The Million Dollar Minute: A System for Breakthrough Ideas
Okay, here is a detailed briefing document based on the provided text, focusing on the main themes and important ideas of Bob Serling’s “The Million Dollar Minute”:
Briefing Document: The Million Dollar Minute
Source: Excerpts from “mdm-details – Licensing Lab”
Author: Bob Serling
Date: (Inferred to be relatively recent based on references to updated materials)
Executive Summary:
This document analyzes the key concepts and strategies presented in Bob Serling’s “The Million Dollar Minute,” a system for generating breakthrough ideas for products, services, and marketing. The core idea is that ordinary concepts can be “enriched” through strategic additions, leading to substantial profit. Serling emphasizes that this process is accessible to anyone, regardless of their experience, and provides numerous real-world examples to support his claims. He highlights the importance of understanding customer experience and buying behavior, which forms a crucial component of his newly updated method.
Main Themes & Key Ideas:
- The “Million Dollar Minute” Concept:
- The central idea revolves around “enriching” ordinary ideas to transform them into highly profitable ones.
- The concept is illustrated through an opening hypothetical scenario involving investing in a rock opera that becomes desirable only when Paul McCartney is attached to it. This highlights how a single element can dramatically increase the value of an idea. As Bob Serling states “That’s the point where an idea or concept gets “enriched” by something that converts it from an ordinary idea to an idea worth its weight in gold.”
- The document aims to persuade the reader that this process is replicable and highly valuable.
- Enrichment through Strategic Additions:
- The example of the finger skateboards demonstrates that the key to success is not always inventing something entirely new.
- The original generic finger skateboards were outcompeted by skateboards that had the licensed designs of pro skaters.
- Serling built on this by adding a spark-producing attachment to these toys to drive additional sales, stating, “With my little attachment, when the kids dragged the tail of the board to stop it, the attachment would shoot out a trail of bursting sparks.”
- These examples highlight the power of identifying and adding elements that increase customer appeal and perceived value.
- Importance of Customer Intelligence:
- A key update to the “Million Dollar Minute” process is the emphasis on customer intelligence (experience and buying behaviour) as a vital driver in generating breakthrough ideas.
- Serling states that this “is the single most valuable source of information that will truly move the needle.”
- He describes a “proprietary method” for gathering customer data quickly and at no cost, to avoid pitfalls of conventional research that may cost time and money yet be ineffective
- This focus on customer behavior is the key to the updated process which has reduced the execution time from 2-3 days to 3 hours.
- Accessibility of the Process:
- The process is presented as easy to master and doesn’t require prior experience in any specific industry, “it doesn’t take any previous experience to use it to create blockbuster product, service, and marketing ideas for any market.”
- Serling highlights that he does not have a college education, further emphasizing the process’s accessibility to anyone.
- The course can be completed in approximately two hours which also makes it very accessible to a wide audience.
- The Three-Phase Process:
- The document outlines a three-phase process for generating these “enriched” ideas:
- Phase 1: Preparation: This phase focuses on setting a single goal, creating a focus statement to define the desired outcome and assembling a small team.
- Phase 2: The Million Dollar Minute IDEA process: This uses the acronym IDEA to structure the process. It covers Information gathering, developing raw ideas, evolving ideas to potential ‘million dollar’ ideas and then authenticating each idea. Critically, customer intelligence is gathered in step one.
- Phase 3: Execution: This is the action plan for implementing the idea.
- Overcoming Thinking Biases:
- The document identifies two common thinking biases: excessively logical and overly creative.
- It posits that effective innovation requires the combination of logic and creativity
- The “Million Dollar Minute” process is designed to coordinate logical and creative faculties for optimal performance.
- Real-World Success Examples:
- Numerous case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the “Million Dollar Minute” process, including:
- Generating $49,900 extra profit for Frank Kern through a new email campaign idea.
- Increasing Darren Hardy’s profits by $78,000 with modified positioning and pricing.
- Creating a multi-million dollar company by solving a technical problem in software.
- Helping Corey Rudl and Derek Gehl add an extra million dollars to their revenue in one week by using a simple modification to their marketing structure.
- Creating the “Bank On Yourself” program.
- A 2,200% increase in subscribers to a company’s email list through homepage change.
- A 714% increase in profits for a training program through a change in methodology.
- These case studies showcase the broad applicability of the process to various industries and challenges.
- Pricing & Call to Action:
- The “Million Dollar Minute” program is offered at a significantly reduced price of $897 (originally $4,250).
- There is a clear call to action to purchase the program and leverage the benefits of the process
- There is a strong sales element to the entire document and the call to action is compelling.
Key Quotes:
- “That’s the point where an idea or concept gets “enriched” by something that converts it from an ordinary idea to an idea worth its weight in gold.” (Defining the “Million Dollar Minute”)
- “With my little attachment, when the kids dragged the tail of the board to stop it, the attachment would shoot out a trail of bursting sparks.” (Example of a product enrichment)
- “…the single most valuable source of information that will truly move the needle is customer intelligence.” (Importance of customer intelligence)
- “The problem with only thinking logically is that this type of person tends to be overly critical. They can find the downside of anything. As a result, they end up killing all creative ideas before they’re even given a fighting chance.” (Describing a predominant logical thinking type)
- “In order to consistently create breakthrough product ideas and marketing strategies, both the logical and creative faculties of your mind have to work together toward a common goal.” (Describing the thinking required for breakthrough ideas)
Conclusion:
“The Million Dollar Minute” is presented as a transformative system for generating high-value ideas by strategically “enriching” existing concepts. The updated process, driven by a better understanding of customer experience and buying behavior, significantly reduces the time needed to create breakthrough marketing, product and service ideas. The emphasis on real-world examples and the accessibility of the process make a compelling case for its value and potential to create significant improvements in business outcomes. The use of strong sales techniques throughout the document also makes the offer compelling.
Here’s the real power in this little exercise
What you’ve just experienced is something I call The Million Dollar Minute. That’s the point where an idea or concept gets “enriched” by something that converts it from an ordinary idea to an idea worth its weight in gold.
Now, I’m sure you realize that I’m not really producing a rock opera – and by no means am I partnering with Paul McCartney.
But this little exercise demonstrates the value of a truly enriched idea.
So let’s switch gears and I’ll give you a few examples of real Million Dollar Minutes.
What’s the difference between an ordinary, run of the mill idea and a breakthrough idea?
For my friend and well-known marketing expert, Frank Kern, it was $49,900 he never would have seen without the idea I gave him. Here’s how Frank describes it:
“The idea for the serial email campaign you gave me was crazy. Usually the first email gets the most sales, then you get less sales with each email in the sequence until they stop. But like you promised, I actually got 150% more sales on my last email. Plus it was really easy. I just plugged in what you gave me, mailed my list, and within two weeks, I had $49,900 in profits I wouldn’t have seen without this. And it’s even better when you consider that this product had already been sold to my list 3 or 4 times before.”
Frank Kern
So how did I create the idea that drives this new form of email campaign – and many other highly profitable marketing strategies and product ideas as well?
I used my simple, proprietary process called The Million Dollar Minute – A Step-by-Step Process for Creating Breakthrough Products, Services and Marketing Strategies.
It’s easy to use, really – once you understand how. And I lay out the entire process, step-by-step in my short course that you can master in about two hours.
Another real-life example of The Million Dollar Minute in action
If you’re familiar with me, then you know I created a hot-selling skateboard toy featuring the logos of Tony Hawk and half a dozen other top skateboarding brands. It was sold in Toys-R-Us, Wal-Mart, Kaybee Toys, Target, and on Amazon and thousands of websites all over the world.
And the story of how this unfolded illustrates how effective The Million Dollar Minute process really is, even if you have no experience whatsoever.
The company I licensed my toy to was not the first company in this market. Another company actually came up with the original idea for these small plastic skateboards that kids move around with their fingers. And that original company that created the “finger boards” concept was doing just fine at first, enjoying sales in the multi-millions.
Then the company I licensed my toy to came along and took over the entire market. You see, the original toy skateboards had generic designs on them – skulls, demons, bright colors and that kind of stuff.
But a couple of guys in the toy industry saw how popular these skateboards were and came up with a better idea – an “enriched idea”. Instead of using the same old generic designs, they licensed the images and logos of Tony Hawk and a bunch of other top skateboard brands and used them to decorate their version of these toy skateboards.
So now when a kid walked in a toy store, he saw one brand of toy skateboard with a skull or thunderbolt and a second version with Tony Hawk’s logo. And that spelled doom for the original company, because 9 out of 10 kids would rather have the images and logos of their favorite skateboarders than just another skull image.
Within months, the second company drove the original company completely out of business. But here’s the most important part…
The second company did not invent the toy, they merely used an “enriched idea” to improve it. And that simple improvement alone, just the addition of famous skateboarders’ brands, allowed them to completely dominate the market and drive the originator completely out of business.
Now, fast forward a couple years and that’s where I come in. You see, I didn’t invent the toy skateboard or come up with the idea to use Tony Hawk and the other skateboarders’ graphics on them. That had already been done.
What I actually did was create a simple “add-on” that attached to these skateboard toys that made them more fun for kids to play with.
With my little attachment, when the kids dragged the tail of the board to stop it, the attachment would shoot out a trail of bursting sparks. And because few young boys can resist anything that simulates fire or loud explosions, my version was an instant hit!
So what’s the lesson here?
Very simply, it’s this: there are millions of dollars to be made by creating an “enriched” idea for either a new product or improvement to an existing product – or a new marketing piece or improvement to your existing marketing piece.
Now – here’s the most important part
Having my toy in thousands of stores and websites all over the world and collecting a royalty for every piece sold was really cool. But there’s one more element to this that’s even more important.
You see, before I used The Million Dollar Minute process to come up with this I idea, I didn’t have a lick of experience in the toy industry. And that’s the true power of this simple process – it doesn’t take any previous experience to use it to create blockbuster product, service, and marketing ideas for any market.
In fact, in addition to the ideas that produced $49,900 extra profit for Frank Kern and my skateboard toy, here’s just a sample of some of the other “enriched ideas” I’ve created using The Million Dollar Minute. And in many cases, I didn’t have any previous experience in these industries:
- When I applied the system to a marketing piece I was evaluating for Darren Hardy, former publisher of Success magazine, I gave him enriched ideas for modifying his positioning and his pricing. After applying these recommendations, Darren saw an immediate increase of $78,000 in profits. And because he offers this same program multiple times a year, he’ll collect these additional profits every time.
- A few years back, I was approached to solve a technical problem in a scoring process for testing and assessment software, despite the fact that I’m essentially a technical dunce. However, The Million Dollar Minute helped me create a solution that had eluded the software engineers for years and together with two partners, we built an innovative company around that software, which we later sold for multi-millions. The company is still in business today, serving prestigious companies like Pioneer Electronics, Johnson & Johnson, Cars.com, General Electric, and CVS Pharmacies.
- A couple years before Corey Rudl passed away, I sold a division of one of my companies to him and his partner, Derek Gehl. This was a straight sale, but the one “extra” that Corey insisted on was that I create a couple “enriched ideas” that would help them increase their profits quickly. After a short review of their business using The Million Dollar Minute, I recommended a simple addition to their marketing structure they were overlooking.They applied the idea and the results were exceptional. Derek has told me that within the first week by implementing what I recommended, they took in an additional $1 million. And altogether, they ended up producing $2.6 million in additional revenue they never would have seen without this “enriched idea”.
- Pamela Yellen single handedly created an entirely new industry based on a highly specialized form of investment. But when you invent a brand-new industry that people have never seen before, it can be difficult to convey exactly what it is so people grasp the concept quickly. And more importantly, so they feel an immediate, compelling need to buy your product.That’s where product naming plays a critical role. When I was brought in to help with the marketing strategy for the product, I immediately noticed that its name didn’t really do it justice. And I knew we had to develop a name that clearly demonstrated the value of her product as soon as you saw it.
So using The Million Dollar Minute process to brainstorm with Pamela’s team, I came up with the name for an investment vehicle that lets you pay all the interest on loans and credit cards to yourself rather than to banks and credit card companies.
The newly coined name was “Bank On Yourself” and the program has been a huge hit (and very profitable) right from the start. This is yet another example of an industry where I didn’t have a shred of experience, but what I did have was The Million Dollar Minute.
- As a byproduct of a specialized form of feedback from one of my clients (this form is included in the program), my course “Million Dollar Licensing” was created. It was a breakthrough for many people, directly responsible for creating more multi-millionaires than I can count. And helping thousands of people broker highly profitable licensing deals.
- A simple, counter-intuitive change to a company’s home page created by The Million Dollar Minute produced a 2,200% increase in subscribers joining their list. And their sales increased by even more since they could sell to these new subscribers again and again.
- There’s also the new marketing strategy the process created for a spinoff company of publishing giant Harcourt-Brace that produced a near immediate increase in sales of 400%. From start to finish, it took just 3 weeks to achieve this.
- A repositioning of a training program for licensed service professionals resulted in a 714% increase in profits. By using The Million Dollar Minute to focus entirely on customer experience and buying history, rather than conventional surveys, a clear strategy was discovered that ran circles around all others. And the company maintained this 714% increase year after year.
- Then there’s the under the radar sales growth strategy I developed for making more sales in 4 days than you normally make in a month. Dozens of my clients have profited from this enormously. In fact, one of my clients used this every month for 8 years running, then took an early retirement.
- Oh, and by the way, the opening to this piece that turned you from a skeptic into a believer in just 60 seconds – the ideas for this too was created using The Million Dollar Minute.
- Plus, many more.
How to become a master innovator in two hours
At just about an hour to go through, my course The Million Dollar Minute is a quick read. But I strongly suggest you review it twice to make sure you master the entire process. Altogether, that should take you about two hours.
Once you have this simple but powerful process down, which is easy for anyone to master, you’ll be able to create your own “enriched ideas” for any type of product, service, or marketing piece. And you’ll have a great time doing it, too!
Now, I’m not going to make you any wild-eyed promises of how many millions you’ll see from this. The truth is, there’s no way for me to know.
But what I can tell you is that I’ve used this process for nearly 30 years now to create breakthrough product, service and marketing ideas that have produced millions upon millions of dollars in sales. And since I only graduated from high school and don’t have any college education, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to benefit from this simple process.
Plus, this all-new edition is a breakthrough in itself
This version of The Million Dollar Minute is an all-new edition that includes the first major update I’ve made to the program in 8 years.
There are a number of changes throughout the process that make it easier to use and more effective. Most importantly, there’s a major update to the entire process that dramatically reduces the time it takes to generate breakthrough ideas for marketing strategies, products, and services.
You see, while you can easily learn the complete process in about two hours, executing all the steps normally takes between 2 and 3 days.
Until now, that is.
As part of the comprehensive updates to this all-new edition, I’ve added a new component that drives the entire process. Over the past 8 years, I’ve discovered that nothing locks in your ability to create breakthrough ideas more effectively than a deep understanding of customer experience and customer buying behavior.
The problem is, up until now, it would have cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct the necessary research to get this information. Plus, because of the built-in flaws associated with conventional research methods, it’s highly likely that you wouldn’t be able to get it at all.
However, I’ve developed a proprietary method that allows you to thoroughly gather this research in a very short time and with no cost whatsoever. And this critical information, that now drives every step of the process, is what reduces the time it takes to create breakthrough product ideas and marketing strategies from 2 to 3 days down to just 3 hours.
So you actually gain more by doing less!
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the steps that make up the complete process.
A step-by-step tour of The Million Dollar Minute process
There are three Phases in the complete process. Each Phase has just a few simple steps, all easy to learn and execute.
So let’s take a look at the steps that make up each Phase in this innovative process. This will give you a better understanding of the overall process – and what’s covered in the program.
Phase 1: Preparation
Step 1: Establish your goal. All projects need to have a single goal. Otherwise, your attention is pulled in multiple directions, resulting in poor overall results.
This step provides a simple method for selecting your single, ideal goal. And it’s especially useful for identifying the single best goal when you need to choose between two or more excellent goals.
Step 2: Create your Focus Statement. Not only do you need to select a single goal, but you also need to be able to clearly state that goal and the outcome you want to achieve. This is done with a Focus Statement, which is a tightly defined statement of what success will look like when you achieve your goal.
In this step, you’ll get an ingenious process for creating an accurate, impactful definition of your goal in 15 words or less.
Step 3: Assemble your team. In order to create the most dynamic marketing, product, and service ideas possible, you need to limit the size of your team. The maximum number of people on your team should be 8. However, the process can be run just as effectively with just 1 or 2 team members.
Phase 2: The Million Dollar Minute IDEA process
There are four steps in this Phase, represented by the acronym IDEA. This is where you’ll gather all your research… organize it in a way that’s designed to optimize your ability to create breakthrough ideas… actually create your initial ideas… improve on those ideas… and finally select the single idea that’s best for creating an exceptional marketing strategy, product, or service.
Here’s what’s covered in each of these steps.
I – Information immersion. In this step, you’ll gather all information that’s relevant to your goal. This includes finding out everything you can by gathering published information, talking to your customers, studying your competitors, and more.
And here’s the CRITICAL point that drives the entire Million Dollar Minute process:
Whenever you’re gathering information that will inform the development of your marketing, products, or services, the single most valuable source of information that will truly move the needle is customer intelligence.
This intelligence includes actual customer experience and customer buying behavior. And it must be collected directly from your customers, not from third parties or focus groups.
Collecting this information in the most effective way, is so critical to your success, that there’s an entire section devoted to an innovative method of gathering next-level customer intelligence. By using this method, you’ll gain a deep level of customer intelligence that none of your competitors can hope to match.
D – Develop raw ideas. This is an “incubation” stage where you begin to develop raw product or marketing strategy ideas and idea fragments. It’s fun, exhilarating, and extremely productive!
E – Eureka (potential Million Dollar Ideas evolve). Next, we move to a deeper level of “idea engineering” where many of the raw ideas from the previous step are refined into complete ideas with tremendous profit potential.
A – Authenticate each idea. The ideas from the previous step are put through a quick but rigorous verification process. Each product idea or marketing strategy is validated against real-world requirements and constraints. The goal is to arrive at The Million Dollar Minute – that single minute where you identify the most lucrative product or marketing strategy for your business.
Phase 3: Executing your Million Dollar idea
In this final Phase, an action plan is developed to implement the product idea or marketing strategy you’ve created. As great as any new idea may be, nothing will come of it without a strong implementation plan.
At the same time, the plan must be simple and action-oriented to ensure that it actually gets carried out quickly and effectively. There are two levels to this phase:
Level 1
1. Put someone in charge
2. Commit all necessary resources
3. Set a completion date
Level 2
1. Plot your course
2. Carry out your plan
3. How and when to modify your plan
4. How to stay motivated
This is a critical phase and it’s been carefully designed to make sure your plan is complete, easy to implement, and keeps you engaged and motivated all the way to completion. There are obviously considerably more details for each step at each Level, but this should give you a good overview of what’s included for this final Phase.
To get better results, you need to change the way you develop solutions
If you’ve ever asked your customers what they want and then created it, only to be surprised when it produces mediocre results or fails completely, there’s a good reason for this.
And there’s one final point that will help you understand why highly educated people with the best intentions don’t seem to be able to create breakthrough ideas for products or marketing strategies.
You see, with rare exception, most people have a predominant way of thinking and working. This is the habitual way you tend to think, view the world, and work.
First, there’s the predominantly logical thinking type. These people tend to measure every idea and issue as if there were a black and white answer. You know, the ones who always claim they’re just playing “devil’s advocate”, when they’re really bending over backwards to invent reasons why something won’t work.
The problem with only thinking logically is that this type of person tends to be overly critical. They can find the downside of anything. As a result, they end up killing all creative ideas before they’re even given a fighting chance.
On the other side, you have the predominantly creative types. These people tend to be very impulsive. They’ll hitch their future to the first decent product idea or marketing strategy that comes along.
The problem is, predominantly creative types don’t have the skills or the patience to evaluate their ideas. So they never distinguish the good ideas from the bad.
In order to consistently create breakthrough product ideas and marketing strategies, both the logical and creative faculties of your mind have to work together toward a common goal. And that’s actually quite easy to accomplish.
As you’ve seen in the brief overview of this process, The Million Dollar Minute is carefully designed to coordinate your logical and creative faculties and cause them to work together, thus performing at optimum levels. The result is the ability to create Million Dollar product ideas and marketing strategies on demand, whenever you need to and as often as you’d like.
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