Using Celebrity to Further Your Business

I want to tell you a little story of a friend’s successes and failures with his supplement business.

As a little background, he started a supplement company 6 months ago. He spent thousands of dollars on research, getting the best ingredients, the best scientists behind the product, the best label he could come up with, thousands of bottles filled and unfortunately blew through his entire budget. Now it’s time to begin marketing the product and he had no money left.

First of all, I wouldn’t recommend blowing your entire bankroll on building up a product that you don’t know how to sell (hint: start as an affiliate before spending your life savings on product research, design and production.)

So, now he’s in a position where he has no money left and needs to make this product sell (and recover his $xx,xxx that he put in) as soon as possible or he’s not going to be able to pay his mortgage.

What does he do? He turns to me and asks to help him. I start by telling him the bad news that it’s going to be one heck of an uphill battle but then I explain to him how he can save his business without spending another dime.

What do I tell him?

I tell him a method that will potentially only cost him a percentage of the profits, no heavy affiliate network buy-in fees and could actually be a really great marketing strategy.

So what’s the strategy?

I tell him to pick up the phone, email away, knock on doors and do whatever he can to get a celebrity to represent his product for a percentage of the sale, preferably one with a big following in his niche.

How is he going to do this? How’s he going to convince them?

I have no idea. But, I do know that when people are hungry enough and really need to make something work they will find a way. I tell him to pour his heart into every conversion, don’t hang up the phone, make every person you talk to hang up on you before you quit. Most importantly, I tell him not to promise them any particular ROI or results but just promise (and follow through) that he is putting as much work into future distribution of his product after he gets the celebrity to slap their picture on it as he is in getting them to represent it.

Guess what happens?

After less than 2 weeks of phone calls and chasing managers around he gets a bite. A big bite. A big face in Mixed Martial Arts is now representing his product. Not only is he representing it, but he had a business contact with a huge email list of prospects which were emailed out about the product and the new joint venture between my friend and the MMA star.

My friend made his entire investment back from that email alone INCLUDING paying the MMA star his percentage.

The moral of the story is that there’s always a way to promote something, even if you are down to your last dollar. Good old fashion never quit mentality is still effective when you are left with no other options.