Lightning Fast Growth – Forecasting 50

(0:00 – 0:29)
I wanted to go back to the roots of business, you know, before Al invented the internet in 1995, there were a lot of time, there was a lot of time and energy put into what is the fastest way to grow a product, what is the fastest way to grow a business. The fastest way to grow what you’re currently doing would not be to get on national TV, would definitely not be on radio, although radio still works. It wouldn’t be any type of large advertisement.

(0:30 – 1:09)
I would say for 98% of people listening to this, the fastest way to very large growth would come from some form of an endorsement, some form of a large endorsement, some large organization, some large body or person, it could even be a large magazine or newspaper giving their blessing to your product or service. Jeff Walker wrote a whole book called Launch a couple years ago, kind of centered around this topic. And for those of you that know who Dr. Oz is, he’s like a health nutritionist type doctor.

(1:10 – 1:40)
If Dr. Oz personally tests a product for a few months and then endorses it to his, I think 2.8 million people on his email list, many companies have been made just because of one Dr. Oz endorsement. So it kind of gives you a flavor for what this episode is about. So the best way to explain the power of an endorsement, in my opinion, is with a very real case study.

(1:41 – 1:59)
And this case study changed our business in 1997. In 1995 and 6, we had a small chain of video stores. And back for those that were too young before VHS tapes, you were too young to see the VHS tapes in your home.

(1:59 – 2:11)
Back in the late 80s, 90s, if you wanted to watch a movie, you would go to a video store. You would not rent a DVD. You would run a VHS tape and you would put it in this big machine and you watch a movie.

(2:12 – 2:44)
So especially in the Midwest in the wintertime, going to the video store, renting three to four to five movies and getting some popcorn was kind of a thing. And we did very, very well in the video business for almost a decade. Well, no matter who you were and no matter what type of video store you had, if you were in the Midwest and there was what’s called summer months where it was nice and warm, many people would prefer to barbecue or their kids were home from school.

(2:44 – 2:57)
They’d hang out. They didn’t rent as many movies. As a matter of fact, our videos stores would drop somewhere in the tune of 22, 25, some even dropped 28 percent depending on the location.

(2:57 – 3:30)
And so in March of 1997, I said to myself, what can I do to make sure that this 25 percent drop in revenues for three months does not ever happen again? And I remember kind of literally beating myself up because I had taken out notebooks, I brainstormed, I had talked to people. And, you know, finally, I just I was on the verge of giving up, just sucking it up, saying, all right, we’re not going to make a dollar. We’re going to lose money for three months again, all stores.

(3:31 – 3:54)
And I remember a Time magazine article that said, don’t ever say the words, how can I? You need to replace them with who can help me. And it was like getting struck by lightning. I got in my car and I drove around for six to eight hours where most of our stores were located, just looking at the signs of business owners in town.

(3:55 – 4:09)
And I’m just like, OK, who can help me? Who can help? And I kept driving by. Who can help me? I stopped for lunch. Who can help me? And about four thirty in the afternoon, I pulled back into our video stores and I was pretty disappointed, honestly.