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in Australia. They all play by the same rules. I ve had abusive phone calls from our opposition because we
direct-mail people. Nobody else does that, which is great.
What do they say?
They say,  How dare you write to my customers and offer them $50 off their first month s account. You ll go
broke. And I say,  Well, O.K., I will, fine.
I thought I should go into direct mail. I had a piece that I ran for a while, and then it started to get a little
corny and I got tired of it, so I stopped using it. But in the last Boot Camp, Jay said,  Don t stop using something
that s working. He also said,  Just keep mounting the same piece until it stops working. So I went home. The
thing that I hadn t used in a while pulled in an incredible $300,000 worth of business for the year. Now it started
again to pull in another $100,000 worth of business. There s a whole lot of people that didn t make their decision
the first time until they got the second letter.
Now to finish up: Two promotions worked absolute gangbusters for this year. With the first one, we were
going to spend $6,000 on advertising and promotion. I said,  Let s not spend anything on advertising, and let s
give it away at the pumps tomorrow morning.
How did the staff react to that?
The staff said,  Great! The staff always wants to sell cheap petrol. Everybody s excited. We opened up,
and in two days we blew the money that we were going to spend on the month-long advertising campaign, but we
had an instant customer base. We put so many people through that city store, that the thing was up and running as
a matured city store in two days as opposed to six months normally.
What did it really save you, not cost you?
It saved us thousands.
The other thing is the bread promotion. We put on two loaves for $1. And two loaves for $1 lost us 50¢ a
loaf, and it was a trial promotion in one store. We letter-box dropped 2,000 houses in the vicinity. At a 1,000
loaves, we had run out. And that was over a weekend. People were coming in hysterical, wanting to get this
cheap bread. I couldn t believe it. To save 50¢, so many people were doing it. The whole thing cost us $500 and
put a massive amount of people through the store.
The person didn t just walk up to the counter with the loaves of bread?
No, no. Half of them bought something else, which is great.
Most people didn t know what you were doing did they?
Ken, can I just ask you a quick question? You got started just changing your name to Bowen Petroleum
Services. How did you go about explaining that to your existing client base?
Quite frankly, our name means absolutely nothing. Back in 1962, when we formed this company, we
delivered stock food and produce to farmers. And the name Rural Distributors was applicable. In 1990, we
considered ourselves a mini oil company, and it s no longer suitable to be selling under a name like that. We told
our customers what we were doing. And not one problem. They all understood it.
They probably respected that.
As long as you re straight with them, you can tell them anything. As long as you re talking to them and at the
time you re talking to them, you re being honest.
* * *
Mexican Restaurants/Temporary Help Agency
Cal s Mexican restaurants had been in business for years and had a loyal following. But his attempts to
expand weren t working, and his narrow margins wouldn t let him spend large amounts on marketing
experiments. In this consultation, I gave him six powerful marketing approaches that can be operated on a
shoestring.
Jay: You ve been in business what, 16 years?
Cal: We re in our 17th year.
Jay: How d you get started and what gave you the idea of doing it cafeteria-style?
Cal: I wanted to get into Mexican food. When people ask,  How d you get into it? I say,  Well, I just didn t
know any better. That s really true. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn t be in restaurants. It s the
hardest business in the world.
Jay: It s terrible and you can t depend on anybody. You have to constantly watch over it. Do you have a lot of
good management people?
Cal: I have excellent management because I pay very well and we care about them. I ve got three of my children
in management. They re tougher than the others.
Jay: They would be. You re lucky.
Cal: They all care a lot. I did my flight training down in Texas and got to like Mexican food. There was an old
man here in town who sold chili and tacos and things. I paid him $5,000 and worked six weeks in his restaurant
to learn how to do it cafeteria-style.
Jay: That s smart. You probably were ahead of the trend, weren t you?
Cal: That was in 1969. There are a lot of Mexicans out here, so Mexican food has been here for a long, long
time. But it was never popular and never developed in large restaurants  just little  Mom and Pops.
Jay: How big is your main store?
Cal: Well, my largest volume restaurant is about 4,500 square feet, and seats 180. My other newer store is about
5,800 square feet and seats about 190.
Jay: The latter one doesn t do the luncheon business, I see. Does it do good dinner business?
Cal: No, it doesn t do good business either time. It s $10,000 a week lower than my original store.
Jay: In your business, when you get into certain volume levels, the marginal profit is very lavish, isn t it?
Cal: The incremental profit approaches 70%. It s over 60% and under 70%.
Jay: That s incredible. Okay. You spent $6,000 a month on radio advertisements. What do your advertisements
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