Marketing And Growing An Audience By Building A Persona With Frank Kern - I Love Marketing Episode #209

I'm dean jackson. He's joe polish.

And this is the I love marketing podcast. Okay. Now, you talked about creating a personality. So Frank Kern as a. Is this. Is this a Persona that you create out there with your crazy videos and you. You know, the Alabama surfer dude and all this stuff, or. I mean, how much of a divima surfer dude.

I'm totally changing my name legally to that, actually.

You should get that website.

Yeah, I'm not from Alabama. Where are you from? Well, I'm saying Alabama now.

Well, why do you talk like this? Where's that accent from?

Georgia. Distinctly different. I mean, we're about to. It's about to get nasty here on the thing. All right.

The Georgia surfer dude. Now, is this Persona that you create, I mean, I believe this is just really how you are like, all the time.

Yeah.

Right. So I think that leads to having, like, an enjoyable business because you're not putting on a facade. You're just kind of being you. And you have probably done one of the best jobs of taking who you are. This crazy, wacky sort of guy that just does what he does in building a whole entire business around that. I think there's some lessons in that that would be useful for people. And a lot of people that you've. Really top marketers that I know that have worked with you have made comments about, you know, just hanging around. Frank, I don't work as much.

I don't make nearly as much money. It's great. All the taxes I save is wonderful.

No, no, actually, people say they make more money from hanging around you less and stuff like that because you're just really laid back about your approach to business. Could you articulate or describe what that is all about as a lesson so people that are watching this interview can walk away with something here?

Yeah. We'll start with the personality thing. Your market always has an ultimate outcome. The person that they would rather be. I'm very fortunate that my market is. Well, in some ways it's unfortunate because the groupie situation is totally awful. But I'm very fortunate in the sense that most of my customers are dudes that are older than I am, that wish that they were younger, guys that would like to retire to the beach and screw off all the time. And it just so happens that I have moved to the beach, and I primarily screw off all the time. But your Persona, if you can do it legitimately, and the key here is legitimately, you know what I mean? You shouldn't just make shit up. If your Persona can match that ultimate desired lifestyle target of your market, like that deeply embedded psychological thing that they really. At the 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. So it's a big deal. Now, the Persona that I give out is an exaggerated version of my real Persona. I mean, I don't just sit around all day and I don't surf like, every single day. I go maybe three, four times a week, which is still a pretty good bit, but I'd rather go every day. But I have to work, you know? And I really do work, right? And I really do like to think about marketing stuff. And I've even got on shoes. I really do.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, no socks. But there's no need to go.

Yeah, I don't see that a lot, do you?

It's a little cold out, you know?

Yeah. You know, here in San Diego, where.

It'S freezing, it's just gotta be 70 something, you know? So it's. It's. Dan Kennedy taught me this 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.

Okay, Well, I mean, a lot of people try to get into the game that you're in and that you're doing very well in. Most of them fail. What are some of the distinctions between people that do well with marketing and people that don't? Because even going back to Ben Suarez in his book Seven Steps to Freedom, this is people that aren't familiar with direct marketing and stuff. Years back, a guy that built a $100 million a year company, 1,000 employees, he had a statistic 20 years ago that said one out of every 70,000 people that enter the direct mail direct marketing business. This is before the Internet even succeed in it. Dismal failure rate in people that try to be information marketers, people that go out and try to do direct marketing. 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. It's the difference between dabbling and deciding. If you take like 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. So we could eliminate probably of that 70,000 group, we could eliminate the first 69,000 right there. Because there's a significant difference between dabbling and deciding. I mean lots of people, lots of the people I sell to and probably lots of the people who buy your stuff through Nightingale, Conan or whatever are dabblers and there's nothing wrong with that. But you can't dabble your way to riches. I mean, good lord, that'd be great if you can. So I think the number one determining factor is a conscious decision and a conscious plan of action to go forward. I mean you got the people who say, yeah, you said yourself they watch the headlines, they watch the opt in boxes. You can't make any money by watching, so 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'll say, well I actually have received on multiple occasions letters from people or emails. In my case 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. It just infuriates me because I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you? 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. It's the stick to itiveness. I think there's 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.

Well, okay, so with psychology, one of the things that I don't even know if you realize how effective you are at understanding the mindset of the people that you're trying to sell to. You probably do, but the point is.

That marketing is no, Joe, go on and tell me.

No, but you kind of have this really evil, scheming, crazy marketing brain, sort of where you just figure out just how to get into the mindset of the people that you're trying to sell to and stuff. Good marketers know a tremendous amount about applied psychology. So psychology as it applies to human behavior and getting people to respond, how critical is it to understand the inner workings of your prospect's brain? I mean, you take like a Robert Collier quote from the Robert Collier letter book written in the 50s, where he says, you want to enter a conversation that's existing in your prospect's mind. You know how to do that. Is that something that you can talk about to teach people that are watching this right now how they could better get adept at doing that?

Yeah, I have actually, there's a. In the course I created called Mass Control, there's an exercise called the instant empathy exercise, and it's very detailed where you don't enter the conversation in the brain. To truly do it, you have to embody that person. I mean, you literally have to. You have to define that character or that typical customer, you know, like your stereotypical person. So if you could take all of your customers and boil them down into one thing and one dude came out, you have to be able to define who that person is all the way down to, like, what this person does for a living, you know, what his home life is like or her home life is like, what they wear, what they think about, what they talk about, how much money they make, what their fears are, what their dreams and ambitions are. And then you have to become so in tune with that that you literally are able to step into the body of that fictitious person that you've created and act as if you were them. So it's hardcore Almost like NLP modeling type of stuff. But the reason I'm able to sell as effectively as I do to my customers is because I am customer. I have been a business opportunity seeker. I have been a beginning marketer. I currently am an entrepreneur and always will be. So naturally I can speak that language. But if I hadn't had the cumulative life experiences that I know probably 95% of my marketplace has and has gone through and or are currently going through, then I wouldn't be able to do it. So if you're not in that position and a lot of people entering new markets and niche markets aren't, I mean, if you just say, hey, today I'm going to go into and start talking about how to become a tomato farmer. But you've never farmed tomatoes. You're not at a disadvantage. But it's important to understand that you need to find out exactly who you're selling to and do that instant empathy type thing where you literally identify even the most minute detail that you possibly can about this ideal customer and then step into their body. Act as if you were them.

That's what I was trying to say.

Actually.

That's what I was going to say.

I'll tell you something interesting. So I was giving a talk in Orlando about this and I walked to the audience through some of the empathy exercise and I told them about the person who I had envisioned as my typical customer, especially selling in a beginner's market. And that person that I created was a man named Bob. He was in his 40s. He wore dark brown shoes, khaki pants, white button down shirt. He sold insurance for a living. He was married, had two children, and he complained about his kids. And he made $65,000 a year. And the audience is like, okay, that's very interesting. I can see how this type of thing works, especially when you're trying to get into the head of who your ideal person is. After the seminar, a guy comes up to me and I said, this person's name is Bob. I gave him a name. Guy comes up to me, his name was Bob. He had been an insurance salesman until he became successful in the information marketing business. He was the right age, the income was the same. The only difference between my character and this real guy was he did not complain about his kids. He had a very healthy relationship with his children. So it works. It's extremely powerful.

And it works because you just resonated with that dude just by explaining, yeah.

And that guy was the embodiment of my market. But it amazed Me that there just happened to be an actual dude named Bob who lived up to every piece of that criteria that I had created by doing the instant empathy exercise. So I'm down there and this guy comes up and goes, man, you're not going to believe this, but you were talking about me personally. We've never met, but my name is Bob. I did sell Insurance. I'm 45 years old. I make $65,000 a year. I am married. I have two children. The guy was wearing the white shirt, the dark shoes, the khaki pants. I was like, oh, my God, you know, this stuff is heavier duty than I thought it was.

Well, I mean, when I got into the information marketing business, I was a struggling carpet cleaner. Never thought in a million years I would be doing seminars, writing courses, doing coaching groups, and all the stuff that has been a byproduct of me learning marketing. Marketing. I learned marketing because I needed to eat. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't know how to generate business. I knew how to provide this service, but I had no clue on how to actually make money. So I learned marketing because I needed to eat. Out of necessity, the byproduct became I got really good at marketing. I was fascinated with the subject. It was fun. And I ended up building a business around that particular skill set. And I've watched literally thousands of people try to go into the marketing business. Many people have bought my stuff as a model. A handful have made millions of dollars. A lot of them just really never got it. And I think one of the. And what I mean never got it is really they were dabblers. They weren't really doing it like you were making a decision. But the people that I have seen having the most success in any, not just in the marketing business, but just running a business are the people that they came from the background of. I was doing something and I turned it into a more leverageable business versus a guy that wants to go and become a marketing guru to dentists, but never has been a dentist and never built a successful practice. They tend not to have the same results as someone that did. And I think one of the big mistakes that people make is they just think, oh, I'm going to be a marketer and sell information. They don't realize the difficulty of the task at hand. And one of the things, the difficulties is understanding the mindset of the person you're trying to sell to. Our friend Eben Pagan, he calls it an avatar, finding your avatar. And I don't think this conversation. I think people can sit and listen to what you just described and say, yeah, that's a really good idea, but they just don't. They'll never go out and do anything with it.

Dabblers.

Yeah. So you mentioned life experience. You've had a pretty colorful life. A lot of weird stuff happened. And you draw on all of that as it becomes a lot of weird stuff.

So foreboding sounding.

I'm trying to keep it sort of.

My days as an astronaut were a little bit shaky.

No, no, you've.

I mean, no one else knew I was an astronaut. They're like, why are you wearing this suit?

What is the highest esteem thing you think you've ever done for humanity, Frank?

Highest esteem?

What is the biggest contribution do you think you've ever made?

I probably stopped talking for a day. You know, that's probably it. I was quiet, I think for a day. I was asleep.

You're married. You have a kid?

Yeah.

One child, too. Talk about your kids. 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 got.

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 to want the royalties on that one. But this mindset, well, it's all negotiable. Everything's negotiable. I gotta 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 tiny little baby steps can lead to big things. And we all know this as marketers. You get a lead, and then you cultivate that lead and you sell them something. Then you sell them more stuff. But when you. 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. Right. 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 pass 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 the negotiation and just like the coddling and everything is going to be okay. And oh 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.

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, everything that any really successful entrepreneur knows how to do really well is how to sell, how to go out and get checks. That's the first job that.

Checks or checks?

Checks.

Checks. Checks could be.

Checks could be anything. Because everything in life is. Yeah, you wouldn't know that, but everything in life is a sales process, a sales pitch. I mean, you're either attracting someone to do something or you're repelling them. I mean, whatever your motive is. One of the areas where I see people fail is they fall in love with the product. They have this really good idea, but they don't put the focus on learning how to sell it, learning how to persuade people, how to drive people, how to attract people. Take your videos, take your copy, take all of the ways that you set it up to bond with people. You're just a really darn good salesperson. And marketing is replicating selling. I mean, I always say that selling is what you do when you're on the phone or face to face with somebody. Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you properly positioned so they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified, predisposed to give you money. Great marketers are able to take selling and replicate it so they don't have to be face to face or on the phone. But you are superb at selling. You use sales copy, you use all kinds of methodologies to do it. So 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, it's the single most important thing you could think about I've got right now. This person's not even a client and I won't talk about them because I don't know if it's cool, but it's like a really big famous dude. Infomercials all over the place, household names, Ben and Merchant, movies, you know, I mean, all this kind of stuff. And I'm advising them on Internet marketing strategies because they're. They could say they could. I don't know, let's just not just to be cool. I mean, you never know, right? So anyway, I got today, I mean, just today I get an email said, how's everything going with this campaign? You know, and this. It took forever up to get up until this point. And they say, well, here are the stats from the email we sent out. We had 19.3% open the email and 5 point something percent click on the email, still don't know about the sales. I'm like, how do you mean you still don't know about the sales? That's all that matters is the sales, first of all. And then this, if 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. You know, it's just critical.

So you know how they say that the oldest profession in the world is prostitution?

Right?

All right, well, that's not actually true because they first had to sell it.

See, Yeah, I mean, it's probably a.

Pretty easy sell, but they still had to sell it.

We're doing pretty good.

Got to be serious here.

Yeah, we are. We're doing pretty good. This is impressive. So there's that. So, all right, 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, the 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 believe because we've all experienced it. It is kind of horrible. 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. They're gonna think I'm a dickhead and I don't want to be here either. And all this kind of stuff. 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 try to disguise the fact that they're selling almost. Or they try to do these bullshit closes and fake things, which just worsens.

It because people can feel that 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, you're not. It's like trying to dance with someone that you're not really dancing with. And so selling in and of itself is wonderful. It's just the motive behind it where you're actually taking the person. And I think you're absolutely right. People have this negative connotation about it and if they don't get that crap out of their head, they're going to screw everything up.

Yeah, absolutely. So they try to go sideways about it. Or as our friend John Carlton says, they sell from their heels, you know, where they're like, I'm sort of trying to sell you, but I'm not really. I'm scared to death. So the way that it always works for me is just to be completely overt about it, but be cool and respectful to the.

What do you mean by completely overt? Explain that.

Oh, here, I'll make a pitch right now. This, this one variation of this pitch that I did got me like 2,000 customers in nine minutes or something. It was crazy. Alright, so here it was. And this wasn't a piece of paper, it was some other stuff. But this is my prompt 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 goat, 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. So 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. The more you can just boil that down, assuming you've got something people want in the place, 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. When you have to convince someone to accept something they don't already want.

Okay, what you're saying here is so critical because the best marketing on the planet is not going to help selling something that nobody wants. So the first thing that someone needs, that needs to exist before you can sell anything is desire. If somebody doesn't desire it, then the best copy, the best marketing, the best sales pitch, a celebrity endorsement is not going to take it very far, if at all. How do you find what people are interested in?

I cheat. I just look and see what they're buying already. If I come starting a new project or whatever, I'll say, okay, well what's selling now? That I can produce a better product, a similar yet better product with superior marketing. That's it. It's like, well, I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Dear God, that would be difficult. But there's really only three reasons I think that people don't buy. Reason number one is they don't want it. Reason number two is they don't have the money to buy it. Reason number three is they don't believe you. So if you just get over all those reasons, you're pretty much set, you know, and 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.

Okay, so I mean, how do you find what someone's already buying?

Well, when I do it online, I'll go to a site like ClickBank, for example, which if, you know, if anyone follows me, they're like, everyone knows about ClickBank. People maybe in the Genius network with you probably don't. But it's a marketplace where you can be a vendor or an affiliate and promote other people's products. And it allows you to search by category for what the most popular products are in their marketplace. And it allows you to see how many of those products are sold on a referral basis. And you can sort the results. You can say, show me the most popular product in the pets and family category that has the most sales that are driven by other people's referrals. 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 as 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. Gotcha. Gotcha. I wish we could figure out a way to say that over a three day seminar or something. And we charge a lot of money for it, you know, but I think.

You actually kind of have.

Well, don't tell anybody about that.

Yeah, yeah. You've got very, very pretty blue eyes.

Really? Yeah. I just wanted to mention I have these. Done.

Are those contacts?

Yeah. No.

Okay, let's see. What. 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 to spend your energy on?

Well, I'll give you the honest answer and then the answer 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. Oh 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. It's probably still going to be worthwhile, like the work I'm doing with that person that we won't talk about because I don't know if it's cool to talk about them. I could maybe generate a large feature from this, but My interest in helping this person is I get to work with this really famous and impactful person who's cool. So I was like, well, yeah, you know, easy decision to make or if it's not really going to be that fun, but it's going to make a tremendous amount of money. That could be a viable approach for someone to take if they don't already have a tremendous amount of money and they're willing to sacrifice a little lifestyle for the money. And this is all pre assuming that all opportunities that even get to this funneling process are legitimate. I mean, 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.

Well, like what you're saying with selling, I mean, one of my. Not one of my favorite definition of selling came from my friend Dan Sullivan, who founded a company called Strategic Coach. Brilliant guy. I asked him one day, I said, what's your definition of selling? He blurted out, he said, getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and then getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. That's just what he said.

How could you possibly come up with that? Off the top of his head? Off the top of his head. I bet he practiced that.

Dan's a smart dude. So I wrote that down. And the key distinction is if you think about what people want, it's a future result. If anyone's buying anything, even if they're someone that doesn't set goals, your future result might be, I'm hungry right now and I want to go have dinner. So there's 10 restaurants in front of me, which one should I walk into to? I'm going to change my course in life and I'm going to go to this three day seminar or I'm going to invest in whatever, or I'm going to buy a hundred thousand dollar car because it represents whatever emotional feeling I'm going to get out of it. So getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result and then getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. But the three words that are inserted into it is, is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and then getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. And when we were talking about selling earlier and people having this negative connotation to it is if you're ever put in a situation where someone persuades you and gets you intellectually emotionally engaged in eating junk food, drinking yourself into Oblivion, wasting a bunch of time. Things that just simply aren't good for you. They can pull all your hot buttons if they know how to talk to you, if they know how to use imagery. There's a lot things of. Of forces in the world that are constantly trying to get people to make decisions, to get them intellectually and emotionally engaged in whatever. But 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. You know, I mean, Mother Teresa was a great salesperson. Got people intellectually emotionally engaged in a future result that was good for them. You know, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Jesus Christ. You know, you could take any person that was influential and persuasive and, you know, do that, or you can be someone that was an evil bastard and got people intellectually emotionally engaged in order to do something. And I don't even know what the hell I was talking about there, where that came from. But you said something. You said something that. What were you saying that actually triggered that thought?

I can only maintain the memory of like the past 30, 40 seconds. Right. Well.

And if this was a really important person I was interviewed, I would go back and edit this just to make.

Sure you want to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know. I think we were just talking about reasons why people don't buy and they don't believe you or whatever.

You led up to that that leads to another thought. The big question in everyone's mind is, who can I trust? And so whenever we're trying to sell something, when someone's going to click button and buy mass control or they're going to buy one of your products, they're sitting there questioning, should I do it? Should I give Frank this money? So you have built up this anticipation, you've built up this desire, and you've convinced them that giving you money is a good thing, and they now trust you. So how would you break down the criteria of what's going on psychologically in a person to where that. I don't know this person at all. I've never met him. I just watched a video on a website or I've read some copy. I now buy this thing what do you think is going on in that person to now they're going to give you money?

Well, if they have that thought train going on in their mind, then I haven't done a good job because I don't want them to ever think I don't know this person. 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. So, yeah, I think what happens is I do my best to eliminate that sense of uncertainty. Because if someone, let's say that random person here, delivers presentation and best friend all throughout high school, best man at your wedding delivers presentation. Same presentation, same product, same words, emotions and spoken, you're most likely going to pay attention to best friend from high school. So if I can create those same associations and that same feeling of trust by making them feel like they've known me all their lives and making them feel like I'm speaking directly to them, not just to them on a one on one basis, but to their innermost desires for what they want and what they want to be and what they want to experience. If I can create that connection, then I know that I've got the trust. I know they feel like they've known me for all their lives and that I'm their friend.

Well, you didn't just wake up one day and you kind of got that. I mean, this came from, I would imagine. How do you learn? I mean, have you read a lot of books? I mean, what do you do? Because there's people out there that are obviously watching this interview because they're trying to learn something. So this is a learning process. And you have had your own learning process, process. And I know even tomorrow you're going to go do some consulting. I mean, you're a guy that constantly spends money on your own education. And what I also know is that the most successful people I know in business, they're never too cool for school. They never stop learning. The people that I see hit a point is when they get to a point where their pursuit of education stops and they think they've arrived. And that is when I see people like start going downhill. So people that are watching this kind of give a little bit of background on what you've actually invested in your own knowledge and then what you recommend as things that people could or should do.

Like who I study.

Yeah, who you study or just like what is. If you had to sit and tell your best friend, look, you want to learn marketing? Here's what I would do. I mean, and that could be buy your stuff, do whatever. I mean, what would you, what do you currently do? 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, make you lobotomize me and just gave me Dan and easily do it all over again. So that's the fundamental stuff of direct response.

If you were to get a fight with Dan, you think you could take him?

I hadn't met him. I probably could take him because I exercise a lot with the surfing and everything. And I'm younger. But that stash, he's got that hook mustache.

Oh yeah, you never know. He could have teeth under the.

Well, he could have powers. I think a mustache like that probably stored up for all those years gives.

A lot like a rabied walrus.

Dan. Yes, probably. I could still totally kick his ass, you know, I mean, I'm just a younger pal.

I'm gonna make sure that Dan watches this.

Just to see that too soon. And I'll be like, hey, what are you gonna do about it? He'll be like, I'll talk you into kicking your own ass. I'm like, damn, you probably could. Why didn't anyone tell me this? That's no fair, you know? And then I'd beat myself up. So there's that fundamental school, like the Dan Kennedys. Gary Halbert was another great one. John Carlton Walton for writing copy. But if I had to distill everything down, it would be Dan for sure. So then school number two would be like, I would say hardcore psychology, but I don't know if it's really hardcore. But that genre of like magic arts sort of thing, right? And I learned a tremendous amount from studying, both studying and modeling Tony Robbins and that. So he to used huge in terms of, like, well, what's really driving behavior? You know, 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 is vitally important, I think, is the art of conversational dialogue in your copy in the written word, and 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. A tremendous amount of trash fiction.

Really?

Yeah. And I tell this to everyone and they're like, you got to be kidding me.

I'm going to write that down. Trash fiction. What would be an example of trash fiction?

Harold Robbins. Harold Robbins is a guy who, unless my facts are inaccurate, which is highly possible, you know, let's just assume this is true. It's going to be close to true anyway. Was the best selling fiction author of all time. He might have been surpassed by James Patterson at this point, who's another one that I read voraciously. But Robbins, I think, sold like 60 million or it was 25,000 a day or something. Insane amount of books. And they're all horrible. Trash, garbage. But they're good. You read them and you're just like, this is the worst stuff I've ever read in my life, you know, and you're, honey, it's time for. I don't have time to eat now. I'm reading this absolute garbage. You know what I mean? You're hooked on it. You got to eat. So there's him and there's James Patterson's another one. And the reason why I read these guys is because so many other people read them. So if you want to learn how to get into the mindset of just the general population, well, read what they're reading. And if you want to enter the conversation in their head, literally read what's starting that conversation and what they're thinking about. Because I think the number right now for James Patterson is 140 million books sold. And that's somewhere in that range right now. There's 140 million people who, if I made a James Patterson reference, they would get it right. So it's like, okay, not that I'm saying Go make James Patterson references in your copy, because that might backfire. But 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, 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 trust, but like micro chunked 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. So then by the time I got home, all the lights were off. So then you're like, why were all the lights off, damn it. And then you got to read. But it's not this long chapter that's coming up and you're like, this is six pages, but you're consuming these little tiny bite sized chunks. Next thing you know, it's three in the damn morning. You know what I mean?

Well, you've just revealed a very fast, fascinating little secret to your thing because you have a lot of cliffhangers in your copy and in your videos. You have a very, you know, 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.

Right.

And having said that, we're going to take a break for a moment. And since this is a Frank Kern interview, I don't have to be ultra professional here.

Oh, yes, you do.

I'm going to take this mic off and I'm going to do something, but everyone's going to have to guess what that's going to be. And then we'll be right back. So hold that thought.

Why don't you leave the mic off?

This is a cliffhanger. Yeah, it's a cliffhanger right here.

Okay, I'm just gonna sit here.

You're just gonna hang out. You're gonna hang out. Don't even stop the video. Just stare deeply into Frank's blue eyes and marketing secrets will be revealed. All right, so we were talking about before. I decided to depart for a few.

Moments to do something very mysterious. No one would ever wonder what possible.

I left the door and then I came back. And you had no idea what the.

Hell was going on, did you? I'm thinking you probably piloted a helicopter around.

I was doing some serious stuff.

Okay?

I do work for a secret government agency. I knew it.

Well, let me go ahead and write you a check.

Now, I had to go debrief. We were talking about trash fiction, something like that. Any favorite ones that you've by Harold.

Robbins or Robbins is the Carpetbaggers.

Hey, since I'm from the carpet cleaning business, is there anything to do with that?

Yeah. Here are all of Harold Robbins stories summed up into one. And I really have yet to read anything by Harold Robinson I didn't enjoy. But the formula is this guy starts out with nothing, goes through a bunch of hard times, makes lots of money, achieves great success, deals with some enemies, bests them, gets taken down somehow, and then rises back up and finishes on top. All while A, drinking nonstop and B, having sex with lots of women. Huh?

Yeah, I don't think anyone would be interested in that sort of story.

No, it's horrible.

It's surprising.

I get offended just thinking about it.

I can't even think of any movies or anything that would ever follow that formula.

But that's the formula every single time, you know, and it's very profane in lots of places. And it's a graphic, you know, but it's good. It's a good read. And the guy sold a gazillion. Now I wish I knew the accurate stats now, but I don't. But it was like an ungodly amount of books just to the point where you're just like, man. And now they're being re released, they're out of print for a while and now they're being re released and reconsumed and movies have been made out of them and everything. So start with the carpetbaggers is good.

Okay, that's good.

And it's about business. Lots of it always is businessy stuff. But I'll leave it at that.

That's a good recommendation. Profanity. I want to talk about profanity for a moment. You use a lot of profanity at your seminars, for one. I think it's hysterical. And I think that's what makes you so damn funny and your seminar so funny. And you also bond with people. Well, some people can pull it off, other people can't. And I've had lots of people in my career. I've sat down with some very famous, very successful, very wealthy people. And in most boardrooms, behind closed doors, people are cussing up a storm. And then you'll run across certain people that are just fanatical about how it's unprofessional, inappropriate and everything. One of the things that I know for a fact that there's a strategy behind it. One of the ways that I've networked and I know a lot of people and I introduce a lot of people together is you just freaking break the ice by just talking like a real human being, whatever you want to call real human being. But the point is that just breaking the ice with people and getting chummy with them is one of the quickest, fastest ways to build rapport. And you're really darn good at building rapport using a very unique method of doing it. There's a strategy to it and I wanted to see if you could actually speak to that because a lot of people will just say, oh, that's just the guy's rude or whatever. But in reality you're a guy that's made millions of dollars. You have a huge following of people, you're looked upon in the launch world, the Internet marketing world is one of the top people on the planet when it comes to marketing. And you're just guy with, with this wacky ass personality. So what's that all about?

Well, the profanity is used as a state breaker. And I will admit that I really don't know anything about nlp. Which people are like, gosh, nlp, this was amazing. I'm like, yes, it was. I intentionally used the reverse double banded monkey technique or whatever the hell they're talking about. I have no clue what they're about talking, talking about. But I sort of know a little bit about this thing. So people will get, people will go to like a seminar and you're talking about live interactions and presentations and stuff. And people will go to an Internet marketing seminar and they'll expect a certain scenario, right? And they're prepared for this scenario. And because of that they've got like this shell around them and it's usually like, well, this guy's going to try to sell me something. Which naturally I'm going to try to sell you something, okay. And this is going to be serious or whatever and all this kind of stuff. So I like to break that statement, break that whole pattern. Because usually you get to go to every seminar in the world and it's like a pattern. You get there, you have your opening remarks, you have your lame joke, then you have your PowerPoint then you break, then you have your PowerPoint next speaker pitch. Next speaker pitch. After lunch, everyone's tired and this is like bam, a formulaic thing. So I had to come there and immediately break the state by saying something like stand up motherfuckers. You know, and then they're like, what the hell was that? And now they're completely off balance. So it's just like aikido or judo or something. You know, if the guy's like, off balance and bam, you win immediately once that person gets off balance. So once I shift them, I break that pattern. I get them off of their balance, then immediately I'm gonna put my arm up here.

Don't try to take that as.

What are you trying to say? I should not take that? Why wouldn't I take that? What about everything else you've told me off camera? Yeah, what the hell.

No, I mean, that still applies. It's not right now. It's not right now.

Jesus. Almost blew the whole interview. So anyway, once you get them off balance, then I can start. I can start going to work on them a little bit and I'll throw it in there to make sure they're awake because it's extremely difficult to pay attention. Not from the. Well, also from the presenter's point of view, but from an attendee's point of view in a live seminar. It's. You kidding me?

Here's a distinction, though, because it's really you just being you, though. I've seen people try to emulate what it is you're doing, and they completely come across as jackasses. And if they don't pull it off, they come across as rude. And in a lot of ways it's completely inappropriate, you know, Whereas, you know, you just are able to flow with it. So it's not. You know, what I don't want to convey is that the lesson here is start cussing at your seminars and insulting your audience. It's part of just who you are and how you do things. But I think there's. There's just a lot to it. I mean, there's something about when there's a viralness to your stuff, when people say, have you seen Frank Kern's new video? Or have you seen Frank do this? I mean, you've actually penetrated. Don't take that out of context. You've actually.

I didn't say anything.

Yeah, I just had. Yeah, you don't need to say anything. It's all over your face.

That's beautiful. I was going to say if you do it in multiple modalities by audio and video, you could have double penetration. Right.

You do sound like, you know, nlp, the double modalities. That was. I'm not even going to go there.

Jesus.

And see, I'm sitting there trying to be appropriate, you know, off video. It's a whole nother thing. But, you know, I'M trying to represent professionalism.

They're getting their money today, buddy.

Yeah.

I'll tell you, they're like this. No, but I mean, honey, get the credit card. Say, how much are we paying for this crap? Good Lord. It gets good. You stick with us a couple hours and eventually it'll get good, you know, because we'll serve refreshment.

I mean, how do you think you're able to, like, pull this sort of stuff off, though?

It's pre framing is exactly what it is. I mean, there's. If I went up there and I looked like a normal person and I had on a suit and tie and I was introduced as, you know. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome a man of great achievements who's been a tremendous asset to the market marketing community. He's helped many people make lots of money. All the way from San Diego, California. Here's Frank Card. You know, I got up there and I got on my dark suit and I'm like, thank you, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here in Cincinnati. And by the way, get up, motherfuckers. That totally wouldn't work, right? You know, but I go up there, jeans, flip flops, T shirt, you know, the event that you're talking about specifically, I went up and I had Led Zeppelin blaring as soon as I took the stage. And it was at the Hard Rock and it was a theme. Everything was pre framed and staged. So the audience went into that event. Not in the state of mind. Well, somewhat, because all seminars were the same to them, but not in that this is going to be professional state of mind. So I was in the right element. It was all framed correctly.

Gotcha.

You can't. Weird obscenities from a guy that looks like me is not going to throw anyone off kilter. You know what I mean? So, yeah, hopefully that answers.

That's good. All right, well, Gary Halbert is who I originally learned marketing from, and he was just brilliant. I mean, crazy.

Crazy like a fox.

You know, Gary was crazy. Gary was an edge walker. You know, he's one of those guys you either loved him or you hated him. One of the most brilliant copywriters. He's the one that introduced me to Dan Kennedy Kennedy. Dan Kennedy used to write my copy for about nine years straight. Did a lot of seminars with him. I met John Carleton and a whole slew of people through that whole world. So, I mean, both of us studied and hung out with a lot of the same people. And I ended up becoming really good friends with Gary. He Passed away a couple years ago at this point. Basically we used to have a lot of conversations about elegant ideas. And I have to credit him for giving me that term in the way that I think about it, that one elegant idea is worth a thousand semi good ideas. In your career, in your business, 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 sort of. That have been just significant in whatever you would call financial success?

Jesus.

Joe hit us with some good stuff.

Favorite colors.

I don't know why. These crappy little answers.

There was no preparation to that at all. Now I come up with something good. That was a really good question. I'll tell you, the most effective thing that has worked well for me and it's worked well for my customers was the idea and the revelation to drop the pretense and just to not really give quite as much of a fuck. And here's how it happened. Well, here's what I mean. Do you play music at all?

Unfortunately. I tried to play the bass guitar. I never got really good at it, but I've dabbled.

Yeah, I don't think you'd have the right facial expression for bass guitar. You have to kind of be really stone faced if you're playing bass. Look at them now, they're all like, you know what I mean?

That's probably why I didn't do it.

Yeah, it would be hard for me too. It's all in the facial expression.

I threw pots on a potter wheel for a while.

That's, you know. So imagine doing that, okay? And imagine doing that in the state of like, I got to do this pot perfectly and you know, it's got to be really good. Lots of people are watching me throw this pot and you do it and it's like going to suck, you know, because you're flipped out by it. And it's the same. The reason I brought up music is because I used to play professionally, is a loosely used phrase here. But for four years I was on the road, which is why I can't hear worth a damn. But if you ever go in there with the mindset of this really better be good and you get tight, then it's conveyed through your playing, right? And you don't play well and you don't read the other guys well and it's just all, it sucks. So I used to market like that, like this has got to be good. Everything's got to be perfect. I got to be professional and look good and then in 2001, I was sued by the Federal Trade Commission and they sued me for a product I created called Instant Internet Empires. And they said that it was a pyramid scheme. And I'm still sort of at a loss on how that was a pyramid scheme. And I was like, you know what, whatever, okay, what do you want me to do? And they said, give us a whole bunch of money. I said, great, tell me what not to do again. I won't do that again. They said, all right, here's what you'd never do again. I said, fine, call me next time and we'll save lots of trouble. But after that happened and I was kind of mad and I said, to hell with teaching marketing at all. I don't even want to deal with it because I was so freaked out. I was like, everything I do, am I allowed to say this? Am I allowed to say that by doing marketing you could potentially make money? Or am I going to get in trouble? Whatever. So I was like, I'm just going to go sell stuff to the pet industry. The complete opposite. I built that business up and it was a million dollar a year business with no back end. And if you can believe that. And I was so lazy, I never even made a backend, which was stupid anyway. It was another like, do it, do not what I say kind of thing. Or wait, now do what I say, not what I do. So I've become very successful in the niche thing. I'm like, you know what, I've got some stuff to offer and I should start teaching because I'm one of the only guys, if not the only guy. Well, now there's. Evan clearly is also but one of the rare people who can teach this stuff and has also built a million dollar business outside of teaching how to make money. So I was like, well, shit, I'm going to go and teach this stuff because it's really good and I can be of tremendous value and get paid for it. So I go out and I decide to start doing it and I had this attitude of like, you know, I'm just going to be myself here and if they don't like it, fuck them because I don't need the damn money and they can kiss my ass and damn if that didn't really work. So what I was able to do, and I don't mean like my marketing is aggressive and like, hey, I'm Frank Kerner, screw you, because I'm not like that at all. But what enabled me to do was not try to be so perfect about it. And just be like, hey, listen, here's the deal. This is the stuff. Here's what it's going to do for you, what I think it's going to do for you. It might not because I'm not psychic, but here's the offer I've gotten and I hope you take it. And I was able to start selling from that perspective and that was so.

What's the word with a C? Colloquia. Writing in a. What's that word?

Colloquial.

Yes. What does that mean?

Well, to me it means super common speech. Just like how you would speak if you were at the bar, you know, working man's language. The commoners. What? The commoners talk like. Yes. As opposed to people in our elevated social position. Yeah, because clearly we're so basically you.

Just kind of like loosened up.

Well, I loosened up, but I just quit giving so much of a damn and I dropped this professional pretense, right? So I used to like show up to events and ties and stuff and like try to act normal, even though I'm not a normal dude, you know, like I really do want to sit around, play video games and hang out. So once I was able to, I said, I'm just going to be myself. I'm going to say, here's the offer, I hope you like it. If you don't, maybe it's not for you, whatever. But here it is and I believe in it. And here's why.

It's been a while so that significantly impacted the way that people would respond to stuff.

Huge. Before I started doing that, I had an okay following and I did pretty good once I started doing that. Blammo. I mean, just really massive, massive significant change. Once my clients started doing that, it was huge. Once they went away from giving corporate serious looking video presentations to a dude, basically being the prospect's friend, talking to them like they were their friend, saying, hey man, imagine we're friends and you call me up and you say, dude, you should really go see Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie. And I'm like, well, I don't know, I don't really like James Bond. I think he's lame, you know? Well, dude, it still is pretty cool because this, this and this. So I'm just saying you might want to go see. I really dug it. All right, dude, well, maybe I'll go see it. Okay, see you later. That's like a normal conversation. There's none of this. You have to go see it today. And if you go see it today, there's none of this, like, stupid lameness. Well, I determined that 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, you know, stiff, bullshit facade type of thing. So that's a really long explanation.

No, no, I'm talking about. That is very good. That's very good.

Yeah, it's, it's. And doing that and proving to my clients that it's. 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 to me.

Okay, so now you also are a great copywriter. I don't know how you would consider yourself a writing copy, but I think you're pretty good. And one of the things that, like Gary Halbert had this comment where he said, all problems in the world can be solved with the right sales letter.

I think he's onto something with that.

I think he's absolutely onto something. And for years, you know, I thought, you know, a lot of things can't be solved with the sales letter. But the more I thought about it was like, you know, almost anything could be solved with a sales letter. It may not completely solve the problem, but at least it could move you towards it. What I mean by sales letters in today's day and age, it could mean on video, it could mean audio, it could be in person, whatever, but it's the words you say. And I think 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. 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. You talked about John Carlton, who's an awesome dude, smart as heck. 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 great, you know, it's just not going to fly. So, thoughts on copy?

Well, a. You're right, obviously. Of course. Yeah. As always. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Joe Polish is correct. It's amazing. So, yeah, dude. I mean, shit, it's vital. But what I would advise people to do and what works for me is, hey, just don't worry about it. I mean, just mellow out. People get so freaked out, you know? And I think the reason why is because, like, what does this scene remind you of? Okay, I'll just. Is there anything? Is this blank? All right, so here I am playing a piece of paper I was going.

To write on my notebook.

I'm not going to write, but what does this look like? Kid at school, right? I mean, this is. You know, you sit down to write copy and you have this blank. And now it's a computer most of the time. Right. But you go back. This anchor was placed into our psyche as kids. And that anchor makes us feel like. 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 thesises, which I wrote one on. Arrow.

Did you ever get a college degree?

An astrophysicist.

That's what I thought.

Yes. I got nothing of the sort. I was kicked out. Literally was academically dismissed in the least amount of time you can possibly go to college. That's. That's how long I lasted. Really, Like. And go out of here. That was literally it. And good for them because that was a total waste of time. But, yeah. So 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, and because it just 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 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'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. That's got to come through. 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.

Cool, Cool.

Well, lots of stuff there in the copy thing. Ultimately that translates to the easier writing copy because you just sit there and you just write some shit and it's either going to be good or not. And if it's not good, you just go back and you edit it a little bit. And that's so much easier than like, okay, okay, headline must be justified to the left. Come on, forget about it.

Okay, so do you write a lot?

You know, I don't write as much as I do because I do so much video.

Now, since your main environment to sell is on the Internet, you're known for being just a brilliant launch guy, knowing how to do. Could you explain what a launch is? What is a launch? When people hear an Internet launch?

Well, the concept of launching in the Internet space was made popular and invented in my opinion, by a guy named Jeff Walker. Luke Skywalker, Formula die. Well, Luke Skywalker taught it to Jeff Walker before he passed, unfortunately in a binge drinking accident. So now Jeff Walker was carrying on Luke Skywalker's Legacy and he's productlaunchformula.com and he started this whole launch thing and he's got this formulaic approach to product.

Launches which is only going to last another two weeks. And then it's an old marketing fad, the Santa fad's.

Eventually it's going to go away. I wish the Santa Ana wasn't. I'm so Hoarse from this and that and the, you know, the yelling. Constant yelling, right? So, yeah. So anyway, so Jeff Walker invents the product launch formula. You know, and I'm more of a modeler than I am a student, right? Like, I rarely read the book. You know, I'm just like, okay, what is this person doing? I'll just do what they're doing, right? You know, to hell with the book. I'm just going, okay. You know, and that can be good, and it can also be bad because if you, like, someone were to model what I actually do, that might ever get anything done.

Actually, you know, one of my. I have a $25,000 a person coaching group for infomarketers, and one of the people that's in it is Telman Knudsen, which I never get. I've known Telman for a while and I still can never say his last name right. But anyway, runtelmanrun.com he's going to raise $100 million for homeless kids in America, actually, which wouldn't incorporate you for Virgin unite. But anyway, one of the things he said, he goes, you know, I just. Just followed Frank Kern's mass control step by step, made $3 million, just did exactly what he said. But he happened to read your stuff. Whereas you, on the other hand, just kind of look at it and try to model it. And probably.

Well, when I created the mass control. First of all, let's address the launch thing. So people associate me with launches a lot. I'm not really the launch guy. The launch guy is really Jeff Walker. I just got involved using my mast control system with some launches that just happened to have been at the time. I think the records have been broken now. But the biggest launches in our. And I say our, I mean, the Internet marketing market space in our history. So I used that to sell my stuff. I was like, hey, look at this. And I said, by the way, this isn't even just about launches, you know, so it was like a stacking of benefits on there. But I think the reason why the clients who have purchased the mass control product have had success is because I knew, first of all, I actually gave. And I was like, damn it, I want this thing to work. I don't just want to send a bunch of stuff to people. I want them to do it so they'll buy more of my stuff. It only took 10 years to realize you can sell more stuff to your customers if they like you.

So I kind of figured that one early on.

I mean, why don't you call me.

Could have saved you all those years of selling pet stuff.

Or could have sold more stuff to the pet people. I could have a plane by now. No plane. You see a plane in here? No nothing. No keys to a plan on my carry. So anyway, I broke it down in these tiny little chunks, you know, I was like, all right, now, damn it. And I wouldn't give. I was militant. My customers are probably like, you're such an asshole. But I wouldn't let them have the next chapter until they'd completed the first one, you know, so it was this like regimented thing. So that was helpful, I think, in the success of the clientele. I don't even know where we got all. Because you were.

No, no, I was asking you about launches because, I mean. I mean, what's the difference between a launch and just a regular marketing campaign where you're trying to sell a course? If you're going to say you have a $2,000 widget thing, glop. And you want to sell it, just selling it, or you want to do a launch with it, what does that mean for someone that doesn't understand what a launch is?

Well, you create a tremendous. First of all, a launch is a marketing event, in my definition of it. You turn the fact that you're selling something into an event and an experience that your customers both participate in and they enjoy being a part of and they feel like they're doing something. Ideally, it's an event, an experience and a voyage where your prospect and soon to be customer feels like they're going on this voyage with you. From the inception of the idea all the way through the creation of the product and your decision to finally release it. And they're experiencing right along side by side with you the joys and pass pitfalls of doing so. By that I mean today the software is finally ready. However, one of our programmers got hit by a bus and he's going to be okay, but we found out it delayed it an extra two weeks. But there's an upside to this whole thing. While he was in his narcotic slumber, he had a vision of the brand new super feature number 2000, which we decided to include incorporated into the product. So without a delay. But it's going to be even cooler than we thought, that sort of thing. They're right along. Oh my God, this is going to be so cool. So that's really what a launch is. And to do it, you create this anticipation and this demand by talking about how cool it is and by bringing people on that Journey with you. And by moving them along. There's a strategy that I use called results in advance. I always talk about it with the dating industry because one of the launches I worked on was in the dating dating world, which was weird because I've been married for almost 10 years. I don't date. I date my wife. But, you know, look, as far as.

What goes on in that head of yours, there's probably plenty of dating.

Yeah, I don't know anything about it. It's crazy. But anyways, and I'll leave it at that.

I'm tempted to say more, but I won't.

I mean, we're not the only people who are going to watch this. I'm going to get in trouble for that. Why? Did Joe polish me?

No, actually, I'm secretly plotting to get you in huge trouble with your wife.

Yeah, that's great. I'm probably already in trouble. She's probably calling now. She knows she's got this psychic thing down. Anyway, results in advance, right? So here's part of the launch thing that works really well for me that I teach. I didn't even teach it in mass control. I just give it away. So imagine that your customer. I tell people to draw, and here, we'll do it here, and I'll hold it up to the camera. And then people who are listening to this on audio are just going to have to be screwed. So all you guys listening on audio, if you bought this from Joe, you should demand a refund. So what I like to do is I draw a timeline like this, and I have a beginning, and then I have the outcome. So here's the timeline. It's just a line on a piece of paper. And let's say that the ultimate outcome for the prospect in this dating example is to have a relationship. Okay? So I'll just put sr, which stands for successful relationships. Okay? So sr. And at the other end, I'm going to draw my little dude. So here's my little dude. So what I want to do is all throughout my launch and all throughout the campaign, I want to give this guy little pieces of information that move him one step closer to this outcome that he wants, right? I want to give him results in advance because the only reason he's interested in me at all, I don't have any delusions that people that are responding to my stuff really give a shit about me. They want the result, they want the outcome, which is totally fine.

Absolutely.

Thanks a lot, guys. I really thought we were friends, but whatever, no one ever calls. They Just want the results. No, I'm kidding. Anyway, I have this little process and I say, okay, what are some of the steps that can happen between little dude here being dateless to him having a successful relationship? And that would draw it out. So step one might be approach, right? He would approach a woman. Step two would be he has a conversation with that woman and she doesn't like, punch him in the mouth. Step three would be he gets the phone number. Step four would be he goes on date, you know, Step five would be he goes on date two or whatever. And then all the way. Now he's got a girlfriend, right? Because everyone knows after the second date you have a girlfriend, right? I mean, that's the law pretty much. So here's the timeline right now that I've drawn out. So I have the dude and then this. A stands for approach, C stands for conversation. P is phone, D is date, and D2 is date number two. So nothing fancy. So what I'm going to do is my first piece of content that I released to my group of these dudes that I'm ultimately wanting to sell this result to is my first piece of content would be like a video that says, hey, listen, you know what? I get emails and phone calls and letters from people all the time. And they say their biggest obstacle right now is, is forget about just getting a date and having a successful relationship. They just want to know how to approach a woman. Because you go into a bar and you see this beautiful woman and you freeze up. We've all been there. You want to go and talk to her. You think of all these things you can say, but how do you break the ice? And she's with her friends. So here are seven ways that you can go up and start approaching women tomorrow and have the results. You're looking for ways that are going to make them not think you're a freak and a stalker and a psycho if you give them that context. Now, notice all I'm telling them how to do is this, right? And I'm going to give them two or three little pointers out of 100 possible pointers for how to approach a woman. But what happens is I give them this piece of content, they consume it. And if they do it or if they envision themselves doing it, I've moved them now one step closer. So now my little dude is here. So he's one step closer. I've given him a little bit of that result in advance. So here's what happens in his mind, right? He goes, he's Thinking to himself, damn, this guy's pretty cool, okay? Because yesterday I was sitting around all by myself at home and then I got this video from this dude and I went to the bar and I talked to three girls and it was cool. None of them threw their drink on me. And it was. What do you know? That's amazing. So a, this person is starting to trust me, which is vital because we know he wants the result, right? Like, most of the time, if you're like selling stuff to people and they're opening your letter or whatever they want, if not your product, they want the result that your product can and or should deliver. You know what I mean? So we know that he wants it, right? So now he's starting to trust me. Remember, there are three reasons people don't buy. They don't want it, they don't have the money, or they don't believe you. He's starting to believe me because he's like, man, this guy's delivered okay? I mean, I did what he told me to do and it worked. Holy shit. Alright. He's one step closer to his result and he wants more. He's like. Because what's happening is. He said, okay, well, so I went and I approached them and they're like, oh, yeah, well, I do come. As a matter of fact, I'm a Virgo or whatever the answer is. But now he's like, but now what do I say to him? What kind of conversation do I have? So now he wants more. So now instead of me being this uninvited person, he's like, man, I wish that dude would write me and tell me what to say, because approaching words. But now what? So my next piece of content moves him that step closer. I give him a little video, a little report on like seven funny conversations you can have with a woman or whatever, which I have no idea what those would be, but assuming that they could be done, that don't involve core form, which has always been my secret, as you know. Listen, if my wife ever wakes up from that and she discovers I'm not Matthew McConaughey, I'm hosed. So if you guys ever see us out in public or anything, be like, hey, McConaughey, how's it going? You know what I mean? I would really appreciate it. So anyway, you move them along leading up to this event, which is your launch of the Stuff. And as you move them towards your launch, you're giving them these results in advance. Their trust for you just escalates exponentially. So now you've given the guy how to approach, how to have a conversation. He's like, wow, so we're talking now. What do I do? I wish I could get a phone number, man. I give anything. I just get the phone number and then you give them that. By the time you've given them all these useful pointers, when it's time for you to release your how to have a successful relationship course, the person's hooked because you've given them these results in advance. They know that you're not full of shit. You've delivered results. They know you care, and they feel like they've known you because you've been walking through this process. You're doing all the other launch ninja stuff that we talk about, and it just plain works. So what happens is when you open those doors, you get these immediate surge of sales. Yeah.

Because you're just constantly keeping people in a state of anticipation.

Yeah. Excited and positive expectancy. So it's not just, ooh, I want to see if this is any good. It's like. Like, this is going to be killer. I can't wait. You know, there's a difference between, like, you can have an anticipation going to the dentist, but it's not a good kind of anticipation. So we have, like a positive expectancy.

First off, this is, you know, it took a while to get to some good stuff here, but, you know, we.

Could edit everything out.

And the fact that you even did this with stick figures is just great.

Yeah, that's all I got.

No, no, actually, this is very, very good. And that was worth whatever, you know.

$7,000 that we charged for this interview.

Exactly, exactly. So you said ninja. The term ninja stuff. Now, in the process of sending out emails, sending out videos, there's a lot of little things that you do. What are some tips that you would give people for getting email opened? Subject lines? Just what are some things that you've learned, if any formulas that will allow you to just have way more response to your communications.

Sure. Okay. So the Internet is media as taught by Dan. Right. He's like, media is media is media. Internet is no different than tv. I'm afraid to say on video that I disagree because I think Dan might foolishly attempt to beat me up when I meet with him in a couple of days. Naturally, we've already established we're going to fight and I'm going to win, so I guess it shouldn't really matter. But I think the Internet is significantly different than other media in the sense of the. There are multiple contexts, mental Places that people who are using the Internet are at. And that's hard to explain, so I'll do my best. Let's say there are like three categories of Internet media out there. Like three main things people are going to do online. They're going to check their email, they're going to browse web pages, and they might go to blogs. Well, every single piece of that Internet media has a different mental headspace. The user is in a different frame of mind. So specifically, when you're checking your email, you are in the let's communicate with friends state. You're not in the let's talk about business state. Typically, you're not in the sell me some stuff state. You're in the I want to see what grandma's doing, or hey, here's a funny satirical take on the MasterCard Priceless ads where the guy's vomiting on himself. Whatever, you know what I mean? It's like in that friendly, fun state. So you need to adapt your communication for that particular media to the mindset that your prospect is already going to have. For example, an email that says, announcing our new fall specials. And then it goes into. And it's got pictures of your inventory with prices slash. And it looks like a print ad from a newspaper. It's not going to do nearly as well as if, like the subject line said, hey, Joe, and then it said, hey, Joe. Just wanted you to know that I'm practically giving you free money to come to this website. This sounds stupid, but when you go here for the full story and you laugh all the way to the bank. Sincerely, Frank. Now, even that in itself was a little bit salesy, but I'm just kind of making this up as I go along. But that was. There are two things to note about that. One is the subject line was what a friend would send, right? And oftentimes a friend wouldn't even say your first name. Because if I'm writing to you, I'm not going to say, hey, Joe. I know it's Joe. You know you're Joe. Everyone knows you're Joe. Because I'm sending to Joe's email address. So I might just say, hey. And you see that and you're like, oh, this must be a personal email. It just says hey, right? And so then you open it up and the first thing is it's really short. So, like, emails typically aren't 900 pages. You know what I mean?

So you don't like long emails?

No, because the function of the email is to get someone to click on the Link typically and to pre frame it a little bit, but really is to get them to click on the damn link. If you look at the mechanical sales process of email marketing, it's like, like a get open B, click link. Then website does the selling or generates the desired response where there's an opt in or whatever. So the thing to notice about that email was it's short. And the third thing is it's very colloquial, very friendly because that's what they're used to. Like your grandmother's not going to write you and say, dear Joe, I was thinking today that it would be a good sound investment for you to consider buying a Vitamix blender. There are many health benefits to having freshly blended. You know what I mean? It's. They ain't going to say that shit. You're going to say, hey, you know, these things are killer. Hey, dude, the Vitamix thing is the funniest thing I've ever seen. This guy put a telephone in there and blended it up. Imagine what it'll do with all those carrots you like to eat. Anyway, check this out. This is kind of funny.

Bam.

You know, and then it's going to get red and bam.

Cradle rock style.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, we should start talking like gangster rappers now. But yeah, so that's the email context world. Okay? So then you have another world which is web pages. And it's okay to sell on web pages, but it's more effective than I've seen in my own marketing anyway to take an even more subtle approach. So the way that I learned to sell online was to copy guys like you and Dan and how you sold in the mail when you're selling in the mail, typically from what I've. And I'm a direct mail rookie, so I believe this to be true, but I don't know it to be true. You're selling under immense pressure. You are as the guy trying to sell stuff because you're not the person with the. The guy's got to open the damn thing, take the paper out, read it. The wife's saying, hey, did you get the milk? Or whatever. The kid's like, daddy, Daddy, look what I drew. The dog just shat on the floor or whatever and in order to respond, this guy's got to tear out the piece of paper, write some shit on it, lick a stamp, stick it back in the mail, or God help him get on the phone and call somebody, which to me is horrible. I never want to call anybody. That's just me because I grew up with the Internet, right? So it's like, you mean, I. It's like when I was selling that trip we're doing to Vietnam, I had to mail the guy a check. I was like, what is this, honey, do we have a checkbook? You know what I mean? It's bizarre.

I'm going to spend 14 days in Vietnam with Frank and it's going to be fascinating.

Oh yeah, dude. We're going to the jungle, we're going to eat hallucinogenic plants. It's going to be awesome.

It's going to be a freak show.

Yeah, that would be totally great. So anyway, so you as the guy selling the stuff, have all these unbelievable things that you got to deal with to get the guy to take action. And as a result of that, you practically take out the emotional sledgehammer and just clobber him in the face with it. You know, it's like, buy the shit right now. You know, I mean, it's the equivalent of, you don't buy this, you're gonna die. You know what I mean? And online that works a. It works really well. But what has worked better in my experience is more laid back approach, which is like, you know, you might want to look at this. You should have this. Here's why. And like shorter, more segmented, less high pressure, less intense insanity around the sale. Because the Internet is ultimately a relationship. And research medium typically is what it is. Research, news, media, shopping. Yeah, but shopping typically in our style stuff, we're interrupting them, their pattern, we're coming in. It's not like if we're selling shoes or something on an online retailer for shoes like Zappos.com is a different thing than the type of stuff we do. Which is dangerously close to me saying, but my business is different. Which is one of the worst things you could say according to the gospel. According to. According to Dan. But in this case, our style of marketing is significantly different. It's a different buying and buying well.

You know, everybody's business is different and unique in a lot of ways. However, about 80% of all businesses are pretty much the same.

Right.

So, you know, I mean, it's.

Here's the point I'm trying to make. It came to me finally. Good. Yeah. This could have been days. The innership, the inner ship is coming for. The Internet is a relationship medium. That's why you get online to have email, phone.

You sounded like Bill Clinton for just a second.

That's what I'm going for. Yeah. So I did have sex with that woman and I enjoyed it. And I'm going to sell the photographs on Facebook and I'm going to do it for America and I'll support Barack Obama and his taxes. So anyway, it's a relationship meeting. I mean, if you think about all the way historically, if you go back in time and remember why you set up an Internet account, chances are it will see you have email. I'm not saying email is the definition of the Internet, but it's a relationship thing. That's why we do it, to maintain and create personal relationships. That's why social media is so huge, because people like to maintain those relationships. In selling online, the direct mail hammer to the face approach works, but the hardcore relationship building and long term approach works better. That's what I'm trying.

Okay, great stuff. Can I ask you, in your experience, if you couldn't use email in conjunction with your websites, how effective do you think your marketing would be with just the website?

It would be extremely diminished. And I'm going to define the use of email as if I was if the ability to follow up was removed. So does that mean I can't follow up with them at all or does it mean that I just can't send them an email, but I can follow up with them through other mechanisms?

Yeah, I mean, you could follow up. Well, here's the point I'm trying to get at. You hear this all the time. I got to get a new website or I got to fix my website. But you don't usually hear people say I got to put together a cohesive strategy that's going to incorporate, incorporate a website that also has an opt in and a follow up system. In a direct mail campaign, which maybe even incorporating phone calls and voice blasts and a free recorded message. You don't hear complete strategy. You hear like, I need an ad. What people don't get is that marketing is not an event typically it's a process. And that process could incorporate multiple different touch points. So you're not a guy that says, oh, I'm an email marketer or I'm a website marketer. I mean, you're using a lot of different tools in your toolbox, but they fit and they make sense and there's a process behind it.

And follow up is the problem. It's all in the follow up. So if that were to go away, the ability to follow up would be. I would make probably 97% less money. Because you think about a really, really kick ass website is going to convert about 3% visitors to sales, maybe a little more, but 3% is going to be doing good cold visitors to sales. Then if you can't follow up with those other 97 people, what are you going to do? You're screwed. You've got to have the whole package. I think all of us Internet guys have made a dreadful mistake. An easy mistake to make with a horrible mistake in terms of becoming overly dependent on email. Absolutely. Again, Mr. Kennedy, you are correct, sir. You told us so. All right, so you're right. We're still fighting when we meet each other. Personally, I am going to win. But now that we've established that, like 10 times, I'm going to get a letter. Frank, I'm going to kill you. Sincerely, Dan. But anyway, to rely on email as just the end all, be all is stupid and has been stupid. And I have been guilty of it. I'm no longer guilty of it, but it's a bad call.

There's a lot of different skill sets. And what I'm doing with Bridge Gap Marketing with Dan Hollins to help optimize the online and offline world, there's leverage points that are missing in both worlds. I don't even think it's either an Internet marketing or offline marketing. It's just kind of like marketing and all these different ways that you go about doing it. People just simply don't leverage what it is they have. You know, I mean, a database is an asset and all the different ways that you can.

Good God. Yeah, absolutely. It's the king. God help me. You get an address and a phone number. See, to us in the Internet world, it's like the email list was the king. And now lots of, myself included, and the guys that I run around with, you know, the big fan, fancy, fancy Internet gurus, we've done all these promotions where give me a little bit of money and I'll send you some stuff. Shipping and handling. And now we've got these databases of physical addresses and I've tested sending offers to them. New concept. You're probably like, oh, shit, Frank. Really? You send them stuff in the mail. But to us, it was a big deal and we're getting. I told you that one that I did it got a 20 something to one ROI. And we're just like, we have been the biggest idiots in the world.

Well, see, I think it's a reliance. I went to an Internet marketing conference a couple years ago and I mean, a lot of very sharp Internet marketers and I was just amazed at how much they had no clue about direct.

Mail oh, none of us do.

What's funny about it is that in a lot of ways it validated so much of the stuff that I knew because I feel like a total dumbass when I go to Internet marketing stuff because these Internet marketers are doing stuff that I had no clue about and know how to do. So the more you learn about marketing, the more you realize you don't know because it's so such, 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, 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, you know, 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 alongs 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 it's still the same. Transactional mechanics are the same in terms of them buying online. Unbelievable response every single time. Like, how come I haven't been doing this forever? You know, oh my God. I mean, 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, you know, 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. And I think everyone watching this or listening is like, yes, you're right. But so people actually do it. And speaking now to the people who are online and online marketers, 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, like, oh, how do you do it? How do you. What are these newfangled printers people speak of? What are these things? You know? But it was nothing. So do it. It works. It's crazy. It's like free money. I promise you. It's insane. My experience, anyway, it's like, good Lord, probably like what you guys thought of when you're like, these kids are out there sending these things called emails, making money. So now I'm having the same perspective with direct mail.

It's the same thing. There's always unmined gold sitting in your database. If you just use different shovels and different ways to get at it. As much as I would hate to have to try to suggest somebody buy anything, I have this really great Nightingale Conant program. That's the number one selling marketing program in Nightingale that talks a lot about how to do direct mail. I've interviewed.

Where would someone get it? Joe.

That would be joepolish.com or nightingale.com but I've interviewed John Carlton a couple times. Great friend of mine. I've had him, Joe Sugarman, all the direct mail experts. I've interviewed Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert, everyone, Ted Nicklaus, even years. I would highly recommend, if you're doing anything that is successful online, taking it offline, you in many cases can triple, quadruple the result just because you're not competing. See, email is the ultimate form of multitasking. Whenever someone's reading an email, they're looking at an email screen. You're looking at literally dozens of things vying for your attention. The beautiful thing about an envelope is you got the envelope there, you might have a stack of mail. But if you use direct response like Gary Halbert's apol versus bpol, people of America, probably all over the world, sort their mail out over a wastebasket and it's either going to go into the A pal, which is everything that's personal or appears personal, or the bpal, which is everything that is junk or looks like junk.

It's going to go in the garbage.

And what you were saying with just writing an email that says, hey, that's the apol BPOL version of how to do so you already are using the principles. It's just using.

When I did the apoll mail on my test, I had to do a handwritten file and a real stamp and a plain envelope. And the return address was my return address, but instead of my name it said super duper Secret Ninja headquarters.

That's good.

Yeah. Because I was like, how could you not open that thing up? Right?

Super duper. I should actually use that. That's a good one.

I put TM on it, so you can't now.

All right, well, one thing. Now this will sound like a goofy question, but I'm being serious. What are your thoughts of the how to self help industry?

That's awesome. Yeah. What do you mean? That's correct.

No, no, what I mean is that you meet a lot of your heroes. You realize a lot of people are flawed human beings. There's a lot of people that have. In terms of marketing, you make a lot of claims and stuff out there. However, I owe so much to the world of people that have written books and documented things, things and put their life experience down and give people the ability to accelerated learning. I think going to a good three day seminar can give someone more insight, more education, more capabilities, more knowledge than spending four years in college sometimes. But the public perception is, oh, you're going to a seminar. Oh, this get rich quick thing. Oh, this self help thing. And I know how valuable it is. There's a lot of crap out there, obviously, I mean a ton of crap, but there's also a lot of really good, good stuff out there. And I think people that are willing to, I think part of someone's ability to be successful with this stuff. We're in the how to business. We sell knowledge. We sell knowledge products and courses and stuff. I think the ability to be successful with it has everything to do with someone's willingness to Invest in their own future. You give your mass control course to someone for free versus some dude that paid a couple grand. The guy that paid the couple of grand is not just spending a couple grand on your stuff. What they're spending a couple grand for is on their own future and that willingness and desire to learn something. And so one of the things I wanted you to. What are your thoughts on people that really do make it? People that have the juice because the information is out there. I mean, we live in such an incredible world where you want to learn, learn. I mean, anything. Be a better parent, get in great shape, be more spiritual, learn how to do Internet marketing.

It's out there, especially with the Internet. It's like you have the world's largest library in your house. Exactly.

Well, okay, my point is, like, if having access to knowledge made someone rich, then every librarian in the country would be a millionaire. So having access to knowledge is only one part of it. There's another piece of it. So, so 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 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 that's what I did was like when I discovered Dan, you know, I. I went and I got everything and I just went through it methodically. 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 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 understand that 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. Can't quite remember, but I think Dan might have been. Been the one that told me that.

Well, see, there you go. And that sounded a whole lot better than what I said. Yeah, so do what he said regarding that. And the third thing that's really powerful though, because I have fallen into that trap, like, well, this guy's got all the answers. And then you find the guy that does something you don't agree with or whatever, and you're like, oh, everything that I learned is crap. And then you just wash out all this good knowledge you put in your brain. You spent time and effort putting it in your brain. It's just done. Because everybody does stupid stuff except me. But everyone else does really stupid stuff all the time, probably constantly, with the exception of myself, which is obviously perfect. And we all know this already. I'm being redundant, clearly.

That's some funny shit right there.

The final thing is fucking do it, man. Do some of the stuff. Don't dabble, decide. I mean, pretend. I tell this to people. I say, I want you to pretend right now that Bin Laden was out there and he had his finger on the Destroy America button. And if you don't do this, he's going to press the button. And this thing would be like, write a headline or whatever and okay, Jesus, I'll write the headline. Great. Wasn't that easy? They'll write the salutation like, fine, tell them not to press the button. Jesus Christ. And the next thing you know, they have a sales letter and they haven't destroyed America. But it's just like, just do it. Because none of this stuff is hard, right? I mean, really, it's not that big of a deal. You just write some shit and send it to people and if it works, send them more stuff. And it doesn't work, write something different. Send it to them again. It's really the whole formula, you know what I mean? It's not that hard.

Well, we're sitting at a time that we're doing this recording. I have to, I guess, sort of time date it. Because you know, this is going to be a timeless interview. I mean, 200 years from now, people are going to be watching the Joe Polish Frank Kern Genius Network interview. But a lot of people, it's interesting seeing when there's struggles in the economy or recession and people are losing money and things aren't as easy as they were at certain times. And Warren Buffett had this quote where he said, it isn't until the tide goes down that you find out who was swimming naked and who wasn't. People can just be lazy and.

They.

Just don't put and apply themselves. I'm like a pessimistic optimist. I want to believe in the potential of people, but potential just means you haven't done it yet. And when you look at people out there, there's just a lot of things with people's behavior. To me, that just isn't really inspiring. And I love seeing people take action and do stuff and make great things happen. That's why I love entrepreneurs, because entrepreneurs have one ingredient which is critical, which is they're simply just risk takers. You got to take risks and you're going to screw up and you're going to fail. If you want to call it failure in the marketing world, you call it testing.

Well, it's an accurate description, I think.

Yeah. And, and so one of the things that I would. If you had to talk to your best friend right now and just give him any form of motivation, inspiration, anything to get off his ass and take action, what would you tell him to do other than just get off your ass and take action?

Oh, I mean, I would literally talking to someone I've known forever, I'd be like, dude, look at me. All right, Imagine all the time, all the years that you've known me, you know what obvious retard I am? I am a self made, cash in the bank multimillionaire. If I can do this, anybody can. And I follow half of the instructions at best that I spend all this money on. I'm going to meet Dan. I'm really nervous about meeting him because he's going to be like, well, you've been my student for three years and you've only followed 10% of my directions. Like, sorry, dude. But with that said, I've been wildly successful, so you don't even have to really do a good job of it. I don't think I've really done a good job as a marketer. I've just like done a consistent job as a marketer.

Right, well, that's good. You've done a consistent job.

Yeah, it's Just show up, man. I mean, just, like, do something. Because I'm living proof that this stuff works. You know, people say, oh, well, you can do this kind of stuff because you're Frank Kern or whatever. Like, and, you know, I get to be Frank Kern because I do the stuff that Frank Kern does, which is like, open the book, get to chapter one, and go, oh, okay, step one, do this, I'll do this. You know, and half of the time, like, step one one works so well, I never make it to step two. Still, the point I made with my pet business, I never had a back end. Now, how fundamentally stupid is that to not have a back end but just the front end works so well? I made so much money, I was like, well, I'll do the back end later, and just never did it. So oftentimes, if you just get to step one, hell, you'll end up doing so much more than 99% of the people did. And you might not even have to make step two because step one might get you as far as you wanted to go in the first place. Or farther. Exactly.

Okay, well, last question I'll ask you then. I think 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's either. 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've 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. You're their slave, essentially. So learn to do that. It's really easy, actually. It's as easy as talking to someone and saying, hey, dude, I went and saw the new James Bond. It's pretty good. You should check it out. It's that simple. 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're in deep trouble. Yeah, pretty much. Hoes is the professional term. Awesome.

Well, okay now, great stuff. Thank you. Appreciate it. In all seriousness, and it's hard for me to. To try to be positive and acknowledge you for anything.

That's the way you're looking at me. Yeah. Yeah.

How do people find out about you? If they want to study Frank Kern, Go to Frank's events, get any of his materials. Where do they go?

See, this is classic do as I say notice. I do. If you go to Frank Kern dot com. If you went there today, you'd see a big sold out notice and then an email where you can put your name on an email or you could finally buy some stuff when I reopen my stuff. However, if you go to frankcarn.com and you open it up and you enter your email, you'll also be sent to my blog, which has Jesus, probably like 10 hours of video similar to this and also has channel.

What do you mean similar to this? There's nothing like this on your blog.

Similar.

I don't recall ever being on the blog indoors.

Okay. And other stuff that's like fun and silly, but there's videos, audio articles. I mean, there's more free stuff than you can stand, really. So. Frankkarn.com, enter your email address. I will naturally spam you probably no more than 15, 16 times a day. And I promise to only send things about penis enlargement pills. But the emails will be very well written and very colloquial. It'll sound like you'll feel as if you're getting penis enlargement pills from someone you've known for your entire life. It'll be great. Awesome.

Awesome. Well, you know, and any famous last words. Anything else you want to say?

You know, if you're ever in California and there's a Santa Ana and it's dry and you find yourself getting really dried out, get a humidifier before getting the cold. That's probably the best advice I could give right now. Or else you'll sound like this. Yes, that's powerful. That's pretty good. That's a good thing to end on.

All right, so what I will say to all the listeners. Listeners, let me know what you thought of this interview with Frank and check his stuff out. He's truly a. I wouldn't say marketing icon, but he's a funny dude, knows his stuff.

The marketing icon sound a lot better. Yeah.

You know, but anyway.

Sam.