“Planting Seeds” in Someone’s Mind Pays Off — Sometimes Big Time

Want to get someone to do something he doesn’t want to do? It’s amazingly easy. All you have to do is plant a seed and wait for it to sprout.

This is a phenomenally powerful business secret I learned from JSN when I worked with him many years ago. He used it to acquire many very profitable information products.

Here’s how he did it:

When he saw a product he liked, he’d call up the owner and ask to buy it. Most times, the owner would refuse. Then JSN would give the owner one good reason he should consider selling. That didn’t usually change the owner’s mind. But, JSN told me, the seed was planted.

At first, I doubted that much would come of this approach. But after watching him do it for a while, the results became obvious. Publisher after publisher — for one reason or another — brought him products to buy. Some of them were very good. Some of them were offered to him before the rest of the market heard about them, so he had a strategic advantage when it came to bidding for them. And some came only to him. He named his price and took them.

[Ed. Note: Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]