Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The "Offer" That Helped End World War 1 (Hint: It Included Toilet Paper)

Episode Date: June 12, 2018

Creating an offer is the secret behind getting anything you want... including prisoners of war. On today's episode, Russell talks about how Harry Reichenbach helped end World War I with an offer that German soldiers couldn't refuse. Here are some of the awesome and surprising things to look for in this episode: What was in Reichenbach's offer that gave him the ability to convince German soldiers that it would be better to be prisoners of war than to continue fighting. How everything in life is pretty much about selling someone an irresistible offer. And how Russell could easily convince you to purchase an iPhone from him for double the cost of every other iPhone being sold. So listen here to find out how hook, story and offer can convince someone to marry you, go to the movies with you, or even end a war. Transcript - https://marketingsecrets.com/blog/the-offer-that-helped-end-world-war-1-hint-it-included-toilet-paper Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I'm going to show you how a simple stack slide was the key, one of the keys to helping end World War No. 1. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, who are spending money from our own pockets, how do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers.

My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right. I'm so excited today. So I'm with my wife. We are celebrating our second anniversary. We decided to rent an Airbnb in San Diego and just ditch everyone, our kids, our family, and we're just sitting here literally doing nothing. We're reading, watching TV, eating junk food and getting massages and rinse and repeat. It's been really fun. And so I brought one book with me. This is a book I'm actually really excited to, I've been really excited to read. One of my friends, Joe Vitale, aka Mr. Fire, he wrote this book when he was, I don't know, like 15 years ago or so, about the time I was getting into internet marketing. I remember seeing it. And I think, I can't remember if I read it or if I read part of

it or whatever, but I know I bought it and I had it. And it was all about P.T. Barnum's Secrets to Business Success. It's called There's a Customer Born Every Minute. Some of you guys, if you've known about P.T. Barnum, there's a quote that he said that there's a sucker born every minute, which apparently is not true. But Joe Vitale's book's called There's a Customer Born Every Minute. And this book's super rare now. In fact, I tried to buy another copy of it on Amazon. It's hard to get. And then I called the publisher and actually ordered 650 copies that we were sending out to all my Two Common Club X members. So those guys who are in Two Common Club X and my inner circle, you should be getting, uh, this book in the mail, which you're going to love. Anyway, I might do a podcast. It's just all the amazing marketing

stuff I'm learning from this book. Cause there's so many, so many, so many good things here from PT Barnum and from everything. Um, but there's one lesson I just read that was so good. I like literally dropped my book and I was like, okay, I have to go to a podcast on this because this is insane and amazing. And hopefully we'll prove a point that I've been trying to make over and over and over and over and over again, that everything good in life comes by making really, really good offers. Okay. All right. So here, here, um, here we go. So in this book, uh, this is actually not something PT Barnum did. This is one of P.T. Barnum's, I'd say one of his students, one of his, someone who studied Barnum. His name was Harry Reichenbach.

And they said he was basically the single greatest force in American advertising since P.T. Barnum. And anyway, so there's a whole bunch of stories about him. The one that was like insanely cool is basically he created an offer. He created a stack slide and then, um, to try to stop the war. He printed out 45 million of these things and flew over enemy lines and drop these things for the German soldiers to get. And he was hoping they would read this offer and then become a prisoner of war. Okay. So literally he created an offer to get someone to become a prisoner of war. Okay. Um, okay. So I'm going to read this from the book.

Cause it's so insanely cool. Um, you can hear exactly what the offer was, how it worked and how effective it was. So it said during world war one, Reichenbach created a diploma that the allies dropped by planes over the German lines. Every time I say diploma, think stack slide or think offer. So he created an offer that the allies dropped by plane over the German lines, the diploma, the offer stack slide gave any German soldier upon surrender status as a prisoner with officer rank. The back of the diploma listed the benefits. So the first thing, if you decide to take this offer, so when you go all in today, I'm going to make you a prisoner with officer rank. So that's not just a regular prisoner.

That's like a higher ranking prisoner. And the back of the diploma, back of the offer, stack slide, listed the benefits. Number one, bread and meat to eat every single day. So when you become a prisoner, the benefits. Number one, bread and meat to eat every single day. Okay. So when you become a prisoner or I'm going to give you bread and meat to eat every single day. Number two, you're gonna get cigarettes to smoke. Number three, you're gonna get a, the liking comb. I'm guessing some type of comb you can comb your hair with. And number four, 24 sheets of toilet paper a day. Okay. Now apparently that was the one that I pushed people over the edge because apparently I didn't have toilet paper, which if you're a German soldier out there trying to kill people, I don't know about you, but I would like some

toilet paper. So they had 24 sheets of toilet paper a day if they go on this offer. I apologize if you hear planes flying by. We're in San Diego on the beach and there's planes everywhere. Anyway, all right. It says about 45 million diplomas slash offer slide slash stacks slide slash whatever you want to call it. 45 million of these things were dropped over enemy lines during the war thousands of germans grabbed the offer and put down their weapons the german army became so concerned that it passed the law making it a capital offense to pick up any paper on the battlefield in short bend over and get shot the brilliant scheme worked because the german soldiers wanted more than anything toilet paper you guys getting this he wanted to end the war he He wanted more prisoners of war.

So instead of just like trying to capture people and pull them by their will, he said, what if we made an irresistible offer, an offer so good that they would just come and give themselves to us? That way we didn't have to go and beg and fight and scheme and like do all this painful thing. They'd actually come to us. Okay. It's okay.

First thing is we need to give them status. Hopefully if you've read the expert secrets books and light bulbs, don't not forgetting. They give them status. Number one is that, um, when you do this, you don't just become a prisoner of war. You become a prisoner with officer rank. You will have status. And they're like, Oh my gosh, this is great. Cause I want status. And they said, okay, what are the things you need? Okay. Um, if you look at internal, the internal struggle, right? Like I'm going to be hungry. Okay. You want to give you bread and meat to eat every single day. Like, wow, that's better than I'm getting right now. I'm treating you to cigarettes to smoke. Number three, you're going to get a comb apparently to comb your hair.

And then 24 sheets of toilet paper. That was the thing that pushed them over the edge. Like, when you act now, I'm going to give you 24 sheets of toilet paper, um, right now. Um, anyway, I just thought it was so, so cool to see how this dude basically created an offer to try to end the world, to try to end the war. And you think about it, it's like everything we do in life all comes down to being able to create amazing offers, right? Like, think about if you want your friends to go to a movie with you. The better you can make the offer, the more likely they are to go with you, right? If you're like, hey, I want to go to this movie, it's going to be really good.

They're like, I want to see this movie. You're like, ugh. But if you're like, hey, if you come to the movie with me, I'll buy your tickets, number two. I will buy you a treat, number three. um, I'll get his front row seats. Number four. Um, I'll get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Like you create an offer. They're like, sweet. I'm in. Okay. Um, think about this when you met your wife, like, Hey, we're going to date. She's like, eh, you're okay looking. But how this, we're gonna go get sushi. And then after sushi, I'm gonna take you to a movie. And then after the movie, we're going to do that. You got to create an actual offer. Right. And they're like, sushi, I'm going to take you to a movie. And then after the movie, we're going to do da, da, da, da. And you create an actual offer, right?

And they're like, yeah, I'm in. I want to do that. Okay. The better you become an offer creation, the better you do everything. Okay. You're going to find a better spouse. You're going to be able to get your kids to do what you need to do. You're going to be able to motivate and entice your employees.

You're going to be able to sell your customers better products. You'll be able to end a war, get people to become prisoners of war for you. Like, like whatever, like whatever it is you need done, it all, it all stems down to this one amazing thing, which is how do we create a really, really good irresistible offer. Um, and it's just, uh, so cool. Just so cool to see in this context because, um, it can work in any of them. Um, it's funny. I was doing a presentation for the two comic club X people the other day and I was trying to explain offer creation.

And it's funny because a lot of them are in e-commerce too. So every time I e-commerce people like, well, I sell physical products. I can do offers. I'm like, I want to stab you in the eye. It's just so easy with physical products. And then all of a sudden an example popped in my head that I shared that I want to share with you guys. Cause I think it's, it's so good. So I said, okay, let's say you wanted to, you were going to go buy an iPhone, right? And let's say you already even had an iPhone. I was like, Hey, I'm going to say my iPhone. And you're like, I already have one. Or like, uh, why would I buy yours? I'm like, well, it's, um, and, and hold on one more caveat on this. I'm going to sell my iPhone for twice as

much as you can buy retail for. Okay. So you can buy this iPhone. I'm holding right now my hands, like 500 bucks. Let's say if you go to anywhere online, um, or you can buy retail for. Okay. So you can buy this iPhone. I'm holding right now my hands like 500 bucks. Let's say if you go to anywhere online, um, or you can buy mine for a thousand bucks. Okay. I guarantee you in about five seconds, I'm going to get every one of you guys to wire me a thousand bucks for my iPhone. Okay. Let me see. All right. This is the deal. Okay. So, uh, when you decide to buy my iPhone right now, the first thing you're gonna get is my phone, which retail price of $500, you can get those anywhere. So that's not that special. Okay. Therefore it is not an offer. We are selling a commodity and when you have a commodity is a race to the bottom. Okay. So commodities like that's the worst thing you could possibly sell, right? That's what most people do. Okay. All right. So I'm taking this, taking this,

this commodity, this iPhone. Now I'm going to turn to an offer. So when you buy this iPhone, a couple of things. Number one is, um, recently I went through my entire audio or my entire library. I had purchased conservatively, I'd say between $450,000 and $500,000 in marketing courses over the last 15 years of my life. I used to have them on six bookshelves that wrapped two rooms in my old office. But I recently sent them to my brother who took all, um, I say 300 plus marketing courses. The average cost per course was a thousand dollars, but somewhere up to four or $5,000 a piece.

He took all of those and he burned all the audios onto, um, um, into audio book format. And those are all in my course or all my phone are here. So I'd say conservatively looking at at least 450450,000 to $500,000 in marketing and sales and personal development courses are on this phone. So when you get this phone right now, I'm also going to give you access to all those courses because they're already on my phone. Number two thing I'm going to give you, or number three thing I'm going to give you, I'm also going to give you an app called Voxer that gives you a secret portal into a Voxer app on my own personal phone. And so anytime you want to Vox me, you can click on a button

and you can ask me any question you want as often you want. Number four, all my phone in my address book are the phone numbers of many really amazing people, like Tony Robbins' cell phone numbers in there, Brandon Bouchard, Frank Kearns, Dan Kennedy's. Actually, that's not true. He doesn't have a cell phone. It's his fax number, so I can fax him. Um, he's sitting there, um, pretty much all the top marketing and sales, uh, and personal development gurus on planet earth. Their personal contact information

is in my phone here. And, um, number five, um, uh, you have access to, um, what else can I put in here anyway? So you see, now I took this phone that normally sells 500 bucks to everyone, and now I made an offer. Now, how many of you guys would pay me 1,000 bucks for this phone? Yeah, everyone on planet Earth would. I had a friend who, I didn't know this at the time, he was about to go through some really bad times, and he messaged me. He's like, and he basically did that.

He said, hey man, I got this little cheap laptop here. It's like a $500 laptop, but it has all my, you know you know, my entire marketing library for the last 20 years are on it. Um, if you want, I'll just say, I'll just, um, I'm getting a new laptop. I'm just going to throw some away. If you want, I'll ship it to you for like five grand. And I was, he told me all the courses were on there. I was like, done wired in five grand and shipped me out this laptop with all these courses on it. And it was the coolest thing in the world. What now a couple of things, number one is probably not legal to do what he he did because he doesn't have the right to, to, to do to like transfer these things. But I was like, I, I thought he was just like offering it to me as like,

this is my own laptop. You can just have it. Right. Um, little did I know he made that same offer to, I don't know, a lot of other people. I think he ended up selling 20 or 30 of them at five grand a pop, um, and made himself quite a bit of money really, really quick all under the table. He was racing from a law thing I found out later. So anyway, that's the story for another podcast episode, but the concept is true. That makes sense. Um, anyway, so it all comes down to offer creation. You guys don't care if you want to get prisoners of war, if you want to find a beautiful wife, if you want your kids to do the right things, if you want people to go to the movie, if you want people to read a book, if you want people to do whatever it is, that is the key. Stephen Larson at our Two Comic Club X event, he got on stage, I don't know if I told you this already or not, and he

got a book that he'd never heard of and never read before, stood up and he made an offer saying basically like, if you get this book, I'm going to give you this and this. And I told the story about the book, made this amazing offer. He had like 10 or 12 people buy the book while they're sitting in the room. He had two people run on stage and fight for the book. After he had done it, he said, I've never read that book. I have no idea what it's about, but I want to prove two things. Number one, he's like, I told a really good story. Number two, I made a really good offer.

If you have a really good story and a really good offer, you can sell literally anything, even if you don't know what it is. That's all it takes. That's the magic of this. The and the art of the whole art of hook story offer. Like I've been geeking out on it so much recently. Like if you look at, I've talked about a lot in the last recent podcast, go back to the episode called hook story offer. Like, um, the more you master that piece of it, um, man, the better you can be at selling anything. I look at like when I was an affiliate, I just wrote a lot of people's products. And, um, yeah, the better you can be at selling anything. I look at like when I was an affiliate, I just wrote a lot of people's products and, um, I, I would always, I would always be like number one, number two affiliate. Like we always got these big competitions. I was like, why did

I always sell so much? And the reason was because I look at whatever the person was selling and I create an offer around that. Like, cool. When you buy so-and-so's course, I'm going to give you this, this. And I'd like, I'd create an offer of my own things they would get for free when they bought this thing from somebody else. Um, and like, that's the, that's the magic of this whole game. Like it's going to be the top affiliate in the world. It's going to be the top network marketer. We're going to be the top selling your product, your service.

Like it all comes down to hook story offer, having a good hook, telling a good story and making it as a spot for. So if it works to get prisoners of war in world war one, um, I promise you guys it'll work for whatever it is you're selling as well. So hope that helps. Appreciate you all. Have an amazing day and we'll talk soon. Would you like to see behind the scenes of what we're actually doing each day

to grow our company? If so, then go subscribe to our free behind the scenes reality TV show at www.funnelhacker.tv.