Table of Contents

• Forward
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
  • The principles of attraction
  • The attraction mindset
  • Greed is good. NOT!
  • Creating attraction requires change
  • Attraction reduces friction
• Rule #1: Become a bigger fish in a smaller pond
  • Ann the crab
  • Niche marketing don't work
  • Pick your turf and ensure dominance
  • The competitive landscape profile
  • CLP Example
  • Highly targeted efforts
  • How I found the GAP and narrowed my own market
  • Survival for start-ups
  • Personal action plan
• Rule # 2: Make the problem more important than the solution
  • Become the problem
  • Communication breakdown
  • The four steps of problem-based attraction
  • Step 1: Problem identification
  • Step 2: Remove yourself from the solution
  • Step 3: Suggest an exclusive solution
  • Step 4: Test risk reversal
  • Personal action plan
    
• Rule # 3: Create an exclusive community of super users
  • The "Passion"
  • Advertising doesn't work anymore
  • Creating "Buzz Agents"
  • A world now connected by super users
  • Hogwart or hogwash?
  • Suicide by marketing
  • More Choices Than Ever
  • Personal action plan
• Rule # 4: Become the only solution
• A question of positioning
• The exclusive marketing position
• Got Milk?
• Develop your brand
• Creating exclusivity for your business
• EMP Worksheet
• Breakthrough innovation
• The innovation continuum
• Memes
• Personal action plan
• Rule # 5: Reject strategically
• Plotting your "Curves"
• What's strategic about rejection
• Not a numbers game
• Reject or be rejected
• Nice guys finish last
• The proposal follow-up game
• The ten absolutes of rejection
• Personal action plan
• Rule # 6: Give information away
• Giving it away
• Elephant comes to city hall
• Lended credibility
• Success on Death Row
• Informational marketing
• Formula for informational marketing
• Personal action plan
• Rule #7: Reverse people's risk
• The envy of Hilary
• Making application
• Leveraging volatility
• Free trials
• Guarantees
• Combination strategies
• Personal action plan
• Rule #8: Let design and color speak
• Take a drink
• Giant Brand, guerilla tactics
• Design first
• Design tells the story
• Color branding
• Selecting your colors
• The problem with marketing design
• Headlines
• Design and layout 101
• Recognizing what works
• Advertising examples
• Create your own ad
• Personal action plan
• Rule #9: Win heartshare
• My friends say I'm crazy
• Carving out a piece of your life
• How sweet it is
• Farewell old guard
• Product marketing
• Advertising misses the mark
• Traditional financing
• Recruitment
• The intangibles of heart share
• Personal action plan
• Rule #10: Collaborate rather than compete
• Corporate America is dying
• What does the future hold?
• Freedom, control and security
• Loyalty and how it impacts you
• Technological collaboration
• Co-opepetition
• Vendor supplier collaboration
• Strategic alliances
• The joint venture
• Business within a business
• Cross-marketing collaboration
• Personal action plan
• Rule #11: Who we are is more important than what we do
• Character
• Integrity
• Vision
• Enthusiasm
• Selflessness
• Identity
• Personal action plan
• Rule #12: Create standards and systems that nurture growth
• Black bamboo
• Surprise, surprise
• Systemized marketing
• The marketing cycle
• Create interest
• Get them on your list
• Give something away
• Leveraging curiosity
• Personal Action Plan
• Rule #13: Learn the discipline of testing
• The Edsel
• Using the Internet to test
• A more traditional approach
• Market perception profile
• Sample market perception profile
• Personal Action Plan
• Rule # 14: Destroy your business
• Cause and effect
• It worked for the Romans
• Attracting the future
• Creating the attraction plan
• Matching goals and objectives
• The competitive edge
• Personal action plan
• Impacting Others with the Rules of Attraction
• The two poles of attraction
• Internal attitudes
• External actions
• Companies that have used the Rules
• Marketing Attraction Assessment
  
• About the Author
  
• Business Attraction Resources
  
• Free Bonus Material
  
• Liner Notes

Forward

It happens often: a term or a concept enters the cultural consciousness so quickly that its power and trueness becomes lost in comfortable idiom. So it has been with the force of "attraction," which I believe is not only one of the most over-simplified principles in business today, but also one of the most misunderstood concepts in the context of client development and the building of business relationships. Since Rhonda Byrne's mega-successful project The Secret, the concept of "attraction," once primarily associated with the physical aspects of personal relationships, has become a kind of cultural panacea for the "name it and claim it" mentality of attracting wealth and prosperity. From James Arthur's financial advisement to Joel Osteen's spiritual guidance, millions of readers have been themselves attracted to the idea that if I walk, talk, and think like a Trump, then I'll one day magically become a Trump (sans hair, of course).

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Attracting the success one seeks requires more than affirmation and vision statements. This is never more true than it is among those who work daily to build and grow small businesses: these entrepreneurs seek tools, not tricks. But few of the pundits who pontificate about attraction provide a realistic formula for creating client attraction in a typical small business environment. After reviewing more than one hundred of the top-selling books that claim to show readers how to attract more business, I found not one of those books tells the reader precisely how to go about applying the vague concept of attraction specifically to the small business model. In fact, most of these books espouse the same traditional marketing concepts- the five P's of marketing (People, Price, Product, Promotion, and Place), for instance- which have been found to produce the opposite of the intended effect: pushing customers further away, rather than attracting them.

This book does not seek to add itself to those numbers. To my knowledge, there has never been a book that has been dedicated exclusively to the concept of attraction as it applies to practical client development and, more specifically, to getting better results from entrepreneurial marketing initiatives. In the last few decades, numerous marketing books have been written about what other successful organizations have done to create an attractive brand or a better customer experience. I myself have been educated and influenced by many of these works. Yet nearly all of them focus on the pursuit of traditional marketing; attraction-based marketing principles are typically presented in static generalizations. No matter how inspiring, none of them truly answer "How do I apply this concept to my business?" And so readers are left scratching their heads.

The Rules of Attraction takes the reader on a step-by-step journey that not only educates them on the principles of attraction but also inspires them to put those guiding rules into action. By demonstrating the way each rule works in specific marketing initiatives, the Rules of Attraction is the only book that includes specific exercises that demonstrate how to implement each of the fourteen rules in any type of business, large or small, new or old, well-financed or poorly-funded. My aim: to leave no one scratching his head.