Skepticism and Conformity
Two reasons why many dream of boats and fancy cars but will
never do anything towards achieving these: skepticism and confor-mity.
North Americans are highly skeptical because a lot of corporations
have done a great job at marketing just about everything under the
sun (including just about every opportunity, legitimate or not) to
these individuals.
They’ve heard it all. They’ve heard the promises of the super pill
that allows you to lose 5-10 lbs while you sleep. They’ve heard of
the ground floor opportunity that will make them rich. They’ve attended the motivational seminars that promised to make them successful (as soon as they would buy the overpriced course offered
by the presenter).
In a time where consumers spend less time enjoying pristine lakes
and mountain ranges and instead have their days cluttered with billboards and commercials, it’s not hard to understand why North
America is a nation of skeptics. Yet some of the same concepts that
create a “red flag” for the consumers here would create intelligent
discussion in other parts of the world. That’s because the phrase
“too good to be true” is abused in North America.
Technology (including business technology and marketing compensation technologies) allows for many “too good to be true” scenarios
to, in fact, be true. A laptop, afterall, would be too good to be true
for those who have never even seen a personal computer
(desktop). Electric cars are too good to be true for the farmer used
How Can
to the horse and buggy. It’s all a matter of our perception and un-YOU Make
derstanding. We as humans tend to fear that which we do not understand. But ignorance is not the best defense.
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Yes, there is a lot of hype. Sometimes even the best of companies
(including traditional corporations) start dishing out hype. But it’s im-Page 56
portant to wade through hype marketing tactics, put the “business
analyst hat” on and really consider the information presented. You
then have the option to accept it, neglect it or reject it. But if you
don’t have your facts in place first, you could miss out on a viable
Dear Employee,
opportunity.
Your Job Sucks
Author—Rob Toth
There’s a story I heard from a professor back in my college days.
He told me of a woman who was running an advertisement selling a
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classic Mustang for $100. The ad was brief (and I’m not a car en-thusiast and can’t recall the specifications) but it more or less informed the reader that it was a true, classic Mustang and it cost
$100. This ad ran in a popular newspaper. Yet several days went
by before the calls came in. Again, tens of thousands had seen the
ad… yet nobody was acting on it until a few days later (and eventually she sold it). See the readers might have imagined a rusted
mustang, a toy mustang, or they thought there was a typo in the ad
or that it was a hoax… a million and one things they made up in
their mind. But, as the story goes, it was an angry wife who was
selling off her cheating ex-husband’s car and out of spite, she was
selling it for only $100. It was a legitimate opportunity to purchase a
beautiful vehicle for $100 but many perceived it as a joke or a mis-print and ignored it. They missed out.
Another story flows from that one, this one taken from the popular
television show Candid Camera. Candid Camera ran a spoof one
time where they filmed customers in a gift shop. At the counter, they
placed a bowl with $1 US bills in it and a note that read something
along the lines of “Please Take One”. Customers were filmed on
tape as they entered the store, saw the bowl, stared at it in surprise
but didn’t take the money. Dozens and dozens of customers saw it.
Some made a fuss and questioned it. They talked it over with their
friends. They looked, walked away, came back and looked again.
Yet it was only a child who actually dug in and finally grabbed a $1
bill from this overflowing bowl of free money.
Yes it was only a dollar, but let’s face it, if the clerk had offered to
deduct $1 from their purchases for the day, everyone would have
jumped at the opportunity. Or if the clerk had informed any customer that they would receive $1 off of anything they bought that
day, the customers would have appreciated it. But free money?
That must be too good to be true. So even though many talked it
over with their spouses trying to figure out if they were reading the
How Can
sign right, their skepticism held them back.
YOU Make
Conformity is the other mindset. I touched on it earlier but in es-Extra Money?
sence it’s the majority choosing to accept and follow the beliefs of…
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well… the rest of the majority. This is how mediocre income and
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mediocre lifestyles are created. The majority, the masses, have
their mentality set on mediocrity (on being average) and 98% go
right along with this… they follow the large group. Unfortunately,
they follow the wrong group.
Dear Employee,
Your Job Sucks
Author—Rob Toth
Note About Hype
You likely aren’t impressed by over-promises and hype. Neither am
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I. You could argue whether its right or wrong and try to change it all.
I suggest though that you don’t spend that much time on the subject. Just accept it. Because the fact is (and marketers know this),
that hype sells. Much like Hollywood knows that sex and violence
sells movie tickets, marketers know that playing word games, comparing apples to oranges, promising hope, and using hype tactics
sells more products. Whether they then choose to engage in it or
not is up to them, but it’s up to you, as the consumer to dig through
all this and consider what is fact and what is fiction.
And, as I mentioned, before you argue that hype sells realize that
the majority of the population responds to it… just look at National
Enquirer, look at the popularity and effectiveness of infomercials,
and more. You can go ahead and try to change the world if you
wish (I leave that task with you… you might want to find some
friends to help you as it will be a heck of a challenge) or you can
just accept it.
Understanding Misleading Advertising
Let’s take a look into some of this hype.
You likely have heard large income claims before, whether it was
on a website, in a classified advertisement, in a magazine, on an
infomercial or any of a hundred and one other avenues. You have
likely read “Make $10,000 per week. We’ll show you how” type ads
before. You also likely heard testimonials of “After purchasing the
course, I quickly made $8000.” Or “Thanks to what I learned at this
seminar, I now make $20,000 per month working from home”.
There would be many elements to look at in any of these situations
to really separate fact from fiction.
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First off, are the testimonials and claims real in the first place or just
fabricated and sensationalized for the sales effect?
YOU Make
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If the person did in fact “make $8000”, for example, did they have
previous experience, customers, contacts related to that field
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(remember my $1 million in one day examples... when properly
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setup with the right contacts, the right customers, the right database
and a long running campaign, even a million can be made in a day
but that certainly won’t be the average result).
But my personal favorite (and this is the most common tactic) is the
Dear Employee,
difference between “sales” vs. “net profits”.
Your Job Sucks
Author—Rob Toth
Let me quickly explain as this will help you decipher what you hear
in financial books, on financial websites, in magazines, at seminars,
PAGE 27
from marketers and more.
Suppose I sell a pond building kit. It comes with all the tools and in-
structions that will allow anyone to build a small pond in their backyard. The kit sells for $1000 (just to keep the math simple). But the
cost of goods in there is $900 (the tarp, the lights, the wiring, the
pumps, and more).
Suppose that my second month in business, I take out a small loan
and invest $5000 into a marketing campaign that lands me 20 sales
in one month. All I did was put the ads into a pay-per-click campaign or sent out a direct mailing (or ran ads in targeted magazines). Point is, no labour, no cold calling. The sales were created
from my marketing messages.
I could be quick to tell you that the pond business is THE business
you need to get into because in my second month I created
$20,000 with no work, no selling, no nothing. All this from the comfort of my own home (the pond kits get drop shipped from a fulfillment house I use).
Heck I could even write a book and sell it online for $47.
Ex-Minimum Wage Line Cook Gives You the Instant
Profit Secrets of How He Made $20,000.00 His
Second Month In the Pond Kit Sales Business.
Learn how you too can earn a six-figure income,
from home, with no experience, no work, minimum time invested while
working in your boxers.
Now let’s look over the real numbers.
How Can
Each kit sells for $1000 but has a net profit of only $100 (possibly
YOU Make
less when you consider fulfillment house charges but let’s stick with
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$100). That means 20 kits sold generated 20 x $100 = $2000 net
profit. But remember, that the marketing campaign (which appar-Find Out On
ently was a very lousy and poorly executed one) cost me $5000. So
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I actually lost $3000 even though I created $20,000 in sales volume.
That’s not even an extreme example to be honest with you.
Dear Employee,
Marketers of money making opportunities use this even more fre-Your Job Sucks
quently. (That’s where some of the widespread skepticism comes
Author—Rob Toth
into play). Some (certainly not all, in fact not even most but some)
marketers will be quick to tell you that they generated $20,000 their
PAGE 28
2nd month in their “money making” opportunity. What they forget to
mention, is that they paid $5000 for the marketing system and invested another $2000 per week into advertising… bringing the total
to $13,000 spent for $20,000 earned. Now, that’s certainly not a
bad deal as that’s $7000 profit which is respectable… and if it was
created nearly on auto pilot with a high-integrity and high-value
product or service, it’s more than respectable… it’s in fact very impressive. But it’s important to find that “truth in advertising”. In this
case, there was a $13,000 risk to create $7000 net profit yield.
The final example of this same “sales vs. net profits” hype tactic
came at a recent internet marketing seminar. The company who
hosted these free seminars sells a service for $2700. The service
promises to increase the online profits of the customer many times
over. Testimonials fill the marketing pamphlets of families who used
these tactics and the service they paid $2700 for and now have
sales of $250,000 per year. Anyone with a bit of curiosity can then
look into the approximate profit margins for the products that such
individuals sold. In some cases, the margins were very low. In fact,
the $250,000 in sales actually equated to about $38,000 in annual
profits. Again, that can be a terrific new income stream for a household, but when risking $2700 and investing the time needed to
launch the online business, it’s a fairly important difference to know
what the true net income potential is.
As a consumer, it’s important for you to get a bit more familiar with
how the marketing rules sometimes get bent. But also know your
numbers. It doesn’t much matter if you sell $1,000,000 per year, if
the profit margin is so poor that it barely allows for a full-time income.
Also, understand these 2 other popular phrases:
Ranked #1 – we were (or this product was) ranked #1 by such and
How Can
such organization.
YOU Make
What characteristics were they looking for to rate this #1? How
Extra Money?
were the tests conducted? Which other products did they look at?
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What really is the credibility of the organization? Is it really a third
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party or is that organization affiliated with the company/product
(possibly even created by them).
Point is, don’t just take “ranked #1” to heart. It may have been, but
that’s empty information to you.
Dear Employee,
Your Job Sucks
Another one is similar but used by some questionable integrity busi-Author—Rob Toth
ness owners who will tell you that they are in the “top 1% of all in-
come earners in the world”. That might sound like a lot of ooh-and-PAGE 29
ahh but the statistics indicate that an income of over $47,000US per
year places you in the top 1% of all income earners in the world. So
while it’s a great little title a person could use, the fact is it’s mis-
“Success or
leading. Heck, if you earn over $32,000 per year, you are in the top
failure as a hu-5% of all income earners in the world.
man being is
not a matter of
With that little statistic, I just made you rich. You’re welcome.
luck or circum-stance or fate
With all this said, even without bending the rules, marketing can in-or the breaks
deed be very lucrative and, possibly more importantly, models such
or who you
as Network Marketing and Internet Marketing (affiliate marketing)
know, or any of
allow for a very low cost, nearly zero risk, yet high profit potential
the other tire-way to build a new income stream (or new income streams, plural)
some old myths
that can help supplement your job income (and give you home busi-and clichés by
ness tax advantages you are missing out on) or even replace your
job income entirely... I know you’d miss your workspace, but you
which the igno-can always take a Polaroid and reference it from time to time as you
rant tend to ex-sip on a Mojito on your recently redone patio.
cuse themselves.” - Earl
And, if you know what to look for, you can get setup with the mar-Nightingale,
keting system(s) that can provide this nearly on autopilot (using
Lead the Field
technologies and concepts such as leverage which we talked about
earlier).
Automated money (from automated marketing) can be a wonderful
thing. It should be experienced by everyone. So should residual income. Residual income is what would allow you to be backpacking
through Europe for 3 months and every week (or day) have a check
automatically deposited onto a Credit Debit Card or into your bank
account. You’re off playing but the work you did earlier is still paying
you. That’s not something the employment model can offer. That’s
why I say, frankly, your job sucks.
How Can
YOU Make
An interoffice softball game was held every year between the
Marketing Department and support staff of one company.
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The day for the game came, and hard as the Marketers tried,
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the support staff whipped the Marketing Department soundly.
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In their best tradition, the Marketing Department decided to find
the best 'spin' they could on the dismal result. They showed how
they earn their keep by posting this memo on the bulletin board
after the game:
"The Marketing Department is pleased to announce that for the
Dear Employee,
recently-completed Softball Season, we came in 2nd place, hav-Your Job Sucks
ing lost but one game all year. The Support Department, how-Author—Rob Toth
ever, had a rather dismal season, as they won only one game all
year."
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