Some time ago, I got tempted into buying Dan Kennedy’s book, “The Phenomenon: Achieve More In the Next 12 Months than the previous 12 Years.”
Does that make me possibly the stupidest person on the planet?
Probably. After all, check out one review on Amazon, which I read before I decided to get the book:
Awful Awful Waste of Money
I seriously think this is the biggest waste of money and quite possibly the biggest waste of time I have ever spent. This is nothing but a pitch for Dan Kennedy and everyone of his student’s products. There isn’t a single how to trigger the Phenomenon. This is an even worse type of push that Tony Robbins does where he at least gives a little info before trying to sell you on spending 10K for a seminar. Do not pay for this.
And yet… I did pay and I got myself a used copy. For one thing, because I love DK’s stuff. For another, because the promise just sounded so appealing I couldn’t resist.
Result:
There is nothing new in The Phenomenon. In fact, the book is mostly not written by Dan, but by a bunch of his coaching students hyping themselves up. And like the review above says, there’s no how to.
Well, there is a checklist of “rules” right at the start. I jumped on it yesterday, my greedy opportunity seeker eyes shining in the dark. Rule #1 said:
“There will always be an offer or offer(s).”
My head sank to my chest. “That’s the one thing I didn’t want to hear,” I said to Dan, who couldn’t hear me.
This rule is certainly something I have known for years. It’s one of the pillars of Ben Settle’s email system, which Ben inherited from Matt Furey and ultimately Dan himself.
Whenever I’ve worked with clients on their email marketing, I’ve always insisted we put an offer at the end of each email.
For one thing, you’re never going to make money without an offer.
For another, engaged readers actually like buying, or at least having the choice to buy.
And yet, I don’t consistently have an offer in my own emails.
Sure, I promote trainings like my Copy Riddles on occasion, and I will do so again in the future. (The next run of Copy Riddles will be in June.)
But I have no default offer I can always go to, even when I’m not in the middle of doing a launch of relaunch of a product.
So it turns out Dan’s Phenomenon book is hardly a waste of money or of time, even though it’s mostly slapped-together self-promotion.
And yet, I remain possibly the stupidest person on the planet.
After all, if I had a client like myself, I would have either forced him to include some kind of offer each day in his emails, or I would have fired him long ago.
So take it from Dan to me to you:
If you are doing email marketing, or really any kind of marketing, make people an offer. With each of your messages. It might turn you into a phenomenon.
But what about me?
Still no offer.
I have to have something. So I decided to offer…
Consulting.
Now, I fully expect absolutely nobody to take me up on this offer, at least today.
That’s because I’ve gotten pretty good at coming up with offers over the past couple of years, working both with clients and on my own projects.
And “consulting” is an awful offer. It’s vague — what exactly does it mean? There’s no sexy name. And who would possibly want it?
Like Agora founder Bill Bonner said, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, wet pajamas stuck to his back, face to face with the awful truth — “We’re out of newsletters.”
Well, likewise, nobody wakes up at 3am thinking, “I gotta have some more consulting.”
I’ll fix some of those problems in the coming days and emails.
I’ll sharpen up the offer. I’ll tell you what exactly I can consult you about, and why it would make good sense for you to pay me to do so.
I’ll tell you some case studies of clients who have hired me for consulting, and what they got out of it (and what they didn’t).
Maybe will even come up with a sexier name than “consulting.”
But all that in future emails.
For now, if you do want my guidance or advice on marketing and copywriting problems, and you want it before others get to me, then fill out the form at the link below, and you will hear from me soon: