Must-read for anyone in business, marketing, or selling — Jay is a genius!
Hey there Rainmaker, we’re going to talk business growth strategy in a minute…
But I got a question from one of my clients yesterday that I thought was rather interesting, worth reflecting on here, and that I think leads perfectly into today’s Strategy Thursday lesson.
My client asked me, “Roy, are you still wanting to go into the ‘guru’ business?”
He was curious. I’ve done well with him recently, and because of that maybe he wants to know how long I’ll be around to help him grow his business.
Also, he reads these daily emails, so he’s keeping track of what I’m up to here.
And so we got to talking…
The idea of being a “guru” is a weird one to me…
Even though that’s kind of exactly what I’m doing here at Breakthrough Marketing Secrets… And even though there’s a lot of value that can be generated from having a high profile… I’ve never thought of myself as being one of the “gurus.” Or, as Ben Settle derogatorily refers to them, “goo-roos.”
Yeah, I’m a teacher. And I like students. And doing things to raise my profile doesn’t hurt my business. And occasionally I make some good money off of coaching, teaching, and so on.
But there’s also a stigma about the whole biz that I don’t want to be a part of. A lot of well-known gurus didn’t become that way by doing what they teach. They became that way by colluding with other gurus, sending customers back and forth, selling largely straw-men strategies that have never proven themselves in the market.
Not all — mind you. There are quite a few marketing teachers who are ethical, honest, and only provide advice they think will benefit you, so long as you apply it.
But there are also a ton of fly-by-night snake-oil sellers… More interested in getting your money than helping you make it.
That’s the part of the biz I don’t want to have any association with…
“But what about the people you respect?”
That’s a completely legitimate question. There are folks like Gary Bencivenga, whose copywriting career and ability we all wish we could match. Dan Kennedy, who doesn’t always make the best of friends (especially with more liberal audiences) but whose business principles are sound and who has made a small personal fortune through his guru-dom. Perry Marshall, who is one of my favorite teachers out there, who has definitely built a guru biz. Joe Polish. Dan Sullivan. Ken McCarthy. The list goes on.
And — to a degree — I’d love to be like so many of these “gurus.”
But there’s one who stands above all, for a very specific reason, that I’ve always admired and wished to base my thinking and approach to helping clients on.
Jay Abraham — The $9.4 Billion Man…
Jay Abraham has been in the “guru” game for a long time. He’s one of the modern forefathers of the information marketing, seminar, and marketing “guru” business.
And while Jay has, as I’ve understood it, made a small personal fortune off teaching marketing… He was — after all — the guy who put on $25,000, 1-week training seminars, packed with students… Jay’s biggest impact has NOT been as a teacher, but as a doer of marketing.
But not in the same way as so many folks who consider themselves “doers” — who go into a business, and create a marketing campaign or promotion, and run it.
Sure, Jay can do that. He can sit down and create a campaign or a promotion.
He can write copy. He doesn’t think of himself as a copywriter. Doesn’t call himself a copywriter. But he can definitely write copy.
Where Jay shines though is thinking — thinking about everything from what needs to be said in copy (very different from writing it!), to the 58 different opportunities any given business has to grow.
And where Jay has generated most of that $9.4 billion in tracked growth, has been in working with businesses to identify the lowest-input, highest-output areas where a tiny little bit of work can generate extraordinary growth results.
That’s what makes him my hero…
I’ve spent a long time getting good at copy.
Actually, the last 10 years or so, really honing my writing. Taking it from academic, thick, and dry… To (hopefully!) punchy, compelling, and action-motivating.
But I’ve also spent the last 10 years perfecting a far less visible skill. Something that doesn’t produce the same kind of tangible “work product” that writing a sales letter does — but one that’s far, far more lucrative.
That is, I’ve spent the last 10 years incorporating thinking like Jay’s on how to go into a business — any business, in any industry — and identify the biggest opportunities for low-input, high-output revenue, sales, and profits growth.
I’ve studied all the different ways to grow a business. Dozens of different revenue models. Concepts for differentiating a business that apply in nearly any industry. Which principles of business growth are pretty much universal, and can be applied wherever there’s a market that has to make a voluntary purchase decision as to whether or not to do business with you.
I know — from experience — what it takes to broker joint venture deals that lead to a win-win-win between two or more businesses and the client who is getting better, more complete service through cooperation of product or service providers.
These have contributed on many levels to some of my biggest successes…
— Helping my first and last marketing employer to more than double their business and put them on the Inc. Magazine list of America’s fastest-growing businesses…
— Breaking sales records at multiple clients’ businesses…
— Generating tens of thousands of leads for campaigns that would go on to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in weeks (above and beyond clients’ baseline revenue during that period)…
— Creating campaigns that exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, and put million-dollar sums into my clients’ bank accounts…
— Made best-selling products 60+% more profitable by simply thinking, “is this price appropriate to the market?” … And recommending clients test higher pricing as a result…
— And more…
And this is on top of my copywriting work…
I don’t list all this to brag, but to say that knowing all this strategy is far more interesting to me than simply knowing how to write a sales letter.
Why? Because it’s strategy that can have the most transformative impact on a client’s business and profits!
That’s why I want to be more Jay.
I want to spend more time going deep with businesses to identify these strategic changes that will have the biggest impact on their business…
Changes that will make their businesses more profitable, with less work, requiring less of their time to maintain an even more successful business.
Along these lines, let me share something…
This is a very important strategy that Jay is known for teaching.
The origin of this particular passage though, is a letter I’m putting the finishing touches on right now. It will go out to a number of hand-selected businesses in my local area, each doing over $5 million, with the hope of going deep with these businesses to generate at least $10 million in profitable growth.
This is me offering one of a couple “mechanisms” (note the Eugene Schwartz copy concept) by which I will fulfill on my promise of $10 million growth in 36 months…
Here’s the excerpt…
Now — let me show you how to grow your business 2X-8X…
Before I lay out the conditions for working with me and how to get started, I want to show you how SIMPLE it can be to add $10 million in profitable growth to a business already doing at least $5 million a year. In fact, I want to show you three areas of improvement in any established business. And between the three of these areas, a $5 million per year business could quickly grow to a $10-$40 million per year business — representing 2X-8X growth…
What I’m about to share with you are perhaps the three biggest leverage points that exist in any business. Points of impact that have a direct and disproportionate impact on your financial results. Areas in your business that are likely under-performing — right now — compared to what they could be doing for you.
You wouldn’t knowingly be allowing a portion of your business to vastly under-perform its potential… But my question is which of these areas of your business could be doing 2X, 5X, 10X what they are now that you don’t know about yet?
— First leverage point: What if your customer acquisition process could work twice as well? That is, what if through the same level of effort and expense, you could bring twice as many customers into your business? There are many, many possibilities for doing this. Better targeting. Better positioning. Better messaging. Better offers. The list goes on…
— Second leverage point: What if you were able to double the profit-per-transaction that you get from every customer? Think of the “Would you like fries with that?” offer. What if you were to find some particular product or service that you could add to your catalog, which when offered to every customer, a certain percentage would happily take you up on it — and as a result, the profit potential in every transaction were to double? (Or a 10X-higher priced offer that a small percentage would take. Or… Or…)
— Third leverage point: What if you could find a way to bring past customers back in, on demand? You could systematize this to have past customers coming back to do business with you more often… OR, when needed, to create instant cash infusions within your business! (Or get them doing more business with you through a subscription or continuity offer, where you sell once but collect income for years. Or… Or…)
Or if you were to do all three? To double your new customers, double your profit in every transaction, and double the number of transactions every customer did with your business in a year…?
To double any one of those would double your profits. Because each compounds on the other though, to double all three would multiply your profits 8X! A more conservative growth of just 25% in each area would yield 95% compounded growth. 50% growth in each — making each area of your business work only half-again better — would lead to more than 3X growth.
You can see how — through the simple task of identifying these leverage points and improving on each — a $5 million business could quickly reach $10 million or beyond.
These three leverage points are a powerful concept…
By simply being able to focus on these areas, you could significantly increase revenue and profits at a business — with very little work at all.
For example, think about the McDonald’s “Would you like fries with that?” offer.
I wrote about this before, but McDonald’s didn’t always offer fries with your meal — or a value meal. But once they tested these upsells, they made such a dramatic impact on revenue and profits that they rolled out to every location in the world… AND transformed the entire fast food industry.
There are similarly simple ways to get more people to come in for the first time… And to get past customers coming back more often.
When you train your brain to look for them, you can find these opportunities in nearly any business.
It’s what Jay has specialized in, creating over $9.4 trillion in business growth as a result. And it’s what I told my client who asked what I’d be spending more time doing.
Less project work. More long-term commitments to working closely with businesses to dramatically increase their revenue through a variety of low-input, high-output growth stimulation strategies I’ve been adding to my toolbox for the last 10 years.
Whether you’re a business owner, employee, consultant, copywriter, whatever… By focusing on these strategies — like the ones Jay talks about in his book Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You’ve Got — you will become far more valuable, and be able to create much bigger impacts on any business, including yours or clients’.
Do you have a $5-million-plus business that you’d like to add $10 million or more in profitable growth to over the next 3 years?
Before I sign off… If you have a business that’s doing at least $5 million, and you’d like to add $10 million or more in profitable growth over the next 3 years… You may be a fit for this program I’m also offering to business owners in my area…
I’ll work with you for the next 36 months to help you grow your business… And you pay me based on results — 5% of growth above and beyond your current growth trend.
If you’re interested in this offer and would like more details, shoot me a note at [email protected] and I’ll send you the letter with full details.
There’s no obligation in asking, and no obligation in submitting an application. But if we are a fit and I see the opportunity in your business, there may be tremendous upside.
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
