My Weekend In San Diego...

This weekend I attended a marketing seminar in San Diego.  I rarely go to seminars...I usually just buy the recording of the seminar after it's done.  It saves me a lot of time.

But this time I was asked to speak, and as a favor to the promoter, I did.  Plus, I thought it was time to meet a few new people.

As some might have guessed...my 2 hour presentation was on "The Power of Controversy Marketing."  Being as it was a "Buzz Marketing Seminar," it was a timely topic.

Buzz Marketing seems to be a popular topic now days.  Morgan knows a bit about Buzz Marketing.  His www.TheInterviewWithGod.com site has received millions of visitors without spending a penny on advertising.

Perhaps the most interesting presentation was given by Marlon Sanders.  If any of you know Marlon personally, you know that he is simply brilliant.  His presentation was all about "Seeding" and why it is the key to speading a word-of-mouth virus.

I think a few people didn't really "get it" because of Marlon's presentation style.  If any of you have seen Marlon speak...he gets pretty darn wacky.  Sometimes it drowns out his message. But I was fascinated with his step-by-step process for "seeding" influential people to spread your message.

For those people who really listened to his message, it was brilliant.  I will be using Marlon's "Seeding" method to launch my www.MarriageAdvice.com website.

Marlon didn't want me to show the photo at the left.  He had just eaten some raw fish and was feeling it (if you know what I mean :-)

Just kidding...it's just a photo of Marlon, hamming it up for the camera.

Here's a few more people that I met this weekend...

The guy in the photo on the right is Mike Koenigs.  Mike is a marketing and multimedia genius.  His site is http://www.mikekoenigs.com/  He's done marketing work in various forms for many major companies.

If you go to http://www.everythingyoushouldknow.com/ you can see some of this work.  He designed and built that site.

He will be launching a service pretty soon that has to do with creating online infomercials.  It's going to be quite revolutionary.  I'm very interested myself to see what it is.

On top of all his talents...he's a super nice guy and I really enjoyed hanging out with him.

Now a lot of your internet marketing guys know Mike Stewart.  I had the opportunity to hang out with Mike for quite some time. 

In fact, I'm about to invest a heavy chunk of change with Mike.  He sells a very high end video production suite, with which I was totally blown away.  It is the ULTIMATE infoproduct creation tool. 

It combines multiple video inputs, with a powerpoint video input, and any type of television or other video inputs to create a really impressive presentation.

And Mike is honest as they come.

I also met a fellow named Sean Roach. 

Sean is a unique guy.  He did more in marketing by the age of 27 than most marketing executives do in a lifetime. 

What was unique about Sean was that he could talk up a storm.  Some of it you could swear was a bunch of BS until you watched him give a presentation.  He was amazing.

This guy has "got game" for sure.

I'm glad I met him.  In fact, he just agreed to a movie and book deal based on his life when he was a teenager (so you can imagine it was interesting.)

And then there was Morgan Westerman...the promoter of the event.  Morgan is a kindred soul.  We are both of the same faith.

Morgan put on an AWESOME event. 

He fed us nearly every meal with some of the best food and then there was the local cruise on a yacht in the San Diego harbor that took us to a wonderful restaurant that sat right on the water.

All I can say is that he must of lost a bunch of money on the event because he rolled out all the bells and whistles.  Thank you Morgan!

Mary Foley was at the seminar.  She sure was a joy to meet and get to know.  She has a great message for all women.  Her site is http://www.gobodacious.com 

Take a moment and visit Mary's site.

She's got some great articles on her site and if you're a gal who's in need of some reprogramming then you should consider joining the Bodacious Women's Club.

Lastly, I met Stephen Pierce. 

What a brilliant dude.

But the most interesting thing about Stephen, as I watched him, is that he is also a quiet humble guy as well.  He knows when to turn it on and off. 

When he's on...he's a locomotive.

When he's off...he's quite and unassuming.

I had the privelege of interviewing Stephen during my presentation.  I asked him private questions about his book, "Under Oath" and some of the "behind the scenes" things that were going on when he wrote and rolled out that book.

If any of you invest in the Buzz Marketing Conference program (when it's released) I think you'll enjoy my presentation and the interview I did with Stephen.

That's all for today.

Please keep the victims of Hurricane Katrina in your prayers.  And if you can do anything to help them, please consider doing something.  Hundreds have lost their lives and thousands are left homeless!

David Frey

Our Wonderful United States Postal System

Ya gotta love our postal system here in the United States.  A customer of mine sent me these photos of a package that I had send to him.

Not only was the package completely ripped apart and stepped on, the stuff inside was gone!

So I took these photos into the USPS to show them what had happened and guess what was the first thing they said to me....

"Sir, did you buy insurance on the package?"

INSURANCE!!!!

Why the crap should I pay insurance on something that I'm already paying them to do?!

The USPS is amazing sometimes.

When I go into their office with a bunch of pacakges I always hear a long moooaaann.

You would think they would be happy to see me and all the business I bring them.  But no, they just see all the work they gotta do (It's a result of having a stale, dumbed down government job.)

Not all the postal workers are like that though. There are a couple in my local USPS office that are great.  They make it worthwhile.

How To Use the Power of Controversy to Generate $62,245 In Sales In Just 3 1/2 Days!

NOTE:  This article was written for me by a fellow we will call "Mr. X." (He didn't want to reveal his identity.)  He wrote it for me after I shared with him my recent campaign results.

You remember the famous saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity?" Well, apparently that's still true today, as I recently learned by accident in an e-mail campaign.

What happened was this...I sent my readers an e-mail to let them know about a program I had purchased myself and used to save thousands of dollars (more about that later).

Well, it turns out that the guy that created this program had run into some
legal problems in the past with the FTC. You see, the "powers that be" for whatever reason didn't like what he was doing and...

"...He Ended Up with a 6 Month All-Expense Paid Vacation to Club
Fed."

I knew this, and my readers were told about it, and guess what? I got tons of e-mails telling me what a bad guy he was. I even had faithful subsribers tell me they were canceling their subscriptions because they couldn't believe I would endorse a product by a guy who had been to prison.

I wanted to respond to this flood of negative e-mails to let my readers know that...the best people to learn from are those who have lived the mistakes they are teaching you how to avoid. Oh, and of course, the best people to learn how to make money from are those who have done it!

That's right...

"You Can Learn More From a Guy Who's Been There and Done It than All the 'Experts' in the World!"

So, anyway, there I was e-mailing everyone to let them know that whatever this guy's past was, his present was that he was sharing everything he had learned, from how to make $100 million plus to losing most of it to going to jail. I mean...

"Just One Little Paragraph He Added to His Ads Generated an Extra $60 Million..."

...and I thought that was something my readers would definitely be interested in! But, you know what? I got more e-mails from people who "googled" the author than I did from people ordering the product or asking how to put this amazing paragraph to work for them.

And, do you know why? Because...

"Most People Would Rather Tell You What's Wrong with Something than Go Make Money with It!"

Yes, Virginia, it's true. Most people aren't players. In fact, I'll make you a bet. I'll bet you that I could send each of the people who e-mailed me complaining about my endorsement of this particular program a FREE copy of all the powerful tips, strategies and information in it with absolute proof of how well it worked and...

"They Would Never Even Read It, Much Less Use It!"

You see, most people just don't believe that they can make the kind of money that direct marketing can generate. They don't believe that you can write a few words down and send them out to people and end up with a virtual unlimited pass to an ATM machine to take out as much cash as you want.

But, you and I know it, don't we? And, that's why, dear reader, I wanted to write to you to let you know about what I learned from my little e-mail where I tried to tell people how wonderful the program was despite what the complaining e-mails said.

I learned that a follow up e-mail showing the controversy and reprinting several e-mails from the people who complained about it...

"Actually Generated Even More Sales!"

No kidding! The compainers kept sending in e-mails whining about why this program had to be worthless because the guy who created it was a "bad apple" and I kept letting everyone know about the complaints by reprinting them, which led to more e-mails and more complaints, but also...

"More Orders!"

In fact, the whole thing generated $62,243 in orders (and still counting!) What did I ultimately learn from this? Well, I learned that...

"the Power of Controversy can Actually TRIPLE your sales."

Now, I'm not saying that you should go out and intentionally create a bunch of questionable mailings just to stir up controversy hoping you'll generate a higher response.

But, I am saying that if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of controversy because of a product or service that you are offering to people, you don't have to just take the complaints and do nothing.

"You Can Actually Turn Unhappy Customers Into an Earning Machine..."

...simply by taking the controvery that they are complaining about,
responding to it publicly where other potential customers can see both sides
of the story and turn those potential customers into orders.

That, my friend is...

"The Power of Controversy"

Talk about turning lemons into lemonade. This is actually turning lemons into a lemonade stand that can make you a ton of money!

Oh, and as promised above, for those of you who want to read about that amazing program that generated all that money...

CLICK HERE TO LEARN ABOUT THE PARAGRAPH THAT GENERATED $60 MILLION IN SALES

And, for those of you who want to know how I saved tens of thousands in
printing costs using just one bit of information from that program...

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW I SAVED THOUSANDS IN PRINTING COSTS!"

A Big Freak'in Fish!

My long time friend Joel Peterson of Profit Calc recently went on a fishing trip to Alaska.  He invited me to go, but I couldn't break away.  After I saw this photo, I wish I had.

Here's the email he sent me from Alaska...

Hey Dave,

I'm writing to you from Alaska... this is the last day of our trip. 

8 of us in the group and we have caught over 1,000 pounds of fish! 

I caught a 70 lb King that I'm going to get mounted.... see the attached picture... 

All the guides up here have told me it is a once in a life time fish.  Many of the guides that have fished up here for 20 years or more have never personally caught one this big so I better get it mounted....good sales pitch cause I went for it...

Wish you were here...Joel

Why I Don't Do One-on-One Coaching or Consulting Anymore

Coaching and consulting have been my passion for the past 11 years.  I love it.  But after many years of doing it, I decided to stop accepting one-on-one coaching and consulting.

I still get requests almost daily, but I turn them all down.

Why?

Well, I think Wally Amos explained it best.

By the way, did you know that before Wally Amos was a cookie mogul, he was a music agent with William Morris in the 70's.

Well, one day Wally came into a conference room, all the music agents are sitting there and he brought a bag of cookies.

This was right before he launched his cookie business.  He said to the group, "Guys, I've had it managing artists, and people, the emotions and the craziness.  I'm now managing a cookie.  And the great thing about managing a cookie is it doesn't talk back, it listens to you, it shows up on time, it does what it's supposed to do, and you can control your own destiny of success and failure without all the emotional entanglements of dealing with artists."

Now go back to that statement and replace the word "artists" with "clients" and that explains why I don't do one-on-one coaching and consulting anymore.

I simply hated to have to explain to people why direct marketing works, why they're reputation won't be soiled using it, and having to defend my marketing tactics.  Those days are over. 

The second reason is that I'm a HUGE believer in creating a product once and selling it over and over and over and over and over and over...etc.

Today I'm successful.  And what does "success" mean to me.

I have the financial resources to do what I want, when I want, with whom I want, where ever I want to do it.  That's success.

Success = Freedom

Do I have deadlines?  Do I work a lot of hours sometimes?  Do I get frustrated at time?

Of course.

But the difference is...that it's self-imposed.  No one "made" me do it.

And to be honest, sometimes I like deadlines, working overtime, and getting stressed.  I'm a type "A" person.  That's my personality.  As long as it's self-imposed...it's okay.

And...that's why I don't do one-on-one coaching and consulting anymore.  :-)

Have a great week.

David

(I still have one strategic consulting client - they are an exception.  They are GREAT to work with and I like being around them).