Unfortunately, as the ascent and strangleholds of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook shows all of us, “Network Effect” normally costs tens and hundreds of millions – even billions. Almost nobody gets a shot at being a Silicon Valley “Unicorn.” 99% of those who do, get stabbed to death. Dead on arrival.

In 2018, I conceived an alternative. I called it “Network Effect for Mere Mortals” – the Planet Perry version of what makes eBay, Uber and Airbnb competition-proof.

Back then, to be honest, it was more theory than reality.

However, Ed Harycki had sold LoanBuilder to PayPal for megabucks 3 months before. We had been scheming together for a couple of years. So I definitely was NOT making any of this up.

I called it Rosetta Stone. My master formula for competition-proofing small companies. It was more a patchwork of essential patterns and fragments than a polished, “proven” formula that others had repeated 100 times.

Yet I was confident. We held the now-legendary Rosetta Stone seminar on three gorgeous days in May in Chicago. People are still buzzing about that event. Astute Planet Perry members began executing the strategies I unveiled there.

Today: patterns and fragments no more. It’s the veritable engine room of Planet Perry. It’s how we grow businesses from $1 million to $10 million while making them simpler, more irresistible and bulletproof. Even $100K businesses (like David Nadler’s Facebook agency below) use it to make their companies more elegant, easier to run, and more appealing to clients.

It has already put 20-40 “in the know” Planet Perry members 5-10 years ahead of the pack. Real years. Not internet dog years.

Tom Donald is a Roundtable member from London. Musician. He founded London Contemporary School of Music.

You would think music lessons, traditionally face-to-face, would tank during COVID. For the vast majority of music teachers that was true.

But Tom pulled record sales in 2020, despite the fact that he had to completely pivot away from in-person instruction and onto Zoom.

Exactly a month before COVID slammed Europe with hurricane force, Tom arrived at Rosetta Stone London. As a result, Tom flipped deep disadvantages into advantages and re-oriented his entire team to virtual, far beyond what anyone would normally expect an online piano lesson company to do.

He and his team shattered previous assumptions about their business. Unlike all his competitors, cowering in their spare bedrooms and praying for government relief checks, Tom recognized that nearly every disadvantage could, by modestly applying technology, switch into a Network Effect for Mere Mortals Moat.

Now everything that used to work against Tom (like the fact that students could no longer go for in-person lessons) works TO TOM’S ADVANTAGE. Not only acquiring customers but building a big fat moat around his castle.

When COVID flipped Tom’s universe from 80/20 to 95/5, Tom seized command of the “Top 5% tier.” Post-pivot, he’s adding international clients far beyond London, further strengthening his moat.

This transformation is accelerating in industry after industry. The other day I had a consult with Chris in the construction business. He runs a narrow niche firm, sourcing custom product from various suppliers and drop shipping to customers. All his business is driven by his website.

Chris already applied Network Effect for Mere Mortals to make 35% profit margins in an industry where 8-12% is the norm; to become the undisputed #1 player.

Chris had already made THE SHIFT. His biz is now a well-oiled machine and he spends several hours a day networking and indulging his curiosity. His business is up during COVID (record sales, 8% over last year), but this is just the beginning.

He says, “During the 2008 crash, we had been forced to try a bunch of crazy stuff. Back then I discovered a specific way of shipping product that would make entire parts of the supply chain unnecessary. I’ve been keeping it in my back pocket.

“The other day I realized, if we could solve [he went on to describe his very specific chicken-and-egg problem, common to ALL Network Effect businesses] we could turn this entire industry upside down.”

I goaded him: “Chris, what would it take to prototype this thing, operate in ONE city or state, six weeks from now – even if you have to carve the product out of a bar of soap?” The answer was already inside him; all it took was someone to ask.

Chris’s next adventure is: Turning his tiny corner of the construction industry upside down and shaking it until all the spare change falls out of its pockets.

An entire calcified good-old-boys-club that is NOT serving customers, NOT innovating, NOT earning its bread is going to tumble like icicles crashing to the ground from a roof on a late winter day.

THE SHIFT, baby. Long live the revolution.

Why NOW is Prime Time for You to Make Your Move:

• Most businesses are waiting for the wrecking ball to come smashing in – yet pretending it can never ever happen (like Americans in February 2020 assuming “coronavirus” could never jump from Italy to the whole friggin’ United States… remember?)
• Most industries are ripe for disruption. When my son Caden graduated from high school, we rented a party awning for the backyard. The awning guy arrived at 7:30am with the wrong model. “So sorry, I’ll go back and get the right one. Be back in an hour.” My day was full of appointments I had to shuffle around. 2 ½ hours later he returns. This sort of incompetence is rampant,and every time someone solves it, they can also, if they choose, consolidate dozens of local businesses into well-run regional or national concerns. Will it be you? Or the other guy?
• COVID has merely accelerated what was already underway – world is more web centric, more network effect based. Have you kept up?
• In many industries, he who owns the leads and owns the web traffic owns the business. We call this Tactical Triangle Takeover. This means agencies who are real strategists (and not merely carpetbaggers) can grab their industry by the balls and own it. But it takes balls to do it, and not everyone has ‘em.

If your business has not yet experienced THE SHIFT, the answer is not another band-aid, not another sales gadget. The problem is usually the engine itself.

If you’re still hustling to take whatever business that comes in, if you’re saying ‘yes’ to everyone in pants, if your product offerings are all over the place, if you still can’t volley back with a definitive answer to what do you do that NOBODY ELSE can do, we’re ready to help you fix that.

• Rosetta Stone: Activate makes THE SHIFT easy and automatic. In Rosetta Stone 2018 I handed out 12 powerful tools. In Rosetta Stone: Activate I’ve streamlined this to one assessment tool, the Rosetta Scorecard, and one Rosetta Process Flow Roadmap. John Fancher will help you complete these during the Implementation sessions. These X-Ray tools reveal the hidden skeleton of the scalable, irresistible, competition-proof enterprise.
• In this course we make it simple and straightforward for you to hone a flaccid Unique Selling Proposition into a clutter-penetrating Definitive Selling Proposition. Your USP will improve dramatically in 45 minutes, and you’ll emerge with a roadmap to dominating your marketplace with a power DSP. This will, in turn, make your paid traffic less expensive; it will increase your conversion rates; it will deepen your ability to pay for advertising, thus you acquire more new customers with greater ease than ever before.
• We’ll prune and pare down your sales message to exactly resonate with your most desirable buyer. This makes your emails, social media posts, ads and promotions more effective and less confusing. (A confused mind always says no.) Don’t work harder – market smarter.
• We will laser-identify your most red-hot, bleeding neck ideal customer so you meet the need none of your competitors can or will meet. This permits you to sell in a competitive vacuum, releasing you from the relentless pressure from competitors.
• We’ll develop a road map for your most ideal offer, striking the ideal balance between “what your customer wants” and what you can effectively and authoritatively deliver. Usually this is 30% adding features and 70% REDUCING features. (Not the other way around!) This lightens your workload and overhead. It strengthens your margins and profitability.
• Suddenly you see with tremendous clarity how easily overlooked ingredients in your business turn out to be invisible moats and levers against encroaching competitors.
• This is incredibly valuable, because your ability to think – breathe – act – create – enjoy – put money in YOUR bank account and not only always invest it back into the business – has more to do with your immunity to competition than any other single thing. We will strengthen those competitive barriers. Your best moats are largely invisible until they become invincible!
• This refreshingly simplifies your life and opens up new s-p-a-c-e that restores your depleted creativity reserves.

This is not for you if you’re basically a representative, dealer, distributor, reseller or franchisee; or if for some other reason you do not enjoy the latitude to change the product being offered. Also, if inertia from family members, partners or employees will prohibit you from making signature changes, this is not for you.

You’re a fit for Rosetta Stone: Activate if you want to grow steadily without exhausting yourself; clearly differentiate yourself from all rivals; and become resolutely difficult to knock off.

In order to qualify for this program, you must have a functioning business that provides services, manufactured physical products, software, consulting or media, and you must have control of the final product that is delivered. You must be willing to butcher sacred cows.

If you are a “marketing crack cocaine addict,” this likewise is not for you. If you are still desperately clinging to the fantasy that you are merely one [insert tool / technique / method / manipulation / software subscription / hypnosis trick of choice] from solving all of your biggest problems… then go ahead and sign up for the next webinar that crosses your Facebook feed, and give somebody else a few thousand bucks. Planet Perry is for grownups.

The way we help you experience THE SHIFT (scalability, magnetic attraction and customer immunity) is through:

1. The Rosetta Stone Scorecard, which reveals the differential between where you are now and where your business potentially can be, in specific areas.
2. Rosetta Process Road Map, which actively guides you through the steps necessary to hone your DSP to perfection, enact Network Effect for Mere Mortals and engineer an irresistible sales story.
3. John Fancher’s Live Implementation Sessions, which will come immediately after the detailed case studies of my successful students. You will have ample opportunities to ask questions not only generally but specific to your own situation.
4. You can take the Activate+Execute Upgrade ($3000) and get personalized implementation sessions with Robert Michon and Joshua Long, who co-instruct Advanced Mastery Network with me. AMN is the $45,000 one-year program where we implement Rosetta Stone concepts hands-on with a small group of highly skilled entrepreneurs.

Rosetta Stone: Activate helps you achieve THE SHIFT through a series of detailed case studies and in-person training sessions with generous Q&A. You get to look over the shoulder of some of my best students and see exactly how they connected the dots.

These are people who operate construction companies, are subject matter experts, software developers, niche industry leaders, coaches, trainers, agencies and consultants. Their businesses have become simpler and easier to operate while becoming easier to explain and more difficult to replicate.

You get the original Rosetta Stone recordings which contain magical priceless moments and strategies that enabled many of my students to sail through COVID-19 with nary a bite or scratch.

People raved about Rosetta Stone starting May 8, 9 and 10, 2018 when it was originally delivered. Jennifer McManus-Kirk described the event like this:

When we kicked off on Day One, it was like a lightning bolt. There was so much power and energy in this room, it was palpable. I did not take a single note. I did not want to stop listening for even one second. I was transfixed. It was like with every word spoken and every topic touched, that C.S. Lewis quote would roll through my head “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

And it had nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with fundamental universal root principles. There was tangible resonance and tuning. I still feel reverberations, and I believe I will far into the future.

On the morning of the third day, I decided to stand for the session. I am glad that I did because I don’t think I would have been able to stay in my seat. The discourse of that morning was so profoundly moving that when the call for questions came the only one I had was “Is that actually happening right now??!!??”

All that is captured on video, and you get instant access the minute you sign up.

• You get instant access to the member’s area which houses a deluxe kit of diagnostic tools that pinpoint “blind spots” and problems that have eluded you until now.
• Starting Wednesday, March 17, 2021, we’ll be delivering a series of highly interactive ZOOM sessions in which my very best students walk you through the process they used to deconstruct and re-engineer their businesses to no longer be stuck or stagnant; head and shoulders above competitors; and difficult or impossible for others to copy. These will provide ample time and space for you to ask questions, probe, explore and fully wrap your head around the Rosetta Stone strategy.
• Then John Fancher will deliver a series of Live Implementation Sessions with you, where he challenges assumptions and replaces them with you, taking your questions, doing on-the-spot hot seats and giving you time to practice. He’ll walk you through the Implementation Road Maps and help you through the steps.
• Joshua Long and Robert Michon, my right-hand men for client implementation, offer even more personalized and customized hands-on training for an additional fee. The upgrade is called “Activate+Execute”.

We designed this training for:

• Lead generators who wish to become the tail that wags the dog – Tactical Triangle Takeover really does make you king of your own micro-universe.
• Agencies who are willing and ready to pivot out of the never-ending commodity trap. If you are a typical agency, you are skimming from one Facebook account to another, one Zoom to another, one lunch-and-learn to another, hustling for clients and trying to jam them in the top faster than they fall through the bottom. Are you tired of it yet?
• Personalities, consultants and coaches who want to “rip off” proof their biz (there’s nothing worse than being just another expendable guy or gal talking about [fill in the blank]).
• Local businesses that aspire to scale nationally. There are huge unexploited opportunities in this area, so for example, businesses like RoofSimple who perfected review velocity on platforms like Google and others have an enormous, sledgehammer, crowbar advantage over all others with unlimited scalability.
• “Proposition Simplifiers” who follow Richard Koch’s signature model. (99.5% of Planet Perry members are Proposition Simplifiers, not Price Simplifiers, and most try to do both simultaneously which never ever works.)
• Niche businesses (such as a new client we’re onboarding in Australia) who must build invisible moats fast… beforeanyone notices how insanely profitable they are. WARNING: If you’re making hefty profit margins and/or growing at double digits per year, you had better sleep with one eye open. Moats are extra critical for you, sir. Businesses enjoying more than 10% profit with relative ease, and/or secretly pocketing a lot of dinero and do not want competitors to find out how lucrative it is; must expand moats before everyone else finds out!
• Service providers for whom complex tribal knowledge and especially privately stored DATA can be transformative (this is a powerful – secret – invisible moat).
• Businesses that have a shot at being #1 in online reviews in their niche. If this is you – sit up and pay attention NOW.

Once upon a time, marketing was “the bee’s knees.” Anybody who could score solid headlines and bullets could reach six figures. But today even marketers with “above average skills” are a dime a dozen.

Marketers now suffer the same doom as doctors. Haggard people, dragged by the nose from one promotion to another, one product launch to another, one diagnosis to another, one seminar to another, never really getting traction, hustling for the next gig.