Guidelines For Accelerated Achievement

When we think of Bruce Lee, it's almost impossible to separate the man and his successes from his theory and philosophy, his clarity and goal setting, his fortitude and mindset, and the unyielding actions that made his success possible. Today on the Magnetic Marketing Podcast, we get to listen to Dan Kennedy and Dwight Woods. Now, Dwight Woods was the owner and chief operator at a martial arts academy in Miami that teaches Bruce Lee's style and philosophy of Jeet Kune Do. Now, this podcast is filled with quotable moments and things that you're going to want to hold on to. So as you were reflecting on your personal journey, your personal fortitude, the clarity of your goals, where you were trying to go, pay attention for that nugget that you need, the thing you can write on the wall, the thing you can put on your phone that is going to help change the game for you and unlock that next step of your success. Let's get started.

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Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy. Welcome to another Diamond Call. We have somebody who clearly everybody knows because he's, with very rare exception, like in hospital or dying or something, is the fast fingers, first guy through on every diamond call, uh, and has been for, I forget, a number of years. Um, beyond him being aggravating in that way, you may or may not know, but Dwight is the owner and the chief instructor at the Unified Martial Art Academy in beautiful Miami, Florida, where he uses Bruce Lee's martial art and philosophy of Jeet Kune Do. Bruce Lee, if you guys don't know, you probably ought to— it's worth Googling Bruce Lee because there's a big background story there. There's connection to Napoleon Hill, not that it's his greatest claim to fame, but some of you might know him from the Green Hornet television show. In any case, It is a very particular balanced approach, not just to the ability to rip people's heads off with your bare hands, but to success in life. And most recently, Dwight's venturing beyond local boundaries of that school with membership sites and coaching groups and concierge Jeet Kune Do, which is aimed at affluent clients, and so forth. So we're sort of turning the tables a little bit on this call. Dwight has always had a high level of fascination in the sort of productivity category. And so, as most of you know, I'm sort of obsessive about it myself. And so I'm going to let Dwight take over the call and we're going to have a discussion about what interests him in that category.

Okay. Well, so my original idea was the topic should be the no BS psychology and philosophy of success. If I remember correctly, the invitation from you was to plumb the depths of your mind on specific topics. But somehow the title became Accelerated Achievement. So I'm going to kind of work with that title that was imposed on us. And I wanted to start with this. Give me then, or give us I should say, your definition of accelerated achievement? And I'm setting you up for something here, just so you know.

All right. Well, regardless of what you're setting me up for, I mean, you know, sort of the watchword of recent years and certainly today is speed. In business, it's speed to market. And most people are impatient anyway. So speed's important. People want to know how to get from point A to point B in the fastest period of time possible. And so that factors in. I think that there's always caution about, as Drucker pointed out, efficiency at the expense of effectiveness. But I do work a lot with clients where we, to use the phenomenon tagline, where we do get more done, more accomplished, more goals achieved in a short period of time than had been achieved in a much longer period of time. And so the acceleration part is sometimes about removing obstacles, sometimes it is about new opportunities, sometimes it's just about focus, getting somebody to pick 3 out of 30 and focus their resources on them. Achievement, of course, is done, not doing or going to do. And so it is whatever objectives people define. I think Paul Myers' quote about that is as good as any, which is when most people aren't getting what they want out of life, or you can substitute business or business life if you like, it's because their goals are not clearly enough defined. So a lot of people are— in pursuit of vague pictures of where they're trying to get. And, you know, that's sort of like the difference of where you might wind up if you set out to drive to Pennsylvania or drive to Pittsburgh or drive to a particular address in Pennsylvania. And a lot of people are at the Pennsylvania stage or the Pittsburgh stage, not at the particular address stage, and those two things hook together because acceleration is impossible without clarity.

So if anybody was expecting shortcuts to achievement or you giving us the insider secrets, then this might not be the call?

Well, it's sort of like Clinton and the meaning of the word is. To the word shortcut. I mean, the way most people think about shortcuts is as making something easier, as eliminating the work.

Right, not having to do it. That's exactly— yeah, not having to do the work.

And no, this would be the wrong call and I would be the wrong guy. I mean, most— virtually all high achievers In any field are at whatever it is they're at early and late and are working harder at it. Now, not dumb harder, but harder at it than virtually all of their peers, and in many cases than they make it look. So for a variety of reasons. A lot of people like to keep their sausage factory completely hidden and only show the sausage. And that, it's okay, you know, as long as you're not deluded by it as an observer. So no, I never define shortcut as an erasure of work. Now on the other hand, I don't want to drive from Ohio to Pennsylvania by going to California either. And so it is about what will get us to the defined objective with the best combination of efficiency and effectiveness, the best combination of directness first. But in a lot of cases, you really can't leap steps either.

Yeah.

So, you know, in a narrow example, As you know, today's phone day for me, so I've been on the phone since 7 this morning, right? And I've had variations of this conversation with a couple of clients. I mean, so one who's working with Fred Katona, I mean, our, our objective is for this advertiser to be able to, to be a major daily advertiser on the Limbaugh radio program. Mm-hmm. But the way for that to happen is not just to whip out the checkbook, write a big check, and slap your radio commercial on Limbaugh, uh, because it's very expensive, uh, to play in that arena. Uh, you only get one chance to do well in that arena, etc. So now there's gonna have to be a series of somewhat painful experiments. Run in a matrix of local markets, moving up to syndicated radio. And of course, it isn't just the radio spot that has to work, it's what the radio spot is driven to has to work, what the actual offer is, on and on and on and on and on. So, you know, the shortcut would be, well, let's just test 5 different spots on Limbaugh and let's write a big check. But it would be a stupid shortcut.

Yeah. So in a recent Diamond Facts, right, you talked about, and I wish I'd been there to see the look on the guy's face, you talked about a speaker who said he hoped that he was going to do well, and you said that you were going to do between $87,000 and $125,000 or you're going to be really pissed.

Yeah.

Right? And so he says to you, well, how do you get those numbers? And then you go through the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, almost 7 things. That you had done to come up with that number, right? Now, so does that qualify as a shortcut?

Well, let me say this. It's, it's actually more about effectiveness than efficiency, but so in, in a big broad sense, expectations govern results, right? But a lot of people take that idea and they have it over, way over, sort of on the metaphysical side in the same arena as, depending on what branch of that thinking you want to go to, whether you want to go to Peale and positive thinking or you want to go to the manifestation guys, they have it over there on that side. Where if I just have an expectation in my head, that's good enough. But it really, a better way to say it would be expectations that you have good reason for govern results.

Did you ever fall for that? For the positive mindset thinking?

Oh yeah, very early, very briefly.

And what got you out of it?

Uh, reality. Starvation. Not eating. Um, um, because it doesn't work. And it's just a question. So a lot— see, a lot of people would rather have their delusions, right, than do the difficult work of figuring out how to make reality profitable and productive. And so some people cling to these delusions their entire life, but it doesn't really take very long, you know, if you're a reasonable human being, to conclude, as I did, that a— whatever now terminology you want to use— positive expectancy, a motivated attitude, Visualization, all that stuff is really no better than a really negative, cynical, ugly view of the world if you can't get yourself in front of people who are willing and able to exchange money for whatever deliverable you have to offer. And so of the two, if you had to make a choice, between mindset and marketing, you take marketing any day of the week, right? Because even somebody with a terrible mindset can make a living with good marketing, right? Uh, somebody with a great mindset will find it very hard to make a living with really bad marketing. Um, obviously having both is the preferred state of being. Um, but so yeah, I mean, I tell the story, I was driving around for a brief period of time in an old beat-up car with the front seat covered with motivational tapes. And it took me a little while to figure out that the motivational tapes and the listening to them alone was not going to change the car, um, or the bank account that was attached to the car, right? So yeah, briefly.

Okay, so we've, we've, we've established, uh, two things then. Um, we're not going to be able to avoid having to work hard, and we're not going to be able to avoid having to work smart.

Um, And really, why would we? See, I really question the— see, I think people who really seek that are almost always disappointed when they get it. We, I think, are hardwired, and so we act against our hardwiring. When we strive to be liberated from work. I think it's much more sensible to try and find work that is A, not onerous, B, that at least some parts of it are interesting to you, that in some way are meaningful. Um, so that you derive psychic satisfaction from the work, because it's hard to derive psychic satisfaction from a vacuum.

Okay.

Um, I had a conversation not long ago with one of our members who a few years back sold a company for a very large sum of money and at a young age intended to retire. And he found himself every once in a while getting on an airplane and flying to Vegas and gambling just because he was bored. And he was sitting at a blackjack table playing $1,000 a hand in the middle of the day on a weekday. There was hardly anybody else there. And the dealer said, sold your company, huh? And the guy said, well, how would you know that? And he said, because you're sitting here in the middle of the afternoon idly and casually playing $1,000 a hand. And he said he decided at the end of that day, he got on a plane, went home, said to his wife, I'm getting back in business.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, I got, uh, there's a, there's a phrase that I heard you say, uh, one time ago, and, uh, I want you to clarify it for me then. It was at the 2007 Sales Strategy Seminar, and you said there is no sense in getting rich slowly. So if we know we got to do some work, all right, um, explain then to me what you mean by that.

Well, first of all, working with money is generally, usually more— both more productive and more enjoyable than working without it. So it's, you know, better to, as quickly as possible, get in a position of having significant resources to employ rather than spending any longer than is necessary getting by with rubbing sticks together and duct tape. I've done both. While it is true that if you can't make money without money, you probably won't make money with money, it is also true that if you do have the skills to make money, you will almost always make a lot more money with money to work with than without it. So, you know, there are reasons that the rich get richer and the poor stay poor or get poorer, and some of it is because they think differently. But also, it is true that, that money attracts money, that the ability to buy expertise, the ability to overpay for certain services in order to get the best, the ability to buy speed. So like the stupid test in our example before would be to go to Limbaugh, but now the smart test is begins with how many different commercials, how many different websites you drive them to, how many different offers, and how many follow-up direct mail campaigns, and how many stations can you test all in the same week. Because if you have to test one at a time, it may take you 2 years to run that test. So I can buy speed with money, and there's certain kinds of speed you can only buy with money. You can actually overpay for future value, which you can't do when you don't have money. So if you study Trump and you read George Ross's book, or you listen to Ross when he spoke at Superconference—

That guy is scary.

Well, he is scary. He's really a very nice guy, by the way. Now, he would cut your arm off at the elbow in a business deal, don't misunderstand, but other than that, he's a very nice guy. But, but I mean, if you pay attention to them, they both make it very clear, he and Trump, that by objective standards, all of Trump's great deals have involved Trump being thought an idiot by many, including the seller, for grossly overpaying for the asset he bought. Right. But he has the wherewithal to buy speed in the form of the future value he's going to create. Whereas without money, you can't do that. You actually have to only buy things where you can find present value at a discount. So, you know, if you have to buy your real estate with no money down and bad credit and create equity through sweat by fixing things up, you can only buy foreclosures on the bad side of town, etc., etc. If you have money right now, you can come down to Florida where you live and you can buy really good property and pay present-day value with no discounts and know that there's at least 25% appreciation to come. Right. And so if you give up 10 of that, even by buying the nicest property in an area at above what the others are selling for right now, you're still going to be 15 points ahead. So, you know, and the flip side of that statement is there's no virtue in getting there slow. Um, you, you, you don't get a bonus at the bank when you go in to make the deposit and tell everybody it took you 10 years to make the money.

That was the day. That was the other part of the statement that I could not remember. There was a— there— I knew it. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, so, you know, there's no There's no reward for the virtue of making it slow.

But what about when you start, you try, you so-called fail at it, and you get discouraged?

Well, again, here we have acceleration by some means important. Uh, because the way most people get so discouraged that they quit is that, well, they either have a, an inaccurate view of success and failure versus testing in the first place, or they get so discouraged that they quit because they are failing so slowly. Um, they are They're moving at such a slow pace that the light at the end of the tunnel is so far away it's invisible.

So it's not massive simultaneous action?

Yeah, I mean, see, so it, it, it, I mean, almost everybody that gets to, to wins fails more than they win. Doesn't matter if it's a salesperson making sales presentations. I mean, you're, you're a good closer. But still, in most selling environments, you are going to miss more than you get. And, and there's somewhat— there's a little bit of randomness to all that.

But then we follow up on them mercilessly.

Well, of course. But so if you take somebody off the street and we're going to teach him how to be in direct sales, and we're going to teach him to sell, I don't know, burglar alarms in the home. If he makes only 1 presentation a week, the national average in that business is a 1 out of 8 close. The best guys are closing 1 out of 4. So if he's not even up to average yet, he may need 12 presentations to close a sale. If we have him make 1 a week, We are— we could be 3 months away from a success and he's going to get discouraged and quit. So we got to figure out how to condense the number of presentations into a short period of time, not to really materially affect the rate of failure. The rate of failure is probably going to be the same. It's just that it's going to be over so fast. And he'll get to his success fast enough. Right.

To feel encouraged.

That we'll be able to build on that.

Yeah.

And so people do the same thing to themselves when they're learning to sell from the platform, which it's more difficult to get reps. But when I was fixing a speaker and I knew I had to fix him, so he's no good at it and we want to make him good at it. Foster Hibbard, the example. I didn't book one seminar, figure we'll go out there and do it and come home and reconnoiter and, and go back out two weeks later and do it again. I knew that'd be— that would be hopeless. I booked 10 nights in a row, so we're gonna fix on the fly, right? And so people really need to do the same thing for themselves. In whatever it is they're setting out, you know, to do from scratch or to improve on.

All right, so I got so far mindset, clarity of goals, massive simultaneous action, and then the concept of failing fast.

Yeah, right.

Okay, what about list building? Not what you think. It's something that I think it was Matt Fury I saw do it quite simply, and it's making the list of the things that you want to— that, that you can do to make money or that you want to have in your life. And then the second list is the things that you can do to get those things.

Yeah, well, there, there's others. Um, there is the list of stuff you want to get rid of, um, which Um, which, you know, I, I remake that list every year. It's the closest thing to sort of New Year's resolutions that I ever do, right? Um, is the list of stuff I don't like, um, that I'm involved with one way or another, uh, that I'd like to get rid of. And, and so most people, by the way, can can make that list quicker than any other list. And there's nothing wrong with making that list. I don't care whether it's, you know, like Jeff Paul's big deal about the financial planning business above all else is he never wanted to have to wear a tie again as long as he lived. Well, okay. I mean, not that big a thing to me, not that I wear them very often, but if that's a big thing to you, by all means. Let's figure out how you can remake your life so you don't ever have to wear a tie again. I tell the story of consulting with Rob Minton in the real estate business when he had a long, long, long list of all the stuff he didn't like about the real estate business. So, you know, he didn't like doing open houses and he didn't like doing listing presentations and he didn't like taking people around and showing them houses. And he didn't want, he didn't like carrying them big heavy signs and sticking them in and out of the yard. And, you know, by the time he got done, the only thing left in the real estate business was cash and a commission check, which we all like. And, you know, then I said, well, is there anything at all about this business you actually do like besides the money you're making? He said, well, I really kind of like dealing with the few investor clients I got because they don't care what the kitchen countertop looks like. Half the time they don't even go look at the houses. They're basically dealing with numbers and they have more value because I can only sell John and Mary a house once this year, but I can sell the investor 3 houses. I make money twice because I get to sell it again for the investor. So I get a commission going in, a commission going out. They don't bother me. They don't call me on weekends. And so the answer to all of that, um, is blindingly obvious to somebody who's not living it. Which is only deal with investor clients.

Yeah.

Um, and, and so that list is useful. Um, the list of what you want is useful. I often have people divvy it up: short-term, medium-term, long-term. And of course, the list of now what you can do about it. Um, uh, and what you can do about it right now with the resources you got, right? What resources you need, you need to have, what information you need to get, what information you need to get, what people you need to go find and meet.

Um, but again, look at how much work you're creating.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, so you take something as simple as coming to a conference So I just came out of the Mailbox Millions thing. And but if you think about that or you think about a super conference, it doesn't matter. So the small percentage of the people who come and really get a lot from it that can accelerate their achievement, they come there to work. And they come there and work. They have lists ahead of time of what we just said— what information I need to get, what contacts I need to make, what resources I need to find, what questions I need to get answered. They visit with every exhibitor, you know. So like, I had a few calls this morning of people who were at Mailbox Millions. And, you know, they made a point of meeting with every exhibitor. They've already had follow-up calls. They've implemented— they've got Bill Gao, who markets to Allstate agents, very, very successful info marketer, has already got a brand new 4-step campaign which he's completely having implemented for him by direct mail concierge. Lisa Miller went home and is only days away from sending me the rough of the catalog that she's preparing of all their company services based on what we talked about at the seminar about catalogs. So, but how do most people come to a conference? Completely unprepared, right? They essentially come like they were going to a concert. And they sit in a chair to be entertained. They hang out with the same 8 people they know through the entire time of the conference. Yeah, you know, they don't work. Now, what's significant about that, and it is significant about the whole work conversation, is they put in the same time. Yeah, they haven't saved any time, right? Yeah, they've been there for the same 3 days. The question is, what did you do with the 3 days?

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. So lack of, lack of preparation beforehand. You know, I, I was talking with somebody the other day and I said to them, you know, it's even like parents who know that they have to have a discussion with the kid about doing, not doing so well in school, and they don't even prepare for the discussion. They just go in.

Well, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, see, most people do phone conversations the same way.

Mm-hmm.

Now, the people I work with don't, at least with me, because they learn, you know, that that's going to get their knuckles wrapped.

Well, how, how long ago do you think I started working on this one?

Yeah, because— yeah, well, I'm sure you put time into this, um, uh, and, um, but, you know, most people don't. Yeah, I mean, most people pretty much show up You know, and then sort of whatever happens happens.

Yeah.

And you know, George Bush's— W is lying about that— was a very good line. You know, if you don't have an agenda, others will be perfectly happy to impose theirs on you.

Yeah, they will.

Um, and so I find that for every conversation, every meeting, um every conference, it's useful to have an agenda.

Let's see if we can cover these two things. I heard Joe Polish use a phrase recently, marketing stamina. All right, give us a tip then on developing that stick-to-itiveness because that's what it's going to take. And we don't want to get discouraged. We want to keep going. I teach a thing, the Mastery Path, where I show people how you join, you start training, your level goes up, but then you plateau. A lot of times it's on that plateau that people get frustrated because they don't feel like they're advancing, and that's when they're inclined to quit without understanding that the plateau is an integral part of the entire development. So how do we cultivate marketing stamina?

Well, I'm not sure what he was referring to. I mean, there's several— there's several aspects about all of that. There is the whole mindset category and how you approach the— marketing within business or business overall, what your vision is, what your plan is, how clear you are about benchmarks and progress points and steps and all of that. There is the issue of resources. So to use the word stamina, I mean, there is the issue of money, capital, churn of capital, how fast you can put the same dollar back out there into the marketplace, margin, you know, how tight or how good your profit margin is, is going to have a whole lot to do with sustainability. So there are— there's sort of the— the money math of the whole thing to put yourself in a position, uh, to press on, right? Um, there is the, um, there is the most pragmatic thing I can say, kind of loops back to I think the first question answer, is that, um, business owners are well served by putting in place something that steadily brings them, predictably brings them, reliably brings them at least a base flow of prospects, customers, revenue. Yeah. A profitable activity. The businesses that are fragile have large spikes up and down, or big spikes and then big dormant periods. They're dependent in one way or another on the next hit. So it's the way movie studios used to be run, um, and It's the way the online launch folks operate. And the problem with that is, is that one thing doesn't go well and it really may represent a 6-month or 2-year gap in revenue. And a lot of people won't have the staying power, you know, to survive that.

Right.

Um, I think that, again, not wanting to do the work. So, you know, in direct marketing, the most difficult thing to create is, is evergreen, is the thing that just can be used month after month after month after month after month with the same efficacy, uh, 4 years from now as it was now. Most difficult thing to create. The most valuable thing to create because now it provides a solid base to stand on.

Have you ever taught a concept such as— how should I express this? We call it trick of the month and it's like, okay, here's— you can spend 5 minutes a day for the next 30 days on something. To get better at it. And I was thinking about it in preparation for this call, and I thought, well, wait, what if I think that my copywriting skill is not up to where it should be? If I work on that a few minutes every day for a month— and so I've taught it in martial art, and I just wondered if you'd ever taught something, heard of such a concept or something.

So what do you do? You focus them on one move Well, it might not even be one.

Yeah, it could even be that. Yes.

Well, um, I've not really learned that way personally. Um, giving it a moment or two of thought, it might have been a less painful way to learn a few things. Than the way I did learn them. When you attach it to something that has a lot of moving parts, like copywriting, again, as long as somebody had the big vision and the staying power to get through the 2 years, let's say, yeah, if you focus somebody on nothing but headlines for a month and nothing but closing paragraphs for a month, and nothing but every which way you can express a warranty for a month, um, they would get significantly better at each of those things in sequence rather than focusing them on getting better with the entire sales letter month to month to month to month to month.

Right. You know what I just thought, what I just remembered, it was Halbert who, who coached you on writing out by hand?

Yeah, Halbert taught everybody.

Not that anybody did it, but yeah, but that could almost qualify then if, if I spent— well, not, you know, I mean, if somebody spent a month.

Oh yeah, doing that. And see, specific to, to writing, I'm sure it exists in your thing, but you know, there's not only the, the learning of the mechanics of it there's a certain muscle memory to it, right, that you only— you don't get it by typing them into the computer. You only get it by writing it by hand. And the subconscious mind is affected differently. There'd be a long conversation, a neurological set of Scientific principles.

Yeah, I imagine the same thing applies somewhat to reading.

Yeah, probably.

Like, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I mean, in your world, to actually doing.

Yeah.

Right. I mean, Sandler's thing, you can't learn to ride a bicycle in the classroom. I mean, at some point in time.

Right. Yeah.

You can prepare, but at some point in time, you got to get on a bike.

Right. Bruce Lee used to say you can't, you can't, learn to swim standing on dry land, right?

Yeah. And, um, um, so yeah, Halbert's thing was, you know, you take 500 great headlines and you write them by hand, and you rewrite an entire ad by hand, word for word, exactly the way it is. And I mean, I did a lot of it, uh, um, um, because, I mean, I guess, you know, I was, I was dumb enough to take it at face value. But you look at somebody like what I have read about Lee, and, you know, these people were very dedicated to a craft, however it is that you get there. And again, most rich people are very dedicated to some craft. Um, and again, and there's not a lot of people who are really dedicated to mastering, hell, anything.

Yeah.

Um, uh, whether it's personal, you know, recreation, or, or, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

Well, so thank you for a very good call.

I can let you off the hook now.

And for all your preparation. And, um, and I hope you found the not just the call but the preparation interesting.

Very much so.

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