There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Amazing 10 “Rings of Power” for Creating Fame, Fortune, and a Business Empire Today—Guaranteed!
By Joe Vitale (2006 edition)
Let’s get a few things clear right at the start:
- There’s no evidence that Barnum ever said “there’s a sucker born every minute”—but there IS evidence that one of his competitors said it about Barnum’s customers.
- While Vitale makes a case that Barnum acted within an ethical framework based on deep religious faith, I personally have a problem with one aspect of Barnum’s ethics (more about this in a moment).
- I find the hypey subtitle a big turnoff. But because of the cover design, I didn’t even notice it had a subtitle until I sat down to write this review, despite seeing the cover daily for the roughly three weeks it took me to read the book.
- Full disclosure: Joe Vitale is an acquaintance and has been helpful in my career.
About number 2: Barnum repeatedly created promotions that deliberately misled people into attending his shows. While the material often contained disclaimers, the focus was on undermining the prospect’s rational incredulity and replacing it with irrational credulity (examples on pages 27, 32, 89, 93, and 134-135). That’s not how I run my business and I hope it’s not how you run yours. Barnum rationalized it by saying (probably correctly in 99% of all cases) that he always gave people more than their money’s worth and did not encounter disgruntled customers. But still, while he delivered value, he made deceptive promises about the “marvels” visitors would experience and then delivered value on the 850,000 (p. 64) much-less-promoted museum items.
Notice how Barnum’s copy here includes several qualifiers and prevarications, but buries them in the emotional triggers of hype while turning scientific doubt into controversy—which always sells (combining the quote from p. 108 with a version in The Independent that starts a few lines earlier but omits the 45 words beginning “and its natural existence”):
“Engaged for a short time, the animal (regarding which there has been so much dispute in the scientific world) called the Fejee Mermaid! Positively asserted by its owner to have been taken alive in the Fejee Islands, and implicitly believed by many scientific persons, while it is pronounced by other scientific persons to be an artificial production, and its natural existence claimed by them to be an utter impossibility. The manager can only say that it possesses as much appearance of reality as any fish lying on the stalls of our fish markets—but who is to decide when doctors disagree? At all events, whether this production is the work of nature or art, it is decidedly the most stupendous curiosity ever submitted to the public for inspection. If it is artificial, the senses of sight and touch are useless, for art has rendered them totally ineffectual. If it is natural, then all concur in declaring it THE GREATEST CURIOSITY IN THE WORLD.”
Look at all the “modern” copywriting tricks squeezed into that paragraph: Time limit, controversy, authority (scientists, doctors and the unidentified manager), exoticism, appeal to multiple senses, superlatives—and curiosity.
Yet Barnum himself says, “Anything spurious will not succeed permanently…[customers] will denounce you as an imposter and a swindler” (p. 210). I guess he felt that his use of weasel words and his delivery of entertainment value were enough to keep him out of that despised category.
Still, this book is worth your time. Vitale does a great job of illuminating Barnum’s core principles (pp. 19-25): 1) Choose a business that brings you joy; 2) keep your word; 3) be all-in; 4) avoid alcohol and drugs; 5) “let hope predominate, but be not too visionary”; 6) focus on just one kind of business; 7) hire well—and fire when you hired poorly; 8) commit to substantial marketing; 9) stay frugal/avoid vanity and extravagance; 10) rely on your own efforts—”be the architect of [your] own fortune.”
Despite #10, Barnum bet heavily on joint ventures. He took risks on unknown performers, made them superstars, paid them well—often a percentage of the gate—and engendered deep loyalty from these partners. He was also extraordinarily adept at marketing, using both paid ads and media publicity extensively. And his fans really did feel like they’d gotten more than their money’s worth, because he believed “the noblest art is that of making others happy” (p. 65).
Barnum is also a model for thriving despite tragedy. His life was a continuous exercise in resilience (pp. 43-44, 141-153) as his uninsured museum was destroyed twice by fire, his mansion burned down, he went bankrupt, he was briefly jailed, and even faced a lynch mob ready to hang him—not to mention the devastating deaths of multiple loved ones. But he always bounced back.
I also admire the way Vitale frequently shows how Barnum’s acumen can be applied in the modern world, as well as the historical continuity of Barnumesque techniques through PR geniuses like Edward Bernays in the 1930s (p. 75) and Paul Hartunian in the 1980s (p. 130).
So yes, get your hands on a copy—but go in with your eyes and ears open to the story behind the story.
