Why not make a fortune as a nobody? Jim Varney did it until he couldn’t keep from becoming famous. He died a multimillionaire. How? He focused on local needs.
So very often today we read of one entrepreneur after another trying to make it big universally online or by franchising nationwide or by becoming famous to tens of thousands of contacts via social media to make a killing in global traffic income as an influencer or by using social media ads or promoting affiliate programs or international multi-level marketing.
But who pays attention to the millionaire nearer to home, you know, the business owner focused on the local needs? Who is an entrepreneur in the local market?
That’d be Jim Varney. That’s how he made his pennies. And they piled up.
Varney became a local market sensation playing a character named Ernest T. Whorral. Ernest had a friend called Vern. Vern always sat behind a camera. Vern always minded his own business, until his nosy neighbor Ernest showed up to start a monologue with the words: “Hey, Vern.”
These Words Made Jim Varney A Fortune. How?
Varney did ads only for regional clients. His gags, his jokes, his style didn’t really change. He would use the same material with different products. But he would do so in different regions of the country.
His audience was local and would associate him with one local company through a local TV station. If somebody happened to be outside the region to see another Varney ad on another local station, it would be obvious that Varney was repeating the gag with another local company. But these were different markets, different clients, and different viewers.
Varney followed this technique to riches. He did not do national advertising or metro areas like New York or Los Angeles or even Nashville. Yet by 1984 he had made more than 800 commercials, which finally drew massive media attention to him.
All along, nevertheless, he had believed that doing national ads would burn out his character Ernest. He was right. He stuck to local markets until he got too big for them.
Then, he went national. Hollywood saw potential for a buck and gave him chance for a few movies. But it all started locally. There was money locally for the one who knew where to find it.
Tap Into Your Local Market For Riches To Come
In The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph.D explain:
Why is it that you’re not wealthy? Perhaps it’s because you are not pursuing opportunities that exist in the marketplace. There are significant business opportunities for those who target the affluent, the children of the affluent, and the widows and widowers of the affluent. Very often those who supply the affluent become wealthy themselves. Conversely, many people, including business owners, self-employed professionals, sales professionals, and even some salaried workers, never produce high incomes. Perhaps it’s because their clients and customers have little or no money!”
Who is an entrepreneur locally? The one who intimately knows his neighbor. Varney knew his local audience and, therefore, where the local money was hidden at.
Actually, we were committed to quite a few markets,” said Jim Varney in an interview in 1984 with Joan Lunden of “Good Morning America”. “Right at the beginning, we started at an amusement park in Kentucky, and then we went to a dairy in Nashville and one in North Carolina. And the dairies picked on it very quickly. So, we were in, like, 16 markets before we knew it.” Why not national ads? “Because we were committed to the local markets.”
The money was at the local level, right in his backyard.
This should stimulate you to avoid replicating the noisy marketing gurus and attention-seeking celebrity wannabes, who sell you programs for building huge audiences on the premise that only by getting thousands and thousands of stranger eyes far and wide to pay attention to your offers will you be able to succeed at making a buck.
Russell Conwell, author of “Acres of Diamonds”, once said,
Many of us spend our lives searching for success when it is usually so close that we can reach out and touch it.”
Varney did not go seek for diamonds where they couldn’t be easily reached. He reached into his own backyard and found the gems right below the surface…acres of them!
Do you know your neighbors? Do you know what they want that no one but you can offer?
What story can you tell me about the needs of your local, well-off neighbors? Are you another Jim Varney or just another Vern?