THE DO-NOT-SKIP-THIS INTRODUCTION
Can One Great Presentation Change Everything for Your Business?
Make You Rich? Influential? Powerful?
What’s the saying? Women want him and men want to be like him.
Having a powerful presentation, stepping to a stage or being on video, and delivering that presentation effectively can change a lot of things, for a person and for that person’s business. It can do something even bigger . . .
President Donald J. Trump.
If you can look at it as an object lesson, objectively, you know that this is an unprecedented political/marketing miracle. It has many convergent, causative factors, including his opponent. But central to President Trump’s h-u-g-e-l-y successful destruction of virtually every norm and believed requirement of campaigning was his mastery of powerful presentations. The Trump rallies were brilliantly organized and choreographed events with his own presentation as centerpiece. Were it not for his very deliberate effectiveness at delivering his presentations, he would not be the 45th President of the United States. And make no mistake, his presentations differed significantly from normal campaign speeches in a number of important ways. That specific analysis is being done by others and might be done by me in a different place at a different time. I raise it here only to set the stage for this book as demonstration of what the ability to craft and deliver a truly powerful presentation can do or be—virtually unlimited, altering or upsetting an entire industry or order, even putting an improbable President into the White House. Surely, there is a powerful presentation to be crafted and presented by you, capable of achieving whatever your chief purpose may be.
Comparatively, few owners of Main Street brick-and-mortar businesses—the butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers of the world—ever figure this out, develop a powerful presentation about what they do, and use it to attract customers. But the ones who do often find profound competitive advantage and accomplish amazing things. As an example, Tom and Nick Karadza have built a hugely profitable real estate brokerage in Toronto specializing in selling homes as investments to novice and pro investors, and they have built that business on the strength of powerful presentations delivered in their office to prospect audiences, online, and at larger seminars filled by their own advertising. Comparatively, few private practice professionals like chiropractors, dentists, child psychologists, lawyers, CPAs, and investment advisors ever figure this out, develop a powerful presentation about what they do, and use it to attract patients or clients, but the ones who do often find profound competitive advantage and accomplish amazing things. Matt Zagula, my co-author of the No B.S. Guide to Trust-Based Marketing, has a seven-figure-income financial practice in a painfully small market that has been fueled by “Evening with the Author” events and his powerful presentations at those events. Similarly, a private client of mine in the same field, James Lange, uses seminars on varied financial subjects to fuel his practice. Dr. Westermeier has mastered the use of in-office seminars on “Better Living with Dental Implants” marketed through his patients to their family members and friends. His presentation works so well and his system for marketing his in-office seminars is so effective, he has wound up with a second business licensing it to dentists all across the country. People in virtually every field are enjoying outsized incomes, immunity from price commoditization, attraction of better caliber customers, and strong competitive advantage by owning and using their own powerful group presentations and selling one to many instead of one to one. There are relatively few in every field, in every market. But they are thriving, and you can too.
That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You have come to the right place.
I poured rocket fuel into my own businesses and fortune with one powerful presentation delivered more than 400 times over nine years to an aggregate audience exceeding 3 million people. Doing so created direct revenues exceeding $1 million a year, and it was the chief builder of a company I later sold for tens of millions of dollars. It also was a media platform and subscription membership that supported me very well for over 25 years, and to some extent still does. Within that business, many powerful, million-dollar-producing presentations were and continue to be crafted and delivered live to audiences, online in webcasts and multi-piece VSLs (video sales letters) leading up to live webcasts, and by audio CDs and DVDs. You can look in on that business as it lives today at http://GKIC.com. It all came to life because of the one powerful presentation and my ability to deliver it as speaker/performer.
Can one great presentation make you rich? Absolutely.
That was so for me, personally. I’ve also helped conceive, craft, and write powerful presentations presented via half-hour TV infomercials that have, in total, driven billions—with a B—of dollars of revenue and built brands worth billions. I’ve helped individuals get powerful presentations together and master their delivery to, in turn, raise their or their business’s prominence, promote their cause or charity, and make themselves famous as authors or experts. If you are going to establish yourself with the Triangle of Power that I use and teach—Authority, Credibility, and Celebrity—an essential item is a book, and the second essential item is a presentation.
Can one great presentation launch, fuel, and build an entire company? Absolutely.
In B2B, creating and delivering powerful presentations can make a huge difference. The leader in marketing management software for diverse small businesses and midsized companies in which I’m a founding investor, Infusionsoft (www.infusionsoft.com), was launched and built by several different presentations delivered first by their CEO and his partner, then by other speakers representing the company. Another “Planet Dan” company, 3DMailResults (http://3DMailResults.com), is the leading provider of ad specialties, promotional products, “lumpy mail” items and complete mailing campaigns utilizing such items. It has been fueled by Travis Lee’s dynamic presentation that teaches and demonstrates the “why” and the “how” of using this kind of direct mail. My client Jay Geier launched what is now one of, if not, the largest training and consulting companies in dentistry, Scheduling Institute, with one great presentation about the right and wrong handling of incoming calls in dental offices. Today, the company has two physical campuses—in Atlanta and Phoenix—conducts over a thousand trainings in dental offices each year, and is an enormously valuable enterprise. Just as Walt always reminded folks that “it all started with a mouse,” this all started with a presentation, delivered to audiences of dentists.
Can one presentation give an ordinary business an extraordinary advantage? Absolutely.
At the Main Street, local level, one great speech can differentiate a doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, school operator, restaurant owner, real estate agent, etc., etc., from all competitors and peers and make them a leading expert and famous celebrity in their market. Years back, a client of mine, David Apts, fueled exceptionally profitable physical therapy clinics with his Back Safety class, delivered regularly to the employees of the factories, coal plants, and other industrial companies in his area, in their workplaces. This pre-empted all other practitioners for all these workers’ compensation cases. This somewhat replicated a system that a partner and I had invented for selling large quantities of Mace®-like chemical deterrent key chains and other self-defense products by sending speakers into all sorts of companies and offices to conduct free Crime Safety classes. Even stores like Home Depot® drive sales with in-store classes for customers. Yes, this requires some creative imagination. But the genesis for it is there: If your business has customers, that means that some presentation related to what people do with what they buy from your business will have an audience. And you can safely bet that if you figure this out and run with it, your close competitors won’t.
At the national level, one great presentation delivered via online video, entirely automated, can circumvent normal distribution channels, sell direct to consumers, and be a self-operating income machine. One of these that I created for a client nine years ago has put money in his bank account every day of its life, all the way to the present, untouched by human hands, while he spends a lot of his time on his boat. Think about how happy he is, each month placing one call to his mailing house and directing them to mail 10,000, 25,000, or 50,000 of his direct-mail pieces, letting those mailings bring his audience to his automated webinar, and getting daily email verifications of orders processed and the daily bank deposit made. This isn’t freakish or fantasy. It is very doable with what you’ll discover in this bookin addition to the resources it recommends.
If you want to see one fine-tuned presentation after another enabling inventors, manufacturers, and entrepreneurs to bypass all traditional sales distribution channels and barriers, tune into the home shopping TV channels QVC and HSN for a few days or at least a few hours. You will see baked goods, steaks, candy, and all sorts of food items, home and business gadgets, fashion, jewelry, gardening tools, you-name-it sold by powerful presentations and by individuals—usually the baker, the rancher, the candy maker, the inventor, the designer, the person behind the brand—delivering them. My friend and client, the late Joan Rivers, was, for years, the number-one sales presenter on QVC, which attached to an ever-expanding portfolio of products bearing her name. She was not winging it. Each product’s presentation was crafted to be a powerful presentation.
This book is about that craftsmanship.
In this book, I’ve partnered with my friend Dustin Mathews, who heads up a remarkable agency and its team, a quasi-factory with a quasi-assembly line, for creating powerful, leverageable presentations for businesspeople of every imaginable type ‘n’ stripe, hundreds of times every year. He starts with the raw material of an individual’s life, interests, stories, experiences, nature of his business or profession, and, of course, his objectives at one end of the assembly line. At the other end, instead of a shiny new car driving off, a shiny new power presentation comes off—with script, MS PowerPoint® slides, other visual aids, video media, or whatever else is needed for it to be used successfully for influence, promotion, or profit. In short, he has refined an art to a system, and, just as Henry Ford made the motorcar affordable for the masses by his assembly line, Dustin has made developing and owning power presentations affordable for just about anyone, whether entrepreneur, professional, author, or expert. From his constant, daily experience with moving one person after another through his process, he has settled on certain conclusions, principles, strategies, structures, modes of storytelling, and sales tactics that are reliable “best practices” for creating power presentations as a do-it-yourselfer—for any purpose—even one-time-use purposes like a Monday morning staff meeting or a specific presentation to your corporate board. As many as you need, as often as you need them.
To return to President Trump for a moment . . .
He created what Dave VanHoose explains in this book is a Signature or Stadium Presentation. He assembled target-selected audiences to deliver it to, and multiplied its reach beyond those in-person events with media. His presentation can be dissected by Dustin Mathews’ presentation formulas. If following this can put an unlikely candidate into the White House, what might it do for you?
Let’s find out . . .
Important Invitation
You do not need to wait until you’ve read the book to connect with its authors for additional free resources, information, and more!
Dustin Mathews and Dave VanHoose are at
and extensions of this book are at
Dan Kennedy’s newsletters, association for marketing-oriented entrepreneurs, and a wide range of resources based on his methods can be found and accessed at
There is a special offer from GKIC on page 165.