Showmanship in Business: The Lost Book That Changed How I Launch Everything | #Marketing - Ep. 55

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This is The Russell Brunson Show. Welcome to the vault. Today I've got another out-of-print book on advertising and selling that is going to change everything for you. So this book is new in my collection, it's called Showmanship in Business. I got this book because we were focusing on like doing what we call dramatic demonstrations. Maybe someone back in the day wrote a book about this and I found this book, I'm like, this is the book. I got a screaming deal on this book and some of you guys may think I'm crazy to spend $500 on a book, but this one cost $500 and it's first edition. One of the cool things about this book book a lot of people probably don't know is Dale Carnegie, who wrote first edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Dale Carnegie actually talks specifically about this book. I pulled out the quote today. He said, this is the day of dramatization. You have to use showmanship. And then he said, read Showmanship in Business by Kenneth Goode and Zen Kaufman. It's an exciting panorama of how showmen are ringing the cash register. And he goes on to talk about some of the case studies. So in How to Win Friends and Influence People, he's talking about this book, yet this book is out of print, it's out of publish. You can't find it, not even on Amazon. We tried to buy one today and it is not there. So that's what Showmanship in Business is.. It's all about how to add that extra flair in your business to get people to notice you, to see what you're doing. You know, front cover here's got this dog on a parade, just an example of showmanship. So that's what the book's all about. I don't remember the story, 'cause again, it wasn't something that people were talking about. Whenever I'm deep diving into a topic or something that I'm geeking out on, I'm trying to find like other source material for me to learn from, right? We have a framework called the linchpin that we teach all of our people inside of ClickFunnels. The linchpin, one of the parts of the framework is we have people do what we call dramatic demonstrations. And so dramatic demonstration, it could be a webinar or a challenge, or it could be, there's a lot of ways to, to create dramatic demonstrations. And so I was trying to find old-school examples of this. In fact, Steve Larson and I are writing a book right now called Dramatic Demonstrations, and we pulled a bunch of examples from other people from back in the early 1900s, late 1800s, who were doing these big dramatic demonstrations, right? You think about P.T. Barnum, he was the greatest showman, right? And so I had those books. I was just trying to find some other related— I'm like, there's got to be some more things to look at there. So I'm always looking for old books. I was searching for things, and somewhere in my searches, this one showed up. And just Showmanship in Business, I was like, just the essence of the title is like, yes, like, that's what dramatic demonstrations are, right? Everyone out there is running an ad to a landing page and whatever, but it's like, if you want to get people's attention today, you have to different, right? The thing that makes you stand out, again, in my world, is creating a dramatic demonstration or adding showmanship into your business. That's how you stick out. That's how you stay relevant for a long, long time. People ask me a lot, like, Russell, how are you still doing this business 25 years later? And the reason is because I add the stuff into our business. Like, nothing that we're doing is just normal, right? You notice we add showmanship into everything we do. I saw the title, I was like, yes, I need that book. Bought it. And then I found out later, again, that it was literally Dale Carnegie wrote about it in How to Win Friends and Influence People. So it's now one of my favorite books in my library. The person that kind of got me thinking about dramatic demonstrations initially was a guy named Tim Shields. He's one of my inner circle and my Atlas members, and he's in the photography business, right? Which you think about people teaching photographers how to build a business, you don't think there's a lot of money in that, right? It's not gonna be like this huge thing, but he's got a $10 million a year business teaching this. And so I started watching what he was doing and he made this documentary he sent to me. It's like a 2-minute documentary and it was a little trailer. What he did is he was like showing how he doesn't just do a webinar on how to do photography, like he creates a dramatic demonstration. So what he did is he went to the side of the Grand Canyon, like him and his wife, they hiked out there, they promoted this whole audience like, we're going to the side of the Grand Canyon, we're bringing in Starlink, we're gonna do this webinar from the side of the Grand Canyon. And all the battles, drama, and everything as they got there. And they finally set it up, and they're in the most beautiful place in the world, and they start the camera, and they do this whole webinar from the side of the Grand Canyon. And I watched that whole thing. And then the next month, he did another one where he went to Banff, Canada, on this frozen lake. And he goes out in the middle of this lake, and he does a webinar there. Like, he's done like 8 or 9 of these in a row, back to back. And he sent me just some footage of that, and he's like, Russell, this is what most people are missing. Like, they're behind their desk doing a webinar. And he's like, I don't do webinars. I do dramatic demonstrations. After he shared that with me, he's like, you know what you should do, Russell? I'm like, what? He's like, he's like, you bought Dan Kennedy's business. He's you always tell us these stories about the pilgrimage people go to Dan Kennedy to go to his basement, and in the basement there's no internet and all these things. He's like, we all hear you tell these stories and we assume it's $100,000 to hire Dan to have a day with him to see that. He's like, you should take the entrepreneur world, like take your world to Dan Kennedy's basement. He's like, in your business you're doing these dramatic demonstrations, like you gotta take your audience in places they wouldn't go on their own, right? They're not gonna go to the side of the Grand Canyon, they're not gonna go to Banff, Canada on a frozen lake. My people are not gonna go to Dan Kennedy's basement, but they want that, they hear about it, right? And so we made this whole campaign, this whole dramatic demonstration, where I basically said, we're going to Dan Kennedy's basement. Like, we're bringing Starlink in. I'm going to show you guys behind the scenes. I'm going to show you that there's literally like his computer's not plugged in. I'm going to show you the fax machine. The nerds in the marketing world with me were freaking out. We got like 15,000, 16,000 people to register to go to Dan Kennedy's basement with me, right? And then, you know, we did this whole pilgrimage. As we were going to Cleveland, Ohio, we stayed at the La Quinta because it's like the worst hotel on the planet, but it's part of the experience. Like, everyone who's ever been to Dan's house always talked about the La Quinta and how it's the worst hotel. Like, when we are Pulling up to the hotel and we're like Instagramming live, this lady comes out of the lobby and she comes out and she's like livid mad. And she's like, looks at us as we're walking. She's like, this is the worst hotel I've ever been to. Don't go in there. I was like, yes. Like this is like, we're getting the whole experience. Next day we go to Dan Kennedy's house, we bring in Starlink and we stream internet down. And what's crazy is a typical webinar, you might get 15 to 20, maybe 25% of people to show up. 'Cause that's what typical show up rates are in a webinar. Because it was a dramatic demonstration. 'Cause we added the showmanship into this campaign and this marketing. We had like 80% of people who showed up for the webinar. People sat there. Dan Kennedy, we did a tour in his basement. He walked around, showed the bathroom, showed everything for like an hour and a half before we even got to any kind of sales pitch and nobody left. They were like enthralled. And so that's what adding showmanship in your business is, right? It's like everyone's doing a webinar. How do I take it to the side of the Grand Canyon? How do I take my people to Dan Kennedy's basement? For you, who are your people? Like how do you add showmanship where it's like you're gonna give them access to something they don't have anywhere else? Like those are some of the ways that we're using showmanship. And creating dramatic demonstrations inside of our business. Now, dramatic demonstrations, they don't always have to be huge as well. Like last year for my birthday, the opportunity is there's something happening I can talk about. I can make a dramatic demonstration. It's like, we're having Russell's birthday, come and register for my birthday party. We have all these speakers that are coming, everyone's gonna talk. And it's like, it can be as simple as something like that as well. So the key is not so much like it has to be, you know, spending tons of money or doing like leaving your location, but it's like, it's creating something that's gonna grab someone's attention and give you the ability to share and then to promote the thing you have. In the Showmanship in Business book, there's actually a 4-part framework that every business who's successfully applying showmanship follows these 4 principles. And so I'm gonna write these out for you, kind of talk about and share some stories with each one. So the first step to have showmanship in your business is to attract. And this one is something in our world, a lot of times online we talk about like creating a hook. Something that's going to grab someone's attention is the first key, right? How do you attract somebody's attention? So I always think about this like if I was to go to the food court at the mall and there's like 400 people and they're eating and talking. If I was to stand up on a chair and yell something out, would it grab their attention? Would they ever stop and look at me? And would they be intrigued or would they kind of like, ah, and they walk away? So I always think about that. Like I gotta say something that's gonna get their attention, make 'em stop talking. Like, oh, what's happening over here? That's what I'm always thinking through. In the book, he shares an example. 'Cause again, this book was written in 1936. And so this is before, you know, obviously internet and stuff like that. But one of the examples they talked about in Traction is that there was a movie theater and they had all this candy at the movie theater. And there's a bunch of candy that nobody was buying. Just kind of, you know, it sat there for week after week and they were trying to figure out how do we attract attention to this? And so what they did is they got this little spot, like almost like a flashlight, and they shown it on the candy that nobody was buying. And because it looked like it was an attraction, like people saw that, like there's something, like why do they light this up? There's gotta be something here. That candy ended up selling out the most and it became the highest selling candy because they added some attraction to it. They added a light to it, which is kind of a simple example. So it's like finding something unique and like shining light on it, right? Again, my birthday promotion, it's my birthday, shining a light on it. I'm trying to attract people's attention to it. I'm going to Dan Kennedy's house, shining a light on it, right? So that's the first step in the framework. Number 2 is to emphasize. So it's like after you got their attention, you have to emphasize either the problem or the things happening so people see it so they're gonna remember it, right? Like that's what showmanship is, that extra level, not just attracting their attention, they emphasize it. In the book, the example he shares is really cool. This guy named Walter Chrysler, you may have heard of him, he owns a company called Chrysler. One of the stunts he did to emphasize after he got people's attention, he actually took his cars And he had people come and he brought elephants out and he had these elephants come and actually step on top of the car. Now, if you see that kind of dramatic demonstration, you see somebody emphasizing something, you see someone with elephants on top of their car, that's one of those things you're never gonna forget, right? Like after that happens, it's like, okay, I'm never gonna forget this thing. I think about this, some of the best that I've ever seen doing this, right? Like I love watching and studying infomercials, but if you remember Billy Mays back in the day, Billy Mays was the guy that did OxiClean and most of the great infomercials of the '90s and 2000s. He was the best at this, right? He'd grab your attention really quick at the very beginning of the infomercial. And then he'd do a demo, right? He'd always do something where it's like, he'd have your white shirt and he'd like put it through grass where it's all green and nasty. And then he's like, get that OxiClean in 5 seconds. It's like, oh, it's OxiClean, now it's done. He like emphasizes the problem and then the react, like how the thing solves it, right? 'Cause you could be like, oh yeah, these cars are really sturdy, right? Or you could have an elephant stand on the car. That's the difference, right? Oh yeah, this will get stains outta your clothes. Or let me put a stain on it, let me show you. You're emphasizing it to make it real inside their mind. That's showmanship. That's the next level beyond just marketing or just advertising. So number 3 is emotionalize. In the book, he said people don't buy facts, they buy feeling. And this is something that is very, very true. When I'm doing a webinar or a challenge or anything, a lot of times we share the facts because we're speaking to people consciously and their logical mind's like, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But the thing that gets people to buy and to move and take action is the emotion. Like what do they feel about the thing? The more I study and the more I write about the subconscious mind, the more fascinating it is. 'Cause people don't do what they think about, they do what they feel. Like if I feel like doing it, they're gonna do it or they're not gonna do it, right? And so feeling is what you're trying to create. So I attract their attention, right? Emphasize the things. This thing gets burned and seared into your brain, and then I gotta emotionalize it, right? So I'm bringing emotion to the table. You're telling stories, you're showing examples, like you're showing why this should be emotional to them. And emotional can be a lot of things. It can be sad. I've seen people who are really good to tell their story and they get emotional, right? Or they can be fear, they can be pain, right? I've seen people at Funnel Hacking Live stage who use, some of our best speakers, they use anger to emotionalize things. Where I'm not really someone who comes in angry and hot. I come in very much more like visionary and trying to show, like cast a vision and show people what's possible, right? And that's how I emotionalize things. Things. So there's different ways to do it based on your style, but adding that emotion is the next phase. And then number 4, which is the last part of the framework here, is to create action, which for all of us, you know, is like call to action. Tell them to do something. It says in the book, it says all this theater means nothing unless you have action at the end. Doing a dramatic demonstration, showmanship, doing all these kind of things, you get their attention, you give them emotion, all kind of stuff. If you don't have them do something, there's all kind of for nothing. So that's the framework from the book, is you're trying to figure out like for you specifically, like how can I create a dramatic demonstration? Those are the things you're thinking through. Okay, what can I do that's going to attract their attention? Okay, after we get them, how do emphasize this so it like gets seared into their brain? And then what do I do to create the emotional experience with them? And then where do I take them to actually take action? And those are kind of how we use showmanship inside of our business today. One more thing we do with showmanship in business, and again, a lot of times we think this is just if I'm selling an event or if I'm doing a course or whatever the thing might be. You can use this any part of your business. A couple years ago, we hired the Harmon Brothers who do viral videos to make a video for us. Spent a lot of money to create the video. We're going to launch it on YouTube and drive ads to it. And then I was like, we got to do something bigger. Like, we need to make this dramatic demonstration. Like, how do we engage our audience, get people excited to make this more than just like us putting something out onto the internet, right? And so we created a whole campaign around it. What we did, we rented out the Boise State football stadium. We went and got as many high-level influencers as possible to come to the stadium for this event. We hired Gary Vaynerchuk to come and be our keynote speaker. And then to top it all off, I was like, we need something that's really going to attract attention, emphasize what we're doing, emotionalize, and create action. We decided to do the largest bubble soccer game in the history of all time. And this was all to launch a YouTube video, right? It wasn't just posting online and just hoping for the and maybe it goes viral. It's like, let's bring these people together and let's launch it together, make an experience and create a dramatic demonstration. And so it was cool because we had almost two different ways. There was the internal people who came who had this experience and all of them promoted it out to their followings and their lists, which helped this video to go viral. But then externally, our entire audience was watching as we were doing this. They had a chance to see behind the scenes, this glimpse of like, oh my gosh, they couldn't be here with us, but we're taking them on this journey. We're not just doing these things in a silo, but we're letting them kind of experience it with us. One of the things I remember, one of my mentors, John Alness, told me one time, he said that our job as entrepreneurs, as advertisers, and he said that he got this from a movie in the '80s, it was a rock star talking about this, he said, for entrepreneurs, our job is to live the life that our audience wishes they could live. They're living vicariously through us, and so we're putting this thing on, but we're allowing our audience to watch it so they can vicariously live through us. Like watch us win the bubble soccer, watch this video go viral, see Gary Vee and these other people speaking, and we're sharing that experience with them. And just, it takes the showmanship to the next level where that story and that message just keeps resonating and growing. Again, that was just to launch a YouTube video. So next time you're putting anything out there, if it could be as simple as a podcast, YouTube video, or as big as a product launch, it's like figuring out how do you add showmanship into your business to get people talking, get people remembering you, creating emotion, and getting people to take action. If you want my notes from the Showmanship in Business book, I've got my notes. There's a link down below. You can go and get the notes for this entire book because right now it's not possible to find online. This is the only copy I was able to find, not even on Amazon. Go through my notes so you get the highlights from everything. You get some of the coolest quotes, examples, and cases. They share tons of examples on all 4 of these things. Example after example after example. I think it's over 100 different examples inside this book for these different points that you can read through. And hopefully, it'll spur some ideas on how you can use this inside of your business. I feel like nowadays people are lazy because we have Facebook and Instagram. Facebook ad and think they're genius, right? Back then, like I think P.T. Barnum was like, I think he was the front runner of all this showmanship. Like imagine there's no TV, there's radio, but who knows? How do you get people to show up to a circus or to a museum or to whatever? Like they had to become masters of showmanship.. And we've forgotten the art of this. If you go back and you study the art of it and you weave that into what we're doing now with the application we have of the internet, it changes the game for everybody. So it's interesting, the lost lessons, but what they had to do. I think about this less. Like when I got started 20 years ago, like it was before Facebook, before MySpace, like back when Friendster was the social network, I couldn't buy ads. So we had to do all sorts of weird stuff. Like we were creating, making up stuff to try to get people to like find us on the internet, right? Like we were doing all sorts of crazy things back then that were just fascinating, but we had to. And now it's like, Everyone's defaulted to just the one thing. I run some ads, you know, or whatever. It's like no one remembers like all the things we had to do to get attention back in the day. And so for us in our business, a lot of people ask why we're still around 20 years later. It's like, because I weave these elements into the campaigns, right? We're using the media to like amplify, but we're still doing the things that got us attention back before we had the media, before these guys had the internet. They were doing this stuff to get attention. And so you can learn so much from these things and apply them to your business today, and it just changes everything.