When I tell hedge fund managers about the power of copywriting in capital raising, they sometimes are completely unfamiliar with the term copywriting. In the following video, I talk about the value of copywriting in marketing your hedge fund.
Video Transcript/Summary: The strategies and tips provided within this video module include:
Writing copy or sales letters is the most overlooked form of marketing in the hedge fund industry.
The difference between a $1 bill and a $100 bill is the message on the paper. As a result, one is more greatly valued than the the other. The same can be said of the difference between the typical hedge fund marketing materials compared to that of the top hedge fund marketing materials.
Marketing material written, using powerful words and strategies, will ensure your marketing materials are portrayed in a clear and robust manner.
The headlines of your sales letters, subject lines of your emails and first words of speeches and communication are most important. It can take hours to craft an attention grabbing headline but failure to grab the audiences attention immediately leads to no relationships being built.
Hedge Funds, family offices and private equity groups spend $20,000 on marketing every year. However, many fail to differentiate themselves by engaging in the industry standard marketing practices. Whilst graphic designers serve a purpose, insightful tips and lessons can be gleaned from working with a copywriter, in addition to providing a clear roadmap for your marketing.
Every investment fund uses emails and investor sales letters. Without the expertise of a copywriter, you may not be building the relationships possible in your communication, or worse still, you might actually be turning off your audience without knowing it.
Investment funds of all types are generally set up by successful traders and portfolio managers whilst very few are started by marketers. Therefore, most hedge funds lack the skill for niche marketing.
99% of the investment fund industry will not be using copywriting best practices in any way. Therefore if a fund can just use 20%, they will be that much better off.
Copywriting is too often overlooked as a capital raising technique and the sooner that you embrace copywriting the better.
Brian Tracy is an internationally recognized business expert who has written more than 45 books over his career. I was fortunate enough to interview Brian on advanced capital raising techniques, strategies for building your authority in your industry, and Brian’s super-valuable advice on building a business.
Brian Tracy in Video Format:
Brian Tracy Interview in Audio Format:
Audio/Video Transcript:
Richard Wilson: Hello. This is Richard Wilson and welcome to this expert audio interview with Brian Tracy. At one point in my own life I was in an investment sales and capital raising job in Boston and it was through listening to Brian Tracy’s audio books over and over again every day on my way to work that I went from not making any sales and raising any capital, to raising millions of dollars every week in my job.
I then went on from there to running a team of 20 plus professionals and $1 million plus a year business as well. And I owe a lot of that success to Brian Tracy who’s on the call with us today.
Brian Tracy’s given over 5,000 speeches in over 50 countries. He’s written over 45 books and he’s also been one of the top three most influential people in my own success in marketing, sales, and capital raising. He’s well known for two of my favorite books, Eat That Frog: 21 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time and the second one is called Goals: How to Get Everything You Want Faster Than You Thought Possible.
So Brian, thank you very much for your time today and joining us here for this interview.
Brian Tracy: It’s a pleasure. Nice to be with you.
Richard Wilson: Great. So, I’ll just jump into the first question here. Everybody that I work with here personally on my own team of people that I meet at workshops that I put on or at conferences have these goals in mind-they want to raise $100 million, they want to launch a new product, a new division, a new investment fund-and they have these marketing or capital raising goals. And I read your book on goals, but I’m wondering if you could share maybe your #1 tip for accomplishing a very challenging or large marketing or capital raising goal?
Brian Tracy: Well, I think the critical thing is the product or service that you’re trying to raise money for. And probably the best description of that, people should say when they hear, “This is what I want to do. This is what I want to bring to the market.” They should say, “Gee! That’s a great idea” or “Gee! Why hasn’t somebody else thought of that before? Well, that’s an incredible idea!” In other words, the more a person is delighted, or astonished, or happy with your product, or service, or idea, the more happy they are to put up money for it.
I work with people who come up with an idea and people throw money at it. They say, “Geeze, can I give you some money? Can I get a piece of that?” So, if your concept is good everything else becomes much easier. If your concept is unclear, then everything else is harder.
So, my favorite word as you know, Richard is clarity…clarity…clarity. And the critical clarity is what is the transformation that is going to take place in the customer’s life or work when they buy and use your product? And how profound is that? How important is that? You know the old saying, “If you could come up with a cure for cancer you’d be a billionaire by the end of the week” because of that profound result.
So, always start with a product, always start with a customer, always start with a service and how this product or service will dramatically improve the quality of the life or the work of the customer.
Richard Wilson: Okay. So, have a very good understanding of what your customer’s perspective is, what they want, and a very clear picture of exactly how your solution is going to be amazingly valuable to them I guess.
Brian Tracy: Yes. And it has to be either amazingly valuable to someone who will pay an enormous amount of money for it or has to be valuable to an enormous number of people who pay a small amount. And also the person you’re talking to-especially if you want to raise capital or raise support-has to personally say, “I want that. I like that. That sounds really great. I want that for myself.”
Richard Wilson: Right. Right. Great. Great. And then I like to talk a lot about authority building techniques. I look up to people like yourself who have built such a great position within the industry and the pushback I always get is about people being too busy, especially people who are starting to find success, who are already in charge of a business or an investment fund of some type. And their push back on building their authority further is really about a time excuse.
But then there’s other people who kind of rise above that. They find time to speak, write books, build their authority year, after year, after year and you’ve really mastered that process more than any other expert I know with your 45 books and 300 plus training programs out there. How have you been able to write so many books and what is your #1 secret to getting all of that done?
Brian Tracy: Well, I began writing books after speaking for several years and I realize that when you have a written book people think that you’re smarter than you really are if I can joke. But it’s interesting. People will buy your book and hire you without reading the book just because you have a book and you have a book on a subject that they think is of interest to themselves or in this case to their company.
My secret for writing is going back to clarity. I’m very clear about what I want to accomplish-the goal-and then the next two are focus and concentration. And as you know, I’ve probably spent my whole life both practicing those two and teaching them. Focus. Focus on a single point and concentration. And concentrating on a single thing till it’s done.
Now, I just finished a book about two weeks ago on schedule. The book’s scheduled for publication. It’s already signed, sealed and delivered. In the next two days I need to finish my next book which is coming out three months later in 2012 cause I write and publish at least four books a year.
Richard Wilson: Okay.
Brian Tracy: I publish them 90 days apart and I publish books that have at least potential buyers. And I just signed a contract last month to write 21 eBooks…
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: …that will be published now to the end of the year and will go out to 32 eBook sales media worldwide. And the whole eBook business is completely different, but everything is focused on concentration. “How can you write a book?” It’s because I put my head down and I do only one thing for an extended period of time. And I’ll structure my time, and I’ll plan it, and I’ll carve out pieces of time, and then I’ll just put my head down and work.
If anyone wants to write a book, by the way, I have a little outline on my website, BrianTracy.com called, “How to Write a Book”. It’s free. And I’ve had many people send to me. Just last week I got a book saying, “I did it!” It had a sticky on it, “I did it! And here’s a copy of the book.” They got those 20 points and they wrote and published a book within 90 days.
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: And they sent me a copy of the book.
Richard Wilson: Wow. That’s great.
Brian Tracy: So, is it possible to do it? Yes. Just follow the formula. Follow the recipe. And I learned this recipe as a result of my own experience. I found out in order for me to keep building authority-actually the word I like to use is credibility-you have to have a book. However, to promote a book they’ll only promote a book that’s come out in the last 90 days. So, after 90 days the window shuts and you can’t get interviews. And interviews are the cheapest almost inexpensive way to continue talking to thousands of people. So I said, “Well, if I want to continually be interviewed I have to continue writing a book every 90 days” which is crazy reasoning.
So, I went out, and I would write a book, and I would get in touch with different publishing companies. Some of my books sold very well, so they would listen to me. I said, “I have a great book title” so that they would say, “We’re interested in that one” then they started to come to me. Well, now I have 7-8 publishers nationally in the U.S. and Canada. I have about 30-40 publishers worldwide…
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: …that came from those publishers. So, I come up with a book and I go to the publisher. I say, “I have a book idea for you” and they say, “Yes we like it” or “No, we don’t.” But always somebody says yes. I say, “Good. Let’s work on its publishing schedule, drop down date, when you need the manuscript and so on” and we pump out like a production line four books, four different publishers every single year.
Richard Wilson: Wow. Okay great. That’s very helpful. And connected to that question, what are your suggestions for not just writing a lot of books-four books every year-but making the book very powerful and very popular? You mentioned that you like to write books that have an audience of a million people or more.
Brian Tracy: Yes.
Richard Wilson: But what’s actually your #1 tactic for doing a lot of books? Is it really just doing a lot of interviews and keeping those interviews constant so you’re kind of mentioned everywhere-in the press, in the media, in the news? Is that your #1 tip or is that a tactic like corporate sales, or your speaking engagements-getting people to buy 1,000 books at a time where you’re speaking?
Brian Tracy: Well, you start off with your subject and perhaps the greatest million dollar insight I can give anybody is find a big problem and then solve it in a big way. And this simple concept is what is a big problem or need that people have and then how can I solve it in such a way that it kills the genre? And after that, nobody will enter that area.
So for example, my book Eat That Frog is the bestselling management book in the world, sold millions of copies in 38 languages. But what is the biggest time management problem that people have is procrastinating. So, I took it and I said Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Things Done Faster. That’s my value.
Richard Wilson: Okay.
Brian Tracy: My publisher told me last month that, “Your title has to be so good that people will buy the book and they’ll buy it on the basis of the benefit that you offer in the title and they won’t even read the book. They just carry the book around. And so, the title has to be so strong that spasmodically their hand jerks out to buy the book-to reach for the book.”
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: So, if you want a book that’s going to sell well a perfect example is Jim Collins book Good to Great: How to go from Good to Great. It sold millions of copies. It’s a perennial best seller. And why? It’s cause everybody who’s running a business wants their company to be a great business and then he follows up. And this is really important, Richard. You have to deliver. Whatever promise you make you’ve got to deliver on that promise in your book so they say, “Gee, I’m glad I read this book!” And they don’t want to put it down and they want to tell everyone else about it.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: Then you can use every marketing technique that’s out there. Some people buy 1,000 copies of my books and hand them out to everybody. Some people like Oprah advertised one of my books and it went out and sold 50,000 copies because on the Oprah newsletter she said, “Everybody should read this book”.
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: It was on self-discipline. If you want to view it it’s called No Excuses: The Power of Self-Discipline. So, if you want to be successful stop making excuses and take action. And the book shows you progressively how to do that.
So, you always say, “What is something that people really need?” And if the book is on a subject that has a small need like Tom [Name 11:00] book is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Every single person who has a business who has people working with them is very interested to know, “I wonder what they are” and it becomes a best seller…
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: …because he’s dealing with something you really want. And then all of your marketing techniques will work.
Richard Wilson: Sure.
Brian Tracy: None of your marketing techniques will work unless the subject is something that people want instantly based on the title and then you deliver.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: Then people say, “I really got my money’s worth”.
Richard Wilson: Right. Which I love that as a piece of advice because I’m a big fan of studying kind of John Carlton Copywriting Best Practices…
Brian Tracy: Yes.
Richard Wilson: And it really comes down to just having basically your headline-the book title. You have to grab the person I think is what you’re saying in the delivery of the goods after you’ve made the promise. But I guess a really unique piece of advice I haven’t heard before by people who I guess have sold a lot of books , many people recommend doing 500 different tactics and it’s hard for them to come up with the #1 most powerful thing. But that’s interesting.
Brian Tracy: There’s a book called 1001 Ways to Promote Your Book. Buy it. It’s in paperback. It costs $10. If you buy it on Kindle or iPad it probably costs $9.99.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: But there are 1,001 ways. The starting point is the book has got to be really good.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: And I bought books that are highly recommended, and I read 1-2 chapters, and I’m so disgusted I throw them away. I very seldom throw a book away, but there are some books that…
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: …are so poorly done. The hype is great and I won’t buy a book from that person ever again.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: The reason my books sell so well-and I’ve got 52 books but I’ll have another 20 books by the end of the year-short books…
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: …between 8,000-10,000 books because that’s where the market is going to short books/high content as opposed to longer books because people won’t read longer books anymore and it’s going to electronic books.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: So, you do two things. You get on the bandwagon-short, high content books, electronic. Now, the thing is that you have to deliver on your promises and that’s the key.
Richard Wilson: Right. Right. Great. And now I have more of a marketing/sales question. I work with a lot of people who raise capital, or business owners who have to make sales constantly, big complex type sales, long sales cycles that could take make months to make a big sale. And I know you’ve done a lot of sales training both with corporations and individuals in your training programs. What would be your #1 suggestion for moving past your competitors and selling more within these kind of complex, relationship based sales environments?
Brian Tracy: Well, you know because of your expertise about the milestone method or the production line method which means that there’s a series of questions that must be answered at every stage of the sale for the sale to move ahead. The first question is this person generally qualified? In other words, can they benefit more than the cost of your product or service from buying? And that you need to find out from your initial contact.
The second thing is does this person have the authority to advance the sale or do you have to go to a higher level? Do you have to have this person introduce you to a higher level? Because especially in a large sale you have what I call gateways. These are people who cannot buy, but they are the first person you have to talk to before you get to someone else. So you think, “What are the questions that need to be answered? Is this the right product for me? Can it pay for itself quickly and efficiently? Can I use it? Will it fit in with my business?
And these are questions you have to ask. These are all milestones. So, in a large sell like when I worked with IBM, they would sale a particular type of sale system that took seven months to sell. And it took seven months from the time you met the prospect who was a genuine prospect who could use and need advantages from your product. It took seven months to move it through the pipeline.
So, for people to meet quota they had to have their pipeline full by April/May because it would take seven months to close the sale. If they wanted to have their quota that year they had to have all their prospects in the pipeline by May or they wouldn’t make it.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: So, that’s what you do. And what I do to encourage people to keep up their motivation is you have awards benefits, prizes, congratulations at each of the milestones. And as you know what large companies do is they do reviews of each client account and where are we in terms of what milestone are we at here. And by doing that they can tell you pretty much how much they’re going to sell in a given quarter or a given year because they know how many of those at each particular milestone will become a sale, and what the average size of that sale is, and what the average profitability will be. So, they can predict with tremendous accuracy based on the milestones.
Richard Wilson: I see. So, your sales approach for these types of things we marked with milestones and it’s ran like a well-oiled machine where you know the conversion numbers for [Overlapping 16:25]
Brian Tracy: Yeah. Write these things down and track them. It’s interesting. There’s a new book that’s just been written by a doctor and it’s called The Checklist Manifesto.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: And it’s a very simple concept that whenever you use it you’re amazed at the difference it makes. And what he found is they can lower the death rates from infections or mistakes within hospitals by 90% just by putting in a checklist so that no steps are missed.
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: And it’s selling using the milestone method of putting in a checklist You can imagine a pinball machine where you remember you pull the spring, and you let it go. And the ball goes up to the top and it goes boing, boing, boing, boing, boing as it bounces down toward the bottom.
Well, it’s the same thing as a customer’s mind has to go through boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing as it drops through the slot. So, you write down what are the steps that the customer’s mind has to go through before they ultimately reach the point where they will say yes? And you think of those and those become your checkpoints.
Richard Wilson: I see.
Brian Tracy: Now, here’s an interesting thing. You can sit down with a customer and you can say, “Mr. Prospect, I’ll be completely transparent with you. What we have found is that for a person to buy and really maximize the benefit from our products or services they have to go through these steps of thinking. And these are the questions they have at each step of the way. And what my job is to do is to answer these questions for you satisfactorily so that you can make the best decision for yourself and your company”. People love it when you’re transparent like that.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: And you help them with the questions, so they don’t have to be wondering, “Gee, have I left anything out?”
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: You give them the checklist and you go through the checklist with them. So, here’s question #1: Will this pay for itself?
So, what IBM would do is they would explain the IRR method. The Internal Rate of Return is how much does money cost you, how much will you earn or save from installing our products or service, and a critical question is time to payback. When you’re selling-especially to business-the critical term is time to payback. How long will the product or service pay for itself? The shorter the time to payback the faster the buying decision.
It is not the customer’s job to figure this out. It is your job to ask them for the information, get the information saying, “Based on what you told me if you install and use our service your time to payback will be three months and seven days” “Your time to payback will be nine months and 15 days”.
And so, therefore, that’s a very high return on investment-internal rate of return. Where else could you get a return on investment which is approximately 134% per antem? You put this money in you get 134% back to your bottom line in nine months and 15 days. In other words, when you point that out to them it becomes a no brainer.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: It’s easy to sell internally, it’s easy to buy. And again, you work with grown up companies. Their job is to make darn good and sure that they fulfill on their promise. “We will work with you hand in hand, arm in arm to make sure that you get the benefits and results that you promised.”
Richard Wilson: Okay. Great. Yeah, that sounds like advice that I don’t think is taken too often within the complex sales that I’m used to doing or used to training in like in the hedge fund, or capital training, or even business to business sales contracts. Usually not myself and I don’t hear the other people calculating the IRR for their clients and kind of making the argument for them so that they can show it to the rest of their team and get it approved right away. So, that does make a lot of sense.
Brian Tracy: Yes.
Richard Wilson: Great.
Brian Tracy: And I’ve always said this, your job Richard, is to make it easy for your customer to buy. Let me repeat that. Your job is to make it easy for your customer to buy. And it’s so simple. And they say, “Really! Yes, make it easy. Don’t make it hard”.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: Difficult, make it easy.
Richard Wilson: Right. Yeah. That’s a very good reminder. I think that my next question is a little bit more geared toward business owners and this question is about people who are running businesses at say $500,000-$1 million a year in revenue. When your business was there at one point or when you were coaching people with businesses of that size what would be the #1 focus that the business owner should take to get their business to that next level-to $5-10 million in revenue? What do you see as the #1 roadblock or the #1 thing that they really need to do in most cases that’s the most important thing they should be focusing on at that point?
Brian Tracy: Well, I went through this exact same process myself this year. And I wanted to achieve sales of $100 million on a new product, alright? And it goes back to what I said a little bit earlier which is so simple, yet so profound is try to find a big problem that a lot of people have and solve it in a big way, alright?
So, what is a problem that a lot of people have? And what I came up with is this idea that there are 29.6 million businesses in America and of these about 90% or more are struggling. At least they’re struggling or they want to do better and they don’t know how, okay?
So I say, “If I could put together a program that would help these business owners, would give them a whole series of great ideas based on years of experience” almost a practical MBA in one audio program which I’m qualified to do and at a price really, really low so it’s a no brainer…
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: …a person would look at it, then if I could sell 1 million of those at $100 each that would be $100 million.
So I said, “Okay. What has to be in a program for it to sell $100 million?” It would have to have all of these ingredients. So, I designed the program on that basis. I ran it up a couple of flagpoles of professionals in the industry. They said, “Oh my God!” “OMG!” “OMG!” They kept saying, “OMG!” They said, “This program will work. It’ll sell in all the big box stores. It could sell $250,000 in Wal-Mart over the weekend…”
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: …cause Wal-Mart has 4,700 stores and if they promote it-but Wal-Mart has a requirement. With Wal-Mart it has to be less than $50. You have to sell it for less than $50. So, I will sell it for $49.95. And will the pricing work for us?
And so, now Wal-Mart, Price Club, Costco, every book store even though they’re fading away, and the programs have all been produced. They arrived on my desk. It’s called Business Success Made Simple. It’s 12 solid hours of materials with a PDF of all the key notes and $100 worth of downloadable internet based video learning programs on the subject, plus a complete analysis that you can do for yourself to determine the strengths, and weaknesses, and areas of opportunity for your business. I’m not trying to sell it because I wouldn’t waste your time for $49.95, but every business owner in America if I said, “Here’s a program and it’s guaranteed for a year”…
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: “Here’s a program that can double, triple, quadruple your sales and profitability. It’s $49.95 and comes with a guarantee for a year.” How many people wouldn’t buy it?
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: The reason I mention this is not because of my program because I have a whole series of programs like that. It’s that this is where you have to think. You have to think, “If I want to raise $100 million”, or “If I want to sell $100 million”, or “If I want to double my revenues what product or service could I develop and what price could I charge for which there are a large number of people that would buy it from me and pay the amount I need to charge to make that profit?”
So, you work back from there and it’s quite astonishing. You know that 80% of all products and services that will be on the market in five years do not exist today. So therefore, always be innovative, always be creative, always think, ‘What new products or services could I create, could I represent, could I joint venture?” Sometimes you can find someone else that has a fabulous product or service that you can use your existing business or resources to sell and you can double your income or sales in your business by selling somebody else’s product to the same customers that are buying yours.
Richard Wilson: Sure.
Brian Tracy: Strategic alliances and joint ventures are what we call sell to OPC-Other People’s Customers. And how many other people have products that you could sell to your customers?
So, that’s how you think. But you always think in terms of customer benefit. You always think, “How could I really benefit people at such a high level that they would love to buy my product or service and recommend it to others?”
Richard Wilson: Right. Right. That makes a lot of sense. Alright. Great. That’s something I think every business probably needs to do every quarter or every year. I was about to say that’s something I need to do, but I think that pretty much anybody that’s running a business needs to constantly be doing this, right?
Brian Tracy: Yes.
Richard Wilson: Great. Alright. So, just a couple more questions here. Speed of implementation is one of my favorite business principles. I tend to talk about it a lot. I just wrote a really short book on it. Kind of in line with what you were saying the trend is going towards short books with a lot of content.
Brian Tracy: Yes.
Richard Wilson: And is this idea of speed implementation something that you’re seeing as being very valuable for capital raisers, marketers, and business owners? And if so, how do you see that playing into their success or how important do you think it is?
Brian Tracy: Yeah. The critical thing is if a person wants to invest the question they ask is how much in, how much out, how fast, how sure? Just strip it down to those four questions. How much can I put in? How much can I take out? How fast can I get it back and how sure can I be that I’ll get it back?
Your job is to have the answers to those questions. So, the first question is how much do you want. That’s easy. Most people start there. The second question is how fast will you get it back. And what you do is you compile medium and low scenarios. If it’s real successful this is the best likely and if it’s medium successful it’s low. Low should be so attractive the person’s going to invest even if it has low return.
The second question is time to market. How fast are you going to get this product or this service to the market because people today, there’s so much risk in timing. It takes a long time to get the product to the market. The market could’ve changed completely. And I like to use the Apple method of analyzing the market. Look how fast they come to market.
They come out of the gates with an iPad. I went out and bought one and wham! They’ve got an iPad2 with two video cameras in it which my wife bought. And now they’re talking about iPad3, iPhone3, and they’re creating markets. You saw their sales jump today. Their profitability jumped 124%, sales are up 82%. They just opened 100 new markets. They’ve now got the iPhone in 100 countries which completely kicks the chair out from under T-Mobile and all of the others…
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: …whose brag was, “We’re in these markets with Blackberry”. Now, iPhone is in those markets and nobody has a reason not to buy it. They’re selling like hotcakes! They’re up to speed, but they’re moving fast! They’re moving fast.
You can imagine people on a treadmill in the Apple offices. They’re not just sitting up there with their feet up on their desk coasting. They’re moving really fast.
So, speed is really important. Everybody has a need for speed and you actually make your product, or service, or services more attractive when you do them fast.
Richard Wilson: Right. Right. Right. And I guess that since you’re writing 20 books between now and the end of the year it’s something that you’re definitely not just advising other people to do. But you’re actually taking constant action in your own business to produce more value more quickly, right?
Brian Tracy: Right. Yes. And you can never stop. You can never coast. The joke is you can coast, but you can only coast in one direction.
Richard Wilson: Yeah.
Brian Tracy: And nobody can coast. People say, “Well, when does the intense pressure for results stop?” It stops when you retire.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: It never stops. No matter how successful you’ve been in the past the question is what’s your next miracle.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: What do you got for me now because what you did for me yesterday’s forgotten so fast.
Richard Wilson: Right. One line from one of your audio programs that’s always just kind of stuck rerunning in my head is that I think you recommend that if you can consistently do things quickly and well, you’ll constantly be getting more responsibility, people will constantly be giving you more projects, and pretty soon you’ll be so much more successful than you were just one or two years ago I think is just such a valuable thing for people to realize and really not just write off as, “Oh yeah. It’s obvious I should do things quicker rather than slower”. But if you do it consistently on every valuable project you’re assigned with it can really make such a huge difference in your life or your sales success.
Brian Tracy: Yeah it transformed my life completely to learn how to accept responsibility and do it quickly. Whatever you say you will do, do it fast.
I’ll give you a little example. Perhaps one of the most popular business hotels in America or the world is Marriott. Marriott has a little game that they play with you when you phone room service. And room service is almost like the pulse. You can tell how well a hotel runs by how well their room service runs. And so, with Marriott you call and order anything, and they say it’ll be there within 30 minutes. And then they have a game to see if they can’t get it there within 15 minutes. And it’s the most amazing thing. You place the order you have to run to the door because they’re there with it.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: And it’s the same thing that Zappo’s did. Zappo’s took themselves from an idea to a $1 billion company by overnight delivery.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: You could order a pair of shoes by 5:00 today and it’ll be at your front door at 8:30 the next morning through a private messenger service paid both ways. If you don’t like it you can put it back in the box and they’ll pay to return.
Richard Wilson: Wow.
Brian Tracy: They went to $0-1 billion with speed and customer satisfaction.
Richard Wilson: Yeah. That’s pretty amazing.
Brian Tracy: Yeah. There’s nothing that makes people more frustrated than to say, “Yeah. Well, I’ll get to it next week.” Nothing makes people happier than to say, “Yeah. I’ll get back to you today.” “I’ll email it to you”, “drop it off personally”, bang, bang, bang. Fast.
Richard Wilson: Right.
Brian Tracy: People love fast. When you’re fast people think you’re smart, think your products are of higher quality, think your management is of higher quality, think that you’re worth more and they’re willing to pay more money for it. So, I’m really big into speed.
Richard Wilson: Right. Great. That’s a really valuable example there. I love that book about Zappo’s and how they got to $1 billion in value so quickly. It’s a great, great book.
Brian Tracy: Yeah. Delivering Happiness.
Richard Wilson: Yeah. Exactly. Alright. So, I just have one final $100,000 question for you. You already gave us a $1 million piece of advice about selling a lot of books and having a powerful proposition when you’re coming up with your book title or benefit focus. But my last question is really about how you’re an enormous success-a top tier business speaker, a trainer, known globally-but if you had to do it all over again I know you could probably do it faster, better, and more profitably with all the depth of experience that you now have.
So, my $100,000 question is for someone who wants to become a mini “Brian Tracy” within their own little niche or industry over the next 20 years and they really want to lay out a path of speed of implementation for projects they need to get done, and immolate your big success, and follow in your footsteps, how could they do that? What’s kind of your $100,000 piece of advice for following in your footsteps and kind of replicating the success that you’ve had?
Brian Tracy: Well, my success is unusual in that I responded to the market. Somebody calls and asks me, “Could you do a seminar for us on selling?” Then I would interview them to find out exactly what they sold, and who they sold it to, and design a seminar that was just for them. Then when somebody else from that industry called say, “Yes, I’ve done work in this industry” and I would just piggyback on what I’ve already done. Then I would say personal development, or time management, or management, or leadership, or even strategic planning. So, I always responded to the market.
In retrospect, there are speakers who earn $1 million a year who are very focused on a single market and very focused on a single subject, for instance something like profitability and growth strategies.
Richard Wilson: Sure. Sure.
Brian Tracy: All they focus on is companies in a $10-15 billion range, how they can increase their sales and profitability more rapidly by doing time tested and proven things.
I would suggest that you write a book. That you pick a subject and imagine that you have the ability as a speaker to speak on many subjects. So, pick a subject that you really love, that you really care about, that you really want to share with people, that you really think can be really helpful to your clients because then it’s something that you really love to learn about it, talk about it, upgrade your skills in it, and become very good at it. And write a book on your subject which has a unique twist. It has something in it that’s really practical that people can use and stick it in the first chapter. Don’t hold back. Some people write a book and they hold back. “You’ve got to read my whole book before you get to the secret success in chapter 12”. No. Stick it in the first chapter.
And so, something that you love, something you care about, something people really value and are willing to pay for. And make yourself the best in that area. Make yourself the go to person in that area.
I have friends that speak in car sales. There’s about two or three of them that’s all they do is they teach car sales to people and they’re fully booked. Everybody knows if you want to train your sales force these are 2-3 of the top people in the country. Same with real estate sales and so on. So, specialization and becoming really, really good at what you do are the keys to becoming a big success.
Richard Wilson: Okay. Great. That’s really valuable advice and I think just like some of the other advice you’ve given it’s the type of advice you need to hear every quarter, every year because there’s always a further refinement, another niche within a niche you could further become an expert on or further dominate with another 2-3 books on that topic, or different angles on that topic.
So, thank you for that great advice and thanks for sharing advice through this whole interview. That wraps up the list of questions that I wanted to fit into this expert audio interview. And if anybody would like to learn more about Brian Tracy you can visit BrianTracy.com as he mentioned. There you can find his guide to quickly writing a book in 90 days. You can also learn about where Brian is speaking next if you want to go see him in person at one of his seminars or conferences. He has training programs available on his website, audio programs, and his latest books are featured there as well obviously.
So, thank you for joining us again today, Brian. I think I got a lot out of this interview and I’ll be listening to it several more times and taking more notes on what you said here.
Brian Tracy: Well, just before you go Richard I just wanted to mention that we are offering what I call Total Business Mastery. It’s an intensive, three day MBA program September 16th, 17th, and 18th in San Diego. And this program, we have people that run companies with 1,000 people, people that run companies with three or four. It transforms the business. It’s virtually every best idea for business transformation condensed into three intensive days. And I’d really like to encourage your listeners to attend it or if they’d like more information come to BrianTracy.com/Register or if they’d like to hear I’ve done a one hour webinar that they can listen to that explains the seminar in greater detail. And it’s BrianTracy.com/Radio.
So, it’s BrianTracy.com/Register to get more information or BrianTracy.com/Register for the webinar on July 20th.
Richard Wilson: Great.
Brian Tracy: That’s tomorrow and you may not get this out by that time. But this seminar is literally business and life transforming. It’s called Total Business Mastery.
Richard Wilson: Total Business Mastery. Great. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing that and I do encourage everybody to check out BrianTracy.com. I’ve gotten such a massive return on the advice that Brian has shared in the past. That’s why I’ve asked him to do this interview here with me today and I’m not sure who we’ll be interviewing down the road. But I guarantee you this will be one of the top 2-3 interviews I ever do for me because of how much I’ve followed his work and gotten such a huge return on the advice Brian Tracy gives away, and provides in his training program. So, thank you again, Brian for all your time and advice.
Brian Tracy: Thank you, Richard. You have a great day.
Richard Wilson: You too.
I hope that you enjoyed listening to this interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. Brian Tracy is recognized around the world for his insights into business and sales and this video was a great example of why he is so sought-after.
As more and more investment funds expand their reach to all corners of the globe, learning how to raise capital internationally is a unique skill that will benefit any fund. In the following video recorded in Madrid, Spain, I speak about the three synergies in international capital raising and how international capital raising differs from traditional capital raising in a single country.
Video Transcript/Summary: The strategies and tips provided within this video module include:
International capital raising has become more and more important in recent years.
There are hundreds of countries where people are rich enough to invest in hedge funds but there are only a few dozen countries where people actually know about alternative investment funds and invest in them.
Geography is important in international capital raising. If you are going to raise capital internationally you should try to target near-by nations rather than all over the globe.
The regulatory environment for a European country could be drastically different than the regulation in an Asian country.
Language is another important aspect of international capital raising. It is more difficult for you to raise capital in a country where investors do not speak English or in a country that you do not speak the language.
The lessons in this video should help you focus your efforts and energy on where you can raise the most capital in the least amount of time. By using these three synergies you should be able raise capital internationally with greater success and grow your fund.
I have worked many years in capital raising, sales and hedge fund marketing and I want to share some free advice on hedge fund marketing with you today. In the following video, I share with you a common piece of advice that is pretty obvious but overlooked, a not-so-obvious piece of advice and a strategy that you can use in your hedge fund marketing.
Video Transcript/Summary: The strategies and tips provided within this video module include:
Common knowledge is not anywhere near as valuable as specialized knowledge.
Focus on specialized knowledge more than general knowledge and you’ll see an increase in your productivity and marketing success.
There is no magic bullet that will instantly help you raise capital.
If you want to have what others don’t, you have to do what others won’t. Hedge fund marketing takes hard work. “Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
Understand your hedge fund investor avatar to really target who you are marketing to. If you try to raise capital from all types of investors you will fail.
Transcript of the Hedge Fund Marketing Video
Welcome to this video on Hedge Fund Marketing. This is Richard Wilson and this is one of my favorite topics to do training and live workshops on because my passion is capital raising, marketing, sales, influence and persuasion, positioning, authority building and all of that relates directly to hedge fund marketing. So what I’m going to do with you today is share with you a common piece of advice that is somewhat obvious, a piece of advice that’s not obvious and then one strategy you can use in hedge fund marketing.
The one thing that’s obvious but most people don’t focus on enough in hedge marketing is the fact that common knowledge is not worth nearly as much as specialized knowledge. Common knowledge that’s not directly applied to something functional would be like memorizing pie out to 2,000 digits. That’s a general knowledge that’s not directly applicable to something valuable. A specialized knowledge would be if you read every book on marketing and you spoke and met with every hedge fund marketing expert in person and took notes and wrote up notes on everything those people said and combined those two pieces of knowledge, that would be very specialized knowledge and that would be worth a lot of money.
So folks on specialized knowledge as much as you can and stop reading the general newspapers, stop seeing the car crashes on general TV and start reading more books on marketing and sales and taking training programs on hedge fund marketing and you’ll really see a huge difference in your productivity and the results you get.
Now, here’s sometimes it’s not too obvious, is that most people when they start looking as hedge marketing, they’re looking for a magic strategy that’s going to raise them a lot of capital. There are lots of strategies. There’s a whole buffet of ideas you can use to raise capital but there is no magic bullet, there is no one strategy that exist that’s going to help you raise a lot of capital, so you just know that right off the bat. So I think most people look for that often and it just doesn’t exist.
Another quote I like to say often in my training programs is that “If you want to have what others don’t you must do what others won’t.” And I think that’s a quote from Brian Tracy who we actually just interview a few weeks ago, so you can listen to my interview with him within our training programs or on YouTube as well. And what this quote means is that if you want to be good at doing hedge fund marketing you should do the hard work that others won’t to be good at hedge fund marketing. You have to do the research, you’ve to meet in person with people, you have to follow up more often, you have to add more value to them first because most people are too lazy to do that.
Hedge fund marketing takes a lot of planning, hard work, and long-term strategy. But that’s a good and bad thing. The bad thing is it’s challenging. The good thing is there’s huge rewards if you can get good at hedge marketing whether you’re running your own hedge fund, working as a third-party marketer or a consultant of some type, or if you’re just working as a capital raiser within a large organization.
Another quote I’d like to bring up in my training program is by Muhammad Ali. Everyone says he’s the most talented person of all time. But really if you look at his life history, he really just trained himself more than anyone else around him. And he even says here in this quote, “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” And the reason I say that here and read his quote is to show that even Muhammad Ali who was considered so insanely talented had to work very, very hard and you’re going to need to if you want to succeed in hedge fund marketing. It’s going to be easy.
Now, one concept I want to share with you today instead of just telling you things that are somewhat obvious or not obvious to you already is the concept of the Hedge Fund Investor Avatar. This is something that we cover for a full hour, hour and a half within our full day live workshops because it’s so important that you get this. And in fact everything else that we train and teach on, on hedge fund marketing lies on the foundation of knowing exactly who your hedge fund investor avatar is.
So what is an avatar? It has nothing to do with the recently popular movie. Avatar means that you have a very well-defined picture of who you’re marketing to, who that investor is you’re trying to reach out to and who you’re trying to raise capital from. If you try to raise capital from all types of investors, you’ll fail. If you don’t know the specific needs, challenges and fears of the investor you’re approaching, you will fail. Many times you can have a well-defined avatar and you can still fail because it is so challenging to raise capital so you need every trick in the book that’s compliance approved and legal to get it so that you can raise capital consistently because it is very hard to do even if you’re intelligent, hardworking and focused.
So what is a hedge fund investor avatar look like? Basically, let’s give an example to make this a little bit easier to understand. If you’re a $100M hedge fund you could be marketing yourself to family offices. You need to understand how family offices as ultra high-net-worth wealth managers operate, how they invest, who they typically invest in, what they expect of their investment managers that they work with and really understand everything about how that family office operates so you can add value to them first, communicate with them on a peer level and get them to invest in your hedge fund.
If you’re a $1M hedge fund or let’s say $10M hedge fund, you might focus on some mid-level to small wealth management firms that invest in hedge funds that are kind of up and coming. This is because wealth management firms that are small to medium size have lower due diligence requirements than very institutional investors who will never work with a $10M size hedge fund that just want to invest with you because you’re too small of an operation.
So if you’re approaching a wealth management firm you need to get inside their shoes and understand, you know have they been burned before by investing in small hedge fund managers? Are they scared of hedge fund managers who have offices based out of their house? Are they scared to invest in hedge fund managers that have no employees or no board of advisers? Do they expect you to have certain types of audit firms or service providers? You need to understand everything about that type of investor that you’re focusing on and then craft all of your marketing materials, everything you do, the types of e-mails you send, how often you call, whether you’re requested to meet in person, what fees are you charging, everything in your hedge fund business should be formed around those 1 or 2 investors that you’ve identified as your number one focus for growing your hedge fund.
Often times people say “Well, we’re approaching all types of investors.” That’s a losing strategy. You need to figure out where 60% or 80% of your assets are going to come from or where they have come from in the past and focus on that for your hedge fund investor avatar. This is really kind of an advanced strategy in hedge fund marketing that nobody really ever talks about in our industry. But it’s pretty common in the marketing industry to talk about doing this and I think more hedge fund managers need to be doing this. So I encourage you to look into this, practice it, identify who your investor avatar is and hopefully we will see you in person one day in one of our live training programs or workshops or within our certified hedge fund professional designation program.
This is Richard Wilson and keep in touch and we’ll talk to you soon.
Hedge fund marketing is tough work, that’s why I am providing you with these free resources to improve your hedge fund marketing strategies and raise more capital. I hope that you can take the lessons in this video to improve your hedge fund marketing.
Your friends here at https://investmentcertifications.com