Jeff Paul

The zany Jeff Paul achieved big success in direct marketing about 10 years ago. He's a former financial planner that used direct mail and other direct marketing techniques to become a big success. Jeff wasn't always successful however. Here's a quick chronology of his business experiences:

Jeff attended the University of Illinois where he was an anthropology major. Unsure of what direction we wanted to take in life, he ended up dropping out of college and worked for his father's retail store in Jackson Mississippi. Unhappy with that decision, he decided that taking night school classes in accounting might lead him to a better career and income. After a year of classes he moved back to Chicago and purchased an accounting franchise for $15,000 and met his business partner.

The accounting business didn't last long because Jeff's partner ended up stealing the company coffers. And to make matters worse, he had naively co-signed an SBA loan which was being called due and payable in full, a whopping $204,000 !

Jeff was down on his luck and about to give up on his dream of financial independence before meeting and working with Dan Kennedy. Jeff had signed up for one of Dan's seminars as a last bastion of hope.

Shortly thereafter, Jeff wrote his first successful direct marketing training course for Financial Planners and accountants. His company was called Profit Plan Systems. Jeff is more widely known for his mail order success course, How I Earn $4,000 a Day Sitting At My Kitchen Table In My Underwear.

I think you can still buy this course from classified and display ads in bizop magazines like Business Opportunities and Entrepreneur. I purchased it in 2000 from a full page ad. The ad was selling a "teaser" version of his course for $19.95. It was really a glorified sales letter masquerading as a product. Anyway, from there you could order the complete course for $177 or thereabouts.

Although How I Earn $4,000 a Day Sitting At My Kitchen Table In My Underwear does have some excellent gems of timeless direct marketing wisdom (like "Sell them what they want. Give them what they need."), you are probably better served by getting your marketing education elsewhere.

The main reason being the quality of the course presentation. Basically the course was a re-purposed version of the marketing system he sold to Financial Planners. Ninety percent of the material was the same. This course was somewhat disorganized, was thrown together haphazardly, pages were crooked (2nd & 3rd generation photocopies!) and had missing pages. The information presentation was disjointed. For example, it was hard to keep from getting distracted by the poor quality of the page copies.

The package included two 3-ring binders (one fat, one skinny) and 6 or 8 cassette tapes. The tape quality was so poor that I couldn't use them. Totally disenchanted by the whole experience, I didn't even bother asking for a refund. I was too annoyed.

Then it hit me...My guess is that Jeff probably sold resale rights of his CFP marketing course to other marketers who are simply photocopying seminar book pages, popping them in a 3 ring binder, making bad dupes of cassette tapes, placing national ads and selling it as a course.

Nonetheless, Jeff Paul is widely respected for his direct marketing expertise. That's because he had a great mentor in Dan Kennedy!