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Eric was still attending college part-time when he took his first overseas trip. Thus, Eric asked a classmate to take notes for him. When Eric's classmate learned that Eric was going to Europe on business, that student's mouth dropped open. "Who are you, some kind of Donald-Trump tycoon!" he replied.
No, Eric was not a tycoon. He was not even a bright student. But, Eric dug in and focused on doing integrated thinking and forward-essence movement in his job. Eric focussed on making his little area at work go from red to black. Once a business activity is in the black, then the whole world can become its market.
Shortly after Eric's first European trip, he learned that a direct marketing convention was going to be held in Sydney, Australia. Eric decided to attend. In fact, he arranged a circle Pacific trip which took him throughout the Pacific -- to Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Eric embarked on the learning experience of a lifetime. That trip cost over $7000. Eric could have never afforded that trip personally. But, Eric knew that he could garner profits right away from such an investment simply by uncovering new business opportunities as a result of visiting those countries.
Eric's first stop was Australia. Australia was a profitable little market for Neo-Tech Publishing. Although the number and size of mailing lists in Australia was small, the mailing lists that did exist were exceptionally responsive.
Eric's stay in Australia proved successful. His blitz for mailing lists produced excellent results. But, when Eric visited the Oriental countries, he uncovered few mailing lists. So, Eric hunted out information and contacts even remotely related to direct mail. He visited lettershops, printers, publishers. This had important long-range benefits. Seeking general business knowledge overseas opens the mind to new avenues of thinking. Even if such information is not immediately applicable to one's business, it can lead to new integrations in the future. A stunning example of this occurred when Eric visited Singapore. Eric met with the advertising director of Accent magazine. Accent is a magazine sent to Visa cardholders in Singapore. Eric explained Neo-Tech's direct-mail business to that advertising director. Eric then proposed to rent the Visa cardholder mailing list. But, the advertising director was adamant that Visa would not release their mailing list. However, that advertising director showed Eric a copy of Accent magazine and a loose-insert advertisement the magazine contained. The advertising director then explained that Neo-Tech Publishing could insert its entire direct-mail brochure in Accent magazine as a loose insert.
Loose-insert advertising is not done in American magazines because most magazines are sold via subscription. The U.S. Post Office allows a magazine to be mailed with just an address label on its cover -- the magazine does not have to be placed inside an envelope. Therefore, loose inserts would fall out in the mail. But, most foreign post offices require magazines to be mailed inside an envelope or wrap. Therefore, loose inserts can be placed in those magazines since they will not fall out in the mail.
Eric was skeptical about this form of advertising. The advertiser had to pay for the printing of the inserts, in addition to an advertising fee. But, Eric decided to test a loose insert in Singapore's Accent magazine.
That loose-insert test proved profitable. Thus, loose inserts in magazines opened up a whole new way to generate overseas customers. By negotiating low prices, Eric was also able to get magazine insert advertising to go from red to black in Australia, England, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and South Africa.
After Eric's Asian trip, Neo-Tech's international business began to increase significantly. But, it was still limited to English-speaking countries and English-speaking businessmen in foreign-language countries. This amounted to a fairly sizable volume of global business. But, that amount of business was tiny compared to the potential of foreign-language business -- especially in major, non-English- speaking countries such as Germany and Japan. Such overseas markets made England and Australia seem small by comparison.
But, at about that same time, an enthusiastic customer contacted Neo-Tech Publishing about the possibility of translating the Neo-Tech bookset into French. This customer lived in the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. Unfortunately, having listened to the so-called experts, Eric was fooled by their sound-good advice. Thus, Eric was not very enthusiastic about paying for a French-language Neo-Tech translation and printing. Also, France at that time pulled the lowest response rate of all European countries. In fact, the response rate from France was so below that of other European countries that whenever Neo-Tech Publishing mailed to a European mailing list, Eric pulled off all French addresses. Neo-Tech Publishing had stopped mailing to France altogether.
But, John Flint, Neo-Tech's chairman, decided to go ahead and invest in the French-language translation. In order to disseminate the Neo-Tech philosophy to as many individuals as possible. However, Eric doubted that translating the Neo-Tech bookset into French would be profitable.
Next, Eric traveled to Paris for a mailing list blitz. He achieved immediate results. Through face-to-face, personal meetings, Eric located and then arranged to rent some very large-numbered mailing lists of French magazine subscribers and bookbuyers. With the translated marketing brochure and the French-language Neo-Tech booksets, the results from French mailing lists were excellent. Within one year France had become Neo-Tech's single largest market outside of the U.S. -- surpassing even England.
Through hindsight, why did the French-language translation work? A sales brochure must contain powerful writing that stirs a reader's emotions. Thus, a sales brochure must be in a reader's native language for the reader to fully feel the power of its writing. But, more significant, the vast majority of individuals living in a foreign-language country do not read English. The only way a business can tap that large domestic market is via a local-language marketing program.
With the French-language results, Eric realized he was onto something big. Eric became excited about translating Neo-Tech books into other major languages. A push to translate into German, Spanish and Japanese began.
Instead, Eric exerted creative cost discipline (see Chapter IV). This had a profound effect. Translation bureaus are geared for large, free-spending corporations. They are not geared for first-generation, red-to-black entrepreneurs. The going rate to translate a book was $50 a page. Thus, it would have cost about $20,000 for the translation of a single Neo-Tech bookset. And that did not include typesetting or printing costs. Thus, it would have been prohibitively expensive for a first-generation, entrepreneurial company like Neo-Tech Publishing to expand into foreign-language marketing. So, instead, Eric ran classified ads in foreign newspapers. The ads asked for an experienced free-lance translator to translate the Neo-Tech books at $15 at page. Many highly-qualified individuals responded. This made rapid expansion into numerous languages possible.
Next, Eric successfully applied a similar creative cost-discipline process to his marketing blitzes. When Eric began taking trips overseas, he had to finance his trips via the shoestring profits from Neo-Tech Publishing's foreign operations. Eric had to travel with maximum economy. But, to blitz a foreign-language country, Eric needed to hire an interpreter to accompany him.
Other international business experts stated not to worry about hiring an interpreter when travelling abroad because businessmen speak English overseas. Well, in major corporations that is true. But, to really penetrate a local market, to pursue the untapped, virgin opportunities, one must get right in with the small businessmen and entrepreneurs. Many do not speak English well enough for conducting business.
At first Eric thought an interpreter might hinder his effectiveness when negotiating. Instead, Eric found that having an interpreter accompany him impressed the people with whom he met. It was exciting and interesting to them. Those businessmen knew they were dealing with a genuine overseas businessman when they had to communicate through an interpreter. Eric found that he often achieved better results when negotiating through an interpreter than in English-speaking countries where he did not need an interpreter.
But, when hiring interpreters, a first-generation, red-to-black entrepreneur must create his own pricing structure. At first Eric went to established interpreter bureaus. They quoted Eric from $300 to $500 a day for an interpreter's services. That pricing structure might be fine for a multinational corporation whose CEO flies in for a day to sign multimillion-dollar contracts. But, for Eric, a three or four day visit to just one country would cost more in interpreter fees than the whole overseas trip itself.
Eric could only afford to pay an interpreter $75 a day. When Eric explained this to the interpreter bureaus they laughed at him. They said no interpreter anywhere would work for that price. But, once again, Eric knew he could get what he needed. For example, Eric phoned an English-language newspaper in Paris and asked for recommendations. The paper referred Eric to a young reporter on its staff who was more than happy to interpret for Eric at $75 a day. In other cities, Eric would run a classified ad in the local newspaper. Eric would then be flooded with qualified responses, ranging from retired professionals to college-degreed housewives who were more than willing to work as Eric's interpreter for $75 a day. What all this amounted to was that Eric would simply create his own supply network whenever traditional set-ups were not within Neo-Tech Publishing's red-to-black dynamics.
The importance of creative cost discipline cannot be overstated. For Neo-Tech Publishing, it made the difference between Eric being able to take overseas trips and, consequently, opening up a world of business versus Eric not being able to afford such trips and never really getting Neo-Tech's international business off the ground.
The hiring of local, part-time translators to translate Eric's business correspondence and customer-service correspondence also required exerting creative cost discipline. At first, Eric went to translation bureaus in his hometown who normally provide businesses with translation services. They charged $20 an hour. Eric explained that he needed a part-time translator who did not have to be an expert translator, just fluent in English and the targeted language, for $10 an hour on a permanent basis. Every single agency balked at Eric's proposal. They all stated that Eric would never find a translator for that price. Eric knew better. He simply ran classified ads in the local newspaper. The ads asked for part-time translators to translate miscellaneous correspondence, fluent in English and the targeted language, for $8.00 per hour. Eric was amazed at the many qualified responses he received, even when the ad was for translators of relatively obscure languages like Serbo-Croatian or Urdu.
Eric realized that international business, like any pioneering situation, depends upon an entrepreneur exerting creative cost discipline to set his own terms and conditions. The entrepreneur must create new methods to supply his fledging business with what it needs within its tight, red-to-black start-up dynamics.
The Complicated Concept was also a crucial factor in Neo-Tech's push into foreign languages (see Chapter VIII.) Neo-Tech's rapid expansion into the major English-speaking markets, and then into the French-speaking, German-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and Japanese-speaking markets was very complicated. In addition to managing the English-language program, Eric now had to hire translators for each new language to translate business letters, phone calls, and customer-service correspondence. Banking arrangements had to be made in each new foreign-language country to accept local currency. The many different language brochures and books had to be printed and kept in well-organized inventories. Eric now had to take marketing-blitz trips to all of those new foreign-language countries. In addition, he had to line up interpreters to accompany him in each country.
Many small companies are scared off by such a daunting task. Small businessmen often think that only a large corporation with vast budgets and manpower can handle such foreign-marketing programs. But, Eric understood the Complicated Concept. He dug in and exerted integrated thinking to systemize work with translators, marketing, order processing, and so on. Everything had to flow like an assembly line. Eric mini-dayed all of the basic movements in the international area. (See Rapid Power and Wealth by Mark Hamilton for a complete analysis of how to break down work into basic movements called mini-days.) With all of Eric's work broken down and segmented by basic movements, Eric would then rifle through his work with extreme efficiency. Still, Eric could have failed if l) international marketing had not been organized as a separate operation so that he could devote his full, undivided attention to working out the complications of foreign marketing, and 2) creative and disciplined cost control had not been exercised from the start.
But, once again, Eric had to dump what the experts claimed were the business norms concerning foreign marketing and translations. Instead, he had to blaze his own path according to competitive, red-to-black business dynamics.
Traditionally, a little mail-order publisher like Neo-Tech could not afford to translate and market its publications globally. According to industry norms, a company first researches a targeted country for months, even years. That company spends hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring expensive, salaried "experts" to conduct research. Then, that company must sink enormous capital investments in building offices and plants in the targeted country. The company must then hire and train a staff of local employees.
Of course, little Neo-Tech Publishing Company with a part-time college student managing its foreign business on a shoestring budget could never afford that. But, through creative cost discipline, Neo-Tech could afford to go international. Neo-Tech Publishing would test a market via small, inexpensive direct mailings and build up its business from there, often into a major program, without making any capital investments overseas. Yet, Eric had talked with business consultants, advertising agencies, and other so-called international marketing experts. All of those experts went on and on about the need for a company to establish a local presence within each targeted country.
Without exception, all of those so-called experts insisted that Neo-Tech Publishing needed a local office to which foreign customers could send their orders. "A customer will not send money overseas to a company with no office in his own country. Trust must be established between local customers and that business. There is no way for a customer to follow up if his product is not received, or if it is not satisfactory." But this is just good-sounding surface logic.
Eric tested this concept by using private mail service addresses overseas. Contrary to what the experts claimed, the bottom line results revealed that when Neo-Tech Publishing listed only the address of its American office, more orders were received from customers overseas than when Neo-Tech listed the address of a local office within a customer's home country. Why? Because Neo-Tech Publishing Company is selling an American product. By overseas customers having to send their orders direct to America, Neo-Tech's product appears more genuine and exciting. It is analogous ordering French wine from Cleveland versus Paris. The French wine appears much more authentic and is more exciting to buy if ordered directly from Paris.
If Neo-Tech Publishing had followed the advise of experts, Neo-Tech would have never had the time nor the capital to afford even the first French-language translation of its Neo-Tech bookset. Fortunately, Neo-Tech Publishing pioneered its own course of red-to-black action.
An entrepreneur should not hesitate to dump the experts and buck industry norms. The independent, red-to-black entrepreneur must pioneer his own path to success.
Anybody can go into international business if they watch their costs. The key is to avoid traditional, high-cost routes of doing international business. Foreign operations should be customized so that they can run on shoestring budgets.
This is the little entrepreneur's leverage against big companies. Big companies taking the traditional route have to proceed cautiously. They must sink huge capital investments in businesses that will take years to build. In contrast, the small business entrepreneur can dance in and out of many countries at once, without sinking any capital investments into a country.
Many businessmen think of themselves as marketers. But, to be a real marketer, one must do whatever is necessary to reach red-to-black dynamics. That often means creating one's own supply structure to fit within one's own red-to-black requirements. Sounds complicated? Employ the Complicated Concept. That is the tool that allows a person to succeed in new frontiers of business in which others strike out. And that is what can propel a person into the major leagues of global business.
As revealed in Mark Hamilton's Neo-Tech Business Control, so-called expert business advice often sounds good, but it is often just surface logic. Such sound-good business advice often has no direct dollar results to back it up. A consultant may spout out good-sounding surface logic like it is some kind of historic revelation that he has personally discovered. But, in reality, he is often merely spouting what sounds good according to glib perceptions. As is almost always the case in any competitive business, what one first thinks about a situation is based upon initial perceptual logic. Those initial perceptions usually prove drastically wrong when real-world competitive results are obtained.
Neo-Tech Publishing methodically tested different variables in its marketing. What Neo-Tech Publishing discovered about international marketing is that basic needs and desires are universal -- even in vastly different cultures. Cultural elements differ from region to region, but the bottom line is that cultural differences are superficial. The basic values and desires of conscious beings are the same everywhere.
Eric tested customized marketing approaches in many different cultures at the insistence of marketing experts. But, the unaltered U.S. marketing piece always pulled a significantly better response. Advertising made with local customizations did worse. Why? Because the changes made in account a of local culture strayed from the essence of a product. Superficial cultural customizations made in advertising and marketing do not matter to the customer. What matters to the customer is the basic value of a product. In Neo-Tech's case, an American product was being sold and that is what the customers expected to buy. Customizing advertising literature to make the product appear British or French or Latin American comes across as false. In addition, the foreign appeal of an overseas product is almost always a positive factor.
A company can hire a $100,000-a-year consultant to customize its marketing program and persuade it to set up foreign offices -- all good-sounding surface logic that almost anyone would think up himself if he just took a few minutes and superficially thought about the situation. But, such sound-good maneuvers will end up costing a business thousands of dollars. And that business will never even know it unless each variable is scientifically a/b tested.
International marketing is particularly prone to camouflaged variations of the someone-else-is-going-to-make-money-for-me myth. For, international marketing covers a vast area, and most business people know little about it. A person can easily fall into the trap of going to someone else in an attempt to let them resolve one's own problems, to let them show oneself where opportunity lies, to let them make money for oneself. But that will never work. The exact opposite will occur. That someone else will end up costing a person and his company a lot of time and money.
As identified in Chapter V, integrated thinking and forward-essence movement is hard work. If a person is not consciously aware of exerting effort to do integrated thinking and forward-essence movement, then he or she is not doing it. Likewise, making money in business is hard work. If a person is not consciously aware of exerting his or her own hard effort and integrated thinking in business, then he or she is probably falling for a camouflaged form of the someone-else-is-going-to-make-money-for-me myth. Sound-good consultants are just waiting for that person's money.
A person should always beware of sound-good surface logic. In contrast, a person should seek out knowledge that has been acquired through red-to-black, bottom-line testing in the marketplace. Failure to recognize this is why so many pipe-smoking academe and white-collar-hoax consultants (particularly in advertising agencies) are proclaimed experts when they are really hoaxes. Many are merely expressing good-sounding surface logic that falls apart under the rigorous test of competitive, red-to-black business dynamics.
Consider an analogy of the geocentric concept versus the heliocentric concept. During the Dark Ages, church-appointed astronomy "experts" observed the sun, stars, and planets circling the earth's sky each day and night. So, in fancy, ego-enhancing language they wrote books and made speeches about how the earth is the center of the universe. They then extolled their genius for figuring that out. But, any man or woman can look up at the sky and quickly draw the same conclusion. Not until the scientific method was applied to astronomy, testing ideas and integrating the results, did a much wider, more conceptual picture reveal itself. In reality, the situation is the complete opposite of what the church-appointed experts claimed. The earth is circling the sun which is circling within the galaxy.
New knowledge can only be obtained through a rigorous, scientific-method-like application of formulating ideas, vigorously testing those ideas, studying the results, and then integrating the results into new, more accurate ideas. Those new, more accurate ideas must then be re-tested. Only through a continuing cycle of direct testing and integrating the results does new knowledge begin revealing itself, most often by the negation of one's initial, perceptually based ideas.
Both in science and in business, no matter how experienced or expert the scientist or the businessman, nine times out of ten his original ideas prove wrong once tested. But, by applying a scientific-method-like approach, vigorously testing all ideas and then integrating the results, one begins seeing, through hindsight, why his original ideas were wrong or incomplete. This direct-testing process slowly begins to reveal new, proven ideas -- new knowledge. Thus, there lies the secret to new knowledge. No matter how experienced, intelligent, of scholarly a person, he or she really is no better at ascertaining new knowledge than any man in the street. Both are duly subjected to the scientific method. But, the successful scientist and the successful businessman, the real experts, consistently test their ideas in the real world. That way they begin to glean new knowledge from the results of their continuous testing. That is the process of a real expert. That is how one becomes successful.
Surface logic is a dangerous thing. The scholarly "expert" can cloak his surface logic in beautiful, good-sounding rhetoric. Thus, he can appear correct, even appear to be a genius, but he is usually just as incorrect as the man in the street positing his personal opinions. No one implicitly understands this better than first-generation, red-to-black entrepreneurs. That is the reason why they are successful. They rigorously test their ideas in the marketplace. Thus, they continuously ascertain new, competitive knowledge by learning from the results of their testing. They discover more competitive secrets than others. Scholarly academe and white-collar-hoax business people, on the other hand, seldom exert the competitive effort to do that. That is why they are not successful entrepreneurs themselves. Instead, they cloak their failure in good-sounding surface logic and smooth rhetoric. But, their surface-logic advice is seldom any better than one would receive from his next-door neighbor. No individual is able to intellectually ascertain new knowledge better than any other individual -- no matter how many degrees, titles, or awards that person may have.
Consider an indirect example of this concept: Eric was on a grueling schedule during a trip to Japan. He suddenly experienced a paralyzing muscle attack. He almost lost his ability to breathe. He was rushed to a hospital. After that attack, Eric visited medical experts in Japan and then in America. The doctors took many tests. Most were top-notch, specialized physicians who truly earned their high positions. But, without being present during Eric's attack, they were all merely positing inner logic as to what went wrong. Eric received a host of different explanations ranging from a low potassium level, to a low blood sugar level, to a stress reaction, to a caffeine overdose caused by Japanese tea.
Eric experienced a second attack several months later while on a trip to California. This time a young ambulance driver arrived during Eric's attack and he immediately recognized that Eric had simply hyperventilated. Because Eric felt nauseated before each attack, he had been taking deep breaths that caused him to hyperventilate. The young ambulance driver said he saw this condition all the time during his emergency calls. He was not a doctor, nor was he studying to be a doctor. He was just a young man who had been taught basic training for ambulance service. Yet, his first-hand, real-world observation of Eric's attack allowed him to immediately diagnose Eric's affliction. On the other hand, the expert physicians that Eric had visited after his first attack were not even close to diagnosing Eric's problem. In fact, they were no better at diagnosing Eric's problem than a layman making a good-sounding guess.
That example demonstrates the new-knowledge concept: only by obtaining direct, real-world results, which in business can only be done through the marketplace, does new knowledge reveal itself. Experience and expertise are not enough. One must be experienced and expert in knowing how to employ methods that effectively test initial ideas in the real-world marketplace. The results obtained from those tests must then be integrated into wider, more accurate ideas and re-tested.
Without exception, an entrepreneur will be confronted by so-called experts in all areas of business. Particularly so in international marketing where there is not much direct experience among businessmen. Such "marketing experts" will espouse a lot of sound-good, "must-do" advice. They will insist that a company customize its marketing in each country according to fluid, ever-changing cultures. Most of that advice will be worthless. Whatever customizing one does decide to do, it is crucial that split-testing be conducted.
America has the largest, most advanced and competitive consumer market in the world. Therefore, if a marketing piece was developed and made successful in America, it will almost always work overseas. In fact, a U.S. marketing piece will usually prove stronger than overseas competitors. Whenever a business attempts to customize its core marketing message away from its American version, its competitive edge is almost always diminished.
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