National Achievers Congress 2019 - Auckland

What a couple of days!!! I’m currently sitting in Sydney’s Virgin Australia lounge, waiting on a long connection back home to sunny (hopefully) Tasmania. I couldn’t think of a better time to unpack what just happened.

Allow me to scroll back a couple of days to last Thursday, and a phone call with my mate Jay in NZ. Long story short:

Jay: ‘I’ve got free tickets to an event that Gary V is speaking at, can you get across for Tuesday?’

The pragmatic, mature adult inside me was filled with doubt:

‘There’s not enough time to sort that out.’

‘It’s completely irrational to jump across the ditch for a one-day event.’

And then there was the lunatic entrepreneur within:

‘How am I going to sell this to Lisa?’

‘Of course I’m fucking coming!’

There’s a good, to fair chance I’m still in the doghouse for going, but Gary V alone was worth the price. Remind me to show Lisa that sentence.

The event itself was a bit of a bust really, with each speaker (except Gary V) displaying a very clear sales agenda during their time on stage. They weren’t awful, they were simply manipulating the crowd into buying mode.

I’ll even be conceited enough to rate each speaker based on my over-inflated opinion as I work through this post. They shared plenty of perceived value, with some interesting takes on old advice, but all-in-all they were very pitchy.

The list of speakers was impressive:

· David Leon from Wealth Mentor Financial Design

· Grant Cardone from Cardone Group

· Graeme Holm from Infinity Group

· Elena Cardone author

· Adam Hudson from Reliable Education

· Gary Vaynerchuk from Vayner Media

When you look at that line-up, you would be justified in thinking ‘that’s got the potential to be an informative event.’

Dangerous word: Potential

Success is a funny business, and it is a business. If there is one thing this event taught me above all: Success is a commodity, and as such, can be traded for cold, hard cash.

The audience consisted of those of us who were looking to complement our learning, and a larger number of those who were looking for the magic bullet. Ticket prices ranged from $49 to the platinum package of $999. With every ticket purchase effectively entering you into the Success Resources (the promoter) sales funnel as a qualified buyer lead.

Within hours of registering my ticket online, I had already received an offer from the promoter to part with some of my hard-earned coin.

This is the business of success. There are plenty of punters who chase the golden ticket, and ‘invest in themselves’ with numerous coaching purchases. It is a business of lead generation and perceived value offerings where simply rephrasing something that people already know can immediately build rapport with an audience of potential marks, errr, I mean clients.

That sounds a tad cynical, because it is. I work within a field that is swarming with sharks looking to prey on the unwary business owner. The online space is often sold as some mystical realm where only a select few can demystify the cloud and create success.

Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. The magic of the world we live in is anyone can achieve their desired level of success because we live in the most interconnected time in our history. Put more value out into the world than you expect in return, and you will succeed.

There is an old guard of salespeople who resist how easy it can be to succeed, and they continue to use old world methods to work over an audience and create a short-term gain. You will learn about some of these as you read on.

It’s not all cynicism and bitterness. I’m lucky enough to know I don’t know everything, and I also know enough to glean some nuggets from each of the speakers. So without further pomp, ceremony, and pumping up of my own tyres, let’s dive into our first speaker.

David Leon – Wealth Mentor – Rating: 3/10

Key takeaways:

· Don’t fall in love with the money, fall in love with the time

· Hustle and grind is the new stupid

· Problem + Solution = Profit. The bigger the problem; the bigger the profit

· Property isn’t about property; it’s about people

· Ignorance is expensive

David started well, he used a couple of good audience engagement techniques and shared his story. It’s a great story. He’s a 42 year old, self-made, multi-millionaire. David talked briefly about the power of positive energy and how contagious it can be. Which is something I’m sure we can all agree on.

And that is the speaking technique that David used. You may even recognise some of the key takeaways from his speech if you try to put them in your own words. It is a valuable skill to be able to stand in front of hundreds of people and paraphrase your way to a sales pitch.

That is why David is marked so low. His story is inspiring, his results are undeniable. If David had focused on his story and given the audience some real-world advice, if he had actually provided genuine advice and value to a primed audience, he would have had people queuing up to ask him for more information.

His clumsy set up for the lengthy sales pitch ruined his whole timeslot for me. His actual pitch at the discounted rate of $3,500 was uninspiring, and he didn’t even disguise it was a funnel for future sales opportunities.

David is clearly a reader of Kiyosaki, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a trained Rich Dad coach. A large amount of his content was straight from the pages of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the Cashflow Quadrant.

David wrapped it up with two cliched closes that every salesperson worth his/her salt will be familiar with:

1. Fear of missing out (FOMO)

2. 2 choices

The power of the herd dictates that people will and did buy his course (which is the value of these events for this type of speaker). Some people may even achieve a level of success with it. I will happily wager my bottom dollar that every single person who signed up to the course will be recommended a further, much more intense training option once they have completed the initial program. They may even be given the opportunity to invest.

Overall, our first speaker left me feeling nonplussed. The only content that was delivered was paraphrased and had no real value. It was what I call teaser content. It hints at the value that may be around the corner, all you need to do to find out is buy now, and we’ll double the whole offer.

Grant Cardone – Cardone Group – Grade: 8/10

Key Takeaways

· Freedom is your financial target

· Best known beats best product

· Cash is trash, trade paper for substance

· Don’t be envious of success, be inspired

· You need attention

Grant Cardone is one of “those” guys. His book, 10X, sums up how he lives his life and sells himself. There is no fear of Grant thinking he’s reached over exposure, and I agree with him. In a world that craves bite-sized content, we need to be everywhere at all times.

I won’t deny it, I see Grant’s style as a bit of a relic to a bygone era. His patter is reminiscent of some of the sales greats of yesteryear with Jordan Belfort a ready comparison.

It is all about the sale and less about the long-term relationship in my opinion. Having said that, it is evident there is still a willing market of punters keen to learn how to ‘sell or be sold.’

Grant speaks well. He exudes the confidence of a man who can happily tear a USD100 bill in half on stage. It was entertaining to see him try and tear an Aussie note and fail, those Aussie notes are designed to last.

Grant’s time was a much more professional lead towards the sales pitch for his bootcamp. Following the script of telling his story and his background of drug abuse and hitting rock bottom, Grant built rapport with the audience with casual patter, and seemingly unscripted platitudes. This is a man who has practiced his pitch so many times it appears natural. The sign of a true salesman.

Using the term ‘with your permission’ really relaxed the crowd and had them on the edge of their seats.

Grant is a master of speaking to his audience and helping them agree with what he has to say. A true master of rapport building. Sprinkled among the patter was the occasional reminder that he has negotiated many billion-dollar deals. The throwaway nature of his economic achievements certainly helped the audience feel that ‘me too’ feeling as opposed to the ‘so what?’

This was a much more professional example of releasing just enough content to catch the buyers in the audience.

The professional way he guided his crowd from:

‘if you’re being critical of another person, you’re really being critical of yourself’

to

‘if you’re going to fail anyway, fail big’

to

‘money is useless until it is used’

and then

‘if 15K seems like a lot, how are you going to get to 15m?’

was absolutely inspiring. Each step of the performance was professionally designed to disarm and inspire people to want to spend more than they really wanted to invest.

Grant is without a doubt an expert within his field. And definitely worth the admiration he has cultivated over a decade of putting himself out on a limb. He speaks common sense and guides his audience to one of his two closing conversations:

1. FOMO

2. 2 choices

It was pretty much the same spiel as our first speaker, just delivered with more experience by someone with more public credibility. Grant spoke well, he will continue to sell spots for his bootcamp and book empire, and he deserves the success. His parting message was well worth me repeating here:

“There are two reasons businesses fail… Obscurity and obscurity.”

And with that, we broke for lunch.

Lunch time observations from our small group attending:

· Each speaker is talking as though the audience have little to no success

· No real actionable advice given so far, only teaser content for paid coaching programs

· At what point do we say ‘I have enough, now it’s time to leave a legacy?’

This ends part one…

Part two will be entitled ‘Most People are Dumb Fucks’ which is a direct quote from one of the speakers. It will wrap up the conference and cover our final four speakers for the day… You won’t want to miss Gary Vaynerchuk’s amazing insights.

Make sure you follow PlainBlack on Facebook so you can get it hot off the presses.