Carl Turner: Fantastic. Nice to talk with you this evening Ralph.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, I met you at Joel Christopher’s Double Birthday Bash and I was impressed with your presentation and your wonderful spirit. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about heroism. Do you have a dream or vision that sets your course in your life?
Carl Turner: Yes, I’ve always had dreams Ralph. I don’t know how people can really exist without them. I grew up in a very poor part of central Mississippi and my first dream was to get out of there and experience life in the mainstream, so I pursued engineering. I’ve progressed down the years from working on nuclear power plants and having my own consulting companies to learning marketing and finally developing the marketing technology that allows entrepreneurs all over the world to benefit from more effective marketing.
Ralph Zuranski: Why did you shift over from working on nuclear power plants to working on marketing?
Carl Turner: Well, I really loved engineering. And then I decided that, after working with almost all the big companies, I wanted to have my own consulting company. And when I did that, I found the most fun part of engineering consulting wasn’t actually doing the consulting; it was doing the sales!
Carl Turner: The most amazing experience I had was when I had my little company (which was in Texas) competing with the 17 biggest engineering companies around the United States and I got the work! It was so much fun to actually do that, and I figured that if I love marketing (which I did) then I should do it full-time.
Carl Turner: So I went to find the best marketing consultant in the world, who was Jay Abraham, and I actually went to work for him initially and eventually did joint ventures with him toward the end. For me it was a natural progression, even though it was a strange one.
Ralph Zuranski: Now it’s interesting, how does nuclear engineering relate to internet marketing?
Carl Turner: Well, everything in life can be optimized if you use the right system. And all nuclear power plants are really is a series of systems. The systems are integrated together using certain feedback equations processed by computers. So, it’s very systematic. If you apply the same thing to marketing, you can get systematic, repeatable results. If you don’t use a system, then you can’t really optimize anything, so you are at the mercy of the world. By using systems, you can test, track, optimize, and essentially create whatever you want in your life.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, you had some pretty incredible success with Jay Abraham. I think that you guy’s did $12 million in sales of his instructional material.
Carl Turner: Yes, well what we did there was essentially five different programs in three years that generated a little over $11 million in sales.
Ralph Zuranski: That’s pretty amazing. I imagine that through working with Jay, and just in life itself that you’ve had some setbacks and misfortunes and made some mistakes. Is it important to take a positive view on the things that didn’t go right?
Carl Turner: Oh yes. One of our big successes was a program we called the PEQ, which was the “Performance Enhancement Quotient”. In that program, we made a little over $3.5 million in sales. The ironic thing was that the first letter we sent out on the subject, we sent it out to over 14,000 people and we got zero sales – which is a miracle… in reverse!
Ralph Zuranski: How is that? How could that be?!
Carl Turner: Well, in Jay’s list, if you sent out a letter to the top 14,000 clients, they’ll buy just about anything, or at least 5 or 6 will. So it was amazing that when we had a fantastic product, no one bought! So we knew that we had just articulated the offer the wrong way. We then wrote it the right way and people bought it in droves.
Ralph Zuranski: So obviously, you had to be an optimist when that massive failure occurred. Did you have a positive view on trying something different?
Carl Turner: Well, sometimes it’s hard to have a positive view! *laughs* But what we had to do was when we were about three weeks from the program and we had zero people signed up, we had to determine if we were essentially going to write off the whole thing or come up with an alternate strategy. So we dug in and came up with an alternate strategy and then made it pay off.
Ralph Zuranski: Did you believe at that time that your dreams had become true?
Carl Turner: Yes definitely. I wasn’t sure that they would come true in that particular program, though!
Ralph Zuranski: I imagine so. When you’re working with people that are such high-powered individuals, do you readily forgive those who upset, offend, and oppose you?
Carl Turner: Definitely. Most people when they do something that offends you or hurts you, they’re not really trying to. In general, they’re focusing on their problems and sometimes they lash out at you because you’re the only thing in front of them. And if you don’t take people’s reactions personally, you don’t have their problems. It’s only when you react personally to what they’re doing that you not only have your problems but theirs too.
Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to experience service to others as a source of joy?
Carl Turner: Well, I think that in life we have certain joys, and one of the things is to do something really good for someone else. I loved working in the marketing field, especially when I was selling marketing-training products for entrepreneurs because I knew that the people who bought the programs from me were going to have much more success in their lives; They were going to be able to give to the community, to their families, and to the world at large. So, it really makes a big difference – when you can go home at night and feel good about just life in general, and especially what you’ve done.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, in working with entrepreneurs, they’re a pretty unique group of people. Do you think a sense of humor is really important in facing the serious problems that you come across in dealing with those people?
Carl Turner: Oh, yes. Entrepreneurs are really the life-blood of the world. And when you consider 9 out of 10 go out of business their first year, you really have to have a sense of humor and view life as a fun process.
Ralph Zuranski: I know that Ted [Nicholas] thinks that heroes are really the entrepreneurs who are making a difference in the world. Do you believe that’s true?
Carl Turner: Oh yes, definitely. If you think about all the little things that you do, whether you order pizza at night, you get food at a restaurant, you go to the grocery store – no matter what you do, you are dealing with entrepreneurs.
Carl Turner: They really provide the quality of life for you. And that’s what really makes the world go “round”; it’s not the Fortune 500 companies that make the cars and things like that, but rather the little guys that work with the Fortune 500 companies and make it possible for those companies to be there as well as do all the things which help us make our lives better.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, you’ve been extremely successful in business and in marketing. Were there any heroes in your life that helped you obtain the level of success that you’ve attained?
Carl Turner: Yes, I think everyone has heroes, whether they admit it or not. When I was growing up my grandfather, who had cotton gins, saw mills, stores and farms, was one source of the belief that I could achieve my goals because I had him to model. Then on my mother’s side, her mother (my grandmother) was really an inspiration because she was a very busy person, but she always took time out of her busy life to give back to the community. She was another role model for me.
Carl Turner: And then I’ve had different role models in business and different things. For instance, when I was trying to change my life from being negative to positive…. when I was an engineer – I was sort of like an engineer’s engineer. I was one of the best. But you don’t want a positive engineer designing a bridge for you! You want a very negative engineer that will think of everything that can go wrong.
Carl Turner: And so, when I got into business, I realized I needed to think positive, because you want to think of everything that can go right. So I met Tony Robbins and adapted his technology to change my life from being negative to positive, so he’s one of my heroes simply because of what he provided for me.
Carl Turner: And other people – like Jay Abraham, who I worked with, is still a hero because he provided the marketing technology that I first learned. Everyone has heroes in their life that make their life enjoyable. Having heroes allows you to reach for something higher.
Ralph Zuranski: So it was your grandma and grandpa that were the heroes in your life? What about your mom and dad?
Carl Turner: Mom has passed on and dad is, happily, still alive. They provided a great home, loved and cared for me and my sister, and gave me a good environment to grow up in. They were great people but they never really understood life the way that it could be experienced. They did the best they could, but they never really saw what was possible.
Ralph Zuranski: How did your grandma and grandpa make a positive difference in your life other than the example that you gave of their entrepreneurial success?
Carl Turner: Well my grandfather on my father’s side, he was always doing things. He would buy foreclosed farms and sell them to people who couldn’t otherwise buy them for a bail of cotton per year! So he made it possible for many people in the community to move forward, and when they needed to plant crops, he loaned them money.
Carl Turner: So he was a person who really helped the community. For example, when the local school house burned, he and the two doctors in the community essentially rebuilt the school. So, he was a giver. And when you’re a giver and you understand business, you can really achieve a lot in your life.
Ralph Zuranski: You think that’s really important to be in business today – to be a giver and to help other people obtain great value through what you do?
Carl Turner: Oh yes, I think it’s important in anything, especially if you’re in business for yourself. If you’re in business for yourself and you’re a giver, you get back so much more than you can ever give.
Ralph Zuranski: There are a lot of people in our society – you have the sports stars, you have the movie stars, the rock stars… who are the real heroes, do you think, in our society today?
Carl Turner: Well I think I’ve already alluded to it, Ralph. I feel the entrepreneurs are because they make things happen. And sure they work long hours, but they give – and by giving they get so much back. So I think they are the unsung heroes of our society today.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, you look at the moms and the dads and the grandmas and the grandpas… they really do make a big difference in people’s lives. Why are heroes so important in the lives of young people today?
Carl Turner: Well, young people tend to focus on themselves, especially during the teenage years when they’re trying to discover what they’re all about. And if they don’t have someone outside themselves to look up to, they tend to look inside and they get very confused because it’s not about what you want, it’s about what you are and loving yourself. And by seeing a hero or a person they look up to, they can finally understand this better and find a way that they can give back too and as such, become a valuable member of the human society.
Ralph Zuranski: Who do you feel are the real heroes in our society today?
Carl Turner: Again, I think it’s the entrepreneurs. And it’s also the moms and dads that help their kids grow and learn more about what they can achieve.
Ralph Zuranski: Why are heroes so important in the lives of young people?
Carl Turner: Again, it’s about what they can do to help the outside world. When they have people that they look up to, they have people they can model. And they can reduce the focus on themselves because when you look at yourself, you can always see pain, see things you don’t have, you can see lack; When you look outside yourself, you can see what other people are doing and get values that you can instill in your own life to become a hero and enjoy life.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, a lot of times people are trapped in jobs that they hate, you know, and kids are just thinking, “What am I going to do with my life?” What advice would you give them?
Carl Turner: Well I would advise them to find heroes and mentors, people that they admire – look outside themselves. And if it’s not someone in the community, maybe they can find people in literature as far as biographies because there are so many heroes out there that can give people what they don’t have, and that’s a positive outlook on life. They can see the joy of giving and the joy of creating something for other people.
Ralph Zuranski: How are you making the world a better place?
Carl Turner: I’m doing my little part to help entrepreneurs. The idea is if I help entrepreneurs be more successful, they can give more to the world in general, they can give more to their employees (because most of the employees in the world work for entrepreneurs, not the big companies), they can give more to their families.
And so in general, by helping entrepreneurs, I can help the world overall without really touching the world but only touching the people who make your and my life much better.
Ralph Zuranski: You know marketing, marketing is the life-blood of any business; it’s where the sales actually occur; it actually brings in money so a company can employ other individuals. How important do you feel marketing really is in the scope of what’s going on in our community today?
Carl Turner: Marketing is in everything, as far as the commercial aspects of it, and even the non-commercial aspects. You’re always marketing to the other individuals around you. If you’re with your wife, you’re marketing the fact that you’re a fantastic husband, or maybe you’re doing “sales” as far as “I’d rather have this particular meal than that particular meal”.
Carl Turner: But marketing is about creating value there so that people can enjoy things. If you just had the necessities in life, you’d have a very bland life and the world economy would grind to a halt because all the world really needs is just food, water, and a minimum amount of shelter.
Carl Turner: And by working with entrepreneurs, you get a lot more in life; you get cars, you get electronics, you get movies… you get all the pizzazz. But even if you had the pizzazz without the marketing, you really wouldn’t appreciate it as much as you do because the entrepreneurs spend a lot of their time marketing those products so that people can enjoy them even more.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, this program: the In Search of Heroes Copywriting Program is about copywriting, and copywriting is about getting people to basically invest in things that are beneficial to them. How do you feel that copywriting can make a big difference in the lives of young people in trying to create ideas that make a difference in society?
Carl Turner: Well, I believe it was in the early days that people called marketing “salesmanship in print”. Somehow that salesmanship has to get to print, and that’s the job of copywriters. So if you have copywriters trained in the principles you were talking about, they’re going to be able to help provide the world access to the goods and services that they really want.
Carl Turner: Because if you don’t have someone to help you understand what you want, then you don’t have commerce and you don’t really enjoy it as much. You know, if you had all this money in the bank but you didn’t understand what you could do to enjoy it, you wouldn’t have real value in life; you wouldn’t enjoy a first-run movie or maybe going to a museum; or maybe climbing up a mountain. So copywriting is the method of allowing those ideas to get captured in print.
Ralph Zuranski: You know, when I was talking with you, you mentioned the sales letter that you wrote that helped bring a lot of people into Jay’s training seminar. What do you think are the most important aspects of copywriting?
Carl Turner: In copywriting – well, in marketing there are three things: there’s the list, then the offer, then the copy. I would say that the most important thing in copywriting is the attempt to bring those three things together. You have to understand what your target market’s looking for and then you have to have a valid offer. There has to be an offer they can understand. That’s where copywriting comes in.
Carl Turner: So it’s the combination of those three factors that allow people to go from the “paralysis of analysis” to enjoy a good or service. That’s where they exchange their hard-earned dollars for a feeling. That’s all that sales is – exchanging hard-earned dollars for a feeling. But those feelings really make the world go “round”.
Ralph Zuranski: What do you think are the things that motivate people to actually invest in things that will be beneficial to them?
Carl Turner: Again, I think it is successful marketing. Because otherwise, they would have to do all the research on their own and if you had to research every product you buy, you wouldn’t buy very much! So you wouldn’t have a chance to enjoy very much. So if you have good salesmen or good marketing people, they allow you to determine what you would like to have and to ultimately have it.
Ralph Zuranski: Everybody talks about the importance of emotions and how every sale is basically based on the emotions of the customer. What do you think about that?
Carl Turner: Well that’s true. You don’t buy a product; you buy a solution to a problem or an emotion. And all that does is allow you to understand what that is so you can again, exchange your money for that emotion.
Carl Turner: It’s not about having a car; it’s about having the admiration of your neighbors. It’s not about having a life-insurance policy; it’s about having the comfort of knowing that your family is being taken care of. Someone needs to bring these things out in order to allow people to really experience them.
Ralph Zuranski: You know it’s interesting that you as a person would be an engineer, especially a nuclear engineer! And the left-brain activity that’s required for that, as far as logical judgment, mathematic and verbal skills; How hard has it been for you to switch over to the other brain hemisphere that has the creative spontaneity, the intuitiveness, the emotional aspects that are so critical to marketing?
Carl Turner: Well it was a little harder than I thought it was going to be!
Carl Turner: But the thing that we tell people is, “find what you love in life and do it. The money will come.” See I knew I loved marketing, though I didn’t have the skill set. That was relatively apparent. It was highly dormant!
Carl Turner: But I was able to develop that over a six year period, and by developing that, I was able to achieve tremendous success in the last three years that I was working with Jay. So, I would say that, yes it was a pretty dramatic change. It was not very easy. But since I loved it, it was fun – and life is about having as much fun as you can stand.
Ralph Zuranski: What were the techniques that you used? I know that there are a lot of people that are trapped in the left side of their brain in the logical area. You know, but everybody realizes that you have to appeal to the emotional desires of the people that you are marketing to. What were the techniques that you used to shift over to the other side?
Carl Turner: Well I tried to put myself in the other people’s shoes, and that’s highly crucial in sales. So I learned how to sell to my target market. My target market was entrepreneurs, and luckily I was one too so all I had to learn was marketing. I didn’t have to research my target audience. So basically I learned what I needed to do in sales, and then I was able to turn and take those same techniques and apply those to marketing.
Ralph Zuranski: You know it’s funny that a lot of people think that sales is a dirty word and people that are salespeople, they’re despicable; they’re almost below politicians! What do you feel about the value of salespeople?
Carl Turner: Well, salespeople allow us to enjoy the standard of life that we have. If we didn’t have salespeople, we’d all be probably out on a farm and basically eating what we produce ourselves. And our quality of life would be very minimal. So thanks to the fact that we have effective salespeople and marketing people, we are able to enjoy the standard of life that we enjoy today.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you feel that marketing is one of the crucial aspects to the success of any business?
Carl Turner: Oh yes, if you don’t have successful marketing, nothing else you do matters. The example I use all the time is the difference between Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft realized that how easy it was to use a computer was based on the operating system. And so that’s what they provided and they were able to achieve 90% of the market because of it.
Carl Turner: Now Apple, who had a better product (especially the software), thought they were selling hardware and not solutions to people’s problems and as a result, they are struggling to keep 4% of the computer market. So it’s really about marketing. You can have an inferior product, as Microsoft had, and eventually gain 90% of the market or you can have a superior product and have only 4% of the market. So it’s not about having a superior product; it’s about having superior marketing (as long as your product or service works!).
Ralph Zuranski: And that’s an integral part of the In Search of Heroes program – to help kids market businesses in their local community – the individuals who are really helping in the community and giving back to the community. What’s one word of advice that you would be able to give those kids that are going to help in the marketing of those businesses?
Carl Turner: “Don’t be afraid to dream”, and then “allow yourself to think big” – have big goals. There’s no such thing as a goal that is too big, but there are goals that are too small. So you want to dream, dream big and go for it.
Ralph Zuranski: If you had three wishes for your life and for the world that would instantly become true, what would they be?
Carl Turner: Well, the first thing I would say… you want to learn to love yourself. And that’s easier said than done. Most people really don’t love themselves. If you love yourself, then you can love other people, and without reservation.
Carl Turner: The second thing is to understand that you make your world. It’s not about the world impacting you. No one can hurt you or make you happy, either one. What happens inside your world is between your ears, and once you understand that and are able to apply that, you can have a good time anytime you want to just by realizing that you control the way you feel.
Carl Turner: And the last part then is to know that if you want to enjoy the zest in life, go for your goals. That way you have a good time and even if you fail, you still have a great time trying for it. But if you don’t go for your goals, then you’ll work for someone who is working for their goals, and you won’t really have the value in your life that you could have. That’s the reason entrepreneurs are so successful in life: they’re willing to go for their goals, and the average people aren’t.
Ralph Zuranski: So you feel that failure is an important aspect of becoming a better person and in the process of attaining your goals.
Carl Turner: Oh yes. If you experience mistakes and you learn from them, that’s really what life’s all about. If you look at little companies versus big companies, the little companies are solving the problems that the big companies have solved a long time before. So as you progress in the world, you have bigger and bigger problems.
Carl Turner: Some of the small companies have problems making payroll, whereas when you get up to the Microsoft area, then you have problems with anti-trust. Well these are still real problems. What you want to do is to move up in the world and have bigger and better problems – by having problems, by failing, and then solving those problems, and then finally to bigger problems.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, I really appreciate your time Carl in answering those questions and I was wondering if you had any parting words that you would like to share with the young people about how to become as successful as you have in marketing.
Carl Turner: I would say: dream big and then go for your dream, not somebody else’s.
Ralph Zuranski: So it’s important just to follow your own path and believe that it is possible to attain them.
Carl Turner: Yes, because it is.
Ralph Zuranski: And the only way you can do that is how?
Carl Turner: By first, daring to dream. And then saying that, “I really want this” and going for it. Otherwise, you’re essentially living someone else’s dreams for them, or providing their dreams for them.
Ralph Zuranski: Now I did an interview with David Garfinkel the other night and he was just talking about the ability to fail and not consider yourself a failure, but to just learn the ways that things don’t work, do you believe that’s true?
Carl Turner: Yes, especially in marketing. If you meet a marketing consultant that tells you he’s never had a failure, either he has a bad memory or he’s not telling the truth.
Carl Turner: All marketing people have failures, but as you fail and learn from those failures, then you become better and better. And the differences between the real successes in life are the people who have made mistakes and learned from them, and the people who haven’t made those mistakes yet.
Ralph Zuranski: I’ve talked to a fair number of people so far and they just seem to believe that the faster you fail, the sooner you become a success. Do you believe in that?
Carl Turner: Yes that’s true. Now you want to do everything you can to avoid failure: learn from other people, model other people… but once you do that, then you want to experience and go for what you want as fast as possible. But do it conservatively. An example of conservatively: you test. Especially in marketing, you test small and then go for the gusto once you know what it is. Life is the same way: you test small and see what you can do, and once you understand that, then you go for your dreams.
Ralph Zuranski: So you think that testing your abilities is crucial to being successful?
Carl Turner: Oh yes. You don’t go out and run a mile the first time you go out for the track team. You want to try maybe a hundred yards, then maybe a quarter mile, half a mile, three quarters of a mile and then a mile. So you want to develop the skills, test, and then go for the gusto.
Ralph Zuranski: Everybody seems to have certain abilities that make them unique. How important is it, do you feel, to create relationships with others that have abilities that you don’t have?
Carl Turner: In life, it’s about strengths. You want to go with the strengths that you have and then find other people to handle the things that you’re not strong at. Because you never really become successful if you do all things well.
Carl Turner: What you want to do is develop a few things really well, and then find other people to handle the other items. For instance, when I did the $11 million in sales in three years, I did it with one assistant (toward the end of the third year I had two).
Carl Turner: And what I did was I delegated all the things other than the selling, and then I kept track of it. And so I was able to do that with one assistant. Before that, the company that had done the same thing I was doing had 16 employees. So by going for the strength I had (which was selling), I was able to do the same thing the other company did, and essentially do it with one other person.
Ralph Zuranski: So you feel it’s important to find people that can compliment the strengths that you have.
Carl Turner: Definitely. Also, as John Assaraf says, “find people that love to do the things that you hate to, and hire them to take care of those things.”
Ralph Zuranski: *laughing* That seems to be a peculiar perspective on life, I mean there’s so many things that everybody hates to do, and I guess it’s hard to figure out what you do that’s good.
Carl Turner: You know what you hate to do – it’s the thing you put off until last. Like, I hated paperwork and so I had an assistant that loved paperwork. As I was doing the sales, if I were to ask her to do a sale over the telephone, she would have froze up! She’d have probably quit! But she loved the paperwork.
Carl Turner: She loved what she was doing and I loved what I was doing and we would have both hated doing what the other person was doing! That’s the secret of life, I think. I guess the unspoken secret to “success” in life is to find the things that you don’t like to do, find the ones who love to do those things, and then work in a complimentary relationship.
Ralph Zuranski: So you would say that throughout your life, the people who gave you the greatest vision of being successful were your grandpa and your grandma, who were really entrepreneurs.
Carl Turner: Yes, my grandfather had all the stores with all of the cotton gins and saw mills and farms, yet he didn’t do most of the work to run them; He found other people to do it for him.
Carl Turner: He had the vision. And he had the strength of being able to pull everything together.
Carl Turner: My grandmother, she did a lot of the things herself as far as helping neighbors and things, but the fact that she gave to them allowed them to enjoy a better life and really appreciate it.
Ralph Zuranski: So you think that really, it’s the grandmas and the grandpas and the moms and the dads who are the people that have the greatest impact on the kids?
Carl Turner: Oh yes, the people who really believe in themselves. See, you can’t give something you don’t have. If you don’t have love for yourself, you can’t give it to someone else. If you don’t have the belief in yourself, you can’t give it to someone else.
Ralph Zuranski: Well Carl, I really appreciate your time in answering these questions. I know a lot of people will find it very inspiring – what you’ve been through and your suggestions on how to be successful. So again, I just want to thank you for your time and I really appreciate you being involved in the Heroes program.
Carl Turner: Well thank you Ralph. I think you are one of the unsung heroes too because by finding out what other people can do, you can then let the young people of this world know so they can avoid some of the learning curves that you and I have experienced.
Ralph Zuranski: Isn’t that the truth?! Nobody needs to have to go through and re-experience the failures that we have had!
Carl Turner: Yeah, you try to avoid that as much as possible!
Ralph Zuranski: Well again, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.
Carl Turner: Thank you Ralph.