Enlightenment-by-Email,
or, How to Make Your Great
TUT Come True
Mike Dooley didn’t know what he was going to do. He quit his
job at Price Waterhouse. He left the company, his security, and his
home. He went to Orlando and sat there, lost, confused, waiting for
direction. None came.
Meanwhile, his brother was making some money from royalties
on a few t-shirts he had designed. So Mike, his brother, and later
their mother, went into the T-shirt business. They called their
business TUT, for Totally Unique T-shirts. Everyone from Disney to
Macy’s bought and sold them. Within ten years they sold more than
one million shirts. Life was good.
As the market began to change, and major buyers began to
make their own T-shirts, the family decided to stop business. The
artistic brother began a career as an actor and improv comic. The
enterprising mother, who had already written two books, began a
full-time career as a writer. Mike decided to buy out the family
business --- which by that time had come to be known as "Totally
Unique Thoughts" --- and run it himself.
"Our most popular T-shirts had always been the ones with
inspiring or spiritual sayings written on them," Mike told me over
the phone one day. "So I decided to offer a Monday Morning
Motivator by e-mail to our loyal list of followers."
The Monday memos were usually poems. And his small band
of followers at the time amounted to 1,000 names. Instead of writing
to these people with an opening that said, "Dear loyal T-shirt
customer...," Mike decided on a more unique approach.
"I created an Adventure’s Club and invited them to be a member
for the sum of only $36 a year," Mike explained. "They would get
weekly and even daily messages from me, all of an inspiring,
motivational and/or spiritual nature."
Did it work?
"No. Almost no one paid for it. So I naturally decided to offer it
for free, knowing I would somehow figure out how to make money
from it down the road."
Mike’s Monday Morning Memos caught on. People loved the
inspiring weekly poetry. Eventually he gathered the courage to add
his own insightful commentaries that would accompany each poem.
His subscriber base grew to 3,000 names.
"About this time I had a friend of mine who was making
$15,000 every month from banner ads on his e-cards," says Mike.
"So I put all my energy into making free e-cards that people could
sponsor click-through ads on. I used the old T-shirt art I had and
added some commentary to make the e-cards unique."
But that didn’t work out, either.
"Within six months advertisers quit taking ads on e-cards. My
friend stopped making $15,000 a month. I never made more than
$100 from my e-cards. But I’m still glad I did them."
Why is he glad?
"They have become a viral marketing campaign," Mike
explains. "People send them to others and suddenly my website is
known to potentially millions of people. Those e-cards are still a
popular feature on my website."
Around this time --- in 2001 --- Mike decided to take the
biggest leap of faith of all.
"I recorded 12 audiotapes, packaged them, and called them
Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams. They are a
combination of my weekly e-memos, old talks I had given, and
entirely fresh material."
That tape set became a turning point for Mike’s online business.
"People would get an e-card from someone, see a link at the
bottom for my tapes, and make an impulse buy right then and there."
Mike sells 40 to 60 tape sets every month, at a retail price of
$125 for either cassettes or CDs.
While he’s never asked for a single testimonial for his tapes, he
has at this point collected an overwhelming amount of them. You
Here are three quick ones:
"Riveting. Inspiring. Even miraculous. Rarely have I heard such
wisdom, such mind-stretching beauty, such practical inspiration and
proven advice."
"I was blown away! I squealed with delight!"
"I’m listening to the tapes repeatedly... EXCELLENT material,
endless new perspectives, spin-offs...your words have set me in
motion!"
While Mike has added a daily e-memo to his weekly ones, he
has never advertised, done any publicity, or implemented any
marketing. His tape sales come from word-of-mouth sharing. His
database is currently 5,000 hot names, and growing. He plans to use
pay-for-click services to build his database. Next he’ll focus on his
affiliate program, which he just added to his site.
In short, Mike went from a company drop-out with no mission
to a man with a giant mission. And he uses the Internet as his
primary vehicle to help people go for their dreams. His main
marketing tool is his "Enlightenment-by-E-mail" daily and weekly
inspiring messages, which continue to be free.
What’s his advice for building a successful business and making
your own TUT---totally unique thoughts---come true?
"As clearly as possible define the end result of what you want in
emotional terms," he advises. "Get into that emotion now, even
before you start working for the dream or even quitting your job.
Having the end result firmly in mind now will help you weather any
setbacks that may occur later."
"And don’t worry about how you will get to that end result," he
adds. "There are a million ways to achieve fame or wealth, or
whatever you want. Don’t tie the hands of the universe by thinking it
has to come in one certain way. The universe has ’Infinite
Possibilities’ at its beck and call. Trust it."
Finally, I asked Mike if he would offer a "totally unique
thought" specifically for you, the reader of this book. Here’s what he
sent:
"Success in the world, business or otherwise, is far more a
function of how well you engage the Universe and its magic, than it
is of how well you manipulate the time and space around you. This
is every tycoon’s secret - whether they know it or not.
"Your job is NOT to out-maneuver the competition, to play into
the hands of future clients and customers, or to reinvent the wheel.
Your job is to define your dream, to imagine the end result, and to
move with your hunches and instincts - that’s it. The rest will
automatically and effortlessly fall into place...a brilliant marketing
strategy, the best "location," the "clutch" idea, and perfect timing
between them. The Universe is ALIVE in the unseen, and active in
all of your affairs. Learn how to use it."
And here.s another very relevant quote from Mike:
.GIVING tells the Universe that you believe YOU are provided
for. For even as you empty your purse you fear not, demonstrating
faith that you will remain whole, that your coffers will be
replenished, and that your love for whomever you gave, is what’s
most important. Verily, as you believe these things to be true, you
will experience such truths, and abundance shall be showered upon
you as if the heavens had opened up..
You.ll note that a large degree of Mike.s success came from
giving --- he gave away (and still gives away) e-cards, and he still
writes and gives away his inspiring daily and weekly memos.
Total sales, plus speaking fees, and revenues from new books in
the mill (Notes from the Universe, Totally Unique Thoughts, More
Reminders Of Life.s Everyday Magic, etc,) should top $250,000 this
year, and Mike projects $1,000,000 in 2004!
Mike says, .None of this would have happened if I hadn.t
offered all my mailings, and club membership for free, though at the
time I had no idea of where it would take me, nor of how I would
eventually profit. It just felt right, people were grateful, and I was
loving my .job..
.Sometimes the Universe doesn.t always respond in kind, or by
throwing dollars at you, but instead, it returns to you confidence,
dreams, and inspiration...which is even better than bucks, because
it.s like learning to fish (as opposed to being given a fish). You then
know how to go get more..
How Giving Led to $1,500,000
By John Milton Fogg
Lots of authors take custody of the "best-seller" claim for their
book. Yeah, well... it may be a best-seller at the .Ain’t Words Cool.
book store in their own home town, but.... It’s a whole other thing to
be able to say that a book has sold a million copies!
That’s just what John Milton Fogg can claim for his book .The
Greatest Networker in the World.. How did he do that? John’s
answer is...
I gave the book away.
I wrote The Greatest Networker... in 1992. At the time I was the
owner/editor of a publication named Upline, that served men and
women in the network marketing profession. At that time, we
probably had a couple of thousand subscribers at most.
I didn’t have the money for the first-print run. A friend and
mentor of mine in the business, Tom "Big Al" Schreiter, suggested I
"pre-sell" the books to people who could sell them to others: book
wholesalers, vendors to network marketers, people who had
magazines or catalogs which sold books, tapes and tools. Tom told
me to make a great low-price deal to these folks so they could make
more money. That would pay for the printing, make a profit for
myself and generate the money to print more books. Tom bought
1000 copies at $3 each.
I asked him how he was going to sell those books. He told me
he wasn’t. He was going to give them away.
That got my attention, so I asked, "Why?"
Tom explained he was going to "seed" the market. He figured
people would like or love the book, and they’d come back and buy
more to give or sell to other people. And, it would create word-ofmouth
advertising for the book, which meant more sales for him
(and me).
Tom also explained the idea of a "value-added" premium to me:
He’d make an offer of one of his products to his people and give The
Greatest Networker... away free as an incentive to buy. People
would get a $10 value, which Tom only paid $3 for.
Good deal for him- helped him sell more of his products.
Good deal for them- they got a free gift, felt great and were
more inclined to buy his offer.
I don’t know how many of my books Tom sold over the years. I
do know he made his investment back and them some - lots of some.
I knew a great idea when I saw one, so I started giving The
Greatest Networker... away with every single subscription to Upline.
My subscribers got a free gift and were more likely to buy the
magazine to begin with. I got my book being read by the best
possible people who could spread the word and help me sell more.
When the Internet came along, I put The Greatest Networker...
up on our website and gave it away there, too.
Over the years I probably gave away 40,000-plus copies of my
book. The cost of that was, say, $50,000. So one way to look at it
was I gave away $50,000.
But I earned a buck a book royalty on all the copies of The
Greatest Networker in the World that were sold. That doesn’t include
any "extra" money I earned from the wholesale or retail sales when
people bought the book.
Do the math.
My guess would be all-in-all that’s $1.5 million of net profit to
me.
All because I gave my book away.
Here.s yet another true story about the power of giving:
Do you know who Seth Godin is? (He’s the other Internet
Marketing guru besides Joe.) :-) Seth wrote The Idea Virus. That
book started a revolution. Seth gave it away on-line. People told him
he was crazy. More than a million and a-half of Seth’s e-books are
out there. AND, after he gave it away for free, he printed up a hardcover
edition for $45 and made a fortune selling that! Go figure.
I had the fascinating privilege of interviewing Seth Godin for
Networking Times magazine. He told me the following "Giving-
Marketing" story and it just blew me away. This is utterly brilliant!
Seth knows a great folksinger who does music for kids. She has
five CDs and she sells them on her own. Now, Seth doesn’t do
consulting any more, but this lady is a personal friend, so when she
asked if he had any ideas on how she could sell more of her CDs,
Mr. Permission Marketing (he wrote that book, too) complied.
Seth asked how much she sold her CDs for. She told him $15.
Seth asked how much one cost her to produce and package. She told
him 80 cents. So Seth said...
"Look, every time someone buys one CD, send them two.
Nobody has any use for a second CD, because it’s the same music.
What are they going to do? They’re going to give it away, probably
as a present. One of these kids gives one of these CDs to another kid
as a birthday present and they’re likely to buy two, three or four
more, because the parents get tired of hearing the same songs over
and over again."
Like I said, "Brilliant." Each one of those give-away CDs that
results in just one additional sale nets the folksinger $14.20. And as
Seth pointed out, parents will probably buy two or three more,
perhaps all five. And each time they do, they get an extra one free,
that they turn around and give to a friend saying, "This is great.
Little Harry will really love this."
Oh, that lady folksinger doubled, then tripled her business with
that CD she gave away.
John Milton Fogg.s website is at:
A Law That Never Fails
By Dr. Robert Anthony
Two years ago I received an email from a friend that said, "I
just came across a website that has a quote from one of your books
right on the front page."
I checked it out and sure enough, there was a quote from my
book, Advanced Formula For Total Success,
prominently featured on the main page.
After looking over the website I was impressed with the service
the owner was offering. I contacted him and told him so. In addition
to the quote, I offered to write a short article endorsing his service.
He couldn.t believe I would do this for him without compensation.
My intention was to support him and help him to succeed. It
never even occurred to me to ask for anything in return. I knew that
the universe would take care of any "compensation."
As a result of my endorsement I found out that during the
following year he had increased his sales significantly. During that
time we never kept in contact and truthfully I had forgotten all about
it.
A little over a year later I received an email from him that said,
.Someone contacted me because they saw your endorsement on my
website and said they wanted to get in touch with you. He says it is
very important. Do you want me to give him your personal email
address?.
Strangely enough I had no hesitation and said, .Yes, have him
contact me..
This is the only communication I had with the website owner
since I helped him over a year ago.
I followed up and contacted the man who wrote to him. That
one contact changed my life.
As it turned out, this individual became a close friend as well as
my new business manager and marketer. As a result, with his help,
my business increased over 500%!
All this from giving freely to someone without asking for
something in return. This was a clear and direct result of the Law of
Reciprocation (giving/receiving) in action.
A law that NEVER fails.
Dr. Robert Anthony is the author of several best-selling books.