The Phenomenon by Dan S. Kennedy
These are my book notes on The Phenomenon by the author and marketing legend Dan S. Kennedy.
This book got quite a few bad reviews on amazon, mostly for it’s rather thin “own” material of Dan S. Kennedy and the amount of (self-)promotion by the 26 contributors to this book.
In part I can relate to this critizism.
But there’re still very valuable key concepts and golden nuggets to find in this book.
Plus: You can learn a lot about headlines by just reading the table of contents below!
Scroll down, I’ll share the key ideas and concepts with you here.
Let’s dive in.
Facts
- Title: The Phenomenon
- Subtitle: Achieve More In the Next 12 Months than the previous 12 Years
- Author: Dan S. Kennedy
- Author’s website: nobsinnercircle.com
- First published: 2009
- Type: non fiction
- Genre: marketing
- Rating: 3/5
- Recommended: Yes
Motion beats meditation.
- Gary Halbert
Table Of Contents Of The Book
- The Most Incredible Free Gift Ever
- Special Free Video Presentation
- What Is The Phenomenon(tm)? And How You Can Use It to Achieve More In Your Next 12 Months by Dan Kennedy
- Best Opportunities Today for Chiropractors to Quickly and Easily Make More While Working Less Than Ever Before by Ben Altadonna
- Best Opportunities Today for Anyone, from Garbage Man to CPA, to Quickly and Easily Build a Highly Profitable College Planning Business by Ron Caruthers
- How Anyone of Any Background, Any Education, Living Anywhere Can Quickly and Easily Create a Highly Successful Internet Business in 12 Months or Less by Derek Gehl
- Learn the Secret to Building a WILDLY Successful Commercial Real Estate Business… More Money. Less Work in 12 Months or Less by Jim Gillespie
- How Any Independent Retailer Can Discover the Hidden Wealth in Their Retail Business and See Increased Sales of 20%, 50%, Even 100% within 12 Months or Less by Bill Glazer
- How to Get $100,000… $300,000… Even $500,000 (or more) Worth of FREE Publicity by Bill Harrison and Steve Harrison
- Business Owners Learn How to Go from Working 70 and 80 Hours a Week, to Working Only a Few Hours Per Week… Make More Money Than Ever by Ron Ipach
- Creating the Lifestyle of Your Dreams by Achieving Optimal Health and Fitness by Lloyd Irvin
- How Anyone from Any Background Can Quickly and Easily Learn a Profitable Skill or Trade and Rapidly Build Their Very Own Highly Profitable Business… All In 12 Months or Less by Gene Kelly
- Found: Your Missing Phenomenon(tm) Link; Discover Ryan Lee’s 21-Day Secret System for Achieving Superior Health and a Phenomenal Lifestyle by Ryan Lee
- Learn How Regular People Just Like You Are Bringing in an Extra $10,000, $25,000, Even $50,000 or More Per Month in Quick Turn Real Estate by Ron LeGrand
- How to Start or Transform a Struggling eBay Business Into a No-Fail, Money Generating Machine by Andrew Lock
- Attention Dentists, Professionals and Entrepreneurs… Breathe New Life into Your Practice and Business by Dr. Charles Martin
- How to Transform Any Struggling Mortgage Business into a No-Fail, Money Generating Machine… While Working Less Than Ever Before… by Michael Miget
- Stop Wasting Precious Time and Money with Unproductive Behaviors Learn How To Quickly and Easily Achieve the “Millionaire Mindset” and in 12 Months or less you too can experience The Phenomenon(tm) by Lee Milteer
- Best Opportunities Today in Making More and Working Less in the Highly Profitable World of Real Estate by Rob Minton
- Dentists… Stop Working So Hard for Average Profits! by Ed O’leefe
Make Your First Real Estate Deal in 21 Days or Less Guaranteed! by Sherman Ragland - Discover How ANY Loan Officer Can Easily Bring Home 6 Figures, Working Fewer Hours and Finally Start Enjoying Life Again! by Brian Sacks
- How Anyone Can Build a Wildly Successful Online Business Regardless If You Know Anything About Computers or the Internet by Yanik Silver
- The Truth about Making $400,000.00, $800,000.00 or even $ 1,000,000.00 per Year in the Mortgage Industry by Scott Tucker
- The Truth about Making Big Money with Real Estate Investing… Just Imagine, in 12 Short Months You Could Be Making More by Working Less Than Ever Before by Tim Winders
- How to Use Auto-Responder and Strong Copy to Grow Your Business at a Staggering Pace by Mark Stokes
- How to Leapfrog Your Way To Success in Real Estate and Business By Leveraging the Power of Association and the Power of the Mastermind by Marlene Green
- The Story of ILTC (International Language & Training Consultants), France by Carol Sausor
- The TrySports Story: How You Can Quickly and Successfully Grow Your Own Retail Businessl by Jim Kirwan
- Phenomenon Practicioners by Industry
Key Concepts & Ideas
Eagerly look at every effective idea to find something you can translate and transfer.
Big breakthroughs occur when you look outside your specific business industry.
We are fascinated by speed, and we’re frustrated by slow.
We know slow doesn’t work.
Slow is our enemy.
The secret is not in how you think.
Thinking about it does not make it so, and so these are what I call lies of omission.
Radically change the way you work and are paid; that’s part of embracing speed.
Entrepreneurial success, like most things in life, is mostly a matter of decision.
A partnership, friendship, intimate relationship, or marriage that succeeds or fails, a book that gets written or remains a jumble of notes in a drawer, the garage that gets cleaned out Saturday or put off until next week - these are all the result of decision and determination to make the decision right.
Making the right decisions is often a lot less important than determining to make your decisions right.
Only by making a decision and acting on it can you get into action and move forward.
By waiting to make only the perfect decisions, you remain inert and cannot move forward at all.
Marketing “X” Or: Direct Response Marketing Rules
- Rule 1: There will always be an offer or offer(s). The more interesting and appealing the offer, the better, but the most important basic point is: never end a conversation in any media without making a direct offer.
- Rule 2: There will be reason to respond right now. Your offer must force and compel your customer or client to move now. Your goal is immediate response.
- Rule 3: Clear instructions. Two sub-rules: one, confused consumers do nothing. Two, most people do a pretty good job of following directions. Most marketers’ failures and disappointments result from giving confusing directions or no directions at all. When you put together any marketing tool; ad, flyer, sales letter, website, phone script, etc., it should be a single focused path with high sidewalls to prevent the prospect from wandering off, that leads to a point of decision and action. At that point, you must tell the prospect exactly what you want him to do next, how and when, and what will happen as soon as he does. Stop sending out anything absent such clear instructions.
- Rule 4: There will be tracking and measurement. You need real, hard facts and data to make good, intelligent marketing decisions. Making such decisions based on what you or your employees think is happening, feel, guess, have a sense of, etc. is stupid, and you don’t want to be stupid, do you? Tracking means accurately collecting all the information you need to determine what advertising is working and what isn’t, which offer is pulling and which isn’t, what marketing has traction and what doesn’t. Tracking leads to knowing what your return on investment is, for each dollar.
- Rule 5: Branding as by-product. Focus on response and sales.
- Rule 6: There will be follow-up. I hate waste. People read your ad, call your place of business, ask a question, the receptionist answers it, and that’s it - no capture of the caller’s name, address, e-mail, etc., no offer to immediately send a free report, gift, coupons. That is criminal waste. It cost money to get that call. Doing nothing with it is exactly the same as flushing money down the toilet. Please go and do so, right now, so you internalize the feeling.
Take the largest bill you have in your wallet, a $10, a $20, preferably a $100, go to your toilet, tear it in hunks, let them flutter into the toilet and flush. You probably won’t like it. Good. Remember how much you don’t like it every time you fail to follow-up (a lot) on a lead or customer. - Rule 7: There will be strong copy.
- Rule 8: In general, it will look like mail-order advertising.
- Rule 9: Results rule. Period. From now on, you will be the most results oriented businessperson on the planet. Immune to opinion, criticism or guesswork. If it sells, it’s good. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.
- Rule 10: You will be a tough-minded disciplinarian and keep your business on a strict direct marketing diet for at least six months.
And then, for the rest of your life.
More Key Concepts & Ideas
Give someone what he or she wants and you can have what you want.
Have clearly defined, written goals with clearly defined action steps and deadlines to achieve each any and every one of them.
Do what most people aren’t willing to do.
Choose what you spend your time on.
Don’t confuse activity with achievement.
Don’t measure the value of what you do by how much time it took to do it.
Spend the majority of your time doing the things that are going to yield the maximum results.
==> Check out my Income Producing Actions here.
Don’t complain.
No whining.
Nobody really cares and it creates more problems than it solves.
People are attracted to winners.
Winners don’t complain.
When things don’t go your way, suck it up and immediately get into the “Here’s what I’m going to do about it” mode.
Don’t let anyone see you sweat!
Surround yourself with successful people.
Don’t quit right at the goal line.
Always be dear about why you do what you do.
Don’t ignore your health.
Intelligently pick your opportunities.
What you say no to is even more important than what you say yes to.
Fish where the fish are.
Fish where the fish are starving.
Look for things where people are passionate and driven by their emotions of greed, pride, fear, guilt and love.
Link your business to people’s passions and you’ll have them lining up to get to you.
Do something to get new business every day.
A good habit is to do at least one thing every day to fill your pipeline of new business.
Be a true student of your business.
Study marketing.
Set rules regarding access to you that both your staff and clients have to follow.
Work really, really hard…
On the other hand, make sure that you build “down time” into your schedule.
Find incredible mentors and study them intensely.
Find a hungry niche market - Before you decide what to sell.
Write compelling sales copy that draws in your visitors.
The most important way to make The Phenomenon happen for you is to simply get started.
Closing Thoughts
My book notes only cover small parts of the book.
So if you like what you read, please consider buying the book from the author.
Thank you for reading and stay awesome,
Tim for Online Business Dude
PS: Start And Grow Your Own, Profitable Online Business From Scratch, Step-by-Step, Today!