Your 2021 Hidden Profits

Plus Money Making Lessons From

You may or may not love the rock band Metallica. But either way, you would be forgiven for thinking that they make their money from just touring and making albums.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Check out ‘Blackened’ the new super-premium Whiskey — “a blend of hand-selected, well-aged bourbons and ryes, uniquely finished in black brandy casks and the earth-shattering music of Metallica.”

How do you link a rock band to whiskey? By playing Metallica’s music to the whiskey while it’s in the barrel.

Yes, you read correctly. Picture the barrels of whisky in a big room, with massive speakers blaring out Metallica’s music. To quote from the Blackened Whiskey website:

“After the whiskeys have been combined in the black brandy casks for finishing, they’re jolted back to life by the unmistakable, earth-shattering music of Metallica. Using our proprietary sonic-enhancement system BLACK NOISE™, the whiskey is pummeled by sound, causing it to seep deeper into the barrel, where it picks up additional wood flavor characteristics.

The convergence of these ambitions has resulted in a sonic-enhancement method that utilizes a variation of the band’s song-determined frequencies to disrupt the whiskey inside the barrel, causing increased wood interaction that kicks up the wood flavor characteristics in the whiskey.”

I don’t drink whiskey so I’ve no idea if this is as insane as it sounds but if it is, it’s brilliantly insane. Metallica’s fans are hardcore. Can you imagine how many of them who love whiskey are getting their credit cards out and how many who don’t are desperately trying to acquire a new taste for it?

This is a classic example of tapping into the customer goldmine and the hidden assets that exist in every business, including yours.

Those hidden assets can be found within your customer relationship. They are the things you are not currently offering your customers that you could be. It’s like hidden gold. Just sitting there waiting to be claimed.

Metallica could have sold this whiskey at any time over the last couple of decades. It was always sitting there — untapped gold waiting to be mined.

Most people in the music ‘business’ think they’re in the business of making music. Metallica understands that the business side of their operation is about maximising the profits from the relationship with the customer. That can involve music. But it doesn’t have to.

Your competitors think they’re in the business of selling whatever product or service it is that you sell. If you want to create true wealth, realise that you’re in the business of mining the gold in the customer relationship.

What’s the difference between a poor estate agent (realtor in the USA) and a rich estate agent? The poor agent thinks they’re in the business of selling houses. They sell the house, take the commission and then ignore the customer.

The rich agent understands that they’re in the business of maximising the relationship with the customer and adding value to them in any way possible. So once they’ve sold you the house, they introduce you to the removal company, home insurance company, curtain company, sofa company, bed company, local builder etc. And they get a nice commission in return.

So ask yourself what you could be offering your customers that you’re not currently offering them. Of course, you start with the obvious products or services related directly to what you sell. You almost certainly have more gold to mine with the obvious offerings.

But once you work your way through the obvious, go searching for the elusive obvious — your version of the whiskey. And if the link to you seems irrelevant (like whiskey to a rock band) come up with something as clever as Metallica’s booming speakers to establish the link.

Here’s another lesson from the music industry. A great way for all businesses to increase profits is through continuity income. Metallica is not alone in their money-making savvy. Here are the membership levels being offered on U2’s website: