The Principle of Defiance (1 of 2)

Let's take just a second and think about why you got into business in the first place. A lot of the time we're trying to buck something, whether it's the paycheck that we get from an employer or it's the lifestyle and the road that's been given to us ever since we were young. Entrepreneurs are defiant until we actually get into business. Something flips and suddenly we're looking for help everywhere we can just to be able to make sure that this works right. And often we're taking advice from people we shouldn't be. Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In today's episode, we get to listen to Dan Kennedy himself from stage. Dan's going to be sharing a couple ideas about how to continue your habit of defiance and what are the healthy ways you should be doing this step by step. Now, this is just part 1 of 2 parts. We're going to continue this into the next episode because as you know, We love overdelivering. We love giving lots of value for free. So let's set aside some time for these next two episodes and really reflect on our business and where we are taking our frameworks from and if it's worth listening to them at all. Let's jump into the Principle of Defiance with Dan Kennedy, part 1.

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. The original idea was to talk about sort of the best business/life lessons of the now 35-plus-year career. Along the way to this, so you're going to get that, but you're going to get something a little different too. Along the way to this, I started work on a book. Some of you sent some stuff in as a result of notices in the newsletter, which I appreciate. I started work on a book about criticism. And it took on kind of a life of its own, and it's expanded into something else, bigger, I think, maybe more important, I think. And it's really a response to the idea that everybody wants— I joked about it earlier today— everybody kind of looks for the one secret to success. And there's, you know, been industries built around this since they were bringing them down on rocks. So, most popular lately was The Secret. And one of the reasons it was so popular is because of the premise, the idea that there is a secret. That if you just knew the secret, then you wouldn't need 368 other secrets. One would be sufficient. And I was never really comfortable with that approach. I don't really think it's that simple, but ultimately I've arrived at one I'm comfortable with. The overriding idea that the book I'm working on will be about, and to a great degree tonight's discussion will be about, and not— coincidentally but not surprisingly, many of the remarks Joan made are about. If you summarize them all, you would summarize it as a principle of defiance. That, so my bumper sticker for this, which we've already registered the domain name, so don't run off, but that really defiance is everything. And so much of what we're going to talk about— so I've whittled it down to 10 big ideas, but much of what we're going to talk about really falls under the umbrella of defying, like, everything and everybody, from industry norms to people who want to impose rules and conditions and practices on you, to their opinions and ideas about your ideas and how you do business and so forth. Specifically for the young entrepreneurs who haven't yet found something more interesting to do and are still with us and are in the room, this applies to your parents too. You now have my permission slip. I got 10 big ideas for you. This is how we're going to spend the evening. We'll start with this one. It's a favorite of mine. It has to do with how you react to other people's opinions. And first of all, the truth of the matter is others' opinions don't matter a great deal, or if they do, they matter very temporarily. But it's important to understand everybody has one. They're not thinking about you as much as we like to think they're thinking about us, but still, everybody has opinions. And pretty much the more you do, the more people have opinions about you that aren't necessarily nice. It's the nature of doing. But in the grand analysis of where you wind up with whatever it is you're setting out to do, pretty much what other people think doesn't matter a great deal. There are a lot of unqualified opinions that are best ignored altogether. When I started in speaking, for example, the example I use is that it's quite common, I'm sure still common, that if you have a quote quote normal speaking engagement and you've been hired by XYZ Association or XYZ Company to come and do a presentation, often they will hand out evaluation forms to everybody in the room to evaluate the speaker. And they rate the speaker on dress and style and body language and clarity of ideas. And so there's checkmarks and 1 to 10s and even places for essay answers for, you know, so for like extra credit if they didn't give you enough critical things to check off on the form. You can write in a few, you know, like I didn't like her shoes. That's a very common one with women evaluating women speakers, is commentary on their shoes. I'm not kidding. So I, like, after the first two experiences with these things, I wrote it into my contract that you couldn't hand out evaluation forms. And at the time I was the only one doing it, by the way. It was actually kind of a controversial thing, and sometimes had problems with meeting planners, but so— and more with peers, though. So the opinion of peers about this was not good. But so here was my theory. Why do I want their evaluation? If I actually want an evaluation of what I'm doing up here, wouldn't I want it from someone else who does this successfully. I mean, if I really want an evaluation, I'll get Tommy Hopkins or Brian or Zig or Tony or, gee, even Frank Kern, you know, to come and sit in the back or watch the DVD and give me some feedback. But I certainly don't want the guy who's the member of the Iowa Plumbers Association, you know, who may be really good at— do you plumb a toilet? Do you un-plumb a toilet? What do you do? I don't know, but whatever it is. So he's really good at plumbing, but what the hell does he know about what I'm doing up here? And yet people take this all the time. You know, they sort of indiscriminately are affected by entirely unqualified opinions. Critical opinions, really critical opinions you get, are very, very suspect. There's a very famous actress who said she never read a review in her life, and I don't know if she's telling the truth or not, but, you know, her explanation was, if you actually could, if you actually could put together a movie and get a movie produced, would you be working as a movie critic for the Milwaukee newspaper? Surely. I mean, we know a lot of people maybe dream of being actors and actresses. I rather doubt there's too many junior high school kids walking around dreaming of growing up to be movie critics for the Milwaukee paper, but But think beyond that. Think how— there is one critic who actually did produce a movie. So somebody who's a good trivia person can help me. Rex Reed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now help with the movie. It was just a titanic piece of crap. What was that movie? Anybody know? Oh, it was awful. You can look it up there. It was Rex Reed, who was a big famous movie critic at one time, and he actually did get somebody to invest in him, and they did put him in charge of a movie. And it's one of the 10 worst movies of all time. I mean, just an absolute embarrassment. The worst movie, though, of all time, just as a piece of trivia if you want to make a note, is a movie called At Long Last Love. It stars Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd singing and dancing. And it is every bit as bad as that sounds. I and a friend went to the theater to see it. There were about 50 people in the theater when it started, and we were the only 2 survivors of the And really it was, you know, it was sort of like watching, I don't know, an autopsy scene on CSI. I mean, you really didn't want to watch it, but you sort of couldn't look away when the blood was spurting up and the body parts were being— it was a movie like that. But anyway, so her thing about a movie critic was, so not only can't they make a movie, which they are criticizing, because if they could, they wouldn't choose to be a movie critic, but now think about how they feel about everybody who does make movies. Right? They hate them. So they hate the high-paid actor, they hate the high-paid actress, they hate the high-paid producer, they hate everybody that has anything to do with a successful movie. So when they see the advance copy of a film, and the movie critic has the horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that the public is going to really like this film, and everybody's going to get awards, and everybody's going to make a lot of money, what is the movie critic incentivized and motivated and inspired to do? Hatch a job. Yeah. Because the very fact that he knows it's going to be well received— this is why most of the most successful, financially successful movies are— get hatchet jobs by the critics. It has nothing to do with the movie. It actually has to do with the critics' idea, "Uh-oh, this is going to be a successful movie." And it's one more time that I have to look in the mirror in my little apartment and admit to myself that I'm a movie critic in Milwaukee for $38,612 a year, and that person I don't like just made $38,000 for delivering 3 lines. This is annoying to me. Right? So that's where they are as a critic. And when I heard this actress explain all this, it made perfect sense to me, and you have to assume that a great many of your critics and my critics are in exactly the same position. Whatever it is that you're doing that they're criticizing is something they can't do. And they can't stand you for it. Or they don't— or maybe they could do it, but they don't have the cojones to do it. Okay? Like, what's your name, dear, I picked on you last night with the hair? Huh? Barbara. Yes. So Barbara there, stand up, Barbara. God bless her. Barbara was caught in the wind outside a Sherwin-Williams store. You know, and look what happened to her. I'm told in 6 or 8 weeks it'll gradually, you know, come out. You know, or she was very, very drunk, fell asleep, you know, and here's what her friends did to her. No, but she actually has a reason. Fashion designer, art designer, so, you know, she's trying to demonstrate that she's hip. But a lot of people would now seriously be critical of that face-to-face or behind your back, but mostly because they don't have the cojones to ever do it, right? Purple hair, I would, you know, at some point in time everybody wants purple hair at some time in their life, don't they? I mean, you know, but they're not going to do it. So the real critical opinions, you really have to be suspect about them because they're usually coming from a place that has more to do with the person giving it than has to do with you. Customers' opinions. Well, customers' opinions matter more than anybody else's. The people who give us money are entitled to a vote. But even that, Even that you have to be very, very careful about for a variety of reasons. One is most people can't enunciate why they buy and why they don't buy, so focus group research is always suspect. And often people who criticize and seem to be unhappy about things buy anyway. I was in an elevator at a at a convention in a professional niche I was doing a lot of work in. A crowded elevator. And a person got in and decided to pick their fight. And they went on from the 20-some-odd floor to the ground floor at great length about how they hated getting all my direct mail and how terrible the direct mail was and how ugly the direct mail was and how unprofessional the direct mail was. And how I should be embarrassed to be sending this direct mail to professional peers, and on and on and on and on and on. And it was a slow elevator, and, you know. Upon checking our records, this person regularly bought from that direct mail. I mean, this person spent a fair amount of money with us. A lot of money. Oh, I want to tell you one other story. I've told you this before, but it's instructive. So some of you have heard it, but we had a member some years ago, and he's high-end furniture stores, and he revolutionized his marketing with our stuff and had been sending in stuff for critique and testimonials and so forth. And finally he was at an event like this and came up and he gave me a really beautiful full-color brochure like an ad agency would do, you know, no headline, no copy, no offer, no reason to come in, pretty pictures of furniture and a logo. That's a big fold-out thing, you know. And I said, what? And he said, oh, he said, this is the one now I have to have made for my wife. He said, so now I have to print up about 1,000 of these. At enormous expense, even though we never use them in the business, so she has something to show her friends that doesn't embarrass her. And he said, it's kind of expensive, but it's not as expensive as the alternative. So, but, and now this is true, so think about this. So the stuff that's working, that's paying for the mansion and the Porsche and the country club membership and the the kids going to a good college and all that, is so embarrassing that rather than have to fight over it, he just produces every so often a brochure he has no intention of using that is not embarrassing that she can show to her friends. This is how insane all of this is, and yet we are affected by it. So here's a great question. It was given to me some years ago. How much of your present life is governed or controlled by any opinions other people had of you you 5 years ago? For most people, the answer to that question is, well, now that I— I can't think of any. Right? For most of you, that probably was your answer. Well, really, nothing going on today is governed by any opinion anybody had of me 5 years ago, good, bad, or indifferent. In most businesses, hardly anything that's going on is governed by anybody's opinion from 5 years ago. If your answer is the other, oh well, everything in my life is being governed by opinions that people had 5 years ago of me. If that's your answer, then quite frankly you've got some really serious problems because it means you've totally abdicated control over everything to somebody else. So in thinking about the book, I made a list of some of the opinions that don't matter to me and have turned out never to matter, if you define matter as governing your outcomes 3, 4, 5 years down the road. So, let's see, my first ex-wife's opinions. Nothing more needs to be said about that. Umpteen professional speakers. Who really think I'm awful up here, just so you know. Zig, who I have nothing against Zig, Zig and I are friends, but we had a row at one point over the no BS thing. Zig's opinion was, probably still is, I don't know, but Zig's opinion was that that was the same— that's cursing like any other cursing, therefore it's— see, you're nodding, you get it, right? And I, by the way, I never got mad at him because he's sincere. I don't— you know, it's one thing if they're not sincere, but he's sincere. So that it's cursing, and therefore it's the same as taking the Lord's name in vain while cursing. So one's as bad as the other. And I, and anybody standing within 12 feet of me, we were all going to burn in hell together. And so I precipitated this, by the way, with my own stupidity. Probably never would have come up if I hadn't like included him in the first No BS book and sent him a copy of it. It might not have ever been an issue, you know, but I didn't really, I didn't share his opinion, you know. And so, but it turns out his opinion Didn't matter. He went to Peter Law, who was running the Success Events, and explained his opinion and said, "You've got to get Kennedy off of here before we all get hit by lightning." And Peter came to me and said, "What are we going to do about this?" And I said, "I don't know exactly." I said, "But I'm making you about $100,000 a day, 2 days a week. That's about $200,000." I mean, are you sure you share this opinion? And it turns out it didn't matter. Envious, resentful relatives. Anybody have any of those? Turns out mine are contributing to the demise of the postal service, but the Christmas card list gets shorter every year. Then there's a whole business group, you know, would-be clients who think my fees are too high, my requirements are unreasonable, the way they have to work with me is unacceptable, dysfunctional clients I fired, people who think I'm an idiot or a dinosaur because I refuse to use modern technology. And it turns out that none of that seems to matter. People writing negative reviews on Amazon. Or other place on the internet. Some of you may have discovered the internet has democratized graffiti. So it has provided a whole environment for a bunch of people living in their mother's basements to vent in a way they never could vent before. Recently, Bill was kind enough to send me an 86-page page download from some website that appears to be totally dedicated to the premise that I am a word I won't say because we have young entrepreneurs in the room. But it's not a very nice word. Some of it's actually amusing. Some of it's not very well written and there's grammatical errors and, you know. But some of it's amusing. But so here's what's important about all that. And the list is longer, by the way. I could keep going. This is going to be a real thick book because that's a whole chapter. So there's all these opinions people have about me, and there's all these opinions people have about you. And they have them at different times and about your business and about your products and about your services and about your sales practices and about about your advertising, and about the way you do business, and when you go make a bank deposit, nobody quizzes you about any of that. I noticed, so right, kind of right before coming here, almost right before coming here, I made two acquisitions, purchases. I bought another racehorse, which mostly because you need to replace the ones you've bought that aren't doing well.. So there's this ongoing process in that business of buy, watch them be slower than you anticipated or lamer than you thought they were, and buy another one. That sort of seems to be the process. So I bought another racehorse, and I bought another car, which you'll see on a blog, by the way, because it's pretty cool. I bought Dean Martin's Rolls-Royce convertible. So here's what I noticed. So forget the specific purchase. Here's what I noticed. I noticed that the people taking my money and giving me the thing that I wanted for the money I was giving them had seemed to have no interest whatsoever in any of these opinions that have been expressed about me, past or present. They didn't ask if people on the internet thought I was a word I can't say because there are young entrepreneurs in the room. They didn't ask what my editor thinks about my books. They didn't ask what somebody thinks about my advertising. They didn't ask any of those questions. Seems like the only question they asked was, "Is the check good?" Which pretty much is like the only question that matters in most of what we do, right? Is the check good? Certainly the IRS doesn't care about anybody's opinions about you. They'll take the checks. And everybody else has sort of discovered this along the way in their lives too. Idea number 2. Idea number 2 now is about the idea of control and who controls what in your business and personal life. And so here's sort of my guiding premises about that. One, if you aren't willing to exert control over others, They will be exerting control over you, not necessarily with your best interest in mind. There is no neutral ground. So either you're in control or somebody else is in control, because somebody's in control almost all the time. But generally speaking, somebody's in control of everything. Minor, where you go to dinner, right, or what movie you go see. Too major. Do you run this ad? Do you not run this ad? Do you fire this salesperson? Do you keep this salesperson? Do you do this? Do you do that? So the whole issue of control— now here's the truth about this. Most people are really, really squeamish about manipulating and controlling other people. There's a— there was a book. It was very popular. I believe it was on the Times bestseller list. It was a sales training book written by an acquaintance of mine, not like a golfing buddy, but an acquaintance. And I annoyed him by making fun of it for the entire 3 years that it was pretty popular in our world because the title of the book was "Non-Manipulative Selling." Now, the book was popular because that's a popular idea with timid, squeamish people, which is the majority of people. It's not to go unnoticed that the majority of people also have tiny incomes. That should not go unnoticed. So the idea of non-manipulative selling was very, very popular, and the book was a success, and there were seminars, and there were training programs, and corporations hired people to come in and teach their salespeople. Not manipulative selling. By definition, there's no such thing. Sales and persuasion is a process of manipulating thoughts and emotions. That's what it is. And so I happen to be a big believer in non-consensual selling. It's nice if they volunteer, but if not, I am willing to manipulate— I'm willing to reach in and get the wallet. I am— see, a lot of people think— a lot of people who hear Zig's later-in-life stuff think he's a kind and gentle person, and I'm the opposite. But if you study Zig's early sales training stuff— so the line I learned memorized when I was 17 from Zig was, I've got their product in the backseat of my car and they've got my money in their kitchen drawer and I'm not leaving until I make the exchange. That is not kind and gentle. That is I'm gonna take the money, right? And I am gonna stay there until I succeed successfully get it. And if you're squeamish about all of that, if you're really timid about exerting control— and so, by the way, if you look at the Ruthless Management book, it's really all about control. If you look at the time management book, it's really all about control. If you look at the sales book, it's really all about control. The management book, by the way, My favorite client story is the client who said to me that his longtime staff person told him, "You were a really nice guy until you started hanging around that Kennedy person." And she quit after some 20-some-odd years with him, and his sales immediately went up because she really was like a cork in the hole that money came through. He just didn't know it. Well, a lot of people have employees that are that. You know, they're a giant cork in the hole through which money comes, and they've really got themselves inserted in there deep over a period of years, and the boss is very reluctant to remove them, you know. But so control is like critical, and really, if you, If you analyze everything I put in front of you, it really is about exerting control over other people and the situations around you. The second point is that the client or the customer cannot be in control. So the whole customer's always right thing is not— See, because servants get low wages. So this idea that the client or the customer gets to call the shots, no. See, it's up to you to persuade and train the customer or the client to be happy doing business the way you wish to do business, right? I recently had a client come back to me after a number of years. Of absence. And they are a fairly big company. And so, but they were a really small company when I first started to work with them, and now they're a fairly big company. And so they came into, well, first of all, of course, they wanted me to come to meet with them at their offices on the West Coast. In part, logically, because they were going to have about 8 people at the meeting and there's only one of me, so it's obviously easier, more convenient to transport one of me than it is to transport 8 of them. It's more convenient and less expensive and more efficient for everybody but me. Transporting me is inconvenient to me. So ultimately they loaded everybody on a plane and they came to me. And our compromise was they didn't stay at precisely the hotel I wanted them to stay at. But they came across, well, I'm willing to compromise. But, so they came across the country to me, and so they were all in a meeting, and at one point I said something undiplomatic about the way they were doing business, and actually sort of personalized about the CEO who was there, and I decided to clean it up, you know, And I quickly, because the other ones in the room were young and most of them had no history with me, and so I thought, I didn't think, I didn't edit before I said it, but I was editing like after, you know, that, well, maybe I don't want to let this hang in front of his troops, you know. And so I said, you have to understand that he and I, you know, have a long history, so I take that as license to be a little blunt and a little annoying now. And he said, you were blunt and annoying from the very beginning. So, but, so I, you know, as some of you know, I, if you've read the Time Manage book, you know, I, I don't take incoming calls unscheduled and Sometimes people have to wait for a couple weeks before they can get a phone appointment with me, and they have to send information before they can get it. We have all these, like, rules for how you do business with Dan. And there's a couple things about them that people consistently don't understand. So one is, most of them existed when I couldn't afford them. It's not like the ability to afford them enabled me to have them. It's more that having them enabled me to afford them. Most people have that the other way around. And secondly, as long as you can persuade people that it's in their best interest, then you can generally have things the way you want it. So you have to have an explanation for all this, but there is an explanation. So, okay, you can't call me anytime you want and take potluck, and if you get me on the phone, you got me. You can't do it. You can't even call into the office, and if I— 'cause I'm not at the office. I'm in an undisclosed location with no communication devices that you can access. That's where I am. So that's very frustrating to people, the fact that they have to wait to wait a week or two weeks. It's very frustrating to people. However, the answer to it is when you do have the scheduled 20 minutes with me on the phone, you got 20 minutes with me on the phone. You don't have me being interrupted. You don't have me talking to you on the phone while I am at Starbucks waiting in line to order a frothy latte. Prope. You don't have me talking to you on the phone while I'm driving down the road. You don't have me unprepared. You got 20 quality minutes of dedicated, focused time, and we eliminate phone tag altogether. You don't call me, leave a message, I get back to you, I get your— we don't do any of that, okay? So it's beneficial to the client as well as to me. Now it is about my preference, don't misunderstand, but there's a benefit side to it for the client as well. Also don't misunderstand, I am in total control of this. Now you would think, and most people would think, well gee, they're giving you a lot of money, how can you exercise that kind of control over them? No, they're giving me a lot of money because I exercise that kind of control over them. You got to get that in the right order. As a matter of fact, here's my big idea about this: to a great degree, your income, your bank balance, will reflect how much control you exercise over others. The less control you exercise. One of the best chiropractors in America. This is how income doesn't correlate to expertise. Disturbs people tremendously. People think income correlates to stuff it doesn't. Like, well, parents are not going to like me saying this necessarily, but it's a big shock a shock to people that income doesn't necessarily correlate to education. Now, to some degree that's true. I mean, you know, pretty much in America today it's pretty tough if you don't make it through high school, you know, or at least get your GED while you're in prison. But MBAs do not necessarily, that doesn't necessarily equate. To income. The last time I ran it, the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest— and I haven't checked it in a few years, so, in this way— but the last time I did, the Forbes 400, which comes out every year, the list of the 400 wealthiest people, half of them had not graduated from college. Another big hunk of them had never even gone, and very few of them had gone to the big name Ivy League schools. All those people are prepared to work for somebody else who didn't go. That's what they are. That doesn't mean they don't earn nice incomes, but they don't necessarily get rich. The correlation is actually all about how much you exercise control over others, and that has to do with one thing and one thing only: your decision to exercise control over others. There is no place to go get a degree in that. There is no organization that certifies you and then gives you permission to exercise control over others. You either do or you don't. And it's a self-taught collection of skills, and it has more to do with attitude than anything else. Great clichés exist for a reason. So, W. Clement Stone's great line. So, how many don't know who W. Clement Stone is? Raise your hands, be honest. Come on. By the way, you would all have learned more by looking around at them than if you looked at me. See, there's a lesson in this, but the lesson ain't up here. Jeez, sweet. And so, Clem Stone built the largest single insurance direct sales operation in the history of the industry. Out of the depths of the Great Depression. Now it's very useful to study people who built gigantic businesses at really bad economic times. There's a reason for that. It's particularly relevant now. And Stone was Napoleon Hill's partner. So most of you know who Napoleon Hill is, but Stone was Napoleon Hill's partner late in life. What many of you don't know is Stone also sort of rescued Napoleon Hill financially late in life. So there's a couple principles missing from Think and Grow Rich. I mean that with no disrespect, but I mean it seriously. There's a couple principles missing from Think and Grow Rich. But anyway, so Stone's cliché is, "The sale is contingent upon the attitude of the salesperson, not the attitude of the customer." And if you say that to a room full of salespeople, they all, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." They nod. And, but that doesn't mean that they really internalize that and behave in that way. But the cliché is true for a reason. It is dependent on the attitude of the salesperson, not the attitude of the customer. Now it's usually left up to the attitude of the customer. So this is all about this issue of control, is how you feel about it, how you then behave about it, what practice choices you put. So all the time that I have conversations with people, when the time management book first came out, a lot of conversations occurred. And Renegade Millionaire Time Management, that product, if you have that, sparked a lot of questions. And I get questions about this more than I get questions about just Baha'i, you know. How can you exert that much control over customers or clients? You just do. Oh, I could never do that in my business because Why? It's different. Thank you. Of course, because my business is different. Of course, I could never do that in my business. Bail bondsman, somebody needs to be accessible. Cardiac surgeon, maybe somebody needs, but other than that, no. And there's somebody in every business who's exerting that much control or more. I remember the first time I went to do a Gary Halbert seminar, I went to He was having them in Key West. So how many of you don't know who Gary Halbert is? Raise your hands nice and high. Come on, who don't know? Name means nothing to you. Raise them up, keep them up. Everybody will learn more if you look around than if you look at me. That's a lot of hands, right? And like, to be involved in marketing and not recognize that name is like sinful. I mean, I mean, it's, it's like being a Christian and not recognizing Moses's name. I mean, I, you know, You've got to read up, folks, you know? So I won't take time, but anyway, so Halbert's this lunatic, marketing legend, and so I'm invited to go speak to his seminar, and his seminar's in Key West, Florida, and so, and people are paying $7,000 apiece to be there, and this is a while ago, so just think of the great bargain you got here. First of all, stuff actually started close to on time, so that alone, compared to a Halbert seminar, it's a big improvement. But so the thing's in Key West, Florida, and there's, I don't know, 400 people, 500 people that want to set up a house down there. Getting to Key West is no easy trek from like anywhere except Key West. Yeah. I mean, it's like a major project. I mean, it's agony, actually. You're either going to 2 stops, 3 stops, some puddle jump thing. The airline I flew down in, the FAA yanked their certification the week afterwards. Or you're going to rent a car and you're going to drive. They managed to create this place with one way in and one way out, which has two lanes, right? It's a brilliant idea. God forbid we should have built more lanes. No, no, no, we're not going to do that. And so, I mean, it's a major project. And I remember saying to Halbert, you know, Don't you think, you know, would it kill you, like, for you to come as far as Miami and have this thing in Miami? You know, people would— he said, there's 400 people here who paid $7,000 apiece. How many more would I get if I took it to their backyard? He said, no, they'll come wherever I want them. To come, enough of them if I handle them properly. Gary, at the seminar, by the way, he walked out— it was the greatest lesson takeaway song. It's an aside, but I'll give it to you. I was talking to somebody this morning about it. So Halbert really, the whole reason to do the seminar was to get clients. However, so Halbert walks out on stage and he's got T-shirt, shorts, sandals on. He's got a big baseball cap that says, "Clients suck." And he spends the entire first 15 or 20 minutes of the seminar explaining in copious detail why clients suck and why he doesn't want any clients anymore and he has all the clients he needs and don't be bugging him during the seminar trying to become a client because he doesn't want a client and don't be chasing him around telling him about your Google goofy idea because he's heard about every goofy idea there is and he doesn't want to hear about it anymore and he's not available and he's not going to change his mind and don't bother. And you couldn't, you had to pry him off of them. I mean, he's in the restroom at the urinal and they're hanging on him on both sides trying to become clients, right? Now it was sort of clumsily done, but I learned a valuable lesson. I give it to you as an extra. Third big idea, about inevitability and finality. So I think one of the biggest stupidities in business is the idea that anything is permanent or anything is inevitable. So right now, people think, most people can't imagine Driving around America and there not being Walmart. This is an unimaginable concept. If you tried to tell most people that there may be a day, sooner than later, when there is no Walmart, they will laugh you out of the room. When I grew up, Every city had a thriving downtown department store. Some of you in the room are of the same age. That was a permanent part of life, unimaginable to anybody that it would never exist. So I grew up where I live now, Cleveland, Cleveland area, so Cleveland, Ohio. The two big department stores downtown, May Company Department Store, Halley's Department Store. For a little while there were three actually, another one called Sterling Linden, but Halley's and May Company were huge, right? And everybody went downtown to the department store. That's where you went to shop, especially at the holidays. That's an American tradition. You went downtown to the department store The Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, the kids went to see Santa Claus, everybody did their shopping, the place was decorated, the lights were turned on. It was a— and if you had asked anybody, imagine, in just a handful of years this will all be over. It won't exist anymore. Well, they would laugh you off the planet. A lot of people don't know there were companies like Walmart before there was Walmart, and they're all gone. Federated Department Store, but Woolworth's. Dan Gaynor and I were talking this morning. Walmart has now announced they're building in markets, they're now building mini Walmarts. What a mini Walmart is, is a Woolworth's store. But some of you don't even know what a Woolworth's store is because it's been gone so long. And at one time it was permanent. It was inevitable. There will always be Woolworth's. There will always be Walmart. There will always— try and imagine life without Google. How could this— this will never be. This will never be. I said to Dan Gaynor, who publishes my political stuff, he said something about— I'm the only one they publish who sends them a CD. You know, everybody else emails the stuff. And stuff, and you know, he said, "We gotta get you using email." I said, "Let me tell you my new theory about that. My new theory about this is I'm gonna outlast it and it will be gone." That's my new theory, that I'll outlive it and it won't even exist. Everybody will be using something else, and I won't be willing to use that either, but email will be gone. He said, "Oh, that." I said, "Really? MySpace." MySpace. MySpace was— keyword was connected to MySpace. Facebook, Twitter. MySpace is like— no self-respecting person is on MySpace anymore. They look at— if you tell them you're on MySpace, they look at you like they look at me when I say, "Send me a fax." And if they don't look at you that way, that's what they're thinking after you turn your back on them. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is inevitably going to be here. Nothing. Walmart is not a guaranteed permanent part of American life. Nor is Google, nor is anything else. I also grew up at a time when no self-respecting person owned a Japanese automobile. Oh, you couldn't. They were called toy autos. Full circle. Um, um, well, the fools, they started making them here. Look what happens to you. You know? So here's the trick about all this. The trick about all this is to get, first of all, get it out of your head that anything has any permanence at all. It was only a little while ago they were all telling us we had to do this. Had to. Everybody walked around, they walked around with bottles of water in hand all the time. Right? Like I'm leaving the house and oh my God, there may be no water. I gotta have water. So they were all telling us we had to do this. That's real recent, right? Now they're telling you don't do that. The plastic emits toxins into the water, causes cancer, 20 years from now you'll be glowing in the dark, your ovaries are gonna fall out, besides you're ruining the environment, Al Gore's losing sleep at night, you should you should take tap water and run it through a little filter, and you should put it in a stainless steel bottle, not one of these bottles, because these bottles are toxic and they fill up in landfills and they'll kill us all, and besides, it really is tap water. This is— well, it is. This is Nestlé's Pure Life purified water. That means it's tap water run through a filter. That's what it is. But it was only a couple of years ago where this It was a permanent part— it's dying now— it was a permanent part of the American landscape. So the trick is to constantly be ahead of your own extinction. That's the trick. 'Cause your extinction is looming all the time. The way we do business, how we do business, how we got customers, how we get customers, what customers want, how you price things, how you— sell things, what technology you use to sell them. The biggest stupidity in personal thought and behavior is the acceptance of finality. So finality is when something is over and you cannot, you'll never recover from it. It'll be over. I mentioned this morning And there are still people alive, it isn't that long ago that the media that I've done a lot of work with, the television infomercial, was actually outlawed. It was illegal. It was over. But it didn't stay over. Somebody changed it. Actually, at one time, by the way, lawyers weren't allowed to advertise. Right? That was illegal, Harry, you outlaw scumbag criminal you are. Now that you advertise, not because you're a lawyer, but because you're a lawyer who advertises to a certain extent. Infomercials were illegal. Casino gambling was illegal everywhere but Nevada. Anybody more than 90 minutes away from it now? New, new, and it's only a matter of time before it's on your iPhone, and you'll be able to place a bet right then and there and play roulette, which people actually call in to Las Vegas casinos and make bets over the phone, and people tell them whether they won or not. Oh, sorry, your number didn't come up. Better luck on your birthday next year. There's a famous story about a guy who loses 50 grand every year on his birthday. He calls up and picks a number and it doesn't come in. They'll be doing it on the— well, they play poker online, right? Anybody in here play poker online? There you go. You buffoons. Honest to God. Playing poker online. Yeah. Okay. That's safe. Uh-huh. You missed the trust but verify deal. I mean, it's bad enough when you can actually see the deal, but, right? So, personal application is over. We're talking— Vicki and I were talking about the World Wrestling Federation. You don't need to know why. But, well, actually, because she went to an event with a friend and saw this thing for the first time, really paid attention to it. So there's 72,000 people there. Yeah, 72,000 people at a World Wrestling— in case you haven't been paying attention, 72,000 people at a World Wrestling Federation. Ticket price is $25 to $650. Not $6.50, $650. The World Wrestling Federation's total revenues, they're bigger than Major League Baseball and NFL added together. So you guys think those are America's sports. They may be, but they're not America's most profitable sport. World Wrestling Federation. Some of the top guys are getting $5 million a year. I mean, they're getting big money. They're stuntmen. They're getting big money. Merchandise sales, unimaginable. Pay-per-view still works. You would think pay-per-view, no, pay-per-view still works for wrestling. Huge. That thing was deader than a doornail. It had one heyday, okay? How many of you don't know who Curious George is? The little animal, the kids' thing? You don't know who he is? Okay, now how many don't know who Gorgeous George is? Huh? You don't know? You don't know who Gorgeous George is? How many know? Let me see your hands if you know. Well, okay, that's pretty good. There you go. So Gorgeous George was the heyday of wrestling. How could you not know who Curious George is? Don't you people have any kids? What the hell is wrong with you? Jeez. So Gorgeous George was in the heyday of wrestling and then wrestling died. Died. It was dead. It was down to 200 people coming to the Canton, Ohio armory to watch 4 or 5 people wrestle. I mean, it didn't even have a TV presence anymore. There was no money in it. There were little local promoters messing around, and Vince McMahon got his little grip on this thing and has turned it into the behemoth that it is today, a wealth machine. Like almost no pro sports empire has ever been. Mixed martial arts is— they're trying to replicate it. NASCAR took lessons from it. NASCAR was almost dead. Certainly a shadow of its former self, but wrestling was dead, okay? And it came back to life. The great lesson is nothing's final, all right? So here's your motto. Here's my belief, okay? It ain't over till I say it is, all right? It's over when I say it is. For you, it ought to be over when you say it is, not when anybody else says it is, right? I, uh, so here, think of this list. So here's unemployable. I wrote down, well, me, but I mean, I wrote down Robert Downey Jr. That career was over. Direct-to-DVD crap movies was all that was left. In part because you couldn't insure him. In case you don't know it, to make a movie in Hollywood, you got to be able to insure all the actors, and he was uninsurable. That makes him unemployable. Unemployable. So when you go see Iron Man 2, First of all, he has a piece of the picture. And when you see the box office reports on Iron Man 2, you remember that this guy 5 years ago couldn't get a job and his career was over. Unmarketable. George Foreman. Many of you saw George speak at the InfoSummit. George came back to boxing in order to remake himself as a marketable personality because he had left the first time as an unmarketable personality. In prison, there's more than one, but I wrote down Martha Stewart. A lot of people made a bad bet on that, me included, when she went. I didn't buy stock. Turned out to be a bad bet. 'cause it's not a real good stock, but it was a bargain then, and if you had ridden it up, it turns out Martha Stewart went to prison. Prison. Prison. Came out bigger. I mean, the empire is thriving. And people are buying doilies who don't doil. They don't, I mean, it's a strange phenomenon to me, the whole thing. The Food Network is too. The Food Network is pornography for people that don't cook. That's what it is. That's exactly what it is. I mean, everybody I know who watches the Food Network orders pizza. What the hell? I can order pizza. There's always something you can do. Because nothing's ever over. There's always something you can do. And the best thing to do when you do it is ignore all normal procedures.

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