Puppet String Marketing…

… Is the brainchild of Kenneth Yu (me, as I write this) and Laura Kuimba, my fiancee.

In case you can’t be bothered to read through our riveting story or don’t have the time to complete it, here’s the gist of it:

Like Most Good Stories, It Started With a Girl

• I met an amazing beautiful girl who completes me in every way, and she’s Zimbabwean African. Naturally, we got engaged a few months late.
• According to Zimbabwean culture, I needed to pay a wedding dowry to the family.
• The unfortunate thing is with a 2 million percent inflation rate and a dire economic state, the dowry can be really expensive–from cattle, cars to houses.
• I started a new company called PUPPET STRING MARKETING and we’re doing a product launch to raise enough $ in anticipation of all these staggering expenses, not to mention newlywed headaches as well.
• The product is a Twitter marketing system known as the SALVATION SYSTEM. A step-by-step blueprint of my Twitter secrets in growing your business, getting JV partners and putting your personal branding on steroids.
• So, if you want to give us a much-appreciated wedding gift, we’ll ensure you get a nice Christmas as well. We welcome you to the company –and product launch — with a difference.

But, if you have the time, get comfy because I guess I want to share me and my fiancee’s story with you so that you can get the whole picture.

Rewind….

I start with my background.

God has blessed me with a gift for words and creativity since a young age. And over the past few years prior to going into the world of online marketing, I was part of Ogilvy doing mad men-type stuff. T

VC’s, print ads, that kinda thing. But God opened doors to this rookie by his grace, in 2 months I won my first award, and by the end of my 3 year tenure I was the most awarded creative in the agency with a slew of prestigious ad awards. God called me out, I obeyed, I ended up in MindValley as a direct response copywriter. God again blessed me with the backstage pass to the world’s top personal development and internet marketers.

My fiancee–Laura–came from a vastly different world.

When I first met Laura, my fiancee, I knew my life would never be the same.

I mean, even outwardly, that itself was an obvious statement.

Not only was she a medical student studying in Malaysia, She was black Zimbabwean, and its a rarity in Chinese culture for these 2 cultures to even interact, much less marry.

Her chocolate skin, sparkling brown eyes, and braided hair were foreign to me.

But even though the cultural differences were a challenge we could overcome easily enough, it was the subsequent incidents that I was even more ill-prepared for.

You see, like all people in love and want to spend the rest of our lives together, we got engaged.

So needless to both our amazement, we found that we were PERFECT for one another, so incredibly compatible. We got together 21 June 2007. Through a string of divine-inspired events, we ended up engaged on 22nd December 2007. Prior to this we felt it was too early to be this committed but somehow God was leading us in2 that direction, so we obeyed.

And this is where the story got interesting.

As you may know, Zimbabwe is basically a banana republic at this point. At a staggering MILLION percent inflation rate and the dictator Mugabe ruling the country, the economic situation for its people was really dire. Unfortunately, Laura’s family was one of its casualties and funds dried up for her studies.

Laura became a university dropout on Jan this year.

That was a really tough point for both of us–I was in between jobs and money was so tight she didn’t even have pocket money. She only ate when I brought her out to it because she 100% leaving off me. And for an independent intelligent young woman, it was really a bitter pill for her to swallow.

And it broke my heart that someone with such a seemingly bright future would have that cruelly yanked away from her.

Worst, even though the more logical solution was for her to return to Zimbabwe, God seemed to be saying for her to stay put here.

But how were we going to carry on? She had no job and her student visa were to expire soon. My salary was not enough for the both of us.

Like Most Good Stories, It Started With a Girl

But we hit two ‘minor’ snags.

The first one is that her customs-like a lot of African nations–we were required to pay a dowry to the bride’s family–IN CATTLE.

Yes, you got that right. The average Zimbabwean dowry is 8 cows.

That was something I didn’t mind. After all, I was to marry the most beautiful girl in the world.

But the crazed tyrant Robert Mugabe was still in power, and that I minded a whole lot more.

You see, as we were going out in Malaysia, things were really bad at home. Despite international pressure, Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe still clung on to power, and the country paid the heavy economic price.

In fact, the 2 million inflation rate took a toll on the people, and recently they came out with the 100 Billion Dollar note.

As mocked as that is by all those inconsiderate comedy shows…

It Is Really No Laughing Matter…

for the people of Zimbabwe. People are dying everyday.

As a result, the Dowry is looked to as a way out. So people are demanding OBSCENE amounts just as a way to get out.

In fact, there have been reports of demands for houses, cars and mobiles in addition to the cattle.

In case you have not gathered, that’s a lot of coin. And even as a copywriter earning a comfortable income, something drastic needed to be done.

I needed to get clients, and to get clients fast.

I turned to Twitter, since there was so much buzz about it being a potent networking tool.

I used this slightly unconventional strategy since the market was saturated with copywriters willing to do it for rock-bottom prices, and flooding all the conventional vehicles like Elance and job boards.

As I didn’t (and shouldn’t) compete on price, I decided to go the whole social media route.

Frankly, I didn’t know what to expect. After all, tons of people were telling me that this whole Web 2.0 shebang was purely hype, and nothing more.

But to my utter surprise, I started getting gigs from day 1 itself. And a mere 3 weeks later, this was my results:

• 1314 warm targeted leads, without even spending a cent on PPC.
• $10,000 worth of value in terms of consultation and JV relationships.
• Strategic alliances with half a dozen internet millionaires.

At that time, I still had no website, no list and no name.

Since then, I now have a mailing list, a website, and connections with nearly every “guru” in the scene.

And my pipeline is filled with at least 6 figure’s worth of projects in various niches with various experts.

Isn’t that a dream for you? To network with fire-in-their-belly, think-and-GROWN-rich entreprenuers who can help you take your business to the next level.

All this without all those fancy Twitter tools and sites. I just used the main site as it is.

Then, the emails and DMs came from the marketing gurus. I was amazed that…

They were asking me how I used Twitter the way I did!

It was then I realized is that my success was an exceptional case…

So many marketers (even the high level ones) are struggling on Twitter with dismal results, and they simply don’t know why.

So what I did was to reverse-engineer my explosive process, and given my persuasionist background (I was a 6 figure copywriter after all)…

And then, Puppet String Marketing was born…

But I guess beyond the immediate financial need, is my urgent need to start talking and rallying Christian marketers.

You see, being inside the heart of what’s perhaps the top New Age internet powerhouse, it has opened my eyes to a lot of things.

The one scary thing I see is the whole Tower of Babel thing going on, all this gurus get together and mastermind how to “elevate the consciousness” of the world. My bosses are even getting together with Gary Goldstein–the producer of Pretty Woman to product a “the Secret” type movie for raising the conscioness of kids!

Their vision is to change the lives of 10 billion people. They’re so ambitious that they want to impact the next unborn generation.

I’ve been asked a few times whether me and my fiancee are going into ministry, the answer is yes, but not in a full time sense. We believe we’re going to impact the world for Christ the way these new age gurus want to take over the world. It angers me they’re selling half-truths to a hurting world where only the Gospel of Christ is the sole answer.

We want to do it through the Internet. Through penetrating MNC’s. Through raising up a generation of investors that will pour the funds to where the world needs it most. Through starting charities that r run like businesses so that we can bypass needless beuracrasy and red tape.

Me and my fiancee are looking for allies for this cause, to think big and change the world, and not rest until the lives are touched and God’s glory literally fill the earth.

God has brought us this far, he will not leave us hanging.

I don’t really know where this is heading, but maybe its a roundabout way of saying that yes, I’m human, and that email marketing and copywriting referrals are much appreciated.

But beyond that, I really want to find a way to just connect with you guys. To get and give support. To mastermind in a way to change the world.

Oh well,  I don’t really know how to end this–but maybe just a request that you pray for us in this challenging time. And we’ll keep you in prayer as well.

Sincerely,
Kenneth Yu, and Laura Kuimba-Soon-To-Be-Yu