The Elvis and Einstein of Marketing

I recently attended a Jay Abraham "Mastermind" marketing conference in Los Angeles along with 650 business owners from around the world. The name Jay Abraham has tremendous cachet in entrepreneurial circles and among would be marketing greats. In fact, there are dozens of "marketing geniuses" peddling their wares on the Internet who are nothing more than respinners and outright plunderers of classic Jay Abraham material.

As a direct marketing consultant, one of the first questions I'm often asked is whether I'm familiar with "Jay's stuff". So powerful is the Abraham cachet that many business owners say they want to work with me as soon as they discover I've worked directly with Jay.

Jay's materials are extremely expensive and he has dozens of books and tape sets on offer. A Jay Abraham book can set you back as much as five hundred big fat American dollars. And, if you follow his advice, you are guaranteed to realize a significant multiple of that amount. In fact, all of Jay's products come with the most outrageous "I-dare-you-to-ask-for-a-refund" guarantees. Risk reversal is a central concept in Jay's corpus of strategies.

But what could there possibly be that would make this self described ADD sufferer worth $5,000 US per hour? One of my American clients credits Jay's strategies with growing his annual revenues from $1 Million to $20 Million in a few years. Could one man's mind be worth that much money? I think so and I’m not alone.

It all comes down to Jay's remarkable brain and its ability to pump out more strategic insights per minute than your garden variety marketing genius can produce in a year -- or a lifetime. It’s an unforgettable experience to witness one man holding 650 business owners spellbound for three days and nights.

Over a hundred of the participants in Los Angeles were repeat attendees. Some show up to every event he holds -- despite that Jay charges as much as $25,000 for his "advanced" courses. Most of the attendees on LA were first timers, but they seemed to catch "the vibe" quickly.

We were all there to sit at the foot of Jay's wondrous brain. There we sat bearing silent witness to his singular grasp of marketing principles, hour after painful hour. (Those conference room chairs become unbearable after twelve or thirteen hours.)

I've heard his presentation on "The Strategy of Preeminence" at least ten times over the years. I could encapsulate it for you in under a minute and do a pretty good job. But my description might not change your business life forever as Jay's undoubtedly would. Every time Jay delivers it, he takes two or three hours. Sometimes he digresses for ten or fifteen minutes to reflect on a word or a seemingly minute aspect of a definition.

And while he delivers his soliloquy, with characteristic thoroughness and passion, a sizable portion of the audience experiences the mind-expanding business "aha" they’ve been looking for.

Elvis and Einstein? Oh Really?

Okay, so the guy is good, you're probably thinking. But what's with the comparison with Elvis and Einstein? Isn't that laying it on a bit thick?

Well, Elvis could cause an audience to lose their bearings completely. He brought a charisma and sheer virtuosity that transfixed his fans, his bands and all his contemporaries. Nobody seriously disputed that Elvis was in a class by himself.

You can say the same about Jay Abraham. How else can you explain the fact that otherwise hardheaded businessmen and women are willing to sit from early morning until late night three days in a row listening to this guy and taking copious notes? (One night we were up till after 4 AM!)

Okay, Elvis, maybe, you might be thinking, but Einstein? Einstein redefined physics, for God’s sake! What has Abraham done except operate an outrageously audacious albeit successful consulting practice?

In his own way, Jay has redefined marketing, which is the very heart of business. That's pretty significant, don't you think?

He single-handedly pioneered the "marginal net worth" or "lifetime value of a customer" concept – and many others -- which have become pivotal for all smart marketers. His work on risk reversal and host/beneficiary systems has created hundreds of fortunes. Some day in the not too distant future, business historians will look back at the changes the Internet made to life in North America and conclude that direct marketing principles pioneered and codified by none other than Jay Abraham were central to the explosion.

If you don't believe that Jay is the Einstein of marketing, don't take my word for it. Check out his latest book: "Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition". It's Jay's one and only mainstream accessible information product, retailing for about twenty dollars. Implement one idea at a time, one a week, for a year. Then we'll talk.

The best part of my experience in LA was hearing Jay relate the story of how he was able to fill the very room we were sitting in. On the third day, Jay and his trusted assistant Carl Turner described in detail and documented fully every step they took to induce 650 individuals to fork over $5,000 to attend the conference.

Speaking directly to all of us, Jay explained his mindset as follows:
"I knew it was just a matter of time. I knew that you were eventually going to become my clients, so I didn't wait for you to write me a check before I started delivering tremendous value. I promised each of you forty days and forty nights of merciless moneymaking and I kept my promise. I delivered free valuable Reports and transcripts and free Tele-classes and more -- to ensure that you all achieved a multiple of the course fee before you arrived."

"When you did not respond to the first five or even ten e-mails, I didn't give up. I couldn't let you down. I wasn't concerned about how things looked from my point of view. I was looking at it from your point of view. I just wanted to make sure you got your breakthrough and I wouldn't give up until you got it!"

Simple stuff, right? Sure it is. That’s what makes it great. So let's go out and implement it in 2003.

All the best,

Tom St. Louis

P.S. If this issue of Marketing From The Heart has
been inspiring, useful or thought-provoking, please
take a moment and forward it to your friends and
associates.

P.P.S. If you have a particular marketing challenge
or question, feel free to forward it to
questions@zerald.com. Your question may be featured
in an upcoming issue.

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