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The
Big Idea
WORKBOOK: The Three Rings – the
REAL Secret to Long-Lasting Success

With Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 2

The Three Rings – the REAL Secret to Long-Lasting Success

If you want people to like you and want to buy your stuff before you have
the opportunity to actually try to sell them your stuff, then you're in the
right place.

In order to do all of this stuff right, I need to first introduce you to the three
rings of lasting success when it comes to promoting yourself and positioning
yourself as someone people should pay a lot of money to.

Ring number 1 is going to be the PROMISE. The promise is the thing you say
about your stuff.

Now the promise is often supported by and to a degree made more palatable
by something called POSITIONING.

Positioning is what they think of you before

you actually make the promise.

 If you have good positioning, they’re

going to be more inclined to listen to
the promise.
 If you have bad positioning, they’re
not going to listen to the promise at
all.

What’s really cool is the thing that precedes positioning is something called
THE BIG IDEA.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 3

The Promise
The promise is basically when you say something like, “Buy my stuff and you
will be happy.” Now interestingly this is where 99% of all marketers and all
campaigns put their focus, “Look how great my product is. My product is
absolutely fantastic.”

The opening conversation is almost always about the promise. It’s pretty
effective… that’s why
99% of people do it.

Fortunately for us that

is in fact the least effective
thing you could do.

The reason it’s

fortunate for us is because if we do what works, while our competition does the
least effective thing, we’ve instantly got an unfair advantage.

So where do we need to start? Where does our thinking need to begin? We

should begin with something that we call the BIG IDEA.

Word of Caution: Crafting the perfect big idea is like writing a hit song. It
rarely happens instantly. I’m going to walk you through an exercise on how to
come up with a big idea, and I want you to give yourself permission to not actually
get it right. Give yourself permission to brainstorm.

I want you to do this exercise to the best of your ability, get your mind
working, and then just walk away from it and do something else. I know it sounds
hokey, but your subconscious will do most of the work for you if you just point it
in the right direction. Test it. See if it works for you. It usually works for me.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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The Big Idea

Let’s talk about the big idea.

The big idea is the thing that grabs your market’s attention, it
presents the promise in a new and possibly even unusual way.

I want you to think of the big idea as a single way to encapsulate what’s really
cool about what you have to offer. No, it’s not a USP, it’s not a unique selling
proposition. It’s actually one level higher than that.

It is a way to open the door of your prospect’s mind with one single
combination of words. This is really the thing that makes you different.

If you can wrap a big idea around a common commoditized product, you now
have something completely de-commoditized and uncommon.

Here’s why this is important. In today’s world everybody has heard just about
every promise under the
sun, and we’ve all been
disappointed to some
degree. But if our
prospects have heard
every promise out there
already and they’re jaded,
we’ve got to be different.
We’ve got to stand out.

Most people try to stand out just by being louder, just by making bolder
promises. “Hey, let’s make the headline in red. Let’s have flashy videos instead of
regular videos. Let’s make even bigger claims.”

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 5

Well, here’s the thing. That’s totally stupid. That is the least effective way to
go about doing it. The better way is to focus on the big idea.

Like I said earlier, coming up with the big idea is difficult. It takes time and it’s
something you don’t want to rush. Give yourself permission to stew on this for a
while. You don’t have to get it overnight. It usually takes a while. That’s okay.

Finding the Big Idea

One of the best ways of coming up with a big idea is to look at these questions.
I’ll give you the questions and then we’ll go through what they really mean.

 What is the promise?

 How do I fulfill that promise in a way that’s different from what the
market is used to hearing?

Now, see, we’re already starting to take a slightly different approach. We will
start with a promise that’s ordinary, but now we’re looking at ways to make that
promise unique. Some of the things we need to focus on are:

 What is their greatest desire?

 What unique way can I address that desire that will get their attention?

I’ll give you some examples of big ideas I’ve seen, come up with or facilitated.

Example 1: Sleeping Babies

First thing we do is we address the DESIRE of the market. About a year or so
ago I was holding a workshop. One of the attendees had a business helping
frazzled parents finally get their children to sleep.

This is their desire: “Get my baby go to sleep. Please.”

© 2016 Frank Kern

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What’s the PROMISE? “I’ll teach you to get your baby to sleep.”

The danger there is that everybody’s heard that promise before. If you go to
amazon.com, there’s a gazillion new parenting books. They’ve tried a lot of things.
They’re likely jaded.

I’m talking to the lady and I’m digging a little deeper, and I said, “How do you
fulfill this promise? How do you make this happen in a way that’s unique, that’s
different from what everyone else does?”

She says, “Well, babies naturally sleep if you just recognize their sleep cues.
Basically what we’re doing as parents is we’re screwing everything up. We keep
the kid awake by trying to put them to sleep instead of recognizing their natural
sleep cues.”

Her DELIVERY METHOD was she would train the parent and not the child.

The BIG IDEA that came out of this conversation was “Born to Sleep.”

The big idea is a very small phrase that has one purpose: to open
the door for a conversation with that prospect.

This phrase isn’t designed to sell the program or make a promise. The big
idea’s sole purpose is to open that door. If you think of the prospect’s mind as a
door, the big idea is turning the knob just a little bit. That’s all it does.

Once you come up with something that can be used as a big idea… in this case
Born to Sleep... everything that she built her system on is around the idea that
babies are born to go to sleep. They don’t have a hard time sleeping.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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The next phase of this is now to find the PREMISE, what supports this big idea.
The premise is basically your way of explaining the big idea.

Imagine we’re having a conversation with a frazzled parent. Dad wants the
kid to sleep. Mom’s desperate for the kid to go to sleep. My client’s like, “You don’t
have a problem. Your baby is born to sleep.”

The sole thing that this little phrase is meant to do is to cause that parent to
say, “What do you mean?” That’s it. Boom. It’s just a way to get that interest.

This is where the premise comes in.

The premise is a statement that defends or supports this big idea.

In this case here was my client’s premise: “Bush babies don’t stay up all night.”
She meant aboriginal babies born in the Australian outback, babies born in rain
forests in Central America, Eskimo babies.

These cultures don’t have the

problems we have. Their babies
sleep like rocks.

Here’s the thing… Babies

aren’t designed to stay up all
night, and babies that don’t have
all the modern distractions sleep
pretty good. Parents are keeping the baby awake by accident because we’re
missing sleep cues.

The final step is HERE’S HOW.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 8

If we’re having an imaginary conversation with a parent and my client says,

“You don’t have a problem. Your child is born to sleep,” the sole purpose of that
statement is to fuel up the parent’s desire to hear the premise: bush babies don’t
stay up all night.

Parents are keeping babies up by accident.

‘Here’s how…’ gives way to the next phase which is

establishing positioning through education.

That was one way that we came up with a big idea around this.

I’ll walk you through it:

The big idea is “Born to Sleep.”

Then we established the

premise. Yeah, bush babies don’t
stay up all night. You're keeping
your kid up all night.

Next thing we do is we say,

“Here’s how…” Now can we start
establishing positioning through
education, “Here’s a way you're keeping your kid up. Here’s some ways that make
them go to sleep.”

Then finally that positioning opens the door to us to be able to make the
promise. In this case, “I will teach you how to get your baby to sleep,” that’s the
promise.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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Now if we went to that prospect and said, “I’ll teach you how to get your baby
to sleep,” the mom would say, “Yeah, right.”

If we precede that promise with “Born to Sleep” and the premise, the mind is
wide open for the promise.

Example 2: Reputation Management

Another example was a client selling reputation management, specifically
helping doctors get their patients to leave good reviews.

The doctors’ key desire was to get patients to leave good reviews about them
online. His promise to them was, “I will help you and teach you to consistently get
good reviews from your customer.”

There he joined the ranks of every other person who was cold calling that
doctor every 15 minutes making the same promise.

He’s got a problem. Remember, we can’t lead with promises anymore. That’s
not going to set us apart. You’ve got to have a better way.

During the workshop I asked

questions about how he
delivered this and what’s
different?

He goes, “Well, what I do is I

focus on the staff. I train the staff
to ask properly and then I know
that even when the patient agrees to leave a good review, they’re probably going
to forget. So I've created an automated follow up system that ensures the
customer leaves a good review.”
© 2016 Frank Kern
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What’s setting him apart here is the automated follow up system that ensures
it works. This is different.

The big idea we came up with was “Predictable Evangelism,” to encapsulate

the primary benefits of the results of his promise.

Now remember, we’re not using this as a headline, we’re not making this as a
commercial or anything. What we’re doing is metaphorically having that
conversation with the doctor. The doctor’s going, “Man, I need more reviews,” and
the guy’s going, “Oh, let me guess. Your patients know what to do and they like
you. They’re just not leaving the good reviews because they forget.” He’s like,
“Yeah.”

He goes, “Oh, what you need is predictable evangelism.”

That phrase is not designed to have him go, “Here take my money.” That’s not
going to happen. Instead he’s going to go, “Wait, what’s that?” That’s all it’s meant
to do.

Remember, we’re now turning the knob. Our next phase is start pushing that
door open. We do that with the premise.

In his mind if he’s saying, “What’s predictable evangelism?” we establish the

premise, “Customers of course could be trained to leave positive reviews, but if
you’ve got a systematic way of doing it, you can make sure they leave the positive
reviews instead of just asking them to get the positive reviews. Here’s how….”

The words “Here’s how…” lead into establishing positioning by educating that
client or in this case that customer.

The big idea was “Predictable Evangelism.”

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 11

It opens the door for him to establish the premise, “Customers want to leave
good reviews, but you’ve got to have a system to ensure they actually do it, and
that’s got to be automated so you
don’t have to think about it.”

“Oh, what’s that?” “Well here,

let me show you how it works.”

Now we’re establishing

positioning through educating
that customer. Once you
establish that positioning, now we can make the promise, “I will train your staff
and install the system that gets you the good reviews.”

If we went to the doctor with the promise, we would fail. If we go to the doctor
with a big idea which opens the door for positioning, we are successful.

Example 3: Weight Loss

Let me give you another example – the most commoditized thing ever. Now,
this is a billion-dollar big idea. I wish I’d come up with it.

One of the most

commoditized things in the
world is the desire to lose weight
fast. Talk about a gazillion dollar
industry. The promise here is
buy P90X and you’ll get
shredded. So says every other
exercise program in the world,
five million times a day. They’re not any different.
© 2016 Frank Kern
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If we’re looking at P90X and we were to say, “Well, what’s your delivery
method?” they’d say, a) it’s hard as hell, b) you're constantly changing your
workouts and you combine intense cardio and weights and everything, and by
doing that it’s a little bit more effective.

You’ve seen the commercials a billion times. Why? Because they work.

What’s the big idea? Muscle confusion. If you're talking to someone who wants
to lose weight and they’re frustrated and they’ve tried everything, you say, “Dude,
you’ve got to have muscle confusion. That’s how to get defined quicker.”

They say, “What’s that?” Boom. That’s all this is doing. This is a two-word
combination that encapsulates the primary benefits and difference of this right
here, of P90X. That’s all it is, a quick little phrase, designed to open that door.

Now that we’ve opened the door, we’re going to push the door open a little bit
more with the premise.

The premise behind muscle

confusion is traditional
workouts have limited results
because your body gets used to
it. You’ve got to constantly shock
the system for maximum impact.
Then the magic words are
“Here’s how to do it.”

If we looked at a P90X infomercial it would follow this almost to the letter.

If we look at it in the big circles what you’ve got here is muscle confusion.
That’s your big idea.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 13

Establish the premise. “You’ve got to shock your body by confusing the
muscles all the time. Gets you faster gain. Here’s how it works.” Bam.

You're establishing your positioning through education. Then finally buy

P90X, do the P90X workouts, you’ll get ripped fast.

If we led the infomercials and all we did was make the promise, there wouldn’t
be any beach body. Wouldn’t happen.

Muscle confusion turns the knob. Positioning opens the door. Now you can
walk in and make the promise.

If you don’t do the other stuff, you're making a promise outside of the doorway
to the mind. You're in trouble.

Example 4: Marketing Automation

The last example is one from my own business. For my professional services
business, the desire of my market is automated marking and sales. My promise is,
“Use our service and we’ll help you increase sales through automation.”

Do we have the benefit of being the only people in the history of the internet
to make that promise? No, of
course not. Everybody has made
that promise. People have heard
it a billion times and it’s never
worked and they’re mad.

The question I had to ask our

team was, “What about our stuff
is different? How are we delivering this in a way that’s making it special?”

© 2016 Frank Kern

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What’s different about our stuff is our system has multiple contingency plans
for people who don’t respond. We know that, in any campaign, most people aren’t
going to do what you want them to do.

 Most people aren’t going to go click.

 Most people who click aren’t going to buy.

That’s the rules of direct response.

We have contingency plans… “If they don’t click, do this. If they don’t buy, do
this,” …where other systems don’t. Also, we have specialized messages for
specific behavior. We treat each person in the system differently based on what
they do.

Well, how did we encapsulate that in the one big idea? It was called
“Behavioral Dynamic Response.”

I came up with a series of words, in this case three words: Behavioral Dynamic
Response. Notice how short these big ideas are.

What that translates into is, if I’m with a business owner who has tried
automation and they want something better, I say, “You need Behavioral Dynamic
Response.”

I don’t expect them to go, “You know what? You're right. Here’s my money.”
What I want them to do is go, “What’s that?”

I’m just opening the door, just a little bit. Turning the knob. That’s all the big
idea does.

Now I can give the premise, “Most people don’t do what you want them to do
in your campaigns. It’s normal. Most people don’t open the email. Most people
© 2016 Frank Kern
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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 15

don’t click your website. Most of the people who click the website don’t buy.
Otherwise we’d be the greatest marketers in history. We’d have a 51% or better
conversion rate. There’d be golden statues of us in the direct marketing hall of
fame. It doesn’t happen.

Most people don’t do what you want them to do. So you have to have
contingency plans in place to
automatically reengage them.
Here’s how that works...”

Boom. Right there. That now

allows me to begin establishing
positioning through education.

I turn the knob, “Behavioral Dynamic Response.”

“What’s that?” “Glad you asked. Here’s how.”

I established positioning through education. Then I can make the promise,

which is of course increased sales through automation.

If I were to lead with this promise I would be just another guy selling
automation. Just like if you lead with your promise you're going to be just another
person selling whatever. We have to make it different.

By the way, $2 million. That’s what that big idea was worth to me just in 2015
alone.

It’s worth doing the work. I know it’s cerebral and we’re not talking about
headlines and stuff yet. This is the stuff you do before the headlines. This is what
makes everything super powered.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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Finding Your Own Big Idea

So how do you find your big idea?

Well, on the worksheet at the end of this module, you start writing the
answers to this.

1. What’s their biggest desire as it relates to your stuff? What is it that

they want?
2. What’s your promise? That’s easy. You’ve known your promise the
entire time. That will be a simple one.
3. How do you fulfill this promise? What is unique about the way that
you're fulfilling this?

You look at these answers right here, and then from there you extract the big
idea.

Maybe you’ll get it today. You never know. In these examples I had two in one
day. First time in history. I couldn’t believe it. Usually it takes like a month or
something.

It took me 18 months to come up with Behavioral Dynamic Response. Then, a

year later, I made it even more succinct by calling it Lead-Compounding.
Sometimes it takes a long time, but it’s worth doing.

Then you get your big idea here, even if it’s not perfect, who cares. Just have
something.

4. Then you write the premise behind it. “What do you mean?” If the
big idea is a statement that causes them to say, “What do you mean,”
your premise is what supports that statement.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 17

One thing I want to tell you is whenever I do this exercise with people in
person, their big idea is usually a headline. The big idea is usually “How to do
something really cool without something, in X amount of time or less.” That’s a
promise.

Don’t confuse your big idea with a promise. We want two, three words max
that encapsulate that promise.

We want to take that promise and make it a thing. We’re really performing
alchemy right now.

We’re taking this promise that’s abstract and we’re turning it into a thing.

 We’re taking the promise of automation and we’re turning it into a

thing called Behavioral Dynamic Response.
 We’re taking the promise of getting good reviews and getting
customers trained to actually leave positive reviews and we’re turning
it into a thing called Predictable Evangelism.
 We’re taking the promise of workout really, really hard, be miserable,
sweat all the time and vomit on yourself as a result of doing it, that’s
incredibly difficult, but very effective exercises; we’re turning it into a
thing called Muscle Confusion.

We’re performing alchemy in this example. That’s what I want you to do here.

The way to do it, answer these questions, write anything down here. Write
out your premise. If it’s awesome, go with it. If it’s not, walk away. Go for a walk.
Listen to some music. Have a couple of beers. Chill out. Whatever.

Let your brain go to work. It’ll come to you, usually when you least expect it.

© 2016 Frank Kern

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THE BIG IDEA PAGE 18

That ends the big idea portion of this training. In our next segment, I want to
show you what to do once we’ve opened the door.

Remember this big idea just opens your door. We still have to do a lot of work,
and that work is done through positioning. In the next segment, I’m going to show
you how to use Power Positioning to get them to like you and want to buy from
you even before you actually make a pitch. I’ll see you there.

Finding Your Big Idea: Worksheet

© 2016 Frank Kern