Jim Rohn

Sideways webinar

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This morning, I was preparing for the PCM hot seat, which is my main task within Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Each week, I get on a call with a different copywriter. I advise the copywriter on a new email promo he or she is writing on a performance-only basis for some client or another.

The guy I’m talking to today has managed to bag a great client — a 41k-subscriber email list, lots of success stories, a high-priced offer, and marketing that’s already working, including a front-end webinar.

This is the first email promo the copywriter will be writing for this client.

So one of my suggestions to him was to minimize his work, and maximize the odds of success for both himself and his client. For example, just take the existing webinar, which is already working, and turn that into an email promo.

That’s hardly a new idea.

It goes back at least 20 years, at least back to Jeff Walker and his Product Launch Formula.

I can’t say for sure, but PFL might be the most successful and influential Internet marketing training of all time? At least if you look at the number of customers, the sales generated by those customers, and the resulting money that Jeff has made from it.

At heart, PFL is based on a very simple idea, and that’s the “sideways sales letter”:

​Take a working sales letter and turn it on its side, so it becomes a series of emails that you can send out as a time-limited promo. Chan-ta-ta-chan! Money in the bank, where yesterday there was none.

Of course, it doesn’t just have to be the sideways sales letter. It can be the sideways webinar, like I told the PCM copywriter today. Or it can be the sideways 1-on-1 sales call. Or the sideways stage presentation. And so on.

If you have a sales message that’s working for you in one long-form format, odds are good it will work as an email promo as well. In the words of Jim Rohn and John Bejakovic:

1. Have something good to say
2. Say it well
3. Say it often
4. Say it in a new format
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Now let me ask you:
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Do you have a working webinar?

​​Does the idea of turning it sideways, and making extra sales sound attractive?

​​Do you have zero interest in doing this work yourself?

​​If so, hit reply, and let’s talk. Maybe I can get it done for you.

My idea for getting others to pay for my advertising

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Yesterday, as the plane leveled off over the Bavarian Alps, I had a newsletter growth idea.

You might say that’s a waste of pleasant scenery on Christmas Day. But what to do? That’s how ideas seem to work.

They bubble up at the oddest times, when you’re not thinking about subject, triggered by nothing obvious.

Jim Rohn might shrug and say, “mysteries of the mind.”

Anyways, my idea was this:

I have another newsletter besides this one. That other one is in the health space.

The content is good. I know, because my audience says so, and even recommends me to others unbidden. ​​But my list is still small.

I could pay to get more readers onto my other newsletter, and in past I have done so.

But why pay when I might be able to get somebody else to pay?

So my Alps-high idea was to contact a few companies in the space and make them a deal they cannot refuse, or that they certainly can.

The idea is that they pay for my ads. Some modest sum at first, say $1k for one month as a test.

I then run ads on FB promoting my newsletter. And to every new subscriber, I also promote the partner company’s offer on my thank you page, in my welcome sequence, and as the main sponsor of each of my issues.

At the end of the month, we revisit the arrangement.

Did the company make back their $1k? Or is there hope they will do so because they got new customers via my newsletter that will add up to more than $1k in LTV?

If yes, we keep going, increase ad spend, and revisit the agreement one month later.

If no, we call it a failed experiment and that’s that.

That was my idea.

You might say it would never work. All the risk is on the company.

​​True.

I might need something extra — credibility, for example.

To get credibility, I could run an initial campaign with my own money, test out how it does, and have that data when I first pitch this idea to my would-be partner.

Or I might contribute some money myself so they feel I have skin in the game.

Or I might have to offer them a Calas-Powell-Rosenthal-and-Bloch-style guarantee, and say that I will refund their ad spend if the test is not successful.

Whatever. I’ll see. In any case, the bigger point still stands:

You don’t have to go at it alone. As the 21.7 Billion Dollar Man, marketing wizard Jay Abraham, once said:

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In business there is certainly no rule, no law, that says you have to do it alone. You don’t. There are a number of businesses out there that are as motivated if not more so than you are to help grow your business for you. You just never recognized that motivation and asked them, or taken advantage of their willingness to help. And that willingness means they can help finance, they can bring people into your business, all at no cost or risk to you.

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In the training where I heard that, Jay went on to give three concrete examples of his clients who got others to pay for their advertising… or for their operating costs… or even for their sales people.

This Jay Abraham training has been very valuable to me. It sold for something like $297 30 years ago. Today, it would probably sell for $2,997 and maybe much more.

But you can get it for an earth-shattering $12.69, and get hundreds or thousands of dollars in additional valuable ideas. The details are here:

https://overdeliverbook.com/

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

Breaking the code of the highly successful person

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The sun is shining, I have an egg sandwich and a bottle of water for the road, and I’m ready to get in the car and drive across three countries in about as many hours.

But before I can do that, I have to finish this email and two more things. And that’s my point for you for today.

I recently read Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs.

​​I long resisted doing so because the very words “time management” sound repulsive to me, a throwback to the time of Fred Flintstone slaving away at the rock quarry until the foreman yanks the pterodactyl’s tail to signal the end of the work day.

But boy was I wrong.

Dan Kennedy’s book is fantastic. I recommend it to anyone who is a driven go-getter (it will help you focus and get more done) or, like me, a lazy layabout by nature (it will still help you focus and get more done).

Anyways, towards the end of the book, Dan quotes a bit of wisdom he heard in his young days from success speaker Jim Rohn.

Dan says that, for him, this bit of wisdom broke the code of the highly successful person. It took all the mystery and mystique away. And here it is:

When you look closely at highly successful people in any field, you walk away saying to yourself, “Well it’s no wonder he’s doing so well. Look at everything he does.”

That’s what Jim Rohn used to say. To which, Dan Kennedy adds, “… and look very closely at the one thing or two or three things he gets done without fail, every single day.”

So there you go. My point for you for today. Figure out one or two or three things you will get done each day, without fail.

Perhaps you’re curious what my “without fail” things are.

Like I said, this email is one. Another, which i started only recently, is working on a new offer. And the third, which I’ve been practicing for most of my life, is reading. Because reading is really the fuel that drives any achievements I’ve had.

I’m not telling you to pick up these specific daily habits. Make your own choices.

​​But if reading is something you want to do every day, both for your sanity and for your success, then, again, I can recommend Dan Kenendy’s Time Management book. It’s a smart investment right now, because it will pay so much in time dividends tomorrow.

In case you want to check it out, you can find the Amazon link below:
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https://bejakovic.com/time-management​​