How to Build & Grow an Audience by Building a Persona with Frank Kern and Joe Polish - I Love Marketing Episode #429

The Persona that you develop is an embellishment of things you already have. You know what I mean? So that's an important characteristic. And I think if you just go out and make something up, people will see through it and you'll ultimately fail and you'll dismally fail.

Hello, this is Joe Polish. Now real quick, before you listen to the podcast, which I hope you're going to love, just wanted to let you know I spent the entire last year on a sabbatical and I've got so many insights, so many things that would be super valuable. And my first official coming back event and my first public appearance is going to be February 11th through the 13th in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. So if you are a high level entrepreneur and you would like to attend in person, go to Jo Polish returns.com joepolishreturns.com check it out. Hope to see you there. Now enjoy the podcast.

If your Persona can match that ultimate desired lifestyle target of your market, like that deeply embedded psychological thing that they really, at the end of the day, if you said, okay, you can have all this stuff, or you could just say to hell with it and go be a dude that surfs and hangs out on the beach and has a lot of money, they say, all right, screw it, give me B. If you can embody that and legitimately present yourself as that, then you have this immediate bond with them that is extremely powerful because you're what they're moving towards and you embody what they're ultimately moving towards. Dan Kennedy taught me when I bought one of his courses, the Persona that you develop is an embellishment of things you already have. You know what I mean? So that's an important characteristic. And I think if you just go out and make something up, people will see through it and you'll ultimately fail and you'll dismally fail. So it's an important distinction.

What are some of the distinctions between people that do well with marketing and people that don't? What are some of the things that you think make it work and make it don't? Because a lot of people do try to be Internet marketers and they watch the copy and the headlines and the opt in pages and all of the stuff, but they just never have success.

With it, probably because they never do anything. And it's the difference between dabbling and deciding. If you take all the people who've actually done something in information marketing or Internet marketing, which I used to say is no different than any other kind of marketing, now I think it is significantly Different. But if you were to take all the people who actually do stuff say, well, how come you did stuff and no one else did? You would probably have like a 90 something percent of the people would answer. They'd say, well, I made a conscious decision that this is what I'm going to do. And I acted on that decision. I made a plan of action and then I considered or I continued down that path, adjusting the course of action as needed until I got the result. Basic stuff, just like if you were baking a cake. But you can't dabble your way to riches, right? So I think the number one determining factor is a conscious decision and a conscious plan of action to go forward. You just have to do stuff. And the second thing is the people who do finally break through from dabble to decide and do something, they'll quit. They say, well, I tried this and I spent about eight hours on it and it didn't work. And this isn't for me. You wake up every day miserable, go to a job that you hate every day and you spend eight hours per day on the job, but you're unwilling to spend an extra hour beyond that one eight hour window that you've already committed to making a major difference in your life and the life of your family. So it's the stick to itiveness, I think is another Dan word, I believe that made it work. I don't know anybody who's ever just said, okay, I bought this course, chapter one, write headline, see what happens. And it all fell into place automatically for them, you know what I mean? It just doesn't happen. Or if it does happen, I've never seen it. So that's characteristic number two would be this adjusting the course.

What do you learn about marketing from having a family and stuff that's clearly had to have some impact on the way that you do things and how you do stuff.

Oh, well, you know what's funny is having young children, you learn like the base level negotiation, you know what I mean?

I love you. Like, you see, should I be serious here? Should I go out?

No, I mean, you really learn like the base level negotiation. So it's like, okay, well everybody, even as children, we all have this negotiative, if that's even a word. It is Webster, I want the royalties on that one. But this mindset, well, it's all negotiable. Everything's negotiable. I got to get something. It's like, put on your shoes. I don't want to put on your shoes. Put on your Shoes. I don't want to put on my shoes. I'll give you some candy. Okay, I'll put on my shoes. You know what I mean? It's like, good Lord. So the whole concept of bribery and negotiation was a big lesson. And just like, tiny little baby steps can lead to big things. And we all know this as marketers, right? I mean, you get a lead and then you cultivate that lead and you sell them something, then you sell them more stuff. But when I had children and started communicating with them and I could talk to them and they would talk to me, you know, because that's. Well, you don't have any kids that you know of, I don't think. Yeah. So as a father, I don't know if the rest of you guys are like this or not, but, you know, when my children were between, like, infant and, say, three and a half years old, I was just that dude that worked for mom, you know what I mean? So once I began able to, like, past that age, and they were like, oh, yeah, you're my dad and we can talk about stuff, I really noticed that the importance of the baby steps in negotiation and just like the coddling and everything is going to be okay. And yeah, you do this, you can have this, and it's great. And we see how much you enjoyed that. Well, you can have this if you do this. And if you apply that, even as dumb as it sounds to marketing in your business, you can move someone as a prospect all the way up this ladder to a lead to a really big important sale through that very same strategy of just tiny little bribes and reassurance and constant communication.

If you could maybe talk to the importance of selling, what you think of selling and anything that you would recommend that the listeners, in order to just do a better job in their business, whatever their business is, how selling relates to it and any sort of suggestions you could give.

First of all, the single most important thing you could think about, you don't have the mindset of everything else is completely throwawayable, disposable. Except for at the end of the day, that sales figure. It's important to adopt it because otherwise you end up focusing on stuff that doesn't make money. I don't know who said it. It's been attributed to lots of people, but it's a true statement of fact that nothing happens until something is sold. That's distinction number one. Distinction number two is selling is not bad. I think everyone who's in business for themselves has had some experience where they were in sales and they were rejected and they got this anchor, this psychological anchor where if I'm a salesman, it's bad. People don't like salesmen.

Absolutely.

It's horrible and it sucks. And it's a perfectly understandable thing to. We've all experienced. It is kind of horrible, you know, I mean, I used to sell cars and be like, see people drive up on the lot and you're like, oh, God, I gotta go out here and talk to these guys. You know, I don't want to be here either, and all this kind of stuff. And I empathize with you. So I'm not saying it's a bullshit belief, but if you're cool about selling, it's totally fine. And where people screw up with selling is they, like, try to disguise the fact that they're selling almost. Or they try to, like, do these bullshit closes and fake things, which just.

Worsens it because people can. It's the same, you know, people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. So it's that being persuaded in an area or in a direction that just really doesn't quite fit.

This one variation of this pitch that I did got me like 2,000 customers in nine minutes or something. It was crazy. All right, so here it was. And this wasn't a piece of paper. It was some other stuff. But this is my prop for the day. And here's the pitch I made. Hi, everybody, Frank Kern here. And today I've got a blatant bribe to get you to try this piece of paper. And here's why I'm being so blatant about this. And here's what I want you to do. This piece of paper is really important to me, and I know it's going to be really important to you because it contains the top 10 magic sentences you can say to get anyone to buy anything, assuming you're selling something of value and integrity, which I know that you will. And because I know this is so valuable today, I'm going to just bribe you into accepting it on a trial basis. So what I'm going to give to you if you take this thing on a trial basis, is I'm going to give you Joe Polish's home phone number. I'm also going to give you the much coveted, rarely seen photographs of Joe Polish in that ghost, circa 1993, back when Van Halen got together, only briefly. I'm also going to give you a kidney. So here's the way this is going to work. There's a little button below this video and you can click on it and you can have me ship this thing to you. And if you'll just pay the cost of shipping, I'll give you all these pictures of Joe and the kidney for free just to get you to try this piece of paper. If you like the piece of paper, that's great. I'm pretty sure you will, but I don't know. I'm not psychic. If you like it, it's just $974,000. And if you don't like it, don't worry about it. Just let me know and we'll never bill you and send it back. Listen, I don't have a lot of these things available because I really don't know how this little test is going to work out. But if you want it, I suggest you get on this now because like I said, these are lots of free gifts just for trying out this piece of paper. And all you got to do is pay shipping. Okay? So cool. Enjoy making this video for you. Hope you have a great day. And there's a button below. Bam. That seems like idiotically stupid, doesn't it? But it works because people are like, oh, thank you so much for not being a dipshit. It's to the point. It's essentially the three steps that John Carlton taught me, which is like to say, here's what I got, here's what it's going to do for you. Here's what I want you to do next. And the more you can just boil that down. Assuming you've got something people want in the first place, your work is really done. There's no need for any jujitsu or judo or anything stupid. But there's a major distinction there. And that is assuming you've got something people want in the first place. I think that's where people screw up. And that's when selling gets hard. Convince someone to accept something they don't already want. The easiest way to find out what people want to buy is what they're buying already. You know, it's like, why go out and try to create this new mousetrap? You know, I mean, it's like if they're buying little wooden mousetraps, just make a cooler looking wooden mousetrap with a neater name, better marketing, and sell that thing. You'll have easier money. So if I see a product that's selling like crazy in this thing and most of the sales are coming from other people spending their marketing dollar to sell it, I know people are just like 90% chance you're onto something as a product because otherwise it wouldn't be so popular and other affiliates wouldn't be spending their hard earned money to sell it. Logic dictates. Okay, well if I have expertise in this area or can buy expertise in this area and simply apply superior marketing to this herd of people that this dude's already selling to, then I'll win and I'll make lots of money.

How would you make the decision between a good opportunity and a bad opportunity? I mean, what's a smart pursuit? What's a dumb pursuit? I mean, you are a guy now that's had a good level of success. Lots of people want your attention, Lots of people want your time. You have more things thrown at you than you could ever possibly do in a lifetime, probably on a monthly basis. How do you decide what to pursue, what not to pursue? This is more like a time management. How does Frank Kern make decisions on where to spend your energy on?

Well, I'll give you the honest answer than the answer that should be. The honest answer is that I really have no system for it at all and it just depends on my mood and I have a very difficult time saying no to anybody. So lots of times I'll get involved in projects that I think are cool for like 10 seconds and I'm like, why in the hell did I. Come on, you know, that's the honest answer. The answer which should be adhered to, and this is like a do as I say, not as I do type of thing is it's two columns of criteria I guess, that should be met. One, is it going to be any fun? Two, is it going to make a lot of money? And the varying levels will self regulate. So it's going to be a tremendous amount of fun and it's not going to make a whole lot of money. Then it's probably still going to be worthwhile. This is all pre assuming that all opportunities that even get to this funneling process are legitimate. You should never consider anything that's remotely funky or shady or won't add a lot of value to people and things like that.

The key is when you're doing stuff that's good for people, I think you almost have a moral obligation to do everything humanly possible to get that person into that position if it's going to help them and add value in their life. And I think if people think of selling that way, then all of a sudden selling no longer is a bad thing. But then you start to realize that that's the only thing that ever gets the world Anywhere.

I want my marketing and all the stuff that I do to emulate the effects of a lifelong friendship. So I want them to feel like they've known me all their lives before it's ever time to ask for any money. And I do that through the use of the character that is me. But I'm often an embellished version of myself. So if I were on stage with you right now, it would be a lot more laid back and I'd have some profanity in there. And we talk about drinking beers and partying and surfing and stuff like that, but it's still an embellishment of what is really there. So that core person, how have you learned your marketing?

And then what would you recommend to people that are watching?

There's really like a three pronged school of stuff for me in terms of hardcore direct response marketing, the fundamentals and the mechanics. It would be unquestioningly Dan Kennedy for sure. I mean, take away everything but Dan Kennedy and I'll go out and make you lobotomized me and just gave me Dan easily do it all over again. So that's the fundamental stuff of direct response. So there's that fundamental school, like the Dan Kennedys. Gary Halbert was another great one, John Carlton for writing copy. But if I had to distill everything down, it'd be Dan for sure. And I learned a tremendous amount from both studying and modeling Tony Robbins and that. So he's huge in terms of like, well, what's really driving behavior? What's really driving decisions. That's where I learned and got that people are buying an emotion when they buy like really, they're buying an emotion, they're buying that feeling and it's often a quick burst. And they would rather have that quick burst feeling than do the work to maintain an elongated sense of that feeling. So that's school of thought number two, number three. And this is going to be weird, but it's vitally important, I think, is the art of conversational dialogue in your copy, in the written word, in the art of making a point really quickly in the simplest terms imaginable, you know, And I learned that and continue to learn that from reading trash fiction.

Really?

Yes, I'm reading trash fiction. Tremendous amount of trash fiction.

Really?

Yeah. And I tell this to everyone and they're like, you got to be kidding me. Pay attention to how these people write and how they communicate. For example, Patterson, it's so hard not to read his books, in my opinion. First of all, they're good, right? But Every chapter, on average that I've noticed, is about six pages long. Which tells us that information you want people to consume must be not only chunked, but like micro chunks down. And every chapter has a beginning, and then right at the end of the chapter, something's about to happen. It's not a cliffhanger, but it's something.

You just revealed a very fascinating little secret to your thing because you have a lot of cliffhangers in your copy and in your videos. You have very. In terms of long copy people, you're someone that conveys a lot, but you do it in chunks and you keep leading people to the next step. What would you consider to be some of the elegant ideas that have made you the most money, that have made your clients the most money, that have been just significant in whatever you would call financial success?

What we really want when we're doing business with someone is we want a friend. We want someone we can trust. So why not act like a friend, someone that they can trust, and talk like a friend, someone they can trust, and carry yourself and be a friend of that person and be someone they can trust, as opposed to this facade, this premeditated, calculated, stiff, bullshit facade type of thing. So proving to my clients that you can' sell a lot of stuff by not being perfect and just be like being a normal person. What happened was they not only started using that approach, but people who wouldn't take action before because they thought it was too hard and they thought they had to be perfect, started taking action and therefore started making money and making a lot of it. So as basic and fundamental as it sounds, that was really big and powerful.

The ability to convey powerful, persuasive language in print wherever is one of the most, if not the most important skill in marketing. I mean, copy is the oxygen that makes all of the marketing work. And what could you speak to just on what copy is, why to use it? Because a lot of people that just don't do well in marketing, they just don't. They undervalue the importance of good copy. And you know, you talked about John Carlton, who's awesome dude, smart as heck, and copy is king when it comes to promotions. If you have the best product in the world, but you have lousy abilities to communicate, why it's a great, it's just not going to fly.

This anchor was placed into our psyche as kids, and that anchor makes us feel like writing something with this blank thing facing us is a monumental and horrifying and terrible task because it means term paper, it means Essay, it means dissertation or whatever other things. Thesis for all those of you who have written thesis. We're conditioned by life experience to fear, whether we want to admit it or not. To fear the blank page because of school, really, because it's either fear or dread it. One of the two or both. So a new thought process has to be instilled. A new anchor has got to be instilled. Where the blank page does not equal pain. The blank page equals money. First of all, there's that. The second thing is, no one is grading you. So even once people get past, they say, okay, the blank page equals money. Great, let's write some copy. They write it from that perspective I talked about earlier, where they're uptight and they're writing with pretense and they're freaked out, so it's got to be perfect and they write as if they're not them. So what I advise people to do and what I try to do is I write as if I'm writing to my ultimate ideal prospect. And that that guy has been my best friend since we were little kids. And I don't mean I'm writing like saying, dear Bob, dude, you're so cool. Remember that time we went camping? I'm writing with that level of familiarity that I would speak to my best friend with. So that complete lack of content. Because like, when it's you and one of your buddies you've known forever, I mean, you talk about anything with this person, you can say stupid stuff, make stupid jokes like say, give me that thing and not have to use the right word and they still know what you mean. So I write like that as if I've known that prospect. So it's got to be that duality that you know you're writing to your ideal prospect, but you have to be writing to him as if you've known each other your entire life and you genuinely care about this person, you know that's got to come through. And you can't fake, or I can't fake it anyway. So you have to have that empathy and you have to really care about it.

So the more you learn about marketing, the more you realize you don't know because it's such a. It's such a huge world. But I think whenever someone gets complacent, because when you can send out a free email, what I would say to Internet marketers is if you can start integrating some direct mail and some offline follow up free money, it will make you better on the Internet. Because what it does is it Forces you to actually have to spend money. And if you don't get see, anyone could blast out a million emails and not have it really cost you anything.

Exactly.

But what happens is you put up and allow wastage. You don't really focus on just maybe the right direction and stuff. In my opinion, with so much attention put on the Internet, there's just less noise in people's mailboxes than there were 10 years ago. And when there's less noise, it's easier to get attention.

The thing that I've tested, the strategy I'll tell you about and then just ride along and actually another strategy too. But what I tested each time each direct mail piece has been like a two to four page letter telling them why they should go to a website. So it's like email, but just in there. Because email is just about, okay, open the email, read it, click on the website. Right, right. Well, the direct mail I'm doing is open the envelope, read the message, go to the website, end the thing. So still the same transactional mechanics are the same in terms of them buying online. Unbelievable response. Every single dime. How come I haven't been doing this forever? Oh my God, I would literally have like two to three times as much money had I been doing this and had my partners. And when I say partner, I mean like joint venture partners and stuff. If we'd all been doing it, we would all probably have like five to ten times as much money because we endorse each other and help each other out so much. So the big lesson is if you're thinking about getting online. Yes. Or if you are online. Yes. It's incredibly profitable and great, wonderful medium to work in. It's different than direct mail in the sense that selling is a little bit different. But if you just do direct mail and stick it on the Internet, it will still work. It worked for me for years. I didn't start making a fortune until I started utilizing other stuff. But the takeaway is integration. For me, my hang up and never doing it before was like, I don't know how to do it mechanically. So here's how I did it mechanically. I went into my shopping cart program. I exported all my buyers who lived in the continental United States. I put them in a file and then I wrote a sales letter and I put that in a PDF and I sent the PDF and the list of dudes to a letterhouse here in California, which was found presumably in the yellow pages by my assistant and said, send this thing to these people. Go forth and prosper. That was it. So it was totally painless. I thought it would be this big deal. I was like, oh, how do you do it? How do you. What are these newfangled printers people speak of? What are these things? You know, how do you do? But it was nothing. So do it. It works. It's crazy. It's like free money. I promise you. It's insane.

In terms of the self help field and stuff, what is the best way to advise the viewers, the listeners of this interview on your thoughts on how to make the most out of it? Because there's a lot of good stuff out there, but you can get yourself overwhelmed. You can go down paths that aren't going to get you where you want to go. I mean, how would you advise someone to get. Get the most out of educating themselves?

Okay, well, what I did was, and I still continue to do this is I'll find one person that I like their stuff and I'll just get everything. I won't get it all at once. Well, sometimes I do, and that's always a mistake because I don't go through it because I have too much stuff. But I'll just get like on a jag. I do this with fiction authors as well, you know, like I just read 10 James Patterson books back to back, you know, so now I got it. All right, so, and that's what I did was like when I discovered Dan, you know, I went and I just got everything and I just went through it methodically. You know, it's like, this is great. And when I discovered Tony Robbins, every single thing, I was like, all right, I got the book. Got personal power. Listen to that. Same with Jeff Paul. Got the $20 book, got the all the Way up to the Home Study course and all that kind of stuff. So there's that, like, get everything and listen to it, but don't get it all at once. And I stick with one person and then. And understand that. But every single person who is a guru anyway that I've ever known is not like a messiah and give them permission to be weirdo people. I think you said it right. If you discarded every book because the author was a weird person, you'd never read anything or something like that.

If you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. And I think Dan Kennedy is the one I first heard that from. I can't quite remember, but I think Dan might have been the one that told me that out of all the skills that someone could go and spend their time learning as it relates to business to grow, become a millionaire. What are the skills that you think are just critical that our listeners leave here with and go out and what you would recommend developing?

You got to learn how to persuade people to do what you want them to do without you being there in front of them. And that is not actually either. This is all of this. It's writing copy, it's making videos, it's preparing audio presentations, period. You got to do it. If you don't do it, you're hosed. You might as well just go home. Because if you don't do it, you're either going to never get the amount of customers and prospects and money that you want or you're going to delegate it to someone else who will have ultimate control and power over you because they have the only ability to make your phone ring and make your cash register ring. And without them, you're screwed. Therefore, you're their slave, essentially. So learn to do that. It's really easy, actually. It's like as easy as talking to someone saying, hey, dude, I went and saw the new James Bond. It's pretty good. You should check it out. It's that simple, you know? But learn it and believe it and know it and do it and you'll be fine if you don't do it. See you later. You know, I mean, you're pretty much hosed. Yeah, pretty much. Hoes is the professional term.

Don't miss another episode of I love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilove marketing.com subscribe if you'd like access to the show, notes or resources to help you take action on what was discussed, please visit ilovemarketing.com 429.