Personal Power Archives

According to celebritynetworth.com, marketer Greg Renker is worth $600 million. It’s possible that’s lowballing poor Greg.

After all, the company Greg cofounded some 30 years ago, Guthy-Renker, does more than $2 billion worth of sales each year.

Guthy-Renker is a big beast. And today, they market in all kinds of channels. But for a long time, their bread and butter was one main medium — infomercials.

They got started by selling the book Think And Grow Rich on TV. They made $10 million from that.

And then they had a much bigger hit – selling a set of self-help audio tapes called Personal Power. The author of Personal Power? A young Tony Robbins.

I heard Greg Renker tell an interesting story about Tony. Greg said there was this secret book that Tony really liked and read and over. Nobody else knew about it. I guess this was around the late 1980s.

So Greg and all his team went out and also bought the book and devoured it. “Aha! That’s the secret to Tony’s charisma and success…”

Well the book is not a secret any more. It’s called Influence, and it was written by Robert Cialdini. I’m sure you’ve heard of it, and you’ve probably read it too.

Like I said, I guess this must have been in the late 1980s. It must have been before the Personal Power infomercial came out in 1990. Because that infomercial is like Cialdini’s Influence come to life on TV.

The infomercial starts out by showing you Hollywood celebrities… world-class athletes… and members of Congress… all lining up to hear what this young guy named Tony has to say.

Then there a bunch of testimonials by ordinary folks. Their finances and family lives and emotional well-being have all been transformed. Just by listening to Tony’s tapes.

Then you see Tony and Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton. They’re getting into a helicopter, which Tony pilots himself. They fly from Tony’s castle in San Diego to Tony’s second home, in Palm Springs.

Finally, after about 5 minutes of buildup, you see Tony close up and you hear him speak.

He’s a really good-looking guy. And he flashes you his warm, genuine smile, and he starts to talk in a confident and yet humble tone.

That’s like chapters 4 through 6 of Influence right there.

No wonder Dan Kennedy, who was an advisor for Guthy-Renker from day one, said they could have put anybody in Tony’s place and the tapes would still sell.

Maybe Dan was exaggerating. But not a lot.

Sure, you might not have Guthy-Renker’s resources. And the guru you’re promoting might not have Tony Robbins’s credibility or winning smile.

But all those things from the start of the Personal Power infomercial can be done on a smaller scale. And they will still work to build up anybody, well, almost anybody, into a powerful but benevolent god who needs to be obeyed.

Anyways, if you haven’t watched the Personal Power infomercial, I think it’s worth your time. Just be careful. Because you can get sucked in.

For example, I got sucked in. I listened to the infomercial a few times for the marketing education… and the next thing you know, I have Tony’s actual program on repeat and I re-listen to it from beginning to end, every six months or so.

But if the prospect of getting indoctrinated doesn’t scare you too much… then click below to see Influence in action:

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been listening to a set of ancient inspirational tapes (well, a digitized version).

I got them because I watched the original infomercial for the tapes, which came out in 1988, and was sold less by the promises (health, wealth, happiness, and success) than by the testimonials (a lesson for you there). So many of the people in the infomercial said, “I’d tried everything, I was still a failure, until I found this.”

If you’ve been following my emails over the past few weeks, you might know the program in question is Personal Power by Tony Robbins. For years, I’d hallucinated Tony Robbins to be some kind of motivational fluff guru. I imagined he went up on stage, hyped people up, and sent them home. “That’s not how success works,” I told myself.

Turns out I didn’t really know much about Tony Robbins. For example, the man is a giant, or close to one. He had a brain tumor while he was a teenager, which caused his pituitary gland to keep leaking growth hormone. He grew 10 inches in high school and now stands at an impressive 6’7. (The tumor imploded in on itself eventually.)

But more importantly, it turns out Tony Robbins knows what he’s talking about. He’s got some real “success technologies” that others aren’t teaching. Well, I’m sure somebody out there is teaching the same stuff as Tony Robbins, especially after the big man has been in the limelight for 40+ years. But I’ve read a bunch of self-help, how-to-succeed books, and while some of the stuff that TR teaches was familiar to me, some of the key details were new as well.

Most importantly, his “success technologies” work. I can’t say I’ve achieved dramatic increases in health, wealth, or success in the 10 or so days I’ve been listening to the tapes. But by using a couple of the ideas TR teaches, I have been able to motivate myself to do things that I normally struggle to do. I’ve done them consistently, and pretty cheerfully and automatically, instead of grudgingly and haltingly.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, if you too have tried everything, but you still find yourself a failure (no shame there, join the club), then maybe give the digitized version of Personal Power a listen. And even if you don’t care for Tony Robbins and have no interest in his “success technologies,” maybe you will find it heartening to know that there are some good and useful products sold through direct response advertising, and yes, even through infomercials.