place - social.dankennedy... - Dan Kennedy

all the different soft drink brands Coca-Cola owns that compete witheach other side by side, a Proctor & Gamble originated strategy. Butfranchisors have often had a rough time with this. It has to do with animportant question for every entrepreneur about growth vs. expansion.There are lots of ways to grow a core business: drilling downdeeper in its market, to get more customers and/or market share;extending the top of an ascension pyramid, to make some percentageof customers much more valuable; adding on – like Subway’smove into breakfast (also now on Wendy’s plate of new initiatives)or store within store, like optical centers inside Wal-Mart or coffeeshops inside Barnes & Noble shops; product line extensions – likeDisney’s time-share and cruise line businesses. Sometimes, though,growth goes so far and then becomes stopped, by physical or marketboundaries or costs of pushing further or deeper, and then expansionis only option. Other times, expansion is the better opportunityfor leverage than growth – for example, if he did everything we knowhow to do and worked at it tirelessly, could Titanium Info-MastermindMember Dr. Tomshack have doubled revenues in his four chiropracticclinics? Maybe. But there was already more than enough successto support expansion by franchising,and 7% of 360+ clinics is a lot morethan 100% of 4 clinics, even if doubledin sales. Entrepreneurs tend to buildthings; big companies with cash andcredit and cost savings synergies tendto buy things, and it’s my belief bothare too married to their one approach.To keep moving forward you have toconstantly consider opportunities forgrowth and for expansion, and be willingto build or buy in order to capitalizeon those you deem best.THE MOST BACK-TO-BASICS FACTABOUT PRICE IGNORED BY 95%OF BUSINESS OWNERS. If you’verecently read the newest NO B.S.book, No B.S. Price Strategy, whichI co-authored with Diamond LuxuryMember Jason Marrs, you’ve beenat “Price School” for 230 pages. But itnever hurts to have more and variedverification of the most fundamentalfact about price, this time from theMintel Food Service/Consumer Survey,published in National RestaurantNews: even in this economy, only 14%of consumers look for the cheapestitems on the menu before decidingSPEAKING OF BITING OFFMORE THAN YOU CAN CHEWwhat to order. In the face of this fact, though, most restaurant chains’managements and independent restaurant owners fret over price,toss away profitability to slash prices, compete on price, advertiseprice, show customers daily specials immediately, in front of theirmenus – when they could sell experience, quality, their best andmost interesting dishes. 86% are NOT making their dining decisionsbased on price. Why not sell to them and let the 14% go pound sandThe Heart Attack Grill, born in Phoenix,is successfully franchising. I’ve shownits clever concept to you before.Pictured here, itsQuadruple Bypass Burger, 8,000 calories.Page 5somewhere else? I envision an ad with a big picture of a garbagefilled dumpster and the headline: “If You Want The Cheapest DinnerYou Can Get, Try The Dumpster Out Back. If You Want Hand-CraftedSteaks, Really Fresh-Today Seafood, Homemade Meat Loaf, And AnEnjoyable Dining Experience, Try Our Front Door.” Then I’d talk a bitabout the 14% vs. 86% - which are you, the factory-produced TV dinnersbeing microwaved and brought out in interchangeable chainsand outrageously presented as real dinners worth going out for, orthe value of a great experience? But don’t get lost in the restaurantexample. This applies to every business and every aspect of price orfee. As few as 5% to a max of 20% buy by price, and about 1/3rd ofthose do so only in the absence of decent salesmanship.®RESOURCESREMEDIAL READING: A BACK TO SCHOOL REVIEW of all myavailable books is on the enclosed insert. If you’ve missed readingany, now’s a good time to catch up.OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS –WHAT I’M READING. •The “long lost”,never before published book by NapoleonHill, OUTWITTING THE DEVILis now available and, if a beneficiaryof Hill’s other works, well worth reading.It is essentially a re-telling of theseventeen principles of his Laws OfSuccess (shrunken to 13, for ThinkAnd Grow Rich) via a dramatic, imaginedor imaginary interrogation of theDevil – although there is some groundbroken you might be surprised to findHill plowing, unless you’ve been a veryserious student of all his prior works.In addition to reading it for its merits,remember that Hill wrote sales documentsdisguised as books; and evenconsider the construct itself for yourown purposes – Steve Allen did thesame with his Meeting Of The Mindsseries for PBS and in book form: in hiscase, roundtable discussions with deadthought-leaders; is there somebody famousin your field’s history you mighthave an after-life interview with? Allenpainstakingly constructed all his interviewees’conversation from their actualwords, from their writings or recordingsof them, but there’s nothing to prohibitgreater license. •For those of you interested in power and influence,I have discovered, read, and am reading more carefully for a secondtime, a novel from 1915 titled H.R., about a clever and ruthlessman’s rise to power by creating a union of “sandwich men” – theday-workers paid pittances to walk the sidewalks of New York in the1900’s, wearing big wooden boards on their fronts and backs, advertisinga business or product. It’s first thirty pages or so are slow goingThe PLACE For PROSPERITY