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Our training clients include:
How You Can Leverage My Success.
Our
programs are rapidly outdating this document, which was the basis of our
training program only a year ago. I include it here only for reference so you
can see how fast this program is moving. Some part of this article are outdated
and I will fix them as I get the chance, but this gives you some insight into my
thinking then and now.
Let me explain. As more and more people began licensing my materials, I wanted to help them become more successful in speaking, training, and consulting. I began to do research on successful speaking and training. I put together this research in my book Making Money by Speaking: The Spokesperson Strategy (which has been recognized as one of the best career books and one of the most innovative business books published in 2006). In doing this book, I discovered something remarkable.
I discovered that my knowledge of strategy was just a small (though critical) part of what has made me successful. In studying the success of other experts, I saw that what I had done unconsciously was follow a formula that had its roots in very good strategy. This formula has several parts: a valuable and interesting message, the willingness to stand up and talk to people about that message, a way to package that message into profitable products, and, finally, a marketing system for building a reputation around that message.
I also realized something else. There is a huge market of people who want to learn about strategy and Sun Tzu's The Art of War. That market reaches into every nook and cranny of every professional field and every industry. Since I didn't want to hire and manage my own employees--more about that below--the best way to reach all those little markets was to help other people like you become professional speakers, strategic trainers, and strategy consultants, spreading Sun Tzu's principles throughout the world.
Think about it. Most successful experts must develop a whole system for positioning and promoting themselves from scratch. Those who are successful find a unique spin on their message. They learn the speaking business from trial and error. They learn how to get their books and audios published to give them authority and something more profitable to sell than just their time. They then learn how to use web marketing and publicity to position themselves in their market niche. Even for those who are successful, this process takes years and years of painful learning. Most who try, however, go out of business before they have time to learn much of anything.
Learning Is Expensive
The challenge is that if you want to become successful on your own, you have to master all these skills. This learning curve is expensive and difficult to climb. It takes years of time, thousands of good decisions, and tens of thousands of dollars of investment. As the science of strategy teaches us, success is mostly a matter of survival. Most experts don't survive.
The
challenges
start with having a unique, powerful, and interesting system to offer. You have knowledge, experience, and skills
that you want
to share with others, but how well organized is that knowledge? What makes
it unique or interesting or even credible? How deep is that knowledge? How
proven is it? Do ideas you use sound like those of a thousand other consultants
developing their own spin? Why are your knowledge and experience any more
credible than the next person's?
Then
there is the problem of products. Everyone wants to write a book. There are
dozens of different types of businesses “helping” people like you develop their
books. There are book designers, editors, publishers, and printers.
Unfortunately, in most cases it is these service providers, not the authors they
"help," who make the money. And most of these service providers, such as book
publishers, are barely making any money themselves. And too many of these
service providers have no clue about how you can make money.
The exact same thing is true for web site development. Lots of people selling advice. Lots of people selling products and systems. Most are barely surviving themselves.
This
brings us to the problem of reputation. Again, there are lots of advisers
who want to sell to you -- marketing consultants, advertising companies,
publicity experts, and the rest -- people who want you to pay them to help
you. But how do they really help? To be successful, you need to establish
a professional image and win respect. How do you do it? Is there a
shortcut to credibility?
Making money is the bottom line. If you aren't making money, how can you teach other businesses anything? If you aren't making money right away, how long can you survive as a trainer, consultant, and speaker? Logically, your consulting, professional speaking, and training have to make money for you if you are going to get hired to make money for other businesspeople. Knowing your stuff just isn't enough! You need a unique and interesting message, profitable products, real credibility as an author, a money-making web site, a public presence, and much more. How can you get it quickly? What is all that worth?
What We Bring to the Formula
As I said before, I am not doing this out of the goodness of my heart (though I think I do have a pretty good heart). I am doing this because by helping you, I can help myself.
First, let me tell you what we offer. We help you use Sun Tzu's 2,500-year-old principles to make your personal message unique and more interesting. Even if you are a true expert in your field, adding Sun Tzu's science of strategy to your knowledge will immediately make your message stand out from the crowd. (It will also enable you to make better business decisions.) Being a licensed expert in The Art of War makes you instantly more marketable, no matter what your previous experience (and especially if you have less experience than you would like).
When you join the Science of Strategy Institute as one of our trainers, you gain instant credibility. Doesn't belonging to an organization with such an imposing name (which is why, of course, I chose it) instantly give you more credibility? Why not build your career on my credibility and reputation? Everyone wants to learn strategy; my book awards, my presentations for the world's largest organizations, and the rest of my accomplishments instantly become yours when you join the Institute. My accomplishments are the Institute's accomplishments and you can be part of the Institute. All our trainers' accomplishments will join together to build that credibility.
As for making money, what is easier than having ready-made, proven products that make you more money than your own products could? Is there anyone on the face of the earth who SHOULDN'T buy a copy of Sun Tzu's great book, adaptations that make it easy to use, or explanations that make it easy to understand? Selling our products are immediately more profitable than any product you could develop for yourself. You instantly have free gifts to give away and high-ticket items to sell. You have not one but a growing list of training programs to offer. And, when you sell your training, you keep every dime you collect. How can that be bad?
Of course, our products don't add to your personal credibility, but we can help you there as well. We have the resources to help you create your own products, especially to help you publish your own books. Being an author instantly makes you an authority, but only if your book doesn't make you look like an amateur. Books are judged by their cover. Unprofessionally designed books scream, "Homemade!" You don't just need a book, you need a great-looking book, a book as polished and professional as you want your image to be. Such books are rare in the "expert" business, but as the publishers of a whole series of award-winning books, we can help you there as well. I can make it easy, giving you templates that make writing a truly professional book as easy as painting by numbers.
Like a book is judged by its cover, in today's world, professionals are judged by their web sites. But a good web site must be more than a pretty face: it must be a money-making machine. You could spend years developing your own web marketing system, but why not get a template for your web marketing from me? I have spent years studying web marketing and refining my system. Remember, before I was a professional speaker and strategic trainer, I was a recognized authority in software technology. Why not let me use my expertise to help you?
This brings us at last to publicity. I have done so many radio interviews over the years that I am, quite frankly, getting a little tired of them (especially getting up at 4 a.m. for East Coast drive-time interviews). I have a huge database of radio producers. I have a great "hook" with Sun Tzu's Art of War. I have years of experience writing segment ideas, the modern version of the old press release. Why not let me use my experience to get you into your local media, training you to take over the strategy pundit role in your local market?
What do we get out of this?
By making people like yourself successful, I can sell more products, make more money, become better known, and leverage my strategic experience by directing a larger, more influential organization. I also get a licensing fee from you, but that fee exists so you can "self-qualify" yourself. If you don't think this opportunity is worth it to you, I can only agree. My real goal is to make myself more successful by making people like you more successful.
Sure, I could hire, train, and manage my own employees, but I don't want to. First, because I don't want work with employees any more. I want to work with self-starters who are working for themselves. Second, because after spending decades managing people for large organizations and then building my own Inc. 500 company, I am done with day-to-day management. I have had hundreds of people working for me, and I can tell you that being the "big boss" isn't what it's cracked up to be. When you are a CEO, you are responsible for everyone who works for you, every day of the week. Every employee (and every customer) thinks they own you and that you are responsible to them. Your time isn't your own. You don't sleep at night. Sure, you make a lot of money, but it just isn't worth it -- at least not to me, not anymore. I've already done it and earned enough money that I am not willing to give up my lifestyle to do it again.
It works out better for me and for you if I give you the opportunity to run your own business. I only want to work with motivated people who have some skin in the game and who want to control their own lives and make their own decisions. Some of those people will fail, but the ones who are successful will be exactly the type of people I want to work with. A few will try to steal from me, but most will prove themselves to be both honest and diligent, not out of nobility, but because they see that it is in their best interest to be part of a larger, successful organization.
I am not going to lie to you. As that organization grows, I will work directly only with the cream of the crop. If you don't rise to the top, you will work directly with those who do. As those people handle day-to-day management, I can do what I do best: position the organization as a whole, solve tough problems, come up with great new ideas, create profitable products, and act as an articulate figurehead.
What do you get out of this?
You already have an idea of the benefits, but let's get down to the nuts and bolts. As a licensed trainer of the Science of Strategy Institute, you get more than a concept. You get real, solid products you can start using from day one to start making money. These materials are described briefly below, but if you want a more detailed description (and you should spend the time going through it) click around and read the pages from this site. It guides our trainers to the material we make available to them. You can't access the actual materials, but you can see what we offer.
Training Materials With Depth: You get polished presentation materials that you can easily customize.
What
if you could tie your personal, unique knowledge to a deeper, more proven system
that gives everyone new insight into their personal situation? Though Sun
Tzu's science of strategy is history's most proven strategic system, how it
works remains largely unknown. Most importantly, it is broad enough to encompass
your own unique insights about your specific area of expertise.
Our message polishes and amplifies your own. It is so much easier, less expensive, and less painful to put your knowledge into our proven, professional presentation materials than it is to start from scratch on your own message.
Profitable Products That You Can Sell: Your profit margin on our
products is so good that the main reason to do your own is not to make more
profit but to
enhance
your reputation. When you are ready, we can provide you everything you need,
from templates to dramatically cheaper production to distribution to a
worldwide market for those products.
You start with proven, profitable products, and you can develop your own products with an organization that knows how do it. You can start making profitable sales right away and create products that enhance your own credibility faster and less expensively.
Instant Market Presence and Credibility: Instead of building your reputation from scratch, you start with a head start.
What
if you could get credibility, reputation, and marketing from a larger
organization and have that organization teach you how to market yourself? What
gives you more credibility than being licensed by an established organization
that has trainers all over the world?
We can tell you how successful speakers build their businesses. You might say that I wrote the book on the subject, because I have. With us, you also get an immediate web presence as part of our organization, professional marketing materials you can download and customize, publicity resources, guidance on developing your own web presence, and more.
A
Marketing System that implements a specific web-site strategy for building a
community of people interested in Sun Tzu's strategy in your area and proven
methods for getting local publicity: If you live in the United States, we can even
jumpstart your publicity program by giving you access to our databases of radio
publicity contacts. If you book them, I will even appear with you on your local
programs, promoting your business as a trainer for the Science of
Strategy Institute.
You also get guidance from me in regular teleconferences discussing our trainers' program and what other trainers are doing successfully. We record these teleconferences for our new trainers. And though you can't access them yet, you can hear the first part of our first teleconference session, discussing our goals for the program, here.
Just Copy What I Have Done!
The fastest way to make money is to follow in the footsteps of someone who has done what you want to do. Remember, I am not some "expert" who just offers advice, a talker rather than a doer. I have built one of the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies in America, won a lot of business awards, trained some of the largest organizations in the world, written a whole series of award-winning books, and given interviews on national television and radio.
Do
you want to do what I have done? Can you do it? Does it take any special
skills? I didn't start with any special privileges. I started as a college dropout who, lacking any other skills, went into sales. I wasn't all that successful
at that either. Then I starting learning strategy. After I started mastering Sun
Tzu (something we require of all our trainers, obviously), I started getting
promoted about every eight months. Before long, I was in corporate management. I
then started my own software company. My success in that company led me to
speaking at corporate and industry events.
After learning the speaking business, I moved into book publishing. Again, I already had a base of experience because I had had a number of books published before. I made a lot of mistakes (as always), but I learned publishing. Now, our books continue to win award recognition year after year. After learning publishing, I moved to publicity and the media. I did hundreds of interviews on strategy and even became a regular co-host on a local radio show. After mastering media, I moved on to web marketing, and to prove my success there, I only need to point out that here you are, reading this!
Do any of these sound like things that you would like to do?
Most people protectively guard the knowledge they have accumulated. Because my study of strategy teaches me to leverage my position, I am spreading my knowledge and skills to as many people as possible. I not only tell you what you need to know in all these areas, I give you the materials and systems you need.
Progress starts when people stop reinventing the wheel and start building car factories, systematically duplicating what works. The Science of Strategy Institute is a factory for duplicating the kind of success that I have had.
What Can We Do for YOU?
First, we lay out the surefire steps to using speaking as a strategy for success. On our trainers' site, this is a simple to-do list. Whatever else you have to teach, you can use our training materials to flesh out your message and programs. Strategy is the Swiss army knife of disciplines, applicable to any competitive endeavor, from business to romance. There is no narrow niche here that needs to be protected. Instead, the teaching of true strategy in a variety of areas is a broad opportunity that needs to be explored.
Next, you need products. Joining our Institute instantly gives you high-quality professional, profitable products from day one, but, as I explain in Making Money by Speaking, speaking leads naturally and almost inevitably to publishing. Being an author establishes your credibility and gives you your own product to sell.
In Clearbridge Publishing, we have developed a wealth of publishing resources, including designers, proofreaders, illustrators, printers, distributors, and so on. We would like to use these resources to help you, our trainers, publish your works, releasing them either on your own or through Clearbridge. We even give you standard book designs that you can use as templates, making writing your own strategy book as easy as painting by numbers.
Whether
you are working on a book already or just thinking about doing a book, we can
save you a great deal of money. In general, our costs for outside services are about
half what you would expect to pay on your own. For example, as a publisher, we
pay from a half to a third what a new author pays to get a book printed. A
book that would cost you five dollars to get printed costs us two dollars or
less. Even with our handling fee, you can save a lot of money working with us.
And beyond saving you money on the basic fees, we can save you from making a lot
of expensive mistakes in the search for good and honest suppliers.
And, if we agree to distribute your book, we can get you distribution not only in all the major bookstores in the United States, but also around the world. It is virtually impossible for a new author to get distribution on his or her own. While distribution to book stores is not all you might think, it is certainly worth having access to.
Of course, products are nothing without marketing. As I explain in my Making Money by Speaking book, there is no local marketing better than getting out and speaking to people. However, teaching you to promote yourself with speaking is just the beginning. The goal of all our programs, including our web-marketing system and publicity program, is to develop your audience into a community and a customer base. The goal of our web-site strategy is to collect names so you can market to them on a regular basis. The goal of our publicity program is to get you known in your community as a respected authority on strategy.
Our trainer licensing program is a classic win-win strategy. You win by making yourself stand out from the crowd, gaining instant credibility, getting profitable products to sell, and getting to keep 100% of your speaking and training fees. We win because we are developing a worldwide network of trainers who promote and sell our products and programs.
If you want to provide strategic training within your corporation rather than in the general market, order that application here.
