Dan Kennedy on Wealth Magnetism

Here’s a guest article by the brilliant marketer Dan Kennedy. His recent book is No. B.S. Wealth Attraction in the New Economy. You should read everything by him, beginning with this article, and then the new book. Enjoy. – joe

How To Liberate Your

Wealth Magnetism

by

Dan S. Kennedy

Most people’s world view of wealth is as a zero-sum game. A big impediment to attraction of wealth is the idea that the amount of wealth floating around to be attracted is limited. If you believe it’s limited, then you believe that each dollar you get came to you at someone else’s expense, your gain another’s loss. That makes your subconscious mind queasy. So it keeps your wealth attraction power turned down. Never to full power. To let it operate at full power would be unfair and harmful to others. If you are a decent human being, and you have this viewpoint, then you will always modulate your wealth attraction power. If too much starts pouring in too easily, guilt is produced as if it were insulin being produced by the pancreas after pigging out on a whole pizza. You can’t help it. Your wealth magnetism will be turned down for you.

Think about the words “fair share.”

They are powerful, dangerous words.

As an ethical, moral person, you probably think — “hey, I don’t want more than my fair share.” But that reveals belief that wealth is limited. If you believe wealth is unlimited, there’s no such thing as a share of it. Everybody’s share is unlimited. There’s nothing to have a share of. There’s only unlimited. Your fair share is all you can possibly attract. As is anybody and everybody else’s.

In business, there’s a similar idea: market share. But again that presumes a finite, limited market, instead of an infinitely expandable market.

In the New Economy, market share is one of the most antiquated of concepts. Boundaries are broken — even the smallest business can be global in reach, thanks largely to the internet. Consumers have access to a multiplied and multiplying range of choices, so classic brand loyalty has been replaced by search for and expectation of the thing that is precisely, perfectly appropriate. The market for all manner of goods and services is greater than ever before yet the fragmentation of the market itself greater and more complex than ever before. The attraction of wealth in this environment has little to do with somehow “locking up” a limited portion of a limited market; everything to do with directly connecting with individuals and meeting their needs and interests. When you think in terms of being in the business of creatively meeting the needs and interests of individuals, it’s obvious that the size of the market available to you is limited only by your own creativity and initiative. Further, that whatever connection you create and accomplish has no relationship to what anyone else does, whether a lot or a little. Clinging to old ideas of limitation blocks access to new opportunity!

If you can make every last smidgen of belief that wealth is limited go away, your attraction of wealth will suddenly, automatically go from modulated and limited and suppressed to full power, and opportunity, money and wealth will quickly flow to you in greater

quantities at greater speed than you’ve ever before experienced.

If you believe wealth is limited, if you view it as a zero-sum game, you are inhibited. This inhibition affects all sorts of things you do or don’t do, such as what you’ll charge, for example, or who you’ll ask for money.

To Sell More, Develop Belief In Unlimited Abundance

I’ve spent a lot of time working with people in sales. Those who identify themselves as salespeople, like folks selling insurance, cars, fire alarms, as well as those who don’t identify themselves as salespeople but are, like dentists and psychologists. Two things are true for all of them that reflect wealth inhibition.

One has to do with price. Most fear discussion of price, fear raising prices, are paranoid about pricing higher than their competitors. I have had to work long and hard to get some people to raise their prices or fees far beyond present levels, industry norms, or competitors’ prices, in order to charge what their service and expertise is really worth to their clientele. In numerous cases I’ve forced fee or price increases of 200% to 2,000% with absolutely no adverse impact — that’s how far under-priced a lot of people are! In these situations, we are not dealing with practical issues. We are dealing with the businessperson’s own inhibitions and fears.

Second is pulling the punch when closing the sale. I sometimes joke about one of my own businesses — freelance advertising copywriting — where I routinely charge fees of $100,000.00 to $150,000.00 or more for a complete project, no less than $25,000.00 for a single ad or sales letter. Plus royalties. I say that the primary requirement for getting such fees has little to do with  my prowess as a copywriter, everything to do with my ability to keep a straight face and voice free of stammer when quoting the fee! This may be the reason a lot of art and antique dealers write the price down on a piece of stationery and slide it across the desk to you. There’s truth in the joke. When the dentist quotes his $70,000.00 case to the patient, when the private residence club quotes the $215,000.00 membership fee, when anyone speaks any price or fee, there is the tendency for tremors, the temptation to discount without ever even being asked, out of fear, inhibition, and presumption. In short, to pull the punch.

Consider the salesman who goes into a person’s home to sell fire alarms. (I have a corporate client in this industry.) The fire alarm salesman with the stuffed Dalmation under his arm and the burning house DVD marches in and discovers that he is in a place of relative poverty — at least by his standards. The two kids are on a thread-bare carpet in the living room. They probably have a good television, but pretty much everything else in the house is obviously hand-me-down, beat-up, falling apart, springs sticking up out of the couch seat. He can clearly see that these people aren’t doing well. Conversationally, he discovers Papa hasn’t worked in four months and the kid’s got some kind of problem that causes big medical bills, and on and on and on. The salesperson becomes increasingly queasy about closing these people on the $2,000.00 fire alarm sale. And, in many cases, he will not close the sale. He will subconsciously pull his punches, accept the first objection easily. Or he’ll consciously, deliberately throw the game at the end and toss that one aside and get out of there. But if their house burns down, one of the children dies, and all their possessions lost, how much honest service did he provide?

If you want your wealth attraction glowing and functioning at full power, you can’t have any queasiness. You can’t have any reluctance. You can’t have any inhibition. You can’t ever pull a punch. In the bigger sense, you have to understand that whatever financial position anyone you know is in, anyone you do business with is in, anyone, period, is in, has nothing to do with you. In the biggest sense, you have to understand that whatever the state of economic affairs in the world, it has nothing to do with how much wealth you accumulate. Your wealth is addition for you but subtraction for no one.

Unless and until you buy this premise hook, line and sinker, you will always suffer from wealth inhibition.

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Above copyright 2010 and used with permission of copyright owner Dan Kennedy. All rights reserved.