Introduction

I know you will enjoy and derive value from this free section of my book….

When the student is ready, the master will appear. Are you ready to learn Marketing?

• Do you want more money?
• Maybe get a raise in pay?
• Or get a promotion?
• Do you have a good idea, and want to get it to the marketplace?
• Want to keep your current job?
• Do you want a new job?

My theory on life is pretty simple. If you want to succeed in life, be it in business, personal, or social, you need to understand marketing, and this is the aim of this book. It is not written as an M.B.A. crash course but to take a fresh look at marketing, and move marketing away from something that is considered by many to be esoteric (limited to few people) to something that can be simply understood and shared freely by everyone, and finally

Unleash the true power of marketing to all who want  to use it.

If we look at marketing today, it can be broken down into two distinct areas: the marketing that is taught in most business schools around the world, which revolves around the concepts of the 4P’s (we will be talking about these later, and how they are just too rigid and linear). Then there is business world marketing - how to use marketing to bring products or services to the marketplace. Today they are basically two polarized ends of a spectrum. What is missing is the bit in the middle - marketing for the rest of us: those who want to use marketing to perhaps find a job, change careers, or simply build a relationship.

What people want to learn is real world marketing!
Got Marketing?

If you look at marketing, it affects everything we do in life in some way, shape or form. If you are in business, the only way that your business can grow and prosper is by doing some marketing. Marketing is used to “get the business” and is the front end or “the tool” used to attract customers. If you have a new idea, you will need marketing to convert this idea into money. If you are unemployed, how do you get a job? You need to market your skill sets. If you have been in the same position for many years, how do you get a promotion? By marketing your value to your boss. What if you want to simply make money? Find a good idea and market it! Do you want to increase your company’s stock price? Market to the market. There is a reason that it’s called the stock market. What you will find is that the answer is always inevitably marketing.

I read my first book on self-development when I was twenty, and it was the most influential book I ever read. The book was called Success through a Positive Mental Attitude by Dr. Napoleon Hill. He is considered to be the "father" of the concept of positive thinking. He was contracted by Andrew Carnegie (then one of the richest men in the world) in the early 1900's to study what makes people successful. His study lasted some twenty years, during which time he interviewed close to five hundred of the most famous people in America, including J.D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford and F.W. Woolworth.

The result was the book Think and Grow Rich. In 1933, Dr. Hill became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The years ahead were very challenging years for America, with a high degree of uncertainty. President Roosevelt asked Dr. Hill what he could do to improve the economic climate.

Dr Hill pointed out that the answer was marketing. He told the President of the United States to market America to the American people, to simply remind them what a great country they lived in.

Under Hill’s guidance, the President kicked off a major marketing campaign that included a program called “The New Deal.” To remind Americans of how much value the country offered, he invited leaders of various religious denominations, along with major media representatives, to the White House. The campaign also set up shelters and soup kitchens to help millions of unemployed people. He took America out of the Depression by living up to his own words.

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

The New Deal program was really no more than marketing. Creating value for America helped tackle the fear and uncertainty that prevailed at the time.

So here you see an example of how marketing can even take a country out of a recession!

How are my views on marketing different than other marketing folks?

My view is that marketing is multi-dimensional. I believe that marketing can be applied to all areas of life. It is not just something that is supposed to be used by business professionals.

This book is about real world marketing. It’s about how to use marketing to get what you want in life. It is written in a simple and easy to understand language. These are not just academic concepts, but are based on what I have seen working in the real world. Over the years, I have been fortunate to interact with marketing professionals all around the world and have seen what works when it comes to “real world marketing,” and I now want to share it with you.

I promise you this is the most pragmatic marketing book that you will ever read!

Marketing is King!

Have you heard of the term “Cash is King?” It’s often used to show the power of cash. The concept is that once you have cash, you can buy any product or service at a discount. My wife likes the term, because she likes to spend a lot of money! Sounds good, but unfortunately it’s not true. I have to remind her that to get cash we need to market products, services or ideas. Never forget that all businesses start and end with customers. Marketing always precedes cash generation.

Let me ask you another question. What do you do once you have cash, anyway? Ask seasoned Chief Financial Officers (CFO’s) and they will tell you it’s pretty obvious: cash must make more cash!

Most of us don’t leave cash lying around, or banks would be out of business. (There would be no more high-rise bank buildings in downtown America.)

CFO’s will use fancy terms like a business is all about the utilization of cash. It means they give it back to the marketers to generate more cash!

No product, service or idea can be sold unless someone somewhere does some marketing. The king (Marketing) has to be involved! At a very basic level, marketing lets the world know you have something to offer. This could be as simple as someone telling you by word of mouth of the opportunity.

The question is not, “Is the King (Marketing) involved?”, but “ to what extent?” Even if you had the perfect product, it would be impossible to sell it without doing some marketing!

Quality marketing is the fastest way to get your product, service or idea to the marketplace. Even if you had the cure for cancer, it would take several months to get the word out, using conventional word of mouth. But with a few press releases, radio announcements and a T.V. appearance, you can create awareness in a matter of minutes. There are an estimated 90,000 media outlets in the U.S. alone waiting to deliver your message!

Depending on the product, service or idea, different businesses use the king (marketing) in different ways. The latest or most fashionable toy or perfume will usually be heavily advertised. Although it may have a lot of inherent value, the manufacturers still want to reap as much revenue in the shortest possible time, before the product goes out of fashion.

By the same token, products that are harmful to your health (such as beer and cigarettes) are also very heavily advertised, but for a different reason. It has been found to be the most effective way to sell these products is in linking them to some form of preferred lifestyle. This acts as a catalyst for driving sales volume.

So I claim that marketing is King. It’s what generates cash in the first place as well as what is used to generate more cash - cash on cash. Nice business when you can get it, and quality marketing always gets it! The irony is that it most probably was a marketing professional that came up with the tag line. Shame on us!

Let’s see the King in Action!

My claim is that Marketing is King. By definition, Kings usually get anything they want, right? What I will show in this book is how marketing can be used to get what you want, when you want it. I will even prove to you that if you don’t have what you want, it’s because of the lack of marketing. I will provide you with a lot of highly specific examples that I think that you will be able to relate to. By using marketing effectively, I hope you can open doors that perhaps have been closed to you for a long time.

Some of the things that you will learn from this book, and gain value from are:

In Life

• The magic ingredient “M” that can get you anything you want in life
• Why it’s called Marketing
• The universal language of life
• What the world ultimately pays for
• The most powerful force on the planet
• How to connect with anyone at anytime
• How the shortest distance between you and success is always HOPE

In Job Hunting

• How to get people to create jobs for you
• How there are actually no such things as jobs - there never were!
• How to get a job interview in one hour or less
• How to get an internship in 24 hours or less
• Why a resume is not supposed to be a resume
• How to get driven around in a full stretch limo and not even have a job!
• Why the purpose of an interview is not to get a job
• Eight classic mistakes all job hunters make
• What is the shortest distance between you and a job?
• The secrets on how to win the interview game
• Why you don’t have a job

In Sales

• The ABC of sales
• The best kept secret in advertising - SRDS
• How to connect with a VIP anytime by simply dropping the “i”
• How to get immediate access to 19 million companies in North America
• How marketing can immediately double your sales effectiveness
• How to find out “Where's the Beef?”
• How to get an interview with the most famous management consulting company in the world
• How to become the richest woman in the U.K.
• 19 marketing characteristics that all world class sales people share
• How to get flown in a billionaire's helicopter

Just look around you today, you will find that the most successful people, products and businesses in our society have mastered the art of marketing.

In life or business, there is no shortage of ideas. What is lacking is being able to convert these ideas into reality, and this is where marketing comes in, making the invisible visible and the visible valuable.

From my research, some eighty percent of all the products that are consumed today will be obsolete within five years, so the question is which of the new ideas will make it? It is clearly those that are able to bring maximum value to the marketplace and market effectively.

Successful people and businesses clearly understand marketing, and have been using the secret ingredient “ M” to get what they want for a long time. Now it’s your turn!

The most powerful force on the planet is Marketing!

Marketing is certainly the most powerful force on the planet. Advertising and sales are used daily to change the way we think, feel and behave. Everything you do on a daily basis is because you are responding to someone’s advertisement or sales proposition.

If you ask any top advertising executive about the goal of advertising, he or she will tell you it is simply to change human behavior.

Our daily lives are moved by people who have mastered the art of marketing. Marketing is used to create perceived value in your mind that moves you to take action.

Someone once told me that intelligent people fight with their minds, not their hands.

I think he was talking about marketing, trying to control the way that you think about and interpret different situations. Marketing is a battle for your mind!

Others hold the key to your success!

The ultimate success formula, in my opinion, is

Success = OPM + OPE + OPC.

To be successful, learn to benefit from others. In the real estate world, the term OPM is widely used and understood. In fact, we all use it without knowing it. It is called using Other People’s Money. Savvy real estate investors know leverage is the key to success. Let’s say you buy a house for $100,000 and put $5,000 down. Due to appreciation, the value goes up by $10,000 in one year. What was the return on investment? One hundred percent ($5,000/$10,000)!

This is called leverage - getting a lot from a little!

The second thing we can gain from others is experience.

Intelligence is when you learn from your own experience. Genius is when you learn from Other People’s Experience! Ignorance is when you are not even prepared to try!

We get OPE in two major ways. The first and best way is always reading. Reading gives the experience of others, without having to undergo the pain of living it. For example, the Job Hunting chapter in this book can save you a lot of time and frustration.

The second way to gain OPE is called the “Mastermind principle.” It’s a concept developed by Andrew Carnegie in the early 1900’s. It is what made Thomas Edison, a person with a limited education, one of the greatest inventors of all time. It is what made Henry Ford so successful, and is based on the principle,

“What I don’t have, I can achieve by using other people’s minds.”

Some of the greatest people in the history of America have used the “Mastermind principle.”

The final benefit we can gain from others is credibility. Not to say that you are not a credible person already, but a helping hand is always welcome! Different forms of credibility appear as OPC (Other People’s Credibility). Networking, references, referrals and testimonials all are built on others’ credibility. When you network, you leverage the credibility of the person you network with. When you ask someone for a reference, you ask them to give you some credibility. When you get a referral, you take advantage of the credibility you have already built with someone. So never forget, your success is in others’ hands!

Before we begin our journey together, I want to make you a promise. My promise to you is that you will get at least a hundredfold greater value out of this book than the price you paid for it. I am a marketing professional and am always looking at ways to add value, above and beyond any expectations you may have of me. So this book is in many ways a few books in one. You will learn how to use marketing to find a job, increase your sales, get an internship or build a relationship. Chapter 5, the chapter on marketing for job hunting, is worth several thousands of dollars on its own! Read it carefully. I will share with you a blueprint for achieving success that is “real world tested.” There are gold nuggets in this chapter that you can immediately use to change your situation if you are desperately looking for a job, or an immediate career change.

I am exceptionally passionate about teaching marketing and I hope that you will be able to feel my presence in this book. But it’s a fact that you only can teach people who want to be taught, because:

Only when the student is ready, will the master appear!

My goal is simple. If I help others get what they want, I will get what I want. I am proud to be part of the profession that we call marketing; it gives me an opportunity to serve, and to contribute to others’ lives. I hope after reading this book, you are able to do the same thing. My goal is not just to get you pumped up, motivated or even inspired (these things are transient at best). I want to provide you with some real world workable strategies and tools that you can apply in your everyday life, and set you on the right course of action to change things in a positive manner, and allow marketing to be the catalyst for change.

However, only you can make the change. To be successful, you don’t just need a philosophy and a winning strategy, but the ability to follow through and make it happen. Ultimately it is up to you to apply these ideas.

I have used a lot of anecdotes from my own experience to bring some realism and humor to the explanation, and hope you’ll have fun with some of the stories. But please don’t just enjoy reading it, or I have wasted my time. Apply the concepts, because power is the application of knowledge. I guarantee that once you start to apply some of the principles, your life will change for the better, be it in your personal, professional or business endeavors.

I assure you that the principles are sound and proven, based on my two decades of research, and the study of highly successful people around the world, and my own personal experiences.

I wish you luck on your journey and fun along the way. Life is short, enjoy it, learn, apply and focus on how you can add value to others. Do quality marketing! Is this not the purpose of life? I look forward to meeting you at one of my talks or seminars. Please come up and introduce yourself.

As we start our journey together, always remember that marketing will always be king, and the king will always be found in Marketing!