Amazon.com Review
Phineas T. Barnum had a real knack for grasping exactly what the public wanted, giving it to them, and making a fortune in the process. But author and marketer Joe Vitale says the renowned showman actually flourished because he “respected people and gave them more than their money’s worth.” In the entertaining and informative There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Secrets to Business Success, Vitale identifies 10 key business practices that were developed during Barnum’s noteworthy lifetime of commercial triumph, and he suggests ways they might be adapted for effective use today. –Howard Rothman
Review
Though he’s been almost universally credited with having said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” it is one of the many revelations in There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Secrets to Business Success that Barnum, in fact, never wrote or spoke the line. Barnum (1810-1891), the infamous showman who in his day became extraordinarily rich and powerful by introducing some of the first superstars to the world, actually built his empire by believing there was a customer born every minute. That philosophy was one of his 10 “rings of power”-tenets he had for creating a business empire, and ones which author Joe Vitale believes are still some of the most ground breaking and time-tested concepts for marketing and sales. Vitale should know. He is an independent marketing specialist, the author of seven books on business success, and travels the world, giving talks on Project Phineas, the world’s first sales and marketing training based on P.T. Barnum’s business secrets. He’s an unabashed admirer of Barnum, which makes his enthusiasm for his subject rather contagious, and has done exhaustive research on Barnum’s life and business techniques. The result is a combination of an entertaining biography and a pragmatic approach to entrepreneurism. Vitale’s analysis of Barnum’s business, say, makes the quantum leap to the current day, such as equating Barnum’s love of technology with tips for effective use of e-mail in one’s business. If such a jump might seem far-reaching at first, Vitale confidently strides through with the reader, and by doing so, illustrates one of Barnum’s tenets: helping other people get results. Barnum, Vitale shares, loved “skyrockets,” giving people more than their money’s worth, and the power of the written word. It seems quite clear that he’d have been proud of Vitale’s treatment of him and his visionary marketing ideas. — From Independent Publisher
