Dan Kennedy – Advanced Business Development Secrets Academy

Dan Kennedy – Advanced Business Development Secrets Academy

Get Dan Kennedy – Advanced Business Development Secrets Academy at the CourseAvai

DANKENNEDY’S2-Day ADVANCED Business Development SECRETS ACAdEmy INSIdERS’ STRATEGIES FOR A BETTER, STRONGER, mORE SOPHISTICATEd BUSINESS With Special Evening Guest NIDO QUBEIN President, High Point University on Boards of Directors of Great Harvest Bread Co., La-Z-Boy Furniture And BB&T Bank & INCLUDING:

• Advanced
• DIRECT Marketing
• Architecture & Strategies
• SECRETS ACAdEmy

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Insights from 40+ Years of Intimate Work With Hundreds of Built-From-Scratch Multi-Million to Billion Dollar Businesses & Start-Up, Built, Sale Of & Investing In Companies 2 3

Advanced Business Development Dan Kennedy

Quick preface: this letter violates a rule of selling: it contains a lot of teaching. Overt, declared, pointed to information and revealed methods as well as hidden between the lines, to be discerned lessons.

For the astute, there is a real value exchange here. Your time and your consideration of this opportunity is not requested or taken without direct compensation; that compensation is here in outright revelatory information about the subject at hand, and in demonstrated methods of presentation and persuasion.

YOU NEED TO BE A LITTLE PATIENT WITH THIS LETTER. It is long. It is not crafted as an accelerating adrenalin rush, as emotionally driven sales pitches usually are – instead it is thoughtful, and asks that of you, its reader. Treating this as a provocative and potentially profitable document in and of itself will reward you.

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Dear Friend,

What, exactly, is Advanced Business Development? (Do YOU need it?)
And what is the Advanced Business Development SECRETS Academy?

Let me first quickly say what it is NOT:
It is NOT more of the same on marketing, nor is it confined to ‘marketing’ at all. It is NOT simply about making more money. It is NOT elementary or easy to understand or apply. It is NOT common knowledge.

“Development” is NOT just growth – which is the way ordinary business owners think about their businesses, narrowly, more new customers, more sales, bigger. Development incorporates growth and expansion and diversification and synergy and maturation and maximum profits now and maximum equity value in the future. Keep in mind, you are pressured day to day to think just about Growth.

More customers, more sales, more revenue. Getting out of that day-to-day, and going to an entirely different, safe, stimulating place to think bigger, broader, more patiently, more thoroughly about your business can, itself, yield big dividends. But the right guided thinking experience can literally be worth millions and birth breakthroughs!

DEVELOPMENT has you holding your business up and looking at it from more directions than most ordinarily do, and looking out from your business in more directions than most do. This Academy is your only opportunity to do this with me.

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SCOTOMAS HEALED, HIDDEN WEATLTH-CREATORS REVEALED!

A ‘scotoma’ is a chronic blind spot. A blind spot in an otherwise normal field of vision. Most business owners have them, the “disease effect” of working in and on a particular business, in its field, narrow focused and narrow experienced. Dr. Kramer noted that an object as small as a penny held close enough to the eye can block out the
entire world around you and the sun above.

Many years after the end of WW II, a lone Japanese soldier was discovered in a jungle on a Pacific island, still in uniform, gun in hand, endlessly patrolling. Trapped on that island, inside that jungle, he had no idea the war was over! It is easy to be trapped on your island, inside your dense jungle.

Of course, you are heads ‘n shoulders better than most. You get a lot of diverse exposure as a GKIC, and you are otherwise a “Curious George” – but still, it is easy to develop scotomas you just don’t realize are there!

SEVEN KEYS TO DEVELOPMENT OF THE BEST, MOST VALUABLE BUSINESS POSSIBLE:

In my youth, working in graphic arts, we took typeset onto photo-paper into a darkroom, submerged it in chemicals in trays, and the invisible type and images appeared and darkened to crystal clear clarity. Similarly, business development is, in part, about (1): seeing concealed opportunities.

This is the most common thing I hear from clients after private consulting days: “I came thinking I was in business “a” and left in businesses “a” + “b” + “c” + “d”…or left in an entirely different business”. That’s the power of very experienced, fresh eyes: where you see a wall, I see a hidden door and concealed passage to new treasure.

I accomplish this routinely and frequently for clients. I also often find myself preventing mistakes that would PROHIBIT huge profits.

Recently, in one consulting day with a client who wisely sought my input before launching a franchise-type expansion of his million dollar income, single location business I STOPPED HIM from three mistakes he had no recognition of, almost certain to later keep several million dollars a year from flowing to him, easily and automatically. (I’ll show you the biggest of these as an example at the Academy.)

It was well worth his $19,400.00 fee for the day just for this 40-minute discussion. But the “nature of the thinking” behind this specific set of recommendations is even more valuable than any isolated recommendation, and I will give you The Gold Keys to that thinking of mine, that I bring to every situation.

A system for frequently, constantly hunting for and identifying concealed opportunity is invaluable. I have one. I’ll
share it. Including tools and checklists. Just as another powerful example, a few days before writing this I was in a consulting day with a new client, with about a $20-million business. As I questioned him, three niche marketing

Advanced Business Development Dan Kennedy opportunities became evident. In each, he already had an unexploited stronghold. In one, he had a ready and likely willing “host”; partner that he was already making money for, who owned customers and media they already made available to others but he had never proposed using.

In less than an hour I had a credible plan for using those three opportunities to triple revenue to $60-million. We also confronted the only huge flaw in his current business strategy, which was giving him direct connection to only about 10% of the end user customers – which I reengineered to get it with 80%.

This, to them, had seemed like ‘The Problem That Can Never Be Solved’ because of the nature of their distribution. These were not dumb or ignorant or foolish or lazy entrepreneurs.

To the contrary. And they had built a $20-million business from scratch in about 4 years. But their experience was restricted to that business. My experience is very broad and diversified. I saw things they were blind to. I had already fixed the problem they thought of as unique at least four other times.

This same “EUREKA!” can happen working with me in a group setting, not just one to one, and it WILL happen for many at Advanced Business.

Development Secrets Academy. (More about this example, much later in this letter.)

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INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENT VERSUS REINVENTION & REPLACEMENT

Schultz didn’t improve the coffee shop. Apple didn’t improve the phone. I didn’t improve the speaking business*. When Buffet liberated GEICO from being the sleepy, niched “Government Employees’ Insurance” to today’s GEICO, he didn’t try to improve the agency, broker, sales-force model.

The NFL created more wealth for its owners in a fast decade than in its entire, prior history not by improving the game or its existent marketing, but by reinventing the
entire fan (and gambler) experience with its Fantasy Football and its own TV products, the NFL Network and RedZone.

*Its reinvention model (which birthed what is now GKIC) is laid out in an info-product titled Big Mouth, Big Money, available at GKIC.com/store

Development can mean (2) reinvention. Raw land or a blighted neighborhood or a dying industrial park re-imagined and transformed into valuable property, a new community, a thriving ‘warehouse district’ with restaurants and clubs. Inside many businesses, even entire niches, industries, professions, there is the equivalent of blighted neighborhoods, vibrancy in decline, regression, or unused raw land. I am a master at re-purposing assets within a business AND at reinventing businesses.

I have reinvented processes, businesses, even entire industries! Maybe yours is ripe for reinvention. Let’s find out. Maybe YOU are due or overdue for reinvention.

I have essentially reinvented myself and the way I earn my money and conduct business three times. My friend, the late Joan Rivers, had to reinvent herself twice, and did so brilliantly and courageously. Personal and Business Reinvention have profound parallels. Let’s explore.

NOT DOING MORE, RUNNING FASTER AND HARDER – LIKE A HAMSTER ON A WHEEL, ON CRACK COCAINE. INSTEAD:

LEVERAGE.
There is development of (3) process and systems, the essential foundation for freedom – marketing systems, sales systems, retention and ascension systems, theft and loss prevention systems, profit systems. There is (4) customer development: how a new buyer is “converted” to a committed customer, then to an evangelical advocate and champion.

There is (5) development of (and co-optingof*) other businesses’ and peoples’ assets outside of your business, for your business: their customers,their leads, their locations, their distribution, their influence, their dormant or neglected products, andmore.

Development of strategic alliances; “power circles” of trustworthy and capable vendors, expertsand advisors; endorsers. Learning to use to the max OPR (Other Peoples Resources) and OPM(Other Peoples Money) is the most liberating, empowering, expansive entrepreneurial thing youcan do.

There is (6) development of your media platform, the most powerful competitive advantage,the most versatile and effective marketing methodology, and the “visible secret” of so many businesses.I can virtually GUARANTEE that you are under-exploiting your own media platform opportunities.

Finally, there is the (7) development of sustainable equity (not just income) – leverage while you ownyour businesses, maximum value for you if and when you exit.*Means: appropriation and use of as if your own – by agreement, guile, forceAs you can see, Development is a complex subject. And as you can see, I have dissected it into seven categories of work and of opportunity.

Thisfacilitates an organized approach to making practical, profitable use of Development. Not going homewith ideas. Structure. To-Do’s. For my “Business Development Secrets Academy”, I am organizing every strategy, method,revealing and provocative example, and “trick up my sleeve” I’ve ever used and currently use*, for myclients as well as my own business, into these seven development categories.

Each accompanied by itsown, never before published reference checklist. You will not only get my methods, you will get insightinto the way I think – to unearth opportunities their owners are blind to and to create new opportunitiesas well.*As I turn the big 6-0, one of the saddest things is the realization that my accumulated experience has provided and providesan evermore valuable foundation for creating dramatic development in businesses, while I am running out of time to use it.

It seems an almost perverse reality! I can assure you, the “powers” I have to transfer to you are far greater than they were5, 7, 10 years ago. The QUALITY OF MY THINKING is much better, sharper, quicker.

In just the past 3 years, more clientshave invested more money in my advice and assistance and in implementing it in marketplaces than in the prior 12 years,and that acceleration and expansion has boomeranged, bringing incredibly valuable, insider, test, failure, success and resultsbased information to me. Last year, over $50-million was spent just deploying advertising and marketing pieces and systemsI developed.

I have been INTIMATELY working with entrepreneurs creating 3X to 11X year to year growth….developing$10-million to $50-million enterprises from ZERO and from $4-million, $6-million, $8-million levels….and expanding and6 7Advanced Business Development Dan Kennedydiversifying once “small ball”, narrow focused businesses. This HAS impacted my thinking just as my thinking has impactedthese companies. THIS is what you are accessing via my new ADVANCED Business Development Secrets Academy.

If you were at my Wealth Academy in 2014, you got deep insight into how I think aboutmoney. Now, here, you’ll get the same kind of understanding about how I think about business. AndI do think differently, more opportunistically, more creatively, more expansively than just aboutanybody else.

It’s my thinking that put Dr. Tomshack on his fast track, from owning 4 chiropracticclinics he felt imprisoned by, to, as a franchisor, essentially owning a good share of over 400clinics and having a business exciting to him.

It’s my thinking that took a small business sellingcostume jewelry through dealers recruited only by ads in a few magazines into the multi-milliondollar ‘Gold By The Inch’ phenomenon fueled by a TV infomercial running everyday for 8 years.It’s my thinking that …. well, this list is long, spanning 40 years, accelerating in recent years, andencompassing unmatched variety and diversity. THE POINT IS: understanding how I think aboutbusiness in general and about different businesses, specifically, is potentially fortune-making,speed-creating and even life altering.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been paid well over $1-milliona year to exercise these powers, this thinking, my “X-ray vision”,dispensing advice, re-imagining and re-structuring businesses,moving products to new places, creating marketing systems (andsales copy).

I have clients staying and paying year after year,for 5, 10, all of those 20 years, some dating even longer. Theyinclude the companies you’ve heard of and know, like GuthyRenker, and many you wouldn’t recognize by name or aren’teven aware of – that have developed by my guiding hand.

In my “Advanced Business Development Secrets Academy”, you get a transfer of ALL thisaccumulated and very current experience – sifted, sorted, neatly organized, actionable. Is there any equalto this? No. This year, a major, new seminar was aggressively marketed, promising amazing businessdevelopment secrets, revealed by a most impressive, highly hyped individual.

Fine. But on close andcritical examination, you would realize this “magician” had, for himself, created a good-sized fortune froma “dot.com” built to unsustainable bubble and sold at a most fortuitous time. With scrutiny, you wouldrealize his experience/knowledge base is actually narrow and small and historical.

Comparatively, mineis linked to major success in hundreds of varied product, service, industry, profession, product category,media strategy and developed companies, each multiplied by millions, tens of millions, and in a few cases,hundreds of millions of dollars by my guidance and by my ‘work product.’

Spanning 40 years but alsoas current as tomorrow’s sunrise. There are “experts” who have religious rigidity about ONE businessapproach and must force-fit yours and any others they encounter into that one approach – or pronounce it“bad.” This is like a chef knowing only one recipe. No matter the ingredients, he can only make one dish. Ihave far more diverse experience, thus greater creative flexibility.

You can profit from this 1, 2 or 3 ways:

(1) You can use these secrets and powers to re-make,strengthen and create unimaginable wealth from your current business.

(2) You can use these secrets andpowers to become a highly paid advisor to others. (And I strongly recommend that in place of the futilityof dispensing free advice.)

(3) You can use these secrets and powers to make successful judgments asan investor. This grows more and more important the moresuccessful and affluent you become. We’ll come back to details in a short bit. First, Ithink you need to know, specifically, why I am the personyou should pay attention to, about “Development.”

Yes, Iknow you know me already. And if you are uncontrollablyimpatient, you can jump over this to page 9.

But I think it’sgood to have specific relevance when you are asked to paya fee to a person providing certain information, strategicadvice and business direction.

THE #1CONSIGLIORE TO‘I BUILT IT FROM SCRATCH’MILLION DOLLAR, MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR,50-MILLION DOLLAR TO BILLION DOLLAR COMPANIES

There is a profound difference between aiding and abetting already well-established, largecorporate entities versus standing with true entrepreneurs as they grow businesses from dirt up, againstodds and obstacles, often resources handicapped, then transition from mere growth to expansion, fromneeded income to equity.There are forests full of capable consultants to corporate America, in every category of need andopportunity.

They can come in and fix plumbing in dis-repair that is already there. Because stupiditygrows as big companies grow, they can easily find leaks to plug. They can simply meddle a little andearn their keep.

Also, much of corporate America lives by a very different agenda than entrepreneurs’businesses – measuring progress or success by relative market share gains or losses, by cost savings inshort-term that are actually cancerous, even by fall or rise in stock prices, more a matter of perceptionthan actual value. You can certainly find “profit” in the knowledge of many people who toil in thosefields.

But there is also a canyon of disconnect between the CEO and CFO crowd with 19th-Floor toweroffices, executive lunch rooms and access to nearly unlimited capital and resources VERSUS you andyour business life.There is NO forest of authentic experts in developing entrepreneurs’ businesses fromstart or reinvention or rescue to small to big to diverse to dominant and valuable.

There’s ME.8 9Advanced Business Development Dan Kennedy As you know, I’ve been inside and intimately involved with a great number of grown-fromscratch, extremely successful and extremely sophisticated businesses and companies, in diverse fields.

I’ve made myself rich as their owners’ and CEOs’ consigliore. I’ve learned as much as I’ve givenanyone. From this, I’ve accumulated an incredibly ‘wide AND deep’ collection of strategies – somequite proprietary – for Advanced Business Development – most of which I have NOT publicly writtenor spoken about.

I’ve alluded to them but not gone into depth. I’ve used them with and for my clients, ascriteria for deciding on stocks to buy and companies to invest in for the long haul, and for myself and forwhat is now GKIC.

NOW, you can be privy to them too. For the first time ever. For the only time, “live.” Clients who have relied on me as their trusted advisor – some quietly – at start-up and atbusiness maturity for 10, 20, 30+ years include people who’ve built big and complex and sophisticatedbusinesses.

One very recently left NetJets and bought his own jet and employs two pilots, commutesfrom choice of homes to work by helicopter, has an east and a west campus of significant size for hisbusiness. I began advising him when he had no money and was personally selling his one “program” to20 people at a time in motel meeting rooms.

He has developed a business easily worth $35-million to$50-million, very likely to double in the next 3 years. As recently as July, he and his team were with mefor another day of strategy advice. Another, different client first consulted with me in 1987, still does, on various projects today.

Hiscompany has topped a billion dollars in revenue. Another, more recently, launched a health franchise,zoomed to nearly 400 locations. For another, I created $15-million in new revenue, in a rather maturebusiness, in 2013.

From all these combined, in aggregate, I’ve learned more than I’ve given any one ofthem – but I can give it all (absent exclusively confidential details) to you.Imagine being able to get the “condensed juice” fromprowling around in hundreds of these kinds of experiences – withstart-ups, with new opportunities created in or attached to maturebusinesses, in multiplying value, making deals, solving problems,fixing systems.

It has come from consumer goods, from B2B, frompublishing and info-marketing, from dozens of categories. It can begeneralized, then applied situationally. I have organized it all into thisAcademy.

This is what I use in my work. It’s never been laid outbefore any group before. I’m a bit uncomfortable with this analogy, but if you think of my books and newsletters as Kthrough 12, my special Trainings as university, you can think of this as grad school. The great ad manAl Ries, author of Positioning: Battle For Your Mind once said of me: “if you want a Ph.D. you can use,get it from Kennedy.”

But make no mistake: these 2 days are anything but an academic exercise. I don’tthink I’m capable of such a thing. In this case, we’re dealing with information that’s hard as nails, notsoft as pudding.

This is a peeling back of one of the last remaining layers of the onion that is me. Thefocus is on the pragmatic, not the conceptual. And I will be killing myself preparing…. Collecting input from early registrants via unique,detailed questionnaire. Re-tracing past and present work and case histories. Taking now unconscious,automatic synaptic response to various business situations and codifying them for your use.

This is ahuge project. A mountain of work. I’ll invest many, many days in the final organizing of this. For which,of course, I require excellent compensation – earned.“But Wait – There’s More!”

You see it all the time in TV direct-response now – the garden hose that coils itself up, themotorized cat toy, etc., etc. – “if you call now, we’ll double the order, just pay extra shipping andhandling.” Well, I’m DOUBLING THE TRAINING, and there is no extra shipping and handling!If you’ve been with me before, in an in-depth, “Dan Only” Training, you know it gets intense and it’sdemanding. You have to concentrate just to keep up.

Last year, I told a lot of “tough” truth about money,why it moves, what it requires. Advanced Business Development is at least at that level, probably“tougher”. But….We are also going to cover how wealth is created via DIRECT marketing….EXACTLY How People & Companies Get RichRoutinely & Formulaically in DIRECT Marketing- and why most don’tThere are certain formulas for building a “direct marketing money machine”, with a fewsurprisingly simple requirements.

There is a certain formula for extracting wealth from it day by dayonce it has moved from infancy and toddler to standing upright on its own two feet as a mature adult.The money is, often, entirely in the back-end, and that requires a sophisticated approach. These thingsare all known. And reliable. Defying them is fraught with peril and usually leads to failure. There areonly 2 reasons people do fail in direct marketing: one, they don’t know these formulas and facts.

Two,they convince themselves to ignore one or more of the ‘success requirements’ and push ahead againstthem rather than being aligned with them.10 11Advanced Business Development Dan KennedyI have, repeatedly, been on both sides of that equation personally, been there withclients a lot.

I have defied these facts and formulas and been financially punished for doingso, exactly as I deserved. I have also leveraged these facts and formulas for myself andothers into small and large fortunes. You profit from ALL this experience.

By the way, most people have an existent product or business or idea, or ready access to an ideaor product or business that can be made to disgorge a fortune through these direct marketing formulas.The billion dollar acne product, Proactiv®, came from two dermatologists.

Guthy-Renker’s first TVsuccess, Think & Grow Rich, came out of publishing’s back shelf. My friend Joe Cossman used onlyone strategy to take ten different products to a million dollars or more in profits – inventing only one ofthem, acquiring rights to the rest for nearly nothing.

There are four different sources of direct marketingopportunity you might plug into, and any one will do, in order to produce millions for yourself. I’ll showyou all four, and show you enough specific examples that you can’t possibly leave without fully andcompletely understanding them.

As a small example, I’ll reveal the inside details of how I’ve pocketed over $300,000.00 net inthe past 3 years by plugging into one of these sources, and using all its resources, so I’ve put at risk orspent nearly zero dollars of my own, leveraged work done once into reoccurring income ‘events’, andnever needed an employee or even any media of my own.

I know, $300,000.00 is not a fortune. I offerthis as structural example. As an inside look at one of these four sources and exactly how I made it handme money. But, $300,000.00 is nothing to sneeze at either. I doubt you’d turn an extra $300,000.00down.

I hope you wouldn’t.Side Note: This is in keeping with something I’ll discuss even more on the optional, extra ModusOperandi Day: how I have armies of people working on different businesses and projects to put a lotof money in MY pocket, really working on MY behalf – without employing them, managing them,investing in them.There are two possible ways to use and benefit from this information.

First, inside or applied to your present business(es). Most businesses, even the most mundane,contain at least one of these four sources either not tapped into at all or grossly under-used. Just about everybusiness can be made more profitable and more “advanced” with these direct marketing formulas. Thesehave removed brick ‘n mortar or local geographic boundaries for a widely varied assortment of businessesand professionals – including some very surprising ones.

These have lifted lids on price. They have turnedsingle, ordinary businesses into “umbrella enterprises” comprised of 4, 7, even 11 different vertical-nichebusinesses, each worth as much or more than the original parent. These have made the “dream” of 24/7/365automatic income from e-commerce real.

The most basic, elementary look at this is in the book No B.S.DIRECT Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses and (the woefully out-dated yet still overall validbook) How To Make Millions With Your Ideas.

But we can go much farther, be much cleverer, and createincredible breakthroughs in YOUR business with marriage to some kind of direct marketing. Years back, I aided this happening for a very staid, traditional industrial chemicals companybased in Arizona. A metals and jewelry manufacturer in New England.

More recently, a real estatebroker in the Midwest. Even more recently, a Texas wealth advisor. A software company you mostassuredly know. Strategies very recently given to a niche gun manufacturer. I could fill pages.

Inalmost every case, these businesses were locked up inside small boxes and narrow distributionchannels, even one distribution channel…..and remember, I fervently preach: the worst number inbusiness is: one.I will take you inside very current situations where I have radically changed the way differentbusinesses sell OR added new and additional ways they sell….creating different kinds of dramatic marketing,sales, growth and profit breakthroughs.

I’ll be adding in up-to-date examples right up to the month before thisAcademy! And you will get DEPTH AND DETAIL that I can’t or won’t disclose and present in any other forum.Second way you can profit from this: as means of creating or finding a new opportunity.

You’renot a tree, so firmly planted that anything beyond the length of your limbs is entirely beyond your reach.You are mobile, not rooted. Most people behave as if they are rooted. My life’s work is full of instances where people and companies have metamorphosed or leapt tonew and different opportunity.

Guthy-Renker began as an infomercial company selling info-products;they converted to a cosmetic/nutraceutical products direct marketer, not reliant on TV. Dr. Tomshack:chiropractor to franchisor. Bill Glazer, an adept retail store owner who mastered ‘direct marketing fora NON-direct marketing business’, but might have stayed using that mastery only for his own stores,perhaps opened additional stores, had I not “revealed” an entirely different, leverage rich strategy(expansion and diversification in place of growth).

There are some I don’t want to talk about here, butwill in the Academy. There is a formula for re-deployment of key assets. It might swing open a hidden,concealed doorway in your business life. There really is NO law prohibiting you from applying all you’ve learned and are learning in adifferent place.

There may be good or even urgent reason to do so. So, with a better understanding of how direct marketing works – in the direct marketingindustry – you can alter the trajectory of your entire business life with new opportunity or re-makeyour present business to stand apart from all others in its category.

Darin Garman, as example, didthe latter, transforming himself from a local commercial real estate broker to a global direct marketerof real estate investments (from that same local ‘inventory’), using media like Forbes and InvestorsBusiness Daily and Financial Times, direct-mail, and the web.

His ENTIRE LIFE changed because ofdirect marketing. As part of an overall business development strategy, this can be the chief means of differentiationfrom all others in your category.

12 13Advanced Business Development Dan KennedyWhat The Shark Tank Investors Don’t Know(But You Can And Should)The flaw in the entire Shark Tank group of investors is that none of them have much experience with or apparent understanding ofdirect marketing.

They all see the opportunities brought forwardONLY through the lens of traditional distribution channels and growth methods. I watched when twoguys with patents on a different, highly sophisticated, beautifully crafted putter – already selling well inJapan but not here, priced to sell at $500 – were beat up and rejected by one ‘Shark’ after another, eachdeciding that the task of getting this into pro shops at country clubs and golf retailers was too daunting.

No one even mentioned going direct to consumer, for which they have ample margin, great story – ‘ThePutting Secret Found Only In Japan’; for which there are outstanding mailing lists, from which avidgolfers can be driven online to watch an online infomercial.

None of the Sharks mentioned the “dirtylittle secret” of forcing retail with demand driven by direct marketing – a strategy used by the gunmanufacturer I consulted with while writing this, for which I prescribed an amped up, targeted versionthey had not considered.

No Shark knows of the information-first direct marketing strategy, that couldsell the putter behind it. It so happens I have some experience with selling $800 putters, 20 years ago, soI was thrilled, not intimidated, by the price. And I would have done a deal with these guys in a heartbeat.

(They did finally make a deal, but there’s risk the Shark will drag them down a dead-end.