A Very Dangerous Idea

Welcome to this week's episode of the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today you have a chance to listen in to a presentation Dan Kennedy did called Absolute Autonomy. I hope you enjoy this week's episode.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril.

They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by.

Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless. His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. For all the stuff we teach, one of the biggest reasons to do it is to be able to then do business on your terms, but also doing business on your terms is actually sort of a marketing strategy in and of itself. So there's a closed loop. This is a, this is a dangerous but important idea. It is dangerous because people don't approve of it. For most people, even thinking about themselves in this context is uncomfortable, but there's a concept we're going to talk about called earned entitlement. And so earned entitlement is you are entitled to certain rewards because in fact you earned them. So a lot of people are running around looking for unearned entitlement. I believe in earned entitlement in Once, when you have earned entitlement, you ought to exercise it. So when you have done responsible things, when you've done smart things, when you've worked hard, when you've done good marketing, you have a— you can consider yourself superior to the majority. If you deliver exceptional service and quality, you should consider yourself a superior being. If you get up every morning on time and go to work, and actually go to work. You should consider yourself a superior being with earned entitlement. You get a lot of pushback when you operate as if you have earned entitlement, and most of all, it's in conflict with your own conditioning, right? You have been taught and the pushback you get, it looks like this, right? What makes you think? How dare you? Pride goeth before the fall for those of you that are religious. His arrogance, who died and made you king? Do you really think the world is supposed to revolve around you? So let's be clear, okay? Their— all these other people's problem with you is not with the general ideas of autonomy and independence and control. Their problem is with you having it. That's their problem. And most importantly, be clear, it's their problem. Further, they will pretty much have a problem with you if you abandon it anyway. Because if you are successful at all, if you are in control at all, everybody else who isn't has a problem with that. There is a list in there of the 19 extreme autonomy factors. So number 1 is A belief system of open architecture. What does that mean? So every option's on the table, but there's damn few options. So open architecture really is all options are on the table. All options. You rethink, you constantly reexamine everything. Should we sell this way? Should we sell to this person? Should we Should we sell at this price? Should we change the whole deal? Should we be in a different business? Should we— Very few people are this open. Open architecture is really important to get things the way you want them to be, because most of the time, the way you want things to be are not the way they already are or the way somebody else has designed them to be. So open architecture. The amazing power of can't gets in everybody's way. Moral authority, another big thing for autonomy. You gotta really think you're a superior being entitled to a superior being's rights, privileges, and existence, meaning you get to dictate and have things the way you want them to be. Number 3: highly developed, extremely valuable skill or toll position. Money isn't everything, but it's hard to buy autonomy without it. But better than money, more leverageable than money in many cases, is a toll booth through which a whole lot of people want to get through and will pay to get there. For mostly, the way you can create that for yourself is with relationship, good relationship with a sufficient-sized herd, a sufficient-sized group of customers, clients, or patients of sufficient quality and value that other people will pay you a lot of money to get to them through your toll booth with your endorsement. Failing that, the other, the other part of this, or the replacement for that, which almost anybody can get is a highly developed, high-value skill for which you can command so much money that dollars for hours, manual labor, still can buy you a lot of autonomy, and you can make incredible income demands and other demands because your skill is so great. So the local guy at the Doc in a Box clinic down the road from you wherever you live, he is not in this position. The number one heart surgeon in America is in this position. Probably the top 10 heart surgeons in America are in this position. The top in a lot of fields are in this position. People get on airplanes, fly across the world, fly across the, fly across the country to go to them. So a highly developed, highly valuable skill, right? The marketing pathway is one way to get there, because the person who can make the customer come through the door has the highest value skill in the world, right? So let's think toll booth for a minute. So, it is often said that the President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world. And whatever day I came here demonstrated that that's not true. Alright? Because Oprah didn't put her camera crew and her set on a plane and schlep to the White House to tape her show with the president and his wife. They got on a plane and hauled their butt to Chicago, woke up the air traffic controller, got in a car, drove to downtown Chicago to tape the Oprah Show. You tell me who's the most powerful person in the world. Well, who comes to who tells us a lot which by the way is why you want to engineer your business so they're coming to you, you ain't going to them. Highly developed skill. Here's how powerful that is. I've had them load up as many as 12 people in a plane, fly across country to come meet with me for half a day. Why? Because I won't go. That's why. I'm not going. Sorry. Yeah. So now how do you get away with that? You have a skill that is of extraordinary value that actually or by perception they don't think anybody else has. That's how you do that. But understand, I got that. And I didn't get it by scratching off a scratch-off ticket. But I didn't get it, you know, with 8 years at Harvard either. I got it myself. If I can do it, anybody else can do it. Earl Nightingale's old rule was, If you actually studied for 3 hours a day for 3 years in a row one subject, how to do something, and you studied everything you could lay your hands on for 3 hours a day for 3 years, you'd rank as one of the top 10 experts in that field in the country. Predetermination by clientele. Kind of links to the other one. So here's— Here's how powerful predetermination is. This was Dean Martin's Rolls-Royce, which I own. Now here's what's important to know about that. A, I didn't, not like I was Googling looking for a Rolls-Royce, right? So I wasn't looking for another car, I certainly wasn't looking for a Rolls-Royce, I wasn't interested in any of that, okay? Until we happened to walk by Dean Martin's Rolls-Royce. Now for reasons that, they're irrelevant, but That changes everything for me. Price didn't matter, right? They could have said anything, probably, and it would have been— why? Because by the time I walked, I don't know, 20 minutes around the car place after seeing the car and thinking about it, I was predetermined to get that car. No other. So it's not like, oh, let's— could I have paid less for a 1986? Probably. I don't know. Could I pay— I don't know, because I never have checked. I don't care. So I was predetermined to get that car. Now almost everybody in their life at one time or another has experienced predetermination. At one time or another, you have been absolutely predetermined to live in a particular community, and if that's the case, real estate prices, right next door to that community don't matter, nothing, because you've predetermined. We're going to jump to, we are going to jump to 11 and 12. Clarity. Napoleon Hill said definiteness of purpose. So if you really want to achieve it, if you really want just near total autonomy, everything the way you want it to be, you get to do business the way you want to do it, with who you want to do it with, at the price you want to do it, all the definition of autonomy, here's the deal. It can't be procedural modus operandi. It has to be your purpose. It has to be your chief overriding governing objective has to be that you get to do business the way you want to do it, with who you want to do it on. How often do you cede to the temptation to violate your own system of self-governance, which is based on autonomy as your chief purpose? And you really can judge how serious you are about all this by how often you do it and how often you know you didn't, that you were tempted, you were asked, you were coerced, you were threatened, you were pushed, and you didn't. You have to decide if your autonomy is up for sale or if it is subject to compromise. I'm going to jump to 16 and 17. This is a biggie. It's sort of an all-encompassing biggie. The question essentially was, if you can only name one secret to success, what's the one thing? Most businesses, even if they look simple, when you start to see behind everything that is going on, for that business to be profitable. It's a complicated, complex mess. I mean, painful. But, and we get paid. People like who make 7 figures or build big businesses, you know, one of the things we're getting paid for is our tolerance for pain. That's what we're not getting paid for, our skill. We're not getting paid for our talent. We're not getting paid for our deliverables, we're getting paid for our tolerance for pain. This search for the simple, right, is a mistake. With it comes— so with it comes all industry norms are there to limit behavior and activity, right? And so if you want to boil— if you still want to boil Success down to one secret. I'll give it to you. Here it is. It is defiance. Period. So, of everything. Everything. Industry norms, other people's opinions, rules, laws. So defy traffic law, defy everything. Lawyers can advertise because a guy named Van Osteen defied a law against lawyers advertising. If you're a lawyer in the room and you can place an ad, you owe him a debt of gratitude. Your little doohickey you're walking around with, you owe a guy named Bill McGowan a debt of gratitude because he defied what everybody believed were federal statutes that gave a monopoly on long-distance telephone to AT&T. He defied the law. Right? So defiance of everything. All the intimidation, all the, "You're a workaholic," everything you can think of that people are throwing at you to limit, restrict, interfere with your autonomy, you have to be in a state of defiance about it. Second linked point, number 17. Firm, swift, violent resistance to their interference with your autonomy. So when I do make a mistake, and I do commit the sin of violating my own system of self-governance, and I have somehow found myself interacting with somebody who is not capable of or willing to play by my rules, It's my fault, it's not theirs, but I can't fire me. So there's only two choices to be made, and one of them is sort of off the table. So they've got to go, right? I have this litmus test that says if I wake up three mornings in a row thinking about you and we're not sleeping together, okay, and you can't take half my assets, Then you've got to go, right? And I immediately got to begin thinking about how to get rid of you quicker, not later, by the way. Not trying to— three strikes and you're out deal. So yeah, try and train them, but if they won't respond to training, you know, take the dog back to the pound. Right? Let somebody else figure out how to stop them from peeing on your favorite chair. Same thing with clients, customers, patients, vendors, staff. There's a lot of them. What is there, 300 million people now in this country? And we're not even talking the globe. There's a lot of people. There's, there's, I don't got to keep any of them. You don't either. If the patient won't show up on time, next patient. If the vendor won't show up on time, next vendor. If somebody is constantly irritating you about X, next person. They've got to go. Firm, swift, if necessary violent. I want to actually talk about the most important things on the blueprint list though. Number 3 on your blueprint list is conducive environment, place strategy. So most people let themselves work, sell, manage, negotiate, write, speak under disadvantageous circumstances. Now it is my contention you ought to be able to do whatever it is that you do, whatever your chief and core competencies are, you ought to be able to do them under the worst possible conditions. But you ought not be testing your ability to do that on a regular and frequent basis. But it's amazing how many people do. So here's what goes on, for example, in the typical chiropractor's office. Where does the typical chiropractor do his report of findings, which is his sales presentation? It's a closet. It has a desk just overloaded with uncompleted insurance forms and paperwork, right? But if you give them a closing room, if you give them a room that's actually built, designed, equipped, engineered for one purpose and one purpose only, making that sale in an environment conducive to making that sale, his results go through the roof. Where are a lot of people making important business calls? So they are making their important business call while driving down the road, at 70 miles an hour weaving through traffic, eating, and talking on their cell phone with the window down, and playing Angry Birds on their GPS. I mean, that's how they're making an important call. Well, you're not that superhuman. I hate to break the news to you, right? You're not that good. So this idea of choreographing the most conducive environment possible where you can do well is important. There is a thing called home field advantage. It applies to most businesses, right? So I can speak anywhere, but I do best when I have totally controlled the environment. I can write anywhere, but I do best when I'm writing in a particular environment that I've built for writing with all my resources at hand and zero distractions and no window to look out of. So you should be able to work anywhere, but why not do your work in a place that you can do your best work? So you want home field advantage. You want people coming to you if you can. You want to totally control the environment so that it is to your advantage. You get to decide the conditions under which You will work. Autonomy must be protected. It's number 6 on your blueprint list. Eternal vigilance. What's happening? What threats occurring in my industry? Who's doing what? Who's broken through the barrier? Who is starting to screw with me? Act quickly. Absolutely resist open borders, right? Access, access has to be managed and controlled. And if you are in a business where you feel that if you're not instantly, constantly, always accessible, you will you will suffer, you will lose. What does that tell you? It should tell you you have screwed up the predetermination part of the business. You screwed it up. There is no business, except maybe, maybe bail bondsman, maybe, Somebody at the bail bondsman office has to be accessible all the time, because when you're making one phone call that determines whether you're going to spend the night in the small gray cell with two guys that look like Dwight, you, you, you, you, you, you like kind of want to be able to reach somebody, you know? But pretty much anybody else does not need to be immediately accessible unless They have messed up predetermination, right? Awareness of and protecting yourself from your own chief weakness. So that's the donut story from before. So if your chief weakness is sob stories, you can't put yourself in a position where you listen to sob stories. If your chief weakness is whatever it is, you gotta protect yourself from it. Or it will get you. Awareness of and resistance to psychological and emotional manipulation. Remember, everybody else has a problem with your autonomy. They don't like it because you got it and they don't. So they do not like it, and they will pull out all the stops to mess with it. All the stops. They're going to be sending you the film on your iPhone of your little child crying because you aren't at the game. That's what she's going to send you. And every version of it you can think of. They are going to pull out every stop there is. You got to be aware of it. You got to be sensitive to it. You got to fight it. Here's the last one. This is pretty cool. Evaluate each item. By item, I mean thing you're going to do, thing you're not going to do, person you're going to enter into some sort of relationship with, company you're going to enter into some sort of relationship with. Evaluate each item in terms of whether or not it's strengthens or weakens your personal power and autonomy. Because everything you do does. It either pluses it or it minuses it. There are no neutrals. And if that's— if it's your overriding purpose and objective, then you have to evaluate everything in these terms. Thank you very much.

Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love You love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow. And the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. Now this free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at noBSletter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month. One from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.