There's a Customer Born Every Minute

P.T. Barnum's Amazing 10 "Rings of Power" for Creating Fame, Fortune, and a Business Empire Today -- Guaranteed!

Joe Vitale

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780471784623
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781118040768
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Praise for THERE'S A CUSTOMER BORN EVERY MINUTE

"Joe Vitale has created an entertaining, educational, and motivational manual-with the help of P.T. Barnum-that belongs in every hotel room alongside the Bible. Then, guests might read his inspirational book first, and give thanks to God for this worthy discovery."
—Alan Abel, media hoaxer, author, consultantand lecturer on "Using Your Wits to Win"

"If you're going to excel in business, learning about a showman like Barnum and applying some of the lessons he taught can give you valuable insights. Joe Vitale has captured ten of these lessons (he calls them 'rings of power') and shows how you can apply them in a way that will open your eyes and stretch your imagination. There's a lot of money-making and fun wisdom here."
—Joseph Sugarman, Chairman, BluBlocker Corporation

"Finally someone does it!!! Joe Vitale reveals the REAL P.T. Barnum! Vitale highlights the outrageously astute marketing of Barnum. Barnum's driving belief certainly was that there IS a customer 'born' every minute. You will glean a number of useful 'new' marketing ideas that you can instantly use in your business. And you will learn about one of the savviest marketers of a time gone by. Fun, exciting, insightful, and packed with ideas! Genius!"
—Kevin Hogan, author of The Science of Influence and The Psychology of Persuasion

"I love this book. If you'd like to know the real story about one of the most fascinating characters in American history, told by a master storyteller (and the person who probably knows more about him than anyone else), read this book. Barnum is not the guy portrayed by the legend attached to his name. He is much, much more, and Vitale tells his story with the can't-put-it-down passion and excitement he's become so well known for."
—Bill Harris, President, Centerpointe Research Institute

1

Presenting... the Greatest Marketeer of All Time—P. T. Barnum!

I know you will not consider a few words of advice from me as impertinence, but will heed them and treasure them up as a legacy.

—P.T. Barnum, 1891, five days before he died

“You here on business?” asked the man beside me.

I was on a late afternoon flight from Dallas to Houston, where I lived at the time. Most of the people on the crowded airplane were coming from business meetings in the cowboy city. The fellow beside me wanted to make the short flight go even faster by speaking with somebody, anybody, and I happened to be sitting in the lucky (?) seat beside him.

“I’m flying home after doing some research in Connecticut for my next book,” I said. “It’s going to be about the business secrets of P.T. Barnum.”

I said it with a certain pride. I knew this man beside me, whoever he was, was aware of Barnum’s name. Everybody knows it. I also knew nobody had ever written a book on Barnum’s business ingenuity. I was feeling smug, waiting for the applause. But it never came. The man beside me looked confused.

“It’s a book about the circus guy?”

I cringed. I tried not to look insulted or impatient.

“Barnum operated a circus in the last part of his life,” I explained, trying to point out that Barnum was far more than a “circus guy.”

“Long before the circus he ran numerous businesses, made unknown people famous, started dirt poor, got rich, lost all his money, and got rich all over again,” I said.

“He was the most recognized name in America and maybe in the world in the 1800s. He knew Presidents and was even considered as a Presidential nominee. He was a clever businessman and maybe the greatest marketing mind that ever existed. His techniques made his museum famous and helped make his circus something every child wants to attend today. The man was so famous you even know his name right now, yet he died more than one hundred years ago.”

I caught my breath and let the businessman beside me consider the facts I expressed. Finally he spoke.

“Didn’t Barnum say ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’?”

“No,Barnum never said that,” I replied. “Barnum respected people and gave them more than their money’s worth. He never said, wrote, and probably never even thought that stupid line. No researcher or historian has ever found evidence that he said it.”

I counted to 10 and waited for my fellow passenger to say something else that would rile me. I didn’t have long to wait.

“Barnum’s methods might work for a big company or for some corporation with a huge general audience, but I don’t see how I can use his ideas in my little business.”

I realized here was an opportunity to expand this man’s thinking. I asked him what he did for a living. He said he owned a small company that refurbished vans. When I asked him how he marketed his business, he said he went to trade shows.

“And how do you make yourself stand out at these trade shows?” I asked.

“We get a big table.”

I had him now.

“How many other people get big tables?” I asked.

“I guess most of them do.”

“Do you realize that if you pretended you were P.T. Barnum, and acted more flamboyantly, more brashly, more boldly, you could have a trade show booth that would be the talk of the entire trade show?”

He still didn’t get it.

“Look,” I began. “I wrote a book for the American Marketing Association on small business advertising. I know that it is no longer enough for you to just advertise your business or attend trade shows. There’s just too much competition in today’s world. You have to stand out in the crowd. You have to do something more daring to bring attention to your business.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to be like the businessman who hung from a towel that was tied to a flying helicopter to show his towels would not tear. You have to be as bold as the publisher who threw a media event announcing his new magazine by hiring the Beach Boys to sing.

“Look at Cal Worthington, the car dealer who ran television ads featuring ‘his dog Spot.’ Every week his dog was some animal, from a dog to a goat to a pig to a giraffe. That’s Barnum-like thinking. These publicity stunts helped Worthington become the most successful auto dealer in history. And it’s that kind of thinking that made Worthington a millionaire. A hundred years ago it made Barnum a millionaire. It can also make you a millionaire today.”

I let the businessman consider my argument while I looked out the window at the Texas sky. If nothing else, the conversation made me more aware of the fact that people don’t really comprehend just how phenomenal this character called P.T. Barnum really was. Not everyone realizes that the sales and marketing methods Barnum invented can be used today. But my daydreaming was soon interrupted.

“We use promotional gimmicks like pens with our name on it and calendars with our logo,” my fellow passenger said. “We get stories done on us in the trade papers, too.”

“And how’s business?”

“It’s good. We nearly went bankrupt at first, but we’re moving along and growing.”

“I’ll be blunt with you,” I announced, preparing this man for the radical honesty I was about to say. “Unless you do something with more guts, you will remain one of the little guys.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because you have competition and sooner or later that competition will rear its head and take a bite out of you. Whether you survive or not will depend on how stable you are, how smart you are, and how much outrageous marketing you do.”

“Outrageous marketing?”

“Look at Robert Allen. He wrote an investment book called Nothing Down. Well, who cares about another money book? There are 2,000 books published every week. To separate his from the crowd, Allen issued a challenge.”

“I think I remember it.”

“He said, ‘Take my wallet and all of my money, leave me with one hundred dollars in cash, drop me in any city, and within 72 hours I will have a piece of prime real estate.’ ”

“He did it, didn’t he?”

“You know it. And that stunt got him front page coverage in the papers, brought him national publicity, helped make his book a bestseller, and made Allen a multimillionaire.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And look at Tony Robbins. The man was so poor he used to wash his dishes in his bathtub. To make himself stand out in the crowd, he started conducting seminars on firewalking. That grabbed media attention. Now the man lives in the Fiji Islands and spends more money in one day than he used to make in a year.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Or look at Ted Turner. The world thought he was nuts when he created a national cable network. Now CNN gets studied and copied by the other networks!”

“Yeah, but—”

“You can’t be an also-ran in business and expect to survive and prosper,” I continued. “You have to stick your neck out. You have to wedge your name into the minds of your prospects. Once you break into their awareness, they won’t easily forget you. That’s what Robert Allen did. And Tony Robbins. And Ted Turner. And P.T. Barnum. They forced themselves into our minds.”

“Yeah, but—”

“If you want your business to rocket to Mars and back, you have to be willing to take the next step. And the next step just might be off the top of a tall building.”

“Coffee or tea?” interrupted a smiling flight attendant.

Neither of us wanted anything.

“And let’s not forget Houdini or Ali or Stanley Arnold or Edward Bernays,” I said.

“Who?”

“I’m writing about them in my book, too,” I answered.

“Yeah, but Barnum had it easy,” my friend said. “He lived in a time when there wasn’t much competition.”

This guy was getting to me now.

“Barnum grew up with our country, that’s true, but he had competition just like everyone else. And more importantly, he took people and places that others had tried to promote, used his own methods, and made his enterprises known around the world. The museum he bought had already been around when Barnum made it a colossal success. He brought Jenny Lind, the famous singer, to America and made crowds flock to see her. But when Lind tried to promote herself without Barnum, she flopped and soon returned to Europe. No one thought the midget Charles Stratton was special, until Barnum renamed him General Tom Thumb and started to publicize him.”

My passenger just looked at me, his eyes blank.

“Barnum was the key,” I explained. “His methods turned otherwise passable people and shows into money making—even historic—events. And you can use his methods today. That’s why I’m writing this book. I’ve discovered his 10 Rings of Power for making any business into a money machine. I’m writing this book to convey these techniques to people just like you. You need it.”

“I need it?”

“Don’t you think there’s an outside chance that Barnum knew something you didn’t? Isn’t there a remote possibility that there are sales and marketing techniques you haven’t used or heard of yet—techniques that just might make you rich?”

“I never really thought about it.”

“Look. The San Antonio public library’s Hertzberg Circus Museum has courses where they teach children business skills, graphic arts, and advertising principles by letting them start and run their own little circus. That’s pure Barnum. And if this information helps kids learn about business, don’t you think it might help you, as well?”

“They’re teaching your Rings of Power to kids?”

“No,” I replied, smiling. “They’re teaching kids how to run a business with the circus as their metaphor. They haven’t studied Barnum like I have. Besides, Barnum wasn’t involved in the circus until after he was sixty years old. I’m teaching adults how to create empires by telling them how to use Barnum’s 10 Rings of Power. I call my program Project Phineas.”

“But I don’t think my customers would enjoy seeing me do wild stunts.”

“Do you think people enjoy seeing Sir Richard Branson fly around the world in a balloon?” I asked.

“Well, he’s likeable.”

“He’s likeable because he’s daring,” I said. “Besides, people won’t care as long as you deliver what you promise. Barnum had few complaints from his customers. Tony Robbins, Robert Allen and Ted Turner also get few complaints. Why? Because they deliver. They give legendary service. Their customers leave feeling incredible. The idea behind publicity stunts is to get attention. It’s no longer enough to advertise or hand out flyers or sit at a trade show. You have to think more outrageously and act more boldly, and you have to deliver what you promise, or else.”

“Or else?”

“Or else you’re history.”

The World-Famous Matchstick Guitar

My neighbor looked away from me. I think he had had enough of my arguments in defense of Barnum. That’s good, as I had had enough of him. I picked up the guitar magazine I had brought with me to pass the time and flipped to the back. I chuckled to myself as I read about a matchstick guitar made in 1937.

Seems a certain sailor named Jack Hall collected matchsticks and made musical instruments out of them. He first created a fiddle, then two mandolins, and then a guitar made up entirely of 14,000 used matchsticks which he painstakingly glued together. This particular matchstick guitar was finally played in public in 1991 on BBC television, two years before Hall died.

What a waste, I thought to myself. Barnum would have taken that unusual guitar and its creator and put them on a world tour. He might even have rented out the guitar to be placed on display at trade shows like the one my fellow passenger attended. The guitar would have brought attention to his booth, made people talk, and helped increase his business. Visitors would walk away and talk among themselves, asking each other, “Did you see that wild matchstick guitar over at the refurbished vans table?”

Instead, the people who knew of the matchstick guitar let an opportunity for fame and fortune slip through their fingers. And the man beside me was content to sit at trade show tables and struggle along in business. As I wondere...

Table of contents

• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 - Presenting... the Greatest Marketeer of All Time—P. T. Barnum!
• Chapter 2 - P.T. Barnum’s Amazing 10 Rings of Power for Creating an Empire
• Chapter 3 - Bonus
• Chapter 4 - P.T. Barnum’s Amazing Mind-Set for Success
• Chapter 5 - Attention! What P.T. Barnum Learned When He Was Almost Hanged
• Chapter 6 - Barnum Knew People Would Spend Their Last Nickel on This One Thing
• Chapter 7 - P.T. Barnum’s Secret for Making Unknowns Famous and Himself Rich
• Chapter 8 - The Shakespeare of Advertising’s Rules for Jumbo Success
• Chapter 9 - How an Unknown P.T. Barnum Met Queen Victoria—and Got Rich
• Chapter 10 - How Barnum Purchased the Business of His Dreams with No Money
• Chapter 11 - P.T. Barnum’s Secret for Surviving Disasters and Tragedies
• Chapter 12 - How P.T. Barnum Wrote His Own Ticket to Success
• Chapter 13 - Bonus
• Chapter 14 - How P.T. Barnum Got Rich Right after Going Broke
• Chapter 15 - Bonus
• Chapter 16 - How to Barnumize Your Business
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Resources
• About the Author
• Index
• Special P.T. Barnum Bonus!