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REPRINTED FROM
DAN S. KENNEDYS No B.S. Information Marketing Letter
FEBRUARY 2009
Each Special Report brings you an extended length dissertation on one aspect of infomarketing. These Reports alternate every other month with Issues of The No B.S.
INFO-Marketing Letter*; 6 times a year, a new Report, 6 times a year, the newsletter.
The Letter/Reports are included in Information Marketing Association Membership as a
Member Benefit (www.info-marketing.org).
*NOT to be confused with the regular No B.S. Marketing Letter or The No B.S. Marketing To The Affluent
Letter also published by GKIC.)

2014/GKIC

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Resources Assembled for Creating and Running Simple and Easy Multimillion-Dollar Information
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business coaches, newsletter publishers, and seminar promoters turn to the Information Marketing
Association for the critical insights on the business side of running a successful information marketing
business. This information gap can only be filled by the one and only trade association for the
information marketing industry.
The IMA offers everything you need to continue to grow your information marketing business under
one umbrella. The benefits are too many to list.
Because you have this report, you can experience all of the benefits for free, for 2-months, with an
invitation only opportunity to get a two month trial membership. Just visit www.IMAFree.com to take
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As Ive said elsewhere, this isnt my first run around the recession
track. Been here before, done this before.
To my knowledge, there are five best strategies for these
conditions. Six, if you are sitting on mountains of money, have no
need for more, and dont mind your business going backwards and
having to later be re-built, then you might choose to just hibernate.
Take vacations, a sabbatical, see the U.S.A., or spend the next 3 to 5
years learning to ski or surf or bend spoons with your mind. Its NOT
the worst response. For some, it is the best response. It is definitely
the least stressful response. But most of you arent going on
extended vacation. So youre going to need these five strategies.
They are not necessarily strategies youre going to want. But youre
going to need them.
Here is the inconvenient truth: in the near term, you will be
required to invest more, think more, create more, do more and work
more to get less than youve been accustomed to. It will take more of
everything just to get mediocre instead of horrific results. (And
that should finally put an end to my being incorrectly identified as
a motivational speaker.)
You can resent this all you like, and privately, personally, I do. But
there it is. Just like my going bald.
I would make the point, better to be facing this requirement in an
info-marketing business than any other. Others who own stores or
restaurants or chains of them, circuses, factories, sales operations
in home remodeling or office equipment, and on and on their pain
greater, their agility more hampered, their troubles complicated by
their own overhead and infrastructure and need for capital and
consumer financing. If you need three bottles of Tums lined up on
your desk, each assigned to a unique source of indigestion, they need
thirty. Others greater misery is some consolation, although its
impolitic to admit it. But, in privacy, go ahead and grin when you
think about your arrogant brother-in-law the car dealer, who has
always sniffed at whatever the hell it is you do. Still, doing so
wont create a bank deposit. Only digging in and digging hard in hard
to dig in dirt will. So, here are some shovels.

The 5 Shovels
#1: Give em something(s) they cannot get anywhere else or
provide for by themselves
#2: Get them connected to something(s) you can disconnect

#3: Provide them with antidotes to what ails them most and most
urgently
(Re-position and re-package what you offer as such antidote and/or bring them new
ways of making money.)

#1, #2, #3 are best fulfilled if you can crack the code of delivering new customers or repeat
business to their doorstep, in ways they cant duplicate easily or affordably on their own, so that
they rely on you and, as a practical matter, cant disconnect. Platinum Member Dr. Tom Orents
newest, area-exclusive business begun last year, doing dentists marketing for them has these
elements; the Royalty Rewards program conceived by Rory Fatt and Bill Glazer has these
elements. (By the way, usually, THE best way to crack this code is by going into their own
customer and prospect lists and doing follow-up, upsells, cross-sells, reactivations, etc. that they
wont do for themselves). This is probably the most difficult reality to create and it is admittedly
fraught with peril, but it is also the one with the greatest long-term value. Simply, create and control
media and implementation that delivers customers how can they ever leave you? Consider the
Val-Pak business, a business of enormous size, longevity, profitability, with excellent retention of
advertiser-clients even though most whine and complain about how few customers it
produces.they keep using it despite complaining because it does produce customers, and
because they must stay in to protect their category exclusivity.
If you think about #1, #2 and #3 separately, there are many other possibilities. In #1, for example,
connection to a national brand, brand name, professional certification, and/or celebrity or
celebrities qualifies later, I describe Platinum Member Dennis Tubbergens supplying of a
celebrity to financial advisors in his program. Its been a major success for him. This is something
Ive taught and harped on for years .a major opportunity for niche info-marketers..that very,
very few have heeded my advice about. The few who have are definitely benefiting now. It, as #1
linked to #2, makes the loss emotional as well as practical. There is pride of ownership in
attachment to the celebrity (or brand), embarrassment in having it taken away, and revulsion at the
thought of it moving across the street to a competitor.
In #3, it may be something proprietary to you or private labeled for you that your clients become
exclusive resellers of, that can only be obtained through you, and for which you have a complete
marketing system. By giving them a new product(s) or service(s) to sell to their existent customers
and that may also be front-end advertised to bring in new customers; you cross into the selling of
opportunity, discussed in greater depth, later in this Report. This links #3 to #2. It also enables you
to create new, dynamic income streams from the products being purchased at wholesale for resale, and from the sales tools bought with which to sell them. It can be the construction of a
second, good business on the back of the first. For you, this necessity as mother of invention can
lead to ownership of your own niche direct-selling company, a valuable property, so you come out
with equity, not just income. Id suggest viewing it as an opportunity rather than a band-aid. Think
of it this way: the stored value in your business you arent tapping is: your followers end-user
customers. If your followers are now consumers of your stuff, switched to a salesforce, they
become conduit to all those customers. If you have 1,000 owners of whatever's, who each have
1,000 customers, you need to net but $1 per customer per year from sell-through to pocket
$1-million. And, looping back to #2, if your followers are earning commissions or overrides by
being part of your program, they cant disconnect.

Another approach to #3 is providing some way of squeezing more juice out of the shrunken supply
of leads/prospects coming to them through the sources they already employ Platinum Member
Jay Geier fits in that role, with his comprehensive, done for them, fix-the-handling-of-inbound-calls
program (which EVERY niche marketer should be selling to their herds via JV with Jay.)
AREA EXCLUSIVE PROGRAMS are, incidentally, alive and well, right now, and can be a fine way
of combining #1+#2, or #1+#2+#3. Based on calls with most of my Platinum Members in January,
conversations with clients, etc., Id say that right now Platinum Member Ed OKeefe (in the
dental field) is doing the best job and having the greatest success with Area Exclusive. He has
multiple, different area exclusive clubs, is effective at selling them, and has excellent compliance,
implementation and retention. This provides a solid revenue base for his business, and a
continuous big-ticket sale occurring with new clients as well. In the same profession, Dr. Orent has
a viable program (delivering marketing services) and the program I helped create, run by Dr.
Charley Martin DentistryForDiabetics - is in good shape and growing; in January, five new
doctors in new areas. Dean Killingbeck has gone from early struggle to growing success at selling
his area exclusive program via the Discovery-Day model, putting people in the direct-mail business
helping local merchants. I could go on. I have some direct involvement with, relationship with
about 20 operators of various area exclusive programs. NO ONE SHOULD ASSUME THAT
CURRENT ECONOMIC CONDITIONS PRECLUDE SELLING $10,000.00 TO $50,000.00
PROGRAMS in niches of many different kinds.

#4: Go to greater extremes.

Sorry, but now is not the time to cut back on service, on gifts, on razzamatazz at events, at
frequency, consistency, at the creation of good guilt. In fact, the opposite: identify the customers
essential or most valuable to keep and lavish them as never before with attention (and worry about
the precedent set later). I see some info-marketers cutting costs in various ways that negatively
affect the customers experience; its false economy.
You might note that, at Glazer-Kennedy, weve added to our costs without raising prices for
example, in February, Gold Members (and above) began receiving an extra Marketing Sample Kit
Of The Month, with an actual, physical sample of a direct-mail piece, other marketing tool, web
site (sent on DVD), etc. with detailed instructions for its use. This requires staff time to assemble,
adds printing, assembly and postage costs. DIAMOND Members also got value increased with a
more elaborate online resource center. None of this reflects a desire to reduce profits and incur
added costs. It does reflect a realistic assessment of the heightened competition for available
dollars, for retaining our position on that monthly credit card statement while the customer red lines
someone else.
Be certain to take very good care of your most valuable customers. The day I was finishing
this, I was on the phone with an info-marketer who Id forced to do in-depth analysis of his
customers individual contributions to profit. In 2008, the business had net profits just a tick below
$630,000.00. That came from a list of 60,000 customers, but only 25,000 of the 60,000 made 3 or
more purchases per year thus worth, roughly, 300% more than customers in the other 35,000;
and more importantly only 500 were rabid and reliable buyers of virtually everything offered,

including high priced products and events. Each one of the 500 is worth as much as 250+ of the
other 24,500. He needs to listen real close and if he hears one of those 500 sneeze, fire up the jet
and get over there, Kleenex in hand. Better yet, he better prevent any of those 500 getting sick at
all. Key word: prevent.
Try to better satisfy your bigger number of good-but-not-great customers. Its a mistake to
ever worry much about overall, total retention. Thats going to get worse during times like this no
matter what you do. You want to make sure it worsens within the group of lowest value, least
responsive customers. If you do too much to try and save them, you may also do things that turn
off the better customers. Pay close attention to what your good customers are hoping for, looking
for, and excited by and deliver that even if it is of no use in better satisfying your poor customers
who churn anyway. In other words, dont dumb down the deliverables for the slowest and laziest
students youll lose the interest of the smart ones with initiative.
This brings us to segmentation talking to different customers differently, in the same way its
best to talk to different prospects differently. In more generous times, the lumping together of
different kinds of people with some commonality but differing prime interests may have been
something you could get away with. Now, maybe you cant. Think restaurant owners: much in
common, but there are fine dining, casual, and fast food; sit-down dining but carry-out/take-out;
pizza, Chinese, steak; single store operators, multiple store operators. They each devoutly believe
their situations different from the others. If they are financially pinched, pressured or anxious, and
become more discriminatory about spending, theyll be less willing to be in mixed company and
translate ideas; more demanding of getting things specifically for them. The same principle applies
to any niche, as well as to all issues of separation; age, gender, geography, income.
Warning: merely piling on more of the same, trying to satisfy with bigger portions, will, for the
most part, fail to justify its expense in satisfaction measured via retention, repeat purchase
responsiveness or ascension. Its a costly mistake often made. Right now, you definitely do NOT
want to take anything away or, in effect, shrink portion size, but you cant just pile more on the plate
either. These conditions require delivering with more precision. Delivering to each person what that
person wants and values most. This unfortunately involves more work and, probably, more cost.
As a practical matter, what does delivering with more precision mean? Some examples.it means
more narrowly-focused, specific break-out sessions at an event, offering more variety and diversity,
so people can find something of high personal interest, although of zero interest to others in
attendance. Its harder to put together the event, more space is required and its costlier. But thats
what it takes. It means five tele-seminars a month instead of one for people in a coaching program,
so they can pick the one of greatest personal interest. It means online communities organized into
a plethora of small special interest groups vs. one big pond. You might think of this as extreme
specificity.
In front-end marketing, its very likely you are going to have to go to extremes, by way of
doing things you otherwise would be unwilling to do.
As example, My Platinum Member Dennis Tubbergen has taken my road show model (dating
back to my SuccessTrak business of the 80s, with an evening seminar traveling in 4 to 6 city tours,

happening 3 out of 4 weeks every month)and is making it work beautifully. He has trained up a
good presenter, so he is not doing them. The traveling speaker does 5 seminars a week: Monday
night in 1st city, Tues. A.M. and Tues evening in next locations, Wed A.M. and evening in next, then
flies home Thursday for three days off. He is closing 40% of the room on a $2,000.00+ product; a
percentage of those (I wont cite) quickly attend a training at Dennis offices, where a $35,000.00
program is sold to a very respectable percentage (which I wont cite).the overall economics have
him going negative by nearly $3,000.00 for each person gotten to that training, but coming out the
other side with a total cost-per-sale under $10,000.00 for the $35,000.00 program. You might not
relish the idea of creating, experimenting with and perfecting a presentation, getting a good
presenter and paying him enough to keep him, scheduling and filling seats for the tours, etc., etc.
when I had mine, I had the speaker plus a full-time exec running the whole thing, plus using part
of the hours of a secretary for scheduling, booking travel, and babysitting the speaker. So I
wouldnt be jumping up and down with joy over this again either. BUT. It can be a solid, steady,
successful way of bringing in good, new customers you cannot get at a distance, by any and all
other meansand it is particularly useful during difficult selling times like these. You may need to
get out and beat the bushes.
LITTLE HINGES Again, this report is courtesy of Dennis Tubbergen. Sparked by another
Platinum Member, Jay Geiers use of hot babes in business attire in his advertising, and at my
specific suggestion, Dennis re-worked a control direct-mail piece that brings in his leads, adding
a sexy brunette in business suit and mailing this version only to males on the lists.it is out
pulling the control to such an extent, lead production costs have been slashed by 30%. This
requires list segmentation, and going to the trouble of sending different pieces to different
segments of the list, and driving different prospects to different entry web sites something so
many info-marketers are understandably loathed to do, preferring a one-message-fits-all approach.
But, with response harder than ever to come by, the reality that men respond differently than
women to different photos and different language.that owners of the exact same kind of business
in Nebraska respond best to entirely different stimuli than those in Massachusetts.this reality is
what will kill most certainly all the lazy marketers.
I do a lot of copywriting, but I know some of it is doomed when handed off, because the clients
simply will not do what is necessary to deliver it to prospects in a way that gives it a fighting
chance. Consider the state of Ohio, where I live, and assume we are sending a direct-mail piece in
a #10 envelope with a photo on it, to insurance agency owners throughout the state. Based on
Dennis experience, we might split them male from female from husband-wife couple owners. But if
we look at the map and know the state, there are a lot of geo-demo-psychographic realities that
warrant a different photo on envelopes going to Columbus and Cincinnati than to Cleveland, to
small towns; different for small towns north of Columbus than small towns south of Columbus, and
different for small towns surrounding Cleveland than those in the mid-section between Cleveland
and Columbus. Etc. Etc. And most of those changes would affect percentage opened thus
response. And thats just one adjustment, the photo on the envelope. I can think of 20 more. If you
want to be successful in direct-mail, in most cases, going to these kinds of extremes is going to be
necessary for some time to come.

A brief consideration of manual labor vs. media.

A Platinum Member told me of a conversation he had with a big-name, famous speaker you would
all know, after having him in as a guest speaker. The speaker advised my Platinum Member that
he couldnt imagine there being anything the Platinum Member could spend his time doing that
would be of greater value or produce more income than being one to many, face to face, selling
to his customers. My Platinum Member wanted to know what I thought about that.
I told him that the speaker saw the business through a narrow viewpoint based on his own very
narrow and limited skill-set and experience, thus with a bias toward manual labor. This speaker, for
example, could not and could not even imagine spending a week at the keyboard developing a
sales letter that would bring in a million or two million dollars, a sum he would get, net, only by
hauling his hiney around the globe, probably speaking for ten days and traveling for twenty more.
The speaker also thinks purely in terms of income, not equity; his business has none, and he is
clueless about developing any. Truth is, he does not have a business; he has a job. However, with
that said, hes not ENTIRELY wrong. It is, and has long been, my observation that too many infomarketers take distancing themselves from face-to-face with their customers and avoidance of
personal selling to a harmful and unreasonable extreme, creating severe weaknesses in their
businesses (that are exposed at times like these), and ignoring and neglecting very significant
opportunities. It is for this reason that I encourage clients like this Platinum Member to hold
frequent new-member seminars at his home officeencourage others to get out on the road and
run tours.encourage others to, in many other ways, create one-to-many (and in some cases oneto-one) personal selling opportunities with their customers.
At Glazer-Kennedy, we created our IBA Program with the local Chapters to provide this kind of in
the room/human touch experience for newbies, and Bill speaks at several chapters a year, and I
some as well. We have also, in each of the past 3 years, held one event with Bill and I presenting
and accessible aimed at new folks one in L.A., the next in Baltimore, and most recently The
Phenomenon Event in Orlando. It would be valuable, profitable, and a justifiable use of my time or
his to do some smaller-scale new member training every month although neither of us is willing
to do it, and there is positioning to consider. But were we in a niche, with multiple high-dollar
programs and services to sell, I would insist on doing it and do it myself if need be. Or, were I you,
and incurring tougher sledding getting, keeping and ascending new customers, Id not only be
willing to do it, Id be eager to do it.
The attempt to grow and to sustain a complex info business entirely at a distance and entirely
through media, with little or no direct access to you and communing with you for a broad base of
the customer is, frankly, misguided. I know people sell this idea, and some buy into it, but its
fools gold. A vitally important element is the customers opportunity to see you, hear from you,
touch you, tell you their story, in person. Further, the famous speaker is right about the best skills
and abilities of many (not all) info-marketers; that one of the top three is selling and/or speaking,
and it is foolish to shelve that, especially if setting it aside in favor of doing things youre much less
skilled and effective at. As one client recently said to me, If youre gonna make $9-million a year,
youre gonna git your hands dirty.

#5: Create value menu items.

Recessions require price variety. Make a note.
The restaurant industry is visibly scurrying to create value items and you should too. Ive written
about this before, in the contexts of building a large catalog, and of re-cycling and re-purposing
material; one path is to bust apart high-priced packages to create lower and varied price, smaller
products. For example, you might take a prior years boot camp package, pull three or four
recordings from it, and make individual items from them, or pair them with other tele-seminar CDs
by topic. If, for example, you had a boot camp speaker on referrals, and in the past few years, had
done three different coaching calls on referrals, you could put those together on four CDs or,
edited, on two CDs, piece together a new workbook, and bingo, youve got a $39 to $69 item.
This may be the right time to turn archived and old hard product into new online deliverables,
eliminating manufacture and shipping costs, thus selling at reduced prices.
You need to keep your customers buying. Not just for the immediate revenue, but because the
habit is important. If they stop, getting them started again later will be difficult. To keep customers
buying in times like these, you need to give them more price choices across a broader spectrum. If
you are used to selling from $300 to $3,000; you may need some choices at $100, even at $10.
With prospects, you may need to add lower, even ridiculously low first-transaction choices into your
sequence, and rely more on patient, persistent, gradual ascension. People forget that I built much
of my business with $1.00 audio-tape offers (modeled after Gerardo Joffees approach to listbuilding; get and read his book about mail-order), $10 books, and later, at the Success events, not
just the $278 product, but a $99 product as well.
Glazer-Kennedy Membership can be viewed as a value-menu item. If you are smart, and are
a GKIC affiliate, youll more aggressively promote it during these times by plugging it in
as a step or steps late in your entire sequence with new leads; periodically, offered to
accumulated, unconverted leads. Sure, its self-serving for me to push this, but its also important
to you because. (a) it is a zero-effort way for you to extract more return on your investments in
generating leads, and to continue generating and working leads in an environment of rising
acquisition costs, lower conversion, slower ascension, you need every dime you can extract from
every lead. Some who simply will not buy from you, and evidence it by stubborn nonresponsiveness to your sequenced efforts, will buy from us. (b) Ours is a free gift offer; if you
arent leading with a similar offer, this gives you the ultimate down-sell; free. (c) Anything you can
do to stir the pot with accumulated, unconverted leads is worth doing, especially if done via e-mail
at negligible cost. (Thats why its brain-dead stupid not to participate when GKIC puts together a
special promotion, like the one just conducted around the Uncensored Sales Strategies teleseminar.) (d) If we get them, we turn them on, we train them, and they inevitably seek out GKICderivative providers in their niches, leading them back to you. If some go to a competitor, so what?
they were of zero value to you before, and a buyers a buyer, so most buy from multiple
providers.
As an aside, this is also a time to expand your back-end catalog of info-products, by bringing in
other authors, experts and publishers products all across the price spectrum, so that you fully
capitalize on the small percentage of your customers who buy everything, who buy constantly, who

own everything youve got. To that end, we have a whole new collection of Kennedy products
specifically for re-sellers, about which you can get info by returning the Form attached to this
Report, with the big, hand-written A on it.
This is also an ideal time to create a new highest-price package of products, coaching,
services, and whatever-else, for your top customers to ascend to and/or to sell as a front-end. That
may seem counter-intuitive, but you must remember that there are still and always 1%ers, and
5%ers aspiring to be 1%ers. There are people ready and eager to step up to the most elite level
and the most complete program.

Other recession strategies to consider

1. Buy something. If you have cash and financial strength, as well as customers for an x you
dont currently offer, theres probably somebody with a perfectly good x who has no cash, is
financially weak, and can be acquired now much cheaper and on much better terms than before or
after the current trauma. You might buy horizontally, as I just said; acquiring an x you can sell to
your customers and customers you can sell your y and z to as well. You might buy a business
or buy intellectual property or even buy a person suddenly wandering loose or in trouble. Or you
might buy vertically, acquiring a vendor who sells to you. The selling prices of businesses are
suppressed by the economy, the difficulty of getting financing for deals, and the risk of loss of value
over the next 2 to 3 years, so bargains exist now.
Along these lines, you might re-visit the career of the late Joe Cossman, described in his book
How I Made $1-Million In Mail-Order. Joe went looking for products sold only a few ways or
dormant altogether, that he could secure exclusive rights to (just) for different, specific means of
distribution, in any category he felt he could apply his know-how to (i.e. getting products placed
and sold through catalogs, selling via mail-order, and fueling sales with publicity). The same
approach can be more pointed; looking only for such products that might be sold to, or better yet,
through your existent clientele. As I already mentioned, the conversion of your herd of consumers
(of info-products, training, coaching, etc.) to a dealer, distributor or direct sales network can be a
very big win. It automatically creates pain of disconnect, as the access to the items being profitably
sold can be taken away. It changes the dynamic from them paying you to you (also) paying them.
And it can build a good business. At other times, you might find more resistance to such overtures
than currently; now, your folks ARE already looking for additional ways to make money.
2. Start something. Competitions very thin. Hardly anybodys starting new things. So, in every
category, consumers arent seeing much of anything thats new and people are always interested
in the new shiny object, but doubly so when its been a while since theyve seen any. And if you
have the financial wherewithal and emotional strength to be inordinately patient about profitability,
theres no better time to buy market share than when nobody else is bidding on it. To be fair,
starting something new and going to cold prospects is more expensive now. I just went through
an experiment of my own, that I chose to kill and bury quickly, where new customer acquisition
cost, based on initial testing, promised to be between $1,000.00 and $1,500.00 --- my best guess
is, the very same campaign would have acquired those same customers at under $700.00 in 2006.
But were I willing to endure and do many complex things to mitigate the negative in this case, I

could, during this down-time, put a brand new herd in place to cash in on when the nuclear cloud
clears. The better position, though, is to figure out how to start something entirely new with your
existent, unconverted leads, so that the lead generation costs already borne by Business #1 gift
and fuel Business #2.
Incidentally, an info-category or market that is toxic to its mature participants can be surprisingly
fertile ground for the newcomer appearing for the first time. The day I finished this Report, I had a
phone call with a copywriting client who, in May of 08, entered the real estate investor arena,
marketing systems for buying, flipping and investing in residential properties. While most that've
been selling such information to lists of actual and want-to-be investors for some time have seen
their sales evaporate, his new business has thrived. As recently as last week, he put about 600
people on a tele-seminar and sold 70 one thousand dollar packages, to customers who had
recently purchased their first program from him. His prospects are converting, his customers are
buying on the back-end.
3. Bring an entirely different opportunity to your customers or to your entire niche. For
example, several niche gurus are quietly offering the Kennedys All-American Barber Clubs
franchise to their clients. We have designed it and positioned it as the ideal 2nd business, so it is
not a suggestion to exit the persons present business/industry/profession or the guru, at least not
in the short-term, and the savviest niche info-marketers recognize it is not competing with them for
dollars either; it is bought with different dollars, typically secured from different sources than are
being used to pay the guru. The commissions available merely for being an introducer are
significant. If even a small number of your customers might be receptive to owning an ideal 2nd
business and having area exclusivity for it, you might want to consider working with us on this.
But whether you find this particular situation appropriate or not; whether you utilize strategic
alliances with others or develop something from scratch on your own; what you do have as asset
or liability depending on your response is a restless herd; business owners actively looking for
and at alternative and additional opportunities beyond the four walls of their present business.
During economic times like these, newsstand purchasing and readership of magazines like
Entrepreneur soars, attendance at franchise and opportunity expos as much as quadruples, lead
flow to franchise and opportunity marketers jumps, all from two main sources: displaced or fearful
of displacement executives, managers and workers; and frustrated small business owners, selfemployed professionals and salespeople. The Desire For Different is multiplied and magnified
during difficult recessions with no end in sight. This changes the nature of your asset of your
herd(s), creates new value in it that will be accessed by somebody, and temporarily suppresses or
even erases value in it which you have been steadily mining and relying on. You can react by
being opportunistic, by being resistant and in denial, by being fearful, or by waiting and hoping for a
speedy return to what was.
4. Go from niche to generic. While most magazines are shrinking as advertisers exit, Small
Business Opportunities Magazines January issue was its thickest ever. This is a mainstream
magazine not just mailed to opportunity seeker lists, but on newsstands from Wal-Mart and
supermarkets to Barnes & Noble. It is thriving as representative of the boom-time for opportunity
marketers that occurs during each recession, the deeper and more prolonged the better.

There are two kinds of opportunity offers that always do well: one, the heavy-hype, and get rich
overnight with this secret pitch; the other, the legitimate, easy and cheap to start, home-based
business, often some sort of service from the mundane, like carpet cleaning, to something new
and clever, like Example#1.
This Example was fun to find, because it takes something mundane, that few people would ever think of
doing on their own, and turns it into a packaged business opportunity anybody could do. This follows one
model from which many business opportunities have been created the renting and installing of Christmas
tree decorations in homeowners front yards, as one example. That one has been sold to John and Mary
Consumer, but migrated backwards into niches and has been sold to lawn care business owners. It seems
to me the business in this ad might be tweaked and sold to flower shop owners, lawn care operators, maybe
others.

Reasonable people look for ways to make extra money, and people already in direct selling, selling
some product line, look for things to add and also sell; desperate and less reasonable people look
for the magic, instant means of making money. Both groups offer opportunity for different types of
opportunity marketers. Both groups multiply in size and receptivity during recession.
Direct sales and even MLM will have a resurgence, with established, reputable companies once
again able to recruit and grow here in the United States which, during the recent boom, has been
difficult due to zero work ethic. Party-plan selling companies do particularly well in an economy like
this, because it gives stay-at-home moms a way to make a few hundred dollars a month from just a
couple evenings with husband as babysitter, and it gives a girls night out at very low expense to
everybody. (For that reason, I upped my holding of Tupperware a little, and bought a modest
amount of stock in Herbalife. And I am currently consulting with a client on a start-up in the home
party field.)
Many niche info-marketers have a way to play, if they choose.and to use the story, reputation,
credibility, testimonials, etc. theyve developed for their niche in this different space. For example, if
you now work with people in established carpet cleaning businesses, you can start putting new
people in the carpet cleaning business. If you now work with people in the restaurant industry, you
can create programs for people to start catering, meal preparation and delivery,
and baking businesses from home. If you sell software, you can put people in business of using the
software to assist businesses too small to buy it. The question is: what can be lifted from your
present know-how, background, story, current info-business, current materials and re-configured
as a home-based business or direct selling opportunity?
A bit of background..Opportunity is as evergreen as it gets. I have opportunity ads in my files dating
back to the Civil War, from Harpers Weekly, then the first national newspaper, obviously long before USA
TODAY. Included here, an ad from the 1950s, and a current example; Platinum Member Michael Gravettes
full-page ad. For 8 consecutive years, the TV infomercial I created for the Gold By The Inch distributoropportunity ran multiple times, in multiple markets every day and every night, and still holds the record for
longest airing lead generation show in the opportunity category. Over 30 years, Ive written eight different
full-page opportunity ads that have run for no less than 3 to as many as 10 years, each producing millions of
dollars; developed about the same number of direct-mail lead generation packages and twice as
many lead fulfillment packages.one of those responsible for more than $35-million. When you click on the
current Jeff Paul infomercial, remember it is derivative of the original $4,000.00 A Day At Kitchen Table ad
and booklet I created. My clients in the opportunity field over the years have included some of the biggest

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including Don Dwyer, of the Dwyer Group, a very successful marketer of low-fee franchises in service
industries, notably including Rainbow Carpet Cleaning; De-Tech, a home fire alarm system direct-selling
company; former Platinum Member T. J. Rohleder. My work selling opportunity began, literally, while still
in my teens. Later, when I took over a production company manufacturing audio cassette programs for
speakers, I quickly re-birthed its distributor program, ran 2-page ad spreads in Success Magazine and
smaller ads elsewhere, and had it producing over $100,000.00 a month within 6 months. The present
Glazer-Kennedy Insiders Circle network of Independent Business Advisors, local Chapters and local
mastermind groups, now a multi-million dollar business unit within the company, is thanks to my know-how
in crafting and selling opportunity. It is a model, incidentally, that Im surprised a number of niche infomarketers havent borrowed, tweaked and used. I mention all this, so you know there is a lot of depth to my
understanding of this category of info-marketing.
I introduced the greener pastures/irrelevant speakers into niche-industry boot camps (egs. Ron LeGrand
selling get-rich-in-real-estate at an auto repair owners conference) based on my many years of experience
with the selling of opportunity, in one form or another. With few exceptions, the speakers selling opportunity,
and usually those selling unrelated opportunity out-sell all others. I also used my background in opportunity
marketing as basis for the area exclusive concept I brought to coaching, coaching-plus and do-it-for-themservices programs sold by info-marketers of which there are now over a hundred that I know of in a
variety of niches, from dentistry to financial services to real estate, and you-name-it... (All of the foundational
information about the structure and marketing of these kinds of programs, the Discovery Day model, etc. is
in a resources package on Area Exclusive/Big Ticket Coaching, now available from Glazer-Kennedy,
although not yet in catalog or web-store; you need to call the office.) I have also led info-marketers all the
way to full-fledged franchising; both conversion franchising in their niche, and new franchising.
In most niches, now is a tough time to be presenting your goods, services and expertise as a means
of improving and growing their businesses; it is a premise they lack confidence in and are reluctant
to spend money on. So, at bare minimum, you need to think in terms of re-casting what you
provide as a new, better replacement for their present business, so that you move from selling
advertising-marketing-sales or business improvement to selling opportunity. Those two sentences
are million dollar sentences, so you might want to stop for a few minutes, re-read them, and think about how
they may relate to your business. (Dont just race on by. The conditions they refer to are NOT going to race
by.) Beyond that, it is quite possible you should be getting into the opportunity business in another,
additional way. In either case, I cant imagine you finding anyone with as much relevant experience as I,
who can provide both strategy and, as needed, copywriting and yes, thats a commercial.

5. Sell All And Exit, Sell Some To A Partner. Selling in a down market usually means selling at a
depressed price, which is generally ill-advised IF you are confident, for good reason, of an up
market presenting itself in the short term; at least before you run out of customers, cash or sanity.
Generally speaking, this is a good time to buy things and a bad time to sell them. However. There
is more cash parked with no place to go than Ive ever seen in my career; there are people eager
to be in our businesses in your business, and/or to gain entry to your niche or to better their
other, existent business in your niche; and info-businesses of the Kennedy type are unique
animals never bound by standard formulas for selling prices. And somebody may be motivated to
buy your business as a bargain now, who wouldnt buy it at a premium otherwise. If you were
contemplating exit from 3 to 7 years from now, you might want to attempt accelerating your
timetable and engineering exit now saving yourself a few years of running faster to stay even.

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Well, there you have it. My five shovels. And five other difficult economy responses.

Somewhere in them, theres probably a big opportunity for

you. Not just treatments, band-aids and balm, but a big
opportunity. Hill was right about this; inside every
adversity is hidden the starting point of a great
opportunity. Finding it will require thinking differently
about both your business and the conditions of this time.
Hopefully, this Report, and re-reading this Report help
with that. Exploiting the opportunity once found will
probably require doing things you hadnt planned on
doing, might not want to do, might not want to do forever,
more complicated than youd prefer, inconvenient. That I
cant help you with. That is the stubborn, unpleasant
nature of great opportunity. Its rarely found at the
convenience store.
Examples that follow.
Example#1: from current issue of Small Business Opportunities typical of the kind of low barrier to entry
opportunities that come out of the woodwork during recessions.and a full-disclosure ad, just like the ad
I wrote for Louise Nielsen about starting a home cleaning business. Odds are, this fellows an info-marketing
novice who will fail; his ad dollars would be better spent offering a free or $10 book purporting to teach the
business but actually, then selling the $249 package or it plus a higher priced option; and, on the back end,
live training and/or coaching and/or do it for them marketing. However, despite the flawed approach, the
copys good, the story has the necessary ring of authenticity, and the opportunity is believable.
Example#2: is a combo correspondence school course/moneymaking opportunity ad. These kinds of
companies thrive in recessions did in the Great Depression. Napoleon Hill wrote ad copy and sales letters
for one such school for several years. I wrote a booklet for International Correspondence Schools that was
mailed more than 1-million times. The elements that make this work are: learn at home; acquire a new skill;
earn a promised amount of income per week. I thought youd find the learn-from-film angle interesting (then
a revolutionary technology, akin today to online courses or video-conferenced live classes.) In a niche, you
can present a break-out aspect of what you teach in this way. Example idea: offering to teach restaurant
owners and chefs how to sell and deliver one in-home gourmet cooking demonstration and dinner for 8 per
week and make an extra $1,000.00 a week.
Example#3: a current opportunity ad I wrote (re-wrote from his control) for Platinum Member Michael
Gravette. It, like #1, is a full disclosure ad. This ad is either 2 or 3 years old, and can be freshened with
some reference to current economic pressures fueling rising crime and peoples anxiety about it which he
and I have recently discussed. Note that this ad actually presents two opportunities; the traditional direct
selling opportunity; and the make-money-via-internet-marketing story.

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8 / 2014